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Tag: crime
Joe Biden

Fox's Right-Wing Crime 'Crisis' Bombs -- Because Violent Crime Is Down

After President Joe Biden accurately declared that murders and other violent crimes fell last year, Fox News responded by urging viewers to focus instead on individual tragic anecdotes of violent crimes, particularly ones involving migrants. The network is concocting an unverifiable surge of “migrant crime,” which its personalities can use to reinstall Donald Trump in the White House.

“Last year, the United States had one of the lowest rates of all violent crime — of all violent crimes in more than 50 years,” Biden said Wednesday in remarks to police chiefs from major cities. “Murder, rape, aggravated assault, robbery all dropped sharply, along with burglary, property crime, and theft. And it matters.” Biden attributed the decrease to the work of “the law enforcement and community leaders here today” and touted the impact of the 2021 American Rescue Plan’s funding for public safety. He concluded by saying,“Our plan is working, but we still have much more to do.”

Biden’s statements are consistent with the data evaluated by Jeff Asher, a crime analyst whose work has appeared in outlets like The New York Times,The Atlantic, and Axios. Asher wrote in December:

Murder plummeted in the United States in 2023, likely at one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded. What’s more, every type of Uniform Crime Report Part I crime with the exception of auto theft is likely down a considerable amount this year relative to last year according to newly reported data through September from the FBI.

Americans tend to think that crime is rising, but the evidence we have right now points to sizable declines this year (even if there are always outliers). The quarterly data in particular suggests 2023 featured one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the United States in more than 50 years.

Biden’s use of data to show that the violent crime spike, which originated during the Trump administration, has receded under his tenure is an antidote to Fox’s typical practice of leveraging individual crime anecdotes to damage Democratic politicians. Fox personalities have spent the last several months diligently trying to create a narrative of a wave of “migrant crime” purportedly triggered by Biden’s border policies, flooding the airwaves with reporting on such anecdata. They are working hand-in-glove with Trump, who used a recent interview on the network to take credit for originating the “new category” of “migrant crime.”

“There is no evidence that immigrants in the country illegally have historically committed more violent crimes, and there is no evidence that such immigrants are committing more violent crimes,” the Washington Post’s Philip Bump noted in an analysis of the Fox’s coverage — and Republicans are responsible for spiking bipartisan border security legislation for the explicit reason that Trump wants to use border chaos to win the election — but that’s not slowing them down. (Update: NBC News reported that its “review of available 2024 crime data… shows overall crime levels dropping in those cities that have received the most migrants,“ including Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, New York, and Los Angeles.)

Fox’s response to Biden citing actual crime data seemed to range from offended to infuriated, with everyone from “straight news” correspondents to prime-time propagandists pushing back by pointing to anecdotes. Their Wednesday commentary presents a case study of how Fox’s day-in, day-out coverage uses individual instances of crime to terrify their viewers and encourage them to vote for Republicans.

Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich previewed Biden’s speech — and telegraphed her network’s partisan counterattack — on Wednesday afternoon.

“Unclear how compelling a case he can make that his record on crime is better than Trump’s, I suppose he’s going to look at the numbers and try to say that that’s the evidence people need to look at,” she said on America Reports. “But anecdotally, when you have families and communities experiencing high levels of crime, and especially experiencing high levels of migrant crime, when you’ve got record numbers at the border — and this has been the Achilles heel of the administration — unclear if that’s going to be a winning argument.”

Anchor Sandra Smith lashed out at Biden after the speech concluded, falsely claiming that Biden had not included a time frame for his statement that violent crimes dropped and saying that the president was sending a “brutal message” to people from unnamed cities experiencing rising crime.

“You know, I'm just looking at the list of participants in that room and the cities from which they come: Philadelphia, Buffalo, Miami, Milwaukee, Chicago. I mean, Congresswoman, I don't know who he thought his audience was by standing up and touting -- he said, ‘Murders, rapes, aggravated assaults, robberies all dropped sharply,’ without context or time frame,” Smith said. (In reality, police departments in Philadelphia, Buffalo, Miami, Milwaukee, and Chicago all reported decreases in homicides or violent crime in 2023.)

“That's a brutal message to people when they're saying pretty loudly that they don't like the crime that is on the rise in their cities,” she added.

Fox’s flagship “news side” program, Special Report, did not mention Biden’s remarks about crime data — but it did make time for more anecdotes. “For the third and fourth time this week, we are telling you about an illegal immigrant arrested in connection with a brutal crime," Bret Baier said at the top of a segment.

Later in the program, Trumpist radio host Hugh Hewitt implicitly explained the political strategy Fox is pursuing. “Every single act of violence perpetrated by an illegal immigrant between now and [the election], expect it to be a headline, it is Joe Biden's Achilles heel,” he said. Baier responded by highlighting “the recent headlines that we have seen just in the past few days about these heinous crimes allegedly at the hands of illegal immigrants.”

Fox’s evening show propagandists piled on, touting individual instances of “migrant crime,” laying them at Biden’s feet, and warning viewers that they could be the next victims.

Laura Ingraham scoffed at Biden’s use of data in his speech, saying that “crime is on everyone's mind,” that “we all know communities don't feel safer,” and that “there's no meaningful change in the policies that are making America more dangerous.”

“Anyone who thinks that this is an isolated incident, no. Women and children are being brutalized by illegal aliens all over the United States,” she later added before highlighting individual cases, as on-screen text read, “the deadly cost of Biden’s open border.”

Jesse Watters went even further. “There is a migrant crime spree killing Americans and the president is an accessory to murder,” he alleged, highlighting anecdotes and attacking Biden’s speech. “A vote for Biden is a vote for more death,” he concluded.

Fox is repeating the strategy they tried in the months leading up to the 2022 midterm elections. Republicans, at the urging of Fox’s then-star host Tucker Carlson, tried to win back Congress by focusing on crime, and Fox poured on the coverage in an attempt to carry them to victory.

But when data on the period was finally reported, it turned out that violent crime had actually fallen in 2022. Fox had manufactured a Biden “crime crisis” based on anecdotes because they wanted to help Republicans win elections. And two years later, they’re doing it all again.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Busted: Moms For Liberty Moralist Quits School Board After Shoplifting Arrest

Busted: Moms For Liberty Moralist Quits School Board After Shoplifting Arrest

This past Friday, Keri Leigh Blair, a Tennessee school board member backed by the far-right group Moms for Liberty, was arrested and charged with stealing over $700 of merchandise from a local Target. Oh, the morality! Blair resigned from her position on the Collierville Schools board on Tuesday, having served just over one year, saying she is leaving for “personal, family reasons.”

According to the Collierville Police Department, Blair is accused of stealing from Target by “skip scanning” items at the self-checkout on November 25, November 30, Deccember 3, December 6, December13, December 18, and December 20—seven times! Target alleges Blair made off with $728.61, and police say the chain “is prosecuting.”

This is just the latest example of book-banning moralist moms behaving badly. Around the same time that Blair was being investigated, a so-called “parental rights” activist in Pennsylvania was facing criminal charges of “assault, harassment, and furnishing minors with alcohol” at a birthday party she hosted in September.

The rot of this anti-education movement can be seen at the top as well. Recently, Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler and her politically connected Republican husband, Christian Ziegler, have been embroiled in a scandal after a woman who’d been in a sexual relationship with the married couple accused Mr. Ziegler of sexual assault. In every instance, these holier-than-thou actors—who seek to censor our country’s racial history and attack LGBTQ+ children—demand that everyone submit to their narrow view of the world. Everyone except, of course, themselves.

As for the school board seat left vacant by Blair, the local ABC affiliate reports that state law dictates that the Collierville Board of Mayor and Aldermen appoint a replacement who would serve until November 2024.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Jack Smith

Copy of Smith's Immunity Case Brief Suggests Trump Committed Serious Crimes ​

In his recent briefing challenging former President Donald Trump's claim of absolute immunity, Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith suggested the ex-president may have committed multiple serious offenses.

The Daily Beastreported Wednesday that in an 82-page briefing Smith's team submitted over the holiday weekend to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, Trump could have carried out any hypothetical crime, from ordering the FBI to fabricate evidence against political opponents, ordering a US military assassination or selling nuclear secrets to a foreign country. Smith made this argument in response to Trump's assertions that immunity would apply in any situation where there is "correspondence with a state official about a matter in which there is a federal interest, a meeting with a member of the Executive Branch or a statement on a matter of public concern."

"In each of these scenarios, the President could assert that he was simply executing the laws; or communicating with the Department of Justice; or discharging his powers as Commander-in-Chief; or engaging in foreign diplomacy," DOJ prosecutors wrote. "Under the defendant’s framework, the Nation would have no recourse to deter a President from inciting his supporters during a State of the Union address to kill opposing lawmakers — thereby hamstringing any impeachment proceeding — to ensure that he remains in office unlawfully."

Anti-Trump conservative attorney George Conway tweeted that the briefing includes an "interesting choice of hypotheticals," and sarcastically remarked that "it took quite an imagination" for Smith's team to suggest those crimes. Of course, one of the major concerns in the former president's classified documents trial is that Trump took top-secret documents pertaining to nuclear weapons with him to his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving the White House.

The briefing includes arguments similar to those Smith made when challenging Trump's immunity claim in US District Court for the District of Columbia, where Judge Tanya Chutkan is overseeing the scheduled March 4 trial. Chutkan temporarily paused proceedings while the higher courts considered the immunity question, following her early December ruling against the former commander-in-chief. The trial date has not yet been changed despite the ongoing appeals process.

Jack Smith's team is arguing to the DC Circuit that the judiciary should reject Trump's immunity claim, after the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) rejected the special counsel's request to have the nation's highest court hear the immunity question ahead of the appellate court. A three-judge panel consisting of two appointees of President Joe Biden and one George H.W. Bush appointee will hold a hearing to decide the question next week.

Trump's scheduled March 4 trial in Washington, DC for alleged election interference will take place on the eve of the pivotal Super Tuesday primaries, where delegate-rich states like California and Texas will hold their nominating contests along with roughly a dozen other states.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Israel

The World's Oldest Hatred Roars Back Into Fashion

In one day of savagery, Hamas brought the world's oldest hatred into the mainstream. The upwelling of antisemitism around the globe, and especially in the United States, mocks the naivety of those who imagined that the oldest hatred was mostly in the past, that Israel could be a normal nation, or that a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue could be realized in the near future. American Jews, stunned by the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust, are reeling from the lack of basic decency shown by many progressives. If your ideology blinds you to the crimes of rape, arson, kidnapping and mass murder, what is there to discuss?

No more hiding behind "anti-Zionism is not antisemitism." This moment, for all its horror, is at least clarifying. Jewish schools and synagogues are closing around the globe. Vandals stenciled Stars of David on the doors of Jewish homes in Paris. What has Zionism to do with that?

Criticizing the Israeli government, or even generally taking the side of Palestinians over Israelis, is not anti-Zionism. No, anti-Zionism is dehumanizing hatred of Israelis and Jews. It's the denial of Israel's right to exist and the hunger to punish, harm or kill Jews wherever they may live. It is indistinguishable from antisemitism.

Raw, Jew-hating anti-Zionism can be found in statements like that of Columbia professor Joseph Massad praising the "resistance's remarkable takeover" of Israeli bases and checkpoints and calling the 10/7 attack "awesome" and "striking." We see it in the mob in Sydney, Australia, that gathered to celebrate — yes, celebrate — the mass murder with cries of "Gas the Jews." We see it in the mob at Cooper Union college shouting antisemitic slogans at a group of Jewish students who were barricaded in the library for their safety.

The depravity of Hamas's useful idiots is matched only by their ignorance. In Philadelphia last weekend, I passed a pro-Hamas demonstration. One protestor's sign read "Free Palestine" and was decorated with a hammer and sickle. The cross-cutting inconsistencies here are legion. Hamas is an Islamist movement that believes in strict adherence to sharia law, persecutes homosexuals and represses women. But they are the oppressed, according to the moral hierarchies in vogue on the left. The protesters also decry Israel as a "settler colonial" state. Sorry, that's rubbish.

There have been Jews in Israel since Biblical times of course (and Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority for hundreds of years), but the modern settlement of the land began in the 1880s when Jews from Europe arrived, inspired by the Zionist idea. They were not colonists for any European power. They were fleeing European persecution. Several more waves of migrants came in the following decades, especially after the severe pogroms of the early 1900s. They did not push anyone out of their homes or land. They purchased land legally and openly.

Israel is also routinely accused of genocide, which is satisfying for the kind of person who thinks, "Why can't they shut up about the Holocaust?" But it's a lie. Israel has for 16 years absorbed thousands of missiles fired over the border into southern Israel with only limited responses. They built the Iron Dome system and safe rooms instead of attempting to destroy Gaza. But the rule cannot be that Hamas can target Israeli grandmothers, families and babies for kidnapping, rape, death and dismemberment but Israel cannot pursue them because they hide among their own civilians. That would amount to surrender to terrorism.

The Hamas apologists who point to the suffering of Palestinian civilians are not wrong about the suffering — though they cannot see the obvious responsibility of Hamas for starting this war. A pre-10/7 poll of Palestinians in Gaza found that 62 percent wanted to preserve the ceasefire. In any case, Gazans haven't been given a vote since 2006, so Hamas's claim to legitimacy is essentially nonexistent.

There is also a strange selectivity among Hamas apologists in their concern for civilians. They overlook the glaringly obvious moral distinction between intentionally targeting civilians and inadvertently harming civilians. Hamas makes war on Israeli and Palestinian civilians, in the first case through the most vicious violence imaginable and in the second through using them as human shields for missiles and terror headquarters. Yet their apologists give them a pass for both. They also display notable indifference to what is happening to the civilians in other parts of the world: in Yemen (15,000 killed), or Nagorno-Karabakh (100,000 Armenians ethnically cleansed and forced to flee their homes), or Burma (25,000 Rohingya killed, 18,000 raped), or Syria (306,000 civilians killed including 30,000 children, 12 million forced to flee their homes). It's almost as if it doesn't matter how many people suffer and die — that doesn't disturb the sleep of Hamas's defenders. What matters is whom you most hate. Israel and Jews top the list.

There was a time when respectable observers who sympathized with the Palestinians would emphasize their desire for "two states for two peoples." No longer. The protesters and Ivy League professors who proclaim their support for a "free" Palestine "from the river to the sea" are not asking for a tame, two-state solution. The river is the Jordan. The sea is the Mediterranean. What lies between is Israel. Hamas has never made a secret of its rejection of the two-state idea. The slogan envisions at least massive ethnic cleansing, and after 10/7 only a fool would imagine that genocide is unthinkable. There would doubtless be cheers in Paris and Sydney and Dagestan if it came to pass. And that only underscores the original Zionist raison d'etre. There must be an Israel because the world's oldest hatred will never die.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.