Month: April 2024

Yesterday evening, at a Memphis, Tennessee ‘block party’, two were killed and at least 14 injured in a shooting spree at what some are calling a ‘420 celebration’ involving weed.

More than 300 shots were fired, causing participants to flee.

JUST IN: Memphis police in Tennessee are responding to a mass shooting reported in Orange Mound at a “block party.”

According to the Memphis Police Department who spoke with ABC24, at least two people are dead and others were rushed to the hospital.

“Two people were pronounced… pic.twitter.com/wh6vw0jCsy

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 21, 2024

The shooting happened in Memphis at the corner of Carnes Avenue and Grand Street, which is right next to Orange Mound Park in central Memphis.

Some participants were reportedly openly carrying rifles and weapons.

Online, some have already claimed that the media will not report on this incident because many of the rally participants appear to be African Americans. The political left typically complains about the way language is used related to racial crime stories, and the political right sometimes complains about how the mainstream media suppresses the race of criminal defendants or in the presentation of crime statistics to hide the frequency of offenses by specific racial groups.

The motive of the shooters is not known at this time, and the Memphis Police report that they are still investigating the crimes involved.

Memphis Mayor Paul Young, who was elected in the past year, is faced with a city of 621,000 and one of the highest crime rates in the country.

The prior Mayor blamed the District Attorney and court system for its weak-on-crime policies, releasing violent criminals from prison, and low bond policies, as causing the rise in Memphis’ crime problems.

Then-Mayor Strickland said in 2023:

“…ask the District Attorney’s and the judges and the judicial commissioners and the people who run our state prisons. Why are they letting these people out so quickly? That’s the problem. You oughta talk to the court system, what are they doing about crime?” Strickland said. “I’ll tell you what they’re doing, they’re letting criminals out on the street violent criminals back out on the street, low bonds.”

Memphis had its highest crime rate in history in 2023. With 2022 data, Memphis had the highest violent crime rate in the country, which included 397 murders.

Memphis radically changed its bail system in August 2022. The changes included revising the way in which bail was set by a judge. Bail is the insurance provided by a defendant to show up for future court dates. Without a financial penalty, many choose to simply ignore court subpoenas. The normal ‘failure to appear’ rate for criminal defendants in normal courts is around three percent. In areas that have enacted left-wing bail reform, the ‘failure to appear’ usually hovers around 50 percent. The American Civil Liberties Union “ACLU”, which was originally founded to help Communists resist the World War 1 draft, praised the Memphis bail reform decision.

Many in New York State are convinced that left-wing ‘bail reform’ there caused violent crime to skyrocket throughout the state, especially in the major cities.

Crime has substantially increased throughout America since the disputed 2020 election. Conservatives typically blame “soft on crime” policies such as releasing violent criminals from prison, low/no bond arrangements where criminals aren’t motivated to even show up to court once released from jail, among other policies. Liberals have typically blamed poverty as the cause of crime, either because a defendant needs money or because they haven’t been able to get an education to become too educated to commit crime.

And of course the political left will also use word play and statistics abuse in order to gaslight America that violent crime is going down, such as when National Public Radio said as much earlier this year, “In cities big and small, from both coasts, violence has dropped.”

The post Two Dead, 14 Wounded, shot at Memphis “Block Party”, part of America’s Lawless Leftist Cities appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

A Catholic bishop in Michigan has said that Joe Biden does not understand Catholicism.

Biden has long claimed to be a devout Catholic despite his policies being deeply contrary to the church’s teachings.

Michigan Bishop Robert Gruss of the Diocese of Saginaw lectured at the Cathedral of Mary of the Assumption on April 5 and discussed Biden.

Fox News reports, “Asking the faithful to interrogate their own hatreds and resentments, the bishop pointed out that destructive lack of forgiveness does not apply only to individuals they know, but also public figures and institutions.”

“If you’re harboring bad, negative, resentful feelings towards our president, you’re not free,” Gruss said. “Otherwise, you’re letting him control you and your thoughts and your words and your actions. And I guarantee that if he is a problem for you, then those thoughts, words, and actions are negative — they’re gonna come out and then we commit sin. That’s what sin is.”

“How many times have you confessed your anger towards the president?” the bishop asked, making the crowd laugh. “I’m serious, I’m not kidding. If you have it, you should be confessing it. Otherwise, you’re not free.”

Gruss said that as far as his opinion of Biden, he pities him.

“I don’t have any anger towards the president. I feel sorry for him. I’m not angry at him, he’s just stupid,” Gruss said.

The congregation laughed again, prompting Gruss to clarify, “It’s not stupidity in the derogatory way, it’s stupidity in the sense of […] he doesn’t understand the Catholic faith.”

WATCH THE FULL LECTURE HERE:

The post WATCH: Bishop Says Biden Doesn’t Understand Catholicism — ‘I’m Not Angry at Him, He’s Just Stupid’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott says too much money goes to white-run arts groups, so instead he is giving $3.6 million in city-directed funds to blacks-only arts groups.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D)

“For too long, public dollars have simply just gone to the big names and the big players in town,” Mayor Scott said. “And dare I say, I know my staff is going to hate this, the big names and big players in town that just happen to be White-ran organizations in Baltimore.”

Not only is the Baltimore mayor clearly giving away funds in an illegal way, discriminating against all other races in how he gives out taxpayer money, but he’s also wrong about there being white-run arts museums in his own city, including for art museums he sits on the board for.

Scott is awarding the “Diversity in Arts” grants funded by federal COVID-19 relief dollars. Capital grant recipients include the The National Great Blacks In Wax Museum and the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture.

The National Great Blacks Wax Museum has a wide array of statues from all stages of black history, and is receiving $250,000 in taxpayer funds. It received $2 million in federal funds last year. It reports having 150,000 annual visitors.

The Lewis museum claims to have over 10,000 items in its collection. It reported 15,000 general admission visitors in its 2023 annual report.

The art museums that did not receive the Mayor’s funding, include the three most prominent museums in the Charm City such as the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Walters Art Museum and the American Visionaries Art Museum.

But none of those three appear to be hostile to black art, black leadership, or are especially white-run, in contrast to the Mayor’s statements.

The Baltimore Museum of Art’s Director is Asma Naeem, who is Pakistani as noted in the press release announcing her appointment.

Baltimore Museum of Art Director Asma Naeem

The Mayor’s comments about Baltimore’s art museums being white-run as it relates to the Walters Art Museum are even more out-of-touch with reality though. Oddly, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott sits as a trustee on the Walters Art Museum’s leadership board. As well, the Chair of the Board is Guy Flynn, is black.

Baltimore attorney and Chair of the Walters Art Museum, Guy Flynn

The third traditional Baltimore art museum, the American Visionary Art Museum was, until very recently, similarly led by a black woman, Jenenne Whitfield. Whitfield was the director of the museum from March 2022 through September 21, 2023, because of unstated creative differences with the organization’s board of directors. The museum’s co-founder Rebecca Alban Hoffberger is currently serving as an interim until they can find a permanent replacement.

Jenenne Whitfield, former director of the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore

So the motivation as stated by the Mayor to fund all-black art outlets at the expense of the more traditional art museums in Baltimore because they were all white-run, appears to be wholly false.

National Public Radio has previously said that criticism of the Baltimore Mayor was racist, no matter the terms used.

Mayor Scott is in a tough Democrat primary, for a primary election being held on May 14th. There are four leading challengers for the nomination, and while Scott is the favorite there are strong contenders.

Whomever prevails faces a tough budget because of the prior spending priorities, such as spending millions of dollars on art projects. Because of increased education payments, the City’s Comptroller Bill Henry says that the 2025 Fiscal Year budget may prove impossible to draft, pass, and reconcile.

“We’re now paying almost twice what we were paying several years ago in terms of local contribution to the school system, which is good for the schools. And it’s not like the kids don’t need the additional resources. It’s just that that puts an incredible challenge on local government to continue to provide all of the other services that people expect from city government,” Henry said.

Baltimore is the largest city in Maryland, with an estimated 575,000 citizens. The city’s annual budget is $3.47 billion. The racial demographics of the city are roughly 62% black, and 32% white.

The post Baltimore Mayor Announces millions in Black-Only Arts Funding, includes Black Leaders Wax Museum, Comptroller says City is Broke appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Around the world, a myriad of different localities have economies that revolve around tourism. This applies to both rich and developing countries, both warm and cold weathered.

What these places all have in common is that – for better or for worse – the lives of the local communities will be deeply affected by the relentless influx of visitors.

It has now come to the point where many of the most sought-after tourist attractions are becoming over-crowded in a way that is disrupting the life of the locals in an unacceptable way.

So, they are starting to react. These last few days we saw parallel examples from the sunny Spanish Canary Islands and from the northern Netherlands city of Amsterdam.

Different realities, same problem: too many people.

Canary Islands.

It’s been reported that thousands of people protested today (20) in Tenerife, in the Spanish Canary Islands, situated along the coast of North Africa.

The locals are calling for limits in tourist arrivals, and also want to stop a boom in short-term holiday rentals and hotel construction that is driving up housing costs for them.

Reuters reported:

“Holding placards reading ‘People live here’ and ‘We don’t want to see our island die’, demonstrators said changes must be made to the tourism industry that accounts for 35% of gross domestic product (GDP) in the Canary Islands archipelago.

‘It’s not a message against the tourist, but against a tourism model that doesn’t benefit this land and needs to be changed’, one of the protesters told Reuters during the march in Tenerife’s capital, Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

Smaller marches were held elsewhere in the island group and other Spanish cities, all of them organized by about two dozen environmental organizations ahead of the peak summer holiday season.”

The protestors want a limit on visitor numbers to diminish pressure on the islands’ environment, infrastructure and housing stock.

They also want to enact curbs on property purchases by foreigners.

“‘The authorities must immediately stop this corrupt and destructive model that depletes the resources and makes the economy more precarious. The Canary Islands have limits and people’s patience too’, Antonio Bullon, one of the protest leaders, told Reuters.

The archipelago of 2.2 million people was visited by nearly 14 million foreign tourists in 2023, up 13% from the previous year, according to official data.”

Amsterdam.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, at the northern coast of Europe, the Netherlands capital city of Amsterdam is banning the construction of new hotel buildings in its latest move to curb over-tourism.

The Dutch city is also establishing limits to the number of overnight stays by tourists.

Euronews reported:

“‘We want to make and keep the city livable for residents and visitors’, the local government said in a statement.

‘This means: no over-tourism, no new hotels, and no more than 20 million hotel overnight stays by tourists per year’.

Authorities also announced a limit on river cruises as part of the bid to reduce visitor numbers.”

The new rules state that construction of a new hotel in Amsterdam will only be allowed if another structure closes.

Amsterdam’s authorities also cut the number of riverboat cruises that enter the capital, reducing them from 2,300 vessels to some 1,150.

“This restriction would slash the number of tourists visiting Amsterdam by about 271,000, according to national news site Dutch News.

Cruises are particularly disruptive during the spring bulb season when some 1,000 of them anchor in Amsterdam, city finance chief Hester van Buren told Dutch News.

‘I am not saying this is going to solve the problem of too many tourists’, Van Buren said during a presentation of the plan this week.

‘But we are not going to divide tourists up into good and bad. This is one of a string of measures to reduce the number of tourists in total. It is about the overcrowding and the coaches parked all over the pavements’.”

The ongoing drive against over-tourism in Amsterdam has also seen its tourist tax hiked, marijuana banned in the red light district and tours of sex workers’ windows prohibited.

Read more about curbing tourism:

NOT AN AMUSEMENT PARK: Japanese City of Kyoto Bars Tourists From Popular ‘Geisha District’

The post From Sunny Spanish Islands to a Dutch City by the River, European Communities Are Mobilizing Against Over-Tourism appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Democrat, declared on the House floor that “the Ukrainian-Russian border is OUR border” during an unhinged speech.

Connolly was raging at Republicans opposing the aid package to Ukraine before Saturday’s vote.

“Some say, well, we have to deal with our border first,” Connolly claimed. “The Ukrainian-Russian border is our border! It’s the border between depraved autocracy and freedom-loving people seeking our democratic way of life! Do we have a stake in that outcome? Yes. Undeniably, yes.”

The melodramatic pontificating continues with Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA). “Some say, well, we have to deal with our border first,” bellows Connolly. “The Ukrainian Russian border is OUR border!”

Who knew?!? It’s basically like the border between Virginia and Maryland pic.twitter.com/51rQcpdqOd

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) April 20, 2024

Connolly echoed the sentiment in a post on X, writing, “The border between Russia and Ukraine is the border between depravity and democracy. Between autocracy and freedom. We undeniably have a stake in that outcome of that fight.”

The border between Russia and Ukraine is the border between depravity and democracy. Between autocracy and freedom.

We undeniably have a stake in that outcome of that fight.

Today, we must stand shoulder to shoulder with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters. pic.twitter.com/quM8sOUl9Y

— Rep. Gerry Connolly (@GerryConnolly) April 20, 2024

“Today, we must stand shoulder to shoulder with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters,” the lawmaker continued in the post, which also included a video of his speech.

The House ultimately passed the bill, which includes $61 billion in aid for Ukraine.

Meanwhile, our own border is currently being invaded.

The post WATCH: Unhinged Democrat Rep. Gerald Connolly Declares ‘the Ukrainian-Russian Border Is OUR Border’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Like reading a news story about a person getting scurvy, hearing about a modern metropolis getting beset by rat-borne illnesses almost seems like getting thrown back in time to the Dark Ages.

But, no, this time it was not a problem afflicting an impoverished medieval village, but rather one of the largest cities in the entire developed world: New York City.

While the city has been allocating resources toward prosecuting former President Donald Trump for the crime of winning the 2016 election, it has descended further and further into a state of squalor.

As reported Wednesday by CBS News, not only have rats in New York become ubiquitous in the worst way possible, but levels of rat-related sicknesses have reached their highest annual rate last year.

The New York City Health Department has been warning the populace of the increasing cases of a disease spread by contact with rat urine.

According to the department, leptospirosis is caused by bacteria in infected animals’ urine. It usually causes flu-like symptoms (aches, chills, stomach trouble) but, if left untreated, can cause kidney failure, liver failure or meningitis.

CBS News reported that Mayor Eric Adams and city health officials have been working on methods of containing the disease and the disgusting rats, including sterilizing the animals (since rat poison has been outlawed) and encouraging citizens to use gloves when handling garbage or food waste.

Still, seeing as a single rat pair could breed 15,000 descendants in one year and the city’s garbage containment plan is expected to take at least two-and-a-half years, suffice to say New Yorkers’ rat-related woes are far from over.

The reason this trashcan is so important is because diseases linked to RAT URINE (leptospirosis) are spreading in the filth that was once a great American city. There aren’t enough trashcans in the world to solve the problems that sanctuary cities have brought to America. https://t.co/qQyOD5JXBi

— Amy (Doc) CHAI, MD 4Congress CT-3 (@docchai2022) April 19, 2024

If only funds to help deal with this issue were not allocated somewhere else.

Such as the civil fraud case and criminal “hush money” prosecution against Trump.

According to NewsNation, the latter trial, which got underway this week, could cost New York City up to $2 million, with $50,000 spent on security measures alone (assuming the trial lasts a minimum of six weeks).

A six-week trial in Donald Trump’s hush money case could cost New York City as much as $2 million, one legal analyst estimates. The city could spend about $50,000 per day on safety precautions.

More: https://t.co/z3jBIoyaCd #MorningInAmerica pic.twitter.com/FkkwnpUL8l

— NewsNation (@NewsNation) April 16, 2024

Taking a former president to court requires security, road closures and many other disruptions, not to mention the mountains of cash required to maintain those precautions.

While this legal circus has gone on much longer than necessary, average New Yorkers have been living with a pest problem straight out of the Dark Ages.

City and state Democratic leaders instead have prioritized a political witch hunt against the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

The post While NYC Dumps Resources Into ‘Getting’ Trump, Rat-Borne Disease Explodes Amid Squalid City Conditions appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Rep. Matt Gaetz exposes Biden regimes cover-up of catastrophe in Niger.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) totally embarrassed the US Army Secretary and exposed Joe Biden’s latest foreign policy catastrophe during questioning this week in the US House of Representatives’ Arme Services Committee hearing.

Gaetz exposed the latest Biden foreign policy failure – this time in Niger, Africa.

US troops are trapped in the country allegedly without water and medicine. The Army was likely hiding this to protect itself from embarrassment. Deployed Americans are in limbo and unable to do their jobs and the Biden State Department is completely outmaneuvered once again.

Secretary Wormuth and General Randy George testified before the House Armed Services Committee on April 16th.

Matt Gaetz posted the report on his congressional webpage.

US Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, a potential DEI hire, was stunned and speechless when Matt Gaetz confronted her about the trapped US soldiers in Niger a country in tremendous turmoil.

Matt Gaetz: SecretaryWormuth, there’s train and equip money requested in this budget, right?

Secretary Wormuth: Certainly, congressman.

Matt Gaetz: The train and equip mission in Niger is owned by the army, right?

Wormuth: Yes. We certainly provide soldiers for that. Yes.

Matt Gaetz: General, do you know what is going on in Niger right now?

General George: I know there’s some challenges over there in Niger right now, and I don’t think that we are actually in charge of that mission that’s on the ground.

Matt Gaetz: Yeah, we just heard the secretary say you’ve got soldiers there, so we’re going to dive into that to some extent. Do you know what the status is of diplomatic overflights to our installations in Najair?

General George: I’m vaguely track I’m assuming that that’s a challenge.

Matt Gaetz:  I mean, it’s not a challenge. It’s binary. Are we allowed right now to do diplomatic overflights in Niger? Yes or no?

General George: I don’t know exactly.

Matt Gaetz: I’m not tracking it that close. I don’t think- Madam Secretary, do you know if we’re allowed to do those diplomatic overflights?

Wormuth: I don’t, but I’m sure the Afrocom commander does.

Matt Gaetz:  Yeah, but you guys just said it’s in the budget you’re asking for to do these train and equip missions. One of them is in Niger. In Niger right now, the government has stopped us from doing diplomatic overflight missions. We have army soldiers right now in Niger who aren’t getting their troop rotations, who aren’t getting their medicine, who aren’t getting their supplies, who aren’t getting their mail. The two senior people in the United United States Army are sitting before me and it’s like, Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. Are you going to do anything for the soldiers that are in Niger right now who can’t get medicine? Yes or no?

Wormuth: Congressman certainly, we can talk to General Langley and make sure that…

Matt Gaetz:  I’ve talked to General Langley. He comes in here and never has really good answers. I asked him for information about how many of the coup leaders we had trained, including in Niger, and Ghana, and Mali, and the Ivory Coast, and he didn’t even produce his I’ll report on time. So pardon me for a lack of confidence in General Langley. What I’m telling the two of you is that you have a responsibility for these soldiers in Niger. And general, you would agree with me with the premise that we should never sacrifice the well-being of our service members to avoid political embarrassment, right?

General George: Congressmen, I will tell you, I’m not tracking that somebody in Niger is not getting their medicine or their mail, but I will follow up after this.

Matt Gaetz:   You don’t even know the stats of diplomatic overflights. How about the great power competition? You would If we were to train and equip missions, we would never want Russian soldiers at the US installation where we’re doing train and equip, right? That’s not even a tough question. You would agree?

General George: Yes.

Matt Gaetz:  If there were Russian soldiers behind the wire at Air Base 101 in Niger, where we have soldiers doing the training and equip mission, that would concern you, wouldn’t it? Right. Well, I’m here to tell you we’ve received reports that they run out of medicine in May, that they cannot get their troop rotations. You know why you don’t know that? Because it’s a cover up. Because the US Embassy in Niger is covering it up because of Secretary Blinken’s embarrassment. Because Blinken went there in March of 2023 and said, This was the centerpiece of our Africa strategy. This was the model of resilience. Then, lo and behold, the very coup leader we trained takes over the country. Then we struggle with whether or not to call it a coup. We’ve now called it a coup. Since we’ve called it a coup, now they won’t let us get folks in and out.

And so I’m looking at what could erupt as another Bengazi. There is no mission for them to do. There is no train and equip right now with the coup leaders. So we got a bunch of people sitting around without their supplies, without their medicine. And the whole reason intelligence isn’t getting to us is because the embassy is blocking it because Blinken is humiliated that this failed.

And I’ve used my five minutes on everything in the army right now because I have constituents who are there in Niger, and they’re wondering how to get water. Did you know they can’t even get clean water? Did you know that the partner nations that we have at that base with our soldiers, the partner nations, the Italians and the Germans, they’ve stopped cooperating with us. They won’t even help us get provisions to our troops because of the status of forces agreement that we have with the government being deemed invalid. I am just a country lawyer from North Florida, but this strikes me as something the two of you should know about. I get the blank stares, but Secretary Wormuth, can I take as your commitment that you are going to leave here and you’re going to see to the well-being of these folks in Niger and that they can get the rotations and the medicine they need?

Wormuth: Certainly, I will make sure they’re getting the medicine and the water that they need. Yes, congressman.

Here’s the video:

The post Matt Gaetz Embarrasses Army Secretary – Exposes Biden Regime’s Cover-Up in Niger! – Embassy Silent on the Hundreds of US Troops Stuck in Niger Reportedly without Medicine and Water appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

This article originally appeared on AbleChild.org and JoeHoft.com and was republished with permission.

The parents of the victims of the Covenant School in Nashville, TN, have begged Davidson County Chancery Court to withhold from the public Audrey Hale’s manifesto and all documents belonging to the shooter, which were legally gifted to the parents of the victims by the shooter’s parents.

Gifting the documents to the parents of the victims is odd. But for the parents of the victims to then assert that they hold some kind of “copyright” on those documents is twisted on its face and one cannot help but wonder what really is behind this enormous effort to withhold information about Audrey Hale.

Let’s think about it for a minute. What we know is that Audrey Hale went to elementary school at Covenant, transferred out to Isaiah T. Creswell Middle School and Nashville School of Arts then on to Nossi College of Arts. Everything was seemingly okay.

At 28 years old, the now transitioning female, was identifying as the male, Aiden and, while living at home with mom and dad, began purchasing seven firearms, including shotguns, rifles, and handguns. It was also at this time that we find Hale being “treated” for an emotional disorder.

On the morning of March 27, 2023, Hale drove to her elementary alma mater and discharged 150 rounds, killing three children and three adults. Why? Why did Hale choose Covenant School for her murderous actions? Why not Middle or High School or how about the local fast-food joint? This was a specific hit. Planned. Hale knew where she was going and why.

The problem is that the public doesn’t know why. The public doesn’t know why Hale decided to take the lives of six innocent people. But the public will have to live with any legislation that comes from her murderous behavior… legislation that may limit its right to own firearms or increases funding for mental health services that may actually be responsible for Hale’s actions.

So now let’s consider what we don’t know. We don’t know the name of the doctor or psychiatrist that was “treating” Hale for the emotional disorder. We don’t know what “treatment” was provided to Hale. Did Hale have talk therapy or was Hale prescribed psychiatric mind-altering drugs? Did Hale’s doctor know whether she was a threat to herself or others? If yes, was this information passed along to law enforcement? Did the doctor know Hale was buying guns and was that information shared with law enforcement?

Moreover, the autopsy explains that there was no positive hit for many different types of prescription drugs, and that doesn’t take into consideration that Hale could have gone off the medications prior to the shooting. Knowing whether Hale had been prescribed any psychiatric medications is imperative because the adverse events associated with going cold turkey off drugs are extremely serious and even deadly, depending on the drug. Furthermore, there still are some questions regarding the therapeutic levels of psychotropic drugs that may have been excluded from the lab report.

Crazier still, let’s also ask why in the world did Hale’s parents think it was a good idea to gift the shooter’s personal writing history to the victim’s families? That’s a first. Why? What did these parents think would come from this bizarre action? Is it possible that Hale’s parents thought this would somehow make it easier for the victims’ families? Or did Hale’s parents believe giving away their daughter’s writings would relieve them of any culpability?

One also must wonder whether the Covenant School’s history of sexual abuse that is widely reported on social media had any role in Hales attack on the school. Was Hale aware of the rumored sexual abuse or, God forbid, was Hale a victim? Who knows? It’s anyone’s guess. And this is the problem with withholding any data that may shed light on what led to Hale’s inexplicable murderous actions.

The conflicts of interest of some of the parents of covenant school are shockingly obvious, having created two cash cows, the Covenant Families for Brighter Tomorrows, and the Covenant Families Action Fund, will surely be used to generate attacks against the second amendment and push for coercive mental health programs of all parents across the State.

In addition, a trustee of the board of the covenant school, Dr. C. Buddy Creech, is a vaccinologist, at Vanderbilt Medical Center, which also happens to be a major stakeholder in the transitioning industry. It would be interesting to know where Hale was seeking guidance for her transition. This is why it is important to release as much information as possible about the school and the shooter.

Keeping the public in the dark about Hale’s motives only leads to speculation and conspiracy theories. The families of the victims say that releasing the manifesto and documents will lead to copycat shootings. Naturally, they could be right, but withholding the information may also lead to more shootings. Keeping Hales motives secret does not get the public to why the murders occurred. Only sunshine on the issue can get the public the information it needs to come up with solutions to these deadly acts of cowardice.

The post Breaking: Massive Cover-Up of Trans Shooter’s History in Nashville Covenant School Mass Murder Case appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

J6 protester and Deep State victim Raechel Genco

On January 6, 2021, Raechel Genco and her husband Ryan Samsel woke up early in the morning and left Pennsylvania to head down to Washington DC. The couple parked at Pentagon City Mail and took a train into DC. When they arrived, they walked to find where President Trump was speaking. While waiting, they walked around, talked with people, took some pictures and stopped at a few vendors.

Once Trump started speaking, they found a spot to stand and during his speech, it was hard to hear him and seemed like the volume on the speakers was very low/muffled. After a while, Ryan had to use the bathroom and so they walked down Pennsylvania Avenue where there were a lot of people already walking down towards the Capital and they joined them.

One group was chanting “F*** Anifia”, then there was another group of people they noticed who were wearing tie-dyed shirts and another group standing around. Raechel later found out they were some of the Proud Boys members. Ryan went up to a gentleman but Raechel was not sure what was said. As they walked around, there happened to be another small group of people, and one of them had a gun holster around his waist.

According to Raechel, the ‘protester’ with the gun was hanging with Ray Epps that day. That protester was not arrested for three years until video was released of him shooting the gun in the air that day.

** Please help Raechel Samsel if you can, click HERE.

Before they got to the US Capitol, the first set of bike racks were already taken down so everyone was standing at the second set of bike racks. She stood off to the right side at least 3-4 rows back from the bike rack as people started filling the gaps. There was a lot of yelling, another person was using a bullhorn, and someone else was yelling in a microphone.

Ray Epps was seen leading the crowd at this point. He whispered in Ryan Samsel’s ear how to take down the bike racks before they were breached. Epps was leading the effort. Epps later lied to congressional investigators about his role in breaching the barriers to the Capitol.

Raechel Samsel was off to the side as protesters worked their way to the US Capitol. Raechel never committed any acts of violence and never entered the US Capitol.

Raechel says at the time, she was confused on what was going on and stood off to the side by the bike rack. She believes there were two police officers standing near her. She remembers Ryan telling her to stay there. But as more people started to come through the opening she had to follow with the crowd before being trampled on. There were tens of thousands of people walking peacefully to the US Capitol. Raechel then went through a dirt pathway and found her way up to where other people were standing around the Capital. She stood back by the plaza area behind the scaffolding. She was surrounded by many friendly people who were praying, singing, and chanting “USA.” People were very peaceful at this point.

Ryan Samsel delivers medical attention to Joshua Black after he was shot by police on January 6.

The police then started firing flash bangs into the crowd without warning. This caused people to get upset. Ryan rendered aid and helped Joshua Black after he was shot in the face with a rubber bullet. The police attack was unrelenting.

Then a Capital police officer started shooting down the crowd of thousands from his perch above them. The police officer was shooting protesters in the head. The officer shot Joshua Black in the cheek with a rubber bullet. Ryan Samsel offered assistance to Black who was bleeding out.

There was a flash-bang thrown not too far from where Raechel was standing and tear gas got into her eyes and in her lungs. It was so bad she could not breathe. She says it felt like her eyes and lungs were on fire. Thankfully someone standing near her had a bottle of water and Ryan poured water into her eyes. At that point Ryan was worried and they both agreed it was time to leave.

While trying to find their way out of the area they came across a lady that was in distress. Raechel and Ryan, along with one other person, helped the woman up and passed her to some other people to get her some medical help. They then left the Capital to walk back to the train station and drove home.

Raechel Genco was later arrested by the Biden regime.

Raechel was forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars on attorney costs and a hundred hours of community service.

Back in July 2023 Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX), a former sheriff, destroyed dirty Chris Wray during his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

Nehls brought video and photos of Ray Epps encouraging Trump supporters to enter the US Capitol on January 5th and January 6th and then leading the charge through the first ste of barriers to the US Capitol.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that Ray Epps ALSO led the charge through the second set of barriers that day.

Ray Epps also was filmed hurling a massive metal sign at police that day.  He never was charged for this criminal act.

Here is Rep. Nehls confronting Chris Wray.

Rep. Troy Nehls: There he is breaching the line going in at the first breach into the capital into the Capitol grounds of restricted area. Mr. Wray you have arrested hundreds of people related to January 6 and there have been people arrested for breaching Capitol grounds. Couy Girffin is an example. Raechel Genco is an example. And then we go to Mr. Brandon Straka. Brandon was arrested for disorderly and destructive conduct which included yelling, I quote go, go as rioters tried to empty the Capitol. These three never went into the Capitol, they never assaulted anyone. So let’s be honest with each other. There is very little difference between the actions of Ray Epps and Brandon Straka that day. But yet Straka was arrested and Epps wasn’t. Epps also testified to the January 6 committee. He was back at his hotel when video Evans showed that he wasn’t. He lied. He was on the Capitol grounds just as Brandon Strecker was. EPS even texted his nephew at 02:12 p.m. And said I quote I was in the front with a few others. It was on the video. I also orchestrated it. Now look into the camera sir when you answer my next question. Are you going to arrest Mr. Epps, yes or no?

Here is the video of Rep. Troy Nehls confronting Chris Wray.

This week The Gateway Pundit received a video from political prisoner Ryan Samsel from his current location in the MDC Brooklyn Prison.

Ryan told us that shortly after Nehls confronted Chris Wray and mentioned Raechel Genco by name, the FBI retaliated against Raechel and threatened to punish her further.

Raechel had completed her community service hours but the FBI threatened to punish her further and keep her on probation for another 4 years — for standing outside of the US Capitol on January 6.

** Please help Raechel Samsel if you can, click HERE.

Here is the transcript of Ryan Samsel’s call this week.

Ryan Samsel:

Jim Hoft: Hi, Ryan Sam. Thank you for reaching out. I’m really sorry about your situation. Can you tell me the latest developments? This has to do with your wife, Raechel.

Ryan Samsel: Yeah, Raechel Genco. So it’s been over three years since January 6th. She got arrested for parading and protesting, not even trespassing. They arrested her about a year into her sentence. Now, Troy Nehls questioned Christopher Wray and asked Christopher Wray why he arrested Raechel. He called her Genco — Then he brought up a few other defendants. Under the question, Christopher Wray said, I will not answer that question. Raechel Genco was due to be off probation a month later. A day or two after that very hearing, Raechel got a notification from her probation officer saying that she was in violation of her probation. They extended her probation three months, which is completely illegal without a hearing. Then the probation officer then said, Hey, we can’t supervise you no more. You’re free to go, but we’re going to have a hearing because you violated your probation. So Reachel said, ‘What’s my violation?’ They didn’t have a violation yet. So they came at her a few months later and they said, You lied on doing your community service. Well, she says, No, I didn’t. I have all the emails to my community service. So then they violated her in Judge Cobb’s courtroom.

Judge Cobb then switched from… The best of my knowledge, Judge Cobb then said, No, we can’t do it here. You have to do it in the district that she was at, which was Pennsylvania. So now, she’s now facing felony charges because Christopher Way is retaliating because Troy Nehl’s challenged Christopher Wray on why Raechel Jenco was charged, and Ray Epps wasn’t at the time.

Ray Epps was then charged a week later. Raechel Jenco was in violation of probation the next day or two days later. Now she’s going to court on May 5th, and in central Pennsylvania in the Harrisburg region. Now they said that the prosecutor in the case even said, Hey, look, let’s just give her a probation over and let her just redo the probation, give her another chance. Even though she did complete it, not only she completed, she did double. We have the proof. I’ll send you that. I’ll send you the recording of Christopher Wray being questioned by Troy Nehls. This is the retaliation that they’re doing. Because everybody’s supporting us and all of us in DC, so now what they’re doing is they’re attacking us in our own districts, because now we can’t…

So, Jim, I ask you, please spread this awareness. But this is the retaliation. And I’ll send you all the clips of Troy Nehl’s doing this. I’ll send you everything, and I would really appreciate.

Jim Hoft:  Let me know this, too. Raechel, what was her original charges? What did they charge her with? And what did she do that day on January sixth?

Ryan Samsel:  Jim, she walked up the stairs behind me and nothing. She got charged with parading and protesting. That was it. That was her charge, was parading and protesting. She never went in a building, and that was the thing. She was the only single person that did not go in a building that got that charge… She was the only one that was charged with parading and protesting that did not enter the building. She never went in and was charged with that.

Nobody else was charged with that. Even Julie Kelly, when she did it, she says, Is it odd that she was with Ryan Samsel and was charged with that? The FBI said, Hey, ‘”Listen, all you got to do is testify and say you’ve seen Ryan do this and make sure you don’t bring Ray Epps’ name up and say that Ryan was lying, and she refused to do that.” Her life has been hell ever since. Her probation officer said, It’s a part for Raechel is not allowed to go to the media. It’s a part of her probation. Now that Raechel’s… She only got one year probation.

It’s literally, Jim, we’re going three years later, and she’s still being supervised because what they’re doing is they’re violating her on a fake violation, and it’s an unsupervised probation now. So then they’re going to just keep extended. They’ll turn a one-year probation to a five-year probation by doing this shit. Oh, my God.

Jim Hoft:  That’s horrible. It’s absolutely horrible. We’ll definitely report on this, Ryan. Thank you for letting me know. I’m really sorry to hear that about Raechel. I had no idea that was going on.

All right. I’ll send you a clip of Troy Nell’s when he berated Christopher Raito to help support that if you want, Jim.

Okay, great. That would be great. Thank you, Ryan.

All right, bud. I’ll talk to you. Okay. All right.

Bye.

The post Chris Wray Confronted on Female J6 Prisoner During Congressional Testimony – So FBI Goes Back and Threatens and Harasses Her Some More – AUDIO appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Jimmy Breslin: Essential Writings, ed. Dan Barry, Library of America

Every publication—every good publication, anyway—is a bit like a baseball team. You’ve got your writers of various sorts, editorialists, book reviewers, and so on. These are your players. Foremost are the reporters, invariably badly dressed, usually gregarious, usually late on deadlines, rarely your great literary stylists but they shake out the interesting details of things. You’ve got your editors, usually better (or at least more formally) dressed, retiring or disagreeable, prone to drinking, the real type-A guys who don’t take crap. These are your managers, the guys who put together a line and guide the ship of state and answer for whatever boneheaded stuff the reporters do, of which there’s usually plenty. You’ve got your business guys, the ones who sit in the dark and sweat you about your reimbursements and know who is working for which senator and that sort of thing—the front office, which is the same kind of guy in baseball and I suppose every other kind of industry. 

There in the mix on the writing side you’ve got columnists. “Columnist,” when you pry off the decades of accumulated connotations, pretty much just means “space-filler.” The columnist is there to fill a column of text. He is to do this on some regular schedule. You hope (I speak as an editor here) that he’s going to be insightful or moving or funny; at any rate, you hope he’s going to be correct and non-libelous. But the bare, base-model minimum is this, that he be on time and to length. You’ve got to fill your inches, and you’ve got to fill them on time.  

Columnists tend to produce a mix of color and reporting—the tighter the deadline and the longer the column, the more color there tends to be. In this respect, they are more, irrespective of their publication’s format, akin to newsmagazine writers. What Otto Friedrich wrote about the newsmagazines among which he spent so many fruitful years tends to hold for the newspaper columnist as well: “The news, what happened that week, may be told in the beginning, the middle, or the end; for the purpose is not to throw information at the reader but to seduce him into reading the whole story, and into accepting the dramatic (and often political) point being made.”

Like many other party tricks—gurning, smoke rings, telling a decent joke—this sounds like an easy order to fill but proves harder in execution. Not everyone is cut out for columnizing, at least not indefinitely. Whittaker Chambers, unprompted, quit his column at National Review after two years; he gave William F. Buckley no explanation, but it seems he just felt he had nothing more to say on that schedule. A lot of columnists work for a couple years that way and move on to better things.

Yet there are those who thrive in the genre—can’t get enough of it. H.L. Mencken was a weekly columnist for most of his adult life, and a daily columnist for much of it; the now sadly neglected Ring Lardner likewise. On the other side of the pond, G.K. Chesterton wrote a daily column for the Illustrated London News for years. These examples underline a point: Your warhorse columnist of the first rank tends to become best known as a stylist. There are only so many worthwhile insights the human intelligence can produce in a month, let alone a week; you need something to carry you through the between times. Here is danger: It is a short slide from a characteristic style to self-parody, to being a hack. To return to baseball, you don’t want to repeat the same pitches too often, or they’ll stop working. You see this tendency in the late career of Baltimore’s own divine, who has a tendency to repeat the hyperboles a little too close together for the context of a book. In a column, where they might have been separated by a week or two, such repetitions would not have rankled.

Lardner illustrates a quirk of the American columnist tradition, namely that our leading column men tend to be sportswriters. Sports lend themselves to columns for the same reason that columns become exercises in style: You never have to worry about what bare facts you’re going to write about. Somebody beat somebody somewhere by some runs or points. The sportswriter, let alone the sports columnist, has sadly declined; nobody needs to read the paper for results anymore. Now, sportswriting means summarizing a tweet from Adam Schefter summarizing something some lickspittle agent’s assistant summarized for him from a private meeting summarizing contract negotiations between teams and athletes.

Of the latter-day practitioners of the column, the late Jimmy Breslin stands out. From 1960 until his death in 2017, Breslin wrote columns for multiple outlets, particularly the Long Island Newsday and the New York Daily News. He wrote sports, but he also wrote a lot of other stuff. The son of a working mother from Jamaica, Queens, he was the voice for the white ethnic millets of New York—canny, wry, tough, but also sentimental, even self-righteous. He looked the part: tubby, black Irish, a face that looked like it was laughing even when it wasn’t, the living mascot of a million beat cops, bus drivers, and sandhogs. He embodied the New York political sensibility—broadly liberal, distrustful of the Interests, a politics built around “the little man.” One of Breslin’s first big breaks was interviewing the gravedigger for JFK. But he was not what you would call woke. In the ’90s, when a Korean-American Newsday reporter accused him of sexism, he called her a “slant-eyed” “yellow cur” and took to The Howard Stern Show to expand on his thoughts and feelings about Koreans. Newsday suspended him until an apology was extracted.

Breslin was a fixture. My grandparents (Brooklynese) would have called him a character (“He’s a real charehctah”). He ran for city council in conjunction with Norman Mailer’s mayoral bid; their slogan was “Vote the Rascals In.” Yet Breslin was unlike Mailer personally. He remained married to his first wife until her death, and then his second, a New York councilwoman, until his own. This, also, is very Irish-from-Queens. Progressive politics has nothing to do with the right and wrong in your own life. Michael Moore, although a Michigander, has a little of this working-class moral austerity, which is becoming rarer and rarer, particularly in Democratic circles.

He wrote the whole time. A new Library of America collection, Essential Writings, gathers the highlights of a career, including two books—How the Good Guys Finally Won, about the Nixon impeachment, and The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Guttierez, about the death of an illegal immigrant construction worker—and many, many columns. 

There are two ways of writing American: chewing your cigar and holding your cigar. (Can you guess how the editorial We are oriented as we type these words?) Breslin is at his best when he’s chewing his cigar. From a column on the reporting about Mickey Mantle’s death: “The nurse resented every word of what she had read about the death of Mickey Mantle. These cheap sobbing uninformed Pekinese of the Press had hurt her patients.” On the 1962 Mets: “Basically, the trouble with the Mets is the way they play baseball.”

From a column on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church (which perfectly summarizes every American Catholic’s feelings back in the early ’00s): “I don’t want to be a bishop anymore because the bishops of America have given the title such a bad name.” Later: “I cannot understand why, today, right now, Mansion Murphy of Rockville Centre dares to remain on church grounds after all he has done to place children in jeopardy. Nor can I fathom the reason why Bishop Thomas Daily was still in his residence in Brooklyn this morning. Both bishops belong in the city dump.”

It’s when he puts the cigar down that the self-righteous, almost puritanical tone tends to come through; here you can see the beginnings of the heavy-duty whining of the “personal essay” of the ’00s and ’10s. In a review of a Lardner story collection, Breslin decides to make it all about Watergate and the Nixon impeachment (Lardner’s son was one of the Hollywood Ten and went to jail for refusing to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee): “Ring Lardner went out into a place which proclaimed itself as America, but in 1901 it was a place for men on their way to making billions. The land was being stolen or scarred, the people manipulated and discarded and the Rockefellers, Goulds, Astors sawed and chewed their way through all the rules of life. Their dishonesty set a tone for the nation, spread a stain on its people, which maybe we haven’t been able to change yet.”

Yet at Breslin’s best there’s the liberal ability to see both sides, the complications of human persons—such as his profile of Big Mama Nunziata, the Gallo crime family’s matriarch, or his comments on a 1964 race riot:

The colored people, all of them, even the leaders, acted like small children yesterday. They have a deep, serious, legitimate, immediate case for themselves. A 15-year-old boy who weighed only 100 pounds was shot to death by an off-duty police lieutenant last Thursday. The case is being investigated. It has inflamed Harlem. The young kids, semi-illiterate most of them, who follow Malcolm X and other dangerous rabble rousers, used this to start a riot. They did not, these people milling from 125th to 133d Sts., last night, represent all of Harlem. They represented the part of Harlem that couldn’t wait for trouble with the white police. But they stood on street corners and hoped for trouble and when it came and the police hit them, the leaders promptly screamed “Police brutality.”

Police brutality? Sure, there was brutality last night. Terrible, sickening brutality. But this was a mess, an absolute, incredible mess, and if you were on the street with the bottles coming down and who the hell knows what was going to come from the rooftops, there was only one thing to do. Go after these crazy bums on the street corners and knock their heads open and send them home with blood pouring all over them. The crowd was uncontrollable. They laughed when Bayard Rustin took a microphone and pleaded with them to go. They jeered and spit at policemen. They wanted everything they got last night.

Breslin wrote and wrote and wrote. A lot of it was pretty good. He was dubbed a “deadline artist,” which is not a bad title. Perhaps he’s best regarded as an obituarist—for a type of liberal who is gone, and for a New York that is gone.

In a 1963 boxing profile, he writes about a bar in the Bronx:

Once, in the Irish neighborhoods, you had one of these places every couple of doorways. But now there are only faint traces of Irish neighborhoods left and this kind of a bar is rare. It is, Bimstein was saying over his beer, a shame.

It is, isn’t it?

The post The Columnist appeared first on The American Conservative.