Month: May 2024

FreedomWorks, critical to building the Tea Party movement of 2011, which became nationally known for fighting ObamaCare, announced it was closing today. Its 12-member board of directors voted unanimously to close the 20-year-old conservative organization.

Politico’s Luke Mullins ran an ‘exclusive’ piece setting a warped narrative about what caused the FreedomWorks implosion: divisions between MAGA vs. the GOP. Here’s the key takeaway:

FreedomWorks, the once-swaggering conservative organization that helped turn tea party protesters into a national political force, is shutting down, according to its president Adam Brandon, a casualty of the ideological split in a Republican Party dominated by former President Donald Trump.

Other outlets like the Hill, FoxNews, Washington Post, have simply lazily repeated the same Politico framing. Multiple insiders say, however, the Politico piece is all wrong.

Former Grassroots Director Merissa Hamilton tells the Gateway Pundit, “The Politico story is simply not true. The collapse of FreedomWorks wasn’t a rift between MAGA and non-MAGA; it was colossal bad management by CEO Adam Brandon who created a toxic internal culture and who doesn’t understand voters or donors.”

Former FreedomWorks Grassroots Director Merissa Hamilton

Politico tried to blame ‘right-wing nutjobs’ for promoting so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ about well-documented evidence of systemic election fraud as driving the organization into the ground. Politico also tried to frame the story as part of Trump’s policy failures, related to massive increases in the national debt.

Here’s what Politico said in their article to that effect:

Increasingly, however, those positions clashed with a Trump-aligned membership who called for tariffs on imported goods and a wall to keep immigrants out but were willing, in Brandon’s view, to remain silent as Trump’s administration added $8 trillion to the national debt.

The Politico piece is just anti-Trump fake news spin, according to multiple insiders, driven to protect the reputation of the outgoing CEO. FreedomWorks’ CEO Adam Brandon tried last September to refashion the organization as progressive on climate change and promoting abortion. This was six months after firing most of the MAGA-aligned lower-level staff in a purge.

The Gateway Pundit spoke with multiple insiders, some on and some off the record. One former Senior Executive at FreedomWorks who was willing to talk anonymously because it was breaking a Non-Disclosure Agreement but felt compelled to tell activists and donors their side of the story.

“This was an organizational suicide. Big donors and an Anti-Trump board made this all happen on purpose.”

“Adam Brandon and his allies willfully orchestrated the means to end this organization. Adam had his priorities the entire time on starting another organization to succeed FreedomWorks, spent money on frivolous things, alienated donors, took money from the wrong donors, and alienated our grassroots networks,” the source said. “Adam’s been fleecing FreedomWorks from 2022 to present to build a parallel organization.”

FreedomWorks CEO Adam Brandon, according to multiple sources, was engaged in significant financial mismanagement of the libertarian organization. Several insist $300,000 was spent acquiring one donor phone list that only had 1,200 names. This is one example, they say, in a string of horrible financial moves that a former Executive said felt ‘orchestrated to bring down the organization.’

The Senior Executive said, “I watched him take $250,000 from a donor, philanthropist Frayda Levin, to do anti-Trump grassroots work to MAGA people in Florida. It was all about money and power to Adam. Adam took the money and wanted to hurt Trump using a differently-branded organization to protect the FreedomWorks brand. It was the height of unethical behavior, deceiving both donors and activists. It left me very jaded. I realized that conservative movement leaders often hate actual conservative voters.” Contacted to confirm this detail, Levin said she did not recall this donation but that it may be accurate.

The Senior Executive said further, “The prostitution for big donors at FreedomWorks and in many conservative groups, regardless of what they believe, was just staggering. It’s just disgusting. It’s all about whoring yourself out for the money. It doesn’t matter what the small donors say, they just cater to big donors who are obsessed with Nikki Haley.”

The Senior Executive continued, “Adam Brandon brought in Margaret Iuculano as the Chief Development Officer, or CDO, who served as the head of fundraising. She had no fundraising experience and was completely unqualified. She was a ReMax real estate agent in Florida prior to running an 8-figure fundraising operation. The consulting agency that brought her in was given a quid-pro-quo $10k a month ‘consulting’ contract after she was hired, to perform a ‘cross-department audit’ that was reportedly used to justify the Trump firings.”

Margaret Iuculano, former Chief Development Officer of FreedomWorks

“She bragged to me that the consultants agreed with her on everything. She told me with a smile that ‘everything I wanted to be wrong, they also thought was wrong.’ She knew nothing about fundraising, and her performance matched her experience.”

Hamilton echoes that sense of Brandon’s financial failure: “Adam Brandon allegedly wasted a million dollars in 2023 on nothing, then laid off grassroots staffers, let go of his VP, didn’t fundraise, and it was organizational suicide. We had successful programs and a great staff, but he was managing an implosion.”

Said Hamilton, “This is all a product of an epic failure of leadership by Adam Brandon.”

The tension in management was between Adam Brandon, whom some describe as a ‘grifter,’ and the Executive Vice President Noah Wall, who was seen by staff as more aligned with Trump voters. Wall was purged in March 2023, along with 40% of the entire staff, focused on the ones who were more Trump-friendly, without any severance. Some of these were later re-hired because, again, according to insiders, the organization could not function without its internal Trump-aligned workers.

The Senior Executive said, “I was in a meeting where an outside auditor realized our accounting department, at Adam’s direction, had been entering donations in twice causing a major problem. It ended up being a 6-figure mistake, and I noticed that Adam and Margaret were very defensive. Just from how they were acting about the problem, I knew something dodgy was going on. The demise of FreedomWorks was planned from the beginning: they wanted to dismantle the place and then get out.”

Brandon was planning to set up his own spin-off group, tentatively named “The Center for Independence” that would use a combination of A.I. and ChatGPT to communicate more effectively to African-American voters about libertarian principles in battleground states. Brandon allegedly told staffers on repeated occasions that he had planned to dissolve the organization in order to move its assets to his new group. Donor Levin confirmed that Brandon had planned this organization.

“Call me old school, but A.I. is never gonna replace basic grassroots, and that’s what Adam Brandon never understood,” Hamilton told the Gateway Pundit. Brandon was also on the verge of leaving the organization, with a search underway for his replacement, when the decision to shutter the organization came through as a result of a unanimous board decision.”

The FreedomWorks board was composed of: Adam Brandon, Joan Carter, Paul Beckner, Carl Knudsen, Peter Copses, Stephen Modzelewski, Richard Stephenson, Frank Tsamoutales, Betsy Albaugh, Robert Lansing, Marilyn Hayden, and Ted Abram.

The former FreedomWorks senior executive said, “There were board members who not only hated Trump, but hated conservatives in general. It all reminded me of the ‘long march through the institutions’ and I realized I was watching everything lurch to the left, the same way the Koch network and Americans for Prosperity has done.”

“Many of these organizations talk a good game about conservative principles, but behind closed doors, it’s not what they believe.”

Philanthropist Frayda Levin had similar thoughts on the collapse of FreedomWorks, Levin mentioned that CEO Brandon was in the process of changing the organization’s mission and that its new outlook was “incoherent.” Levin did not recall the $250,000 Florida donation but noted that she stopped donating along with several other donors two years ago and has mentally moved on. “I deleted all their emails. Adam was trying to get independents elected, it didn’t make any sense,” Levin told the Gateway Pundit.

Levin continued, “It’s certainly difficult to manage the pro and anti-Trump factions of the political right, but there are many other problems with grassroots activism, chronic problems that FreedomWorks was running into,” Levin said. “Activism has become my computer is talking to your computer, and legislators and powerful people see it for what it is. A large part of the problem is that government has gotten so large, there are so many issues to fight about, that it’s very difficult to maintain a grassroots network. Americans for Prosperity, where I was the Chair, doesn’t have a grassroots network to speak of anymore. I wish I had the answer, I don’t.”

FreedomWorks was an organizational component of center-right grassroots activism, educating thousands each year in the principles of libertarian philosophy and practical recommendations on how to act on those principles.

The organization’s remaining 25 employees are being laid off. Hamilton says they might not be properly compensated, even though many would likely be under Non-Disclosure Agreements and unable to publicly voice their grievances. Hamilton claims this was a deliberate decision not to pay employees reimbursements or other owed compensation. “I’m still owed thousands of dollars, and I know many others who are as well, including a great activist from Michigan who was never paid thousands owed from mileage reimbursements over a year ago. The grassroots workers got stiffed, and where did all the money go?” said Hamilton.

“The definition of grifting is taking money for a program you aren’t really running. And Adam Brandon definitely raised funds and did not spend them on FreedomTeams, the grassroots division of FreedomWorks. He kept the name, but they kept stringing along donors even when they knew the program was never going to work,” said Hamilton.

“The real tragedy in all of this is that populism needs libertarian ideas, Trump and Trumpism would only be strengthened by a principled freedom ideology, and now there’s one less group serving that critical need. Liberty and Populism can, and must, coexist.”

Adam Brandon, Margaret Luculano, and Noah Wall were asked for comment and did not respond.

The post Libertarian FreedomWorks Group Closing, Leader, Politico Blames Trump, but Insiders say Donors Orchestrated Org Suicide appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

The ongoing crisis at the American border has been a hot topic of discussion, with politicians and media outlets alike trying to make sense of the chaos. However, what if the root cause of this issue was not in the hands of the government, but rather the notorious cartel?

It may sound like a conspiracy theory, but new evidence has surfaced, revealing the alarming truth about the current state of the border. Despite the efforts and resources put into securing the border, it seems that the real power lies within the hands of the cartel.

This mountain in Sunland Park, New Mexico is no longer ours.

Border Patrol agent said this mountain belongs to the Mexican cartels.

That stretch of the border has been one of the busiest sectors with over 1,000 illegal crossings DAILY. pic.twitter.com/AjrWKPaj6j

— Sheri (@FFT1776) May 10, 2024

For years, the government has been struggling to control the influx of illegal immigrants and drugs at the border, with little success. But according to recent reports, it appears that the cartel has been the one pulling the strings all along.

The level of control that the cartel has over the border is unprecedented, with sources claiming that they dictate who and what gets in and out of the country. It’s a disturbing revelation that has left many questioning the effectiveness of current border security measures.

CARTELS CONTROL THE BORDER, EVERYTHING WE DO IS REACTION TO THEIR PLANS – anonymous U.S. Border Patrol agent makes shocking confession regarding the States’ out-of-control border under Biden’s open-for-all policy.

We don’t control the border, Cartels control it, everything… pic.twitter.com/8ZrLyMBRJl

— Enkeleida Kalemi (@EnkeleidaKalemi) May 10, 2024

As the cartel continues to gain more power and influence, the consequences for the American people are dire. Not only does this pose a threat to national security, but it also has a significant impact on the economy and the safety of citizens living near the border.

The situation has become so dire that some have even suggested that the government should negotiate with the cartel to come up with a solution. But at what cost? Giving in to the demands of criminals and compromising the safety of the nation is not a viable option.

One can’t help but wonder how the situation at the border reached this point. How did the cartel manage to gain such a stronghold over the border and the lives of thousands of people? These are questions that demand answers and immediate action from those in power.

In the midst of this shocking revelation, it’s essential for the government to take swift and decisive action to regain control of the border. Failure to do so will only result in more chaos and suffering for both American citizens and those trying to enter the country through legal means.

It’s time for the truth to be uncovered and for those in positions of authority to take responsibility and tackle this pressing issue. The American people deserve to know the reality of the situation and to have their safety and security prioritized above all else. As for the cartel, their hold on the border must be broken, and justice must be served.

What are YOUR thoughts?

We want to hear from you! Please comment below to join the discussion.

The post Truth Behind America’s Border Crisis: A Shocking Revelation of Cartel Control appeared first on The Conservative Brief.

Illustration by The Gateway Pundit

In March, the US Supreme Court heard arguments from The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft , the state of Missouri, the state of Louisiana, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Aaron Kheriaty, and Jill Hines (“Free Speech Plaintiffs”) in arguments against the Biden Administration and an army of government agencies.

Before all of the appeals, the case originally started after the States of Missouri and Louisiana, joined by The Gateway Pundit and the other individuals, noted above, alleged that the Biden White House and DOZENS of federal officials and agencies were conspiring with and/ or coercing Social Media Companies such as Facebook, Twitter and others to censor the speech of MILLIONS OF AMERICAN CITIZENS, particularly during COVID and the lead-up to and aftermath of the 2020 Presidential Election.

Evidence clearly showed – and even Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the FBI pressured Facebook to take down the Hunter Biden laptop story – in true Fascist manner, the Feds worked with or otherwise demanded that Big Tech police the speech that they disagreed with and that went against the government’s approved party dogma.

The Gateway Pundit and the other Plaintiffs initially sought out a preliminary injunction and were able to acquire a substantial amount of evidence in support of that injunction.  You may recall that, probably not coincidentally, on July 4, 2023, Federal Judge Terry Doughty issued an order granting Gateway Pundit, et al’s motion for the preliminary injunction, preventing the government from working with Big Tech to censor Americans’ speech while the full lawsuit was being battled (likely to be a multi-year period).  The government immediately appealed this Order to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that the injunction was improper and that the plaintiffs lacked the proper authority to challenge government action.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals substantially agreed with the good guys, and the scheming government tyrants were left with no choice but to appeal their case yet again  – this time to the Supreme Court of the United States.

What is interesting about this case is also the fact that the government agencies, including the FBI and CISA were pressuring the tech giants to take down mostly truthful and accurate information that would keep Americans informed on the issues and open to alternative ideas.  The information on COVID and elections was certainly sourced and researched by The Gateway Pundit and others before it was reported but the government did not want the truth to get out.

For example, this week the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released evidence that the State Department knew that the COVID virus was leaked from a Wuhan Biolab and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) covered it up. They hid this from the American public.

This was information the US government was pressuring tech giants to censor and ban on social media.

The Supreme Court will decide in June whether the government has a right to censor speech in America in the Murthy vs. Missouri case. In the meantime, Senator Mark Warner, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, announced this week that CISA and the FBI have resumed their meetings with the far-left tech giants to remove information they deem to be misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation.

This is taking place before the 2024 election.

They’re doing it again.

The left-leaning NextGov reported:

Key federal agencies have resumed discussions with social media companies over removing disinformation on their sites as the November presidential election nears, a stark reversal after the Biden administration for months froze communications with social platforms amid a pending First Amendment case in the Supreme Court, a top senator said Monday.

Mark Warner, D-Va., who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters in a briefing at RSA Conference that agencies restarted talks with social media companies as the Supreme Court heard arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, a case that first began in the Fifth Circuit appellate court last July. The case was fueled by allegations that federal agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were coercing platforms to remove content related to vaccine safety and 2020 presidential election results.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide whether agencies are allowed to stay in touch with social media firms about potential disinformation. Missouri’s then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed the suit on the grounds that the Biden administration violated First Amendment rights pertaining to free speech online in a bid to suppress politically conservative voices.

According to Warner, communications between agencies and social platforms resumed roughly around the same time that multiple justices appeared to favor the executive branch’s stance on the issue, he said.

Actually, Murthy vs. Missouri is about the government coercing tech companies to restrict speech of opinions and facts they don’t approve of.

The post Senate Intel Chair Confirms CISA, FBI Have Resumed Coercing Social Media Companies to Censor the Speech of MILLIONS OF AMERICANS appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Screenshot

In a recent viral sting operation by a group of prominent YouTubers, including Vitaly Zdorovetskiy, an alarming allegation has surfaced that California’s District Attorneys will not prosecute individuals caught in these stings, despite clear evidence of predatory behavior towards minors.

Last Tuesday, the online series “Catching Child Predators,” led by Zdorovetskiy along with DJ Deorro and Bradley Martyn, released a disturbing episode where Herschel Weingrod, a veteran Hollywood producer known for his work on ‘1996 Space Jam’, was caught on camera in a compromising situation.

Weingrod, who introduced himself as “Boris,” was filmed at a local restaurant with a young girl who, according to him, claimed to be 23 based on her dating profile. However, during the confrontation, it was revealed she had informed him of her actual underage status.

The confrontation escalated as Weingrod attempted to dismiss the severity of his actions, claiming that talking and flirting with a minor was “not a big deal.” The situation intensified when Weingrod tried to leave the scene, only to be pursued by Zdorovetskiy and Martyn, who resorted to firing pink and blue gunpowder cannons.

Read more here:

YouTubers Catch Hollywood Producer Herschel Weingrod in Predator Sting Involving Minor — Fire Powder Guns During His Attempt to Flee

The series aims to expose sexual predators engaging inappropriately with minors.

In a shocking twist revealed in Thursday’s episode streamed on kick.com, a member of Zdorovetskiy’s security team shared that despite their efforts to bring such predators to justice, they are allegedly being stonewalled by the DA’s office.

“They’re basically like, ‘Don’t bring them in. There’s nothing that the DA is going to do now. Just write it up, file it, and that’s all we can do now,'” the security member recounted, highlighting a purported directive from desk sergeants based on DA Gascón’s policies.

“We’ve got to just keep bringing a light to it because, unfortunately, through no fault of theirs, they’ve done everything they can for us, but it’s the DAs in California that are refusing to prosecute pedophiles. Police are doing everything they can, but the DA is not supporting them,” he added.

WATCH:

LA Police tells Vitaly’s team that the DA will NOT be prosecuting any p*dophiles he catches. ‼

Vitaly warns Kick owners his next stream will be a lot more humiliating for the p*do’s & he will no longer be calling the police. pic.twitter.com/jtbgQpXXDr

— DramaAlert (@DramaAlert) May 9, 2024

This should not come as a surprise.

Under current state law, purchasing or soliciting a child for sex is merely a misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in county jail, a minimum of two days in jail, and a potential fine of $10,000. Additionally, offenders are required to register as tier-one sex offenders for at least ten years.

Republican State Sen. Shannon Grove is spearheading the push with SB 1414 to elevate the offense to a felony.

Senate Bill 1414 (SB 1414) was introduced last month to increase penalties for child sex trafficking. The bill would make it a felony to solicit or engage in commercial sex with a minor, and criminals could face two to four years in prison and a fine of up to $25,000.

The Senate Public Safety Committee rejected SB 1414. Instead the committee “forced hostile amendments and voted the bill out of committee without Senator Grove’s consent,” according to the news release.

According to citizen journalist Max Bonilla, the bill has undergone amendments that compelled the author to exclude 16 and 17-year-olds from the legislation that would make purchasing a child for sex a felony. Moreover, the amendments removed the requirement for offenders to register as sex offenders after their first offense. “They’ve virtually rendered the bill useless. These people are sick demons,” Bonilla said.

WATCH:

CA SIDES WITH HUMAN TRAFFICKERS AND PEDOS:

Today, The Senate Public Safety committee passed SB 1414, but with amendments forced on the author to exclude 16 and 17 year olds from the bill that would make purchasing a child for sex a felony.

On top of that, they removed the… pic.twitter.com/IQF9Yo3UMX

— Max Bonilla (@outragedteen_) April 17, 2024

The post Liberal Cesspol: California’s Far-left District Attorneys Reportedly Won’t Prosecute Any Child Predator They Turn In (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Everyone has the occasional bad class, but my worst run of sustained teaching failure came during the fall semester of my first year. I do not include the spring semester because the class in question consisted of twelfth graders, and end-of-year exams, graduation ceremonies, and my own tacit surrender ended any pretense that I was actually teaching those students by some time in February. 

People curious about school assume that the bad classes are filled with spitball-launching hard cases. This is surely true for some unlucky teachers, but my worst classes were always the apathetic ones. I had just enrolled in what I thought would be a one year stint in a teaching program for Americans in Central Europe. I ended up in a village in Northeastern Hungary. 

Teenagers today are sadder and more anxious than a generation ago. The surgeon general has declared a youth mental health crisis, depression and related psychological problems are on the rise, and minor key, down tempo songs about loneliness and isolation have displaced anthems and ballads on modern pop charts. Covid is the obvious explanation, but most of these trends preceded the lockdown era, which suggests that draconian public health measures were an accelerant and not a root cause. Quarantine merely worsened a suite of preexisting problems.

The twelfth graders who defeated me were enrolled in the school’s B track, which meant they took easier classes than the more academically gifted A track students. One cultural difference between Hungarians and Americans is the former’s often disconcerting penchant for directness. A Hungarian homeroom teacher once told me, with no preamble, that her class was nice but not very clever. Everyone said the B students weren’t interested in or good at schoolwork. There were a few notable exceptions, but this judgment usually proved to be correct.

Various reasons have been suggested for the recent rise in teen anxiety, some plausible, some less so. I do not think that 15-year-olds are naturally preoccupied with climate change, for example. I doubt that bullying, cliquishness, and other behaviors that have made adolescents miserable since time immemorial have suddenly become worse. So, what’s changed? 

I often think back to that 12B group, probably because the things I could have done better are trivially obvious in hindsight. During the pandemic, several states waived teacher training and licensing requirements to address urgent staff shortages. These measures had no impact on instructor quality or classroom outcomes, which tracks with my experience. There is no substitute to being in a classroom, screwing up, and resolving to do better next time. Those interminable sessions with 12B were the tribute I paid to succeed in future classes. Cold comfort to my earliest students, perhaps, but true nevertheless. 

There is one obvious culprit for the adolescent misery crisis. Psychologists have observed that rising teen sadness roughly coincides with the introduction of smartphones and the rise of social media. You might call this a moral panic. But wouldn’t it be strange if near unlimited access to the greatest repository of distraction in human history, combined with social media networks that prey on our every vice and insecurity, didn’t change young people’s behavior? 

As classes advance through high school, they acquire reputations in the staff room. Sympathetic Hungarian colleagues assured me that 12B had always been a “difficult” group. It didn’t help that I couldn’t speak their language, had parachuted in a year before graduation, and was teaching a subject that, while useful, wasn’t strictly necessary for their post-high school careers. It’s not hard to teach the bright, enthusiastic kids. Learning how to deal with students who struggle academically is the real challenge. The most heartbreaking cases desperately want to learn English but stumble over the simplest phrases. Their more gifted peers effortlessly acquire the vocabulary and conversational tics of a suburban American teenager by watching Youtube. 

Quite by accident, I witnessed the smartphone revolution progress in observable increments. When I started in the countryside, smartphones were common, but they were sufficiently expensive to be shared among families or siblings and were usually not given to younger kids. Limited data plans and the absence of an open school wifi network, something the students regularly complained about but which in retrospect seems a blessing, also curtailed phone use in school. So did a certain old-school Hungarian mentality about classroom behavior. When I moved to a private school in Budapest, students were granted unlimited wifi access and had been using smartphones since elementary school. 

I gradually got better at teaching the B groups. Looking back, many of my favorite students were from those classes. Am I protesting a bit too much? Maybe so, but the B students were more likely to play pickup basketball, more patient with my halting attempts to speak Hungarian, and sillier than their more sober-minded counterparts in a charming, unselfconscious way. Sometimes you forget that academic talent is not the sum total of a student’s life. 

Private school was still fun. I could no longer bask in the virtue of teaching “normal” kids, but there were certain compensations: unlimited printer access, frequent field trips, not having to reserve one of the three rooms with a working projector a week in advance. The students were sharp and typically entered high school with an impressive command of English, thanks to private tutors, English-speaking parents, international vacations, and life in an increasingly cosmopolitan Budapest. It can be very rewarding to help a struggling kid master the basics of ordering a hamburger, but it’s also a relief to skip the preliminaries. Something was a bit off, however. Attention spans were shorter. Policing phone use in class was a constant issue. The pandemic didn’t help matters.   

A 9B group I was particularly fond of once played a trick on me straight out of Tom Sawyer. It was the first day of glorious spring weather, and the students wanted to hold class outside, something you can get away with when you teach in a village. We went out to the school playground but 9B insisted on going to another park because, they explained, they didn’t want to be bothered by the younger kids at recess. As soon as we were out of sight of school, half of them produced cigarettes and lit up. All I could do was laugh.         

Smartphones and social networks are almost certainly useful for picking up conversational English. The barrage of memes, video clips, and English media has endowed smart, language-savvy kids with a level of fluency their predecessors could only dream of. A few older teachers clearly resented this. Imagine learning English the old-fashioned way in 1980s Hungary, through copious note-taking, endless grammar exercises, and rote memorization. Then some snot-nosed 14-year-old shows up on the first day of class already sounding like a native speaker.    

There were other classroom screwups. An enthusiastic middle schooler with a shaky grasp of history turned what was supposed to be a Greek hoplite shield into a surrealist work of art. Another student, playing the role of an aggrieved witness during a mock trial, burst into tears during cross examination. I rushed to her side, certain I would be fired for excavating some long-buried trauma for the sake of a dumb speaking activity, only to learn that she was just very committed to the role. A Studs Terkel-esque figure should travel the world interviewing ESL teachers and record their classroom war stories for posterity. 

The obvious issue with smartphones is that they diminish students’ attention spans. A less remarked upon problem, one that I realized only gradually, is that they sap young people’s curiosity. The Internet was supposed to inaugurate a golden age of information access. You can take entire classes from Yale and MIT online, free of charge. It turns out that access without guidance is worse than useless. The very availability of information discourages students from picking up a book because whatever they’re looking for is a Google search away, or so they think. Immersion, memorization, even note-taking are considered relics of the bad old days. Paradoxically, those with a preexisting store of knowledge are best positioned to navigate the torrent of information online, like the proverbial boomer with a healthy relationship to social media because he already enjoys a rich offline life. Young people who grew up in this baffling information landscape are the least equipped to handle it. 

I remember a comment from a self-described prep school teacher under a New York Times article on education. We have such fun in class reading Shakespeare and Chaucer, he wrote, and then all my students go off to college and end up at McKinsey or Goldman Sachs. Why teach if your take-home pay isn’t even in the same universe as other career options? My man, you get to make a living introducing Shakespeare and Chaucer to young people. The pay stinks, but there are other compensations.     

One seemingly trivial example of how technology can be actively harmful in the classroom has to do with note-taking. Nobody likes taking notes, but the act of writing something down is a potent mnemonic device. Uploading your slideshow and allowing students to take photos of the board seem like obvious time-saving measures, but this makes it harder for them to remember things and leaves kids with nothing to do during lectures (idle hands are the devil’s playthings). You can take notes on a laptop, of course, but it is trivially easy for students to pretend to type while they do something else. Instead of improving the classroom experience, technologies everyone assumed would be a boon for teaching have needlessly complicated a tried-and-true method of instruction.  

I’m not sure when it happened, exactly, but the first short story I ever taught was “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” It did not go well. I was desperate to fill a 45 minute class with something, anything, so I dug up a story I vaguely remembered enjoying from middle school. The first half did take up every second of that period. As if by some unspoken accord, the students and I did not return to or even mention Mitty the next lesson. I’ve gone back to that story every year since. 

My fear is that the advance of technology in schools is seen as an inevitability and not something to be managed and, in certain cases, curtailed. There is an understandable desire on the part of principals and administrators to stay on the cutting edge of new developments, or at least sufficiently up-to-date to stay relevant for tech savvy students. I am not such a luddite that I wish to ban computer science classes. But the relentless colonization of every subject by laptops, “interactive” digital tasks, and other distraction-inducing measures have done more harm than good.  

I like listening to my students read out loud. The Hollywood stereotype of a harsh Eastern European accent comes from the Slavic languages, which do not mix well with English. Hungarian, however, is not a Slavic tongue. It has its own sing-song quality that makes it enjoyable to listen to, even when the speaker is an increasingly agitated lady explaining that, no, you can’t pay with your debit card in this particular checkout line. When combined with the British style of instruction that still predominates in Hungary, it produces a charming, musical English accent.  

Covid school closings show just how hard it is to roll back technological “advances.” Everyone knows that remote instruction was a disaster. Yet schools continue to hold online classes for all manner of disruptions, from snow days to flu outbreaks to the sudden arrival of busloads of illegal immigrants. Who asked for this, aside from bureaucrats who get to say that they haven’t lost any teaching days to inclement weather?  

We were reading “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant, one of those classic short stories that has survived countless curriculum changes, and I was trying to explain the concept of “theme.” Class, can you think of any other books or films with a powerful thematic message? From the back of the classroom, a hand is tentatively raised. “I think I have an idea, Mr. Collins.” (pronounced Koll-leenz) Thrilled that someone from an often uncommunicative group has volunteered an example, I respond enthusiastically. What have you got for me, kid? “I was thinking about the importance of family. You know, from the Fast and Furious movies.”

The (thoroughly debunked) idea that students have different learning styles is a staple of teacher training programs. Maybe this is because teachers are stupid. A more charitable, and to my mind more persuasive, explanation is that teachers want to find ways around the seemingly intractable problem of kids’ vastly different academic abilities, an uncomfortable reality that is apparent to anyone who spends time in a classroom. It’s easier to tell yourself that adding a few “kinesthetic” or “auditory” exercises to a lesson will help slow learners than facing up to the fact that some of your students just aren’t very good at school. Technological fads are a more expensive way of evading that same awkward truth.  

I remember when the village school received a stack of tablets for classroom activities. They ended up collecting dust in a storage closet. This was a school where kids had to bring in their own toilet paper. Nobody gets excited about grants for bulk toilet paper purchases, however.  

Sal Khan, of Khan Academy fame, wants to give every kid who needs tutoring an AI-powered chatbot. There is a short science fiction story from Isaac Asimov, “The Fun They Had,” that centers around kids taught by robots. They discover an old book and are astonished to learn that schools once had human teachers. I’ve never taught this story because I always assumed the premise was too absurd to contemplate.  

Rote memorization is underrated. There, I said it. Older teenagers aren’t going to get excited about reciting a poem or a passage from Shakespeare, but you’d be surprised how quickly younger kids take to memorization. It’s a bit of a challenge, they get to perform in front of their classmates, and there’s a rhythmic, incantatory quality to many older verses. Kipling and Macaulay are great for this sort of thing. I also like to think that some students are “poetic” learners. Maybe they can add that to the learning styles canon. 

“Educators tout it as the perfect tool for teaching the TV generation — a technology that weds television, compact discs and personal computers into something called interactive video.” That was The South Florida Sun Sentinel on laser discs, November 12, 1991. 

It’s possible that fears of classroom technology are overblown for the same reason that different learning styles are nonsense; strong students will succeed and weak students will struggle regardless of circumstances. I don’t believe this is true—good teaching can make a difference and, even if you’re not raising anyone’s IQ, young people benefit from exposure to serious ideas. There is a more fundamental problem, however. Just as the Internet, a tool that promises unlimited information, can actually discourage curiosity, smartphones and social media paradoxically undermine the social relationships they’re built on. These products seem purpose built to frustrate adults and make adolescents miserable.  

“Online feels more peaceful and calming,” Nate, age 14, tells the New York Times. “You don’t have to talk to anybody in person or do anything in person. You’re just sitting on your bed or chair, watching or doing something.”  

The default position of a young person today with a few minutes of free time between classes is hunched, in a pose reminiscent of Rodin’s “Thinker” minus the pensive stare, over a flickering screen. Students spend less time interacting with classmates and teachers and more time consumed by their devices. There are two dominant modes on social media: relentless affirmation or content that preys on your every anxiety and insecurity. Neither is particularly healthy for young people. There is also the constant temptation to withdraw from real world uncertainty into a reassuring virtual cocoon designed to keep you hooked. Why date, play a sport, or hang out with friends when you can retreat to a carefully manicured digital environment?  

Concerns about smartphones and social media transcend ideology or partisanship. The youth culture celebrated by the left has been sapped of its vitality; Nirvana and Rolling Stones t-shirts easily outstrip merch from any contemporary musician. Teenagers, long assumed to be eager rule breakers and instinctive rebels, now ape the styles of prior generations without any of the accompanying experimentation or energy. Cultural vitality is not the only casualty of this new landscape. The decline of dating threatens family formation and healthy adult romantic relationships. Alienation and loneliness threaten the very fabric of society. 

I no longer teach high schoolers. Everyone assumes I’m thrilled to have “graduated” to university classes. It’s true that I’m now less likely to lose my temper or get stuck in an interminable meeting. I still miss the younger kids. I don’t mean to romanticize high school, which is often awkward and sometimes much worse. But it is a vital stage in a young person’s social and intellectual development, and it’s perverse that we’ve so readily acquiesced to an unprecedented change in how teenagers encounter the world. Take it from someone who has airballed his fair share of lessons—you always regret just giving up.    

One unsatisfying thing about long essays on pressing social issues is that they usually offer little in the way of practical solutions. Well, I have a straightforward proposal that will not “fix” education, but will at least diminish the tidal wave of anxiety and distraction affecting young people. Ban phones in school. Don’t leave it to individual departments or teachers who need predictability and administrative cover for enforcement. Don’t make phone bans the sole preserve of boarding schools, elite public schools, and other affluent enclaves. Teach computer science, teach kids how to code, but spare the rest of our classes the scourge of the smartphone.   

There is one poem I’ve taught with a 100 percent hit rate. I usually save it for my final class of the year. We talk about the story of Odysseus and what it means to have a “hungry heart.” The last verse of Tennyson’s “Ulysses” is best listened to with your eyes closed. The language is archaic and almost impenetrable, especially for non-native speakers. Somehow it still hits, even in a musty, uncomfortably warm classroom at the end of eighth period. After you leave high school, dear students, will your hearts stay hungry? Will you continue to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield? We can only hope.

The post Teaching in the Age of the Smartphone appeared first on The American Conservative.

Byron York of the Washington Examiner appeared on the Laura Ingraham show this week and explained why voters aren’t buying Joe Biden’s economic message.

It comes down to reality and memory.

You can tell people that the economy is doing great and things are better for them but people still remember how much better things were under Trump.

You can’t lie to people about their grocery bill.

Transcript via Real Clear Politics:

LAURA INGRAHAM: [Biden] also apparently said Trump never succeeded at creating jobs and I, meaning he, has never failed. What’s the Truth-O-Meter saying?

BYRON YORK, WASHINGTON EXAMINER: I think the Truth-O-Meter is off the scale on false because obviously Trump created a whole lot of jobs. We all know what happened in 2020 with the pandemic. But Trump’s economic record before that was quite good.

The bigger problem that Biden has is you can’t talk up the economy if people are feeling pain in their personal lives. They hear him talk and they say that is not what I’m seeing when I go to the grocery store and we’ve been trying to buy a house and it’s not working. You can’t talk up the economy when it disagrees with people’s own perceptions…

We have a number of interesting things going on. We had an article in Politico today about remember in the first years of the Biden administration, Democrats were rushing to pass as much spending as they could, trillions and trillions of dollars to use as sort of post-pandemic momentum to keep levels of spending at enormously high levels.

Watch the video below:

BYRON YORK: Trump created A LOT of jobs pic.twitter.com/k4xoYe9Cg2

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) May 9, 2024

Joe Biden can brag about job creation until he is blue in the face, but it won’t work. Trump was better for jobs and the economy and everyone knows it.

The post Conservative Pundit Byron York Explains Why Biden’s Economic Message isn’t Sticking With Voters (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Credit: Getty Images

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has formally requested that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) release all communications involving Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in relation to the “witch hunt” against former President Donald Trump.

For context:

Alvin Bragg (Manhattan DA): The focus has largely been on alleged financial crimes, including possible fraud and falsification of business records related to hush money payments and other financial discrepancies within the Trump Organization.
Letitia James (New York AG): James has pursued civil charges against Trump and his business practices, alleging persistent fraud involving banks, tax authorities, and insurance companies. This includes misrepresenting the value of assets for financial gain.
Fani Willis (Fulton County DA): Willis is investigating alleged criminal interference in the 2020 presidential election.

In a series of tweets, Bailey cited evidence suggesting that the DOJ, under Biden’s regime, orchestrated or coordinated the prosecutions of Trump.

He pointed to the appointment of Matthew Colangelo, the third-highest ranking official in the DOJ, to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in December 2022 as a critical sign of coordination. Colangelo was brought on specifically to prosecute Trump.

Attorney Mike Davis also said this during an interview with Steve Bannon that Matt Colangelo is the link between the Biden DOJ and DA Bragg in their corrupt acts of targeting and putting together a bogus indictment against President Trump. This guy was in the Obama White House and the Biden DOJ and appears to have been brought in to indict President Trump on whatever he could come up with.

Attorney General Bailey also emphasized that Bragg had previously worked alongside Letitia James in civil litigation against Trump and campaigned on a promise to prosecute the former president if elected.

After securing his role as District Attorney, Bragg pledged to prioritize investigations into Trump’s business practices.

“During that campaign, Bragg promised “if elected, [he] would go after Trump.” Once he won election, he pledged “to personally focus on the high-profile probe into former President Donald Trump’s business practices,” Bailey wrote.

Bailey argues that the timing of Bragg’s charges, which came only after Trump announced his candidacy for president, suggests a politically motivated effort to weaken Trump’s campaign.

“Given the timing, the weakness of the charges, and their impact on Trump’s ability to campaign effectively, there is substantial reason to suspect that President Biden has coordinated with Bragg and others to prosecute Trump,” Bailey wrote.

The Attorney General insists that Missourians have the right to know whether the prosecutions of Trump are being coordinated by the federal government, particularly by Biden’s administration, which has a vested political interest in weakening Trump’s candidacy.

Bailey’s office filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request at the DOJ to obtain any communications that could shed light on the extent of federal involvement in these prosecutions. The demand specifically targets interactions between DOJ officials and local prosecutors like Bragg, James, and Willis.

“The people of Missouri deserve transparency, and we’re demanding the DOJ turn over documents that we believe will expose these political prosecutions for what they are: a witch hunt,” Bailey added.

The Attorney General’s office has yet to receive a response from the DOJ regarding the FOIA request. However, Bailey remains adamant that the prosecution efforts against Trump are a calculated attempt to hinder his campaign trail activities and damage his chances of reclaiming the presidency.

The post Missouri AG Demands DOJ Release Communications with Soros Funded DA’s Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, and Fani Willis Over ‘Witch Hunt’ Against President Trump appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart, Jeremy Carl, Regnery, 256 pages.

The latter decades of the Ottoman empire are occasionally held up as a golden age of pluralism and tolerance; in some respects, they were, particularly after the British put the kibosh on the lion’s share of the Arab slave trade. The empire’s non-Turkish, non-Muslim populations were organized into millets, or “nations,” governed by the laws particular to their religious and national groups. Armenians, Syrian Christians, Greek Orthodox, a variety of Jews, Arab Catholics—all were able to practice their religions and participate in public life with relative impunity under their own leaders, who answered to the sovereign of the sublime House of Osman, sultan of sultans, khan of khans, kalif, padishah, etc., who generally had more pressing concerns than micromanaging the affairs of the millets.  

The problem was that the Ottoman state didn’t end up doing the things we expect states to do very well at all. Inefficient revenue-collection techniques and the marginalization of the Silk Road as a central trade route sent the fisc into a long period of decline. The farther-flung polities notionally under the suzerainty of the Sublime Porte did more or less whatever they wanted, including committing various violations of the rights of the millets. (The Iraqi Jewish Sassoons, the great trading dynasty of the 19th century, fled Baghdad for British India because of the depredations of the Mamluks, who were so independent as to wage occasional wars on the central government in Istanbul.) Various Western powers exploited the independence of the millets to meddle in Ottoman internal affairs under the guise of “protection.” This administrative and fiscal chaos meant that the sultan had difficulty doing things like fielding a modern army, which became a serious, even thematic weakness in the First World War. 

The aftermath is well known: the last-ditch Ottoman efforts to modernize and homogenize, which featured what are characterized as the first modern genocides; and the failure of those efforts, which led to the collapse of the empire. The secularism, nationalism, and official monoculturalism of the modern Republic of Turkey, particularly the enforcement of Turkish language use irrespective of ethnic background, were ultimately a reaction to the failure of the millet system. The unified nation-state is the way we moderns have balanced the particular and the universal in human society. It hasn’t been perfect, but it has worked. 

In one of the characteristic backwards steps from more sophisticated to less sophisticated political systems in the past 60 years, the Western world has moved away from nationalism and embraced milletization, particularly in the face of mass immigration. Western milletization has some peculiar twists, though. First, it is everywhere inflected through the peculiarities of American racial dynamics, even in places where those dynamics are almost unintelligible. (Why were there Black Lives Matter marches in Sweden, where there is no history of African slavery and blacks make up less than 1 percent of the population?) Second, the institutions of the nation are themselves identified with “whiteness,” which is denigrated, but those institutions are then expected to be used to dole out compensatory privileges to historically disfavored millets.

Jeremy Carl, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, has addressed the dangerous oddities of the American millet system in The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart. His argument is that, thanks to the civil rights regime as codified in 1964, America has undergone milletization that is totalitarian—it affects every aspect of public life—and incomplete—as applied, it does not address protections for the declining share of the population that is identified as “white.” His remedies focus on dismantling the legal structures of affirmative action and disparate impact.

It is not a comfortable book to read, but it is important. The central contradiction in our system—treating the characteristics of the American nation, from the Constitution to the English language, as manifestations of “whiteness,” and the consequent direction of institutional power inward against the institutions themselves—threatens the very substance of our shared public life. (The traders in identity politics agree with George Lincoln Rockwell that America is a white nation—they just think that is a bad thing, and use it as cover for attacking America itself.) Carl argues that, while a future in which Americans’ primary identification as American is desirable, the slide toward such conspicuous multicultural success stories as South Africa cannot be arrested so long as whites are a disfavored class and America itself is identified with that disfavor: “As people who, for better or worse, are soon to be just another patch in the American quilt, whites need to be able to speak up unapologetically for their own rights…. If we do not correct the course we are on, I fear we are headed for the civil strife and racial violence that has characterized so many other multiracial countries over the centuries, including, in the past, our own.”

Carl is fundamentally arguing for steps toward renewed national unity, rather than for white identity politics as an end per se: “That I am criticizing the way America has sacralized diversity does not mean I hate the diverse groups of people who call themselves Americans. It means I hate the social dynamics we are creating through anti-white discrimination, unfettered immigration, and a declining focus on cultural assimilation.” This is a worthy goal, but the very problems he identifies make it doubtful that this disclaimer will save him from the usual accusations. They also make implementing solutions difficult. The traders in identity politics, even when they are in power, no longer exactly think of themselves as part of the American body politic; if enough people follow them, there won’t be an American body politic left. 

“Being a nation is a baffling thing; for it is wholly subjective,” Enoch Powell, himself a strenuous opponent of the color bar and race-based disparity of legal rights and privileges, wrote, “they are a nation who think they are a nation: there is no other definition.” It may be too late for our shared subjectivity.

The post Race Hustlers Are Destroying America appeared first on The American Conservative.

David Lammy, Britain’s all-but-certain next foreign secretary, is talking to J.D. Vance, says Donald Trump is ”often misunderstood” on NATO, and claims that he can find “common cause” with the potential 47th president. What is going on?

Everyone loves to coin a doctrine, as every politico fancies himself a statesman. It is standard foreign policy practice, and it immediately propels ambitious politicians to positions of respect. The first rule is to have a serious sounding name for the thing, preferably a mix of two different, even occasionally opposed theories: think “congagement,” once vogue in D.C. circles—a strategy mixing containment and engagement with China. 

Lammy, the Labour member of parliament for Tottenham, has mastered the art and coined a doctrine of “Progressive Realism.” He is meeting with potential cabinet members in the U.S., including the heir to a Trumpian realist conservatism, J.D. Vance.

Realism, you see, is back in fashion after the failed utopia of the last quarter century, and it sells.

Who doesn’t want to be known as a “realist”? If one is a smart member of the inner circle and a would-be gatekeeper, one needs to portray himself as some sort of a realist. Connoisseurs will recall that Mike Pompeo once tried that. Lammy, too, wants to shape the debate both in the UK and, as most British foreign secretaries feel like Greeks to the Romans, also in the U.S. Ergo, progressive realism, theoretical inconsistency notwithstanding. 

The problem is that it doesn’t make much sense.

Lammy’s theory is essentially boilerplate liberal internationalism without some of its more fanciful accretions. Consider that Lammy said in an interview that NATO isn’t paying its fair share and that Trump has a point. So far so good. He then also vowed to stand by Ukraine till the end.

Lammy writes in Foreign Affairs, 

Above all else, the United Kingdom must continue supporting Ukraine.The future of European security depends on the outcome of the war there, and the British government must leave the Kremlin with no doubt that it will support Kyiv for as long as it takes to achieve victory. Once Ukraine has prevailed, the United Kingdom should play a leading role in European security will [sic] be the Labour Party’s foreign policy priority.

In other words, more internationalism, and more integration with the EU. Hardly a symptom of realism, which will, in its true form, dictate that the UK buck-pass the security burden to buffer states between London and Moscow. 

Lammy has criticized Blairite interventionism: “The failures of Afghanistan,Iraq, and Libya undermined the idea that liberal interventionism was, as Blair remarked in 1999, ‘a more subtle blend of mutual self-interest and moral purpose.’ Instead, it came to be seen as a recipe for disorder.” 

But then he proceeds to say that inaction and isolationism have their own problems: “That said, the last decade has made it clear that inaction has high costs, too.The fact that the United States did not police its redline against the use of chemical weapons in Syria not only entrenched Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s monstrous regime; it also emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin.” He argues that Putin apparently played on a lack of Western resolve and decided to annex Crimea. There is of course no evidence of that particular causal link, as no one, least of all Lammy, is privy to the Kremlin’s inside process-tracing. 

Lammy thinks that the Kosovo intervention was a sign of moral good, and that it disclosed an ethical dimension for British foreign policy. The Kosovo adventure essentially destroyed NATO’s neutral defensive character by taking it into an operation where no strategic interests were involved; it was a blatant intervention against what was until then considered internal sovereign matters of a country, and it destroyed the norm of national boundaries; it was the start of supranational organizations interfering in national affairs; and it provided a template that the Russians replicated, both rhetorically and martially, in their intervention in Georgia in 2008. This, in a country which gave birth to realists like Castlereagh, Canning and Curzon, and elevated “balance of power” to an art form. 

Given London’s “till death do us apart” embrace of the current Kievan struggle, bromides about international corruption abound. London is apparently awash with Russian money, and Lammy’s next crusade will be against that. Lammy also supported Sadiq Khan, the current mayor of London, against conservative candidate Susan Hall because she is apparently bigoted to point out that London is awash with Arab cash and is practically broken by mass migration and crime. Lammy writes about having close cooperation with Ireland and the EU, currently the two entities on warpath over the questions of mass migration. (As we write, anti-migration riots are breaking out all over Eire.) 

You get the idea. 

There is an inherent contradiction of talking about progress, a quasi-providential and directional concept of history, and merging it with realism, a fundamentally amoral concept by which actors are beyond judgment in a history that is cyclical. Lammy, or whoever ghostwrites for him, clearly either does not get that, or is trying to take us for a ride. Realists don’t believe in “international community” or such nonsense. You’re either a nationalist, with a clear geographical sense of interest and national borders, or you’re not. Lammy isn’t. There are clear guidelines in the British history, of a true amoral realist foreign policy, from Viscount Castlereagh’s great power concerts deciding the fate of the continent, to Canning’s prioritization of the navy and the Anglosphere as opposed to European continent, to Palmerston’s balance of power, to Salisbury’s “splendid isolation,” to Curzon’s “divide and rule” and Lansdowne’s idea of equilibrium. 

One need not like it, but the model is already there; one only needs to look back, instead of forward, and there will be no need to reinvent the wheel. Until then, however, Americans must be wary of such meaningless lectures. 

Does Lammy believe in “humanitarian interventions,” as Tony Blair highlighted in his epochal Chicago speech about the international community, which influenced Clinton, W., and Barack Obama? Does he think borders are sacrosanct, and that migration has turned into an invasion? Does he think great powers are the main actors of foreign policy in a world of anarchy? Does he believe in continual expansion of NATO? These are just a few of the unanswered questions.

Americans, including the next cabinet nominees, should perhaps start asking them when they next face a Lammy lecture. 

The post Can Britain’s Left-Wing Next Foreign Secretary Find ‘Common Cause’ with Trump? appeared first on The American Conservative.

Meanwhile in the Democrat hellhole of New York City…

A shocking video posted to X showed a man wrapping a belt around a woman’s neck, dragging her body onto a street in New York City, and raping her.

According to NYPD, the 45-year-old woman was attacked and sexually assaulted near 152nd Street and 3rd Avenue in the Bronx on May 1 around 3 am.

The attacker covered his face with a white towel as he assaulted the woman. No arrests have been made.

PIX11 reported:

A man wrapped a belt around a woman’s neck and dragged her unconscious body between two parked cars before raping her on a Bronx street, according to police and a viral video.

The 45-year-old woman was attacked near 152nd Street and Third Avenue at around 3 a.m. on May 1, according to the NYPD. The woman was walking down the street when a suspect came up from behind and looped the belt around her neck, the viral video shows.

The man, who covered his face with a white towel, then used the belt to pull the passed-out woman several feet along the sidewalk and into the street between two parked cars, the video shows. Police said the suspect then raped her.

The video shared on social media does not depict the entire assault. There have been no arrests, and the investigation is ongoing.

The video posted to X does not show the entire assault.

Police are urging anyone with information about this horrific assault to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477).

WATCH (graphic warning):

Graphic Warning: Disgusting video out of New York shows a man snag a woman with a belt before dragging her behind a vehicle. Video was posted online without further information.
If you recognize this man contact your local police. #nyc #newyork #crime pic.twitter.com/5111yRTJwQ

— PPV_TAHOE (@ppv_tahoe) May 9, 2024

The post SHOCK VIDEO: Man Wraps Belt Around Woman’s Neck, Drags Her Unconscious Body onto NYC Street, Rapes Her appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.