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Blue Cities, States Using ‘State of Emergency’ to Attack Second Amendment

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2 months ago

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By Tom Gantert (The Center Square)

Government officials across the country are looking at gun violence state of emergencies as a way to address crime within their cities.

In Philadelphia, candidates for mayor held a debate Jan. 19 focused solely on gun violence.

“On my very first day, I am enacting a state of emergency on gun violence,” Helen Gym, a Democratic mayoral candidate, said during the debate recorded by WPVI.

RELATED: Biden Repeats Bizarre Challenge to Legal Gun Owners: You Need an F-15 to Take on the Government

Declaring a state of emergency grants additional powers to government and also makes them eligible for more government financial assistance, according to the executive orders put into place in numerous cities.

New York became the first state to declare an emergency due to gun violence in July 2021. It has extended that emergency until Feb. 15.

Rochester, N.Y., originally declared a gun violence state of emergency in July 2021 and extended its emergency for 30 days on Jan. 17.

In Rochester, the emergency order allows the police to shut down businesses that are determined to be nuisances. In December, the city filed a lawsuit against the firearm industry “for their role in fueling the gun violence crisis” in Rochester, according to a news release.

The city of Flint, Mi. declared a gun violence state of emergency in July 2021. The city said that emergency is still in place.

RELATED: Left Pushing to Use Banks, Credit Card Companies as Work-Around for Gun Control

The city of Portland, Ore. implemented a gun violence state of emergency in July 2021. The mayor’s office confirmed that emergency has been extended through February.

The city of Blakely, Ga., declared a local emergency due to gun violence in July 2022. The city stated the order was no longer in effect. While the emergency was in effect, the city was able to implement a midnight curfew and cease the sale of alcohol after 11 p.m.

And there have been calls by activists for their government to follow suit and implement gun violence emergencies.

The Oaklandside reported in June 2021 that activists chanted “state of emergency!” in an attempt to get Alameda County in California to declare a gun violence state of emergency.

In October 2022, California Congresswoman Barbara Lee and U.S. Senator Alex Padilla of California wrote a letter asking U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to declare a national emergency due to gun violence.

RELATED: Minority Communities Object to Illinois’ Proposed Gun Ban Penalties

“Gun violence is currently the leading cause of premature death in the United States,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter, according to a news release. “The Public Health Emergency Declaration on Gun Violence will fundamentally reframe how people perceive gun violence prevention efforts and recommit this nation to ending gun violence. When faced with a national public health crisis, the federal government marshals its resources to protect Americans, and gun violence should not be an exception.”

The National Rifle Association said emergency orders aren’t the solution to the problems of shootings in cities like Philadelphia.

“There’s no gun violence or gun crimes without violent criminals,” Lars Dalseide, spokesman for the NRA, said in an email to The Center Square. “Arresting, prosecuting and punishing violent criminals who commit these heinous crimes is the solitary thing that will address this sad epidemic of violence in Philadelphia.”

Everytown For Gun Safety did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Syndicated with permission from The Center Square.

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Politics

Marjorie Taylor Greene Attacks Joe Biden For Stopping Her From Denying Kids Food

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11 hours ago

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March 27, 2023

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Marjorie Taylor Greene attacked President Biden on Sunday for not allowing House Republicans to take food assistance away from kids.

Greene tweeted:

Rep. Greene is lying. House Republicans are being advised to target cuts to food stamps (SNAP) as a part of their debt ceiling hostage-taking.

According to a report from Senate Democrats, the budget that Marjorie Taylor Greene is touting would gut the SNAP program, “At a time when more than one in eight households with children are food insecure, the Republican proposals cut $412 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.”

Joe Biden was not lying.

According to the Census Bureau, 11.4% of American households receive SNAP benefits, and 48.6% of those households have a child under the age of 18. Children, seniors, and persons with disabilities make up the vast majority of Americans who are receiving SNAP.

The House Republican plan would take hundreds of billions of dollars in food assistance from children. Rep. Greene was attacking the President Of The United States because he would not agree to a plan that would take away food assistance from low-income children.

Republicans are targeting SNAP, Medicaid, changes to veterans benefits, and Social Security as part of their budget plan. The budget that Greene is so proud of would increase child hunger in the United States so that Greene and others could give more tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations.

President Biden is protecting America’s most economically vulnerable kids from Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association

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Trump Is Also Trying To Intimidate Jurors And Judges

Published

11 hours ago

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March 27, 2023

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Former President Donald Trump is trying to intimidate more than just the various prosecutors who might be readying indictments against him, but also the jurors and judges, according to a former Southern District of New York Criminal Division Deputy Chief.

“If the case is charged, there will be jurors and judge to hear the case,” former SDNY Criminal Division Deputy Chief Kristy Greenberg noted on Ali Velshi’s MBNBC show. “He’s trying to intimidate everyone associated with this case.”

Greenberg also went on to explain that these many investigations into Donald Trump are examples of the system working because they show the law being applied without fear or favor.

The FBI is indeed investigating a death threat after the Manhattan DA received a letter threatening to kill him with white powder, reading “ALVIN: I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

The letter came from Orlando, Florida.

Trump’s intimidation tactics have been getting him into enough hot water that his lawyer claimed that he quickly deleted the photo of himself with a bat next to a photo of Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.

“I think that was an ill-advised post that one of his social media people put up and he quickly took down when he realized the rhetoric and the photo that was attached to it,” Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina said on Meet the Press.

Except that Trump left that threat up for at least a day because it was posted on Thursday and we got a screengrab of it still up 21 hours later on Friday morning at 10:22 AM.

21 hours is more than enough time to realize the photo was a problem since it was making headline news for that entire 24 hours. For example, this is enough time for a news organization to get into trouble if anything in their article isn’t accurate, so it is more than enough time for Trump to realize that the photo he shared is a clear threat.

How many times do most people share photos of themselves on social media with a baseball bat aimed at the head of local law enforcement, maybe a local judge they’re appearing before or a police officer who wrote them a ticket?

That’s right, it’s not very often. Because it’s not a casual action and it’s not socially acceptable to appear to threaten people with violence, especially not law enforcement.

On Al Sharpton’s Politics Nation show, Sharpton pressed Tacopina about Trump posting the bat, which Tacopina justified by saying Trump took it down before it did any damage.

There is no reason to suggest that Trump in fact took that down before any damage was done. In fact, Trump left it up long enough to get his message through to his supporters, to the jurors, to the judges, and to the prosecutors.

Trump has been successfully using the post and delete, say something and then a day later take it back scam since he came on the scene as a politician. It’s time for the media to stop pretending he doesn’t know what he’s saying and doing. Like everyone else, Trump should be accountable for his own actions.

Trump is operating like a mob boss, except that he is also running for president and is a former president. His attempts to intimidate witnesses and others are nothing new, but it is still reprehensible behavior for any elected official.

Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.

Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.

Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Connect with Sarah on Post,  Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.

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James Comer Crashes And Burns As Jake Tapper Blows Holes In His Alvin Bragg Attack

Published

12 hours ago

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March 27, 2023

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Rep. James Comer (R-KY) tried to defend his attempted obstruction of Alvin Bragg’s investigation, but CNN’s Jake Tapper used facts to blow holes in his argument.

Clip of House Oversight Committee Chair Comer:

Transcript via CNN’s State Of The Union:

REP. JAMES COMER (R-KY): Well, what the DA is trying to say is what you just quoted. He said, stay out of local investigations.

The problem with that is, this is not a local investigation. This is a federal investigation. He’s investigating a presidential candidate, not to mention former president of the United States, for a federal election crime.

That has no business being litigated in a local district attorney’s office.

And when he says he’s not going to cooperate with Congress, unfortunately for Mr. Bragg, he doesn’t have the luxury of determining whether or not he can comply with congressional requests, because he crossed over two levels of government from the local level to the federal level to try to prosecute something that, clearly, if there was a reason for prosecution, it should be done by the Department of Justice on the federal level.

TAPPER: Well, he’s investigating, as I understand it, potential violations of state crimes.

COMER: Even at that, look, let’s just be honest here.

I mean, this is about politics. This is a presidential candidate. When you look at what we believe the role of the Manhattan DA should be is to fight crime. I mean, that’s one of the biggest issues in New York. We saw that in the midterm elections last November.

Voters overwhelmingly rejected many Democrat candidates because of the crime issue. We have a crime crisis in many of our cities. And we’re trying to do something about that in the House of Representatives. And one of the reasons we believe we have high crime rates in certain parts of America is because we have prosecutors that are soft on crime.

And we believe that our tax dollars — and that’s where I come in with the House Oversight — we believe tax dollars would be better spent prosecuting local criminals. That’s what a DA is supposed to do.

TAPPER: Are you arguing that people who commit business crimes are not committing crimes?

COMER: Look, well, is this a business crime? We’re talking about a federal election crime here, Jake. This is a federal election crime.

The Manhattan DA does not write federal electoral law.

COMER: Congress writes federal election law.

TAPPER: My understanding is that he’s being investigated for falsifying business records. It’s — there was a related prosecution. Michael Cohen went to prison. That was a federal investigation from the U.S. attorney during the Trump years.

But that U.S. attorney, Mr. Berman, prosecuted — and Mr. Khuzami — prosecuted Michael Cohen. He went to prison for the that, as well as related crimes. I don’t remember hearing anything from you during that period. I guess he wasn’t a candidate, but he had been working for Donald Trump.

Comer appears to be suggesting that state campaign finance laws don’t apply to federal office candidates, which is on its face nonsensical, but presidential campaigns aren’t national elections. Presidential elections are a series of 50 state elections that are managed by each state.

Rep. Comer is suggesting that Trump is above state and local laws because he is running for president. However, if a presidential candidate violates a state law, they can be charged in that state. Trump is potentially facing criminal charges for violating Georgia’s election interference laws in 2020.

Comer ignored the fact that Trump claimed the hush money payment as a legal expense when it was not. Trump potentially committed fraud.

Jake Tapper was ready for Comer, and when he asked a very logical question about local prosecutors being able to investigate local crimes, Comer changed the subject and started talking about urban crime.

House Republicans know that they have no jurisdiction over local prosecutors, as their efforts are all about political pushback for Trump instead of upholding the rule of law.

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association

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