Will Democrats Fall Into The Crime Trap?

Most of the highest crime cities are run by Democrats. Boston, NYC, Chicago, Baltimore, SF, LA, Seattle, Portland (it wasn’t that long ago that Seattle and Portland were pretty decent. Pre-COVID they were around a 28, meaning safer than 28% of cities, at worst. Now it’s a 1 for both). They’re horrible policies led to the crime explosion. In some cases they’ve tried to get a bit tougher, like, say, San Francisco, but, it’s a little late, so, crime still flourishes. Until there’s a serious crackdown, nothing changes. So

Trump’s DC move forces Democrats to again grapple with crime

President Trump’s use of federal resources to combat crime in the nation’s capital is forcing Democrats to once again address the issue of law and order, something that has been a vulnerability for them in recent elections.

Democrats were quick to note — following Trump’s announcement Monday that he would federalize the city’s police force and deploy the National Guard — that violent crime in Washington, D.C., is down.

However, Republicans see the message as a winning one as signs suggest voters are concerned about crime regardless, leading some Democrats to warn their party against falling into the same political trap some see as having damaged them in the past.

“My advice to Democrats is don’t take the bait,” said Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Nellis noted that voters could still feel strongly about crime even as statistics show improvement in metropolitan areas like D.C., thereby opening Democrats up to easy attacks from the GOP.

Too late! Democrats are already trying to die on the hill of “yeah, crime is still really high, but, it’s down!”

Polls show Republicans have the upper hand on the crime issue. According to a CNN survey released in June, 40 percent of voters said the GOP’s views on crime are closer to their own, while 27 percent said the same about Democrats.

“It’s obviously a winning an argument for Republicans, especially anytime we’re talking about crime in Democrat-run cities,” the national Republican operative said.

OK, this goes on in political calculations for a bit, but, here’s what Democrats do not get: we would rather not let it be a political issue, we just want to reduce crime to acceptable levels, and punish those who commit crimes. I’m sure most Democrats would like crime reduced, as well. They want to feel safe walking down the streets, in their homes, in their cars. But, if Democrats want to be super soft on criminals, then it becomes a political issue, and the GOP will bludgeon them with it.

Read: Will Democrats Fall Into The Crime Trap? »

Bummer: EPA Ends Contract With Unionized Employees

Good. For the most part these white collar federal employees should not have a union. What are they being protected from? Oh, right, it’s about government negotiating with government to give more taxpayer money to government employees

Trump’s environment agency terminates contract with unionized employees

electric vehicleThe U.S. Environmental Protection Agency moved to end its contract with unionized employees, according to the union’s president, the latest action in President Donald Trump’s push to weaken collective bargaining across the federal government.

The union, which represents 8,000 EPA employees, is planning a legal response to the decision, said Justin Chen, president of the agency’s chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees, in a statement on Friday.

The decision gets Trump closer to his goal to strip hundreds of thousands of federal workers of the ability to collectively bargain with U.S. agencies. Eliminating union deals would allow agencies to more easily fire or discipline employees, according to attorneys representing federal workers.

“EPA is working to diligently implement President Trump’s Executive Orders with respect to AFGE, including ‘Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs’, in compliance with the law,” an EPA spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the executive order Trump issued in March.

The order involves removing collective bargaining rights at more than 30 federal agencies, including the EPA, and is currently being challenged in court by unions who say it violates free speech and obligations to bargain with workers.

These are public employees. There is no right to bargain. They work at the mercy of the taxpayers. They should earn raises based on performance. If they do not like this, go work in the private sector.

Read: Bummer: EPA Ends Contract With Unionized Employees »

If All You See…

…is grass dying due to too much carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is No Tricks Zone, with a post on Pacific typhoons dropping.

Read: If All You See… »

Media Laments Businesses Devoid Of Illegal Alien Workers

What this tells me is that there are lots of companies who need to be fined, at a minimum, for employing illegal aliens

Factories from GE to Kraft Heinz lose immigrant workers, stressing those who remain

Jaelin Carpenter was stressed. Four people on her team of 26 at GE Appliances had learned that their immigration status had changed.

Under former President Biden, they’d been allowed to stay and work in the U.S. for two years, protected by a program set up to help people fleeing humanitarian crises back home. But the Trump administration abruptly canceled that program, revoking their legal status and their authorization to work. Carpenter fielded call after call from her panicked co-workers.

“They were calling me asking me if they’re on the run. ‘Does this mean I’m getting deported today?'” she recalls them asking. (snip)

In recent months, immigrants working in manufacturing, food production and other industries have lost their jobs due to President Trump’s immigration policies — not as a result of immigration raids, but because Trump ended Biden-era programs that had provided them temporary permission to remain in the U.S. and get jobs.

Those affected include more than a half-million immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who had been granted humanitarian parole for two years through a program known as CHNV — an acronym for the countries it covered. The changes also affect close to 1 million immigrants who were allowed into the U.S. after securing appointments at the U.S.-Mexico border via a U.S. government app.

Yeah, well, Temporary Protected Status programs are meant to end, not continue on and on and on. And all those for those folks were scheduled to end soon anyhow. There are plenty of people on welfare who are eligible to actually work the jobs. Oh, and all those federal workers can find jobs.

Fear of immigration raids turns California community into ghost town

Huntington Park, California, a working-class community of more than 50,000 people, has recently felt like it has a bullseye on its back because of ramped-up raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The town is 95.6% Latino, and as many as 45% of the residents are undocumented, according to the city.

Whoa, hold up: 45%? If the news knows this then ICE knows this. In case CBS News is unaware, it is against the law to be in the U.S. unlawfully.

Over 60,000 Are in Immigration Detention, a Modern High, Records Show

The number of people in immigration detention reached a new high of more than 60,000 on Monday, breaking a modern record set during the first Trump administration, according to internal records from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The number of detained people has jumped since January, when about 39,000 people were in immigration detention, reflecting efforts by the Trump administration to quickly ramp up arrests and deportations. According to ICE records obtained by The New York Times, more than 1,100 people had been detained since Friday, about 380 people a day.

The capacity for immigration officers to detain people has grown rapidly since ICE was formed in 2003. Twenty years ago, the average daily population of detained immigrants was approximately 7,000, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association. The previous peak since the government’s current method of counting began was 55,654 in August 2019, during the first Trump administration.

It would be a lot lower if Democrats stopped trying to keep people unlawfully present in the U.S.

Read: Media Laments Businesses Devoid Of Illegal Alien Workers »

An Interesting Thing Happened While Dems Protested Trump’s DC Takeover

I mean, seriously, protesting against reducing crime in the nation’s capitol is a hell of a hill to die on, and then

Read: An Interesting Thing Happened While Dems Protested Trump’s DC Takeover »

Warmists Taking The Recent ICJ Ruling Farther Than Expected

Of course, none of the Warmists want to make their own lives carbon neutral

New global ruling says sovereign states are legally responsible for tackling climate change

Sovereign states are not only responsible for tackling fossil fuel damage, they have to make redress, according to a recent ground-breaking ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The ruling makes clear that the court believes states must actively prevent harm to the world’s climate system. States that fail to act accordingly may have to pay compensation, restore damaged ecosystems, rebuild infrastructure or face further legal challenges.

The ruling came in the form of an advisory opinion, which is a legal interpretation provided by a high-level court or tribunal with a special mandate, in response to a specific question of law. Simply put, an advisory opinion is not legally binding in the way a court judgment between two nations would be.

However, as an expert in international relations, I believe the consequences of this ruling are significant, both legally and politically.

Politically, states are now in the firing line as the main agents of harm. States and the public and private sector energy companies that states contract, license or subsidize are now more visible in terms of the kind of climate harm they permit.

Well, if you other countries want to give up their money, have at it. How about you Warmists give up your own and redistribute it?

What the ICJ’s advisory opinion on climate change means for military emissions

Despite the density of the document, the ICJ did not address everything. Some authors have already identified missed or intentionally avoided opportunities, such as guidance on the legal rights of nature, or deeper engagement with the rights of future generations. Also, the judges themselves have criticised the panel for an overly cautious approach.

The military’s impact on the climate is one such elusive topic. The court did hear about military and conflict emissions in Palestine’s oral statement to the court. That included the emissions caused by the conflict and expected by post-conflict reconstruction, as well as the barriers that occupation can place on climate adaptation and mitigation. (snip)

In defining the duties of states towards their climate obligations, the court indirectly addressed military emissions reporting and decarbonisation measures. While reporting of peacetime military emissions is currently voluntary, keeping at or below 1.5 degrees inevitably demands that military emissions are properly accounted for in national inventories and NDCs, and mitigated. A complete and undistorted picture of the climate crisis requires that states treat their militaries like other high-emitting sectors.

Bugger off. Maybe talk to your Palestinian terrorist pals about not starting wars they keep losing.

Read: Warmists Taking The Recent ICJ Ruling Farther Than Expected »

Weird: Washington Post Editorial Board Kinda Agrees With Trump On D.C. Crime

Most other Democrats seem to be doing this

Yup, Jazz Hands thinks fighting crime is authoritarian

Is this the hill lots of Democrats want to die on? Protecting lawlessness?

Fighting crime in D.C. cannot end with Trump’s show of force

President Donald Trump is putting on quite the show to project strength on crime after the foiled carjacking of a staffer in his administration. On Monday, he took control of the D.C. police and deployed the National Guard.

It’s one thing to get tough, but it’s also essential to enact sustainable fixes. Crime is a serious problem, and fighting it requires a serious commitment — from this administration, as well as federal lawmakers, the mayor, the D.C. Council, prosecutors and local judges.

Trump is correct that crime remains a serious issue in the city (and nationally). Violent crime has fallen over the past few years, as city officials note, but many residents still do not feel safe. Carjackings, for instance, have dropped after a surge in 2023, but they remain above pre-pandemic levels. High-profile incidents of violence underscore the problem, which local leaders cannot wave away.

Nevertheless, Trump’s efforts to put more law enforcement and armed troops on the streets of D.C. will probably have limited value. A stepped-up security presence might deter crime and keep some troublemakers from going out after dark for the rest of the summer, but Trump will only control the police department for 30 days unless he finds a way to get both chambers of Congress to authorize an extension.

Yeah, it is a temporary fix. D.C. needs more cops

What D.C. needs is more permanent police officers. In 2023, then-Police Chief Robert J. Contee III warned that the city’s force had fallen to a half-century low of about 3,350 officers, forcing the city to spend millions of dollars on overtime. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and the D.C. Council have already dedicated millions in their recent budget to increase staffing, as part of a goal to reach 4,000 officers by 2031. Congress could restore the city’s budget, which it cut while averting a shutdown earlier this year.

D.C. is having trouble retaining and recruiting police officers, because they know the city officials like the mayor do not have their back. So lots of them half-ass their jobs. Why try hard when you’ll be called a racist if you bust someone, and lots of the people they do bust get let go without even a slap on the wrist.

D.C. can help itself by holding more juvenile offenders accountable. The city passed a law last year called Secure DC that made it easier to prosecute certain crimes, such as illegal gun possession and carjackings, and to detain dangerous defendants, including juveniles, while they await trial. This marked a political shift for the city, where left-wing lawmakers and the elected D.C. attorney general, Brian Schwalb, previously championed relative leniency for teens who committed serious crimes.

Yeah, well, they are going to work hard to try and get the kiddies to not be criminals, but, they’ve had a free ride for years and aren’t ready to give it up. Remember who created this situation: Democrats.

Read: Weird: Washington Post Editorial Board Kinda Agrees With Trump On D.C. Crime »

Climate Crisis (scam) Means There Is No “Best Time” To Travel

Would that be a good thing? Not everyone can take vacation at the same time. In Warmist World, though, everything is doom. And this is a new one from the cult

Why ‘best time to visit’ no longer applies

I spent April and May this year travelling across Nepal – prime trekking season and often billed as the “best time to visit”. Almost every online guide promised clear skies and comfortable temperatures. Instead, I found hazy polluted air and low visibility, especially at lower elevations. Early monsoons swept across the country, briefly clearing the smoke but replacing it with downpours I hadn’t prepared for. The gap between expectation and reality was jarring.

This isn’t just a Nepal problem; travel is facing climate-driven disruptions everywhere. Australia recorded its hottest March on record this year, with temperatures 2.41C above the historical average. In Japan, cherry blossoms are blooming earlier than ever. Across the globe, longer summers, shorter winters and erratic “false springs” are now routine.

“The planet’s warming since around 1980 is making heatwaves, droughts and floods more frequent and severe,” says Jonathan Erdman, senior meteorologist at The Weather Company‘s weather.com. “All three of these are most common during summer, when travel peaks.”

But the unpredictability now stretches year-round. “Extremely wet and dry periods can happen any time of year – including shoulder season – if the weather pattern gets stuck for a while,” Erdman adds.

It must be mentally exhausting to constantly look for the worst in everything. Why couldn’t they have been a happy cult? A happy religion, like Buddhism and this new “Happy Science”? Instead, it’s always so miserable and doomy.

That article is here.

Read: Climate Crisis (scam) Means There Is No “Best Time” To Travel »

If All You See…

…is a horrible fossil fueled tractor, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Not A Lot Of People Know That, with a post on the NY Times’ lies on wildfires exposed.

Read: If All You See… »

Trump To Decide On Whether To Dispatch National Guard In D.C.

The Washington Post seems a bit upset that Trump wants to *checks notes* reduce crime in the nation’s capitol (using the MSN copy, since you can read the whole thing. WP article here.)

FBI dispatching agents to D.C. streets as Trump weighs calling National Guard

The FBI has begun dispatching agents in overnight shifts to help local law enforcement prevent carjackings and violent crime in Washington, according to two people familiar with the matter, as President Donald Trump threatens a federal takeover of the nation’s capital and considers calling up the National Guard.

A decision on calling up the Guard could come as soon as Monday, when Trump plans a news conference at the White House on crime in D.C., according to a U.S. official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.

Trump on Sunday compared forthcoming action against D.C. crime to his administration’s aggressive crackdown against illegal immigration at the southern border, saying that he plans to “immediately clear out the city’s homeless population and take swift action against crime.”

“Be prepared! There will be no ‘MR. NICE GUY.’ We want our Capital BACK,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social social media platform.

This is somehow controversial. The city voted 90% for Kamala Harris in 2024: do the Democrats enjoy the high crime rate and homeless all over? You get

So, again, the District Of Columbia is rated a 2 by Neighborhood Scout. That means it is safer than 2% of U.S. cities. Meaning it is high crime. You have a 1 in 95 chance of being a violent crime victim, and the 10.47 (per 1,000) rate is over double the national rate of 4. Assault and robbery are off the chain. Property crime is 1 in 24, with a rate 3 times the national rate. Theft and motor vehicle theft are super high. You can see the map above. The darker the blue the more the crime. Should there be crime around all the historic sites, the White House, the Capitol Building, the Supreme Court, the Reflecting Pool, the museums?

I’m guessing the police think there’s an issue.

Read: Trump To Decide On Whether To Dispatch National Guard In D.C. »

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