The Radical Strategy Behind Trump's Promise to 'Go After' Biden

At the New York Times, "Conservatives with close ties to Donald J. Trump are laying out a “paradigm-shifting” legal rationale to erase the Justice Department’s independence from the president":

When Donald J. Trump responded to his latest indictment by promising to appoint a special prosecutor if he’s re-elected to “go after” President Biden and his family, he signaled that a second Trump term would fully jettison the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence.

“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Mr. Trump said at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., on Tuesday night after his arraignment earlier that day in Miami. “I will totally obliterate the Deep State.”

Mr. Trump’s message was that the Justice Department charged him only because he is Mr. Biden’s political opponent, so he would invert that supposed politicization. In reality, under Attorney General Merrick Garland, two Trump-appointed prosecutors are already investigating Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents and the financial dealings of his son, Hunter.

But by suggesting the current prosecutors investigating the Bidens were not “real,” Mr. Trump appeared to be promising his supporters that he would appoint an ally who would bring charges against his political enemies regardless of the facts.

The naked politics infusing Mr. Trump’s headline-generating threat underscored something significant. In his first term, Mr. Trump gradually ramped up pressure on the Justice Department, eroding its traditional independence from White House political control. He is now unabashedly saying he will throw that effort into overdrive if he returns to power.

Mr. Trump’s promise fits into a larger movement on the right to gut the F.B.I., overhaul a Justice Department conservatives claim has been “weaponized” against them and abandon the norm — which many Republicans view as a facade — that the department should operate independently from the president.

Two of the most important figures in this effort work at the same Washington-based organization, the Center for Renewing America: Jeffrey B. Clark and Russell T. Vought. During the Trump presidency, Mr. Vought served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Clark, who oversaw the Justice Department’s civil and environmental divisions, was the only senior official at the department who tried to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election.

Mr. Trump wanted to make Mr. Clark attorney general during his final days in office but stopped after the senior leadership of the Justice Department threatened to resign en masse. Mr. Clark is now a figure in one of the Justice Department’s investigations into Mr. Trump’s attempts to stay in power.

Mr. Clark and Mr. Vought are promoting a legal rationale that would fundamentally change the way presidents interact with the Justice Department. They argue that U.S. presidents should not keep federal law enforcement at arm’s length but instead should treat the Justice Department no differently than any other cabinet agency. They are condemning Mr. Biden and Democrats for what they claim is the politicization of the justice system, but at the same time pushing an intellectual framework that a future Republican president might use to justify directing individual law enforcement investigations.

Mr. Clark, who is a favorite of Mr. Trump’s and is likely to be in contention for a senior Justice Department position if Mr. Trump wins re-election in 2024, wrote a constitutional analysis, titled “The U.S. Justice Department is not independent,” that will most likely serve as a blueprint for a second Trump administration.

Like other conservatives, Mr. Clark adheres to the so-called unitary executive theory, which holds that the president of the United States has the power to directly control the entire federal bureaucracy and Congress cannot fracture that control by giving some officials independent decision-making authority.

There are debates among conservatives about how far to push that doctrine — and whether some agencies should be allowed to operate independently — but Mr. Clark takes a maximalist view. Mr. Trump does, too, though he’s never been caught reading the Federalist Papers...

Schizophrenic Woman Arrested After Physically Attacking People on Chicago's Northside

The woman was apparently off her medication.

At the Other McCain, "Crazy People Are Dangerous."

BONUS: "In Terms of ‘Owning the Libs,’ Nobody Else Even Compares to Donald Trump."

Seattle Halts Mail Delivery to Southside

Mail theft has gotten so bad.

At Instapundit, "GOODER AND HARDER: Mail Delivery Halted for an Entire Zip Code in Seattle."

One Dead After Driver Intentionally Plows Car Through Group of Teenagers at Westlake High School (VIDEO)

There's too much death. 

Day after day we're subsumed by "senseless" acts of violence. Damn. What next? Car control?

At the Los Angeles Times, "Driver intentionally hit Westlake High students, killing 1, after Walmart stabbing, authorities say."

The poor kid.

Alleged Pedophile Throws Himself Under Wheels of Utility Van

Be sure to check the comments.

Paedophile hunters chasing a man who was allegedly attempting to meet underage children throws himself under an oncoming van! pic.twitter.com/MS3qqC9sdA

— Danny Tommo 🇬🇧 (@RealDannyTommo) April 18, 2023

Mexican Drug Gang Turns In Members It Blames for Americans’ Deaths

Don't travel to Mexico. You're likely to be killed.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Gulf Cartel faction left five men tied up in downtown Matamoros with a sign apologizing to victims and their families."

Also, "Americans Kidnapped, Killed in Mexico Were Victims of Violent Border City: Matamoros is the birthplace of the Gulf Cartel, one of Mexico’s oldest and most powerful criminal organizations."

Huntington Park Police Shoot and Kill Black Double Amputee Wielding Knife (VIDEO)

The video is here.

At at the Los Angeles Times, "Video shows police fatally shooting double amputee who was holding knife," and "Video adds to questions about police shooting of a double amputee holding a knife."

Cousin of Patrice Cullors, Black Lives Matter Co-Founder, Dies from Cardiac Arrest After Being Tased by L.A.P.D. (VIDEO)

The spin from the Los Angeles Times: "LAPD’s repeated tasing of teacher who died appears excessive, experts say."

Right. Here's the full context:

LAPD released videos of their arrest of Keenan Anderson, a "cousin" of #BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors. He died hours after getting tased during an arrest on Jan. 3 while committing a felony hit & run & attempted car theft. He had cocaine in his system. https://t.co/9a1yBSj3FQ

— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) January 13, 2023

The Privatization of Policing

From Emma Freire, at Compact, "David, 26, is shoplifting peanut butter from the Stadium Shopping Center in Portland, Ore. He has been living on the streets for about a month. Already addicted to heroin, he had started using fentanyl four days earlier. The store’s personnel spot him and call their private security firm Echelon Protective Services. They know that if they call the police, they might have to wait up to two hours. And this situation needs to be dealt with right away. The shopping center’s management pays Echelon to patrol the area at all times."

RTWT.

Andrew Tate Is Charged With Human Trafficking and Rape in Romania

I don't know much about this guy and have never listened to or watched.

Jedediah Bila practically swears by him, though, below.

And at the New York Times, "Mr. Tate, an online personality known for making misogynistic comments, and three others will be held in custody for 30 days, the authorities said":

Andrew Tate, a former professional kickboxer and online personality who frequently made misogynistic comments to his large following on social media sites, has been remanded into custody for 30 days by a judge in Romania after the police charged him and three others with human trafficking, rape and forming an organized criminal group.

Prosecutors with the Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism in Romania said in a statement on Thursday that two Britons and two Romanians were being detained for 24 hours as part of the investigation. The statement did not name Mr. Tate, but the police in Romania confirmed on Friday that he and his brother, Tristan, both of whom have dual citizenship in Britain and the United States, were among those detained. The brothers live in Romania, according to Mr. Tate’s website.

Late Friday, a judge in Bucharest ordered all four parties to be held for an additional 30 days. A lawyer for Mr. Tate, Eugen Vidineac, said he was “disappointed” in the outcome and that an appeal had been filed. An appeal’s judge will decide whether Mr. Tate will remain in prison for the entire 30 days, Mr. Vidineac said, adding that a decision could come as soon as Monday.

Ramona Bolla, a spokeswoman for the Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism, confirmed the charges. It was unclear whether the other two people were acquaintances of Mr. Tate or his brother.

Prosecutors said that the local authorities had carried out searches of homes they believed were connected to human trafficking and rape. The authorities said they were investigating whether the suspects created a criminal group in 2021 to engage in human trafficking in Romania, the United States and Britain.

Six victims, who were allegedly coerced into performing sexual acts, were housed in buildings outside Bucharest, prosecutors said. On two separate occasions in March, one of the suspects used violence and psychological pressure to rape a victim, prosecutors said.

Mr. Tate, who is in his mid-30s, rose to prominence in 2016 after appearing on the British version of the reality television show “Big Brother.” He has continued to build his online presence, often making hateful comments, including that women who are raped are partly responsible for the attacks.

Mr. Tate drew attention again this week after getting into a spat on Twitter with the 19-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, bragging about his collection of exotic cars and their “enormous emissions” and asking for her email address. Ms. Thunberg replied with an address ending in “@getalife.com.”

Speculation online centered on whether a distinctive pizza box featured in one of Mr. Tate’s tweets to Ms. Thunberg had helped lead the authorities to him, but Ms. Bolla told The New York Times on Friday that that was not the case...

Jedediah says that Tate's been released. 

 More.

Four College Kids Were Brutally Murdered In Idaho But There's No Attack Angle for the Democrat Party So Their Deaths Don't Matter

At AoSHQ, "On November 13, between 3am and 4am, a killer crept into a house and butchered four people with a knife on the campus of the University of Idaho. They victims are not members of Democrat Grievance Group nor was the weapon used a Hate Weapon like a gun so the Corporate Propaganda Press has decided that these murders are Non-Useful --- Oh, also: The murders did not happen in NY, LA, or DC. Just some Flyover Country corpses. No big deal."

Democrats Promote Tough-on-Crime Credentials as Party Plays Defense

Shot: At the New York Times, "With sheriffs vouching for them and a flood of ads proclaiming their support for the police, Democrats are shoring up their public safety bona fides. Still, some worry it’s too late":

In the final stretch of the midterm campaigns, Democrats are straining to defend themselves against a barrage of crime-focused attacks from Republicans, forcefully highlighting their public safety credentials amid signs that G.O.P. messaging on the issue may be more potent than usual in some critical races this year.

Democrats have enlisted sheriffs to vouch for them, have outspent Republicans on ads that use the word “police” in the month of October, and have been using the kind of tough-on-crime language that many on the left seemed to reject not long ago — even as some Democrats worry that efforts to inoculate the party on a complex and emotional issue are falling short.

Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, who is being criticized over a 2018 video in which he called ending cash bail a “top priority,” aired an ad in which an officer declared him a “tough-on-crime” lawmaker who confronted those “who wanted to defund the police.”

Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada has long highlighted her pro-law enforcement credentials, including with an ad featuring a police chief praising her record of being “tough on crime.”

And Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, whose history on criminal justice issues is being denounced by Republicans, sounded pro-law enforcement notes at a senior center on Friday as he discussed his tenure as the mayor of Braddock, Pa., saying he “was proud to work with our police departments, and funding the police.”

Nationwide, Democrats spent more money last month on ads that used the word “police” than Republicans did, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. But heavy Republican spending on crime ads earlier this year has helped define the final weeks of the campaign in states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

National crime trends are mixed and complex, and Republicans have often reached for arguments about crime or border security, with varying results. Some party strategists doubt the issue will be decisive this year, with many Americans far more focused on economic matters.

But a Gallup survey released late last month found that “Americans are more likely now than at any time over the past five decades to say there is more crime in their local area than there was a year ago.”

The issue, fanned and sometimes distorted by conservative news outlets, has been especially pronounced in liberal-leaning states, including New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Wisconsin, where big cities have struggled with concerns about violence and quality of life over the last few years. But the topic is at play in many tight Senate, House and governors’ races...

Chaser: "Most Candidates Running on Crime Don’t Have Much Power to Solve It :Your congressman doesn’t control the police budget. Your senator probably doesn’t know where the worst hot spots are."

Tuesday's going to be blast!

FLAMING SKULL: 'Florida *Democrat* Election Official Blows Whistle of Longstanding ILLEGAL Practice of 'Ballot Harvesting' by Paying Mostly African-American Residents $10 Per Ballot'

 At AoSHQ, "'WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS "MISINFORMATION" ACCORDING TO THE TREASONOUS CRIMINAL GANGS CALLED THE DOJ AND FBI, DEFINED AS "TRUE FACTS WHICH CONTRADICT THE LIES OF THE REGIME'."

The Democrats' Willie Horton Problem

At TIPP Insights, "Diana Allocco lays down the facts regarding the Willie Horton case and how Democrats have forgotten the vital lessons from the unfortunate incidents":

“One of my objectives, quite frankly, is to lock Willie Horton up in jail.” — Joe Biden, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair, bragging Democrats were tougher than Republicans on criminals, 1990.

The nation’s 2022 top-tier fear is crime. Three quarters of Americans say violent crime is a major problem, and getting worse. Democrats’ cashless bail laws, attacks on police, and other liberal soft-on-crime policies have unleashed unrestrained criminality across the country, particularly in Democrat-run cities, where dangerous criminals are no longer locked up in jail. At all. “Arrested-and-released” is now the most common phrase in every crime article.

And this is not just theory to people, or some kind of political talking point. According to a recent Golden/TIPP poll, a record 16 percent of Americans themselves or a family member have been victims of crime — and the distressing numbers are particularly elevated among African Americans, Hispanics, and urban voters, where close to 25 percent — one in four — are crime victims.

Republicans are campaigning hard for the midterms on the real problem of crime — and gaining traction everywhere. The Democrat response: “That’s racist! It’s Willie Horton all over again! Shut up!” ....

To Democrats, Willie Horton is shorthand for: “Racist Republicans using racist dog whistles to get racist votes.” Democrats spit out this name like a two-word incantation, with total confidence that few current voters have any idea what the real story is. Well, let me lay out some essential details — because everything you think you know about Willie Horton is bull...

Leftists are desperate. People are increasingly frustrated with Racism! Racism! Racism! all the time. It's near the bottom of priorities that Americans say are important this year.

In any case, click through at that top link to read the rest. Lots of links embedded in the piece.

It's Time to Mandate Treatment of the Dangerously Mentally Ill

From Michael Shellenberger, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "What happens when we leave people with psychosis to their demons? Ask the families of Alison Russo-Elling, Nathaniel Rivers, and Michelle Go":

Last Friday in Queens, New York, Peter Zisopoulos, 34 years-old, described by his neighbors as an “odd, quiet loner,” suddenly set upon Lt. Alison Russo-Elling, 61, a veteran paramedic walking back to her station after lunch. He knocked her down then stabbed her to death in a frenzy. He is now being held at the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, awaiting clearance from doctors that he is stable enough to face arraignment on murder charges. Zisopoulos, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, was hospitalized in 2018 after allegedly making anti-Asian threats.

This attack is eerily like the one on that took place the afternoon of July 21, in the Bronx, when Nathaniel Rivers, 35, and his wife, the parents of a young son, were sitting in their car near their home, sharing a pizza, waiting for the rain to pass.

Suddenly, 19-year-old Franklin Mesa came over to Rivers’ car window in an agitated state. Words were exchanged, briefly, before Mesa thrust a knife into Rivers’ chest. Rivers’ wife got out of the car, picked up a pry bar and clobbered Mesa. But it was too late: Mesa had mortally injured Rivers, who died a few minutes later.

Mesa, who has been charged with Rivers’ murder, is said by his family to have schizophrenia. He was well known in the neighborhood for “hostile, aggressive” encounters. Police said he was arrested last year for twice punching somebody in the face. Mesa reportedly once tried to prevent a young mother from getting on a bus.

And yet it appears that nobody made sure Mesa was taking his psychiatric medicine, which his sister said he had been on since he was 15. Had Mesa been properly medicated, Rivers almost certainly would still be alive today.

These horrifying deaths rekindle the national debate over how to prevent violence by the seriously mentally ill. Between 2015 and 2018, 911 calls reporting emotionally disturbed people have jumped by nearly 25 percent in New York City. The share of homeless people in New York with serious mental illness, usually defined as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, has most recently been estimated at 17 percent.

Consider the case of Martial Simon, a 61 year-old mentally ill homeless man, who early this year confessed to pushing 40 year-old Michelle Go onto the subway tracks, where she was killed by an oncoming train. Go was a manager at Deloitte who was lauded for her extensive volunteer work with struggling New Yorkers, including the homeless. Simon has spent decades bouncing between jails and hospitals. Declared mentally unfit to stand trial for the murder of Go, Martial is now being held at a psychiatric facility.

Years before, his sister saw something like this coming, and she pleaded with the authorities to prevent it. “I remember begging one of the hospitals, ‘Let him stay,’” she said, “because once he’s out, he didn’t want to take medication, and it was the medication that kept him going.”

The medical system was warned, by Simon himself, that exactly this was coming. As the New York Times reported: “A homeless advocate who saw Simon’s medical records reports that Simon even told a psychiatrist in 2017 that it was only a matter of time before he pushed a woman onto the subway tracks.”

Though it is difficult to get an exact estimate, a large body of research makes clear that people like Zisopoulos, Mesa, and Simon are just three among hundreds of cases of people in New York alone—to say nothing of cities like Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco and others—in which mentally ill people off their medication have assaulted or killed people. And if you think the problem is getting worse, you are right...

RTWT.

 

Republicans Intensify Attacks on Crime as Democrats Push Back

 At the New York Times, "With images of lawlessness, G.O.P. candidates are pressing the issue in places where worries about public safety are omnipresent. Democrats, on the defensive, are promising to fund the police":

In Pennsylvania, Republicans are attacking John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate candidate, as “dangerously liberal on crime.”

Outside Portland, Ore., where years of clashes between left-wing protesters and the police have captured national attention, a Republican campaign ad juxtaposes video of Jamie McLeod-Skinner, a Democratic congressional candidate, protesting with footage of rioters and looters. Ms. McLeod-Skinner, an ominous-sounding narrator warns, is “one of them.”

And in New Mexico, the wife of Mark Ronchetti, the Republican nominee for governor, tells in a campaign ad of how she had once hid in a closet with her two young daughters and her gun pointed at the door because she feared an intruder was breaking in. Though the incident happened a decade ago, the ad accuses Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, Mr. Ronchetti’s Democratic opponent, of making it “easier to be a criminal than a cop.”

In the final phase of the midterm campaign, Republicans are intensifying their focus on crime and public safety, hoping to shift the debate onto political terrain that many of the party’s strategists and candidates view as favorable. The strategy seeks to capitalize on some voters’ fears about safety — after a pandemic-fueled crime surge that in some cities has yet to fully recede. But it has swiftly drawn criticism as a return to sometimes deceptive or racially divisive messaging.

Crime-heavy campaigns have been part of the Republican brand for decades, gaining new steam in 2020 when President Donald J. Trump tried to leverage a backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement to vilify Democrats. But two years later, left-wing calls to defund the police have given way to an effort to pump money back into departments in many Democratic-led cities, raising questions about whether Republicans’ tactics will be as effective as they were in 2020, when the party made gains in the House.

Republicans are running the ads most aggressively in the suburbs of cities where worries about public safety are omnipresent, places that were upended by the 2020 protests over racial injustice or are near the country’s southwestern border. In some of the country’s most competitive Senate races — in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — Republican candidates have pivoted to a message heavily aimed at crime.

“This is something that crosses party lines and everyone says, ‘Wait a minute, why isn’t this something that is dealt with?’” said Mr. Ronchetti, whose state has experienced an increase in violent crime this year. “You look at New Mexico: People used to always know someone with a crime story. Now, everyone has their own.”

Polling shows that voters tend to see Republicans as stronger on public safety. By a margin of 10 percentage points, voters nationwide said they agreed more with Republicans on crime and policing, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released this month.

National Republican strategists say they always planned to use crime as a so-called kitchen-table issue, along with inflation and the economy. Now, after a summer when Democrats gained traction in races across the country, in part because of the upending of abortion rights, Republican campaigns are blanketing television and computer screens with violent imagery.

Some of the advertising contains thinly disguised appeals to racist fears, like grainy footage of Black Lives Matter protesters, that sharply contrast with Republican efforts at the beginning of Mr. Trump’s term to highlight the party’s work on criminal justice overhauls, sentencing reductions and the pardoning of some petty crimes.

The full picture on crime rates is nuanced. Homicides soared in 2020 and 2021 before decreasing slightly this year. An analysis of crime trends in the first half of 2022 by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan policy and research group, found that murders and gun assaults in major American cities fell slightly during the first half of 2022, but remained nearly 40 percent higher than before the pandemic. Robberies and some property offenses posted double-digit increases.

Candidates on the right have tended to be vague on specific policy details: A new agenda released by House Republicans proposes offering recruiting bonuses to hire 200,000 more police officers, cracking down on district attorneys who “refuse to prosecute crimes” and opposing “all efforts to defund the police.”

Still, Republicans see the issue as one that can motivate their conservative base as well as moderate, suburban independents who have shifted toward Democrats in recent weeks.

In the past two weeks alone, Republican candidates and groups have spent more than $21 million on ads about crime — more than on any other policy issue — targeting areas from exurban Raleigh, N.C., to Grand Rapids, Mich., according to data collected by AdImpact, a media tracking firm.

But those attacks are not going unanswered: Over the past two weeks, Democrats have spent a considerable amount — nearly $17 million — on ads on the issue, though the amount is less than half of what Democrats spent on ads about abortion rights over the same period...

 

Isn't It Common Sense to Protect Our Borders (VIDEO)

Here's Will Witt, for Prager University:

The Day After One of His Cultists Murders What He Claims Is an 'Extremist Republican' 18-Year-Old Boy, Joe Biden Urges His Demented Followers to ... 'Fight Extremist Republicans'

 At AoSPHQ, "Via Twitchy, despite having just incited one of his crazed followers to murder a teenager in the name of "fighting Republican Extremists," Joe Biden put out a statement telling his cultists to... fight Republican extremists some more."

Fentanyl Crisis Is an International Attack on America

From Greta Van Susteren, "Fentanyl crisis is an international attack on America. We must fight back":

Nearly 3,000 people were murdered on 9/11 by terrorists who entered the United States. Immediately, our government took action to prevent future attacks and protect Americans. We tightened security. We put checkpoints in our airports – and we began special screening procedures for people entering America from overseas. We changed our cockpit access. We created "no fly" lists. We didn’t just sit there and hope that the threat would go away.

After COVID-19 surfaced in January 2020, it was quickly apparent that our nation was again under attack, very much like that sunny Tuesday morning in September 2001. Except that this time the culprit was a virus from abroad. To respond, our government – and governments around the world – took similar decisive action to slow the spread. The United States and other nations temporarily closed their borders and restricted international travel until we could fully identify the problem and get this enemy under control. When travel reopened, we created new checks and tests to try to prevent infections from overwhelming our health care systems, until we had treatment options and a less lethal form of the coronavirus.

Yet when it comes to a third enemy coming from abroad, one that killed more than 71,000 Americans last year – many of them young people – our government is relying on outdated tactics and old ideas.

Fentanyl kills 195 Americans every day

I am talking about the fentanyl crisis, which is killing 195 Americans a day – one of those is country singer Luke Bell, who recently died of an accidental fentanyl overdose.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times stronger than heroin and up to 100 times more potent than morphine, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A lethal dose may be as small as 2 milligrams.

When used illicitly, it can kill on the first use. The raw ingredients for illegal fentanyl come from China and are then sent to Mexico, where they are often pressed into pills – including what appear to be legitimate prescriptions like Xanax and valium or prescription pain medication. They could also be made into a powder, or combined with other illegal drugs to lower the cost and create a bigger “high” – a grisly imitation of putting fillers into foods to cut costs.

In one weekend, Sept. 17-18, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in Nogales, Arizona, confiscated about 400,000 fentanyl pills arriving from Mexico.

Are fentanyl deaths 'overdoses'? Or 'murders'?

Legitimate fentanyl is used in medical settings, but illicit fentanyl is different. We politely label fentanyl deaths “overdoses,” but a truer term would be “poisonings” – or, given the explosive rise in deaths over the past few years, “murders.”

Fentanyl kills far more Americans each year than gun violence. More and more schools around the nation have “Narcan stations,” the rescue drug that can reverse a fentanyl overdose.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, law enforcement seized nearly 10 million fentanyl-laced pills last year, an astronomical rise from the fewer than 300,000 pills seized in 2018.

And what is our federal response to this deadly killer coming into our country?

When it comes to fentanyl, drug control is too late

The Biden administration is asking Congress for $42.5 billion for drug control programs – $3.2 billion more than this year. But when it comes to fentanyl, drug control – which is predominantly a combination of prevention and rehab strategies – is too late.

Fentanyl poisoning is often a one-time mistake. A teenager ingesting a fentanyl-laced pill does not simply become an addict needing rehab. Too often, tragically, all we can offer their family is a funeral home.

Last January, a 16-year-old high school sophomore and junior varsity basketball player in Bethesda, Maryland, died in a bathroom in his home after taking what turned out to be a counterfeit Percocet pill, laced with fentanyl. The pills were sold to him by a 23-year-old, according to Montgomery County police.

What about interdiction? The administration did set aside $275 million to disrupt drug trafficking across the nation through law enforcement programs. But by that time, fentanyl is already inside the USA.

It’s past time for all of us, Washington included, to uncover our eyes and see the situation for what it is: an international attack on our people...

 

‘Crime Is a Construct': My Morning With the Park Slope Panthers

From Suzy Weiss, at her sister's Substack, Common Sense, "A Brooklyn man with politics ‘to the left of Lenin’ tries to organize a neighborhood watch. It didn’t go quite as planned":

In the last couple of months in Park Slope—the baby bjorn-wearing capital of bourgeois-bohemian New York—a thief absconded with $200,000 worth of jewelry in a smash and grab, three boys stole a bunch of iPhones off of subway riders, a ticked off customer attacked the owner of a bike store, $6,000 was stolen from an auto shop, and a beloved pet was catnapped from a bodega on Seventh Avenue.

But it was the death of a golden retriever mix named Moose that activated the residents of the South Brooklyn enclave.

Early in the morning on August 3, Moose and his owner—Jessica Chrustic, 41—were out on a walk when a homeless man who lives in the park gave chase. He hit them both with a large stick and threw a container of urine on Moose, while muttering about immigrants taking over the park. The dog died a few days later from internal injuries, after two emergency surgeries. The man who killed him is still at large.

A few weeks later, on August 20, Kristian Nammack issued a call to action on Nextdoor, a social media site for local organizing: “Do we want to organize a community safety patrol, and take our park back? Think what the Guardian Angels did to take back the subways in the 70s/early 80s. We may also get to wear cool berets. I’m being serious.”

Nammack, 59, had been part of the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011, and his financial consultancy firm focuses on themes of “climate, renewable energy, gender lens, racial equity, economic advancement.” “How about PARK SLOPE PANTHERS as a group name?” he suggested. When I got to the inaugural Park Slope Panthers meeting—held last Saturday in Prospect Park, near where Chrustic was attacked—there were six people, including Nammack. We were overlooking a sloping meadow that was bathed in sunshine and filled with giggling kids and hipster couples on dates. It was one of those early fall days that reminds you why you’re willing to live in a city with more rats than human beings. Nammack was handing out pale yellow t-shirts that said “Park Slope Panthers” with a logo—two “P”s nested together—printed on the front.

Nammack explained that while we were all there because of Moose, there were other things to be concerned about. It seemed like there were more homeless people sleeping in the park, in the subway station, and on the trains and streets. There was more garbage everywhere in the neighborhood, more crappy vape shops and stores that sold Delta-8 weed, and more delivery guys on bikes blasting faster through crosswalks. Packages, bikes, and catalytic converters were getting stolen. Nammack told the group how he’d tried to help a local store owner while a group of 15-year-olds robbed his store. One of the teens had a knife.

The group—a few older, white women who love their pets; a young white man who said he was there for the sake of his younger sister’s safety; a forty-something Asian woman who wanted to “elevate Park Slope culture as a whole”—nodded along.

The Venn diagram for Park Slopers and Democratic voters is pretty much a circle. No one wanted to be labeled Park Karens. This made the whole crime-fighting thing a bit awkward: “It’s about finding a way that’s non-biased to report these things and have people feel like it’s safe here,” said Emily, one of the Panthers.“You don’t want to fall into that stereotype of privilege.”

A group of four who looked to be in their early twenties—three women and one man—rolled up about 15 minutes into the meeting. “Are y’all the Park Slope Panthers?” The one who asked was dragging a speaker on wheels and playing electronic music, presumably to drown out the meeting. “We are super not into you guys having your meeting or doing anything in the park.”

The young activist—who was white, wore glasses, grew up in Park Slope, and had a medical-grade face mask on, like his three comrades—was also super not into the cops, or anything resembling the cops. When Nammack told him we were taking turns introducing ourselves, the activist informed Nammack that he wasn’t “super into abiding by the structure that you’re setting up.”

Nammack asked them to just move along. When the glasses kid replied, “Yeah, we’re not going to do that,” Nammack invited them to sit, prompting the group of Conscientious Interrupters to decamp to a nearby tree to game plan. The park was filling. There were barbecues and birthday parties underway. Eventually the young activists decided to join the circle.

“What’s with you calling yourself the Panthers?” said another dude who had just appeared wearing a black hoodie and looking to be in his forties. He seemed more of a weathered activist, a bit more hardcore than the kids, and he didn’t want to wait his turn. He said his piece, followed by another newcomer named Damien, who wanted to join the group rather than protest it.

Nammack picked up the thread again. Back during the Occupy Wall Street days, he informed us, they took turns speaking. “I think it’s your turn, then your turn, then your turn, then your turn, then your turn,” he said. When it was his turn to introduce himself, Nammack said, “I have a non-profit and two companies. I’m too busy to run a neighborhood watch group, but I can’t help but be community-concerned.” He was from Long Island and had lived in Sweden, which he loved because it was “less hierarchical.” Nammack said he was “left of Lenin” when one of the activists accused him of being a vigilante. (When Tucker Carlson reached out to have Nammack on his show, he told Carlson to “fuck off.”)

As far as the name, and the fortysomething dude’s problem with it: “There’s two statues of panthers at an entrance to the park,” Nammack pointed out, gesturing toward the two limestone pedestals designed by Stanford White. The panthers had been sculpted by Alexander Phimister Proctor, and had been there since 1898.

Didn’t matter. “Using the Panthers as your group’s name is kind of abhorrent to me,” said one of the girls. She was white, wearing cut-off jean shorts, loafers with socks, and a Baggu purse. “It feels antithetical to what the Black Panthers would stand for.” The next girl to speak said her name was Sky. She, too, was white, and had also grown up in the neighborhood: “It’s easy to be wrong about who you’re going after, particularly when those are some of the few black people still living in the neighborhood, and they’ve been pushed out on the streets by all white, ultra-wealthy people.”

“We can be the tigers!” suggested Dionne, the middle-aged woman next to me. Sweet Dionne...

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