Chicago sees dip in homicides after spikes during pandemic and unrest over policing
January 01, 2023
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The Republican Party of Michigan is facing bipartisan backlash after social media posts connecting new proposed gun legislation to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, reported The Detroit News on Wednesday.
"Democrats are advancing bills in the state Legislature this month to expand background check requirements for firearm purchases and to mandate the safe storage of guns in homes where children are present," said the report. "The package of proposed laws also would allow for 'extreme risk' protection orders, permitting a court to temporarily remove weapons from someone's home if they are deemed a threat to themselves or others."
These measures come after a series of high-profile shootings in Michigan, including a 2021 massacre at Oxford High School by a 15-year-old whose parents bought him a gun despite mental health episodes, and a shooting last month on the campus of Michigan State University.
One GOP tweet in question showed a 1945 photograph of a bin of wedding rings the Nazis stole from prisoners murdered in the death camps, with the caption, "Before they collected all these wedding rings ... They collected all the guns." It was accompanied by the text, "#History has shown us that the first thing a government does when it wants total control over its people is to disarm them."
IN OTHER NEWS: Jordan Klepper finds small crowd but big delusions at Manhattan MAGA rally
The false narrative that the Nazis enacted their reign of terror through gun control has cropped up routinely. In reality, it was the pre-Nazi Weimar Republic that imposed tough limits on civilian gun ownership in Germany. The Nazis actually relaxed those gun laws in 1938 to make it easier for German citizens to own guns, as part of a broader campaign to militarize their society.
One of the earliest origins of the myth of gun control as a Nazi strategy appears to have been in 1983, when gun-rights activists in Chicago sought to defeat a handgun ban by putting up posters depicting Hitler endorsing gun control in Skokie, a heavily Jewish suburb that was home to a large community of Holocaust survivors.
The post drew immediate condemnation from Michigan officials in both parties.
"Haven't the victims of the Holocaust suffered enough than to be shamefully exploited in death by this vile post? Anti-semitism thrives when these grotesque distortions of history diminish it," said state Sen. Jeremy Moss, a Jewish Democrat. "This tweet by @MIGOP is absolutely inappropriate and offensive and should be taken down immediately," tweeted Republican Jewish Coalition CEO Matt Brooks. "It's operating out of ignorance. And that's one of the great threats to our democracy today," said former Congressman Dave Trott, a Republican who supports the new gun safety legislation.
Kristina Karamo, the newly elected Michigan GOP chairwoman known for a history of QAnon conspiracy theories and election denial, refused to retract the post.
"My ancestors were enslaved and my great-great grandfather was lynched by a white mob in front of his entire family," stated Karamo. "We will not be silent as the Democratic Party, the party who fought to enslave Black Americans, and currently fights to murder unborn children, attempt (sic) to disarm us."
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Jordan Klepper acknowledged that Tuesday’s sparsely attended Manhattan MAGA rally was in most ways like no other.
“This was an unusual MAGA rally,” the Daily Show correspondent said in a segment the program posted on its YouTube channel.
Donald Trump on Saturday called for protesters to demonstrate in front of the Manhattan courthouse where the former president said he expected to be arrested on Tuesday.
“The numbers were low, and it was in my home city,” Klepper said.
IN OTHER NEWS: Rand Paul stunned by Moderna CEO: Less risk of myocarditis for people who take vaccine
But although the tiny crowd size and urban setting were constant reminders that the event wasn’t what Klepper typically sees in typical Trump rallies, the misinformation made him feel right at home.
“The arguments over some basic facts were refreshingly familiar,” Klepper said.
A man in a cowboy hat tells Klepper “I’m here to support Trump because they want to indict him.”
“I’m here to actually see what’s going on,” the man says. “Everyone was talking about it, so I wanted to check it out because I don’t believe what I’m hearing on the news.”
“Listen,” the man says. “I don’t know all the specific facts, but what I do know is he’s my president.”
“Right now?” Klepper interrupts.
“You think he’s serving the role as your president, currently?”
“In my heart, he’s my president,” the man says.
A woman Klepper interviews tells him that “Joe Biden is going after” Trump and that she doesn’t understand why because “they’re going to push (Biden) out the door and probably put ‘Michael’ Obama in, OK?”
“We all know Trump doesn’t understand how the law works, turns out he doesn’t know when it works either,” Klepper says at the end of the video.
“But for MAGA supporters feeling FOMO about missing the Donald’s showdown with justice, I’m confident you’ll get another chance.”
Klepper concludes by asking the man in the cowboy hat if he would travel to Georgia should Trump be indicted there.
“I don’t know, maybe I will,” the man says.
“It’s like a big old indictment tour, right?” Klepper jokes. I’ll see you in Georgia, maybe we’ll swing by D.C.”
Watch the segment below or at this link.
Jordan Klepper Takes on a Handful of Trump Arrest Protesters | The Daily Show www.youtube.com
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Special counsel might think there are still more classified documents out there: expert
March 22, 2023
An appeals court shot down the idea of Donald Trump's lawyer not testifying about the documents scandal. It means that Trump's lawyer, Evan Corcoran, must testify about the documents.
Lawfare editor Scott R. Anderson said that folks are not "grasping how strange it is for the D.C. Circuit to have moved at lightning speed on this. Or what I think it might mean that DOJ thinks there is still classified information in the wild and Corcoran can lead them to it."
The New York Times report about the appeals court decision noted several details about special counsel Jack Smith's investigation.
"About three weeks after Mr. Corcoran’s meeting with investigators in June, federal prosecutors issued another subpoena — this one for surveillance footage from a camera near a storage room at Mar-a-Lago," said the Times report. "Among the subjects that Mr. Smith’s office wants Mr. Corcoran to testify about is a phone call he had with Mr. Trump around the time that the subpoena for the video footage was issued, according to a person familiar with the matter."
IN OTHER NEWS: Rand Paul stunned by Moderna CEO: Less risk of myocarditis for people who take vaccine
The report goes on to say that prosecutors also want to know details about two men that were caught on the surveillance footage moving boxes from the storage room, those familiar told the Times.
"One of the men was Waltine Nauta, a former White House aide who went to work for Mr. Trump in Florida. The other was a worker at Mar-a-Lago," the report said.
The judge agreed that the government met the threshold for breaching attorney-client privilege, but as part of the comments, Judge Beryl Howell told Corcoran that he must turn over "most of the legal documents he had tried to withhold and return to the grand jury to more fully answer the prosecutors’ questions."
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