Monthly Archives: January 2021

Our country stands at a crossroads. A violent mob invaded the Capitol building with the express intent of overturning the presidential election. In the process, five people lost their lives, countless laws were broken, and the Constitution - the document these insurrectionists claim to cherish so dearly - was buried in a sea of MAGA hats and conspiracy theories. This lawless riot was openly solicited by the President and condoned by many of his enablers. Considering themselves above the laws that have governed our country for nearly 250 years, they sought to impose by force what they could not achieve by legal means.

Lest we think this assault on the rule of law confined to a few extremists, I urge you to reflect on the Second Amendment Preservation resolution being considered by the Vernon County Board. It too pays lip service to freedom and the Constitution. It too openly undermines the rule of law and Constitutional limits on the power of elected officials - in this case the County Board. The resolution states that the County Board opposes - without defining that term - any and all additional regulations regarding the possession of and use of any firearms, disregarding the Boards complete lack of jurisdiction on the matter and that the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the constitutionality of such regulations. My question then is: Does the Vernon County Board consider itself above the law? Is the Board prepared to accept liability for the lawlessness this resolution invites?

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Letter to the editor: What happened to law and order? - La Crosse Tribune

As one of 10 children growing up in extreme poverty in Greensboro, North Carolina, Mark Robinson has defied a lot of odds in life: an alcoholic and abusive father, foster care stints and an overwhelmed single mother.

After joining the Army Reserves right out of high school, he married and had two children while drifting through various jobs making furniture, a profession that kept evaporating as each plant he worked for relocated to Mexico.

In 2018, he attended Greensboro's City Council meeting to voice his frustration over the town's decision to ban a local gun show and found himself giving an off-the-cuff yet deeply impassioned speech. Despite not owning a gun at the time, Robinson argued for four minutes in defense of the Second Amendment and ended up garnering national attention. This year, with few resources and no electoral experience, Robinson became the first black lieutenant governor-elect of North Carolina.

Robinson's win is astounding for any number of reasons, but especially because he managed to beat the $8 million spent by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in his state to take him out, Zito writes.(Photo: Brynn Anderson, AP)

"I didn't expect the reaction that I received from that speech," Robinson said. "I thought maybe a couple of friends would see it and that was about it. When it went viral ... a lot of people encouraged me to get a radio show and things of that sort."

But he decided against courting fame, because "in order to effect real change, there's no better place to do that than in the political arena."

So, Robinson ran for lieutenant governor, and became the first black Republican to win a major seat in the state since the 1890s. He also earned more votes in his state than the two top Republicans on the ticket: President Donald Trump and Sen. Thom Tillis, and nearly as many as Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who will now have a member of the Republican Party as his second-in-command. If Cooper is successful in his rumored run for U.S. Senate in 2022, Robinson will ascend to the state's highest office.

Robinson's win is astounding for any number of reasons, but especially because he managed to beat the $8 million spent by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in his state to take him out.

The funds came via the Beyond Carbon Victory Fund, an environmental justice campaign Bloomberg launched last year that boasts a $500 million budget dedicated to electing state and local candidates "who are climate champions."

In his upcoming role as the new lieutenant governor, Robinson will chair North Carolina's energy council.

On Bloomberg's bid to turn his ticket blue, Robinson is matter-of-fact.

"Just because you have money, that money does not always translate into votes," he said. "Our message was simple: We're 100%pro-life; we stand up for our Second Amendment, our God-given right to self-defense, school choice, caring for our veterans and standing up for law enforcement and law and order.

"You just can't sway people because you want them to think the way you do. People see right through that."

In short, Robinson was just a guy who resonated with people, connecting with them on issues they face every day. His message might have ruffled the feathers of the politically correct, but no one could ever doubt its authenticity. He never assumed he knew better, a mistake Bloomberg made with both his fly-by-night run for president and his push for more progressive candidates in smaller races across the country.

"If Michael Bloomberg's failure to have any impact on the 2020 race tells us anything, it shows message and messenger are more important than money," said Paul Sracic, a political science professor at Youngstown State University.

Bloomberg also came up short in two other down-ballot races in 2020. Despite pouring $2.5 million of Beyond Carbon funds into Democrat Chrysta Castaneda's bid for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, she lost helping cement decades of GOP power on the energy-regulating board. And even with his $6.5 million drive to put three progressive candidates onto the Arizona Corporation Commission, which regulates the state's utilities, only one Democrat was successful, allowing Republicans to hold their majority.

Bloomberg dumped another $100 million into Florida through his Independence USA PAC to grease the wheels for Biden and down-ballot Democrats, only to see the needle move backward for his party in that state. Not only did Trump get 1 million more votes in Florida than he did in 2016, but Republicans also expanded their majorities in both state chambers while ousting two Democrats from congressional seats in the Miami-Dade area.

Meanwhile, the $60 million Bloomberg spent to support Democrats in House races across the country gained the party nothing. No Republican incumbent lost a seat in the House of Representatives, and the Democrats lost at least a dozen seats in the lower chamber to GOP challengers.

Even the $60 million Bloomberg spent pushing gun-control candidates through his organization Everytown for Gun Safety had little to no effect. This year saw a record for new gun ownership in America: almost 5 million people are new gun owners, with 40% of them women.

Bloomberg's spokespeople did not return calls for comment, but one of his top political advisers, Kevin Sheekey, told the Associated Press last month: "At the end of the day, a win is a win and Joe Biden will take office in January and Donald Trump will leave. We feel quite good about ... the end result."

At the same time, there is no denying that Bloomberg's Goliath attempts to conquer every level of American politics this year fell to scores of Davids across the country including Mark Robinson.

"I chuckled to myself about this on more than one occasion," Robinson said. "Michael Bloomberg lives in an ivory tower in one of the greatest cities in the world. This guy has billions of dollars and here he is trying to take out little old Mark Robinson. It really is bizarre and if you wrote this as a movie, nobody would believe it. But here we are."

Salena Zito is a CNN political analyst, and a staff reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner. She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoe-leather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between.

Read or Share this story: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2021/01/14/opinion-how-one-man-defied-all-political-odds-became-lt-gov/6654174002/

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Opinion: How one man defied all the political odds, overcame Mike Bloomberg's millions - The Detroit News

The Boogaloo Bois is a recently formed decentralized armed movement comprised of loosely knit cells scattered throughout the United States. Boogaloo participants have also been involved in several attacks and plots, including the attempted kidnapping of Michigans governor, an attempt to sell weapons to Hamas, and a deadly attack on a federal security officer in northern California. The movement is centered on participants belief that the U.S. government has become excessively tyrannical. Participants, therefore, have concluded that a second civil war is unfortunate, but inevitable, in order to obtain true liberty. The movement refers to this idealized second civil war as the Boogaloo (Spotify [Buck Johsnon], July 2020). Occasionally, the word Boogaloo is exchanged for slang terms, however, such as the big luau, the Bungalow, or the Big Igloo.

Boogaloo, Internet Culture, and Black Lives Matter

Boogaloo cells contain a mix of civilians and former military personnel. These participants call themselves boojahideen, a linguistic spin-off of mujahideen (Liberty Actual, Boojahideen Shop). They have also been forced to utilize secondary online public forums like Reddit, Gab, and Parler because mainstream platforms like Facebook and Twitter have prohibited their content. (Reddit [RealRhettEBoogie]; Parler [Boojahideen Outfitters]). Despite this deplatforming, they are still able to circulate their ideology and connect with boojahideen in different regions of the United States.

This internet culture plays a key role in amplifying Boogaloos ideology. Many Boogaloo participants accordingly first connect with one another online (Sofrep.com, December 24, 2020). Similarly, a fundamental component of Boogaloo internet culture is utilizing memes, which became a method of propagandizing Boogaloo perspectives of civil war. One Boogaloo flag even has meme-based insurgency inscribed on it (Onlyfeds.com, January 2021). Boogaloo propaganda also enables a more violent ideology to become palatable and communicable to both existing boojahideen and the general public.

The Boogaloo movement is not, however, racialist. Instead, Boogaloo cells congregate around a libertarian political ideology that deviates from traditional right and left positions. Boogaloo cells across the United States have participated in and supported leftist-led Black Lives Matter rallies since the death of George Floyd (Youtube/Black Lives Matter757, August 10, 2020). Boogaloo participants believe Black Lives Matters is Disneyfied and its supporters consist of some Marxists and white Karens who are not supported by Boogaloo, but Boogaloo participants hope to win them to Boogaloo ideology and have Blacks and whites walk arm-in-arm against the feds (Spotify [Buck Johsnon], July 2020).

In some instances, Boogaloo cells have provided security for protesters during Black Lives Matter events. (Twitter.com/ryanteeter98, August 27, 2020) In addition, a Boogaloo participant, Ivan Hunter, was arrested for contributing to the burning down of a Minneapolis police precinct after George Floyds death and screaming Justice for George Floyd (startribune.com, October 24, 2020). Hunter was also affiliated with Steve Carillo, another Boogaloo participant who killed a California federal protective security officer after George Floyds death (justice.gov, October 23, 2020). However, Boogaloo is also a vociferous proponent of the typically right-leaning view that Americans are entitled to an entirely unrestrained second amendment right to bear arms, open carry, and form well-regulated militias.

FBI Prevention of Boogaloo Attacks

Boojahideen insist they are not radicals, seek a peaceful revolution, and kick out any white supremacists on the margins of society if they try to participate (Spotify [Buck Johsnon], July 2020). However, multiple Boogaloo participants are facing serious charges following both attempted and executed attacks on law enforcement and public officials. The FBI has played a crucial role in deterring these boojahideen plots often through the use of inside informants and undercover officers infiltration of Boogaloo cells.

In September 2020, boojahideen Benjamin Teeter Michael Solomon, who were in the communication with Ivan Hunter, were charged with attempting to provide material weapons support to Hamas (justice.gov, September 4, 2020). Believing Hamas was a mutual enemy of the United States, these two boojahideen considered themselves to be in alignment with Hamas. They, therefore, offered to manufacture unmarked firearms and firearm accessories for Hamas.

Unbeknownst to Teeter and Harrison, they were, in fact, attempting to deal arms to one of the FBIs undercover informants. Following an initial meeting with the informant, these boojahideen later delivered five firearm suppressors and a drop in auto sear firearm converter to the undercover FBI agent who they believed to be a senior Hamas official. At that time, they even offered to provide automatic weapons to Hamas and work as Hamas mercenaries in the future. Their actions, however, resulted in prompt charges from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (justice.gov, September 4, 2020).

Multiple Boogaloo Bois are also facing charges in Michigan after plotting to kidnap the states Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and lay siege to the state Capitol building (justice.gov, October 8, 2020; see Militant Leadership Monitor, January 5). While the militia responsible called itself Wolverine Watchmen, individuals within that militia referred to themselves as boojahideen. In addition, a leader of the Whitmer kidnapping plot, Joseph Morrison, used the online nickname Boogaloo Bunyan in digital forums (Michigan.gov, October 2020).

Morrison and other plot participants were interviewed by a local TV station prior to their arrest during a second amendment gun rights rally. In the interview, Morrison sported a trucker hat with the Boogaloo flag patch on the front. His co-conspirators also donned Hawaiian shirts, a fashion trademark of Boogaloo participants (Youtube/Target8News, October 9, 2020).

The kidnapping plot was launched in response to what the participants called government tyranny stemming from Whitmers COVID-19 lockdown orders. The cell had been developing detailed plans to kidnap Whitmer, try her for crimes, and lay siege to the Michigan state capitol building. Confidential FBI informants were able to leak plot information, meeting audios, and chat room conversations with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (Michigan.gov, October 2020). This collaboration led to the arrest of everyone involved in the plot.

Boogaloo Responses to the Biden Administration

With the Joseph R. Biden-Kamala Harris administration transitioning into the White House, new dynamics will emerge between the Boogaloo movement and the U.S. government. Some Boogaloo cells have a history of seeking unity and offering aid to peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters (Youtube/Black Lives Matter757, August 10, 2020; Youtube/UnicornRiot, August 26, 2020). The Biden-Harris administrations criminal justice policy is expected to address Black Lives Matter protesters demands (joebiden.com/justice, January 2021). Thus, it is likely the Boogaloo movement will support these agenda items.

However, Boogaloo participants still have a rigid stance that U.S. citizens must maintain unimpeded constitutional second amendment rights, including the right to carry firearms in all capacities (Youtube/MatthewRodier, October 17, 2020). The Biden-Harris administration, however, aims to eliminate the sale and import of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines (joebiden.com/gunsafety, January 2021). It is highly likely the Boogaloo movement will push back against these changes.

In the past, boojahideen have voiced their discontent with firearm restrictions. On August 18, 2020 in Richmond, Virginia, for example, a large group of Boogaloo participants marched in full tactical gear while open-carrying weapons. During the event, Boogaloo participant Mike Dunn read an open letter that stated any gun legislation proposed and passed will be seen as a direct act of war against the free people of Virginia. This includes any firearms ban and magazine capacity limitations (Youtube/News2Share, August 18, 2020). It is highly likely that the Biden administrations gun control laws will be viewed as a direct act of war in the eyes of the Boogaloo movement.

While the rallies Boogaloo militias have attended in 2020 remained peaceful, it is impossible to ignore the multiple terrorism-related incidents in which its participants have planned and participated. The attempted kidnapping of Governor Whitmer, attempt to provide material support to Hamas, and attack on federal building personnel display the willingness of boojahideen to attack government officials to advance their political agenda. While it is likely Boogaloo cells will support Joe Bidens decision to reform policing operations, the Biden administrations restrictions on select firearms will likely trigger rebellious activity from boojahideen nationwide.

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American 'Boojahideen': The Boogaloo Bois' Blueprint for Extreme Libertarianism and Response to the Biden Administration - The Jamestown Foundation

If tradition holds (and who knows about that anymore), on a cold night this February Joe Biden will motorcade from his new home at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. up Capitol Hill, and a new House sergeant-at-arms will proclaim, "Madame Speaker, the president of the United States!" In front of that so-familiar flag, the 46th president will ask a joint session of Congress for unprecedented, bipartisan help in facing the worst domestic crises since FDR and the Great Depression a race to vaccinate millions of Americans as thousands die daily, amid food lines of the many unable to work.

Yet as Biden looks out over the House chamber, he will see staring back at him the blank faces of 147 lawmakers who just days earlier had voted to suspend not just the basic tenets of U.S. democracy but the very notion of rational truth in voting to halt the certification of the Democrat's election, on utterly unfounded voter fraud claims. And arguably that's not the worst of it.

Sprinkled among those scores of Republican truth-deniers are some who based on credible allegations and what we already know about the stunning Jan. 6 insurrection that occurred at the U.S. Capitol met with or gave verbal encouragement to the mob that stormed the building in the rampage that left five people dead. It's likely that the 117th Congress, in its first weeks, will be knee-deep into a Democrat-sought probe into whether some of its members gave tours to the 1/6 rioters the day before, or shared knowledge about how to find the hidden officers of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Biden's likely plea for bipartisanship and unity in the face of the worst pandemic in 100 years will encounter the angry glare of new extremist members like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, R-QAnon, who if her words uttered on Newsmax this week can be taken seriously will have introduced an impeachment resolution against the new president on Jan. 21 and Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Youcrazy?, if the heat-packing Coloradan hasn't been stopped at the metal detectors.

As the dust settles from Wednesday's unprecedented (and totally warranted) vote to impeach President Donald Trump a second time, in the waning hours of his destructive four-year term, everyday Americans need more help from Washington than any time since 1933. And yet our Congress has never been more divided and wracked by anger and paranoia, understandable since some GOP members sure seemed on the same side as an armed mob that erected a gallows in its fantasies of hanging Democrats.

In a stunning interview with my Inquirer colleague Jessica Calefati, western Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb one of the most moderate Democrats on Capitol Hill, who calls for working with Republicans and occasionally does so said his trust is shattered, and that some of his GOP colleagues have "become morally blind to the consequences of their own actions."

The distrust over the insurrection isn't even the end of it. Democrats are also furious over the refusal of many Republicans to take the deadly coronavirus threat seriously and wear masks, with two members including 75-year-old cancer survivor Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey and a congressional spouse infected after sheltering with mask-less GOPers during the siege. Among Republicans, Second Amendment zealots like Boebert are furious over the presence of metal detectors that might curb their heat-packing ways. Amid this rancor, an army of 20,000 National Guard troops protects the Capitol in the biggest force since the Civil War, or maybe we should now call it Civil War I.

Living Americans have never seen anything quite like this, although, as Yale historian Joanne Freeman chronicled in her remarkable 2018 book "The Field of Blood," Congress was marred by a stunning number of fistfights, canings and duels in the run-up to that first Civil War. How do we get out of this mess? It won't be easy, but here's a couple of thoughts.

First, Congress will need to separate out the completely unacceptable direct involvement egging on the murderous mob at the Capitol from the also-troubling but, arguably, not criminal support for blocking the rightful 2020 election results.

For example, an investigation needs to look at the roles of Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Briggs of Arizona and Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama. In a since-deleted video, Ali Alexander, the right-wing activist who was central in organizing the Jan. 6 events that culminated in the Capitol assault, claims that the three GOP congressmen helped plan the entire affair, including the notion of applying "maximum pressure" to flip Republican votes on certifying Biden's election by "hearing our loud roar from outside."

The House just voted to impeach Trump for inciting the violence. If the claim by Alexander about Gosar who'd insisted at a December rally that Biden's presidency could be stopped "once we conquer the Hill" Biggs and Brooks can be confirmed, the three must be expelled from Congress for insurrection. Period, end of story.

But the problems may not end there. On Wednesday, New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill like Lamb, one of the most centrist and least confrontational Democrats on Capitol Hill made the stunning allegation, later joined by more than 30 of her colleagues, that some members may have offered "reconnaissance tours" to the soon-to-be-rioters on Jan. 5, the day before. Democrats are demanding a probe of that, and troubling aspects of the attack insurrectionists knowing where to find the secret offices of Pelosi and Majority Whip James Clyburn, or the panic buttons ripped out of the office of Rep. Ayanna Pressley that suggest the coup plotters had inside help.

Anyone who aided the coup plotters should be expelled. That would take a two-thirds vote, which would need to include Republicans (although knowing these blood-red districts would send new Republicans to Washington might sway them, if the evidence is damning enough). But there is precedent. During the Civil War, Congress expelled 14 insurrectionists. It's stunning that this would be relevant in America in 2021, but here we are.

But that's only part of the problem. The 117th Congress now includes those 147 Republicans eight senators and 139 members of the U.S. House who voted last week, even before the clean-up from the insurrection had begun, to buy into the same American version of The Big Lie that had motivated these rioters and thugs, the complete fantasy that some kind of election fraud denied Trump his rightful victory.

In the days since, I've seen numerous calls from progressives on Twitter for any or all of these 147 to be expelled from Congress. Whatever the moral validity of that argument, it's just not realistic, politically, that two-thirds will kick out the other one-third over their vote, regardless of how harmful it was to democracy. It's a "marshal of the Supreme Court"-level fantasy. Some GOP senators like Missouri's Josh Hawley and Texas' Ted Cruz have seen the largest newspapers in their home states beg them to resign. But they are not going to resign. They will be in the Senate for the next four years, taking votes on whether you get evicted from your apartment or whether you can get a vaccine in time before you get sick.

For many Americans, probably many of the 82 million who voted for Joe Biden, the new Congress is already illegitimate with 147 members on the record as voting against reality. This truly is a Civil War-sized dilemma, and I only see one possible way admittedly, a long shot, although not quite as unlikely as mass expulsion out of this bind, short of that second Civil War. Congress needs to create a Truth and Reconciliation process a commission, perhaps, or even just an open forum that will allow some or hopefully most to acknowledge Biden's victory, state for there record that there was no election fraud in 2020, and maybe even apologize for saying otherwise.

Last year before we had any idea the 45th president would incite an insurrection against the U.S. government some of us called for a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address the lies and the anti-democratic policies of the Trump years. For that idea, we were vilified by some right-wingers who acted as if we were proposing a Nuremberg-war-crimes-trial kind of operation. But in fact a Truth and Reconciliation Commission as successfully pulled off in South Africa and other strife-riven countries is a chance for finding a common national story, for amnesty and a new beginning.

I'd be shocked if this happened, but I don't know any other peaceful path forward. If Congress doesn't somehow address its growing rift and descent into hatred and fear, a lot more than five Americans will needlessly die, either from an unchecked disease, or from hunger and depredation, or from growing civil conflict. Lincoln was right: A House and Senate divided against itself cannot stand. Expel the criminals. Acknowledge the truth. Then reconcile and start tackling America's real problems before it's too late.

(Will Bunch is the national opinion columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer.)

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Will Bunch: Congress must expel its coup plotters, then somehow find truth and reconciliation, or US is doomed - LancasterOnline