‘We shouldn’t legitimize those who break our immigration laws by giving them driver licenses…’
Department of Motor Vehicles / IMAGE: WTNH News8
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., introduced a bill this week that would block certain federal funds from states that give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.
Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said it was intended to keep in check blue-state policies that benefit Democrats by importing additional noncitizens to secure additional funding and political influence while effectively rendering federal immigration law meaningless.
“States granting licenses to illegal immigrants undermine our immigration laws and threaten public safety,” Cramer said in a statement.
“Our legislation imposes real consequences on states which ignore federal law but still take millions in federal funds,” he said. “It’s a commonsense step toward making America more safe.”
The bill, dubbed the Stop Greenlighting Driver Licenses for Illegal Immigrants Act, would specifically apply to self-proclaimed “sanctuary states” that “defy federal immigration enforcement or that allow illegal aliens to get driver licenses without proof of lawful presence.”
The bill is a response to increased efforts in liberal states to legitimize illegal immigration. New York recently passed a Green Light Law, which allows illegal aliens to apply for driver’s licenses. The day the law went into effect, the state’s DMV offices were overwhelmed with license applicants. Several county clerks ideologically opposed to the law have challenged it in court.
“We shouldn’t legitimize those who break our immigration laws by giving them driver licenses. Unfortunately, states like California give illegal immigrants driver licenses and help them hide from federal law,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who is co-sponsoring the bill, said in a statement.
Blackburn cited the death of 22-year-old Pierce Corcoran, who was killed in 2018 by an illegal driver, Franco Francisco Eduardo. And in 2019, another Tennessee resident, Debbie Burgess, was killed in a hit-and-run accident caused by an illegal alien with a lengthy criminal history.
“While Tennessee and many other states prohibit driver licenses for illegal aliens, a growing number of states are moving in the opposite direction and unleashing dangerous open-borders policies,” Blackburn said in a statement.
“Immigrants must follow the proper federal process and obtain citizenship or lawful status before obtaining a state driver license,” she said.
‘I think the president would be better served by never commenting on a pending federal investigations…’
Roger Stone (screen shot: Fox News/Youtube)
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Several congressional Republicans broke with President Donald Trump after he publicly criticized the Justice Department’s sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, a former Trump adviser and longtime Republican operative, was found guilty in November of seven charges—including making false statements, witness tampering and obstructing a congressional probe.
Trump should have accepted the DOJ’s original sentence instead of asking Attorney General William Barr to review it, said Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of Trump’s top congressional allies.
Graham said he didn’t think Trump was trying to “bully” the judge who will decide Stone’s sentence, but added that it’s inappropriate to publicly meddle.
“I don’t think he should be commenting on cases in the system, I don’t think that’s appropriate,” Graham said, according to The Hill.
Moderate Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska—both of whom voted to acquit Trump on two impeachment charges earlier this month—agreed that Trump “should not have gotten involved,” Collins explained.
“I think the president would be better served by never commenting on a pending federal investigations. I said that back when the Mueller investigation was going on, and it’s certainly the case when you’re at a sentencing stage,” Collins said.
Murkowski went one step further and said the president has no right “determining what the sentences are,” adding that the Democrats concerned with Trump’s “political interference,” as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., dubbed it, might be right.
“I don’t like this chain of events where you have a … proceeding, a sentencing, a recommended sentence, the president weighs in and all of the sudden Justice comes back, says ‘change the deal,'” Murkowski said. “I think most people would look at that and say ‘hmm, that just doesn’t look right.’ And I think they’re right.”
Democrats have already demanded Congress investigate Trump for his comments on Stone’s sentencing, and some have even suggested impeaching the president once again.
“You know, we’re not going to take our options off the table,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., a member of the House Judiciary Committee, told CNN when asked if the committee would launch another impeachment inquiry.
Trump’s predecessor, former President Barack Obama, also received criticism for weighing in on pending cases, including a confrontation between police and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, in which Obama said the police had “behaved stupidly.”
During the trial of George Zimmerman, who was accused of murdering trespassing teenager Trayvon Martin as the latter was walking back from a convenience store, unarmed but wearing a hoodie, Obama said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”
Although the president has unconditional pardoning power—with the exception of himself—when it comes to federal crimes, most prior executives have used them sparingly out of concern for the political fallout that would result from the appearance of impropriety.
Liberty Headlines’ Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
‘Four more years of Trump means four more years of an overall business-friendly economic agenda of low taxes and light regulation…’
Sen. Bernie Sanders reacts to Trump vowing not to let America become a socialist country. / IMAGE: Screenshot via Yahoo News
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Even though self-proclaimed Democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is now the Democratic front-runner, Wall Street investors don’t seem worried—in part because they don’t think he can win, according to CNN.
Andrew Hunter, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a recent note to clients that he remained the underdog as far as market forecasters were concerned—the only question is when he’ll fold.
“The lack of any stock market reaction to Sanders’ surge suggests that investors either still don’t believe he can win the Democratic nomination against the more centrist candidates or, alternatively, that Sanders will win the nomination but, in doing so, his lack of appeal to independents makes it even more likely that Trump will be re-elected,” Hunt said.
If Sanders continues to surge, there “might be a more discernible hit to market sentiment,” he added.
But right now, the markets are operating under the assumption that Sanders will lose the nomination and Trump will win the general election. Between 80 and 90 percent of participants at Goldman Sachs’s client conferences thought Trump will win reelection in November, the banking company noted in a recent report.
But not everyone on Wall Street is confident that November is Trump’s to win. Goldman Sachs’s chief economist, Jan Hatzius, said that no matter who the Democratic nominee is, the projections “indicate a considerably closer runoff in November than suggested by the widespread view among investors that President Trump is a shoo-in for reelection.”
Trump is the preferred candidate among investors: “Four more years of Trump means four more years of an overall business-friendly economic agenda of low taxes and light regulation,” explainedThe Week’s James Pethokoukis. “Both Trump and Wall Street share a critical common interest: They want the Dow industrials to keep on climbing.”
Even if Sanders did win the general election, most investors are confident that a divided government would prevent Sanders from radically changing the economy.
“For Medicare-for-all or a wealth tax to become reality, it would require Democrats to sweep the presidency and both houses of Congress, and it would require them to assemble either a large-enough majority to avoid the Senate filibuster or a committed-enough majority to triumph in a bare-knuckled procedural fight,” JPMorgan told its clients.
‘Like just about everything BuzzFeed writes it is wildly taken out of context, twisted and shrouded with bias…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was caught in a blatant lie Thursday, claiming on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that a leaked Homeland Security memo expressly sought to “punish” New York for refusing to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
The memo said nothing about plans to “punish” the Empire State, as Cuomo claimed.
The interview came as Cuomo prepares to meet with President Donald Trump to discuss DHS’s dialing back of services in the Trusted Traveler Program.
It coincided with recently implemented “green-light” laws in New York that permit illegal immigrants to receive driver’s licenses, while blocking that information from being shared with federal agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
During the appearance, Cuomo repeatedly used the word “punish” in reference to the DHS memo.
“There is a memo that leaked from the Department of Homeland Security that was published by BuzzFeed which says exactly that, and the Department of Homeland Security said it is their memo,” Cuomo said.
“It said we have to punish states that don’t agree with us,” he continued. “‘Punish’ is their word (emphasis added)—and this is what happens when an administration believes they’re above the law.”
Cuomo went on in a desperate attempt to link his New York conspiracy theory with the Ukraine conspiracy theories, recently promoted by House Democrats, for which Trump was acquitted of abuse of power last week following a Senate impeachment trial.
“This is what happened with Ukraine, this is what happened with [Lt. Col. Alexander] Vindman, this is what happened with Roger Stone,” Cuomo claimed, suggesting Trump was unduly using his influence in each case to settle personal scores. “Their politics come first, and law means nothing.”
Notwithstanding Cuomo’s politically motivated efforts to refuse cooperation with immigration authorities in order to benefit Democrats in the ballot box, the frequent Trump nemesis also had an even bigger problem: There was no mention of the word “punish” in the DHS memo, according to the agency and the BuzzFeed piece’s author.
BuzzFeed’s Hamed Aleaziz acknowledged in a Twitter exchange with DHS spokesperson Heather Swift that his use of the word was more of an editorial flourish than actual fact.
Nowhere in the story does it say we quoted “punish” from a DHS memo — it is a summarization of the explanations listed out by a DHS official for each policy option.
DHS Assistant Press Secretary Harry Fones told Liberty Headlines that the embellishment was par for the course with BuzzFeed, a site best known for its clickbait quizzes and for publishing the now-debunked Steele Dossier.
“Like just about everything BuzzFeed writes it is wildly taken out of context, twisted and shrouded with bias,” Fones said. “I’d encourage reporters to instead read what the Secretary actually did and the statute it responds to.”
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) YouTube removed a video that shows Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., naming the person who many say is the anonymous Ukraine whistleblower on the Senate floor — a move that Paul called “dangerous and politically biased.”
The platform said in a statement on Thursday that “videos, comments, and other forms of content that mention the leaked whistleblower’s name” violate its community guidelines and will thus be removed from the site.
“We’ve removed hundreds of videos and over ten thousand comments that contained the name. Video uploaders have the option to edit their videos to exclude the name and re-upload,” Ivy Choi, a spokesperson for the company, told Politico.
Though the whistleblower hasn’t been officially outed, Republicans suspect that CIA officer Eric Ciaramella is the one who filed the formal inspector general’s complaint on Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
The clip showed Paul mentioning Ciaramella during the Senate’s impeachment trial, although the senator did not identify him as the whistleblower.
Paul did so after Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts refused to read a question Paul had submitted that included the alleged whistleblower’s name.
Paul clarified that nowhere in his speech did he “accuse anyone of being a whistleblower.”
His question simply stated: “Manager Schiff and Counsel for the President, are you aware that House Intelligence Committee staffer Shawn Misko had a close relationship with Eric Ciaramella when at the National Security Council together, and are you aware and how do you respond to reports that Ciaramella and Misko may have worked together to plot impeaching the President before there were formal House impeachment proceedings?”
Regardless, YouTube has taken it upon itself to “censure speech,” Paul said in a statement.
“It is a chilling and disturbing day in America when giant web companies such as YouTube decide to censure speech,” he continued. “Now, even protected speech, such as that of a senator on the Senate floor, can be blocked from getting to the American people.”
‘What I believe is that that’s not a job for the Fed…’
Rashida Tlaib / IMAGE: Time via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell once again dismissed a suggestion from socialist “Squad” members that they could pay for their their costly and wasteful proposals by having the bank print them more money.
The absurd idea, known as “modern monetary theory,” suggests that the government could print unlimited money to grow the economy, ignoring delicate issues like inflation and currency devaluation.
The theory was a centerpiece to the controversial Green New Deal proposed roughly a year ago by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-NY. Her bill, which some estimated would have a price tag in excess of $90 trillion, was unanimously defeated by the Senate and was never called to the House floor.
While discussing the Fed’s ability to bail out financial institutions, Tlaib asked, “Do you not believe that the governments of Detroit and Puerto Rico also play a vital role that should be preserved even if financial crisis makes it hard for them to borrow money?”
Powell noted that the Federal Reserve’s role related exclusively to the organizations that were regulated by it, and it did not serve the same function as an appropriations committee.
“What I believe is that that’s not a job for the Fed,” he said. “The Fed has a particular role and particular authorities, and lending to state and local governments and supporting them when they’re in bankruptcy, that’s not part of our mandate.”
The false equivalency Tlaib asserted between troubled lenders who face defaults due to economic downturn and municipal governments that refuse to rein in their spending practices raised the specter of deeply divisive bailout decisions in the first year of President Barack Obama’s presidency.
The Fed did its part by maintaining near-zero interest rates for much of the Obama presidency and buying out securities in three major housing lenders.
Most regarded the government intervention as short-term solutions to a desperate financial landscape, deeming the institutions “too big to fail,” while encouraging further constraints that would prevent the recurrence.
Tlaib took the opposite approach, questioning why other failing institutions outside of commerce should not be entitled to their own bailouts.
That, however, is “not appropriate for us in the sense that it’s government finance,” Powell said. “That’s to be dealt with by fiscal authorities, rather than by the monetary authority.”
After Congress approved massive bank-bailouts in 2008 and 2009 for both public and private lenders—drawing ire across the political spectrum—Obama proceeded to pass massive stimulus-spending packages that he claimed included both “shovel ready” infrastructure projects and widely lambasted proposals like “cash for clunkers” to buy out old cars.
He also assisted in subsidizing the financially distressed General Motors, hoping to help revitalize Detroit, but leading many to decry what appeared to be the first seeds of socialism with its nationalization of the auto industry.
Despite the intervention, Detroit filed bankruptcy during the Obama administration and sought additional state and federal assistance to prevent the repayment plan from forcing it to sell items of cultural importance, such as works of art.
Tlaib, who represents part of Detroit, was elected in 2018. Although the city has, in some ways, recovered, its ties to the auto industry have continued to be a source of constant unease amid the threat of job reductions, a recent strike and a corruption scandal involving the United Auto Workers union.
Puerto Rico, the U.S. territory from which Ocasio–Cortez’s parents hailed, has face its own insolvency issues, largely related to government corruption and misappropriation of federal aid following a series of natural disasters.
After its six-year debt crisis, the island reached a settlement agreement this week for repaying $35 billion.
‘What if you can’t win the presidency without an online mob?’
Bernie Sanders / IMAGE: NowHearThis News
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Democratic primary voters are fed up with the liberal media’s hostile coverage of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who is now the front-runner in the race for the Democratic nomination.
One New Hampshire voter told MSNBC on Tuesday night that she voted for Sanders because MSNBC didn’t want her to.
“I want to say the reason I went for Bernie is because of MSNBC,” she said in an interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber. “I think it is completely cynical to say that he’s lost 50% of his vote from the last time when there were two candidates.”
The voter then claimed that many of the candidates in the Democratic field were “wonderful” options before decrying the media’s hostile, anti-Bernie coverage.
“Now there are multiple wonderful candidates who would be great presidents and people that I think we can unify and get behind,” the voter continued, “but the kind of ‘Stop Bernie’ cynicism that I heard from a number of people—I watch MSNBC constantly, so I heard that from a number of commentators—it made me angry enough, I said, ‘OK, Bernie has my vote.’”
This voter isn’t the only Sanders supporter upset with MSNBC. Several of Sanders’s campaign staffers demanded that MSNBC anchor Chuck Todd resign after he quoted a conservative columnist who likened Sanders’s supporters to President Trump’s.
“He says, ‘no other candidate has anything like this digital brownshirt brigade. I mean, except for Donald Trump,’” Todd said during a segment of his show. “I know everybody’s freaking out about this, but you saw the MAGA rally that’s preparing around here. There are people coming from three or four states. That’s real and this is like Bernie.”
One of Sanders’s senior advisers, David Sirota, said it’s obvious Todd and the rest of MSNBC are “very frightened that ordinary voters, many of whom use the Internet, may actually get to participate in deciding who wins the presidency.”
“What if you can’t win the presidency without an online mob?” — MSNBC seems very frightened that ordinary voters, many of whom use the Internet, may actually get to participate in deciding who wins the presidency pic.twitter.com/nPM5c8DF1n
‘We’re just not going to vote for the economy when he’s caging children, causing all this racist rhetoric…’
Nancy Pelosi/IMAGE: CBS via YouTube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) With President Donald Trump’s failed impeachment in the rear-view mirror, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is now looking to tear up Democrats’ old political playbook, according to Politico.
“Impeachment didn’t move the needle … so continuing to focus on that target, you’re not going to convince anyone at this point,” said Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wisc.
Instead, Pelosi intends to pivot to another false claim: that the economy isn’t as great as it seems.
Pelosi reportedly met privately with top former Obama economic advisers for a consultation on how to make the public believe that Trump’s booming market is paltry compared with the “new normal” stagnation of his predecessor.
Some of her more vulnerable party members in Congress were glad to change the subject from the Ukraine embarrassment after months of belaboring it.
“I’m glad that we’re shifting and pivoting to something else,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas. “Every time I poll in my area, it’s always the same thing: education, health care and the economy.”
In addition to being more emboldened by his Senate acquittal last week, Trump experienced a bump in his approval rating as a result.
But Democrats must find some way to dispel the booming economic optimism that many Americans feel toward their current financial outlook if they are to successfully sell current presidential front-runner Bernie Sanders as a viable alternative.
Trust Us—You’re Suffering
IMAGE: geralt (CC) via Pixabay
The plan comes as even the left-wing Associated Press can’t help but speak glowingly of the economy.
On Wednesday, it reported, “Stronger-than-expected company earnings reports and positive U.S. economic data have helped keep investors in a buying mood.”
Economic naysayers who projected that Trump’s election would usher in catastrophe have long since been silenced, and few believe that an economic downturn is possible between now and the November election.
Even a force majeure, like the lingering worries over a health epidemic, can’t seem to drag the markets down.
“You have the continuing good news on the coronavirus potentially slowing and being under control, and that’s obviously powerful,” Tom Martin, senior portfolio manager with Globalt Investments, told the AP.
Notwithstanding, Rep. Kind said he hoped that the new Democratic strategy of touting economic failure would specifically target key battleground states, such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and his home state of Wisconsin.
Trump won the swing states in 2016 by tapping into the outrage of blue-collar voters who felt forgotten and ignored.
“You still see record farm bankruptcies taking place in Wisconsin, a manufacturing recession, stagnant wage growth and no paid family or medical leave policy,” Kind claimed. “These are major problems holding us back economically.”
Trump advocated for paid family leave—one of several popular Democratic talking points—during his State of the Union address while expressing hope for bipartisanship following the impeachment effort.
Instead, it seems, Democrats will try to use the economy as a political bludgeon rather than spending the next nine months working in tandem with Republicans to address any lingering shortcomings.
Ironically, some—including many so-called fact-checkers in the liberal media—had not gotten the message that the economy is bad and, as recently as last week, were continuing their efforts to credit President Barack Obama with ushering it in.
Even Pelosi’s second-in-command, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, struggled to shift gears.
“It would not be a saleable argument to say the economy’s not doing well. It has been doing well, it continues to do relatively well,” Hoyer said at a briefing with reporters, according to Politico. “But, quite frankly, the economy is growing jobs at about 30,000 less than the Obama administration.”
What Impeachment?
Mike Pence, Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi during the State of the Union / IMAGE: Screenshot via Yahoo News
Likewise, it seems the Left hopes to deny ever having gone all-in on its previous impeachment effort.
Contrary to the fact that many far-left radicals were vowing during the 2018 election to impeach the president, re-affirming it on their inauguration day, and had actually brought articles of impeachment to the floor on three separate occasions prior to the Ukraine attempt, the left-leaning Politico claimed that Democrats only came to supporting it last fall.
“Pelosi and other top Democrats have never thought impeachment would be a winning political message, fully aware that he would be acquitted by the Senate,” insisted Politico. “They refused to even consider the possibility of impeaching Trump until the fall, when Trump was accused of pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.”
But during an acquittal celebration with GOP allies last week, Trump—like many others—expressed his doubts that Pelosi’s claims to be reluctant about impeachment were ever genuine.
In March 2019, both she and Rep. Adam Schiff publicly disavowed impeachment, but similar to Schiff’s prior claims that he had evidence of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, their statements were widely regarded as little more than theatrical posturing to set the scaffold for their inevitable attempt.
Far from being broadsided by the consequences, Pelosi accurately predicted the outcome a full 10 months prior to Trump’s acquittal—and four months before the phone call that Democrats sought to use as the pretense for the impeachment.
“Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path because it divides the country,” Pelosi said last March. “And he’s just not worth it.”
But the eventual case that Pelosi signed off for was neither compelling—with no actual crime having been committed—nor was it bipartisan. Rather, four House Democrats refused to support the articles, with two voting against both of them.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey switched parties shortly thereafter and became a Trump-supporting Republican.
Setting Up Another Failure
Even Politico readily acknowledged that Pelosi’s latest gaslighting effort ran counter to common-sense.
According to polling conducted by the Navigator Research group, “candidates playing the partisan blame game—arguing, for example, that Obama pulled the country out of a recession—would lose in a head-to-head against Trump’s economic message 38 percent to 41 percent.”
It said that the winning message for Democrats was talking to people “about what’s happening in their lives.”
But, yet again, the Left seems only willing to glean from that what it can spin to its existing message of fear-mongering and politically correct identity politics.
Longtime impeachment hawk Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., doubled down on the need to sell Democrats on the stale message of child separations at the border even as Trump has focused on reaching out to marginalized minorities while effectively fixing the Democrat-engineered border crisis and fighting political crosswinds in the process.
“Black and Latino voters aren’t selfish voters,” Gallego said. “We’re just not going to vote for the economy when he’s caging children, causing all this racist rhetoric, doing all these types of things that I think affect our communities, not just jobs.”
‘If Bernie has more delegates, do you really think the Bros will make way for Mike?’
Joe Biden / IMAGE: Late Show with Stephen Colbert
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) A super-PAC that supports former Vice President Joe Biden‘s campaign has issued a warning of a “doomsday scenario” should the former vice president fall out of the presidential race.
The Unite the Country super-PAC sent a memo to supporters, telling them that the party could fracture if one of Biden’s Democratic rivals—including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar, or former mayors Pete Buttigieg and Michael Bloomberg—wins the party’s nomination, Politico reported.
“And the stature gap on stage is terrifying,” the memo said, referring to Buttigieg’s height, estimated around 5 feet, 8 inches.
Trump already has mocked the petite Bloomberg, who also stands around 5-foot-7. According to the Daily Caller, a historical analysis shows taller candidates have a distinct advantage over shorter ones.
The group said the Democratic National Convention could become chaotic if a clear front-runner does not come to the convention in mid-July, especially if there is a contested convention between Bloomberg and Sanders.
They urged donors to stand with Biden, despite devastating losses for the campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire, to prevent a brokered convention.
“Donors hedging their bets on Biden because of Bloomberg could be creating a doomsday scenario for Democrats everywhere,” the group’s treasurer, Larry Rasky, wrote. “The Sanders–Warren wing of the Party is ready for the Bloomberg fight.”
He said Democrats couldn’t afford a divisive brokered convention—which could lead the losing candidate to run as an independent, splitting the ticket.
“If Bernie has more delegates, do you really think the Bros will make way for Mike?” he added, derisively referencing hardcore Sanders supporters, who are known as “Bernie Bros.”
“Not to mention that the legacy of the Sanders campaign (such as the Squad) will ravage any chance Center-Left Democrats have of maintaining hard won victories in states from Pennsylvania to California,” Rasky continued.
Biden needs big-dollar donors, as his campaign has struggled to capture grassroots supports from Americans giving less than $200, Open Secrets reported.
The memo criticized Buttigieg for his inability to capture the black vote, and specifically for his call to decriminalize all narcotics, including cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and other deadly drugs, the Washington Examiner reported.
Klobuchar earned similar criticism for her history as a prosecutor.
Rasky blasted the “Sanders Socialist issue” as “real and dangerous.”
“Biden is 100% correct. Democrats in swing areas in the country will have to hide from Sanders. In 2018, Sanders backed candidates went 0-40 in swing areas,” Rasky said. “We cannot risk the House, state Houses, and also have no shot of dislodging McConnell with Bernie at the top of the ticket.”
Ralph Northam / IMAGE: Face the Nation via Youtube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) The Democratic-controlled Virginia House of Delegates passed an “assault weapons” ban on Tuesday, along with a bill that would allow local Virginia governments to remove Confederate monuments in public spaces.
The “assault weapons” ban, HB 961, would “make tens of thousands of gun owners in Virginia criminals overnight,” according to Republican state Del. Nick Freitas.
The bill would expand the definition of “assault firearm” and prohibit the sale or transfer of such weapons. It would also expand restrictions on magazine sizes.
“This bill creates an environment where you could receive up to 12 months in jail for every magazine you have over 12 rounds,” Frietas said. “At the same time that Democrats are voting for early release programs for people convicted of first-degree murder and rape, they are criminalizing law-abiding gun owners.”
HB 961 will not move to the state Senate, where it is expected to pass before being signed into law by Gov. Ralph Northam, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“And just like that, Virginia House Democrats vote to make millions of Virginians surrender their property or become criminals,” tweeted Republican state Rep. Dave LaRock.
And just like that, Virginia House Democrats vote to make millions of Virginians surrender their property or become criminals. If the Senate goes along with this nonsense, the Governor will sign it, and then AG Herring will spend YOUR $$$ to defend this unconstitutional overreach pic.twitter.com/GXSs7JaO9p
The Virginia House also passed a measure that would give cities and counties the autonomy to “remove, relocate, contextualize, cover or alter” Confederate-era monuments in public spaces.
Democratic state Del. Delores McQuinn said the bill is a step toward allow locating communities to decide for themselves “how they want to memorialize history.”
Under the measure, local leaders must first pass a resolution stating its intention to remove the monument, then request a report from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources with background about the person depicted and the circumstances under which the monument was established.
Charlottesville radicals attempt to cover a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee. / PHOTO: Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines
The locality would then have to make that report public and then hold a public hearing before it could vote. A decision to remove a monument would require a two-thirds vote or could be sent to voters for a referendum.
Under the bill, the locality would have to offer the monument to a “museum, historical society, government, or military battlefield” for a period of 30 days, though both measures say the local government has the “sole authority” to determine its final disposition.
Virginia Republicans successfully blocked both of these measures last year, but after losing both legislative chambers to the Democrats in November, they no longer have the votes to prevent the bills from becoming law.
“I do not believe this will end well,” said Republican state Del. Charles Poindexter.
In regards to the “assault weapons” ban, dozens of local sheriffs have vowed not to enforce the law.
The radical left-wing City Council in Charlottesville previously attempted to remove two Confederate monuments in the city, disregarding state law and the recommendations of a blue-ribbon panel, as well as the vocal protestations of local residents.
Those efforts ultimately failed but resulted in the fatal 2017 rally that brought extremists from the Left and Right into violent confrontation, many converging on the picturesque college town from out of state.
The clashes resulted in the deaths of a local activist who was hit in a vehicular assault and two state police officers who perished in a helicopter crash while monitoring the situation.
Liberty Headlines’ Ben Sellers and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
