This was epic.
Attorney General Bill Barr absolutely DESTROYED radical Democrat Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-MI) during the Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday morning.
Rep. Lawrence tried to berate the Attorney General on the increase in hate crimes in the United States during the Trump administration. Barr quickly corrected the liberal Democrat with the fact that hate crimes have been increasing since 2013 — during the Obama years.
Rep. Lawrence: Are you familiar with the data with the percentage? Have they (hate crimes) increased under the Trump administration? There are indications they have… Hate crimes, have they increased under this administration?
AG Bill Barr: I haven’t seen any data that it’s growing since 2017.
Rep. Lawrence: So is it a priority? You haven’t looked at the data. You’re not aware of it.
AG Bill Barr: As I said in my confirmation hearing. I’m very concerned about hate crimes and intend to vigorously pursue them. The data that I have seen have shown an increase going back to 2013. So I agree with you, they have been increasing. But I have seen no data to say it’s different under the Trump administration.
Ouch.
Attorney General Barr did not address the substantial increase in fake hate crimes during the Trump years.
The newest U.S. House of Representatives caucus to receive formal approval has been revealed: The House Anti-Socialism Caucus.
Congressman Chris Stewart (R-UT) announced in February via press release that he intended to form the new caucus.
In a piece published by left-leaning outlet Slate on Monday, Lilly Jay presents her firsthand account of her "close encounter" with former Vice President Joe Biden in 2014, when she was 18 years old — and shortly after she had suffered a sexual assault. The account is the eighth such public statement by a woman alleging an "uncomfortable" interaction with Biden.
Michael Cohen may have given Democrats everything they wanted, but it’s not like he’s going to get any help from them now.
That’s at least the message being sent by Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who says he’s not going to help President Donald Trump’s former lawyer delay his jail sentence after Cohen said he had found a hard drive with millions of files that could be of use.
“I don’t get involved in sentencing matters as a practice. I never have in Congress and that’s been my policy,” Schiff, a California Democrat, told CNN on Monday.
That’s the first official response from Democrats regarding a letter from Cohen’s legal team, which was circulated last week among a number of congressional Democrats, according to CNN.
According to The Associated Press, the letter was sent to Schiff, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Me.
On May 6, Cohen is scheduled to begin a three-year sentence on campaign finance violations, financial misdeeds and lying to Congress.
However, he now says that he has access to new information that might be of use to Congress.
“Michael Cohen’s recent public and closed-door testimony to Congressional committees has triggered additional areas for investigation by law enforcement authorities and the Congress,” Cohen lawyer Lanny Davis said in a statement last week, according to Axios.
“In fact, Mr. Cohen has recently obtained a hard drive with 14 million files from his computers and phones over the past 10 years, which we believe has significant value to the various congressional oversight and investigation committees.
Did Democrats just use Michael Cohen as a weapon against President Trump?
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“Yet Michael Cohen is the only person in the Trump organization who has been prosecuted. The actions against Mr. Cohen appears to be selective prosecution and the sentence imposed is a disproportionate one. For him to surrender in 30 days would be a detriment to committees search for truth, as well as a miscarriage of justice.”
In the letter, Cohen’s attorneys state that in order to properly present the new data, he needs time before he reports to prison.
“We hope that this memorandum demonstrates that Mr. Cohen needs to be readily accessible and immediately available to provide ongoing assistance to Congress in order for it to fulfill its executive branch oversight responsibilities,” the letter states, according to CNN.
“However, with 30 days left before he surrenders to prison, time is no longer a luxury he is capable of.”
To be fair, this rather reeks of desperation at this point. So has pretty much everything Cohen has done of late, however, so how this is any different than before is confusing to me.
Rep. Schiff still says he wants the information on the hard drives, mind you, he’s just not going to do anything to delay Cohen’s prison sentence to get it.
“We continue to encourage Mr. Cohen to provide us any materials that he has that are relevant to our investigation,” he said.
“We will continue to do so and hope that he has additional information to offer.”
Perhaps Cohen can get some Democrats to sign onto getting his sentence delayed.
Yes, he gave the Democrats everything they wanted by accusing the president of financial misdeeds and hush-money payments, but what has he done for them lately?
The Mueller report fell flat, Democratic leadership seems to have little appetite for impeachment and Cohen could be facing a new perjury probe because of the inconsistencies in his recent congressional testimony.
Any sort of consideration the Democrats were going to give a proven liar, therefore, is done for. He’s obsolete.
If he thinks he’s going to get any help avoiding reporting to prison on May 6, he likely has another thing coming.
It sure doesn’t sound like Adam Schiff is going to help.
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Remember radical Islamic terrorism? The threat from that? Probably not so much, at least if your memory is anything like the media’s.
If Islamic terrorism gets mentioned at all in this country, it’s only to state that it’s less dangerous than terrorism from white supremacists. Which, while terrorism from white supremacists is indeed dangerous, I don’t remember them crashing planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 people in the process.
Rondell Henry wasn’t thinking that big, according to federal prosecutors. However, the alleged wannabe terrorist still wanted to emulate the 2016 attack in Nice, France, that killed 87 people, according to documents unveiled in a Washington-area court this week.
“A Maryland man inspired by the Islamic State group plotted to ram a stolen U-Haul truck into as many pedestrians as possible at a popular convention and tourist destination just outside the nation’s capital, federal prosecutors said Monday,” The Associated Press reported.
“The allegation was made in a court filing as prosecutors in Maryland urged a judge to keep the defendant, 28-year-old Rondell Henry, detained on a charge of driving a stolen vehicle across state lines. The police arrested him on March 28 after officers who discovered the stolen truck saw him leap over a security fence,” the report said.
When he was taken into police custody, Henry began talking about his plans for the truck, according to prosecutors.
“‘I was just going to keep driving and driving and driving. I wasn’t going to stop,’ the document quotes Henry as telling law enforcement authorities who questioned him. He said he wanted to create ‘panic and chaos’ similar to a deadly truck attack that killed scores of people in Nice, France, in 2016, prosecutors say.”
Henry’s alleged target was National Harbor, a complex of restaurants, retail shops and hotels on the Potomac River in Maryland.
Later in the report, the AP notes the computer engineer was described in court documents “as harboring hatred for ‘disbelievers’ and looking to emulate Islamic State militants he saw on beheading videos and fighting overseas.
Do you think that radical Islam needs to be a higher priority for American lawmakers?
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“On his phone, which prosecutors say he discarded on a highway in an apparent attempt to conceal evidence, authorities found images of the ISIS flag, armed ISIS fighters and the man who carried out the massacre in an Orlando, Florida, nightclub three years ago.”
Speaking of ISIS, when the last piece of Islamic State group-controlled territory was finally recaptured by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, there was almost nothing in the way of celebration in the media or among Democrats.
Nor, in fact, is stopping radical Islamic terrorism a major policy priority of the Democratic Party.
However, this is the party that’s willing to push the Green New Deal — unless, of course, someone wants to vote on it, because it won’t pass. The plan isn’t just profoundly unrealistic about how soon we can eliminate carbon emissions, it could also end up costing us up to $93 trillion. (And it wouldn’t even eliminate cow farts!)
And then there’s H.R. 5, known as the Equality Act, which has been getting attention as of late. As Terry Schilling wrote in The Daily Caller, its idea of “equality” may or may not be yours.
“The ‘Equality’ Act would make it illegal to make private spaces such as changing rooms, bathrooms, and even your local gym’s locker room only open to women. Girls in school will have no say over who can enter their bathrooms and locker rooms,” Schiller wrote.
“Battered women’s shelters can and will be sued and shut down if they refuse to let men who claim to identify as women room with abused women. The ‘Equality’ Act would even criminalize doctors who refuse to perform sex-change surgeries simply because a patient ‘wants it.’”
These are the legislative priorities of the Democrats. In the meanwhile, Islamic terrorism remains a real threat.
Yes, we don’t know the exact details of Rondell Henry’s alleged plot or how serious he was. We don’t know how much of a chance he had of succeeding. We don’t know if he’s even guilty of any of this.
What we do know is that there are people who want to run U-Haul trucks into crowds — and worse — in the name of a twisted religious vision.
In the meanwhile, we can all be thankful that the left is looking out for those cow farts.
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Last year, The Heritage Foundation studied how
the tax cuts would affect Americans in every congressional district across the
country. We found that each of the 435 districts got a tax cut and that the
average American household paid about $1,400 less in taxes as a result in 2018.
Americans with children also benefit from the tax cuts. A
married couple filing jointly with two children saw their tax bills fall by an
average of $2,917.
Depending on how much you make, where you live, and how many
kids you have, the numbers can look different. You can check out the average
tax cut in every congressional district here.
Americans don’t just benefit from the lower taxes. They
benefit a second time from higher wages generated by a faster-growing economy. Lower
taxes for businesses and individuals help fuel more investment and innovation,
which means more jobs and higher wages.
Over the next 10 years, thanks to a larger economy, the
typical American will benefit from over $26,000
more in take-home pay, or $44,697 for a family of four.
Tangible Results
Average tax cuts can be a bit abstract and can seem too good
to be true, so we crunched
the numbers for specific taxpayers. Here are two examples.
Sofia Lopez, a single teacher making $50,000, paid $5,474 in
federal income taxes for 2017. This year, she paid $1,104 less to the federal
government. Her marginal tax rate dropped from 25 percent to 12 percent. Overall,
she got a 20 percent tax cut.
Under the old tax code, John and Sarah Jones—a married couple with combined earnings of $75,000, three children and a home mortgage—paid $1,753 last year. They just finished filing their taxes, and this year their federal income tax bill will decline by $2,014. In fact, because of the larger $2,000 child tax credit, they will get a refundable credit of $261.
As a result of tax reform, 9 out of 10 taxpayers got a tax
cut, which most Americans received through lower employer
withholding.
Even if most people got a tax cut, some people are concerned
that their tax refunds might be smaller after initial reports showed that some
refunds could be smaller than in previous years.
The key to remember here is that tax refunds are the
government paying you back if you overpaid your taxes throughout the year. They
are not related to the size of your actual tax cut. Nonetheless, folks are
still rightly concerned about the unanticipated change.
Since the initial reporting, revised numbers now show that
average refunds are about
the same as last year. Americans likely got a tax cut and still got the
refund they were expecting.
Another change that has gotten a lot of negative attention
is the capping of the state and local tax deduction (SALT). This cap begins to
fix how the deduction that until recently had subsidized
unusually high taxes in some states at the expense of federal taxpayers in
low-tax states.
After sustained negative press, Ryan C. Sheppard, an accountant at Knight Rolleri Sheppard in Fairfield, Connecticut, recently explained to Bloomberg that “[a] lot of folks are coming in assuming they’re going to lose under the new tax law when in fact, they’re not.” That’s because the cap was paired with new lower tax rates and other reforms, like a larger exemption for the alternative minimum tax.
It has now been more than a year since the tax cuts were
signed into law, and many Americans may have forgotten how the law changed.
Lower Tax Rates. Tax
rates were cut across all seven of the income tax brackets. The top marginal
rate decreased from 39.6 percent to 37 percent. The marginal rate for a single
earner making $50,000 dropped from 25 percent to 22 percent, while the rate for
a married couple with $75,000 of income declined from 15 percent to 12 percent.
Bigger Standard
Deduction. The amount of income fully exempt from the income tax, called
the standard deduction, almost doubled. For married joint filers, the deduction
is $24,000; for single filers, it is $12,000. The new larger deduction takes
the place of the personal exemption and simplifies tax filing. About nine in 10
taxpayers will simply claim the new standard deduction in 2018 rather than
itemize their taxes.
$2,000 Child Tax
Credit. The child tax credit doubled from $1,000 to $2,000 per child and
begins to phase out at almost quadruple the income level of $400,000. The new
larger credit more than offsets the repeal of the personal exemption for
dependents.
$10,000 State and
Local Tax Deduction. Taxpayers who choose not to take the standard
deduction are able to deduct up to $10,000 of state and local property taxes
and income taxes (or sales taxes) paid.
For individuals, the bill also expanded 529 college savings
accounts to K-12 expenses, limited the mortgage interest deduction for new
mortgages, zeroed out the individual mandate tax, raised the death tax exclusion,
eliminated the phase-out of itemized deductions, and increased the exemption
for the alternative minimum tax, among many other changes.
But all of the individual tax cuts expire after 2025 and
will need to be extended. Otherwise, Americans will face steep tax increases down the road.
Taken as a whole, these changes simplified
taxpaying for typical American taxpayers and cut their taxes by
thousands of dollars. Thanks to tax reform, paying taxes this year will be less
painful than last year.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a new excuse for her strange accent at the National Action Network conference last week: Code-switching.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the controversy, here are the basics: At the predominantly black conference last week, the New York Democrat seemed to adopt a Southern drawl when talking about menial work.
“I’m proud to be a bartender, ain’t nothin’ wrong with that,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with working retail, folding clothes for other people to buy. There is nothing wrong with preparing the food that your neighbors will eat. There is nothing wrong with driving the buses that take your family to work.”
Ocasio-Cortez speaks in an accent that she never uses while telling a room of predominately black people that there is nothing wrong with them folding clothes, cooking, and driving other people around on a bus for a living. pic.twitter.com/FIbIAPokt0
Once the incident garnered attention, Ocasio-Cortez quickly went on the defensive.
“As much as the right wants to distort & deflect, I am from the Bronx. I act & talk like it, *especially* when I’m fired up and especially when I’m home,” she wrote in one Twitter post. “It is so hurtful to see how every aspect of my life is weaponized against me, yet somehow asserted as false at the same time.”
People still didn’t seem to buy that, so we got a new explanation: She was just code-switching.
If you’re not familiar with the linguistic concept, a crude description would be to say that it’s switching between two different dialects or languages during a single conversation or sometimes within the wider context of a certain milieu. In Ocasio-Cortez’s case, she was just taking on a Southern accent in front of black people because she was … a black person from the South? Oh well, let her explain it:
Next time you‘re told straight hair is “unprofessional” & that speaking like your parents do is “uneducated,” then you can complain about code-switching.
Code switching is a tool communities learn when they’re told their voice, appearance, & mannerisms are “unprofessional.” https://t.co/tKPTneEncO
“Next time you‘re told straight hair is ‘unprofessional’ & that speaking like your parents do is ‘uneducated,’ then you can complain about code-switching,” she tweeted when someone questioned the argument being made for her. “Code switching is a tool communities learn when they’re told their voice, appearance, & mannerisms are ‘unprofessional.’”
The good news is that we can improve this easily w/ honest reflection.
For ex, are certain hairstyles discouraged in your workplace?Why?
Can you think of someone who didn’t advance bc of how they spoke? Why?
Examine what’s deemed “unprofessional” around you & adapt it to 2019.
“We see the perceived ‘costs’ to not code-switching all the time. Can’t tell you how many young people in our community don’t have the confidence they should bc they didn’t grow up learning secondary speech,” she continued. “Their talents get stifled by ‘respectability,’ despite enormous gifts.”
“The good news is that we can improve this easily w/ honest reflection. For ex, are certain hairstyles discouraged in your workplace? Why? Can you think of someone who didn’t advance bc of how they spoke? Why? Examine what’s deemed ‘unprofessional’ around you & adapt it to 2019.”
Now mind you, she didn’t make the code-switching argument to begin with, arguing this is how she’d talked in other speeches. That doesn’t mean that she didn’t think she was code switching or that it’s mutually exclusive from her original explication of the strange lapse into a Southern accent — that it was no different from speeches she’d given previously, which was clearly false.
But it is interesting to note.
It’s also interesting to note that some African-American Twitter users didn’t think she possessed that particular code to switch (though CNN’s Don Lemon apparently wasn’t one of them):
But you are not black or Southern. I am a third generation New Yorker. 17th generation American none of my family is friends from New York speak in the dialect you did at NAN. You mocked black people. We won’t forget it.
Some reactions were a bit more forceful about the point. (WARNING: The image below links to the original tweet where the obscenities are written in full.)
And then others pointed out the obvious.
Code switching = still pandering.
Assuming a different speech because of people who don’t speak the same as you is just suggesting they’re not intelligent enough to understand you.
That’s arguably the most disturbing thing — the fact that she adopted this speech before the National Action Network, a predominantly African-American group, while talking about menial jobs. That probably wasn’t the moment to drag that out.
Do you think that Ocasio-Cortez was pandering during this speech?
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Also, while we’re on it, Ocasio-Cortez’s rant about the horrors that code-switching is meant to avoid seems pandering as well.
Professionalism isn’t a bad thing. It isn’t racist or enforcing homogenous cultural norms. If you don’t speak and act professionally in an interview, you’re not going to have the same chance at the job that someone who speaks and acts professionally does. Get used to it. This isn’t racist, classist, sexist or anything of that nature — and minority Twitter users realized that.
Beyond that, however, it’s clear that even if she was code-switching that some minorities weren’t buying that she had the right to. Granted, these are three responses, but one can extrapolate this — particularly when one considers the fact that just about everyone — regardless of race — is tiring of Ocasio-Cortez’s excuses in this matter by now.
I hope this doesn’t go away, however, because I’m curious what she’ll come up with next.
Multiple personalities, perhaps? Repressed trauma from being among the oppressed class? Imitating the colonizer? So many possibilities, so few news cycles for this story to remain fresh.
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While the mainstream media just can’t get enough of the new socialist hotshot in Congress, House Speaker seems to be growing weary of the wunderkind, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Pelosi, after all, is the leader of the Democratic caucus that now control the House, so she expects to be garnering the lion’s share of the media coverage. Instead, the 29-year-old former bartender from New York is grabbing all kinds of headlines, and getting those sought-after invites to late-night talk shows.
Pelosi, 79, is a pro, so when she appeared to take aim at Ocasio-Cortez — who has nearly 4 million followers on Twitter and millions more on Instagram and Facebook — she did so without naming her.
During an interview with USA Today, Pelosi was asked about the difficulty of coordinating House Democrats while some freshmen like Ocasio-Cortez “proudly embrace socialism” and are busy shoving the party far to the left with “sweeping action on climate change and call for a government-run health care system.”
“While there are people who have a large number of Twitter followers, what’s important is that we have large numbers of votes on the floor of the House,” Pelosi said.
Zing.
Ocasio-Cortez has been complaining about Democrats who occasionally vote with Republicans on issues important to their constituents and wants the party to target those consider disloyal. But Pelosi, who has been in Congress more than 30 years, told USA Today it’s not that simple.
When USA TODAY asked how more liberal members responded when she told them they needed legislation that could pass, she responded, “They’re fine.”
“As I say to my own district, ‘You go out and elect 218 people, just like San Francisco, then we can talk,’ ” she said.
It’a not the first time Pelosi has dissed the upstart from New York. Back in February, she seemed to mock Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal,” which calls for the end of automobiles and planes and even wants to address farting cows. The estimated cost for the program over 10 years is $93 trillion.
The day AOC was unveiling the GND, Pelosi “brushed off the idea of the Green New Deal as a ‘suggestion,’” Politico reported.
“It will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive,” Pelosi said. “The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it right?”
And Pelosi snubbed Ocasio-Cortez, passing her over for a seat on the Ways and Means Committee, even though the incumbent AOC beat — Joe Crowley — sat on the committee. Ocasio-Cortez was also reportedly left out of the Pelosi-controlled Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.
According to a new report from the well-known organization, Clarion Project — which describes itself as "a non-profit organization that educates the public about the dangers of radical Islam" and upon whose advisory board frequent Fox News c
Union College President David R. Harris recently penned an argument against free speech on college campuses, claiming that institutions of higher learning have a responsibility to manage speech by providing “constructive engagement,” so that students can have an optimal learning experience.
Union College president David R. Harris penned an op-ed, entitled, “A Campus Is Not the Place for Free Speech,” in which he argues that it is the role of colleges and universities to filter the conversations on campuses to provide “constructive engagement.”
“I oppose free speech on college campuses,” states Harris in his op-ed, “I think college campuses should be safe havens from voices on the left and right that violate what I have learned and what I believe.”
The college president had written his op-ed in response to President Donald Trump’s recent executive order requiring colleges and universities to uphold the First Amendment on campus in order to continue receiving federal research funding.
“Many of the president’s supporters have applauded his free speech decision,” states Harris, “because they argue that higher education institutions trumpet liberal perspectives and silence conservative voices.” Harris adds that the members of academia higher education believe “the president and his supporters do not understand what actually happens on college campuses.”
Harris also claims in his op-ed that institutions of higher learning would only be managing speech on campus for students’ own good, suggesting that when left unchecked, free speech would not facilitate a productive learning experience, arguing that individuals will end up using speech irresponsibly when utilizing it in its “purest form”
“Free speech, in its purest form, is an exercise in what is achieved when a person yells a view and then leaves, after which someone with an opposing perspective does the same” states the college president, “The speakers do not grow as a result of the experience, and the audience has no opportunity to probe the opposing points of view.”
Harris also insists that he is a supporter of free speech, but just not when it comes to college campuses. On campuses, Harris says, “we must strive for something more than free speech.”
“It is not enough for individuals to speak freely,” continues Harris, adding that college students are already having more constructive and diverse interactions than “most adults,” claiming, “college campuses and social networks tend to be more diverse than ‘real world’ neighborhoods and social clubs.”
One could argue, however, that younger generations today seem to be less tolerant of everything from intellectually diverse conversations, to even lighthearted comedy skits.
Last week, for example, students at Texas State University demanded censorship of the school’s Turning Point USA student group, a conservative club on campus that some students say need to be banned in the name of “free speech.” The school’s student government plans to vote on a resolution regarding the matter on Monday.
Moreover, students at Columbia University kicked Saturday Night Live comedian Nimesh Patel out of their own event where they had invited him to perform last December, claiming that his jokes were “offensive.”
