Tag: democrats

House Democrats Pass Police Funding Bills Amid Crime Crisis

House Democrats passed a package of bills on Thursday aimed at bolstering police funding and public safety after Republican lawmakers accused them of being soft on crime amid a surge in violent crime across the United States.

Lawmakers voted to pass four bills as part of the package: the Mental Health Justice Act of 2022, the Invest to Protect Act of 2022, the Break the Cycle of Violence Act, and the VICTIM Act of 2022.

The Mental Health Justice Act of 2022, sponsored by Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), creates a grant program for states and local governments to train and dispatch mental health professionals to respond to emergencies involving behavioral health, as opposed to police.

Elsewhere, the Invest to Protect Act of 2022, sponsored by moderate Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), raises funding for smaller police departments that employ fewer than 200 law enforcement officers.

The Break the Cycle of Violence Act, sponsored by Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), provides grants to fund community violence intervention initiatives in areas with higher rates of homicides and community violence.

Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), who introduced the VICTIM Act, called its passing a “major win for America’s public safety,” and said it passed the U.S. House with support from Democrats and Republicans.

The bill provides funding to local police departments to hire victim support personnel along with investigators to aid in solving unsolved homicides and violent crimes.

Specifically, the legislation would “establish a Department of Justice grant program to hire, train, and retain detectives and victim services personnel to investigate shootings and support victims,” Demings said in a statement.

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Dems Plan Resolution To Keep Explicit Books In Schools

House and Senate Democrats have begun to prepare a resolution aimed at blocking local “book bans” by parents who believe gender identity, social agendas and explicit sexual content should be removed from a child’s education, Politico reported Thursday.

The resolution, concerned about the spread of book banning, “reaffirms the United States’ commitment to supporting writers’ freedom of expression, and the freedom of all Americans to read books without government censorship,” according to Politico. Erika Sanzi, director of outreach for Parents Defending Education (PDE), told the Daily Caller News Foundation that PDE does not support book bans, yet believes explicit content is inappropriate in K-12 settings.

“Parents Defending Education has never supported book bans. The fact that most school libraries don’t stock ‘Art of the Deal’ does not mean the book is banned and the same goes for a book with sexually explicit illustrations and content deemed to be inappropriate in a K-12 setting,” Sanzi said.

The draft resolution references a 1982 Supreme Court decision, Board of Education v. Pico, which established a precedent that blocked schools from removing books from high school and junior high libraries in a “narrowly partisan or political manner,” according to Politico.

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Lawmakers push for DOD to allow recruits with HIV to join the military

A group of Democratic lawmakers is pushing the White House to allow HIV-positive individuals to enlist in the military, saying current rules ignore the latest advancements in health care for those living with the virus.

“The current policy banning these individuals from enlisting or joining a commissioning program is outdated and without merit, and does not reflect the military’s commitment to equality, diversity, and the inclusion of all races, ethnicities, religions, and sexual orientations in service,” a group of six Democratic senators and 34 House Democrats wrote in a letter Wednesday.

“Anyone who is qualified and has a desire to serve their country should be allowed to do so, and we remain optimistic the administration will heed this important call.”

The move comes three months after the Defense Department updated its policies pertaining to HIV-positive service members, allowing them to stay in uniform and remain deployable provided they have no detectable viral load.

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Democrat Slams GOP for Posting ‘Child Pornography,’ Then People Remind Him Where It Came From

Democrats appeared horrified in response to a Nebraska Republican Party Twitter account posting explicit cartoon-style images of what appears to be young adults (if not underage children) committing sex acts.

“We apologize for the graphic nature of this tweet. We support Republican values/candidates to protect children, their education and parental rights. The tweet showcases the hard facts of what materials and books are in Nebraska Schools, due to Democratic policies and agendas,” the Nebraska GOP wrote in the since-deleted tweet.

One Nebraska Democrat in particular, former chair of the Nebraska Democratic party Vince Powers, was especially put off by the images.

Sadly for Powers, he failed to realize these are the very same images his colleagues in the Democratic Party have been fighting to keep in school libraries for months on end now.

“[The Nebraska Republican Party] has posted child pornography on Twitter . I won’t retweet it. It’s disgusting.@RepDonBacon @Flood4Nebraska @SenatorFischer and Jim Pillen need to condemn this sick public tweet immediately or otherwise it will be fair to say each is ok with child pornography,” Powers wrote regarding the since-deleted tweet, according to Not the Bee.

As it turns out, the disgusting, explicit pictures shared by the GOP account were from a book called “Gender Queer: A Memoir.” Powers’s allies in the Democratic Party have been fighting to make that book available to underage school children for months.

“Gender Queer” and other books depicting transgender individuals committing sex acts have appeared in schools in Virginia, Rhode Island, Florida, Ohio and North Carolina, according to an October 2021 report from The Western Journal.

The Western Journal’s report found one potential reason for the book’s wide dissemination: Two prominent national school library organizations have promoted the book as essential reading material for minors.

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Nate Silver: ‘Liberal elites’ pressured Pfizer to delay vaccine until after 2020 election

Nate Silver claimed “liberal public health elites” pressured Pfizer to delay fast-track approval of its COVID-19 vaccine until after the 2020 presidential election — thus denying then-President Donald Trump a political win before voters headed to the polls.

The number-crunching data journalist reacted to an article by Politico that cited a House report that claimed the Trump administration sought to expedite approvals for both vaccines and “unproven treatments” for COVID-19.

“‘Trump pushed for vaccine approvals too fast’ is the worst possible critique of the Trump administration’s COVID policy,” Silver, founder of the Disney-owned FiveThirtyEight political news and analysis website, tweeted.

“That probably saved a lot of lives. If anything approval should have been faster.”

In a subsequent tweet, Silver wrote that “liberal public health elites” pushed Pfizer to “change its original protocols” that govern its authorization of vaccines so that the decision would be put off until after Election Day two years ago.

Silver noted that Pfizer’s decision “had the convenient side-effect of delaying any vaccine announcement until after the election” and that the story “deserves more scrutiny.”

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Pelosi-Linked Lobbyists Are Pushing China’s Social Credit System For American Citizens.

Among the firm’s consultants working for Ant Group is Larry O’Brien, who has been described by the Washington Post as a “major Democratic operative.”

“Mr. O’Brien has been a long-standing participant in the House Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s (DCCC) maximum level individual donor program, the Speaker’s Cabinet, and in the “Pelosi Team 100” program.  Over a period of two decades, Mr. O’Brien has had an extensive degree of involvement and interaction with the House Democratic leadership, with myriad Democratic members across a wide array of House committees and with the leadership of the DCCC,” explains his professional bio.

He has also worked “at the most elevated participation level with the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC),” charging its “premier individual donor group, the Legacy Circle, since the inception of the program in 2006.”

“He was designated a “Lifetime Member” of the Legacy Circle in 2014. In addition, he is the recipient of what the DSCC describes as one of the highest honors it can bestow, an award of lifetime membership in its “Majority Trust” program. In the award letter to Mr. O’Brien, Senator Schumer, then Chair of the DSCC, stated, “I can’t think of a more qualified Democrat to receive this honor,” his bio continues.

Another Ant Group lobbyist on behalf of the OB-C Group, Thomas J. Keating, served in the House of Representatives in the Office of Sergeant at Arms for over 13 years, with his most recent role as Director of Police Services.

Several other establishment D.C. figures – including advisors to the campaigns of George H.W. Bush and Mitt Romney – are also working on behalf of Ant Group according to the OB-C Group’s lobbying registration. For three months of work, the firm received a retainer of $60,000.

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Congressional staffer spent his off-hours pretending to be an FBI agent

This story from the Daily Beast about a congressional staffer impersonating an FBI agent is just crazy. In 2020 a couple of Secret Service agents in Washington, DC noticed what appeared to be an unmarked police car but something about the license plate looked off. It turned out it wasn’t a real undercover police car, it had just been made to look that way by a congressional staffer named Sterling Carter:

According to D.C. court documents, Carter had tricked out the otherwise boring sedan with blue emergency lights, a laptop computer mount on the front dashboard, a spotlight near the driver’s side view mirror, and even a barrier separating the front half from the back half—ready to transport detainees.

Carter, who was standing near his parked car, was wearing a black T-shirt that read “federal agent,” a police duty belt, a Glock pistol, extra ammunition, handcuffs, a radio, and an earpiece. That was enough to convince passersby, who kept thanking him for his service, according to court records.

The two Secret Service agents tried to get closer but Carter seemed to be trying to avoid them. When they ran the license plate for his car, it came up blank. At that point they called a Joint Operations Center and uniformed Secret Service agents on bicycles were sent to confront Carter.

When five bicycle cops with the Secret Service approached him, Carter simply said he was “FBI,” according to a police report. His baseball cap and facemask made it difficult to identify his face, the police report said. When they asked him for credentials, he said he didn’t have them on him, then flipped on his emergency lights and sped away. One agent pedaled as hard as he could on an electric bike through several D.C. streets, but gave up after a few blocks for “officer safety reasons,” the report says.

An investigation was opened involving the Capitol Police, the Secret Service and the FBI. One Secret Service agent recognized the shirt the suspect was wearing and traced it back to a single shop in Florida. After receiving a list of everyone who’d bought that particular shirt, he narrowed it down to one person who lived in the DC area and matched the description of the suspect: Sterling Carter. Several weeks later, the investigators learned that Carter was a congressional staffer who worked for Rep. Brad Schneider, a Democrat from Illinois.

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Dems Poised To Make IRS Larger Than Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol Combined

If Democrats have their way, one of the most detested federal agencies—the Internal Revenue Service—will employ more bureaucrats than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined.

Under the Inflation Reduction Act negotiated by Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), the agency would receive $80 billion in funding to hire as many as 87,000 additional employees. The increase would more than double the size of the IRS workforce, which currently has 78,661 full-time staffers, according to federal data.

The additional IRS funding is integral to the Democrats’ reconciliation package. A Congressional Budget Office analysis found the hiring of new IRS agents would result in more than $200 billion in additional revenue for the federal government over the next decade. More than half of that funding is specifically earmarked for “enforcement,” meaning tax audits and other responsibilities such as “digital asset monitoring.”

That would make the IRS one of the largest federal agencies. The Pentagon houses roughly 27,000 employees, according to the Defense Department, while a human resources fact sheet says the State Department employs just over 77,243 staff. The FBI employs approximately 35,000 people, according to the agency’s website, and Customs and Border Protection says it employs 19,536 Border Patrol agents.

The money allocated to the IRS would increase the agency’s budget by more than 600 percent. In 2021, the IRS received $12.6 billion.

Although Democrats say the hiring of additional IRS agents will help root out tax cheats and other criminals, federal tax revenues have steadily risen over the past several decades. Federal tax receipts are projected to hit $5.7 trillion in 2027, up from just over $4 trillion last year without additional IRS agents.

But the roughly $450 billion in new spending proposed by Democrats requires new funding mechanisms. Some of the new spending includes $161 billion for clean electricity tax credits and $64 billion in new Affordable Care Act subsidies.

The majority of new revenue from IRS audits and scrutiny will come from those making less than $200,000 a year, according to a study from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. The committee found that just 4 to 9 percent of money raised will come from those making more than $500,000, contrary to Democrats’ claims that new IRS agents are necessary to target millionaires and billionaires who hide income.

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