More Minnesota Riots, A Disturbing Disconnect, Storm Clouds On The Horizon, The War On Cops, The Left's Toxic Atmosphere, The Vultures Circle

by Gary Bauer: The War On Cops
There was rioting in the Minneapolis suburbs and in other cities across the country last night. The violence was triggered after Officer Kim Potter, a 26-year law enforcement veteran, shot a young black man during a traffic stop over the weekend.

Authorities in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, say she meant to use her Taser, but accidentally pulled her firearm. You may have seen video of that incident by now. But there are other videos you haven't seen.

Like the video of Officer Eric Talley rushing into a Boulder, Colorado, grocery store to stop a mass murderer who killed ten people. Officer Talley died in the line of duty.

You haven't seen the video of the Capitol Hill police officers who were intentionally driven into by a radical black Muslim. Officer William Evans was crushed to death.

You didn't see the video of a Long Island police officer who was attacked with a knife at a traffic stop Saturday night. Or the video of the two Utah deputies who were both shot in the face that same day.

You didn't see the video of Monday's gun battle that lasted over an hour and stretched for miles in western Georgia. Before it was over, three police officers were shot.

You didn't see the video of the police officer who was shot yesterday at a Tennessee high school while engaging an armed student.

The media deliberately focus on the relatively rare examples of police mistakes, making it look like there is a war on minorities. But there is in fact a war on police. Remember the left-wing demands to "defund the police"? They haven't stopped.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib says the solution to what happened in Brooklyn Center this weekend is no more policing and no more incarceration. That's insane! Several cities tried slashing their police budgets, and it backfired. Crime is surging. (Here, here, here, and here.)

All over the country, police departments are reporting mass retirements. So consider this: How much would you have to be paid to do the job that police officers do every day? What would the country look like if Rashida Tlaib gets her way and we wake up one more morning to find there are no police?

The Left's Toxic Atmosphere
We can have a debate on reforming law enforcement, but it's extremely difficult in the toxic atmosphere that the left has created. Case in point: Curt Boganey, the city manager of Brooklyn Center, was abruptly fired last night. His offense? He supported due process for Officer Kim Potter.

During a press conference yesterday, Mayor Mike Elliott made it clear that he wanted Officer Potter fired. Asked for his thoughts, Boganey said, "All employees working for the city of Brooklyn Center are entitled to due process with respect to discipline."

That's it. But by 6:30 last night, Boganey was out of a job. The mayor and the city council fired him.

When did supporting the right of due process become controversial or cause for termination?

The fact of the matter is that Boganey was sacrificed to the mob. At least one council member told local reporters that she "voted to fire Boganey out of fear of potential reprisals from protestors if she did not." Council member Kris Lawrence-Anderson added, "He was doing a great job. I respect him dearly."

But apparently just not enough to respect his right to free speech and due process!

Meanwhile, there is a steady drum beat from the political left insisting that the biggest threat young black men face is being shot by police officers. No it isn't.

According to a study by the University of Michigan, the main causes of death for young black men are in order: Accidental death, suicides, homicides, heart disease and cancer. As this editorial explains, crime, not the police, is the major threat plaguing the black community.

But woke Hollywood stars, who sit in their gated communities, wag their fingers at law enforcement and tweet their disdain for the men and women who protect us all. And left-wing politicians denounce the criminal justice system as systemically racist, while also suggesting that we abolish the police and our right to self-defense.

The Vultures Circle
While Biden and the left continue their race-baiting policies that daily increase divisions in our country, America's enemies are circling like vultures. From Beijing to Moscow to Tehran, tyrants smell weakness in Washington, D.C.

President Xi of communist China demonstrated his disdain for Biden by sending 25 warplanes into Taiwan's air defense zone, the largest incursion yet. The "probe" included 18 fighter jets, four bombers and a couple of anti-submarine aircraft. If China reabsorbs Taiwan, the U.S. is done in the Pacific.

Is it a coincidence that at the same time Russia's Vladimir Putin is massing tens of thousands of troops on the border with Ukraine? Russia hasn't moved this many troops into position since 2014, when Obama/Biden were running the show. Apparently, Biden/Harris doesn't scare them either.

Meanwhile, at the Pentagon, Biden's appointees are monitoring the social media posts of U.S. military personnel to see if any of our brave men and women in uniform are "too right-wing." Other senior officers have been assigned the task of integrating transgendered personnel into the ranks.

So while America's serious adversaries prepare for war, our military leadership is busy trying to please America's "woke" leftists who hate the military.

This won't end well.

Fauci's Follies
Dr. Anthony Fauci needs to stop doing interviews. He's rapidly losing all credibility. He has frequently been wrong and flip-flopped a lot. Whether he realizes it or not, he is now undermining the whole reason people get vaccinated in the first place.

For example, last month Fauci was warning about a fourth COVID surge. Two weeks later, he was downplaying the risks of a fourth surge due to the success of the vaccination campaigns.

But while speaking on MSNBC this weekend, Fauci suggested that vaccinated people should avoid eating at indoor restaurants, and he was still urging extreme caution for those who have been vaccinated. If that's the case, what's the point of the vaccination?

It's absolutely clear that the impact of his remarks on the already decimated restaurant industry, and those who supply it, never crossed his mind.

Well, that was Sunday. Yesterday, Dr. Fauci was doing damage control.

Speaking with Wolf Blitzer on CNN, Fauci was a bit more balanced, saying that the risks for fully vaccinated people were "very low," and that eating indoors ultimately was a personal decision based on the level of risk someone is willing to take.

Once again, Fauci is proving why public health advice should be only one of the factors that a president and public officials take into consideration.

By the way, what about that fourth surge? Well, according to the latest CDC data, the seven-day average of cases ending April 11th was 67,653. That's up about 27% from a month ago. But it's still down more than 70% from the January peak just three months ago.

So, why is all the news focusing on another surge? The real story should be the massive decline in cases.

Liberal Lies
A central element of the left's strategy seems to be lying to the American people. I don't mean run-of-the-mill exaggerations, which all politicians do. I'm talking about fundamental lies about our country. The media almost never call out these lies, which are often intended to stoke racial tensions.

For example:

• After losing in 2016, the left lied when it claimed that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election.
• Liberals lied after the 2017 Charlottesville riot when they falsely said Trump had praised neo-Nazis as "very fine people." He did not say that. Trump condemned them. But Biden and others repeated that lie throughout the entire campaign last year.
• Vice President Harris has compared the brave men and women who protect our border and enforce our immigration laws to the KKK. That's a really ugly lie. The Klan hung black Americans from trees. Border Patrol and ICE agents protect people of all races.
• More recently, they have lied about Georgia's election reform law. They are telling minorities that the law is meant to keep them from voting. That's a raw race-baiting lie. The law expands voting opportunities.
• Leftists are lying about science. They say an unborn baby is not really a human being. They say a man can be trapped inside a woman's body and vice versa. No science supports that.
• They're lying about gun laws. (Here and here.)
• They're lying about systemic racism and hate crimes.

Now consider this: The same leftists who are regularly lying to us control virtually every major American city. Yet we're supposed to believe they are telling the truth when they say there was no cheating on Election Day.

Biden's Court Packing Scheme
As we reported Friday, President Biden has signed an order creating a commission to study changing the composition of the Supreme Court. The number of justices on the high court has changed occasionally during our history, but it has been fixed at nine since 1869.

After a series of setbacks on his New Deal legislation, President Franklin Roosevelt attempted to pack the court with six new liberal justices sympathetic to his agenda. But the heavy-handed attempt by the executive branch of government to control the judicial branch backfired spectacularly. So much so that no president has ever tried it again.

At various points in his career, Joe Biden has condemned court packing. He called Roosevelt's effort a "boneheaded idea," a "terrible, terrible mistake" that "put in question" the Supreme Court's independence.

That was then. This is now.

Polling shows that the American people are overwhelmingly opposed (here and here) to packing the courts. But the "nice guy" who insisted that he just wants to unite the country is now attempting to secure iron-clad control over all three branches of government. The left is trying to gut all the checks and balances that the founders gave us.

• After Hillary Clinton lost, the left insisted that we abolish the Electoral College.
• The left wants to change the Senate rules to abolish the filibuster so it can pass whatever it wants.
• Now the left wants to change the number of justices on the Supreme Court because it's frustrated that Donald Trump was able to appointment three new justices.

By the way, the same week Biden created this commission, he attacked the Second Amendment and made the troubling statement that "no constitutional amendment is absolute."

So, it's not surprising that he's asking a stacked commission to look into whether the number of liberal justices should be increased and whether the justices should be subject to term limits, something Biden and the left have opposed applying to members of Congress.

In related news, the Supreme Court ruled 5-to-4 Friday night to overturn California's pandemic restrictions on home churches and Bible studies. That may sound like good news, but Chief Justice John Roberts once again joined the court's liberals in voting to restrict religious freedom.

In other words, we just learned that we have only a one-vote margin on the critically important issue of religious liberty.

Never Trumpers Gave Us The Biden Nightmare
Many Never Trumpers insist that people who served in the Trump Administration, including people like me as a Trump-appointee to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Liberty, were complicit in anything untoward that happened during Trump's years in office.

As a result of our "guilt by association," they began compiling an "enemy's list" to make sure that former Trump aides were denied jobs and "held accountable." Well, that goes both ways.

The Never Trumpers, in my view, are complicit in everything that is being done to our values right now. They are complicit in forcing taxpayers to subsidize abortions.

They are complicit in the chaos at the border. They are complicit in the appeasement of Iran.

They are complicit in Biden's efforts to pack the courts. They are complicit in his tax hikes, and the damage he causes to working-class Americans.

The Never Trumpers accepted money from the most vicious leftists in the country to ensure that Trump/Pence lost, and that we must suffer through four years of this disaster we currently have in the White House.

Never Trumpers should never be part of the conservative movement again!

Mansions For Marxists
Black Lives Matter was formed in 2013 and rose to national prominence last year in the wake of George Floyd's death. In 2020, the organization raised at least $90 million from woke celebrities and corporations, as well as many well-meaning Americans. Now we know how some of that money has been spent.

It turns out that one of the movement's co-founders, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, went on a home-buying spree. In recent years, she purchased four homes worth on average at least $800,000. Their combined value is well over $3 million.

But that's not all. She and her husband also flew to the Albany, an "ultra-exclusive resort" in the Bahamas, to inquire about another property. It's not known whether they purchased anything, but one resort worker said, "People who buy at the Albany are buying their fourth or fifth home. This is not a second-home residence. It's extremely high-end."

Khan-Cullors's real estate collection is ironic given that she is a self-described Marxist. I wonder if she was getting real estate advice from Bernie Sanders? Needless to say, other BLM activists are demanding a thorough investigation of the movement's finances.

Khan-Cullors is merely following in the footsteps of the historic Marxists she so admires. Castro, Mao and the Soviet commissars always found a way to live the "the good life."

Ad Wars & Our Future
Watch this recruitment ad for communist China's People's Liberation Army. It's tough. It's action-packed. It appeals to masculinity, strength and love of country.

Now watch this ad from the U.S. Army. It's focused on confronting racial division, and creating "an environment in which people feel comfortable expressing their grievances."

One of these ads projects confidence and the will to achieve victory, while the other reflects a nation consumed by self-doubt.

Don't get me wrong, friends. The American military has a long and proud history of racial integration. But at the end of the day, the military has one purpose – to win America's wars, not to satisfy Nancy Pelosi, the New York Times and the members of the Berkeley faculty lounge.
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Gary Bauer (@GaryLBauer)  is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families 1 and Campaign for Working Families 2

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