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Daily Caller

Why Are The Nutjobs Trying To Kill Political Opponents All Left-Wingers?

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

 

By Josh Hammer

In Aug. 2012, a left-wing MSNBC aficionado named Floyd Lee Corkins armed himself with a handgun and extra magazines. He drove to the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the socially conservative Family Research Council, planning to shoot it up.

Corkins, who later cited the Southern Poverty Law Center for the proposition that the FRC is an “anti-gay” organization, was also carrying 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches, which he hoped to stuff in his dead victims’ mouths. Corkins, who served as a volunteer at a local LGBT community center, was stopped by an unarmed security guard.

In June 2017, a left-wing MSNBC aficionado named James Hodgkinson armed himself with a rifle and handgun. He drove to Alexandria, Virginia, in hopes of assassinating the Republican team practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game. He severely wounded then-House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who thankfully survived after receiving multiple blood transfusions and surgeries. Five others were also injured. Hodgkinson was a 2016 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign volunteer who, in a Facebook post three weeks before the shooting, wrote: “Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.”

In June 2022, a young Californian named Nicholas Roske flew to the nation’s capital. Roske attained a handgun, zip ties, a tactical knife, a hammer, a screwdriver, a crowbar, duct tape and other burglary tools. At 1:38 a.m. local time, about a half hour after a taxi dropped him off in front of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Chevy Chase, Maryland, home, Roske had second thoughts and called 911. After his arrest, Roske told police he was angered by the leaked draft opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization abortion case. Roske had written in a private chat: “Im gonna stop roe v wade from being overturned.”

In March 2023, Audrey “Aiden” Hale, a transgender individual, slaughtered three children and three adults at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. A former pupil at the Christian school, Hale took precious time during the rampage to divert and unload seven rounds into a stained-glass depiction of the biblical character Adam in a church next door. As this column asked last year: Why, exactly, would a transgender former student of a Christian school return to that school to murder innocent Christian children and shoot up a stained-glass representation of no less symbolic a biblical figure than Adam? We don’t necessarily need Sherlock Holmes to figure this one out. Leaked excerpts of the murderer’s manifesto corroborate Hale’s sinister, anti-Christian motive.

Last Sunday, former President Donald Trump survived an attempted assassination for the second time in a span of roughly two months. The first would-be assassin, the mysterious Thomas Crooks, donated $15 to ActBlue, the well-known Democratic fundraising platform. The second would-be assassin, the considerably less mysterious Ryan Routh, has a prolific public record. Routh, a convicted felon and supporter of Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, had an over-the-top, creepy obsession with Ukraine — one of the defining causes of the contemporary Left. Routh’s social media accounts were rife with de rigueur left-wing platitudes about the alleged unprecedented threat posed by Trump to America’s democracy and constitutional order.

Murderous political violence in the United States today is not an all-of-the-above phenomenon. Yes, such violence must be condemned by all responsible political and civic actors, as we inch ever closer to an irrecoverable national abyss. But MSNBC’s daily on-air histrionics to the contrary notwithstanding, all sides are not equally culpable for the terrible situation America finds itself in today.

Trump may not always be the most circumspect rhetorician, but he has never actively called for his supporters to physically assault their political opponents — including on Jan. 6, when he called for his throng of supporters gathered at the Ellipse to “peacefully and patriotically” demonstrate at the Capitol. The same cannot be said for Trump’s opposition, such as when Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) said earlier this year on MSNBC that Trump is “unfit,” “destructive to our democracy,” and “has to be eliminated.” According to a poll released on Wednesday, a whopping 28% of Democrats said America would be better off if Trump were assassinated — and another 24% of Democrats confessed uncertainty.

This is unconscionable.

The left has had a violent streak going back at least as far as Karl Marx’s calls for a global revolution of the proletariat — and the French Revolution even before that. And in today’s post-truth world, an expedient narrative often trumps cold facts. But Trump is not a “fascist” or “dictator.” On the contrary, Trump’s first term was, if anything, marred by excessive deference and an unwillingness to fire insubordinate bureaucrats.

If MSNBC talking heads and their left-wing confreres fail to tone down the rhetoric, reasonable observers will conclude they agree with the 28% of Democrats who want Trump dead.

To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan Ramp Up Pressure On Google Parent Company To Deal With ‘Censorship’

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Andi Shae Napier

Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan are turning their attention to Google over concerns that the tech giant is censoring users and infringing on Americans’ free speech rights.

Google’s parent company Alphabet, which also owns YouTube, appears to be the GOP’s next Big Tech target. Lawmakers seem to be turning their attention to Alphabet after Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta ended its controversial fact-checking program in favor of a Community Notes system similar to the one used by Elon Musk’s X.

Cruz recently informed reporters of his and fellow senators’ plans to protect free speech. 

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“Stopping online censorship is a major priority for the Commerce Committee,” Cruz said, as reported by Politico. “And we are going to utilize every point of leverage we have to protect free speech online.”

Following his meeting with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai last month, Cruz told the outlet, “Big Tech censorship was the single most important topic.”

Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent subpoenas to Alphabet and other tech giants such as RumbleTikTok and Apple in February regarding “compliance with foreign censorship laws, regulations, judicial orders, or other government-initiated efforts” with the intent to discover how foreign governments, or the Biden administration, have limited Americans’ access to free speech.

“Throughout the previous Congress, the Committee expressed concern over YouTube’s censorship of conservatives and political speech,” Jordan wrote in a letter to Pichai in March. “To develop effective legislation, such as the possible enactment of new statutory limits on the executive branch’s ability to work with Big Tech to restrict the circulation of content and deplatform users, the Committee must first understand how and to what extent the executive branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech.”

Jordan subpoenaed tech CEOs in 2023 as well, including Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Tim Cook of Apple and Pichai, among others.

Despite the recent action against the tech giant, the battle stretches back to President Donald Trump’s first administration. Cruz began his investigation of Google in 2019 when he questioned Karan Bhatia, the company’s Vice President for Government Affairs & Public Policy at the time, in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Cruz brought forth a presentation suggesting tech companies, including Google, were straying from free speech and leaning towards censorship.

Even during Congress’ recess, pressure on Google continues to mount as a federal court ruled Thursday that Google’s ad-tech unit violates U.S. antitrust laws and creates an illegal monopoly. This marks the second antitrust ruling against the tech giant as a different court ruled in 2024 that Google abused its dominance of the online search market.

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Daily Caller EXCLUSIVE: Trump’s Broad Ban On Risky Gain-Of-Function Research Nears Completion

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Emily Kopp

President Donald Trump could sign a sweeping executive order banning gain-of-function research — research that makes viruses more dangerous in the lab — as soon as May 6, according to a source who has worked with the National Security Council on the issue.

The executive order will take a broad strokes approach, banning research amplifying the infectivity or pathogenicity of any virulent and replicable pathogen, according to the source, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the anticipated executive action. But significant unresolved issues remain, according to the source, including whether violators will be subject to criminal penalties as bioweaponeers.

The executive order is being steered by Gerald Parker, head of the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, which has been incorporated into the NSC. Parker did not respond to requests for comment.

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In the process of drafting the executive order, Parker has frozen out the federal agencies that have for years championed gain-of-function research and staved off regulation — chiefly Anthony Fauci’s former institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.

The latest policy guidance on gain-of-function research, unveiled under the Biden administration in 2024, was previously expected to go into effect May 6. According to a March 25 letter cosigned by the American Society for Microbiology, the Association for Biosafety and Biosecurity International, and Council on Governmental Relations, organizations that conduct pathogen research have not received direction from the NIH on that guidance — suggesting the executive order would supersede the May 6 deadline.

The 2024 guidance altered the scope of experiments subject to more rigorous review, but charged researchers, universities and funding agencies like NIH with its implementation, which critics say disincentivizes reporting. Many scientists say that researchers and NIH should not be the primary entities conducting cost–benefit analyses of pandemic virus studies. 

Parker previously served as the head of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), a group of outside experts that advises NIH on biosecurity matters, and in that role recommended that Congress stand up a new government agency to advise on gain-of-function research. Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield has also endorsed moving gain-of-function research decision making out of the NIH to an independent commission.

“Given the well documented lapses in the NIH review process, policymakers should … remove final approval of any gain-of function research grants from NIH,” Redfield said in a February op-ed.

It remains to be seen whether the executive order will articulate carveouts for gain-of-function research without risks of harm such as research on non-replicative pseudoviruses, which can be used to study viral evolution without generating pandemic viruses.

It also remains to be seen whether the executive order will define “gain-of-function research” tightly enough to stand up to legal scrutiny should a violator be charged with a crime.

Risky research on coronaviruses funded by the NIH at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through the U.S. nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance typifies the loopholes in NIH’s existing regulatory framework, some biosecurity experts say.

Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act in 2023 indicated that EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak submitted a proposal to the Pentagon in 2018 called “DEFUSE” describing gain-of-function experiments on viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 but downplayed to his intended funder the fact that many of the tests would occur in Wuhan, China.

Daszak and EcoHealth were both debarred from federal funding in January 2025 but have faced no criminal charges.

“I don’t know that criminal penalties are necessary. But we do need more sticks in biosafety as well as carrots,” said a biosecurity expert who requested anonymity to avoid retribution from his employer for weighing in on the expected policy. “For instance, biosafety should be a part of tenure review and whether you get funding for future work.”

Some experts say that it is likely that the COVID-19 crisis was a lab-generated pandemic, and that without major policy changes it might not be the last one.

“Gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens caused the COVID-19 pandemic, killing 20 million and costing $25 trillion,” said Richard Ebright, a Rutgers University microbiologist and longtime critic of high-risk virology, to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “If not stopped, gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens likely will cause future lab-generated pandemics.”

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