Politics

Baltimore has the highest murder rate in the country, so one would imagine the state’s legislators would be seeking ways to get tough on violent criminals and safeguard the city’s residents. Instead, nine members of the Maryland House of Delegates, all Democrats, have co-sponsored a bill designed to benefit young killers. The deceptively named Youth Accountability and Safety Act (HB 1180) prevents prosecutors in the state from charging anyone under the age of twenty-five with first-degree murder.   Under Maryland law, first-degree murder includes premeditated murder, along with various other types of murders, including those committed while perpetrating arson, rape, burglary, carjacking, kidnapping, escape from a correctional facility, sexual offenses and others.

South Carolina Tim Scott is set to announce his bid for the presidency as soon as this week, Cockburn has heard from three sources. Scott has been doing the pre-announcement ritual of touring early voting states such as Iowa and New Hampshire — as well as his home state of South Carolina. Per one of Cockburn's sources, Scott will announce at an event in South Carolina. No surprises there. Scott is set to throw his hat in the ring after former president Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, and as Florida governor Ron DeSantis, thought to be the party’s top alternative to Trump, falters in the polls. DeSantis himself is also yet to announce.

A few weeks before Easter, a staffer for Republican senator Rand Paul was randomly and brutally attacked in downtown Washington, DC. The staffer, Phillip Todd, was leaving dinner with his friend when an assailant stabbed him four times in the abdomen, skull, brain and lungs. He suffered a punctured lung and potential brain bleeding. Todd was rushed to hospital, where he was operated on and ultimately survived the attack.   The man who stabbed Todd is a forty-two-year-old named Glynn Neal. Like many of DC’s violent criminals, Neal has a lengthy rap sheet. Virginians for Safe Communities, a nonprofit organization, detailed the man’s long history of criminal behavior.

North Carolina sparked some hope for the GOP future this week, after the “historic” defection of a longtime Democratic legislator handed Republicans a veto-proof supermajority in the state’s House of Representatives. State representative Tricia Cotham, a moderate now-former Democrat, was joined at a press conference by her new colleagues in the state House’s Republican conference and US House representative Dan Bishop, who was on crutches after injuring himself playing pickleball. “I didn’t care if I had to have the leg amputated, I was going to be standing next to Tricia,” he told me.

Could abortion be a vote-winner for Democrats nationally? Former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is concerned for the future of the GOP. Walker is an authority here: he’s one of the few elected officials to have ever won three elections in four years, after Democrats mounted a boneheaded attempt to recall him from office back in 2012. What worries Walker now, per comments he made to Fox News Thursday, is the result of this week’s election for his own state’s Supreme Court that saw liberals secure a judicial majority for the first time since 2008. That election centered largely on abortion — the soon-to-be justice who won, Janet Protasiewicz, made very clear that she was pro-choice.

From top to bottom, the Chicago Teachers Union — one of the shadiest unions in America — now runs the Windy City. Brandon Johnson will succeed scandal-plagued Mayor Lori Lightfoot and hand his former colleagues in CTU the keys to the city. Johnson made hundreds of thousands of dollars as a CTU executive, while failing to pay thousands of dollars to Chicago in fees in water and sewage bills. When all is said and done, Johnson will have defeated his fellow Democrat Paul Vallas in the runoff by about 4 percent. In contrast with Johnson’s platitude-heavy offering, Vallas ran a campaign laser-focused on crime, pledging to boost the city’s police force numbers at a time when crime is surging once again in America’s third largest city.

Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg officially indicted Donald Trump on April 4 on thirty-four counts of “falsifying business records in the first degree... with the intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof.” This makes Trump the first president in US history to be indicted on a criminal charge. Not willing to let any opportunity — however ignominious — go to waste, Trump is already selling t-shirts on his website featuring a digitally-created mugshot with the words “Not Guilty” emblazoned below and the prisoner code "45-47" (get it?). The former president was not required to take an actual mugshot by Bragg's office.

The 2024 presidential election is heating up and with it comes the typical scramble of political consultants trying to hitch wagons to the winning campaign. The hottest gossip right now surrounds the Never Back Down PAC, which will support Florida governor Ron DeSantis in the event of a presidential run and has recently gobbled up some prominent Trump 2020 alumni. One of the key players in any Republican election is Jeff Roe, the head of Axiom Strategies and a top consultant to Senator Ted Cruz during the 2016 election. Axiom, which is one of the three major GOP consulting firms alongside Majority Strategies and Arena, played a major role in Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin's upset over Terry McAuliffe in 2021.

On the day after District Attorney, Alvin Bragg confirmed that a grand jury had indicted former president, Donald Trump, his office’s general counsel made a bizarre request of three House Republican committee chairmen. In a letter to Representatives Jim Jordan, Bryan Steil and James Comer, Leslie Dubeck asked the lawmakers to denounce Trump’s “harsh invective” against Bragg. Trump had warned that his indictment or arrest might unleash “death and destruction.” On social media, Trump’s supporters have vilified Bragg. “As committee chairmen,” Dubeck suggests, “you could use the stature of your office to denounce these attacks and urge respect for the fairness of our justice system and for the work of the impartial grand jury.

Both legal lions and laymen can be excused for having doubts about the first indictment of a former president, as we toggle back and forth between the historical significance and the lurid facts involved. As Florida governor Ron DeSantis put it: “Look, I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair.”   Charges that Donald Trump falsified internal business records in covering up $130,000 in payments to “actress” Stormy Daniels aren’t what people will focus on. This case is headed for the cable TV shows long before it sees the inside of a courtroom. The Trump indictment certainly adds an extra coating of sleaze to The Donald’s image.