Since the 2020 election, the left has been accusing conservatives of spreading the “Big Lie”—a label attached to anyone who believes that voter fraud does occur and that there are legitimate election integrity reforms that require legislative attention. Every reform that lawmakers have introduced has been labelled “Jim Crow 2.0,” and the left has rallied hundreds of organizations to prevent them from becoming law.
Yet while decrying legitimate election reforms from conservatives, liberals have been busy pushing their own election bills, such as HR1, which would have federalized our entire election process and completely changed the way we vote. It was a radical bill that fortunately stalled in the U.S. Senate due to a lack of votes.
But their defeat in Washington hasn’t stopped the left in their quest to undermine the security of our elections and chill our speech rights. A coalition of liberal organizations have decided to bring HR1 to Arizona with a new ballot measure called “Arizonans for Free and Fair Elections.” Suffice to say, there is nothing free or fair about it…
I am heartbroken over the evil that has overcome Uvalde, Texas. And I, as a mom and a grandma who has grandchildren in the Litchfield Elementary School District, am outraged that our system has continued to fail us. Over the last twenty years, we’ve taught kids to hide, protect, and wait for help. More must be done.
Gun-free zones are dangerous, and it is time to protect schools like we protect airports, hospitals, courthouses, and banks and we must stop threats with equal or greater force. I support the Second Amendment and believe that education is the key to gun safety, not legislation. In an era of increased crime, reduced funding for police, and long response times – I must be my own first responder to protect myself, my family, and my community, which is why I carry a firearm. The evil in Uvalde was not caused by a gun, it was caused by a broken system that continues to push paper, policies, and legislation versus solving the root issue. We must heal the pain in our communities, strengthen families, and improve economic opportunities. Most importantly, it is TIME to fund meaningful programs that address mental health, safety, and firearm awareness and training.
Cheryl Todd is the Arizona State Director for the DC Project.
The overwhelming majority of people are done with COVID restrictions. Just look at the reaction when mask mandates were put to an end on airplanes last month. Cheering. Celebration. Throwing masks away. There’s nothing surprising about this—unless of course you’re a member of the liberal media.
With a desire to tackle COVID overreach head on, our own state lawmakers got to work last year. And through a series of Budget Reconciliation Bills, they took important steps to protect Arizonans from more COVID mandates.
But then in November, some of the protections were thrown out in court on procedural grounds. Thankfully, the Arizona legislature didn’t ignore the problem and got back to work this year. Now, they have passed several significant bills that are officially signed into law to protect against future COVID and government overreach…
We have been struck by another tragedy this week in Texas. The cries go up, “Something must be done!” And indeed, it must. If we do not take active measures to stop this killing, the momentum will continue. Copycat actors will duplicate previous shootings, as we have seen since Columbine.
While some factions of the country will attempt to advance a political agenda, others will go about securing the most vulnerable places in our society. What if there was a model we could use to end the carnage? There is.
In several school districts across the country, a program called “F.A.S.T.E.R” exists. You can read about it at fastersaveslives.org. It stands for Faculty and Administrator Safety Training and Emergency Response. It is a program, taught by the most highly qualified police officers and trainers to willing and qualified school administrators, staff, and educators, to equip them with the tools and skill set to save lives in the event of an active killer amongst them.
The program teaches only volunteers who are qualified how to neutralize the threat, and then just as importantly, the lifesaving first aid for gunshot trauma and the tourniquets and chest seal patches to get the victims to the ER with a pulse. Did you know that 90% of shooting victims who make it to the ER with a pulse survive?
According to President Biden, “Terrorism from White supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today,” as he put it in an address to Congress. Attorney General Merrick Garland agreed, noting that “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” are the most dangerous element of domestic violence. Garland declared that we must “bring federal resources to bear” and “adopt a broader societal response” to the threat of White supremacy.
But it’s a slur to claim that Americans live in fear from White supremacists like the brownshirts of yore. In reality, White supremacists are a small fringe group of pathetic losers who are despised by all.
Their gatherings often attract more attackers than members. No one raises money for their bail when they get in trouble, like Kamala Harris did for BLM when their “mostly peaceful” protests produced burning buildings and mass looting.
The Leftist media faithfully performs its task of propping up this imaginary threat. Incidents of White-on-Black violence make headline news for days while pundits emphasize the role of systemic hate. Similar incidents with different racial dimensions are often underreported or ignored.
In early May, five outbreaks of violence occurred within a few days. A California Taiwanese church was shot up by a Black man. Another Black man killed workers in a Dallas salon. A White man killed shoppers in a Buffalo grocery store. Pro-life offices were fire-bombed in Wisconsin and Oregon.
President Biden, as usual, only paid attention to the one that fit his White supremacy narrative. He seized upon the Buffalo incident as “proof of the poison with which White supremacy threatens America.” He vowed to not “let hate win.”
Even though the media’s over reporting makes them seem more numerous, incidents like the Buffalo shooting are, statistically, isolated events. But the Buffalo murders don’t even qualify anecdotally as an example of right wing-inspired terror.
C.E. Cupp on CNN explained the horrific incident by noting how “far right-wing media…stir up racial animus, ethnic animus, religious animus…getting people angry and afraid.” Another CNN expert compared Republicans to 1930s fascists and current Islamic dictatorships. “What these people want is a Christian White nationalist version of what you have in Iran today and Saudi Arabia.”
But the perp’s own 80-page manifesto reveals no hint of any such causation. Yes, he was deranged, a psychopath with an intense hatred of Blacks but no connections to White supremacy groups or ideology. He despised Fox News specifically and said he “wanted no part of conservatism.”
Though he was clearly not inspired by right wing influences, commentators latched on anyway to the killer’s advocacy of “replacement theory.” The New York Times called it a “racist, fringe conspiracy theory,” but it’s nothing of the sort.
It’s simply the fact that the US White population is shrinking while the population total is growing, mostly due to immigration. The concern isn’t skin color but whether this demographic shift will contribute to the decline of America’s culture and values. Recent trends in minority support of Republicans give hope that this may not happen, but at any rate, the observation is immaterial to White supremacy.
The Big Lie of pervasive White supremacy is deeply harmful. First, it serves as the pretext for our overgrown government to react to the “threat” with a series of banana republic-style measures to suppress opposition.
The so-called Ministry of Truth was paused, but the DOJ has created task forces to counter “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists,” including members of the military and parents advocating before school boards, but not Antifa, BLM, or Muslims.
Second, the Big Lie precludes a serious discussion of realistic remedies for interracial violence and the ongoing carnage of young Black men. We should do away with gun-free zones, which only reassure potential killers. We should work harder to keep guns out of the hands of the clearly deranged without a wholesale sacrificing of civil rights. We need to stop the push to decriminalize crime and denigrate police officers. And much more.
While we chase the chimera of White supremacy, real people continue to die.
Author Note: This column was written before the school shooting in Texas. Its conclusions are not affected.
Push a sympathetic message. Drum up a bunch of misguided support. And then aim for a ridiculous tax increase. That was the strategy from Red4ED after it launched a little over four years ago.
In that spring of 2018, the color red was popping up all over the place—from Facebook profile pictures to protests at the state Capitol. And it was supposedly all about increasing teacher salaries and funding for K-12 education. It was a movement that had great momentum, a sycophant media, and a political class that was terrified to stand up to them. Yet they figured out how to, in four short years, go from a political juggernaut to one of the largest and most expensive failures in Arizona political history.
Of course, defeating this multiyear assault on Arizona by Invest in Ed was a huge win for taxpayers, job creators, and the future prosperity of our state. And it would not have been possible without a combination of political miscalculations and blunders by the Red4ED decision makers and a consistent, sustained opposition from key organizations and elected officials willing to stand up to the bullies behind the movement…
