Expert Witness Throws Jim Jordan’s Latest Troll Job Into Hilarious Disarray

On Monday, Jim Jordan brought held a Judiciary Committee hearing in Manhattan, where he and his fellow House Republicans attempted to paint New York City as a crime-ridden disaster.* However, they instead managed to remind Americans that loose gun laws and Republican leadership have led to high crime rates and unlawful schemes that ship guns from red states to blue ones.

Jordan’s New York City field trip was part of a larger effort among House Republicans to try to discredit Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who added a new historical footnote to the twice-impeached former President Donald Trump’s checkered record by making him the first president ever to be criminally indicted. Republicans on the select committee hoped their hearings would undercut Bragg by highlighting what they characterized as a supposed crime crisis happening on his watch. Jordan, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, staged this “field hearing” just steps away from Bragg’s office.

But not everything went off according to plan. During the hearing, Jim Kessler, the executive vice president for policy at the centrist think tank Third Way, testified about how safe New York City actually is, versus the safety of the home bases of some of the House Republicans leading the Bragg and New York smear campaign.

“New York City is safer than most of the states of the members sitting on the dais on the majority side. In 2020, for example, New York City’s murder rate was 18% below the national average for the entire United States,” Kessler began. “Mr. Chairman, Ohio’s murder rate was 59% higher than New York City’s.” He continued, listing other places with high crime rates relative to New York City—including Louisiana, Texas, South Carolina, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, Indiana, Arizona, and Alabama.

“A hearing about the ravages of crime could be in Alabama with its towering homicide rate and a mass killing that just happened yesterday, or Louisville, where five people were murdered in the blink of an eye at a downtown bank,” Kessler continued, referring to the weekend mass shooting at a sweet 16 birthday party and the Louisville, Kentucky, mass shooting last week. “Or the murder capital of California, which is not Los Angeles or San Francisco or Oakland, but in Speaker McCarthy’s district of Kern County with its county seat of Bakersfield. And it has been the murder capital of California for six years running.”

Kessler went on to mention the so-called “iron pipeline”—the trafficking of guns from states with looser gun regulations like Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina to places like New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, which often have tighter gun laws. “Wouldn’t it be great if this hearing was about how illicit guns are trafficked to places like New York City, New York, Boston, Philly, Chicago and on and on, and how those guns terrorize the innocent people living in those places and elsewhere?” Kessler posed. “That’s the sort of thing Congress would do if it really cared about what was happening with regard to crime in New York City.”

“There are eight and a half million people living in New York City on this tiny plot of land. Bad things happen here, no doubt,” Kessler said. “But the miracle of New York City is how well this enormous chunk of humanity mostly gets along and suffers less crime than much of the nation.”

Kessler was later questioned in the hearing further about New York City’s relative safety versus places across the country, from Mississippi and Wyoming to Missouri and Ohio. Representative David Cicilline decided to be clever.

“In light of the testimony we just heard, what is the mechanism for the committee to transfer this hearing to Ohio, where the crime rate is significantly greater than here in New York?”

He added, “How do we move the venue so we can have a hearing in a city or state that has a serious crime, the state of Ohio?”

Jordan quickly dismissed the quip, saying it was not a proper “parliamentary inquiry.”

Further illustrating how much of a joke the whole charade is, Representative Matt Gaetz chimed in during his time to address these high crime rates in places beyond New York City. “To the extent that there is an impact on crime rates in major cities, I would suggest that that is exactly what you get with the ‘Soros-ization’ of the United States Justice system,” the Florida Republican said, echoing the sort of sweeping antisemitism even Republican leadership has embraced. (Remember folks: It’s only antisemitism if it’s Ilhan Omar talking about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians; it’s not if we’re saying rich Jewish people control society.)

* This post originally misstated the committee organizing the hearing.

The Louisiana state Republican Party thinks that diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs on college campuses are too “divisive” and should be banned.

The Republican State Central Committee, or RSCC, the state GOP’s governing body, unanimously passed a resolution Saturday asking the state legislature to ban DEI offices at all Louisiana colleges and universities, both public and private.

The resolution refers to DEI offices as “bureaucracies” that “operate as divisive ideological commissariats” and are “a threat to academic freedom and academic integrity.” It calls for the state legislature to pass bills that will remove DEI departments from all higher education institutions in Louisiana.

The resolution passed the majority-white body by a voice vote “with no discernible dissent,” according to NOLA.com. The RSCC membership, which includes multiple state senators and representatives, voted on the measure during the state party’s quarterly meeting in Baton Rouge.

The move comes amid a growing push by Republicans to ban “woke ideology” (a.k.a. freedom of thought) in schools. The GOP has spent the past few years working to transform critical race theory, or CRT, into a political boogeyman. CRT is a framework for understanding the legal underpinnings of systemic racism in U.S. society and politics; Republicans have framed an advanced academic field of study as something that’s being used in elementary schools to indoctrinate young children. Slowly but surely, the same rhetoric is being applied to education at all levels.

One of the prime offenders of late has been Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has vowed to defund all DEI programs at state universities. He also banned high schools from teaching an A.P. African American studies class, deeming it “woke indoctrination,” and pressured the College Board to gut the course syllabus.

In Texas, the state Senate approved a bill last week that would bar college and university professors from “compelling” students to adopt certain political beliefs. The bill’s sponsor insisted his measure would not censor any topics of discussion, but critics warn the legislation is too vaguely worded and could actually curb difficult, nuanced conversations about issues such as race and gender.

Montana Republicans are working 9 to 5 to prohibit minors from attending drag shows, but a recent amendment to an anti-drag bill could ban more than they perhaps intended.

House Bill 359 has passed both the state House of Representatives and the Senate Judiciary Committee. It still needs to be voted on by the entire Senate. If it passes, it will ban minors from attending drag performances and ban publicly funded organizations from hosting drag shows. The bill specifically targets Drag Story Hour, an event where drag queens read stories to children.

But the bill was amended Friday to change the definition of what constitutes drag. Under the changes, a drag performance is “an obscene performance that features drag queens, topless dancers, exotic dancers, strippers, or similar entertainers who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest,” meaning of a sexual nature.

A drag queen is “a male or female performer who adopts a flamboyant or parodic feminine persona with glamorous or exaggerated costumes and makeup.” The amendment removes the mention of dressing differently from “the performer’s gender assigned at birth.”

As journalist and transgender rights activist Erin Reed pointed out, this means that the bill could affect glam rock, wrestling, and performances by Dolly Parton. Queen Dolly herself has said she has exaggerated her appearance to be “flashy” and “flamboyant.”

If it becomes law, Montana’s drag ban would categorize any business that serves alcohol and hosts a drag show as a “sexually oriented business.” They could face a fine of up to $10,000 and even lose their liquor license if they repeatedly violate the law.

The measure also bans public schools or publicly funded institutions such as museums and libraries from hosting drag performances, specifically Drag Story Hour. The institution would be fined $5,000 for hosting a show, and the staff member who approved it could lose their teaching or librarian certification.

Critics of Montana’s bill have previously pointed out that the measure would affect theater productions of Mrs. Doubtfire, Rent, or several Shakespeare plays. It could even target Halloween costumes.

Montana is the latest state to advance a (vaguely worded, extreme) measure attacking drag performances, which have become a particular target for the right wing in recent years. In March, Tennessee became the first state to pass a law banning drag performances, but the measure was blocked by a judge before it could go into effect on the grounds that it was overly broad and violated free speech rights.

On Friday, scores of Republicans, including every 2024 hopeful, descended upon Indianapolis to chum it up with NRA members in the aftermath of two devastating mass shootings in Kentucky and Tennessee. And the results have been as appallingly wild as one could imagine.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem insisted that, contrary to the deluded media’s narratives, the NRA is much more diverse than is given credit. That, indeed, the attendees of the convention represent a mass movement of people of all stripes ready to go to battle to defend their right to own killing machines.

As to the validity of her proposition, well, take a look:

Beyond trying to score woke points about how diverse and inclusive the NRA is, Noem also glowingly discussed how her almost-2-year-old granddaughter apparently “already has a shotgun, and she already has a rifle.”

“Soon, [she’ll] need them,” Noem said about the toddler.

Noem also signed an executive order on stage, one that “blocks state agencies from contracting with large banks that discriminate against firearm-related industries.”

The performance of it all was laughable for a moment, but plainly demoralizing in sum. In the immediate wake of two horrific shootings—among over 150 that have swept the nation already this year—Republicans like Noem put on their shiniest holster belts and did their jig. All to impress one of the entities most responsible for a culture that’s so violently obsessed with guns it cannot fathom another reality.

Republicans may earn an A+ from the NRA; but on the matters of protecting children, of maintaining the sanctity of life, of guaranteeing people the assured liberty to live a healthy and safe life, they are not even on the grading scale.

The NRA’s top executive, Wayne LaPierre, kicked off the organization’s annual convention Friday by threatening pro–gun control politicians.

The National Rifle Association convention is taking place this weekend in Indianapolis, on the anniversary of one of the deadliest mass shootings in the city’s history and on the heels of two major mass shootings in the last month.

“Gun-hating politicians should never go to bed unafraid of what this association and all of our millions of members can do to their political careers,” LaPierre told the crowd, to cheers.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1646941951625666577

LaPierre’s chilling threat shows just how much influence the gun lobby has in politics. No Republicans have challenged his remark so far. Meanwhile, every Republican running or rumored to be running for president is speaking at the convention.

Elsewhere in the country, Republicans seem fully in thrall to gun rights (meaning, unfettered access to firearms). One of the most recent mass shootings was in Nashville, when a shooter killed three children and three adults at a private Christian grade school. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee initially hedged on increasing gun control, but he pulled an about-face earlier this week after thousands of protesters marched to the state Capitol to demand new legislation. Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton indicated his party was willing to work toward “bipartisan solutions.”

But on Thursday, House Republicans shot down a “red flag” bill that would prevent future shootings like the one at the Covenant School.