Verdict on Reform Prosecutors More Mixed Than Headlines Suggest

I consider myself middle of the road on police and criminal justice reform issues. As I said in the new episode of the podcast just out this afternoon, high crime rates will snuff out criminal justice reform as surely as night follows day. I'd reiterate a point I've made at other points over the years: no one has a greater interest in low crime rates than liberals and progressives because high crime rates spawn conservative politics. They don't just turn the tide against more humane criminal justice policies. They shift the whole political universe in a more authoritarian, conservative direction. Again, just an observable fact.

See Also:  "The View" co-host Joy Behar said Wednesday that gun laws would change "once Black people get guns in this country."

But with all this said, the narrative emerging out of yesterday's primaries that voters sent a big rebuke to Democrats over law and order politics or that it was a rejection of criminal justice reformers is at best incomplete.

See Also:  Joy Reid accuses Republicans of thriving on 'demographic panic,' says GOP wants no one to feel 'safe'

This editorial from The Los Angeles Times gives a good review of the races across the state. It's really more of a mixed bag. Yes, Chesa Boudin went down to a resounding recall defeat. But there were a number of other races where reformist prosecutors did fine. The reformist state attorney general, Rob Bonta, managed to get more than 50% of the vote in a crowded field.

See Also:  Sara Haines asked Sen. Chris Murphy if the Republican Party is going further right during Tuesday's episode of "The View."

One interesting case is that of L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva. He was first elected as reform-minded Democrat (not reform in reform DA sense) in 2018 but has shifted hard to the right and now frequently appears as a guest on Tucker Carlson as a law and order foe of the "woke left." In his primary he got just under 35% of the vote and will now face a run-off with the number two vote-getter. As the Times points out that's the worst result for incumbent LA County Sheriff in the last century.

See Also:  Joy Behar said on "The View" on Monday that inflation and high gas prices were a "worldwide problem" and largely blamed the baby formula shortage on Republicans.

The whole picture is more of a mixed bag than the Boudin headlines would suggest.

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I would stress again: I would expect reformers to be doing worse. That is because while crime rates are still far below the highs of the early '90s, they are up. What's more, while I think the spike in crime is mostly driven by dislocations caused by the pandemic critics can point to at least a broad chronology in which the rise of criminal justice reform was followed by rising crime rates. What's more, many of the policies reformers espouse are ones I'm at best ambivalent about. So this really isn't me trying to put the best face on something. The actual results both in California and the rest of the country are just much more equivocal than the overnight reports suggest. If anything they show the resilience of reform politics in a tough electoral environment.

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Understanding ‘Mass Shootings’

On the long list of excuses and deflections gun rights activists use to shut down any talk of gun regulation, one critical angle comes down to numbers. Mass shootings, school shootings, gun massacres — whatever you want to call them — only make up a tiny percentage of the number of people killed every year by guns in the United States. That's true. Relatedly, AR-15s, the mass shooters' firearm of choice, account for only a tiny percentage of overall firearms deaths in the United States. That's true. Indeed, some noted that the 10 African-Americans murdered in a Buffalo supermarket on May 14th may not even have been a majority of the African-Americans killed by firearms on that single day. Using these very real numbers, gun rights activists portray supporters of assault weapons bans, bans on high capacity magazines and the rest as reactive and innumerate. It's similar to the way that gun activists sometimes try to shut down restriction conversation by noting how people horrified by all the carnage don't know all the technical differences between this gun and that one.

See Also: Pelosi defends not passing a bill, claims Supreme Court Justices aren't in any danger despite assassination attempt this week…

These numbers are real. Upwards of 50,000 Americans die every year by firearms, a number that massively dwarfs a dozen or two fatalities in even the biggest mass shootings. But the whole line of argument mischaracterizes the role of mass shootings in U.S. culture and society. It's an argument made in bad faith on the gun supporting side of the equation. But it exists on the restrictionist side as well. That's part of what gives the argument such power.

See Also:  Whoopi Goldberg says 'both sides' guilty of rhetoric like Schumer's against Kavanaugh, must 'be more careful'

School shootings and all of what we call mass shootings in the United States are properly understood as terror crimes. They function as such and they are intended as such. They cast a pall of terror far beyond those immediately affected by them. Definitions here get in the way of proper understanding. The most common definition of a "mass shooting" is an incident in which four or more people are shot in a single incident, or series of incidents closely related in time and location. That definition comes from the FBI and the Congressional Research Service. But that includes all sort of crimes most of us aren't thinking of when we think of mass shootings: robberies gone wrong, domestic disputes, gang killings. Those victims are just as shot. They are just as dead. But they're not what most of us are talking about when we talk about mass shootings. If they meet a technical definition then we need a new set of words to describe what we're talking about.

See Also: Texas Rep Jasmine Crockett blamed Republicans for shooting: 'The blood of these children' is on their hands

The hallmark of almost all of these attacks is their randomness. Sometimes they target specific groups — African-Americans at the Buffalo Supermarket or the Emanuel AME church shooting in Charleston or Jews at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. But the shooter seldom has any relationship with his victims. He doesn't know them in most cases and they don't know him. They have no reason to know he's coming. Indeed, there's no particular person he's trying to kill. He's just trying to kill as many people as possible. In the vast majority of cases he's already decided he's going to die in the attack, which puts him beyond any negotiation or threat or deterrence. It's the randomness and spectacle that casts a pall and specter of terror far beyond the individual crime.

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From one perspective, racist or anti-Semitic or misogynistic attacks are in a different category from the more random school shootings that don't seem to have any clear purpose or ideological agenda. They are certainly different to the targeted groups. But I would argue that the commonality is greater than the differences. They are all massacres as spectacle and terror. And it is these crimes where AR-15s really are central to the deed. There's a reason why virtually every mass shooter uses one. They are symbols of overwhelming force and massacre. They also kill the most people in the shortest period of time.

See Also: CNN correspondent Whitney Wild downplayed the violent threat against Justice Brett Kavanaugh's life and warned about political violence from both sides, after an armed man was arrested outside the justice's home, Wednesday.  

America has a whole other largely handgun-based problem. That's the one that facilitates the firearm suicides that make up almost half of all firearms death. It's behind most intimate partner killings, toddlers stumbling on unsecured gun and killing themselves, killings in robberies, gang killings and more. That's the source of the great majority of deaths. It's disproportionately a hand gun rather than a long gun problem. But it's mostly distinct from these terror crimes which have a logic, a goal and origins that are quite distinct.

See Also: Ana Navarro loses it during CNN gun control panel: 'Get your a--es in gear and call your Senators!'

We can't address this problem without understanding it properly. And we can't be distracted by bad faith arguments that are facilitated by lack of a proper understanding.

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Michigan GOP Gov Frontrunner Arrested

We mentioned last week that after the top GOP candidates for the Michigan governor's race were stripped from the ballot over forged signatures, the remaining at least nominal frontrunner (poll leaders in most recent poll) was a guy named Ryan Kelley, who was literally part of the mob that stormed the Capitol building on January 6th and had a lot of connections to the guys who plotted to kidnap and murder Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Well, he just got arrested by the FBI. No details yet on what the charges are or why he was taken into custody.

See Also: CNN correspondent Whitney Wild downplayed the violent threat against Justice Brett Kavanaugh's life and warned about political violence from both sides, after an armed man was arrested outside the justice's home, Wednesday.  

11:49 AM: Kelley's arrest was part of a raid on his home and stems from his actions breaching the Capitol complex on January 6th. Charges forthcoming.

See Also:  NBC Washington Correspondent Yamiche Alcindor and former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade join Andrea Mitchell to discuss key challenges facing the January 6 Committee ahead of their primetime hearings this week: getting a "distracted nation" to pay attention and understand what's at stake. "I think the biggest challenge for lawmakers here, as they talk about these sort of huge ideas of American democracy and sort of the experiment that we're all living in, benefiting from, possibly being brought to his knees, is whether or not they can make people care," says Alcindor. "The American public has been groomed to expect high value quick entertainment," says McQuade. "I think putting together a polished show can be very important."

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A Few Thoughts on the Hearings

I wanted to share a few quick thoughts with you before tonight's hearings.

See Also:  Joy Reid accuses Republicans of thriving on 'demographic panic,' says GOP wants no one to feel 'safe'

One very minor point is that for some time I've heard complaints to the effect of, "what has the committee been doing all this time? Most of what we've found out about January 6th has been from the media." This is mostly a misunderstanding. The great majority of reporting you've seen over the last six months revealing texts and other material about the insurrection originated with the committee's investigation. So this isn't an either/or. The committee investigation has almost certainly been the primary generator of new information even though very little of it has come officially from the investigation.

See Also:  Sara Haines asked Sen. Chris Murphy if the Republican Party is going further right during Tuesday's episode of "The View."

The other issue is whether the committee can live up to the hype. Many Americans are convinced that none of this really matters. No one will face consequences no matter what is revealed. But precisely since many of the fruits of the investigation have already emerged in the press, is there a lot still to be learned? Is there enough game-changing information to sustain interest? I have no way of knowing the answer to this. But it has been striking to me that the top members of the committee have gone out of their way to say that there are lot of bombshells to come. We'll see.

See Also:  Joy Behar said on "The View" on Monday that inflation and high gas prices were a "worldwide problem" and largely blamed the baby formula shortage on Republicans.

Finally, what is the goal of all this? I would say there are two goals. One is simply that when there's an armed insurrection aimed at overthrowing the government, you should compile a detailed record of what happened. You should do that regardless of whether it has any immediate effect on anything. The more practical goal of the hearings should be to put the country back in the mode it was in in the hours and days just after the insurrection. At the time the country overwhelmingly saw what happened as totally unacceptable and an effort whose leaders should either be prosecuted or at least written out of legitimate politics going forward.

See Also:  NBC Washington Correspondent Yamiche Alcindor and former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade join Andrea Mitchell to discuss key challenges facing the January 6 Committee ahead of their primetime hearings this week: getting a "distracted nation" to pay attention and understand what's at stake. "I think the biggest challenge for lawmakers here, as they talk about these sort of huge ideas of American democracy and sort of the experiment that we're all living in, benefiting from, possibly being brought to his knees, is whether or not they can make people care," says Alcindor. "The American public has been groomed to expect high value quick entertainment," says McQuade. "I think putting together a polished show can be very important."

You get a feel for that in the recording two New York Times reporters released last night from the immediate aftermath of the insurrection in which Kevin McCarthy told his GOP colleagues that Republicans couldn't "sweep this under the rug." It's a piercing, telling revelation since McCarthy quickly steadied himself and then spent the next 18 months sweeping the whole matter under the rug. But having that comment preserved does capture the shock and realism of those initial days.

See Also: Pelosi defends not passing a bill, claims Supreme Court Justices aren't in any danger despite assassination attempt this week…

It is worth remembering that though I think there was always little chance of it happening in the 48 hours following the insurrection Vice President Pence found it necessary to release a statement stating explicitly that he had decided he would not seek to remove Trump from office by means of the 25th amendment. It was really a crazy thought since that was really never what the 25th amendment was intended for. But for a brief moment the possibility seemed very real. Real enough that Pence initially wouldn't say what he would do and then felt the need to address it directly.

See Also:  Whoopi Goldberg says 'both sides' guilty of rhetoric like Schumer's against Kavanaugh, must 'be more careful'

This was all before the establishment GOP decided that the insurrection was, if not good, then at least completely fine. Once Republicans became functionally pro-insurrection, to many observers of American politics the whole matter became just another squabble between the two political parties. Just more politics.

See Also: Texas Rep Jasmine Crockett blamed Republicans for shooting: 'The blood of these children' is on their hands

You'll never get back to that original moment. The shock is gone. Too many people have spent too much time building stories which justify and minimize what happened. But that is or should be the goal: getting back as much as possible to that initial moment when the gravity and seditious nature of what happened was too clear to be ignored.

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Trump Tries Mid-Meltdown To Discredit Ivanka For Admitting She Knew Daddy Lost The Election

Sorry Ivanka, even you aren't safe from your dad's well-established pattern of publicly throwing people under the bus.

See Also: Pelosi defends not passing a bill, claims Supreme Court Justices aren't in any danger despite assassination attempt this week…

Ivanka Trump, ex-President Donald Trump's eldest daughter who served as a White House adviser, struck a massive blow to her father's fake narrative about the 2020 election on Thursday night, when the House Jan. 6 Committee aired her recorded testimony that she had "accepted" then-Attorney General Bill Barr's assessment that there wasn't evidence of widespread voter fraud.

See Also:  Whoopi Goldberg says 'both sides' guilty of rhetoric like Schumer's against Kavanaugh, must 'be more careful'

And the former president didn't let that slide on Friday morning.

See Also: Texas Rep Jasmine Crockett blamed Republicans for shooting: 'The blood of these children' is on their hands

To hear Trump tell it, his daughter didn't know what she was talking about, didn't really care about her job and was just being nice to Barr (who sucked, by the way!).

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"Ivanka Trump was not involved in looking at, or studying, Election results," he wrote on his fake Twitter app, TRUTH Social. "She had long since checked out and was, in my opinion, only trying to be respectful to Bill Barr and his position as Attorney General (he sucked!)."

See Also: CNN correspondent Whitney Wild downplayed the violent threat against Justice Brett Kavanaugh's life and warned about political violence from both sides, after an armed man was arrested outside the justice's home, Wednesday.  

The House Jan. 6 Committee unveiled Ivanka Trump's testimony during the panel's first public hearing to establish how the ex-president's own inner circle didn't believe the 2020 election had been stolen.

See Also: Ana Navarro loses it during CNN gun control panel: 'Get your a--es in gear and call your Senators!'

Key evidence lay in Ivanka Trump's response to the committee asking her during her interview how Barr shooting down her father's voter fraud lies affected how she saw the election.

See Also:  "The View" co-host Joy Behar said Wednesday that gun laws would change "once Black people get guns in this country."

"It affected my perspective. I respect Attorney General Barr," she replied. "So I accepted what he was saying."

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'The View': Sunny Hostin And Ana Navarro Argue About Congress' Response To The Attempted Murder Of Brett Kavanaugh

Ana Navarro and Sunny Hostin get into a skirmish on The View as the panel discuss the attempted murder of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. But Navarro makes the point that as much as it's wrong for anyone to try to attack a public official, the urging for legislation isn't as swift as it should be for victims of gun violence, particularly the 19 children and two adults who were killed in Uvalde, TX.

See Also: Ana Navarro loses it during CNN gun control panel: 'Get your a--es in gear and call your Senators!'

According to Decider, Navarro commented on the incident, saying that Americans "should be worried about the Supreme Court, and we should condemn, and not condone any violence against any public official, whether we agree with them or not."

See Also:  "The View" co-host Joy Behar said Wednesday that gun laws would change "once Black people get guns in this country."

"It shouldn't just be the Supreme Court. There's also federal judges," she continued. "There was one in New Jersey, Esther Salas, whose son got killed, and she's pushing her own legislation."

See Also:  Joy Reid accuses Republicans of thriving on 'demographic panic,' says GOP wants no one to feel 'safe'

Hostin interjected to contradict House Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's insistence on Congress passing legislation to protect judges. She said, "Justice Sotomayor was threatened right after that judge's son was murdered, and you didn't hear about Mitch McConnell wanting to pass any legislation then. So let's remember that that wasn't a direct result. Let's put it all in perspective."

See Also:  Sara Haines asked Sen. Chris Murphy if the Republican Party is going further right during Tuesday's episode of "The View."

Navarro replied that the fact that an attack could occur to any judge is why condemning violence "against any public official" is important.

See Also:  Joy Behar said on "The View" on Monday that inflation and high gas prices were a "worldwide problem" and largely blamed the baby formula shortage on Republicans.

"But what we don't agree on," Navarro continued, "and what I want to know is, how come the reaction is an immediate call for legislation but our children get thoughts and prayers?"

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"She also said regarding the Republican insistence that mass shootings come from lack of prayer in school, "If prayer prevents mass shootings, then how come people are getting killed in churches?…What do you say to that?"

See Also:  NBC Washington Correspondent Yamiche Alcindor and former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade join Andrea Mitchell to discuss key challenges facing the January 6 Committee ahead of their primetime hearings this week: getting a "distracted nation" to pay attention and understand what's at stake. "I think the biggest challenge for lawmakers here, as they talk about these sort of huge ideas of American democracy and sort of the experiment that we're all living in, benefiting from, possibly being brought to his knees, is whether or not they can make people care," says Alcindor. "The American public has been groomed to expect high value quick entertainment," says McQuade. "I think putting together a polished show can be very important."

The View has been addressing gun violence extensively after the Uvalde massacre. Overall, the panel agrees that Congress should pass common sense gun reform.

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Ana Navarro Furious Over Jan. 6 Hearings on ‘The View’: “I Am So Angry Again”

Ana Navarro got heated on Friday's episode of The View, reigniting her anger over the Jan. 6 insurrection during a conversation about the ongoing hearings. As the country tunes in to the prime-time committee hearing, which kicked off yesterday (June 9), Navarro said she is once again feeling upset about what took place that day last winter.

See Also: Pelosi defends not passing a bill, claims Supreme Court Justices aren't in any danger despite assassination attempt this week…

"History will not whitewash or erase what happened on Jan. 6. Donald Trump, no matter how much people try to change the narrative, is going to go down in the annals of American history with the names of Benedict Arnold and Richard Nixon. He is a traitor," Navarro said.

See Also:  Whoopi Goldberg says 'both sides' guilty of rhetoric like Schumer's against Kavanaugh, must 'be more careful'

The hearing, which presented the Jan. 6 committee's findings over the course of June, included evidence showing how former president Donald Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election.

See Also: Texas Rep Jasmine Crockett blamed Republicans for shooting: 'The blood of these children' is on their hands

Navarro continued, "We've had all these indictments so far, but the people who've been indicted were the cavalry. The generals have not yet been indicted. So what I hope is that as this committee goes through the case — and Liz Cheney did an excellent job yesterday laying out the case — seven different steps of things that Donald Trump did.

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"She was speaking legal jargon, she was speaking to Merrick Garland, who better get off his duff and do something about this, because we cannot be a lawless country where a president with the help of people in Congress, who apparently were asking for presidential pardons, we cannot be a country where a president can try to stage a coup, get that close to it, where police officers end up hurt, where we are all in a level of shock."

See Also: CNN correspondent Whitney Wild downplayed the violent threat against Justice Brett Kavanaugh's life and warned about political violence from both sides, after an armed man was arrested outside the justice's home, Wednesday. 

Exasperated, Navarro practically spit out, "You know, I'm so angry again. I thought I had processed this because we've been hearing about it for so long."

See Also: Ana Navarro loses it during CNN gun control panel: 'Get your a--es in gear and call your Senators!'

Her co-host Joy Behar agreed, chiming in, "I'm furious," as Navarro added, "All of a sudden, this thing has me. I will never forgive Trump or his accomplices for the havoc they've wreaked on this country."

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