A group of states is suing the Security Exchanges Commission (SEC), claiming the commission is overstepping its authority in regulating digital assets like cryptocurrencies — arguing that the SEC’s actions stifle state-level innovation and impose federal control without congressional approval.
Eighteen state attorneys general have joined the lawsuit, one of which is Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, in addition to DeFi Education Fund, a nonpartisan research and advocacy group.
Along with naming the SEC directly in the complaint, it also lists SEC Chair Gary Gensler, among other officials.
The states want the court to stop the SEC from enforcing regulations and allow them to manage digital assets with their own laws.
“The SEC’s sweeping assertion of regulatory jurisdiction is untenable,” the suit states. “The digital assets implicated here are just that — assets, not investment contracts covered by federal securities laws.”
“They do not entail any traditional investment relationship, in which the investor invests capital and the promoter assumes an ongoing obligation to use that capital in a common enterprise to generate returns that the investor will share.”
The lawsuit goes on to explain that the laws defining what counts as an “investment contract” were written in a clear way, and past U.S. Supreme Court decisions support this definition. Because of this, the complaint asserts, the SEC does not have broad authority to regulate all digital asset transactions as if they were securities. The argument is that the SEC is overreaching beyond what these laws and past rulings allow.
The complaint, filed in Kentucky district court, is asking the court to declare that digital asset transactions are not considered securities if they don’t involve a promise to manage assets for profit. They also want the court to stop the SEC from forcing digital asset platforms to register as securities-related businesses if they don’t meet those conditions. Additionally, the states claim the SEC broke rules by not following proper procedures.
Snip.
While on the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump vowed to protect the blockchain industry, making a bevy of promises to crypto enthusiasts.
Trump took the stage at the Libertarian National Convention back in May, where he promised to stop “Joe Biden’s crusade to crush crypto.” In July he said he would “fire Gary Gensler” on day one of his new administration.
“No longer will your government sit by and watch as Bitcoin jobs and businesses flee to other countries, because America’s laws are too unclear and too tough and too angry and too stiff,” Trump said while delivering the keynote address at a Bitcoin conference. “We will keep each and every Bitcoin job in the United States of America, that’s what we’re going to be doing.”
Texas has become a major center of the crypto and Bitcoin industry in America. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is a vocal advocate for the emerging finance sector, and Gov. Greg Abbott signaled he will continue to be friendly to the crypto community, describing himself as a “crypto law proposal supporter.”
There’s a long-running debate about just what the hell cryptocurrencies are under federal law. Unlike other securities (say, a stock or bond), a unit of cryptocurrency is not a token that represents a tangible legal entity in the real world. It’s not a currency as traditionally understood, as it is not backed by specie or the power and authority of a government. It’s not a commodity, because what commodity can be moved across the world at the speed of light?
If it doesn’t actually fit the profile of anything that legislation has specified that the government regulates, then maybe, as Paxton et al assert, then the federal government shouldn’t regulate it. That would seem to be the proper constitutional interpretation under the Tenth Amendment.
While I’m still skeptical of the long-term usefulness of cryptocurrency (though with Bitcoin hovering around $90,000, I sure wish I had mined some back when it was easier to do), the Trump Administration is filled with very smart people who believe in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. History teaches us that it’s best to let new technologies shake out without government interference, so let’s hope Paxton and company’s lawsuit succeeds.
What a freaking epic (and tiring) week! I waited until Fox and Decision Desk had declared Trump the winner past 1 AM Wednesday morning, and then had to get up a few hours later to get ready to work. So we’ve got more election fallout, Israel bags more terrorist scumbags, Elon Musk and Ron Paul may team up to fight government waste, Texas continues to purge wokeness from public institutions, and a song mystery is solved.
Last time around, Trump squandered his momentum. He passed the tax bill that the establishment GOP wanted, after which they didn’t need anything from him and turned to obstructing him….
Like airplanes on a runway. Trump’s approach this time around should be what he should have done last time: Shock and awe. Shut down departments, fire bureaucrats, exercise emergency powers, all so fast that the establishment’s responses are saturated. Javier Millei’s whirlwind assault in Argentina should be the model, sometimes in specifics but also in general approach. Bureaucrats move slowly; Trump should move fast.
Elon Musk says he can cut $2 trillion easily; do it. Also, set bureaucrats competing with each other for what funds remain. Divide and conquer.
The FBI’s files on its policing of domestic dissent should be opened up, as should the details of the NSA’s illegal domestic spying. Trump should have outsiders investigate possible (likely) prosecutorial misconduct in the January 6 prosecutions – something judges have already raised – and fire those responsible, as well as subjecting them to what other legal consequences may apply. The lesson that the deep state can’t intervene in domestic politics needs to be driven home, and the only way to do that is to ruin a lot of lives on the part of people who deserve to have their lives ruined, from the top of the Justice Department and the intelligence agencies to the bottom. Likewise those involved in social media censorship programs, “Operation Chokepoint” style economic warfare, and the like. Abuse of government power against the citizenry should be treated as a criminal matter, because it is.
Trump should also announce that the federal government is waiving qualified immunity on the part of such officials.
There are lots more ideas – you can submit your own in the comments below, and the much-maligned Project 2025, though not actually a Trump initiative, contains some – and Bloomberg is already warning that if elected Trump will dismantle the White House’s gun control ministry. Oh no!
The specifics aren’t really the point here, though I should probably post another essay just about those. But the point here is rapid action across a wide variety of fronts. Trump should take advantage of the precedents that Biden has set for far-reaching executive action, though you can bet that when he does the press will pretend this is the first time anything like that has ever been done.
The story of how Harris pocketed record sums while failing to gain support from voters will be studied by campaigns for decades to come. Democrats who successfully pressured octogenarian President Joe Biden to pass the torch to the former California senator are now conducting an internal autopsy of the 2024 race, in which Trump raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars less than Harris.
“A billion dollars paled in comparison to the increased prices Americans were seeing across the country,” Tom Fitton, president of the conservative group Judicial Watch and a longtime Trump ally, told the Washington Examiner. “Voters weren’t fooled.”
The Harris campaign and its affiliated committees dropped more than $654 million on advertising from July 22 to Election Day, whereas Trump spent $378 million, or 57% less, in the same category, according to data from AdImpact.
Future Forward, the $500 million “ad-testing factory” and super PAC that supported Harris, was a reliable clearinghouse for checks from wealthy Democrats such as Reid Hoffman, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, and Dustin Moskovitz. And anonymous donations, or so-called “dark money,” also benefited Harris at a faster and more substantial clip than Trump thanks to lax federal laws that progressives often criticize but, nonetheless, exploited in 2024.
The Harris campaign declined to comment on its finances. A fuller portrait will be public after the election, as the Federal Election Commission mandates post-general election reports for candidates within 30 days.
In mid-October, the Harris campaign disclosed that it had spent over $880 million this election, almost $526 million greater than the roughly $354 million that the Trump campaign had disclosed spending, according to a Washington Examiner analysis of federal filings. Much of the Harris campaign’s spending was allocated for digital media advertising, polling, and travel from state to state, including to a private jet company called Advanced Aviation.
Payroll and the taxes that accompanied it accounted for $56.6 million of the Harris campaign’s spending. In comparison, the Trump campaign reported spending $9 million on payroll — employing hundreds fewer staff members.
There was also the army of political, digital, and media consultants who were paid over $12.8 million by the Harris campaign, filings show.
One vendor, Village Marketing Agency, received over $3.9 million and reportedly worked to recruit thousands of social media influencers to boost Harris online. Others that scored lucrative consulting gigs from the campaign included the likes of Precision Strategies, a Democratic-aligned marketing agency; Ethos Organizing, founded by former Ohio Democratic Party director Malik Hubbard; and the Biden-allied SKDK communications firm.
Snip.
“Event production” was also a staple spending area of the Harris campaign, which notably hosted a star-studded lineup of musicians from Lady Gaga to Katy Perry for an election eve rally.
The campaign paid more than $15 million, according to federal filings, to companies for such services.
There was $1 million for Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions on Oct. 15 in West Hollywood, California.
Winfrey, a top Harris ally, appeared at a town hall with the vice president in September and was at her final rally in Philadelphia before Election Day.
Viva Creative, a marketing agency that has touted its work with Oprah, comedian Trevor Noah, the Washington Nationals baseball team, and American Express, scooped up $1.8 million from the Harris campaign for event production from September to October. A company called Production Management One in Maryland received $1.7 million, with large payments also going to Vox Productions, Temple University, Wizard Studios North, the Park Hyatt Chicago, and other entities for event production, filings show.
Then there was Majic Productions, a Wisconsin-based company, which has worked the NBA playoffs, the Super Bowl, and at the Bellagio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. The Harris campaign paid that company $2.3 million.
A source familiar with the matter told the Washington Examiner that the Harris campaign spent six figures on building a set for Harris’s appearance on the popular Call Her Daddy podcast with host Alex Cooper. The interview came out in October and was reportedly filmed in a hotel room in Washington, D.C.
In the end, San Francisco mayor London Breed’s recent efforts to crack down on homelessness and crime weren’t enough to save her from the wrath of voters frustrated by years of disorder and talk of a “doom loop” in the famously progressive city.
After 14 rounds through the city’s ranked-choice voting process, Breed lost decisively to Daniel Lurie, a more moderate Democrat and a wealthy heir to the Levi Strauss fortune.
Lurie was ahead from the first round, and after 14 rounds led with 56.2 percent of the vote to Breed’s 43.8 percent, according to the San Francisco Department of Elections.
With San Francisco actually restoring sanity, pretty soon Austin will be the only crazy leftwing city left in America…
“UK Conservative Party elects ‘anti-woke’ Kemi Badenoch as new leader. The UK’s Conservatives on Saturday elected Kemi Badenoch as their new leader, replacing Rishi Sunak after the party’s poor performance in July’s general election. Badenoch, a staunch “anti-woke” advocate, faces the challenge of uniting a divided party while redefining its future.”
Israel seems to be on another winning streak. Israeli Commando Raid Captures Hezbollah Naval Commander….The terrorist, identified by Lebanese media as Imad Amhaz, chief of Hezbollah’s naval operations, was picked by Israeli commandos from the town of Batroun, some 100 miles into the terrorist-held hostile territory.”
Today, the Board of Regents of Texas A&M University System pushed back against “shared governance” with woke faculty members. They voted to end 52 low-performing programs, including an LGBTQ minor.
Over the course of many months, State Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Midlothian) repeatedly criticized DEI courses and the LGBTQ studies minor at Texas A&M. In September 2024, a university spokesperson confirmed that they would deactivate 38 certificates and 14 minors, including the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies minor.
On November 7, the Board of Regents unanimously approved the deactivation of these programs by voice vote.
The only question is why it took so long to fight back against the woke mind virus…
Want to be infuriated? “A federal disaster relief official ordered workers to bypass the homes of Donald Trump’s supporters as they surveyed damage caused by Hurricane Milton in Florida, according to internal correspondence obtained by The Daily Wire and confirmed by multiple federal employees.”
“The Grift Is Ending: ESG Fund Managers Being Told To “Keep Their Lawyers Very Close.”
Green New Boom: “Lithium-Ion Battery Recycle Plant Explodes in Missouri.”
RIPeanut. “Outrage Ensues After Beloved Rescue Squirrel Seized By NY, Euthanized.”
Speaking of sickening, you might want to skip to the next LinkSwarm entry if you don’t want to hear about horrific child abuse: “Animator Bolhem Bouchiba was sentenced to 25 years in prison for ordering the torture of children on live streams, paying parents to abuse their own kids.” Now he works for Disney.
Remember all that money to was supposed to flow to semiconductor companies that fabbed chips in America thanks to the CHIPS Act? Well Intel has seen exactly jack and squat from it. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger: “As we said on our [earnings] call, we are disappointed by the time it is taking to get it done: it is well over two years since the CHIPS Act passed and over that period I have invested $30 billion in U.S. manufacturing and we have seen $0 from the CHIPS grants.” What are the odds that the money has actually been raked off into the usual Democratic pockets? (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Followup: “For five years, Mickey Barreto lived in Room 2565 at the storied New Yorker Hotel without paying a dime. But the free ride ended when he was not only evicted, but also charged earlier this year with a criminal scheme to claim ownership of the Midtown Manhattan hotel. Now, two doctors and prosecutors have said that he is not mentally competent to stand trial, and a judge has given him seven days to find inpatient psychiatric care.” (Hat tip: Dwight.) (Previously.)
Kotaku lays off more writers, though ultra-woke leftist Alyssa Mercante evidently left on her own. Evidently they’re down to six fulltime staffers.
Everything you know is wrong. “A new peer-reviewed study led by Sydney-based researchers Stephen Woodcock and Jay Falleti has found that the time it would take for a typing monkey to replicate Shakespeare’s plays, sonnets, and poems would be longer than the lifespan of our universe.”
“Democrats Admit Trump Actually Won In 2020 And Is Now Unable To Serve Third Term.” “We probably should have been more up-front about the fact that we stole the election and Biden was never president, but oh well. Hindsight is 20-20. I guess Kamala wins by default now, right?”
If you’ve been reading this blog any length of time, you know that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been suing the Biden Administration for both dereliction of federal duties and regulatory overreach. The latter has included several lawsuits against the Biden Administration over their attempts to impose a radical transexual agenda via judicial fiat, and on this front Paxton has just filed another one, this time over the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Texas and 16 other states sued the Biden administration, accusing it of attempting to unlawfully rewrite a federal disability law to include “gender dysphoria” in a newly approved rule.
The lawsuit was filed on September 26 against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the charge that its rule “upends decades of established federal disability law” by redefining “gender dysphoria” as a disability under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the ADA were signed into law in 1977. Section 504 states, “No otherwise qualified individual with a disability in the United States … shall, solely by reason of his or her disability, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under … any program or activity conducted by any Executive agency…”
According to the lawsuit, Section 504 “prohibits ‘any program or activity’ that receives federal financial assistance from discriminating against a qualified individual with a disability.”
The ADA defines a disability as “a physical or mental impairment that constitutes or results in a substantial impediment to employment.”
The HHS issued a rule in May titled “Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” which included a change to Section 504 that states gender dysphoria “may be a disability.”
It determined that any “restrictions that prevent, limit, or interfere with otherwise qualified individuals’ access to care due to their gender dysphoria, gender dysphoria diagnosis, or perception of gender dysphoria, may violate section 504.”
However, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit asserts that when Congress enacted Section 504 and the ADA in the 70s, “it established as a matter of law that ‘transvestism, transsexualism . . . [and] gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments, or other sexual behavior disorders,’ are not protected disabilities.”
The lawsuit additionally seeks to have a 2002 amendment to Section 504, “Nondiscrimination Under Federal Grants and Programs,” declared unconstitutional, claiming it “applies with extreme breadth” to any “program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance,” meaning all recipients of Federal funds are subject to compliance to the Rehabilitation Act.
The court documents allege that the HHS rule “exposes” the 17 states and their agencies to “loss of federal funding.”
“The Biden Administration is once again abusing executive action to sidestep federal law and force unscientific, unfounded gender ideology onto the public,” Paxton said in a press release.
Funny how a man pretending to be a woman is simultaneously both a powerful personal statement of individuality that requires large companies to demand people use officially sanctioned pronouns and a mental illness that requires the federal government to invoke the ADA to remove federal funds unless targeted political enemies bow down to radical transsexual social justice. The answer appears to change depending on whichever is most useful for radical leftwing Democrats to force ordinary Americans to bend to their will.
Paxton has won several previous lawsuits on the issue, and I expect him to win this one as well.
The State of Texas and Attorney General Ken Paxton have been granted a nationwide stay against the Biden administration’s new rule that would defund federally-funded healthcare providers found to be refusing patients “gender transition” procedures.
The Biden administration announced a rule change last April under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), described as seeking to hold the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) “health programs and activities to the same nondiscrimination standards as recipients of Federal financial assistance.”
On August 30, U.S. District Judge Jeremy D. Kernodle ruled in favor of Texas and Montana, ordering that the modification of the Affordable Care Act at issue is precluded from implementation across the nation.
“Here, federal agencies are attempting to impose a sweeping new social policy by manipulating and perverting the statutory text that constrains them,” Kernodle wrote in his opinion.
“Nothing in these statutes authorizes HHS — or any federal official — to require healthcare providers to perform novel “gender-transition” procedures or force States to subsidize them.Texas and Montana seek a stay or preliminary injunction to prevent the irreparable harm that will undoubtedly follow. The Court grants the States’ request.”
Snip.
Texas and Montana sued HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra in June for allegedly requiring “healthcare providers and States to perform and pay for so-called ‘gender-transition’ procedures — or else lose federal funding.”
The filing asserted that the new rule would “defund healthcare providers across the country who refuse to perform or pay for experimental, unproven, and potentially dangerous ‘gender transition’ procedures.”
Montana and Texas were then both granted a statewide stay the following month, banning the application of the new HHS rule.
The victorious states then requested a nationwide stay in order to extend the relief granted by the court against the HHS rule across the country.
Paxton reacted to the stay, saying in a release, “When Biden and Harris sidestep the Constitution to force their unlawful, extremist agenda on the American public, we are fighting back and stopping them.”
“By blocking this destructive policy, which would have forced taxpayer-funded hospitals to conduct unproven and dangerous ‘gender transition’ procedures, Texas has delivered a major victory for Americans across the country.”
For anyone that thought the Democratic Party’s creepy love of child transsexism was a passing fade, the Biden Administration’s institutional determination to mandate child mutilation services into law should belay that naive hope. It also indicates that the evil ObamaCare has wrought on America’s health care is far from over. Fortunately, the vast majority of ordinary Americans have not fallen prey to this madness, and Paxton et al. have put a stop to this particular transsexual madness for now.
Also, any appeal will be heard in the Fifth Circuit Court, which has previously frowned on the Biden Administration’s previous attempts to mandate transsexism by judicial fiat.
Here’s a story that demonstrates the astounding failure of Democrat-controlled California’s soft-on-crime (but hard on legal guns) policies to keep citizens safe.
A man whose record includes seven felony convictions now faces an attempted murder charge after prosecutors say he opened fire with a machine gun on two Los Angeles police officers, grazing one of them.
Malcolm Darnell Guss Jr. is accused of using a fully automatic AR-style rifle to shoot at Officers Stefan Carutasu and Joshua Rodney after they tried to stop his white Chevrolet sedan at around 9:30 p.m. on July 3 in Willowbrook near Broadway and Rosecrans Avenue, just south of Los Angeles.
The articles uses “machine gun,” which is probably technically correct in terms of the National Firearms Act definition, but it sounds like what he was using was an actual assault rifle, capable of selectable fully automatic fire. But since the democratic media complex loves to call Modern Sporting Rifles like the AR-15 “assault rifles,” they’re bereft of language when a real one shows up.
Guss allegedly unloaded on the officers before they could get out of their patrol car, resulting in two graze wounds to the head. Both officers suffered lacerations from the glass fragments of the patrol vehicle’s windshield. Guss fled the scene but was apprehended July 12. On Tuesday, he pleaded not guilty in Compton court to attempted murder and other charges for allegedly using a machine gun in the attack.
Court records show Guss’ prior convictions include two strikes for residential burglaries in July 2014 and December 2018. Since 2020 he’s been charged three times with being a felon in possession of a firearm.
In December 2020, records show, Guss was arrested with drugs and a gun by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies. He was sentenced to two years in prison after striking a deal to plead no contest to a single felony charge in March 2021. That same month, he received another two-year sentence in a separate gun case that stemmed from a September 2020 incident.
The district attorney’s office in a statement said the two convictions had concurrent prison sentences
Guss was arrested again in the Antelope Valley in May 2022, charged with resisting arrest and assault with a deadly weapon. He pleaded no contest to the resisting offense and got 16 months in prison, according to court records.
In February 2023, a judge issued a bench warrant for his arrest after he allegedly violated the terms of his release. LAPD officers in Newton Division arrested Guss on July 10, but he was released a month later, county jail records show.
And yes, there’s footage of Guss trying to kill two cops by blazing away with a “machine gun” through his rear window:
(I’m not sure if it’s the youth, the Gen Z, or the California, but those cops do sound radically different than classic LA police as depicted in TV shows like Adam-12 or Dragnet.)
So we have a repeat offender with multiple felony convictions, who by all accounts should already have been behind bars for a good long time, driving around free as a bird. “Since 2020 he’s been charged three times with being a felon in possession of a firearm.” Once again, Democrats scream and shout about “gun crimes,” but in the locales they control (especially in places with a Soros-backed DAs like Los Angeles’ George Gascon), they seem to do nothing about locking up felons with multiple gun violations. And in a state with some of the strictest gun laws in the country, a felon had no problem obtaining a fully automatic weapon.
Soft on crime policies in Democrat-run California, whether at the state level through bad legislation or at the local level due to Soros-backed DAs who refuse to prosecute, is putting convicted felons back on the street and endangering the lives of both ordinary California citizens and law-enforcement officers. Given how thoroughly the mind virus rot of social justice has infected the Democratic Party, that won’t change until Californians are willing to start electing Republicans again.
Which seems deeply unlikely. But New Yorkers elected Rudy Giuliani in 1993 for the same reason, so maybe it’s not entirely impossible…
The giant Borganism that is the federal government has a built-in bias to stick its tentacles into every orifice of the body politic, gathering more money, power and influence to itself in stark defiance of the Founder’s blueprints for a weak federal government checked by strong state and citizen sovereignty. In addition to money and power, it also wants to gobble up land, and now it wants to eat 700,000 acres of private land on Texas-New Mexico border.
Under the guise of “land protection,” the federal government aims to acquire 700,000 acres of private land in the Southern High Plains region—which sits along the Texas-New Mexico border.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently finalized its Land Protection Plan. The plan aims to acquire 700,000 acres of privately owned land and put it under federal control for “protection” in “perpetuity.” This is part of the federal government’s efforts to expand the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge—which feeds into the broader aim of the Biden administration: fulfilling the “30×30” initiative.
Through the “30×30” initiative, the Biden administration decided that 30 percent of the nation’s land and waters must be under federal control and management by 2030. President Biden launched the agenda via Executive Order 14008 on January 27, 2021.
However, American Stewards of Liberty explains that the initiative was rebranded as “America the Beautiful” after facing public backlash.
As the American Stewards highlight, the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge is attempting to expand the “acquisition boundary” from 6,440 acres in Texas and New Mexico to 7,000,000 acres—all without congressional authority. After they acquire more land, they plan to federalize 700,000 acres through buying the land or obtaining permanent conservation easements.
“Federally acquiring nearly three-quarter million acres from this region is a direct attack on the oil, gas, and mineral industries, agriculture production, and local economies,” the American Stewards write.
They also claim counties were not notified of the expansion.
“No direct notice was given to the counties or local governing authorities. The USFWS [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] failed to coordinate this plan with the local governments as required by law.”
The expanded area grabs land in 15 Texas counties including Bailey, Castro, Cochran, Crosby, Dawson, Gaines, Garza, Hale, Hockley, Lamb, Lubbock, Lynn, Parmer, Terry, and Yoakum. The expansion into five counties in New Mexico includes land from Chaves, Curry, De Baca, Lea, and Roosevelt counties.
If you look at a map of the proposed takings, you can see federal environmentalists want to “conserve” (i.e. control) land rightup to the edge of Lubbock:
Both this plan and the 30×30 plan in general smack of the sort of unauthorized, self-directed bureaucratic empire-building that the Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo decision struck down. Both private land owners and the State of Texas should resist this blatant land grab with all the tools at their disposal.
You’ve got to hand one thing to the gun-grabbers: Their shameless, brazen tactics to disarm law-abiding American citizens know no bounds. There’s no strategy so dirty, underhanded or silly that they won’t try it. Today’s case in point: To disarm people visiting the French Quarter, they just declared that a police station is actually a vocational school.
After New Orleans city officials were unsuccessful in their attempts to get state lawmakers to designate vast swathes of their city’s popular tourist area as a gun-free zone before Louisiana’s new permitless carry law went live July 4, they came up with their own solution, which is probably unconstitutional, definitely whacky and certain to be contested in court.
The New Orleans Police Department has designated their Eighth District police station – which is located in the middle of the French Quarter – as a vocational technical school. In other words, they turned a working police station into a vo-tech. Now, everything within a 1,000-foot radius of the “school” is a gun-free zone, including more than five blocks of Bourbon Street, an international tourist destination.
It is a felony in Louisiana to violate a gun-free zone, which is punishable by up to five years in a state prison at hard labor.
Who will actually attend classes at the new “school” is not known. New Orleans Police recruits are trained at the police academy, which is located at a different facility. However, city and police officials now claim some of the recruits may take at least one class in a small room at the new “vo-tech.” There are no classes planned for civilian students.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill balked at the city’s move, warning officials they could face civil rights lawsuits because of their “made-up designation.”
“I’m working hard to help keep New Orleans safe, but the City cannot avoid state law by unilaterally designating police stations ‘vo-tech locations.’ You cannot just ‘designate’ yourself a vo-tech school. Among other implications, if it was one (it’s not) the police department would be under the jurisdiction of a board of supervisors for higher education, and it would be subject to other oversight requirements. I have no specific plans yet, but would caution the NOPD that it will likely be subject to civil rights lawsuits under Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act if it arrests people pursuant to its made-up designation, which is clearly not legal or effective. I certainly hope the NOPD isn’t violating people’s rights by making up their own rules, which is why the Department is under a federal consent decree,” Murrill said in a statement posted on social media.
“Schools have classrooms, not booking rooms,” Murrill said in another post.
Snip.
Dan Zelenka is an attorney, a board member of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and president of the Louisiana Shooting Association, a nonprofit founded in 1966 with thousands of members, which is affiliated with the Civilian Marksmanship Program and the National Rifle Association.
“The Louisiana Shooting Association of course opposes this redesignation, and the reason is that it’s not a school. You can’t wave a magic wand and create a school just because you teach a class there,” Zelenka told the Second Amendment Foundation Monday.
Louisiana state law is very specific, Zelenka said, regarding what constitutes a vo-tech which, as the Attorney General pointed out in her statement, are subject to the supervision of a board of supervisors for higher education.
“They’re claiming their new school is an adjunct of their police academy, but their police academy is not supervised or managed by this board of supervisors, so they can’t be a vo-tech,” Zelenka said.
City officials, he said, have already changed their gun-free zone maps to include the 1,000-foot circle around the Eighth District station.
“Personally, I think our laws are clear,” Zelenka said. “A police station is not a school.”
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell essentially slapped a Burger King crown on her head and demanded that people bow to her because she’s the Queen of Romania. A police station is not a vocational school, no matter how loudly the Democrats running New Orleans proclaim it nor how many signs they put up to that effect.
But this is part and parcel of the Democratic Party’s insistence that they can ignore both law and reality at will if it furthers their political goals. A man wearing a dress magically becomes a woman simply by declaring it so, a widespread spree of looting and arson becomes “a mostly peaceful,” and state and federal statues can be mixed willy-nilly to charge and convict political enemies.
Fortunately for law-abiding gun owners visiting New Orleans, the Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General are all Republicans, and Republicans run both houses of the legislature. The chances they let these blatantly unlawful shenanigans stand is very slim indeed.
Perhaps the legislature should respond by simply scrapping ineffective, counterproductive “gun free zones” entirely.
Greetings, and welcome to a LinkSwarm so large I had to start working on it Wednesday! Unemployment rises too much to rig it away, home sales crash to Carter levels, Europe’s voters rise up to throw out the left, Hunter is guilty guilty guilty, another blow to the Biden Administration’s tranny Title IX rewrite, Israel rescues some hostages and smokes a Hezbolli terror master, and California continues to do California things.
Every so-called “strong” jobs report has been a disaster if one puts in even a little work to dig below the pristine, if fake, surface. And while we expected this charade to continue indefinitely, and certainly at least until the November election, at which point suddenly all the truth about the ugly labor market would be revealed to usher in the new president amid an economic crisis, we were shocked when none other than the Fed chair admitted today that the Biden admin was rigging jobs data.
In response to a question from a Bloomberg journalist during the post-FOMC presser, asking the Fed chair to comment on the state of the labor market, the Fed Chair said that two years ago the labor market was “overheated” and has since gotten back to “normal”, largely thanks to “supply from to immigration” – translation: illegal aliens have been the main reasons for the increase in employment and the drop in wages and thus, overall inflation, which as we discussed recently, is the narrative that is being pushed out to mitigate demands by most Americans to halt illegal immigration.
Where things got very interesting, however, is when Powell was discussing the demand-side of the labor market: here, he addressed the dropping quits level, the decline in job openings and wages, but more importantly, the rising unemployment rate – from 3.4% to 4.0% which clearly goes against the narrative of red hot payrolls – all of which the Fed chair summarized as strong job creation, yet caveated by saying that “there is an argument that [payrolls] may be a bit overstated.”
Note: he didn’t say “understated” because the “-stating” always goes in just one direction: the one that makes the resident of the White House look good.
In other words, the jobs – like so many things about this Potemkin economy – are a lie, and while Powell immediately realized what he had said, and tried to couch it by adding that payrolls are “still strong”, suddenly the entire narrative of a strong labor market imploded in front of our eyes, because if the Biden admin will lie about a “bit” of the jobs report, it will lie about any part of it.
And, as we have shown above and every month this year, lie is precisely what the Biden administration has been doing, month after month, year after year.
And the biggest stunner, as Edward Snowden put it so eloquently, is that he’s “not sure I’ve ever seen the chairman of the Federal Reserve publicly accuse the White House of cooking the books on employment numbers, but here we are.”
Speaking of which: “Initial Claims Surge To 10-Month Highs As California Joblessness Soars.” “Did we suddenly get a peek at economic reality? The number of Americans applying for jobless benefits for the first time surged last week to 242k (up from 229k and well above the 225k exp). That is the highest since August 2023.” And California, which just happened to implement a minimum wage hike, led far and away with the most claims…
Home sales have dropped so far during the Biden Recession that they’re now back to 1978 levels.
The recession in the U.S. existing home sales market has been so deep that we’re back to late ‘70s levels—despite us now living in a much bigger country:
April 1978: 4.09 million U.S. existing home sales print
April 2024: 4.14 million U.S. existing home sales print*
1978: 223 million U.S. population
2024: 341 million U.S. population
The reason, of course, is that housing affordability has deteriorated so much that many buyers and sellers alike have pulled back from the market. Many homeowners who would otherwise like to sell and buy something else are staying put rather than trading in their 3% mortgage rate for a 7% mortgage rate.
The bad news?
According to a forecast published this week by Goldman Sachs, the recovery for existing home sales could be a slog.
1978: Jimmy Carter was still President, the Bee Gees dominated the music charts thanks to Saturday Night Fever, and a brand new comic strip about a lasagna-loving cat named Garfield debuted. And the average price of a home was somewhere around $56,000. (Yet, somehow, home sales were still stronger during the 1981-82 interest rate hikes than under Carter in 1978…)
A jury of Hunter Biden’s peers found him guilty on all three felony charges on Tuesday after a six-day trial that demonstrated that the first son lied on a federal gun-purchase background-check form when he claimed not to be a drug addict.
The verdict was reached after the jury deliberated for three hours, beginning Monday afternoon with the conclusion of closing arguments. Hunter was surrounded by family members, including wife Melissa Cohen Biden and his uncle James Biden, as the verdict was read. First lady Jill Biden missed the verdict announcement and rushed to greet Hunter afterward.
Hunter was found guilty on two charges for lying about his crack-cocaine addiction on federal gun paperwork when he bought a Colt Cobra revolver at a sporting-goods store in Wilmington in October 2018. He was also found guilty on a third charge for possessing the firearm while he was using crack cocaine.
The first son faces up to 25 years in prison, though he’ll likely receive a lighter sentence as a first-time, nonviolent offender. Judge Noreika, who presided over the trial, said that a sentencing hearing will be held in September.
Though Hunter Biden still has a pending tax trial, don’t hold your breath about him going to trial for his role as the Biden crime family’s bagman…
I’ve pointed out time and again (including yesterday) that Biden Justice Department AG Merrick Garland’s “special counsel” appointment of Biden Justice Department Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss in the Hunter Biden case is a fraud on the public.
In a pretrial ruling denying the younger Biden’s motion to dismiss the case, Judge Maryellen Noreika has confirmed that Garland’s appointment of Weiss did not comply with federal regulations for appointing special counsels. That, however, was not a basis to dismiss the case — particularly with Garland and Weiss quietly citing the last special-counsel regulation, §600.10 (of Title 28, Code of Federal Regulations), which provides that no one may hold the Justice Department accountable for flouting its own regulations.
To be clear, I have never contended that Garland lacked the authority to assign Weiss, or whoever he wanted to assign, to investigate the Biden case. As Judge Noreika correctly explained, federal statutory law — in particular, §§509, 510, 515, and 533 — vest attorneys general with sweeping power to run the Justice Department as they see fit, including power to designate any DOJ lawyers they choose to run investigations anywhere in the country.
Weiss, for example, is now prosecuting Hunter Biden in Los Angeles, on the tax case scheduled to begin trial on September 5, in addition to the gun case in Weiss’s own Delaware district. That’s because Garland doubled-down in assigning the investigation of the president’s son to the same prosecutor — Weiss — who had just schemed with defense lawyers on a failed sweetheart plea deal that was designed to make all conceivable cases against said son disappear (and only after Weiss had consciously dithered as the statute of limitations steadily eviscerated serious criminal offenses).
Garland is the attorney general, and he has that power. It is power he wields with no fear that Congress will slash the DOJ’s budget, censure him, impeach him, or do anything else but caterwaul over how he abuses it. My point is that Garland has been engaged in a nearly four-year fraud — trying to con the country into believing the Justice Department is neither protecting its boss nor trying, to the extent politically feasible, to protect the president’s son.
The AG refused to appoint a special counsel for the Biden investigation, despite the president’s (and other Biden family members’) being implicated in Hunter’s malfeasance, particularly crimes arising out of his peddling of his father’s political influence for huge pay days from agents of corrupt and anti-American regimes.
Europe’s ruling center left just got smashed in European elections.
Early projections of the EU-election results show that the continent’s right-wing parties have made significant advances as voters signal their dissatisfaction with illegal immigration and inflation. Formerly powerful left-wing parties seem to have been routed, while centrists stayed the course.
This antiestablishment sentiment was expressed most strongly in Germany and France, two of the European bloc’s most powerful countries.
The French results prompted President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve the French parliament in preparation for snap elections on June 30 and July 7, as his party lost badly to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which is part of the Identity and Democracy coalition in the European Parliament.
Before crowds in Paris, Le Pen responded to Macron’s announcement: “This historic vote shows that when people vote, people win. . . . We are ready to exercise power, to end mass migration, to prioritize purchasing power, ready to make France live again.”
In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his Social Democrats were trounced by a combination of support for the right-wing CDU/CSU and Alternative for Germany (AfD). The left-wing Social Democratic Party (14.6 percent) and the Greens (12 percent) underperformed. Katarina Barley, speaking for the Social Democrats, called it “a bitter evening.” “I am very disappointed.” The AfD, having won 14 percent as of this reporting, is intent on carrying its EU wins to the national elections in October 2025.
Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni was the only leader of a European power to see success, with the right-wing politician’s allied faction, European Conservatives and Reformists, placing first in Italy.
In Spain, the conservative People’s Party took 34.2 percent of the vote, a rejection of socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez and his Socialist Workers’ Party, which received 30.2 percent. Two other right-wing parties, Vox and Se Acabó La Fiesta (The Party’s Over), received another 14.2 percent between them.
The Greens ceded more ground than any other party in the EU, losing more than a quarter of their seats.
For decades, the ruling Euroelite have insisted that there is no alternative to their high tax, high spending, high debt, high regulation, high immigration, environmental leftist EU superstate. Voters seem to have finally grown tired enough of it that they’re willing to embrace Marine Le Pen if that’s what it takes to make their voices heard.
In his opinion, Thomas wrote that, though a bump stock does increase a rifle’s rate of fire, it does not turn it into an automatic weapon.
“A bump stock does not convert a semiautomatic rifle into a machinegun any more than a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger does,” Thomas wrote. “Even with a bump stock, a semiautomatic rifle will only fire one shot for every ‘function of the trigger.’”
Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his concurrence that, while the ATF’s interpretation of the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act was an incorrect reading of the statute, there are legislative remedies for the issue of bump stocks.
“The horrible shooting spree in Las Vegas in 2017 did not change the statutory text or its meaning,” Alito wrote. “That event demonstrated that a semiautomatic rifle with a bump stock can have the same lethal effect as a machinegun, and it thus strengthened the case for amending §5845(b). But an event that highlights the need to amend a law does not itself change the law’s meaning.”
“The Lies and Fall of Ibram X. Kendi.” “This man gave America the simplest, most easily applicable binary solution to all of our racial problems. It didn’t matter that it was stupid, at least not from the perspective of his personal enrichment. For a while, it sold…What we lived through in 2020, during the Floyd meltdown and its aftermath, was a onetime necrotic bloom during which the first carrion-feeders on the scene were able to fatten themselves up to spectacular proportions on the collapsed body of American progressive racial and political angst.”
The US has broadened its sanctions on Russia, including a fresh crackdown on banks dealing with sanctioned entities.
It expands a December programme to target foreign banks deemed to be aiding Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.
The US also placed sanctions on the Moscow stock exchange, leading to it halting trading in dollars and euros.
It also moved to try to restrict Russia’s use of technology, including chips and software.
US President Joe Biden signed an executive order in December that imposed sanctions on banks dealing with about 1,200 individuals and companies deemed to be helping Russia’s war machine.
Those measures, which expose banks to the risk of being cut off from the US financial system, have now been expanded to about 4,500 entities.
The US will also target gold-laundering.
Peter Harrell, a former White House senior director for international economics, told the Reuters news agency that the US “is shifting towards something that begins to look like an effort to set up a global financial embargo on Russia”.
As part of this effort, the US Treasury announced that it would impose sanctions on parts of Russia’s financial system, including the Moscow Exchange, which is one of Russia’s main stock exchanges.
The stock exchange, which is Russia’s largest foreign exchange market, said the sanctions had forced it to stop trading in dollars and euros.
The US also focused on technology. Chips and other technology made in the US have been found in downed Russian equipment on Ukraine battlefields, including drones, radios, missiles and armoured vehicles.
The sanctions aim to make it more difficult for companies to supply that tech.
The US will target shell firms in Hong Kong selling chips to Russia.
There are YouTubers saying “Russian economy is crippled” etc., but I remain skeptical. The chips going into Russian drones aren’t anything special, they’re COTS stuff and EPROMs you can get almost anywhere.
“Israeli Military Rescues Four Hostages from Gaza.” Naturally this is good news for decent human beings everywhere and a tragedy for the radical left.
“Lebanon: Israeli Airstrike Kills One Of Hezbollah’s Most Senior Terror Commanders. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Tuesday night eliminated one of Hezbollah’s senior-most terror commanders operating in Lebanon. Sami Taleb Abdullah, who headed Hezbollah’s Nasr terrorist force, and three other Hezbollah commanders were killed in an Israeli airstrikes on a terrorist base located in southern Lebanon.” Good. Remember how commentators have repeatedly opined on the possibility of Hezbollah opening up a “second front” while Israel settles Hamas’ hash? They seem to have done very little but the usual pinprick terror attacks. With all the terror money Iran is sloshing around to Hamas and the Houthi’s, one wonders if they’re stretched to thin to send much Hezbollah’s way…
Western District of Louisiana Chief Judge Terry Doughty in an order Thursday declared that Title IX, a federal education law that bars sex-based discrimination, “was written and intended to protect biological women from discrimination.”
“Such purpose makes it difficult to sincerely argue that, at the time of enactment, ‘discrimination on the basis of sex’ included gender identity, sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, or sex characteristics,” Doughty, a Trump appointee, wrote. “Enacting the changes in the Final Rule would subvert the original purpose of Title IX.”
Of course the U.S. Women’s basketball has left Caitlyn Clark off the team. Because we all know queer identity trumps winning a medal for your country…
On the upside, also not competing: “Lia” Thomas. Turns out the Olympics don’t want men competing in women’s swimming. Who could have possibly seen that coming?
“In Hindsight Fans Realize They Were Too Quick To Call The Holiday Special The Worst Star Wars Project Ever…After watching the latest Disney Star Wars offering The Acolyte, however, many fans admit they might have been too harsh to call the holiday show the worst thing to come out of the franchise.”
Attorney General Ken Paxton announced today that a federal court has vacated the controversial Title IX guidance nationwide.
The ruling included a permanent injunction against its enforcement against Texas and its schools.
The Biden administration’s 1,500-page rewrite of Title IX added “gender identity” as a protected class and would force K-12 schools to allow boys into girls’ facilities and activities. Schools that refused were threatened with loss of federal education funds.
In response to the rewrite, Gov. Greg Abbott instructed the Texas Education Agency to ignore the new Title IX rule. He later directed all public universities to also ignore the rewrite.
Meanwhile, Paxton sued to stop enforcement of the new rule.
“Joe Biden’s unlawful effort to weaponize Title IX for his extremist agenda has been stopped in its tracks,” said Attorney General Paxton Tuesday. “Threatening to withhold education funding by forcing states to accept ‘transgender’ policies that put women in danger was plainly illegal. Texas has prevailed on behalf of the entire Nation.”
According to the court order, “Rather than promote the equal opportunity, dignity, and respect that Title IX demands for both biological sexes, [the DOE’s] Guidance Documents do the opposite in an effort to advance an agenda wholly divorced from the text, structure, and contemporary context of Title IX. Not to mention, recipients of Title IX funding—including Texas schools—will face an impossible choice: revise policies in compliance with the Guidance Documents but in contravention of state law or face the loss of substantial funding.”
Not to mention being divorced from basic biological reality. If the cells in a person’s body contain XX chromosomes, that person is female. If those cells contain XY chromosomes, then that person is male. No amount of legislation or regulation will ever change that basic reality, no matter how hard the party insists that you must affirm that 2+2=5.
“Thus, to allow [the Biden Administration’s] unlawful action to stand would be to functionally rewrite Title IX in a way that shockingly transforms American education and usurps a major question from Congress,” wrote U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor. “That is not how our democratic system functions.”
Multiple Texas laws and school policies implicate the concept of sex in the educational context. The Texas Education Code prohibits school districts from allowing “a student to compete in an interscholastic athletic competition sponsored or authorized by the district or school that is designated for the biological sex opposite to the student’s biological sex.” TEX. EDUC. CODE § 33.0834. The Board of Trustees for independent school districts “have the exclusive power and duty to govern and oversee the management of the public schools of the district.” Id. § 11.151(b). Pursuant to that oversight power, Texas school districts promulgate additional policies on related issues that mirror § 33.0834. These school districts receive federal funds.
These additional district-specific policies take various forms. For example, some Texas school districts—such as Frisco ISD, Grapevine–Colleyville ISD, and Carroll ISD—mandate that schools within their respective districts maintain separate bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers based on biological sex. These school districts also prohibit the assignment of bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers based on subjective gender identity. Consistent with the biological reality of sex, Carroll ISD precludes district employees from “requir[ing] the use of pronouns that are inconsistent with a student’s or other person’s biological sex.
“The biological reality of sex” is precisely what the left has declared war on.
As part of the radical left’s war against Christianity and the nuclear family, the social justice-infected Democratic party has decided to make pandering to confused and mentally ill men a higher priority than protecting actual women. Despite how deeply unpopular this anti-reality position with the American public, conservatives were initially slow to take up the fight against it, either cowed by histrionic emotional arguments (“If you deny transexualism, you’re literally forcing them to kill themselves!”) or an inability to believe that the something so brazenly absurd is real and not some sort of elaborate joke. But when the Biden Administration tries to rewrite Title IX, a law written to protect women, by executive fiat to mean the exact opposite of the statutory language in order to protect men pretending to be woman at the expense of actual women, then we have to assume that they are very serious indeed.
Texas is fortunate to have a governor and attorney general who are not afraid to fight against the Biden Administration’s war on reality.
After the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) proposed a new rule expanding federal firearm license (FFL) requirements, the Office of the Texas Attorney General and Gun Owners of America filed a joint lawsuit challenging the rule, and on Sunday secured a federal court order blocking the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) from enforcing the rule against certain plaintiffs.
The DOJ claimed the rule was to help implement the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) authored by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), but critics, including Cornyn, say the Biden administration violated the law and the Constitution in proposing the rule.
The rule has prompted Cornyn to file a resolution of disapproval in the U.S. Senate seeking to strike it down legislatively.
Under the rule, gun owners would be forced to obtain an FFL and perform background checks before selling firearms in a wide range of new circumstances, including if they rented a table at a local gun show.
However, the court order by Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk compares the language of the BSCA against the new rule, highlighting how FFL requirements evolved from the original statute contained in the Firearm Owners Protection Act (FOPA) of 1986 to the current statutory language in the BSCA, and finally compared that to the new rule.
The FOPA required those “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms to have an FFL. It defined such persons as one “who devotes time, attention, and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business with the principal objective of livelihood and profit through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms.”
The BSCA changed the “engaged in the business” definition, broadening it by eliminating the requirement that a person’s “principal objective” of purchasing and reselling firearms must include both “livelihood and profit,” by shortening the requirement to just someone who predominantly earns a profit, Kacsmaryk explained.
He also noted the BSCA did not alter an existing exemption for a person who “makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.”
Kacsmaryk wrote the new rule likely violated statutory laws in several ways, beginning with the requirement that a person who sells a single firearm or discusses selling a firearm could be subjected to licensure requirements under the rule conflicts.
Another provision he said likely runs afoul of the BSCA is the prohibition of firearms obtained for personal protection from being counted among the guns a firearm owner may sell from their personal collection.
“Nothing in the foregoing text suggests that the term “personal collection” does not include firearms accumulated primarily for personal protection — yet that is exactly what the Final Rule asserts,” Kacsmaryk wrote, adding the DOJ’s defense of that provision is “untenable.”
“I am relieved that we were able to secure a restraining order that will prevent this illegal rule from taking effect,” Paxton said in a statement on the order. “The Biden Administration cannot unilaterally overturn Americans’ constitutional rights and nullify the Second Amendment.”
en. John Cornyn (R-Texas) took up two pieces of Second Amendment-related legislation last week, filing a resolution of disapproval aiming to shoot down a proposed rule by the Biden administration to require federal firearms licenses (FFL) for most private gun sales, and a separate bill seeking to relax taxes imposed on firearms regulated under the National Firearms Act (NFA).
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) proposed a rule that greatly expands the circumstances in which someone is required to hold an FFL in order to sell a firearm, and when someone must conduct a background check on a potential buyer.
In proposing the rule, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said its purpose was to finalize the implementation of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), legislation authored by Cornyn that passed in 2022. However, Cornyn says the rule violates congressional intent.
The rule would greatly expand upon the circumstances in which someone is required to obtain an FFL, including if they rent a table at a gun show, make firearm purchases in an amount that exceeds their reportable income for a specific period of time, create records that track profits and losses from firearm sales, or any combination of a litany of details that could result in requiring a license.
According to Cornyn, the BSCA was motivated after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde that killed 19 children and two teachers. He also provided the mass shooting in Odessa as an example of what the bill was intended to prevent.
Addressing media questions regarding the resolution, Cornyn pointed out that the Odessa gunman was known to suffer from mental illness. He obtained the rifle used in the city-wide shooting spree from a Lubbock man who was purchasing bulk rifle parts from the internet, which he would assemble into functional rifles and sell as part of a regular business.
The man who sold the AR-15-style rifle to the Odessa gunman, Marcus Braziel, was convicted of acting as an unlicensed firearm dealer and failing to conduct a background check that would have prevented the sale of the rifle.
“Those making a living or profit for a business motive was the focus of the law, not those casually buying or selling their personal guns,” Cornyn told reporters.
“This rule is proof that the Biden administration is a dishonest broker, and Congress must hold it accountable for its actions in favor of its gun-grabbing liberal base over the Constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans,” Cornyn added in a statement on the resolution.
The resolution currently has 45 co-sponsors in the Senate.
The NRA has some new officers, and there are a few surprises.
Bob Barr representing the Old Guard did win the Presidency. The vote was 37-30. Then the surprises began. Bill Bachenberg from the reform slate went head to head with Blaine Wade for 1st VP and won 36-31. Following that, reformer Mark Vaughan, president of the Oklahoma Rifle Association, beat Tom King 35-31. King really represented the Old Guard and his defeat was a sea change in attitude on the Board.
Second, and what I consider the biggest surprise, Doug Hamlin, Executive Director of Publications and the reformer’s choice for EVP, beat Ronnie Barrett for EVP/CEO. There is some talk that Hamlin is intended as an interim choice while a nationwide search is conducted.
The excessive power that Wayne LaPierre gathered to the Executive Vice President position is part of the problem with the office, and is what let LaPierre turn the NRA into his own personal fiefdom. A lot of that should be stripped away and returned to the board.
More NRA news: The move to Texas resolution failed. Short term, there’s no question that move to Texas was planned as a Hail Mary to extract LaPierre from the legal troubles his corruption had ensnared the NRA in, and in that it failed. Long term, it probably is in the best interest of the NRA to move to Texas, as the state is a lot more friendly to gun rights, both politically and culturally, than either New York or Virginia.
And speaking of NRA news, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Dwight covered his trip to the convention, so if you’re interested in that, head over there and just keep scrolling.
