President Donald Trump’s top consumer protection and antitrust official has approved a massive $13.5 billion merger that will reshape the advertising industry, effectively putting the final nail in the coffin of coordination against outlets based on their political viewpoints.
The Federal Trade Commission announced Monday morning that it has decided not to block a merger between Omnicom and IPG, two rival firms which together make up a third of the world’s “Big Six” advertising agencies. But rather than rubber stamp the deal, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson extracted a major concession: the firms have agreed to cease all coordination related to viewpoint discrimination, refrain from any coordination in the future, and submit to strict compliance mandates.
Ferguson on Monday in his <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/omnicom-ipg-ferguson-statement_0.pdf">official statement on the decision</a> said the firms have offered not only to cease coordination in any way that would steer advertising dollars away from publishers based on political viewpoints, but to cooperate with the FTC’s investigation into past collusion and submit to regular compliance reviews.
The FTC appeared poised to block the merger based on evidence of past “anticompetitive” coordination against conservative news organizations, an issue the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/technology/ftc-investigation-advertising-boycotts.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">commission is actively investigating</a>. Ferguson on Monday pointed the finger at the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, better known as GARM, which was disbanded in controversy after it was caught directing ad dollars away from right-of-center outlets, including The Daily Wire.
“A Congressional investigation concluded that GARM banded together the most powerful firms in their industry to choke off the vital advertising revenue of those who disagreed with them,” Ferguson said in a Monday statement, adding that GARM aimed “to destroy publishers of content of which they disapproved.”
“GARM was neither the beginning nor the end of harmful and potentially unlawful collusion in this industry,” Ferguson said, a reference to concerns that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-jim-jordan-investigating-ad-industry-attempt-to-create-new-garm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GARM would reconstitute itself</a>.  “Numerous other industry groups and private organizations have publicly sought to use the chokepoint of the advertising industry to effect political or ideological goals.”
The conditions proposed by the companies, however, “mitigate” the FTC’s concerns about politically-motivated collusion in the future.
“Today, Omnicom and IPG have committed themselves to help stop that sort of coordination in their industry,” Ferguson said. “This consent agreement will help mitigate the dangers inherent in a consolidated national advertising market.”
“I hope the conditions imposed on this merger will encourage all advertising firms to adopt similar practices and thereby reduce the temptation to collude to the detriment of their customers, independent journalists, small and independent media companies, consumers, and the American public square,” he concluded.
GARM came under fire in 2024 after a congressional investigation, first reported by The Daily Wire, uncovered overt political bias in the advertising coalition that was being used to keep ad dollars away from websites that weren’t deemed “brand safe.”
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/garm-exposed-house-judiciary-report-says-ad-coalition-broke-law-to-silence-conservatives" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GARM Exposed: House Judiciary Report Says Ad Coalition Likely Broke Law To Silence Conservatives</a>
Internal emails from ad executives involved in the coalition, which included both Omnicom and IPG, showed that The Daily Wire was put on a “High Risk exclusion list” and “categorized as Conspiracy Theories.” Other emails show that the highest ranking official derided people “advocating for freedom of speech online” and complained that the Constitution was written “by white men exclusively.”
Daily Wire Editor Emeritus and co-founder Ben Shapiro testified to Congress that GARM was a “cartel,” and effectively made it impossible for conservatives to run an ad-based business.
“GARM acts as a cartel,” Shapiro said. “Its members account for 90 percent of ad spending in the United States–almost $1 trillion. In other words, if you’re not getting ad dollars from GARM members, it’s nearly impossible to run an ad-based business.”
<iframe loading="lazy" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/04Q1cPX9n9c?si=qbfxzrpn9nfP3ZEB" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
The concessions by Omnicom and IPG — which, once merged, will represent the largest ad firm in the world — are a sea change for the ad industry.
While individual companies are certainly still able to decide where they’d like to advertise, it has become standard practice in recent years for the industry to move in concert. Rather than making individual decisions, the industry giants created blacklists using biased third party “misinformation” services such as Newsguard. Entire business sectors would cut off access to disfavored publications based on exclusion lists that became industry standard.
According to the consent decree issued by the FTC on Monday, the firms have agreed to submit annual compliance reports on the matter of coordination for the next five years, as well as spot compliance reports any time the FTC requests one.
The FTC is urging publishers to alert the commission if they believe they are the “object of unlawful collusion.”
The agreement also stipulates that the firms will cooperate with the FTC on all past coordination to boycott publishers based on viewpoint.
“This Agreement requires Omnicom and IPG to cooperate with the Commission in any investigation relating to media-buying services,” Ferguson said, adding that “investigating and policing censorship practices that run afoul of the antitrust laws is a top priority of the Trump-Vance FTC.”
It is unclear whether the other four major ad firms — Publicis, WPP, Dentsu, and Havas — will take action regarding their own practices following the change by Omnicom and IPG. The ad industry has been gathered at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, where the potential merger was certainly a main topic of discussion.
The public will have 30 days to submit comments to the FTC on the merger decision.

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson Testifies During House Hearing

EXCLUSIVE: Trump FTC Secures Landmark Agreement to End Political Collusion in Advertising Industry

advertising

Censorship

Federal Trade Commission

Ferguson

GARM

It&#8217;s not every day that you accidentally stumble upon a vast conspiracy among the nation&#8217;s various local police departments — especially when it&#8217;s a conspiracy that relates to the upcoming presidential election. But yesterday, as I was watching some reporting about New York City&#8217;s decision to decriminalize jaywalking, that&#8217;s exactly what I did.
In case you missed it, yes, New York&#8217;s city council just voted to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nyc-legalizes-jaywalking-supporters-complain-laws-against-it-had-racial-implications" target="_blank" rel="noopener">decriminalize jaywalking</a>. No one&#8217;s going to get any more tickets for crossing against the light, or for walking in the middle of the street. Technically, jaywalkers still don&#8217;t have the right of way, so I guess they might have some liability if they cause an accident. But realistically, it&#8217;s open season for jaywalking in the city. The mayor, Eric Adams, didn&#8217;t take any official action on this bill to decriminalize jaywalking — probably because he&#8217;s busy with the Biden administration&#8217;s attempts to throw him in prison — so the bill has now automatically become law.
Here&#8217;s a report on the new law from a local news station. And as you listen to this, pay close attention to what the male anchor says in the beginning:
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That&#8217;s an interesting little hypothetical. The Democrat politician asks: &#8220;When was the last time you said, &#8216;I&#8217;m happy they caught that jaywalker?'&#8221; And then the reporter says &#8220;Never.&#8221; Therefore, we&#8217;re meant to conclude we don&#8217;t need the law against jaywalking.
First of all, if you&#8217;ve ever been unfortunate enough to drive a vehicle in New York, then the answer to this question would be a resounding &#8220;Yes.&#8221; You would scream with joy if the police arrested every single pedestrian who was walking in the road, even if they were there legally. Pedestrians make driving about a million times slower and more annoying in New York. Drivers in New York wouldn&#8217;t shed a single tear if it became a capital offense to jaywalk.
But even if we pretend that&#8217;s not true, it&#8217;s a pretty interesting argument that these women are advancing, if you think about it. They&#8217;re saying that, if you&#8217;ve never stopped yourself and said, &#8220;I&#8217;m happy they caught that guy for violating law X,&#8221; then we don&#8217;t need law X anymore.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1476-the-matt-walsh-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
It&#8217;s arguably not a bad way of looking at things, but coming from Democrats in New York, it&#8217;s a pretty entertaining approach. Imagine these people applying this principle to, say, New York&#8217;s business records law — the one they accused Trump of violating. Prior to Trump, has anyone in the history of New York ever found themselves saying that they&#8217;re really glad that someone was held accountable for victimless, misdemeanor record keeping violations that happened 7 years ago? Obviously the answer to that question is no. So why do we have those laws on the books? It would be fun to watch that politician (and the reporter) answer that particular question.
It would also be entertaining to ask these women whether we should get rid of, say, the entire tax code while we&#8217;re at it. After all, I don&#8217;t see anyone celebrating IRS agents who audit people for not reporting $600 they just received on Venmo. So why don&#8217;t we decriminalize every single accounting offense and tax code violation? Those aren&#8217;t rhetorical questions. It&#8217;d be a great idea. But of course, these questions never occur to Democrats in New York. They&#8217;re enforcing &#8220;equity,&#8221; not logic.
In any event, back to my conspiracy. You may have noticed how the anchor (and the politician) explained the reasoning for this new law. But let&#8217;s focus on the anchor for now, because he actually seems pretty skeptical of the law. As the anchor put it, &#8220;The overwhelming majority of jaywalking tickets were given to minorities. So why didn&#8217;t they just level the playing field on these tickets?&#8221;
In other words, the anchor wants to know why the police didn&#8217;t simply ticket more white people for jaywalking, while ticketing fewer blacks and Hispanics. Wouldn&#8217;t that solve the whole problem? If we did that, then instead of 90% of jaywalking tickets going to black people and Hispanics, we could make it closer to, say, 40%. And then racial equity will be achieved.
This is the kind of question you only ask when you&#8217;ve been subjected to decades of lies about crime statistics by Democrats like Kamala Harris and Barack Obama, to the point that you actually believe them. It&#8217;s a question that makes a very significant assumption that happens to have no basis in reality. And that assumption is that members of every racial group are jaywalking at precisely the same rates.
If you truly believe that assumption is true, then there is indeed a vast conspiracy among thousands of local police departments, all over the country. There&#8217;s no other explanation for what&#8217;s going on. That&#8217;s because, as I&#8217;ve discovered, these so-called &#8220;racial disparities&#8221; in jaywalking enforcement happen to exist everywhere — not just in New York. 
Here&#8217;s a report from San Diego from a couple of years ago, for example. For some reason, they interviewed a guy who had a beef over his jaywalking ticket. And then they get into the statistics, which reveal just how deep the rot goes in the San Diego police department. Watch:
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So, 16% of the tickets went to blacks, even though they make up only 6% of the population. And this is &#8220;proof,&#8221; according to the activist, that the police are racist. There can&#8217;t be any other explanation for that data. And she doesn&#8217;t stop there: &#8220;Black people are disproportionately affected by almost every type of decriminalization.&#8221;
Well, that gives you some sense of just how widespread the conspiracy is. Across every type of crime, across the entire country, the police are enforcing laws in a racist manner. It can&#8217;t possibly be that different demographic groups are committing different rates of crime. That&#8217;s just unthinkable. Instead, you&#8217;re commanded to think that any difference in crime statistics must be due to one thing and one thing only, which is racist cops.
A few weeks ago, I <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-shockingly-easy-test-has-been-deemed-racist-heres-why" target="_blank" rel="noopener">talked about</a> how the DOJ used this &#8220;reasoning&#8221; during the Obama administration to sue various police departments for enforcing the law. One of the cities they went after was Ferguson, Missouri — which also happens to have an issue with &#8220;disproportionate&#8221; jaywalking tickets. That&#8217;s how vast this conspiracy of racist traffic cops is. Watch:
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The data just keeps coming in. If you&#8217;re keeping track, from New York to San Diego to Ferguson, racist traffic cops are &#8220;targeting&#8221; black Americans for jaywalking. In fact these racist cops are so brazen that they&#8217;ll often target these black Americans *on video*. That&#8217;s what happened in Jacksonville a few years ago. This is a video from Vox that tries really, really hard to present a police officer as racist for doing his job and enforcing the law. Watch:
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From this clip, we can conclude that even when there&#8217;s video of a cop enforcing the law in a calm and impartial way — and even when everyone concedes that these people were jaywalking — we&#8217;re told it&#8217;s still racist because of those statistics. It doesn&#8217;t matter if black people are on video jaywalking, basically. It&#8217;s illegal to ticket them for it because then you&#8217;ll have a &#8220;disparate impact.&#8221;
It&#8217;s hard to overstate how widespread this moral panic has become. Over the past few years, especially at the height of BLM, there were national news stories about supposedly &#8220;racist&#8221; jaywalking arrests. Here&#8217;s one of them in Tulsa:
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The lawyer&#8217;s not even arguing his client is innocent, really. He&#8217;s implying that the optics are bad for the police because they should know that it&#8217;s racist to enforce jaywalking laws against black people. 
This incident made national news. There was a legal battle that stretched on for years. Apparently the police eventually paid a $20,000 settlement over it. And they did nothing wrong. When people are in the middle of the road, you can grab them and arrest them. You can even put them on the ground when they&#8217;re not responding. That&#8217;s how the law should work. But in cities like New York, it&#8217;s not the law anymore.
This is a battle the Left has waged for a very long time. Last year, the Left-wing outlet Mother Jones published an article <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/02/legalize-jaywalking/">entitled</a>, &#8220;The Case for Legalizing Jaywalking.&#8221; It makes all the predictable &#8220;disparate impact&#8221; arguments, where they assume that any statistical disparity is somehow proof of racism. 
And then there&#8217;s <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/02/legalize-jaywalking/">this paragraph</a>, which is a real doozy:
<blockquote>The notion that pedestrians should be relegated to sidewalks and allowed to cross the street only when a walk sign tells them it’s safe is a relatively new phenomenon. &#8230; Groups ranging from the Chicago Motor Club and the Automobile Club of Southern California to the National Safety Council and the Boy Scouts began using the word &#8216;jaywalker&#8217; in the late 1910s and early 1920s to insult pedestrians who had the audacity to enter the roadway outside of intersections. &#8230; Los Angeles passed the first anti-jaywalking ordinance in 1925, which became a model for other cities across the country. Discrimination soon followed.</blockquote>
Yes, according to Mother Jones, the idea that you shouldn&#8217;t walk in the middle of the street is a &#8220;relatively new phenomenon&#8221; that only began in the late 1910s and early 1920s. It&#8217;s possible — and I&#8217;m just spitballing here — that one reason for this change might be that cars themselves are a relatively new phenomenon that only became popular in the late 1910s and early 1920s. Maybe that&#8217;s why the idea of jaywalking came about &#8220;relatively recently,&#8221; as in, a century ago. This is like saying air sickness is a relatively new phenomenon that only began after people started flying in airplanes. It kind of goes without saying.
<h3><a href="https://www.amiracist.com/?_gl=1*jtghwp*_gcl_au*ODQ1NjYzNTg2LjE3Mjg5MDk3OTE.*_ga*MTc2NzM0NDQ2NS4xNzI4OTA5Nzkx*_ga_CZKR9ZYKJP*MTczMDEyMDgwOS40OS4xLjE3MzAxMjA4MzkuMzAuMC4w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MATT WALSH&#8217;S &#8216;AM I RACIST?&#8217; NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+</a></h3>
But this is the level of &#8220;argument&#8221; you get when &#8220;equity&#8221; is the objective. You have to act surprised that we didn&#8217;t have jaywalking laws before we had cars. You&#8217;re reduced to inventing vast conspiracies to explain inconvenient data. In essence, you have to make yourself as dumb as Kamala Harris — all in the service of a delusional and counterfactual ideology.
In this particular case, the consequences couldn&#8217;t be any more obvious. You can visit any third-world country to see what it’s like when cars and pedestrians share the road equally. It&#8217;s total chaos. I’m not usually one to defend government regulation, but our roads are clearly safer and more orderly because of the laws and regulations in place. New York City is getting rid of a common-sense law that obviously makes the roads safer for everyone.
And they&#8217;re doing it because of the same guiding principle that the Biden-Harris administration outlined in a day-one executive order, which is to pursue &#8220;equity&#8221; in all aspects of government. We&#8217;ve talked a lot about the specific policy ramifications of electing someone like Kamala Harris, but this is another consequence that&#8217;s worth talking about. Presidents don&#8217;t just set policy. They also set a tone and a broader agenda. They set an example for people to follow all over the country.
A Kamala Harris administration would encourage and incentivize many more laws like the one that just passed in New York. A second Trump administration, on the other hand, would send a very clear signal that people are tired of lawlessness. It would mean that we can finally put an end to the fiction that every police department in the country is conspiring to &#8220;target&#8221; any particular racial group. It would be a rebuke of the policies of &#8220;racial equity&#8221; that have gotten so many people killed, across every demographic. That&#8217;s a rebuke that, for people living in New York, may come too late. But for the rest of us, it can&#8217;t come soon enough.

New York City traffic

NYC Is Decriminalizing Jaywalking In The Name Of ‘Equity’

NYC Is Decriminalizing Jaywalking In The Name Of 'Equity'

Crime

Discrimination

Jaywalking

Matt Walsh

New York City

Opinion

Police

San Diego

Systemic Racism

Firefighter

This Shockingly Easy Test Has Been Deemed ‘Racist.’ Here’s Why.

This Shockingly Easy Test Has Been Deemed 'Racist.' Here's Why.

Democrats

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Leftists

North Carolina

Racism

Police officer Travis &#8220;T.J.&#8221; Brown, 36, who was allegedly tackled to the ground and left in critical condition last Friday by a demonstrator at a protest in Ferguson, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb, marking the 10th anniversary of Michael Brown&#8217;s death, has shown <a href="https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/local/ferguson-officer-travis-brown-injured-during-protest-health-update-gofundme/63-e159a786-665a-4e14-b936-e157cd6e3689" target="_blank" rel="noopener">signs of progress</a> while he lies in a coma.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
This is the authorized gofundme for Ferguson Officer Travis Brown who suffered a traumatic brain injury during protests that turned violent last Friday night. He has 2 beautiful daughters. Please consider helping. <a href="https://t.co/GFOkbYw6Bk">https://t.co/GFOkbYw6Bk</a> <a href="https://t.co/6DGlSBufBZ">pic.twitter.com/6DGlSBufBZ</a>
&mdash; Jane Dueker (@JaneDueker) <a href="https://twitter.com/JaneDueker/status/1823177129166856329?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 13, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Officer Brown&#8217;s sister, Christina Bailey, wrote of her brother’s improved signs on a <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-ferguson-officer-travis-brown" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GoFundMe page</a> devoted to the officer.
“I wanted to share an update on TJ&#8217;s journey,” Bailey wrote. “He has undergone several surgeries and procedures to address the swelling and fluid on his brain. In the past few days, we&#8217;ve witnessed a few small but significant signs of progress—three coughs, and slight movements in his leg and hand. These moments, though brief, filled us with hope and joy.”
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1723831707612000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0pyrv88A5nsmWM2F2Wr9As">Tickets for “Am I Racist?” are on sale NOW! Buy here for a theater near you.</a>
“Today, the doctors checked TJ’s brain activity, and the results were encouraging,” she continued. “While we’ve been told that the road to recovery will be long and challenging, we remain hopeful.”
The GoFundMe campaign for Brown has raised over $100,000 as of Thursday.
Officer Brown, a father of two, was knocked to the ground by a protester later identified as Elijah Gantt, 28. Brown was unconscious at the scene, and Gantt was still on top of him when other officers pulled him off and attempted to provide aid. “If you look at the video, the officer is standing up, waiting to catch this guy,” Police Chief Troy Doyle <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/08/14/us-news/injured-ferguson-cop-travis-brown-is-a-father-of-two-with-an-infectious-smile/?utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=nypost">said</a> Wednesday. “This guy tackled my guy like he’s a football player.”
<a href="http://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1723831707612000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0devlugByX5GCj0kt4RRcM">WATCH THE TRAILER FOR &#8216;AM I RACIST?&#8217; — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI</a>
Former St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch said of Officer Brown:
<blockquote>
I remember well when I was commissioning him and having given his oath of office, he had a family member pin his badge on. I just remember the big smile on his face, and I thought, “Boy, this guy’s got one of those contagious kind of smiles.” There’s a lot of raw emotion about whether or not he’s going to be able to beat this and survive. And if he does, is he going to ever be able to come back to work? He was very ambitious. It didn’t take him long to get into a specialized unit. He was in a couple.
</blockquote>
Virginia Kruta contributed to this article.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ferguson-police-officer-fights-for-life-after-michael-brown-protest-devolves-into-riot">RELATED: Ferguson Police Officer Fights For Life After Michael Brown Protest Devolves Into Riot</a>

4 people arrested by Ferguson police at protest on anniversary of Michael Brown’s killing

Ferguson Cop Left In Critical Condition Shows Signs Of Improvement

Michael Brown

Missouri

Police officer

U.S.

A <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/ferguson" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ferguson</a> police officer suffered a serious brain injury and is still fighting for his life after protests on Friday, marking the 10th anniversary of Michael Brown&#8217;s death, devolved into a violent riot.
Travis Brown, a 36-year-old father of two, was knocked to the ground by a protester later identified as Elijah Gantt, 28. Brown was unconscious at the scene, and Gantt was still on top of him when other officers pulled him off and attempted to aid the fallen officer.
According to a Wednesday <a href="https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/local/injured-ferguson-police-officer-travis-brown-family-statement-recovery/63-3ff96079-ade7-416a-b141-da6126a89b01" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> from local NBC News affiliate KSDK, Brown&#8217;s family has released a statement on his current condition, which read in part:
<blockquote>
<div class="article__section article__section_type_text utility__text">
On the early morning of Saturday, August 10, 2024, our beloved, Officer Travis Brown, suffered a serious physical injury while performing his tour of duty. He is currently in critical condition, surrounded by his loved ones, as he bravely fights for his life. We are holding onto hope and trusting in the power of faith to see him through this difficult time. 
</div>
<div class="article__section article__section_type_text utility__text">
Travis is more than a police officer; he is a devoted father, son, brother, uncle, godfather, and friend. A man of strong faith, his heart is as big as his smile, and his positive energy is truly contagious. TJ is also an athlete, an adventurer, a lover of movies, and so much more. We know he is determined to continue living life to the fullest once he has recovered. 
</div>
</blockquote>
They concluded the statement by asking for continued prayers as they wait to see whether Brown is able to recover from the injury.
Former St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch, who hired Brown in 2012 and worked with him for two years, <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/08/14/us-news/injured-ferguson-cop-travis-brown-is-a-father-of-two-with-an-infectious-smile/?utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=nypost" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wished Brown well</a> and spoke very highly of him.
&#8220;I remember well when I was commissioning him and having given his oath of office, he had a family member pin his badge on. I just remember the big smile on his face, and I thought, ‘Boy, this guy’s got one of those contagious kind of smiles,'&#8221; Fitch said. &#8220;There’s a lot of raw emotion about whether or not he’s going to be able to beat this and survive. And if he does, is he going to ever be able to come back to work? He was very ambitious. It didn’t take him long to get into a specialized unit. He was in a couple.&#8221;
<a href="http://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1722714742764000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1XzmEsRwzti1RFNuISwYgd">WATCH THE TRAILER FOR ‘AM I RACIST?’ — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI</a>
Fitch shared the family&#8217;s official fundraising page as well, asking family and friends to donate what they could in an effort to aid Brown&#8217;s recovery.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
It&#8217;s my birthday &amp; I&#8217;d love it if we can celebrate by helping TJ! It was my pleasure to hire him in 2012.
Officer Travis (TJ) Brown is in critical condition after a tragic injury. Please help lessen his family&#8217;s financial burden by donating and sharing. <a href="https://t.co/alzWhCN8ck">https://t.co/alzWhCN8ck</a>
— Tim Fitch 🇺🇲 (@ChiefTimFitch) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChiefTimFitch/status/1823310373035917591?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 13, 2024</a></blockquote>
The community has also rallied around Brown, gathering to pray for him and his family after he was hurt.
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Huge crowd turns out to pray for injured Ferguson police officer Travis Brown <a href="https://t.co/0PSFInrmZl">https://t.co/0PSFInrmZl</a>
— KSDK News (@ksdknews) <a href="https://twitter.com/ksdknews/status/1823581580104777837?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 14, 2024</a></blockquote>

Ferguson Faces Unrest And Destruction As Thanksgiving Holiday Approaches

Ferguson Police Officer Fights For Life After Michael Brown Protest Devolves Into Riot

Protests

Riots

Rep. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/cori-bush" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cori Bush</a> (D-MO) on Tuesday became the second member of the far-left anti-Israel &#8220;Squad&#8221; to lose her congressional seat to a challenger.
Decision Desk HQ called the race for St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell just after 9 p.m. local time with just over 40% of the vote tallied — at the time, Bell led Bush by double digits, holding 54.9% to Bush&#8217;s 41.8%.
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Decision Desk HQ projects Wesley Bell wins the Democratic primary for US House in Missouri&#8217;s 1st Congressional District. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DecisionMade?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#DecisionMade</a>: 10:07pm ET
Follow live results here: <a href="https://t.co/R4bJ6cPREe">https://t.co/R4bJ6cPREe</a> <a href="https://t.co/Ikmo4vY6BU">pic.twitter.com/Ikmo4vY6BU</a>
— Decision Desk HQ (@DecisionDeskHQ) <a href="https://twitter.com/DecisionDeskHQ/status/1821005331654164681?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 7, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Polls indicated going into Tuesday&#8217;s primary that Bush might be in trouble.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
New poll shows Wesley Bell pulling ahead of SQUAD Member Cori Bush | <a href="https://t.co/qCxPrBSdLA">https://t.co/qCxPrBSdLA</a> <a href="https://t.co/okwAJxklWg">https://t.co/okwAJxklWg</a>
— Noble Road (@noble_road) <a href="https://twitter.com/noble_road/status/1820513430568390867?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 5, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Bush first appeared on the local political scene in the wake of the Ferguson riots — where she was an active participant — and has continued to use lies about <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sitting-members-of-congress-and-more-commemorate-ferguson-police-shooting-by-lying-about-it" target="_blank" rel="noopener">what happened to Michael Brown</a> to push her political agenda. She has represented Missouri&#8217;s 1st Congressional District — which includes St. Louis City and parts of the outlying St. Louis County — since 2021, after unseating William &#8220;Lacy&#8221; Clay Jr. in the 202o election. She has since made a name for herself by quickly aligning with Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and others on the radical Left.
<a href="http://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1722714742764000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1XzmEsRwzti1RFNuISwYgd">WATCH THE TRAILER FOR ‘AM I RACIST?’ — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI</a>
In the wake of the October 7th massacre — an unprecedented and unprovoked attack on Israel that was carried out by Hamas terrorists — Bush took the side of the pro-Hamas protesters who blamed Israel for the resulting war and threatened Jewish students on college campuses across the United States.
The Missouri Congresswoman has since been embroiled in controversy over funneling thousands to her husband, while he provides &#8220;security&#8221; for her even as she demands <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cori-defund-the-police-bush-pays-big-money-for-hubbys-security-business" target="_blank" rel="noopener">less police protection for others</a> while <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/democrat-cori-bush-reignites-calls-for-defunding-the-police-amid-violent-crime-surge">violent crime surges</a> in her home district.
Bush&#8217;s loss comes on the heels of another primary ouster 1,000 miles away — Rep. Jamaal Bowman, best known for pulling a fire alarm to stop an unfavorable vote from proceeding, lost by double digits after he too voiced support for campus pro-Hamas protesters in the aftermath of October 7th.
Both Bush and Bowman have claimed that, rather than their own radical policies, funding from AIPAC — a pro-Israel group — is the reason their campaigns floundered and ultimately failed.

House-Oversight-Democrats-Hold-Discussion-On-Supreme-Court-Ethic

Another Squad Member Ousted From Congress: Missouri’s Cori Bush Loses Primary

Another Squad Member Ousted From Congress: Missouri's Cori Bush Loses Primary

Congress

Cori Bush

Jamaal Bowman

Politics

The Squad

By now we&#8217;re all painfully aware of how LGBT activists insist on having about 500 days on the calendar to celebrate themselves, from International Pronouns Day to Pride Month to the Transgender Day of Remembrance to my personal favorite, Gay Uncles Day. There&#8217;s clearly something pathological about all of this. But it&#8217;s also strategic at the same time. Leftists understand that to win, they have to completely flood the zone with their propaganda. They don&#8217;t want anyone have any kind of reprieve from it, even for a single day.
Unfortunately, as mind-numbing as this tactic is, it&#8217;s also effective — which is why it was never going to stop with the gender cult. And indeed, predictably, now the BLM movement is getting in on the action. They&#8217;re demanding that the death of Michael Brown — the criminal who attacked a store clerk, then charged at a police officer, punched him, and tried to take his gun — be memorialized on multiple days every single year. This was the martyr at the center of the &#8220;Hands up, don&#8217;t shoot&#8221; hoax, who kickstarted the rise of BLM.
It was less than a year ago, back in August, that I <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-media-is-still-lying-about-michael-brown-9-years-later-heres-why" target="_blank" rel="noopener">discussed</a> all the different memorials for Michael Brown. Everyone from the city of St. Louis to the Biden administration decided to eulogize Brown on August 9th, which was the ninth anniversary of his death. That&#8217;s the big Michael Brown Day, during which we&#8217;re all supposed to pretend Michael Brown was a useful and contributing member of society. We&#8217;re also supposed to pretend that a white supremacist police officer shot him in broad daylight in cold blood.
But as of yesterday, August 9th is no longer the only Michael Brown Day on the calendar. This week we saw a renewed effort to mark the occasion of Michael Brown&#8217;s birthday, which apparently falls on May 20th. The NAACP, for example, <a href="https://x.com/NAACP/status/1792572275570495511" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tweeted</a>, &#8220;Michael Brown should be celebrating his 28th birthday today. We will continue to say his name and fight for justice and accountability. Sending love to his family and friends.&#8221; NAACP president Derrick Johnson posted a similar <a href="https://x.com/DerrickNAACP/status/1792611942554808409" target="_blank" rel="noopener">message</a>: &#8220;Black people deserve to grow old.&#8221;
These messages — as detached from reality as they are — were echoed all over social media yesterday. Veena Dubal, a professor of law at UC Irvine, <a href="https://x.com/veenadubal/status/1792607444075688403" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>, &#8220;Rest in Power, Michael Brown. &lt;3.&#8221; This is someone who allegedly teaches the law, celebrating someone who brutally attacked a law enforcement officer.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1372-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
For its part, the nonprofit called &#8220;Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights,&#8221; led by Kerry Kennedy, <a href="https://x.com/RFKHumanRights/status/1792556011280126245" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tweeted</a>: &#8220;Michael Brown should be celebrating his 28th birthday. Today, we honor his life and legacy.&#8221; As for what that &#8220;life and legacy&#8221; entailed, that part was left unstated, for obvious reasons.
But congresswoman and BLM activist Cori Bush was a little more forthcoming. She uploaded this video to honor Michael Brown:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 Mike Brown Bill" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8XsqTYfXEwo?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&#8220;We&#8217;re only left with the memories of who he was,&#8221; says Cori Bush. It&#8217;s supposed to be a sad line, I guess, even though all it does is remind us of the fact that Michael Brown roughed up a store clerk on camera, then attacked a cop.
For several years now, Cori Bush has simply ignored those inconvenient details. She&#8217;s been trying to make Brown&#8217;s birthday into a national day of mourning since before she was elected to Congress. In fact, Michael Brown is one of the main reasons she&#8217;s in Congress, as she&#8217;ll readily <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_56fSS3AB_Q" target="_blank" rel="noopener">admit</a>. But this week&#8217;s effort to promote a new Michael Brown Day was particularly embarrassing, for a few reasons.
For one thing, it&#8217;s hard not to notice how carefully worded Cori Bush&#8217;s statement is. She knows she has to steer clear of saying that Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot Michael Brown, actually did anything wrong. Even Barack Obama&#8217;s DOJ cleared Wilson, so in all likelihood, she&#8217;d get sued if she tried to do that.
As a result, Cori Bush (and her team of lawyers, we can assume) decided on the term &#8220;police violence&#8221; instead of &#8220;murder.&#8221; They probably figure that the term &#8220;police violence&#8221; gives them the wiggle room they need to insinuate that Darren Wilson is a murderer, without coming out and saying that directly. After all, the act of self-defense can definitely qualify as &#8220;violent,&#8221; even if it&#8217;s completely justified. 
That&#8217;s the level of word games and manipulation that we&#8217;re seeing from BLM activists in Congress right now. They&#8217;re choosing their words very carefully to elicit the reaction they want.
But somehow that wording about &#8220;police violence&#8221; was not, in the end, the most deceptive portion of Cori Bush&#8217;s video. Let&#8217;s listen on:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 Mike Brown Bill" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8XsqTYfXEwo?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
This is one of those statistics that, when you hear it, you immediately know it&#8217;s fake. You don&#8217;t need to use Google, you just recognize it intuitively.
She says that police killings of unarmed black people are directly responsible for, &#8220;50 million additional days of poor mental health days per year.&#8221; But she doesn&#8217;t define &#8220;poor mental health days&#8221; or explain how she&#8217;s concluding that police shootings are causing these &#8220;poor mental health days.&#8221; Or explain how we distinguish regular poor mental health days from the “additional” one.
That&#8217;s because the whole point of statistics like this is to shock you with big numbers so that you don&#8217;t stop to think about what they&#8217;re saying — which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. If you look into them — even for a second — you&#8217;ll realize they&#8217;re completely made up.
This particular statistic has been cited all over the place, <a href="https://thurgoodmarshallcenter.howard.edu/sites/tmcrc.howard.edu/files/2021-05/A%20Growing%20Dilemma%20-%20How%20Police%20Brutality%20Affects%20Mental%20Health%20in%20the%20Black%20Communities.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">including</a> Howard University Law School. As best I can tell, it originates from a 2018 <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31130-9/abstract" target="_blank" rel="noopener">article</a> in The Lancet entitled, &#8220;Police killings and their spillover effects on the mental health of black Americans: a population-based, quasi-experimental study.&#8221; Right away, that title is something of a red flag. We&#8217;re talking about a &#8220;quasi-experimental study&#8221; here, which doesn&#8217;t seem nearly as definitive as Cori Bush made it sound.  She made it sound like she had actual facts, not quasi-facts.
Indeed, if you read on, you&#8217;ll find that the researchers — who apparently took money from a foundation specializing in &#8220;health equity&#8221; — aren&#8217;t certain of their findings at all. The summary of the Lancet article reads: &#8220;Police kill more than 300 black Americans — at least a quarter of them unarmed — each year in the USA. These events might have spillover effects on the mental health of people not directly affected.&#8221;
Did you catch that? &#8220;These events *might* have spillover effects on the mental health of people not directly affected.&#8221;
That&#8217;s quite a hedge, and if you look at the methodology, you&#8217;ll understand exactly why they&#8217;re hedging. Apparently the researchers just looked at two existing data sources. First, they analyzed the U.S Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which is just a telephone survey system that asks people if they&#8217;re feeling okay. Then, the researchers looked at the dates of police shootings of unarmed black people (without regard to whether those black people, like Michael Brown, were attacking police officers when they died). And then the researchers checked to see how many people reported feeling sad within three months of a police shooting of an unarmed black person. They say they noticed a correlation where only black people seemed upset in the 1-2 months after these shootings, while white people didn&#8217;t care. This is a methodology so absurd and arbitrary that if a fourth grader used it for a science fair project, he should get a failing grade. And possibly be expelled. 
It&#8217;s not even worth going into detail about correlation and causation because everyone understands that this data is garbage. For one thing, you&#8217;d expect white liberals to be quite shaken up by the death of an unarmed black person, but that doesn&#8217;t show up in the data at all. But more importantly, there&#8217;s about a million other explanations for why these respondents might have been unhappy.
Even these researchers concede that point, which is why they hedge their findings in the summary. This paper only serves one purpose, which is to give Democrats like Cori Bush a talking point, and a bogus justification to waste more taxpayer money. In this case, she&#8217;s asking for $50 million to redistribute in the service of mental health &#8220;equity,&#8221; which inevitably will mean allocating resources along racial lines.
But Cori Bush and activists like her aren&#8217;t the only ones benefiting from these lies. Outfits like BET, which claims to be, &#8220;where black culture lives,&#8221; are also promoting the narrative. BET put out its own video for Michael Brown&#8217;s birthday, describing him as &#8220;courageous&#8221; and saying that, &#8220;Black boys should be able to grow into Black men in peace&#8221; — regardless of whether they attack other people, apparently. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="004 BET Reports on Mike Brown" width="500" height="375" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UYMSSgAEdRk?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
As with the Cori Bush video, you&#8217;ll notice that they don&#8217;t want to talk about how Michael Brown actually died. It&#8217;s all about how activists &#8220;organized&#8221; and spread their message online. It&#8217;s about &#8220;what type of person&#8221; Michael Brown was, according to his mother.
All of these activists and organizations — from the UC Irvine law professor to Cori Bush to BET — understand exactly why Michael Brown died. They know he didn&#8217;t die in service of any higher purpose. He wasn&#8217;t a martyr or even a footsoldier. He was a violent criminal who somehow made living in Ferguson even more dangerous than it already was.
But all of these activists also understand that the Michael Brown hoax gave rise to the BLM era. That&#8217;s a mythology they cannot revise or reject at this point —  nor would they want to revise or reject it, because it&#8217;s given them so much power and influence. Therefore the perpetrators of the hoax are sticking to the script no matter what. They are simply ignoring all evidence that clearly contradicts their claims.
This is what you have to do if you desperately want to build a movement around a false narrative. You can never admit that the narrative was false. You just have to keep repeating the lie, over and over again, at every opportunity. They won&#8217;t stop until we&#8217;re celebrating Michael Brown all 365 days of the year. They&#8217;re betting that, eventually, the history books will reflect their manufactured version of what happened in Ferguson. That&#8217;s clearly their goal. And unless conservatives start telling the truth about that day — until they start defending Darren Wilson anywhere near as much as the Left worships Michael Brown — then eventually, through sheer repetition, activists like Cori Bush will get exactly what they want.

MixCollage-21-May-2024-04-13-PM-8219

Democrats Solemnly Commemorate The Sacred Birthday Of Saint Michael Brown

LGBTQ

NAACP

Readers Pass

Rep. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/cori-bush" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cori Bush</a> (D-MO) got some serious backlash after she attempted to parlay her personal experience protesting in Ferguson, Missouri, into a defense of the anti-Israel — and often anti-Semitic — protests sweeping across college campuses like Columbia University.
Bush, who has often touted her &#8220;street cred&#8221; as a protester in Ferguson, claimed that she had witnessed firsthand what happened when protests were &#8220;infiltrated&#8221; by people who wanted to make them appear violent and lawless.
&#8220;As a Ferguson activist, I know what it’s like to have agitators infiltrate our movement, manipulate the press, &amp; fuel the suppression of dissent by public officials &amp; law enforcement. We must reject these tactics to silence anti-war activists demanding divestment from genocide,&#8221; she posted via X.
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As a Ferguson activist, I know what it’s like to have agitators infiltrate our movement, manipulate the press, &amp; fuel the suppression of dissent by public officials &amp; law enforcement.
We must reject these tactics to silence anti-war activists demanding divestment from genocide.
&mdash; Cori Bush (@CoriBush) <a href="https://twitter.com/CoriBush/status/1782587802506367041?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 23, 2024</a></blockquote>
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But as many critics were quick to point out, the protests in Ferguson were based on a lie — &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-media-is-still-lying-about-michael-brown-9-years-later-heres-why" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hands up, don&#8217;t shoot!</a>&#8221; — claiming that 18-year-old Michael Brown had not been attempting to attack police officer Darren Wilson and take his gun when he was shot and killed.
In the weeks following Brown&#8217;s death, protesters attacked police and burned their own city to the ground — destroying businesses and decimating property values. Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary — including an assessment made by former <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-loony-documentarian-loses-mind-after-hes-frank-camp" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Attorney General Eric Holder</a> — many, like Bush, still maintain that Brown was &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sitting-members-of-congress-and-more-commemorate-ferguson-police-shooting-by-lying-about-it" target="_blank" rel="noopener">murdered</a>.&#8221;
&#8220;Thanks for reminding everyone that you supported criminal riots, demanded defunding police so others don’t have protection from the rioting, and then used campaign funds (currently under DoJ investigation) to get security for yourself,&#8221; AG (@aghamilton29) posted.
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Thanks for reminding everyone that you supported criminal riots, demanded defunding police so others don’t have protection from the rioting, and then used campaign funds (currently under DoJ investigation) to get security for yourself. <a href="https://t.co/nlVPZJ3HAp">https://t.co/nlVPZJ3HAp</a>
&mdash; AG (@AGHamilton29) <a href="https://twitter.com/AGHamilton29/status/1782621749919580317?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 23, 2024</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;Also a great reminder here that Officer Darren Wilson&#8217;s shooting was cleared by AG Eric Holder&#8217;s DOJ and Michael Brown was on recorded video strangling and shoplifting from a local Bodega owner,&#8221; Stephen Miller added.
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Also a great reminder here that Officer Darren Wilson&#39;s shooting was cleared by AG Eric Holder&#39;s DOJ and Michael Brown was on recorded video strangling and shoplifting from a local Bodega owner. <a href="https://t.co/0rbaNZY4cg">https://t.co/0rbaNZY4cg</a>
&mdash; Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) <a href="https://twitter.com/redsteeze/status/1782632765516923327?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 23, 2024</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;This is conspiratorial nonsense that would crumble under even the most basic questions from journalists. Now ask yourselves why journalists aren&#8217;t pressuring her for details on these claims,&#8221; Miller said in another post.
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This is conspiratorial nonsense that would crumble under even the most basic questions from journalists. 
Now ask yourselves why journalists aren&#39;t pressuring her for details on these claims. Cc <a href="https://twitter.com/MarcACaputo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MarcACaputo</a> <a href="https://t.co/0rbaNZXwmI">https://t.co/0rbaNZXwmI</a>
&mdash; Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) <a href="https://twitter.com/redsteeze/status/1782627236698358180?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 23, 2024</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;For years they boldly and proudly boasted the violence was not only justified, but necessary for their resistance movement. &#8216;Make people uncomfortable! Get in their faces!!&#8217; Now that it&#8217;s out of their control and is hurting their cause, it&#8217;s, &#8216;No no! Those are INFILTRATORS,'&#8221; said Chad Felix Greene.
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" aria-describedby="sk-tooltip-9096" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://onelink.to/dwapp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1700760801843000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2PQrVSrJfhxNb4LcARqniG">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP</a>
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For years they boldly and proudly boasted the violence was not only justified, but necessary for their resistance movement.
&#39;Make people uncomfortable! Get in their faces!!&#39;
Now that it&#39;s out of their control and is hurting their cause, it&#39;s, &#39;No no! Those are INFILTRATORS&#39; <a href="https://t.co/ad3IO3Gnib">https://t.co/ad3IO3Gnib</a>
&mdash; Chad Felix Greene 🇮🇱 (@chadfelixg) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadfelixg/status/1782592614799196544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 23, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Bush&#8217;s defense of the anti-Semitic campus protests mirrored almost exactly the words of Rep. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ilhan-omar-tries-to-defend-columbia-protesters-and-her-daughter-and-it-backfires-immediately" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ilhan Omar</a> — whose daughter was among those arrested at Columbia University for instigating the protests.
&#8220;Throughout history, protests were co-opted and made to look bad so police and public leaders would shut them down. That’s what we are seeing now at Columbia University,” Omar claimed. “The Columbia protesters have made clear their demands and want their school not to be complacent in the ongoing Genocide in Gaza. Public officials and media making this about anything else are inflaming the situation and need to bring calmness and sanity back.&#8221;

House Democrats Hold Press Conference On Need To End Filibuster

‘Conspiratorial Nonsense’: Cori Bush Blasted For Using ‘Ferguson Activist’ Cred To Excuse Anti-Semitic Protests

'Conspiratorial Nonsense': Cori Bush Blasted For Using 'Ferguson Activist' Cred To Excuse Anti-Semitic Protests

Anti-Semitism

Hamas

Israel

Yesterday was the ninth anniversary of the lynching of a police officer named Darren Wilson. On the morning of August 9th, 2014, Wilson tried to detain 18-year-old Michael Brown, who had just robbed a convenience store and attacked the clerk.
That&#8217;s when, according to the Obama DOJ, &#8220;Wilson and other witnesses stated that Brown &#8230; reached into [Wilson&#8217;s] SUV through the open driver’s window and punched and grabbed Wilson.&#8221; Investigators made that determination by observing &#8220;bruising on Wilson’s jaw and scratches on his neck, the presence of Brown’s DNA on Wilson’s collar, shirt, and pants, and Wilson’s DNA on Brown’s palm.&#8221; Brown then tried to grab Wilson&#8217;s gun; Wilson shot him; Brown ran away, then turned around and charged at Wilson; and Wilson fatally shot Brown in self-defense. 
The Obama DOJ did everything it could to find a way to charge Darren Wilson, yet those were their conclusions. Wilson did nothing wrong, much to the dismay of those who wished to sacrifice him on the altar of racial justice. Despite media reports, not a single witness ever claimed Brown said &#8220;don&#8217;t shoot.&#8221; And all the witnesses who claimed that Brown&#8217;s hands were in the air were either contradicted by the evidence, or later recanted their testimony. Those are the factual details. If you&#8217;re so inclined you can read the full <a href="https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/doj_report_on_shooting_of_michael_brown_1.pdf">DOJ report</a> online. 
What you can&#8217;t find online, however, is what happened to Darren Wilson. His name is never mentioned in the media. It&#8217;s as if he never existed. The handful of reports on Wilson in recent years suggest he&#8217;s living a life of anonymity in the middle of nowhere, and that he&#8217;ll never be able to work as a police officer again. His life was destroyed. Nobody who defamed him as a racist killer ever apologized. Nobody who took part in the destruction of an innocent man’s life was ever held accountable.
In a country that cared about police officers, or the truth, that would be a national scandal. But we don&#8217;t live in a country like that, so instead, yesterday the only name you heard was Michael Brown. They canonized him all over again. Here&#8217;s how one local news report talked about the case:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="St. Louis news | August 9 | Noon update | Anniversary of Mike Brown&#039;s death" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WxukhWjA1iM?start=133&#038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
A &#8220;ceremony to honor Michael Brown, the teenager shot and killed by a police officer after a confrontation.&#8221; That&#8217;s how a &#8220;news station&#8221; in 2023 is talking about a thug who attacked a store clerk, then tried to kill a police officer. They don&#8217;t mention any of those facts we just reviewed, because they&#8217;re inconvenient. Instead, the &#8220;news station&#8221; informs you that Brown&#8217;s body lay in the street for several hours after the shooting, as if that&#8217;s somehow incriminating or even relevant. Of course they leave out the fact that the mob made processing the crime scene so difficult that Ferguson had to call in the SWAT team to control the situation. They don&#8217;t mention all the lies that the supposed &#8220;witnesses&#8221; told the media, like the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7tTsEYE3Ms">false claim</a> that Michael Brown had been shot in the back.
It wasn&#8217;t just one news station that decided to lie yesterday. They all did it. Here&#8217;s how the local Fox station described what happened:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Michael Brown&#039;s father speaking on &#039;Chosen for Change&#039; Foundation 9 years after fatal shooting" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5-dTsi3S3g4?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Again, without mentioning any details of what Michael Brown actually did, we&#8217;re told that his case has something to do with &#8220;police brutality and injustice faced by African-Americans.&#8221; That intro was followed by a sympathetic clip with Michael Brown&#8217;s family. Apparently Darren Wilson&#8217;s family wasn&#8217;t available. Maybe they&#8217;re in hiding. We really don&#8217;t know.
What we can say for sure is that there weren&#8217;t any memorial events honoring Darren Wilson yesterday in St. Louis. Instead the city put on a series of events celebrating the legacy of the thug who robbed stores and attacked a police officer. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="St. Louis honors Michael Brown on 9th anniversary of his death" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/v00nMb2ucN4?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Michael Brown &#8220;Was shot and killed followed by a confrontation,&#8221; the reporter tells us. Wow, there&#8217;s that word again. It was a &#8220;confrontation.&#8221; It doesn&#8217;t imply any kind of fault by one side or the other. It doesn&#8217;t tell you anything. It leaves you completely in the dark, which is the exact opposite of what the news media is supposed to do. They just want you to know that the community came together to quote, &#8220;honor Michael Brown&#8217;s life and legacy.&#8221; They don’t bother explaining why Brown’s life and legacy deserve to be honored. 
These so-called reporters know exactly what they&#8217;re doing. Anyone with Google can prove it is a lie in about five seconds. But obviously, none of these people can think for themselves. So the question becomes, Where are they getting the idea to do it? 
We know that the Obama administration benefited from lying about Michael Brown all the way back in 2014, just as they benefited from lying about Trayvon Martin and all the other race hoaxes. That&#8217;s why the Obama DOJ investigated Ferguson&#8217;s police department (and many other police departments), and <a href="https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf">claimed</a> they must be racist because they pull over more black people than white people. It didn&#8217;t matter to the DOJ that Ferguson is an overwhelmingly black town; they just ran with that reasoning, because they knew the city didn&#8217;t have the money or the PR resources to fight them. In fact, when the city publicly announced that it disagreed with the Obama DOJ&#8217;s ridiculous reasoning, the DOJ called the city racist again, just for daring to challenge their narrative. &#8220;You&#8217;re racist, and if you deny that you&#8217;re racist, then that&#8217;s just more evidence you&#8217;re racist.&#8221; That&#8217;s basically what the DOJ said. Again, the document is online if you want to read it.
But that still doesn&#8217;t answer the question of, &#8220;why now?&#8221; Why is the media still lying now about this shooting, even nine years later, when everyone knows they&#8217;re lying?
It could be that they&#8217;re still taking orders from the Democratic Party, which, somehow, has not given up on the lie. Squad bench warmer Cori Bush (D-MO) tweeted yesterday, &#8220;Today is the 9th anniversary of Mike Brown’s killing. He would be alive today if the institutions of racism and white supremacy were eradicated. He should be alive today. We will never forget. We will continue to fight for justice and accountability.&#8221; Ben Crump and various Left-wing groups said more or less the same thing.
But it&#8217;s not just a couple of race-hustling lawyers and politicians from Missouri who are lying about Michael Brown. The Biden administration, at the highest levels, is also portraying Michael Brown as a hero. This was the State Department&#8217;s new &#8220;equity representative,&#8221; speaking yesterday as Tony Blinken looked on:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
the state department&#39;s new &#39;equity representative&#39; just eulogized violent thug Michael brown, with Tony blinker looking on. impossible to overemphasize how their entire movement is built on lies and repeating lies despite all evidence. it&#39;s not just cori bush and ben crump <a href="https://t.co/aL4fTVDFlO">pic.twitter.com/aL4fTVDFlO</a>
&mdash; Gregg Re (@gregg_re) <a href="https://twitter.com/gregg_re/status/1689404929926991872?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 9, 2023</a></blockquote>
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Well, that&#8217;s interesting. The State Department, which uses coordinated disinformation campaigns to inspire color revolutions overseas — with the express goal of overthrowing foreign governments — is now deliberately lying about a police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri from nine years ago. They&#8217;re telling you an &#8220;unarmed black teenager&#8221; was just murdered by a cop for no reason, nine years after that narrative was completely and totally debunked.
Why are they doing that? They know exactly how destabilizing that lie has been over the past decade. Take a look at <a href="https://www.fergusoncity.com/855/Crime-DataGraphs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">this chart</a>. It shows the rate of violent crime in Ferguson over the past few decades. That&#8217;s the red. It also shows you how many cases police solve in the city. That&#8217;s the green. Notice any trends? It’s hard to miss. You see a big bump in violent crime around 2014, when the U.S. government decided to pretend that Michael Brown was a hero, while the number of violent crime cases actually solved goes the other direction.
<div id="attachment_602507" style="width: 590px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-602507" class="wp-image-602507 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/08/Document55.png" alt="" width="580" height="361" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/08/Document55.png 580w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/08/Document55-300x187.png 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 580px) 100vw, 580px" />Courtesy Fergusoncity.com</div>
You can find similar charts from every major city in America. In recent years, police were either defunded or scared away. No cop wants to be lynched for doing his job, after all. And so, predictably, cities got much more dangerous. A lot of people died. And it started with the Ferguson lie, which was the genesis of the modern BLM movement.
To the Left, all those deaths were collateral damage. They think it was all worth it, because the rise of BLM meant more political power for them. They recruited a mob of enforcers who could literally set entire communities on fire with impunity, as a message to the rest of the country. They were able to demonize local police departments, and empower the FBI, which they controlled. And, for the corporations who bankroll Democrats, the rise of BLM was also a welcome diversion from rising populist sentiments in both parties.
The lying about Ferguson, in that sense, isn&#8217;t so remarkable. The State Department and the Democratic Party are pushing for an internal revolution here for the same reason they push for color revolutions elsewhere. They want to tear down the system of government we have in this country, and our rule of law and our traditions. And they want to replace them with something very different — something &#8220;equitable,&#8221; with them in charge.
So far, their strategy is working. It&#8217;s a perfect example of how the Left plays the long game. They&#8217;ve obtained total narrative control.
Sure, their whole narrative was debunked, but what do they care? They’ll just keep repeating the lie year after year after year until eventually the other side gets tired of correcting it, and their version makes it into the history books. It does make you question how much of the stuff you find in history books can actually be trusted. If Cori Bush and the State Department and the entire media and Democrat Party can lie about something that we all remember, what happens when there is nobody left who remembers it?
The unfortunate reality is that historical lies gain more power and momentum as time goes on and we move further away from the event they’re lying about. The truth, however, does not benefit from this kind of distance. If anything, its road becomes much harder. And this is exactly what the Left is counting on.

Matt Walsh 2

The Media Is Still Lying About Michael Brown 9 Years Later. Here’s Why.

Long before <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/college-board-debuts-george-floyd-inspired-african-american-studies-ap-class">George Floyd</a> tragically died under the knee of disgraced former police officer <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/just-in-derek-chauvin-appealing-murder-conviction-in-george-floyd-case">Derek Chauvin</a> on a Minneapolis street in May of 2020, police officers across the country were being maligned as racist murderers by the media and their puppeteer politicians.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last eight years, you most likely saw or heard the fiery rants at the anti-police BLM protests.
Chants like “Hands up, don’t shoot” were heard, referring to the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson in August of 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. “I can’t breathe” was the mantra for the tragic death of Eric Garner in 2014 in New York City, and then “All night, all day, we will fight for Freddie Gray,” was heard in the streets of Baltimore following Freddie Gray’s fatal encounter with police.
Those catchphrases and the names of the deceased, along with others who have died in violent encounters with police, were plastered on the jerseys of prominent athletes all across the sports world, of which some took a knee during the national anthem in protest of a “racist” country.
Hollywood celebrities starred in PSAs maligning the police. The NBA painted Black Lives Matter on their basketball courts, while former Mayor Bill de Blasio did the same on 5th Avenue in Manhattan.
It was reported that Brown, Garner, and Gray were murdered by racist police officers roaming the streets looking to shoot “people of color.” It was broadcasted that they were victims of a systemic racism that permeates through the 18,000 police departments across the country and the courts in all of those jurisdictions.
No matter that those departments and courts &#8211; especially those in large metropolitan cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago &#8211; have been run by liberal lawmakers for decades and are among the most racially diverse in the world.
No matter that each state and city has its own police department acting independently of each other.
No matter that they have their own chiefs, commissioners, district attorneys, and mayors making and enforcing the laws and dictating policy.
In each of the officer-involved shootings detailed above, the fiction that was shoved down the public’s throat by corrupt, irresponsible, leftist media, in order to create a narrative and shape public opinion against the police, isn’t even close to the truth.
The public has been lied to, manipulated, and used, and the effects of the propaganda these ideologues are spewing will continue to be felt by citizens for many years to come. It’s what many in the law enforcement community are beginning to refer to as the “Ferguson Effect.”
The tallest tale the media told was in Ferguson, Missouri. Within hours of Michael Brown’s death, the media dubbed him “The Gentle Giant.” To further cement their characterization of him as an innocent, lovable teenager, they adorned the front pages of their newspapers and websites with his high school graduation photo and another seemingly innocent, prepubescent photo of him wearing headphones.
Initially, there was no mention of him having committed a strong-arm robbery of a convenience store moments before his deadly encounter with officer Wilson. 
There was no mention that Wilson was a six-year veteran of the department with a spotless disciplinary record. Rather, officer Wilson was vilified as a cold-blooded murderer who executed an innocent young man and an aspiring student.
Brown’s sidekick, Dorian Johnson, had a story the propagandist hacks in the media seemed to be waiting for. Johnson insisted that Brown was shot in the back while running away from Wilson, and he was then executed while kneeling on the ground with his hands up, begging for his life.
No matter the story had almost no corroboration from anyone. It fit the false narrative the media was all too ready to broadcast. 
Violent riots and looting sprang up in the streets of Ferguson, and, as the city burned, people sat in their living rooms watching the carnage, listening to the pundits and faux journalists spew outrage at another injustice due to the so-called systemic racism of our criminal justice system and our out-of-control cops.
There was no way of knowing that virtually none of what Johnson said was true. 
No way of knowing that, years later, all of the six accused officers in the Gray case would be exonerated in court by grand juries of their peers in their liberal cities. 
No way of knowing that those same officers would be reinstated in their jobs or that the prosecutor in the case would be forced to resign for prosecutorial misconduct. 
No way of knowing that police officer Daniel Pantaleo, accused of murdering Garner, would not be indicted.
No way of knowing that it wasn’t the first time Dorian Johnson was accused of lying to the police &#8211; Johnson had an active warrant for filing a false police report in nearby Jefferson County in 2011.
Any doubt that Johnson was lying was quickly dismissed by the word of a St. Louis County Grand Jury and then United States attorney general Eric Holder &#8211; perhaps the most left-winged, corrupt attorney general in the history of the country before Merrick Garland.
Yet, by March of 2015, the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/doj_report_on_shooting_of_michael_brown_1.pdf">Justice Department’s comprehensive investigation</a> and report into the death of Michael Brown completely exonerated officer Wilson and rejected Johnson’s story. The forensic evidence was overwhelming and succinctly corroborated Darren Wilson’s step-by-step version of the events. Wilson was not a criminal. He was a hero.
Aside from the great loss of Michael Brown’s life and the pain caused to his family, other damage resulted from this incident. Police Officer Darren Wilson and his family were destroyed in the aftermath. He was stripped of his livelihood and reputation before the fires in Ferguson were extinguished. 
<a href="https://www.thebluemagazine.com/new-blog/2019/4/12/the-dirty-work-of-protection-winning-the-battle">Charles H. Webb</a> said it best when he said, “There is no nice way to arrest a potentially dangerous, combative suspect. The police are our bodyguards; our hired fists, batons and guns. We pay them to do the dirty work of protecting us. The work we’re too afraid, too unskilled, or too civilized to do ourselves…We just don’t want to see how it’s done.”
Unfortunately, what happened in Ferguson, and in the years following, has made police officers afraid to do their jobs.
A <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/11/20/survey-says-more-than-half-nypd-wishes-they-werent-blue/">recent survey</a> conducted by the NYPD in 2022 found that 80% of its officers and their supervisors feared aggressively fighting crime for fear of lawsuits or being unfairly disciplined.
Experienced officers are retiring or resigning in droves, and, while they walk out the door in places like New York City, departments are struggling to recruit qualified candidates. In the <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/07/05/nypd-makes-fitness-tests-easier-after-increased-retirements/">NYPD’s July 2022</a> class, they were only able to recruit half the number they hoped for, even after lowering physical fitness standards for new applicants.
For the police officers coming in and those who remain, the leftist, anti-police propaganda has made the job of policing extremely difficult. This is especially true in large, liberal run cities where rules implemented in the name of protecting the public from the “lawless cops” have compromised the safety of the officer in the street and completely neutered their ability to enforce the law.
There is, however, a glimmer of hope. Things are changing. More people are paying attention. Residents in the higher crime areas and those who no longer feel safe in their upscale neighborhoods are beginning to make noise. They are clamoring for more police on the street. They aren’t buying the insane notion that less incarceration makes us all safer. That is where the change has to start. The people of these cities have to demand it from their political leaders.
As I’ve stated in other columns: change starts at the top. Let’s hope this is the beginning of real change and a major step toward removing the handcuffs from our brave officers in the street and making the Ferguson Effect a thing of the past.
John Dove is a retired NYPD Detective Lieutenant and the former co-executive producer of CSI-NY starring Gary Sinise.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Dove – The Ferguson Effect

The Ferguson Effect: How False Media Narratives Fueled A Generation Of Anti-Police Activism

George Floyd

Media Bias

Sitting members of Congress – and several others — marked the 8th anniversary of 18-year-old <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/biden-seems-to-suggest-michael-brown-was-victim-on-anniversary-of-death-obama-biden-doj-said-officer-acted-in-self-defense/">Michael Brown&#8217;s</a> death in Ferguson, Missouri, by promoting the long-debunked claim that he was &#8220;murdered&#8221; and had been shot while holding his hands up in surrender.
<a href="https://dailywire.com/news/left-tries-rewrite-story-saint-michael-brown-ben-shapiro/">Brown</a> was fatally shot by former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson — who initially attempted to detain Brown because he matched the description of a suspect in a <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/leftists-say-michael-brown-didnt-strong-arm-rob-frank-camp/">strong-arm robbery</a> at a local convenience store — and according to the police report, Brown attempted to pull Wilson out of his marked vehicle and grappled for his service weapon. He was reportedly running toward Wilson, who had by then exited the vehicle, when he was shot.
One witness, who later admitted to fabricating the claim, alleged that Brown had been trying to get away from Wilson when he was killed — and claimed that he had his hands up in surrender at the time of the shooting.
According to multiple investigations, however — including one undertaken by then Attorney General <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/black-lives-matter-a-movement-built-on-the-illusion-of-martyrdom/">Eric Holder</a> — the shooting was ultimately deemed justified and Wilson was not charged.
&#8220;This morning, the Justice Department announced the conclusion of our investigation and released a comprehensive, 87-page report documenting our findings and conclusions that the facts do not support the filing of criminal charges against Officer Darren Wilson in this case,&#8221; Holder said in a statement marking the close of the investigation. &#8220;Michael Brown’s death, though a tragedy, did not involve prosecutable conduct on the part of Officer Wilson.&#8221;
Despite that, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) went ahead on Tuesday with the assertion that Brown had been &#8220;murdered&#8221; by police.
&#8220;Today marks eight years since Michael Brown was murdered by police in Ferguson, MO,&#8221; Jayapal tweeted. &#8220;We need to honor Michael&#8217;s life with action. Let&#8217;s keep fighting to dismantle white supremacy, so we can ensure racial justice for all.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Today marks eight years since Michael Brown was murdered by police in Ferguson, MO.
We need to honor Michael’s life with action. Let’s keep fighting to dismantle white supremacy, so we can ensure racial justice for all.
&mdash; Pramila Jayapal (@PramilaJayapal) <a href="https://twitter.com/PramilaJayapal/status/1557013334532276224?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 9, 2022</a></blockquote>
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Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-MO), who was among the protesters on the ground in Ferguson in the days after the shooting, made the same claim.
&#8220;8 years ago today, Michael Brown Jr. was murdered, so we took to the streets for over 400 days. We were maced and tear-gassed, &amp; beaten by police — all for saying that Mike&#8217;s life mattered,&#8221; Bush tweeted, leaving out several key details such as the number of police officers who were attacked and the number of businesses that were <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/25/366452769/ferguson-businesses-burn-crowds-confront-police-in-overnight-chaos">looted and/or burned</a> by the protesters she claimed were simply &#8220;saying that Mike&#8217;s life mattered.&#8221;
&#8220;Our fight for justice will not stop. We do this for Mike Brown,&#8221; she added.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
8 years ago today, Michael Brown Jr. was murdered, so we took to the streets for over 400 days.
We were maced, tear-gassed, &amp; beaten by police—all for saying that Mike’s life mattered.
Our fight for justice will not stop. We do this for Mike Brown. ✊🏾
&mdash; Cori Bush (@CoriBush) <a href="https://twitter.com/CoriBush/status/1557214781756657666?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 10, 2022</a></blockquote>
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Civil Rights attorney Ben Crump, who has made a name for himself through a series of high-profile cases involving police officers and minorities, took the claim a step further and repeated the debunked claim that Brown had his hands raised in surrender when he was killed.
&#8220;8 years ago, Michael Brown was killed, with his hands up in surrender, by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson. Michael&#8217;s future was stolen from him mere DAYS after he attended his high school graduation ceremony. We’ll ALWAYS remember him! Rest In Power, Mike,&#8221; he tweeted.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
8 years ago, Michael Brown was killed, with his hands up in surrender, by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson. Michael&#39;s future was stolen from him mere DAYS after he attended his high school graduation ceremony. We’ll ALWAYS remember him! Rest In Power, Mike.🙏🏾 <a href="https://t.co/8vhnGGgEe0">pic.twitter.com/8vhnGGgEe0</a>
&mdash; Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/AttorneyCrump/status/1557038011556237313?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 9, 2022</a></blockquote>
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Several people pushed back on the claims, however, like St. Louis-based radio host Annie Frey. &#8220;Peddling the Hands Up lie drains all credibility from your cause. I follow you because I value seeing your side of this issue. But this is a LIE and you&#8217;re using it for your own personal benefit. It&#8217;s disgusting,&#8221; she said.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Peddling the Hands Up lie drains all credibility from your cause. I follow you because I value seeing your side of this issue. But this is a LIE and you&#39;re using it for your own personal benefit. It&#39;s disgusting. <a href="https://t.co/HaDIFaQh2Y">https://t.co/HaDIFaQh2Y</a>
&mdash; Annie Frey (@anniefreyshow) <a href="https://twitter.com/anniefreyshow/status/1557259786806231041?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 10, 2022</a></blockquote>
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Activists Across The Country Gather For March For Our Lives II To Protest Against Gun Violence

Sitting Members Of Congress — And More — Commemorate Ferguson Police Shooting By Lying About It

Sitting Members Of Congress Commemorate Ferguson Police Shooting By Lying About It

Pramila Jayapal

Shooting

On Monday, Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) claimed that white supremacists fired on Ferguson protesters after former police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown in 2014.
“When we marched in Ferguson, white supremacists would hide behind a hill near where Michael Brown Jr. was murdered and shoot at us,” Bush tweeted. “They never faced consequences.”
“If Kyle Rittenhouse gets acquitted, it tells them that even 7 years later they still can get away with it,” she added.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
When we marched in Ferguson, white supremacists would hide behind a hill near where Michael Brown Jr. was murdered and shoot at us.
They never faced consequences.
If Kyle Rittenhouse gets acquitted, it tells them that even 7 years later they still can get away with it.
&mdash; Cori Bush (@CoriBush) <a href="https://twitter.com/CoriBush/status/1460335492415819786?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 15, 2021</a></blockquote>
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However, as <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ferguson-police-former-mayor-dispute-cori-bush-claim-that-white-supremacists-shot-at-ferguson-protesters">The Daily Wire</a> reported, “Ferguson Police Chief James McCall Jr. and former Ferguson Mayor James Knowles disputed Democratic Missouri Rep. Cori Bush’s claim that white supremacists shot at Ferguson protesters.” 
When asked if he could recall any such incident, McCall Jr. <a href="https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/rep-cori-bush-says-white-supremacists-shot-at-ferguson-protesters-but-chief-not-aware-of/article_fbf2b08a-a49e-504b-8080-13dfb6f9f947.html">responded</a>, &#8220;Not that I’m aware of.”
Moreover, numerous mainstream fact-checkers either ignored or downplayed the claim.
As of Friday morning, CNN’s fact-checker <a href="https://www.cnn.com/profiles/daniel-dale">Daniel Dale</a> had not commented on Bush’s claim. Neither had many other fact-checking organizations, including <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/">The Washington Post</a>, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/news/factcheck/">USA Today</a>, <a href="https://www.politifact.com/personalities/cori-bush/">Politifact</a>, <a href="https://www.factcheck.org/search/#gsc.tab=0&amp;gsc.q=cori%20bush&amp;gsc.sort=">FactCheck.org</a>, and <a href="https://leadstories.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.fcgi?IncludeBlogs=1&amp;search=cori+bush">Lead Stories</a>.
Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cori-bush-ferguson/">Snopes</a> did investigate Bush’s claim, but they gave it a more forgiving “Unproven” rating:
<blockquote>Bush’s claim was a remarkable one, and suggested that white supremacists were effectively given license to shoot at Black protesters in Ferguson, and never brought to justice for what would be very serious violent crimes. It was also one that could not be quickly or readily corroborated, which prompted <a href="https://archive.md/rgKYz">significant skepticism</a> about its veracity. Ferguson Police Chief Frank McCall no doubt added to that skepticism when he <a href="https://archive.md/952Rx">told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch</a> he was not aware of any such incident having taken place. 
The congresswoman’s claim was not fabricated out of thin air, but rather related to a specific alleged incident in January 2015. However, we have not yet been able to obtain evidence that supports her core claim, namely that known white supremacists did indeed shoot at protesters, in their capacity as protesters. Moreover, a key figure in the alleged events of that day told Snopes she never saw any individual responsible for the shooting (and therefore could not corroborate the claim that they were white supremacists), and also did not recall having seen Bush at the time. 
In the absence of concrete evidence which clearly establishes the accuracy or inaccuracy of Bush’s claims, we are issuing a rating of “Unproven.” If solid evidence becomes available, we will update this fact check accordingly. </blockquote>
According to the <a href="https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/rep-cori-bush-says-white-supremacists-shot-at-ferguson-protesters-but-chief-not-aware-of/article_fbf2b08a-a49e-504b-8080-13dfb6f9f947.html">St. Louis Post-Dispatch</a>, a spokesperson for Bush’s campaign appeared to double-down on her claims, despite widespread skepticism.
“While on the frontlines of the Ferguson Uprising, Congresswoman Bush and other activists were shot at by white supremacist vigilantes. The question we need to ask is why white supremacists feel empowered to open-carry rifles, incite violence, and put Black lives at risk across our country,” they said.
Local activist Ohun Ashe also referenced the account of Bush.
&#8220;I vividly remember hiding under porches in Canfield as shots were fired at us,&#8221; <a href="https://twitter.com/Ohun_Ashe/status/1460338181413478401" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Ashe tweeted.</a> &#8220;No one came to help us. Ferguson police would be nearby. We would come from under porches using cars as shields in between gun shots to make it out.&#8221;

Fact Checkers Ignore Cori Bush’s Claim That White Supremacists Shot At Ferguson Protestors, Snopes Give ‘Unproven’ Rating

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