As of right now, most national head-to-head polls for the 2020 presidential general election show President Donald Trump losing to his Democratic Party presidential primary rivals. This trend generally holds, regardless of whether the nominee is any of the leading top three Democratic candidates: Former Vice President <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_biden-6247.html">Joe Biden</a>, Sen. <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_warren-6251.html">Elizabeth Warren</a> (D-MA), or Sen. <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_sanders-6250.html">Bernie Sanders</a> (I-VT).
While the Trump campaign might be tempted to rest on its laurels and sneer at the polls based upon a look back at the perceived polling debacle that was the 2016 presidential election, such a move would be just as haughty as it is myopic. As Harry Enten&#8217;s <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-is-just-a-normal-polling-error-behind-clinton/">article</a> from November 4, 2016 — that would be four days before the general election — presciently pointed out, in retrospect, polling from the 2016 election cycle was not actually irreconcilable with a Trump victory. Trump obviously trailed Hillary Clinton in the polls, but his victory was actually not outside the realm of polling feasibility — or even outside the realm of polling reasonableness.
As such, the 2020 Trump re-election campaign would be wise to focus on what it can do to win over a larger share of independent, moderate, and suburban voters. In doing so, the Trump campaign would be wise to look back to a much-ballyhooed part of Karl Rove&#8217;s 2004 blueprint for George W. Bush&#8217;s re-election: Specifically, that campaign&#8217;s ingenious focus on the &#8220;<a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/security-moms-bushs-secret-election-weapon-gl6jc8cxr7j">security mom</a>.&#8221; The mythical &#8220;security mom,&#8221; at the time, was symbolized by the proverbial suburban mother who was worried about revanchist Islamist terrorism and sought to protect her home and family against those who would seek to kill us.
Although some of the specific animating issues have changed over the past 15 years, there is tremendous potential this election cycle for Trump to deploy similar messaging and reach out to a similar sect of voters.
Violent crime in America, despite overall dramatically declining since the 1990s, has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-in-defense-of-prosecutors">unfortunately spiked</a> over the past few years. Why isn&#8217;t Trump formally renouncing the <a href="https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20191004/he-was-released-early-from-prison-in-february-now-hes-wanted-for-murder-on-federal-hill">harrowing</a> First Step Act jailbreak law, the passage of which he apparently already <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/trump-reportedly-regrets-passage-jailbreak-first-step-act-gullible-conservatives-supported/">regrets</a>, and doubling down on &#8220;Willie Horton&#8221;-style anti-crime messaging?
Left-wing Democrats are campaigning harder than ever on anti-Second Amendment, gun-grabbing policy proposals. Why isn&#8217;t Trump leading Republicans on a 2020 platform of cracking down on the gun felons that <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/html/decriminalization-delusion-14037.html">light-on-crime</a> jurisdictions like California seem <a href="https://calmatters.org/gun-violence/2019/10/felons-firearms-california-federal-charges-gun-control-newsom/">hellbent on unleashing</a> upon the general public?
The global jihad — as embodied both by the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-designating-muslim-brotherhood-terrorist-josh-hammer">Muslim Brotherhood</a>, the mother&#8217;s milk of Sunni jihad, as well as more public-facing Islamist outfits like al-Qaeda and Islamic State — continues, 18 years after 9/11, to pose a threat to the U.S. homeland. Why isn&#8217;t Trump running on a platform of discussing not just the wall and border security, but also the arguably even more indispensable issue of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-border-wall-nice-interior-enforcement-nicer-josh-hammer">interior visa enforcement</a>? What about the need to radically <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-never-forget-911-we-need-rethink-how-we-josh-hammer">restructure our immigration policy</a> away from letting in largely unvetted populations of Middle Easterners?
Across the nation, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-who-will-stand-for-the-forgotten-american">neo-Confederate</a> &#8220;sanctuary&#8221; jurisdictions employ anti-<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlevi">Supremacy Clause</a> erroneous legal &#8220;reasoning&#8221; to defy <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;ved=2ahUKEwiHsv7v4LXjAhWTHM0KHZKMB7gQFjAAegQIAxAB&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.law.cornell.edu%2Fuscode%2Ftext%2F8%2F1324&amp;usg=AOvVaw2EunpYa249SvA-oBwwFrS2">federal immigration law</a>, ignore ICE detainers on <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/another-illegal-alien-arrested-brutal-rape-notorious-sanctuary-montgomery-county/">violent criminal aliens</a>, and aid and abet the work of the transnational Mexican cartels that traffick drugs and criminals alike into the homeland. Why isn&#8217;t Trump proposing more aggressive policies to strip federal funding away from sanctuary jurisdictions and effectively message to suburban voters that the government will act to help prevent MS-13 thugs from terrorizing their neighborhoods?
There are a myriad other examples, to be sure. But to maximize its 2020 re-election chances, the Trump campaign ought to focus more intensively on appealing to moderates and suburban swing voters. In order to do so, there is no better platform than a safety and security agenda tailored to the very &#8220;security moms&#8221; that President Bush so effectively courted in 2004.

Handcuffed prisoner

HAMMER: Trump Needs To Focus On A Safety And Security Agenda For 2020

2020 Election

Al Qaeda

Crime

Democratic Party

Donald Trump

Hamas

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Jail

MS-13 Gang

National Security

Democrat presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren claimed on Thursday night that criminals who are locked up in prison are &#8220;entitled&#8221; to taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgery while they are in prison.
Warren made the remark when she was asked by CNN&#8217;s Chris Cuomo about her previous stance that it was wrong for American taxpayers to have to pay for transgender inmates to get gender reassignment surgery.
&#8220;Do you regret that?&#8221; Cuomo asked.
&#8220;Yup,&#8221; Warren responded. &#8220;It was a bad answer [at the time]. I believe that everyone is entitled to medical care and medical care that they need and that includes people who are transgender who, um, it is time for them to have [transgender] surgery. I just think that&#8217;s important.&#8221;
Warren&#8217;s policy proposal comes on the heels of her releasing her &#8220;Plan For LGBTQ+ Rights And Equality&#8221; on Thursday.
In her plan, Warren wrote: &#8220;I will direct the Bureau of Prisons to end the Trump Administration’s dangerous policy of imprisoning transgender people in facilities based on their sex assigned at birth.&#8221;
Warren also indicated that she is open to the idea of legalizing prostitution, writing: &#8220;I am also open to decriminalizing sex work. Sex workers, like all workers, deserve autonomy and are particularly vulnerable to physical and financial abuse and hardship.&#8221;
Warren&#8217;s plan also appears to favor decriminalizing infecting someone with HIV:
<blockquote>We must also decriminalize HIV transmission. In 2018, 26 states still had laws on the books criminalizing HIV exposure. These laws are completely at odds with the scientific advances of the last two decades, which have dramatically improved treatment for HIV and eliminated the likelihood of transmission in individuals who adhere to treatment and have suppressed the virus. These laws contribute to greater stigmatization and discrimination and further discourage people from getting tested and treated. As president, I will work to pass the Repeal Existing Policies that Encourage and Allow Legal HIV Discrimination Act to review federal and state laws and regulations that discriminate against and criminalize people living with HIV.</blockquote>
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Democrat presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren says Americans should have their hard-earned tax dollars go to pay for prison inmates to go through transgender surgery
Warren says the locked-up criminals are &#8220;entitled&#8221; to it <a href="https://t.co/Q5Fm12iXnA">pic.twitter.com/Q5Fm12iXnA</a>
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1182471208270352384?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 11, 2019</a></blockquote>
During the far-left town hall event, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/at-cnn-lbgtq-event-elizabeth-warren-contemptuously-dismisses-men-of-faith">Warren attacked men of faith</a>, suggesting that no one would ever be interested in men who believe in God and who do not support gay marriage.
Morgan Cox, Chair of the Human Rights Campaign’s Board of Directors, asked Warren, “Let’s say you’re on the campaign trail and you’re approached—” Warren interrupted, “I have been.” Cox finished, “You have been, yes. And a supporter approaches you and says, ‘Senator, I’m old-fashioned, and my faith teaches me that marriage is between one man and one woman.’ What is your response?”
Warren responded with a sexist remark, saying: “Well, I’m going to assume it’s a guy who said that. And I’m gonna say, ‘Then just marry one woman.’”
“I’m cool with that,” Warren continued. “Assuming you can find one.”
“The hatefulness, frankly, always really shocked me,&#8221; Warren continued in her attacks on people of faith. &#8220;Especially for people of faith because I think the foundation is the worth of every single human being. And I get people may make decisions for themselves that are different than the decisions other people make, but by golly, those are decisions about you; they are not decisions that tell other people what they can and cannot do.”

Elizabeth Warren

Warren: Inmates Are ‘Entitled’ To Taxpayer-Funded Transgender Surgery

Prison

Transgender

Pope Francis raised his position on the death penalty to a whole new level on Saturday by going so far as to speak out against life imprisonment, saying it diminishes a criminal&#8217;s &#8220;right to hope.&#8221;
&#8220;It is up to every society … to ensure that the penalty does not compromise the right to hope, that prospects for reconciliation and reintegration are guaranteed,&#8221; Pope Francis said, as reported <a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/pope-francis-life-imprisonment-forgoes-the-right-to-start-over-69915">Catholic News Agency</a>. &#8220;Life imprisonment is not the solution to problems — I repeat: Life imprisonment is not the solution to problems, but a problem to be solved.&#8221;
&#8220;Because if hope is closed in a cell, there is no future for society,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;Never deprive one of the right to start over.&#8221;
Pope Francis then directed his message toward all prisoners, advising them to carry hope no matter what and reminding them that God still loves them.
&#8220;Never let yourself be imprisoned in the dark cell of a hopeless heart; do not give in to resignation. God is greater than any problem and is waiting for you to love you,&#8221; said the pontiff. &#8220;Stand before the Crucifix, in the gaze of Jesus, in front of Him with simplicity and sincerity. From there, from the humble courage that belongs to those who do not lie to themselves, peace is reborn with the trust of being loved, and the strength to go on flourishes again.&#8221;
&#8220;You who are detained are important to God, who wants to do wonders in you,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Have courage because you are in the heart of God; you are precious in his eyes, and even if you feel lost and unworthy, do not lose heart. God is greater than our hearts.&#8221;
Pope Francis concluded by thanking prison ministers and chaplains for preaching the Gospel &#8220;within the walls of prisons&#8221; and encouraged them to &#8220;enter the most difficult situations with the sole strength of a smile and a heart that listens.&#8221;
Pope Francis has previously spoken out against life in prison, on top of his denunciations of the death penalty. In 2014, he even said that such a sentence is &#8220;<a href="https://cruxnow.com/life/2014/10/23/pope-francis-blasts-supermax-prisons-as-torture/">a hidden death penalty</a>.&#8221;
&#8220;All Christians and people of goodwill are called today to struggle not only for abolition of the death penalty, whether legal or illegal, and in all its forms, but also to improve prison conditions, out of respect for the human dignity of persons deprived of their liberty,&#8221; he told delegates from the International Association of Penal Law. &#8220;And this I connect with life imprisonment. Life imprisonment is a hidden death penalty.&#8221;
The pope attached life in prison to his over-arching message of prison reform.
&#8220;It is painful when we see prison systems which are not concerned to care for wounds, to soothe pain, to offer new possibilities,&#8221; he <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/27/pope-francis-philadelphia-prison-rehabilitation">said at a Philadelphia prison</a> in 2015. &#8220;It is painful when we see people who think that only others need to be cleansed, purified, and do not recognize that their weariness, pain, and wounds are also the weariness, pain, and wounds of society.&#8221;

popefrancis.jpg

Pope Francis Speaks Out Against Life Imprisonment: ‘Diminishes Hope’

Catholic Church

Pope Francis

John Paul Wright, professor at University of Cincinnati, and Matthew DeLisi professor at Iowa State University have penned a powerful article titled &#8220;<a href="https://www.city-journal.org/html/what-criminologists-dont-say-and-why-15328.html">What Criminologists Don&#8217;t Say, and Why</a>,&#8221; in City Journal, Summer 2017. There is significant bias among criminologists. The reason for that bias is that political leanings of academic criminologists are liberal. Liberal criminologists outnumber their conservative counterparts by a ratio of 30-to-1. Ideology almost perfectly predicts the position of criminologists on issues from gun control to capital punishment to harsh sentencing. Liberal criminologists march in step for gun control, oppose punitive prison sentences, and are vehemently against the death penalty.
In 2012, the National Academy of Sciences commissioned a study on the growth of incarceration. It showed that from 1928 until 1960, crime rates rose slowly each year. After the 1960s, crime rates exploded to unprecedented levels of violence until the 1990s. Prior to 1980, only 40% of individuals arrested for murder were sentenced to prison and those that were served an average of five years. In 1981, less than 10% of those arrested for sexual assault were sentenced to prison. Those who were sentenced served an average of 3.4 years. Liberal criminologists probably believe that light sentencing for murderers and rapists is just.
If criminologists have the guts to even talk about a race-crime connection, it&#8217;s behind closed doors and in guarded language. Any discussion about race and crime sets one up for accusations of racism and that can mean the destruction of one&#8217;s professional career. Wright and DeLisi say that liberal criminologists avoid discussing even explicit racist examples of black-on-white crime such as flash-mob assaults, &#8220;polar bear hunting&#8221; and the &#8220;knockout game.&#8221; These are cases where <a href="https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=knockout+game&amp;view=detail&amp;mid=E3F42C0405548004A753E3F42C0405548004A753&amp;FORM=VIRE">black youth seek out white people to physically attack</a>.
According to Wright and DeLisi: &#8220;Disproportionate black involvement in violent crime represents the elephant in the room amid the current controversy over policing in the United States. Homicide numbers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Supplementary Homicide Reports, 1976-2005 indicate that young African-American males account for homicide victims at levels that are ten to 20 times greater than their proportion of the population and account for homicide offenders at levels that are 15 to 35 times greater than their proportion of the population. The black-white gap in armed-robbery offending has historically ranged between ten to one and 15 to one. For all racial groups, violent crime is strongly intraracial, and the intraracial dynamic is most pronounced among blacks.&#8221; That means the primary victims of black crime are other black people. In more than 90% of homicides, for example, both the victim and the perpetrator are black.
Between 1991 and 2017, the nationwide violent crime rate fell from 758 cases to 382 cases per 100,000 people. Despite the evidence that higher incarceration reduces crime rates, many criminologists argue that &#8220;mass incarceration&#8221; has actually &#8220;took minority men out of their neighborhoods, stripped them of voting rights, destabilized families, and sapped already-paltry economic resources from struggling communities.&#8221; Wright and DeLisi say that &#8220;Such claims could seem plausible only if one believes — contrary to evidence and common sense — that career criminals contribute positively to their neighborhoods, enjoy stable and functional families, vote, and work. What they did, in reality, was to prey on their neighbors.&#8221;
Crime is a major problem for the black community. But in addition to incarcerating those who prey on the black community, what can be done? The answer is easy, though implementation poses a challenge. We should re-adopt the values and practices of our ancestors. Black families of yesteryear were mainly two-parent and stable, even during slavery. Black people didn&#8217;t tolerate property destruction. There were few school fights. Disrespect and assaults on teachers were virtually unknown. These are now all too common. The strong character of black people is responsible for the great progress made from emancipation to today. Find a 70-, 80- or 90-year-old black person and ask him whether today&#8217;s conduct among black youth would have been tolerated yesteryear. I guarantee you that no will be their answer.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

WILLIAMS: Criminologists Mislead Us

Race

The iconic ice cream company &#8220;Ben &amp; Jerry&#8217;s&#8221; has introduced yet another social justice-themed dessert into its repertoire of politically themed confections. This time the company is taking on criminal justice reform measures to address &#8220;systemic racism in our country&#8221; with its new flavor &#8220;Justice Remix&#8217;d.&#8221;
&#8220;Ben &amp; Jerry’s believes everyone deserves the sweet taste of justice, regardless of race or wealth,&#8221; the company said in a press release on Tuesday. &#8220;The iconic ice cream company has partnered with Advancement Project National Office to launch Justice ReMix’d, a flavor created to spotlight structural racism in a broken criminal legal system.&#8221;
Ben Cohen, co-founder of the Vermont-based ice cream empire, said in a statement that the flavor enables people to talk about difficult issues in an easy way.
&#8220;Our approach to creating social change is to raise up the work non-profits are doing on the ground,&#8221; said Cohen. &#8220;We bring every resource we have to support them —our business voice, our connection with fans, our Scoop Shop community and of course, ice cream. Somehow, it’s easier to talk about difficult issues over a scoop or two.&#8221;
The &#8220;Justice Remix&#8217;d&#8221; flavor offers both cinnamon and chocolate ice creams with &#8220;gobs of cinnamon bun dough and spicy fudge brownies.&#8221; It will be available in both nationwide grocery stores and Scoop Shops for a retail price of $4 – $6.
The Advancement Project National Office supports far-left criminal justice reform by pushing <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2014/08/school-prison-pipeline-ian-tuttle/">deeply tendentious talking points</a> like the &#8220;school-to-prison pipeline.&#8221;
&#8220;Our country needs to invest in services that build up communities rather than those that tear them down,&#8221; said the organization&#8217;s executive director, Judith Browne Dianis. &#8220;That means ending a wealth-based pre-trial detention system that locks people up because they are poor, black or brown. It means dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline, divesting from criminalizing students and investing in the creation of high-quality education and services. It’s time to reimagine safety and justice.&#8221;
The flavor&#8217;s arrival comes just one month after co-founder Ben Cohen introduced a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50196/ben-jerrys-announce-another-pro-bernie-ice-cream-paul-bois">special flavor </a>in support of Bernie Sanders called &#8220;Bernie&#8217;s Back.&#8221; The Sanders <a href="https://act.berniesanders.com/signup/bernies-back/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">campaign website</a> has since been offering supporters a chance to &#8220;sign up&#8221; in order to win a pint of &#8220;Bernie&#8217;s Back,&#8221; which features &#8220;one very large chocolate disc on top and a (very stiff) butter toffee backbone going down the middle&#8221; — meant to symbolize Bernie&#8217;s struggle against the evil 1%.
In October 2018, the company also launched &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/37774/woke-desserts-ben-jerrys-ice-cream-introduces-paul-bois">Pecan Resist</a>,&#8221; which supported &#8220;groups creating a more just and equitable nation for us all, and who are fighting President Trump’s regressive agenda.&#8221;
As the same-sex marriage debates shot throughout the Western world, Ben &amp; Jerry&#8217;s was on the front-line with new flavors in every country in support of the LGBT cause. In 2009, the state of Vermont had the flavor &#8220;Hubby Hubby,&#8221; which was followed in 2012 by &#8220;Apple-y Ever After&#8221; in the U.K. Australia had &#8220;I Dough, I Dough,&#8221; while Ireland had &#8220;EngageMint Party.&#8221;
In 2016, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield similarly endorsed Bernie Sanders&#8217; presidential run with <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/266886-ben-jerrys-co-founder-creates-sanders-ice-cream">a flavor</a> similar to the one released last month: &#8220;Bernie&#8217;s Yearning,&#8221; a plain mint ice cream beneath a solid layer of chocolate on top, which was also meant to represent the top 1% making all the economic gains.

Ben &amp; Jerry&#8217;s Unveils New Ice Cream Flavor In Support Of The Advancement Project National Office

‘Justice Remix&#8217;d’: New Ben &#038; Jerry’s Flavor Takes On Criminal Justice Reform

Bernie Sanders

Leftism

Vermont

According to the Mundane Principle, which I just made up, the answer to any mystery is usually the least interesting and most boring of all logical possibilities. This is essentially Occam&#8217;s Razor but with an added dose of cynicism. And it is because of the Mundane Principle, and Occam&#8217;s Razor, that I tend to think Jeffrey Epstein ended up dead on the floor of his jail cell because he killed himself — and he was able to kill himself because our government is grossly incompetent and negligent.
With that said, the so-called &#8220;conspiracy theory&#8221; — that Epstein was given a friendly assist in his suicide, or that he was outright murdered — is not, in this case, unreasonable. Indeed, it is quite reasonable. As Sohrab Ahmari has <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/08/11/journos-debunker-mentality-rush-to-rip-conspiracy-talk/">documented</a>, mainstream journalists and media personalities have derided the conspiracy speculations as absurd and irresponsible, but they are neither of those things. It would be absurd and irresponsible to declare with certainty that Epstein was murdered at the command of one of his uber-wealthy friends, but it is justified to wonder aloud about such possibilities.
After all, the facts, as they are currently being presented, don&#8217;t seem to add up. Epstein is (was) the most important inmate in the entire federal prison system. As the head of a global sex trafficking network, his testimony could expose and destroy an array of rich and powerful child rapists across the world. Given the information he possessed, and the crimes he committed, he was in active danger from several different directions. Inmates are notoriously unwelcoming to accused pedophiles. His well-connected and obscenely rich clients had every reason to want him dead. And then there was perhaps the greatest threat to Epstein&#8217;s continued health and vitality: Epstein himself. He&#8217;d already attempted suicide once, allegedly.
Yet, in spite of all of these facts, Epstein was taken off of suicide watch days ago. What&#8217;s more, his cellmate was <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/08/11/theres-no-video-of-jeffrey-epsteins-apparent-suicide-sources/">transferred</a> to a different cell on the very night of the alleged suicide. The guards who were supposed to check on Epstein every 20 minutes hadn&#8217;t been by his cell for several hours leading up to his death, for some reason. As for video footage, prison officials tell us that there wasn&#8217;t any camera trained directly on Epstein. None of this makes much sense. We can all pretend otherwise, but what&#8217;s the point of that? We&#8217;re all thinking the same thing. Why shouldn&#8217;t we say so?
It&#8217;s not like there&#8217;s anything particularly outlandish about a potential state&#8217;s witness meeting an untimely demise at the behest of whoever he was supposed to testify against. This sort of thing has happened many times in the history of our illustrious country. It would be somewhat remarkable for a prisoner of Epstein&#8217;s stature and importance to be assassinated while in federal custody, but it&#8217;s arguably more remarkable — or just as remarkable, at least — for a prisoner of Epstein&#8217;s stature and importance to kill himself while in federal custody. The whole situation is hard to believe. But it happened. And so we are left only with hard-to-believe explanations.
The greater point is this: The people of this country do not trust their governing institutions, so when they hear that a sex trafficker who could implicate powerful elites wound up dead in prison, they assume that corruption must have played a role. Is this an unfair assumption? Not in the least. Our governing institutions are corrupt. There is a long and storied history of elites pulling strings and calling in favors to escape prosecution for crimes that would land the average schlub behind bars. Is this yet another example in a long, depressing line of examples? Maybe so. The most depressing fact of all is that we&#8217;ll never know for sure, one way or another.

Jeffrey Epstein

WALSH: The Conspiracy Theories About Epstein’s Death Are Perfectly Reasonable And Justified

Suicide

There’s a growing trend in Great Britain: prisoners in jail deciding that they are transgender.
As <a href="https://www.christian.org.uk/news/male-prisoners-self-identifying-as-trans-for-perks/">christian.org.uk</a> reports, “One in 50 male offenders in prisons say they are transgender, according to a survey by the Inspectorate of Prisons.” The Chief Inspector of Prisons, Peter Clarke, said there could be as many as 1,500 prisoners claiming they are transgender in England and Wales, at least ten times the previous estimate. He commented, &#8220;Sometimes we find the numbers of people identifying as transgender are higher in our survey than the prison will think.” Chair of the Prison Officers Association Mark Fairhurst speculated there “would always be some trying to abuse the system.”
There are definite advantages to claiming you are transgender if you are in a British prison; separate showers, single cells, and the choice of whether you’d like to be incarcerated in a male or female prison.
<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/07/09/one-50-prisoners-identify-transsexual-first-figures-show-amid/">The Telegraph</a> noted, “The watchdog’s survey of 5,133 British prisoners found two per cent self identified as transgender or transexual, rising to 10 per cent of the 287 traveller offenders surveyed. Extrapolated across the prison service, this would mean about 1,500.”
In October 2018, a convicted pedophile who declared he was a woman once he was in prison, then was jailed with other women, was sentenced to life by a British judge after the pedophile had attacked two women at the women’s prison.
Stephen Terence Wood, 52, who called himself Karen White and had been called a “predatory and controlling” rapist, had already been convicted of indecent assault, indecent exposure and gross indecency involving children, animal cruelty and dishonesty, according to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/11/transgender-prisoner-who-sexually-assaulted-inmates-jailed-for-life">The Guardian</a>.
The British Ministry of Justice apologized for transferring White to the female prison; the Ministry acknowledged it had not considered White’s previous history before moving him.
Judge Christopher Batty told White, “You are a predator and highly manipulative and in my view you are a danger. You represent a significant risk of serious harm to children, to women and to the general public.”
At a transgender event in Hyde Park, London, in September 2017, two people were suspected by police of punching a 60-year-old woman in the face. There was only one problem: police wouldn’t say what gender the suspects were because they were <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/26/three-sought-60-year-old-woman-beaten-transgender-row/">afraid they might get it wrong</a>. Scotland Yard said it was “a gray area” and dependent on which gender the suspects claimed to be. A spokeswoman for Scotland Yard, who acknowledged the suspects might be transgendered individuals, said, “We have to be very careful. We are not going to commit ourselves to something because I’m afraid it’s not black and white.”

Number Of British Prisoners Claiming They Are Transgender Explodes

Great Britain

The sadistic treatment of Paul Manafort illustrates something I have believed since I attended graduate school in the 1970s and saw the behavior of left-wing students: Leftism makes people meaner.
There are kind and mean conservatives and kind and mean liberals. Neither liberalism nor conservatism makes people kinder or meaner. But this is not the case with leftism. With the handful of exceptions that accompany every generalization, leftism makes people meaner, even crueler.
Take the transfer of Manafort, the one-time Trump campaign manager, from a federal prison to New York&#8217;s Rikers Island prison. Rikers Island is universally regarded as a wretched place. As Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz wrote:
&#8220;The decision to move Paul Manafort &#8230; from the decent federal prison to which he was sentenced to solitary confinement to the dangerous hell hole that is New York City&#8217;s Rikers Island seems abusive and possibly illegal.
&#8220;I know Rikers well having spent time there visiting numerous defendants accused of murder and other violent crimes. It is a terrible place that no one should ever be sent to.&#8221;
Mass murderers and torturers are among those incarcerated at Rikers Island.
Moreover, Manafort, found guilty solely for white-collar crimes, will be placed in solitary confinement &#8212; &#8220;for his own safety.&#8221;
Virtually everyone who has written about solitary confinement, both on the right and the left, deems it torture. Manafort will therefore be tortured after being sentenced to seven years&#8217; imprisonment for fraud and, in the words of the Daily Wire, &#8220;a little-known law that requires lobbyists to report that they are working on behalf of a foreign government (in Manafort&#8217;s case, Ukraine).&#8221;
Angry over the possibility that Manafort may be pardoned by President Trump, the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, charged Manafort with additional crimes based on state law. That way, if found guilty of state offenses, he cannot be pardoned by Trump, as the president&#8217;s power to pardon applies only to federal &#8212; not state &#8212; crimes.
Everyone knows this prosecution is politically motivated. Vance hates the president and wants to use solitary confinement in a hellhole with violent criminals to squeeze Manafort into testifying against the president.
As Dershowitz said to me on my radio show, what Vance is doing reminds him of Stalin and Beria &#8212; the infamous state prosecutor, a man Stalin referred to as &#8220;my Himmler.&#8221; Dershowitz, a lifelong liberal Democrat and supporter of Hillary Clinton, does not use Stalin analogies loosely.
To her credit, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: &#8220;A prison sentence is not a license for gov torture and human rights violations. That&#8217;s what solitary confinement is. Manafort should be released, along with all people being held in solitary.&#8221;
I might add that my opposition to Manafort&#8217;s treatment is not partisan or new. On a number of occasions over the years, I have cited favorably New York Review of Books articles describing the horror of solitary confinement.
Despite its history of opposition to solitary confinement, The New York Times article reporting the plan to relocate Manafort said nothing against the unnecessary transfer but did comment on the expensive suits Manafort used to wear.
Solitary confinement is &#8220;basically a deathtrap,&#8221; former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik wrote when Manafort was placed in solitary at his federal prison. Manafort should never have been sentenced to solitary confinement. But Robert Mueller (and Judge Amy Berman Jackson) sought it for the same political reason Vance has: to break the man.
As former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell wrote: &#8220;When a witness or defendant from whom prosecutors want &#8216;cooperation&#8217; does not do as they demand, they put him in solitary confinement. And it works. It literally breaks people.
&#8220;Solitary does have a place in our prison system, but only for those people who are simply too dangerous to be placed around others at all. However, the torture of solitary confinement should never be used as it is now to break people to prosecutors&#8217; will &#8212; to torture them until they will say or do anything to get out.
&#8220;Solitary is also called the &#8216;hole.&#8217; It&#8217;s a small space, barely large enough to stand, with a slit for light, to which prisoners are confined/caged for 23 hours a day. &#8230;
&#8220;Paul Manafort, seventy years old, has endured this torture for eight months. He&#8217;s now in a wheelchair, while Judge Amy Berman Jackson mocks his rapidly deteriorating health. Where is the outcry from the ACLU?&#8221;
So, then, what enables Vance, Mueller and Jackson to engage in such evil?
The only answer is their politics &#8212; the politics of the Trump-hating left. Cyrus Vance, Robert Mueller and Amy Berman Jackson may well be good parents, loving spouses, loyal friends and charitable individuals. But leftism has given them permission to act vilely and mercilessly while thinking of themselves as fine people &#8212; just as evil doctrines have done throughout history.
As noted at the beginning of this column, when I was at Columbia, I witnessed this leftist mean-spiritedness firsthand in the personal cruelty of left-wing agitators against professors and others with whom they differed.
Here&#8217;s a question perhaps millions of parents will be able to answer: If your child returned home from college a leftist, was he or she a kinder or meaner person than before he or she left for college?
The question is rhetorical.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in April 2018, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Exodus. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

PRAGER: Leftism Makes People Meaner: Reflections On The Torture Of Paul Manafort

Paul Manafort

Kim Kardashian was <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/kim-kardashian-returns-white-house-criminal-justice">back at the White House</a> this week to peddle her pernicious &#8220;criminal justice reform&#8221; agenda. While Kardashian&#8217;s passion about helping ex-felons reintegrate into society may be well-intentioned, the cold truth is that an absolutely staggering <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/staggering-doj-study-83-percent-of-prisoners-re-arrested-within-9-years-of-release/">83% of state prisoners</a> are re-arrested within nine years of their release. According to the <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/18upr9yfup0514.pdf">U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics</a> (BJS), furthermore, the so-called &#8220;low-level drug offenders&#8221; that Kardashian and much of the weak-on-crime/jailbreak cartel so aggressively promote are, in fact, also huge recidivism risks for acts of violent crime:
<blockquote>
Overall, 68 percent of released state prisoners were arrested within three years, 79 percent within six years and 83 percent within nine years. The 401,288 released state prisoners were arrested an estimated 2 million times during the nine years after their release, an average of five arrests per released prisoner. &#8230;
More than three-quarters (77 percent) of released drug offenders were arrested for a non-drug crime within nine years, and more than a third (34 percent) were arrested for a violent crime.
</blockquote>
The risk of recidivism is not just a fantasy concocted by law-and-order conservatives &#8212; it is very, very real.
But the broader reality is that weak-on-crime political operatives often operate under misleading or disingenuous premises. As Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/first-step-criminal-justice-reform-bill-whats-in-it/">pointed out at National Review</a> in the debate leading up to a vote on the White House-supported &#8220;First Step Act&#8221; criminal justice reform jailbreak bill, this &#8220;low-level drug offender&#8221;-centric law actually allows for <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/these-are-the-violent-criminals-slated-for-early-release-under-the-jailbreak-bill/">early prison release</a> for a veritable hodgepodge of thugs &#8212; everyone from dangerous weapon-wielding robbers to law enforcement officer assaulters to violent carjackers to traffickers of fentanyl, a narcotic so potent that a sugar packet-sized dose could kill a whole room. The general profiles of these miscreants would more readily resemble MS-13 brutes than they would the &#8220;low-level drug offenders&#8221; that the weak-on-crime sycophants would have you believe are the true target of &#8220;reform.&#8221;
Far from having a general over-incarceration problem, the United States in the year 2019 actually has an under-incarceration problem &#8212; especially for violent criminals and mid-high level drug traffickers. As Sen. Cotton <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/tom-cotton-under-incarceration-223371">argued</a> in 2016, the actual percentage of violent criminals even arrested &#8212; let alone prosecuted and subsequently convicted &#8212; is harrowingly low: &#8220;Law enforcement is able to arrest or identify a likely perpetrator for only 19 percent of property crimes and 47 percent of violent crimes. If anything, we have an under-incarceration problem.&#8221; Indeed, according to <a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017">2017 FBI Uniform Crime Reporting statistics</a>, the number of cases uncleared by law enforcement in a given year is astonishing: 6,013 murder cases, 79,310 rape cases, 206,091 robbery cases, and 349,190 aggravated assault cases in 2017 alone.
The good news, from a broader perspective, is that crime in America has indeed dramatically plummeted over the past few decades. According to <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/03/5-facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/">Pew</a>, citing FBI statistics, violent crime fell 49% between 1993 and 2017. That is outstanding news and ought to be applauded. But as Pew also <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/03/5-facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/">notes</a>, violent crime actually recently rose from 2014&#8211;2016. Furthermore, BJS&#8217;s <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/cv17pr.cfm">2017 National Crime Victimization Survey</a> showed a &#8220;statistically significant increase&#8221; in violent crime victims from 2015&#8211;2017.
Distressingly, this recent increase in violent crime has coincided with a continued hollowing out of America&#8217;s prison population. As psychology professors Keith Humphreys and Richard Lane <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/30/weve-made-remarkable-progress-black-incarceration-now-we-need-know-why/">observed</a> in April, in <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/trump-lurching-left-crime-will-not-win-re-election/">focusing solely upon</a> the black subset of our prison population, &#8220;the African American male imprisonment rate has dropped by a third since its peak and is now at a level not seen since 1991. African American women&#8217;s rate of imprisonment has dropped 57 percent from its peak and is now at a 30-year low.&#8221; Amazingly, Pew actually <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/02/americas-incarceration-rate-is-at-a-two-decade-low/">noted</a> last year that America&#8217;s total incarcerated population is now at a two decade-low:
<blockquote>
At the end of 2016, there were about 2.2 million people behind bars in the U.S., including 1.5 million under the jurisdiction of federal and state prisons and roughly 741,000 in the custody of locally run jails. That amounts to a nationwide incarceration rate of 860 prison or jail inmates for every 100,000 adults ages 18 and older.
The nation&#8217;s incarceration rate peaked at 1,000 inmates per 100,000 adults during the three-year period between 2006 and 2008. It has declined every year since then and is now at its lowest point since 1996, when there were 830 inmates per 100,000 adults.
</blockquote>
The generally tough-on-crime policies of the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton presidencies blessed this country with decades of relative tranquility. Why on earth would we risk throwing that away to satisfy law enforcement officer assaulters and MS-13 fentanyl traffickers? Why on earth would we now be further hollowing out the nation&#8217;s prison population, amidst a two-decade low in the prison population and recent increases, contrary to the longstanding trend, of increased violent crime?
On the contrary, now is the time to double down on giving law enforcement the resources they need to arrest more violent criminals and on giving prosecutors the resources they need to charge and ultimately convict more violent criminals. There are far, far too many violent criminals and drug traffickers who get off scot-free.
Now is not the time to be hoodwinked by perhaps well-intentioned, but nonetheless naive, promoters of the weak-on-crime and jailbreak agenda. And as for President Donald Trump, he should stop <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1139277199180259328">appeasing weak-on-crime</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46959/hammer-be-very-skeptical-jared-kushners-new-josh-hammer">libertarians</a> within his White House and quickly retreat to his 2016 campaign-era rhetoric on drugs and crime. He had it right back then.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
This election is a choice between law, order &amp; safety &#8211; or chaos, crime &amp; violence. I will make America safe again for everyone. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ImWithYou?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ImWithYou</a>
&#8212; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/752849315094298624?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 12, 2016</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Violent crime is rising across the United States, yet the DNC convention ignored it. Crime reduction will be one of my top priorities.
&#8212; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/759450053379579905?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 30, 2016</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Look how bad it is getting! How much more crime, how many more shootings, will it take for African-Americans and Latinos to vote Trump=SAFE!
&#8212; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/770245313345052673?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 29, 2016</a></blockquote>
</div>

HAMMER: Don’t Let Kim Kardashian Fool You. America Has An UNDER-Incarceration Problem.

Kim Kardashian

Murder

Rape

Speaker of the House and leftist icon Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44521/just-not-worth-it-nancy-pelosi-says-no-impeaching-ryan-saavedra">performed</a> a very <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47633/pelosi-sounds-alarm-over-trump-impeachment-james-barrett">careful</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47966/nancy-pelosi-gets-heckled-california-democrats-emily-zanotti">dance</a> on the issue of possible impeachment for President Donald Trump. Most recently, as The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47966/nancy-pelosi-gets-heckled-california-democrats-emily-zanotti">reported</a> earlier this week, Pelosi found herself heckled by her fellow California Democrats for being insufficiently zealous about impeachment:
<blockquote>
Local lawmaker Pelosi &#8230; clearly anticipated a friendly audience, and took the stage Saturday afternoon to update California&#8217;s progressive activists on a handful of ongoing Congressional investigations into President Donald Trump&#8217;s personal finances and pre-presidential business dealings. When she got to the part of her speech focused on Special Counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s report on potential collusion between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russian officials, though, the crowd turned on her.
Pelosi began discussing Trump&#8217;s potential &#8220;obstruction of justice,&#8221; a charge outlined in the Mueller report but subsequently dismissed by the Attorney General&#8217;s office, and it wasn&#8217;t long before members of the audience were drowning her out, yelling &#8220;Impeach! Impeach!&#8221; &#8230;
Pelosi struggled for several minutes before launching back into her speech, looking very uncomfortable.
</blockquote>
&#8220;Pelosi and other long-time Democrats have been the subject of progressive ire lately, after refusing to sign on to articles of impeachment, preferring instead that Democrats treat the 2020 presidential election as a referendum on Trump&#8217;s actions, including potential obstruction of justice,&#8221; The Daily Wire&#8217;s Emily Zanotti <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47966/nancy-pelosi-gets-heckled-california-democrats-emily-zanotti">added</a>.
But this week, Pelosi reportedly went full Woke® in a private Capitol Hill exchange with House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). Specifically, as Politico <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/05/pelosi-impeachment-1355435">reports</a>, Pelosi actually called not for Trump&#8217;s impeachment, but for his imprisonment:
<blockquote>
Speaker Nancy Pelosi told senior Democrats that she&#8217;d like to see President Donald Trump &#8220;in prison&#8221; as she clashed with House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler in a meeting on Tuesday night over whether to launch impeachment proceedings. &#8230;
&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to see him impeached, I want to see him in prison,&#8221; Pelosi said, according to multiple Democratic sources familiar with the meeting. Instead of impeachment, Pelosi still prefers to see Trump defeated at the ballot box and then prosecuted for his alleged crimes, according to the sources.
They said she was expressing solidarity with pro-impeachment Democrats who want to hold the president accountable while disputing the idea that it is now time to take that step.
</blockquote>
The leaked statement amounts to an interesting political calculation for Pelosi. The speaker, it seems, is attempting to thread a needle between mollifying the restive progressive base of her party and assuaging institutional Democratic establishment forces who are concerned about the possible political ramifications at the ballot box in 2020 of such an unjustified impeachment push. Whether Pelosi will come across as less &#8220;radical&#8221; for claiming that a sitting president of the United States deserves to be imprisoned is, at best, a shaky proposition.
Political prediction market <a href="https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/5158/Will-Donald-Trump-complete-his-first-term">PredictIt.org</a> currently has Trump as an overwhelming favorite to successfully complete his first term as president &#8212; and to therefore not be impeached. Republicans, after all, retain control of the U.S. Senate &#8212; where two-thirds of members are required, in any event, to successfully convict upon the House&#8217;s initial impeachment.

Nancy Pelosi Wants To See Trump ‘In Prison’

Impeachment

Jerrold Nadler

Nancy Pelosi

Progressivism

On Thursday, John Walker Lindh, also known as the &#8220;American Taliban&#8221; fighter, will be released after serving 17 and a half years of his 20-year sentence. In response, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) and Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) demanded answers in <a href="https://www.shelby.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/newsreleases?ID=65C2F49D-C6C3-4FA9-9DFD-F22DF0B1AC70">a letter</a> sent to the acting director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
In the letter, the senators requested information about &#8220;what steps the U.S. government is taking to ensure public safety,&#8221; citing a <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/23/john-walker-lindh-detainee-001-in-the-global-war-on-terror-will-go-free-in-two-years-what-then/">2017 Foreign Policy</a> article that claims Lindh fully intends to continue spreading his terrorist ideology after his release.
The senators also mentioned that 108 other convicted ISIS, al-Qaeda, or Taliban terrorists will soon be released from prison after completing their sentences over the next few years. 
&#8220;Little information has been made available to the public about who, when, and where these offenders will be released, whether they pose an ongoing public threat, and what federal agencies are doing to mitigate this threat while the offenders are in federal custody,&#8221; the senators&#8217; letter reads. 
The letter also cited a report by the chief United States probation officer, the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota&#8217;s Kevin Lowery, that suggests &#8220;that neither the Bureau of Prisons nor the Federal Judiciary&#8217;s Probation and Pretrial Services have sufficient nationwide programming to prevent incarcerated terrorist offenders from returning to violence upon completion of their sentences.&#8221;
The senators also cite a report from the George Washington University&#8217;s Program on Extremism, and they posit that general sharing protocols among various federal agencies, courts, states, local law enforcement branches, and local service providers are &#8220;insufficient&#8221; and lack &#8220;nationwide institutionalization.&#8221; The report suggests there is no &#8220;coordinated federal approach to preventing convicted terrorists from returning to violence.&#8221;
&#8220;Our highest priority is keeping America safe, secure, and free. To that end, we must consider the security and safety implications for our citizens and communities who will receive individuals like John Walker Lindh who continue to openly call for extremist violence,&#8221; the senators wrote. 
The letter concluded with a list of questions about the reasoning behind Lindh&#8217;s release and requests for information about the release of other terrorists, risk assessment measures, intervention efforts, and reintegration policies for terrorists.
The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44894/american-taliban-john-walker-lindh-set-be-released-emily-zanotti">reported</a> that Lindh converted to radical Islam in the 1990s and remains radicalized:
<blockquote>
Walker Lindh was discovered when the United States military captured a small force of Taliban fighters in the early days of the Afghan War. He was detained in Afghanistan for a short time, then shipped to the United States to stand trial as an &#8220;enemy combatant.&#8221; He is officially listed as &#8220;Detainee 001&#8221; in the War on Terror.
At the time, Walker-Lindh, who converted to radical Islam in the 1990s and was already in Afghanistan and ready to join up with America&#8217;s enemies when the September 11th attacks happened, was charged with multiple counts of conspiracy and aiding the enemy, but ultimately agreed to a plea deal, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2002/LAW/10/04/lindh.statement/">according to CNN</a>, that earned him just 20 years in prison instead of several consecutive life sentences.
<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/american-ex-taliban-fighter-to-be-released-in-may-seek-to-move-to-ireland-despite-authorities-warning-he-hasnt-denounced-islamism">Fox News reports</a> that Walker-Lindh was expected to serve around 17 years of that sentence, and despite continuing to pledge his allegiance to radical Islam, he will be released from federal custody in May.
&#8220;The National Counterterrorism Center penned a document dated Jan. 24, 2017 claiming the former Taliban fighter remains as radicalized now as he was in 2001,&#8221; the outlet says. &#8220;As of May 2016, John Walker Lindh (USPER) &#8212; who is scheduled to be released in May 2019 after being convicted of supporting the Taliban &#8212; continued to advocate for global jihad and to write and translate violent extremist texts.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Lindh also reportedly hopes to obtain Irish citizenship and eventually leave the U.S.:
<blockquote>
Although he&#8217;ll be released in the United States, he&#8217;s been able to obtain Irish citizenship, according to <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/john-walker-lindh-american-ex-taliban-militant-obtained-irish-citizenship-thanks-to-his-irish-grandmother">a separate Fox News report</a>, and he plans on leaving the U.S. for Ireland as soon as he&#8217;s released &#8212; a development that has global security forces very concerned.
&#8220;Moving to Ireland became an option for Walker Lindh after he obtained citizenship there, while still in prison, sometime in 2013 thanks to his family&#8217;s lineage,&#8221; Fox News says. &#8220;His paternal grandmother, Kathleen Maguire, was an Irish citizen born in 1929 in a northwestern Irish town, the Foreign Policy magazine reported.&#8221; 
It&#8217;s not immediately clear whether Ireland has officially approved the move, but it&#8217;s also not clear that they have to. As long as an Irish citizen is approved for and receives an Irish passport, they can&#8217;t be denied entry into the country. Walker-Lindh, according to <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ex-taliban-fighter-cant-be-kept-out-of-country-92cdjzj66">the London Times</a> believes that he will at least ask for asylum, since remaining in the U.S. is &#8220;practically impossible,&#8221; but that he doesn&#8217;t believe it&#8217;s a guarantee.
&#8220;Regarding the Ireland issue, I really don&#8217;t know what to expect from the Irish government. I know virtually nothing about them. I think the only reasonable way to present my case to them is to explain my unique circumstances that make my survival in the US practically impossible,&#8221; Lindh wrote to a non-governmental organization called CAGE. &#8220;Essentially I am seeking asylum from one country where I am a citizen in another country where I am also a citizen. The worst they can do is to decline my request. I figure it is worth at least trying.&#8221;
There&#8217;s also a concern that he could simply use Ireland as a clearing house, and that he could return to the battlefield in Afghanistan, or join ISIS after leaving the United States.
</blockquote>

Some Senators Are Concerned Over The Early Release Of ‘American Taliban’ Fighter John Walker Lindh

Radical Islamic Terror

Taliban

Terrorism

Surveillance footage at a Missouri prison shows a Missouri police officer allegedly assaulting a prisoner for verbally insulting him. The officer has since been let go from his job as authorities investigate the situation further.
&#8220;Robert Watson, a former corporal with the Pevely Police Department, was charged with fourth-degree assault Monday stemming from the alleged incident April 23,&#8221; reports <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/video-allegedly-shows-officer-assaulting-inmate">Fox News</a>. &#8220;Surveillance footage purportedly shows him lunging at an inmate who was being booked for violating a court order.&#8221;
In the video, an officer presumed to be Watson stands behind the desk at the Pevely Police Department&#8217;s booking area while interacting with the inmate. Later, the officer puts the inmate into a chokehold and throws him to the floor.
&#8220;The footage ends with the cop shoving the prisoner into a jail cell and slamming the door,&#8221; reports Fox News.
Precisely what the inmate said to set Watson off has not been disclosed at this time. The inmate appears in the video to be Caucasian, though it seems that no specification of the subject&#8217;s race or ethnicity has been reported upon.
Jefferson County prosecutor Trisha Stefanski told the <a href="https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/pevely-police-officer-choked-and-shoved-prisoner-prosecutor-says/article_d69a9db5-d897-5007-9648-8fc4b4cf87d4.html">St. Louis Post-Dispatch</a> that the officer let his emotions &#8220;get the best of him&#8221; and that he acted unprofessionally.
&#8220;This is a decision we don&#8217;t take lightly,&#8221; Stefanski added. &#8220;I&#8217;m a huge supporter of law enforcement, but this was unprofessional, and there was a crime committed.&#8221;
The alleged victim did not seek medical attention and did not appear to sustain any injuries. No felony charges have been brought against Watson, as a result. Pevely Police Captain Larry Miller, the department&#8217;s acting chief since March, said he &#8220;took immediate action&#8221; upon learning of the incident.
Officer Wayne Casey, who was seen sitting at a desk in the booking area as the alleged assault unfolded, has also been fired.
The treatment and abuse of prisoners has become a major part of the national conversation in recent years, especially with the Trump administration&#8217;s passage of the &#8220;First Step Act.&#8221; Signed into law last December, the bill effectively loosened some of the criteria for inmates to participate in early release programs. It has been generally backed by libertarians and many others on the broader Right. Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/38663/malkin-first-step-pro-cop-pro-borders-pro-criminal-michelle-malkin">hailed it</a> as an opportunity to give criminals a second chance after doing their time.
&#8220;There&#8217;s nothing radical about giving law-breakers who served their time an opportunity to turn their lives around and avoid ending up back behind bars,&#8221; Malkin said. &#8220;More than 30 red and blue states have enacted measures to reduce incarceration, control costs and improve public safety.&#8221;
Even CNN&#8217;s Van Jones <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44103/cnns-van-jones-conservatives-are-leaders-criminal-paul-bois">hailed conservatives</a> for taking the legislative initiative on prison reform &#8212; an issue he feels that Democrats should be championing better.
&#8220;The conservative movement in this country, unfortunately from my point of view, is now the leader on this issue of reform,&#8221; Jones said. &#8220;You look at Mississippi, a rock-ribbed, total conservative former jailer is now the governor. Governor Bryan cut the prison population and crime at the same time. [Governor Nathan] Deal in Georgia cut the prison population and crime at the same time. &#8230; What you&#8217;re seeing now is Republican governors being tough on the dollars, tough on crime, and shrinking the prison population.&#8221;

Officer Caught On Video Allegedly Assaulting Inmate

Van Jones

On Thursday, attorneys for 27-year-old Deon &#8220;Strawberry&#8221; Hampton announced that their client, a biological male who identifies as a female and is serving a ten-year prison sentence for residential burglary, would be transferred from a men&#8217;s correctional facility to a women&#8217;s correctional facility.
Hampton filed a <a href="https://www.macarthurjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Hampton-v.-IDOC-12.7.pdf">lawsuit</a> against the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) in late-November 2017, demanding to be moved to a women&#8217;s prison following 16 months of hormone therapy.
The lawsuit alleged that Hampton was the target of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of correctional officers at multiple facilities &#8212; first at Pinckneyville Correctional Center, then at Menard Correctional Center. The lawsuit also claimed that when Hampton &#8220;reported this abuse [at Pinckneyville], the officers retaliated&#8221; with beatings and &#8220;false disciplinary charges &#8230; that resulted in segregation time and [the] transfer to Menard.&#8221;
The lawsuit argued that a failure to transfer Hampton to a women&#8217;s facility would amount to a violation of the plaintiff&#8217;s 14th Amendment rights:
<blockquote>
The IDOC houses all non-transgender women in women&#8217;s prisons, but forces the Plaintiff, a transgender woman, to be housed with men, merely because of the sex stereotypes associated with her assigned birth.
</blockquote>
As to the fact that Hampton still possesses male genitalia and might therefore pose a threat to biological female inmates, the lawsuit quoted a psychiatrist who is an alleged &#8220;expert in providing transgender healthcare.&#8221; He claimed that because of the ongoing hormone therapy, Hampton &#8220;is functionally chemically castrated.&#8221;
After further legal <a href="https://www.macarthurjustice.org/case/hampton-v-idoc/">issuances</a> and allegations of abuse, Hampton was transferred twice &#8212; first to Lawrence Correctional Center, then to Dixon Correctional Center, both of which are men&#8217;s facilities.
In late-December, Hampton won the fight against the Illinois Department of Corrections and was transferred to Logan Correctional Center, a women&#8217;s facility.
The MacArthur Justice Center&#8217;s Vanessa del Valle, one of Hampton&#8217;s attorneys, released a statement saying that she is &#8220;thrilled&#8221; by the victory, adding:
<blockquote>
Strawberry has waited a long time for this transfer. She has been battling for a year in court to have (the Illinois Department of Corrections) recognize her as a woman and protect her from the constant abuse and discrimination in men&#8217;s prisons.
</blockquote>
Hampton&#8217;s legal battle appears to have had a ripple effect. The Chicago Tribune <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-transgender-prisoner-transfer-illinois-20181227-story.html">reports</a>: &#8220;A federal judge last month ordered training on transgender issues for all corrections staff statewide in response to Hampton&#8217;s lawsuit. Officials have said plans for training were underway.&#8221;
The Associated Press <a href="https://wgntv.com/2018/12/27/illinois-transgender-inmate-gets-rare-transfer-to-female-prison/">notes</a> that according to recent data, Hampton may be the only biological male housed in a female correctional facility in the state of Illinois.
Hampton was represented by the MacArthur Justice Center and the Uptown People&#8217;s Law Center.

Biologically Male Transgender Inmate Moved To Women’s Facility After Yearlong Legal Battle

One of democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders&#8217; favorite examples of the kind of beneficent high-taxing, welfare-heavy countries the U.S. should aspire to be is letting down leftists again. Not only is it not really the socialist utopia Bernie described, it&#8217;s not treating foreigners in a very &#8220;open borders&#8221; kind of way &#8212; especially not criminal foreigners.
&#8220;The Danish parliament has approved funding for a plan to hold foreign criminals on a tiny island, despite criticism from the UN and local opposition,&#8221; <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/20/denmark-passes-plan-to-send-foreign-criminals-to-tiny-island">The Guardian</a> reports.
The initiative, passed Thursday, will send about 100 foreign migrants who have fulfilled their jail sentences but cannot be deported because of fears of persecution upon returning to their homelands, to the seven-acre island of Lindholm, which is used as &#8220;a laboratory and crematorium by scientists researching swine flu, rabies and other contagious diseases.&#8221; The island&#8217;s experimental uses are so notorious that a ferry to the island is nicknamed &#8220;Virus.&#8221;
&#8220;A centre for people convicted of crimes ranging from murder and rape to less serious offences is to be established in 2021 and will cost 759m krone (£92m),&#8221; The Guardian reports. Funding for the &#8220;laboratory and crematorium&#8221; island relocation plan was included in the federal government&#8217;s 2019 budget approved Thursday.
The plan was passed despite opposition from the U.N. and some local politicians in part because of strong support from residents near the Jutland detention center, who say the presence of foreign criminals makes them feel unsafe. Meanwhile, residents of the area where the ferry to Lindholm departs fear that the new plan will hurt tourism, on which the area&#8217;s economy largely depends.
The plan allows residents of the island to leave during the day, but requires them to report where they are going to officials and return in the evening.
As The Guardian notes, the controversial criminal foreigner solution is part of Denmark&#8217;s &#8220;increasingly tough stance on immigration,&#8221; which follows a pattern seen in increasingly more European countries amid continued waves of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa, most of whom are Muslim.
While Sanders has often cited Denmark and its extensive welfare program as a model for the U.S., as the <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/michel-kellygagnon/denmark-not-socialist_b_9011652.html">Huffington Post</a> explained in 2016 and 2017, the country isn&#8217;t really as socialist or successful as Sanders would have his supporters believe.
&#8220;Denmark still qualifies as a market economy today despite its high taxes and large welfare state for a number of important reasons,&#8221; writes HuffPost&#8217;s Michel Kelly-Gagnon. &#8220;As Brøns-Petersen points out, property rights are well-protected, the currency is sound, international trade is relatively free, and the regulation of business, labour, and credit is light. There are few restrictions on hiring and firing, there&#8217;s no legislated minimum wage, and taxpayers are not called upon to bail out their banks.&#8221;
It&#8217;s no surprise then that Denmark actually scores pretty highly on various economic freedom indexes. Its supposedly robust welfare state, part of the reason so many migrants have flooded in in recent years, is &#8220;more of a rickety derelict than a solid structure,&#8221; Kelly-Gagnon notes. &#8220;Successive governments have had to repeatedly reform the system, scaling back its benefits.&#8221;

Leftist Darling Denmark To Send Foreign Criminals To Little Island Used For Medical Research

Capitalism

Denmark

Socialism

In preseason 2016, Colin Kaepernick, then the back-up quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, sparked the polarizing national anthem protest movement when he told a reporter after being asked about refusing to stand for the anthem, &#8220;I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.&#8221;
While Kaepernick would make clear over the next few months that he held the United States in low regard in general, even going so far as to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/11079/kaepernick-called-out-reporter-shirt-praising-james-barrett">compare</a> the U.S. government unfavorably to Fidel Castro&#8217;s tyrannical communist regime, the central focus of his movement has continued to be criminal justice reform.
On Tuesday, the loudest critic of the anti-anthem protests &#8220;delivered what Kaepernick kneeled for,&#8221; <a href="https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2018/12/19/trump-delivered-what-colin-kaepernick-kneeled-for/">noted</a> talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, when the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed the Jared Kushner-spearheaded criminal justice reform bill in an 87-12 vote.
Limbaugh began the segment by reading from a summary of the bill&#8217;s key provisions: It&#8217;s going to: &#8220;Send up to 4,000 prisoners home by increasing the amount of time inmates can cut off of their sentences due to good behavior. Allow more male and female inmates to serve time in house arrest or halfway homes instead of prison cells, with exceptions for high-risk inmates. Require that prisoners be placed within 500 miles of family. Outlaw shackling during child birth. Mandate the provision of sanitary napkins and tampons to female inmates.&#8221;
After sarcastically expressing dismay that the law apparently doesn&#8217;t allow men who believe they are women to have sanitary napkins and tampons, Rush continued highlighting the bill&#8217;s key points: &#8220;Reduce the mandatory penalty from life to 25 years for a third conviction of certain drug offenses, and from 25 to 15 years for a second conviction. Prohibit the doubling up, or &#8216;stacking,&#8217; of mandatory sentences for certain gun and drug offenses. Give judges more discretion in giving less than the mandatory minimum for certain low-level crimes&#8230;. Make the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act retroactive, which changed sentencing guidelines to treat offenses involving crack and powder cocaine equally.&#8221;
After underscoring that the bill was opposed by what the media is describing as &#8220;hardline conservatives,&#8221; Limbaugh tied the initiative to a man who has made clear that he&#8217;s no fan of Trump, and vice versa.
Prison reform, he said, &#8220;is one of the things that Colin Kaepernick was taking a knee for during the national anthem when he was on the San Francisco 49ers. This is one of the things he was protesting. So now nobody needs to kneel anymore. They don&#8217;t need to be any protests because we&#8217;ve got prison reform. Trump to the rescue. Trump did it! And these people all protesting Trump, they&#8217;re all thinking Trump is the bad guy here, and Trump is the president where this finally happens!&#8221;
Limbaugh noted that previous politicians have talked big about comprehensive prison reform, but all failed to take real action. &#8220;There isn&#8217;t one politician in this country on the federal level who tried to do anything but stroke their chins about this over the years!&#8221; said Rush. &#8220;Even The One, Barack Hussein O. He didn&#8217;t even try to do anything about it seriously. He did not even lift a finger. Hillary Clinton never mentioned it. Yet the Democrats are getting all this credit for having compassion and concern for the nation&#8217;s minorities and the prison community. Yet it&#8217;s the Trump administration where something happens. Evil white people! Donald Trump and Jared and Ivanka.&#8221;
&#8220;The Democrats have done nothing on this but talk about it,&#8221; Limbaugh added later. &#8220;They&#8217;ve done nothing but demand it. Left-wing radical protesters have done nothing but protest over it. Nobody&#8217;s ever done anything about it until Trump came along. I think the Democrats secretly are not all that in favor of this. They can&#8217;t say that out loud, but I think that they worry about anything that helps people be less controlled or dependent on government. Socialism. But they have to support this &#8217;cause this is their voter base, they think. Prison community, the felon vote, this is their constituent. They have to act like they like this, but note they never made it happen.&#8221;
Transcript via <a href="https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2018/12/19/trump-delivered-what-colin-kaepernick-kneeled-for/">RushLimbaugh.com</a>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/39481/pro-kaepernick-player-nfl-just-hit-me-7th-random-james-barrett">Pro-Kaepernick Player: NFL Just Hit Me With 7th &#8216;Random&#8217; Drug Test After Wearing Protest-Themed Cleats</a>

Limbaugh: Trump Just Erased Kaepernick&#8217;s Reason To Kneel

Colin Kaepernick

Rush Limbaugh

Trump Administration

In a rare moment of bipartisan action, the U.S. Senate passed President Trump&#8217;s widely supported First Step Act, a prison reform bill promoted heavily by Trump&#8217;s son-in-law Jared Kushner. After the bill passed with an overwhelming 87-12 vote Tuesday night, Trump took to Twitter to celebrate the &#8220;historic&#8221; bill.
&#8220;America is the greatest Country in the world and my job is to fight for ALL citizens, even those who have made mistakes,&#8221; Trump wrote in a pair of tweets. &#8220;Congratulations to the Senate on the bi-partisan passing of a historic Criminal Justice Reform Bill. This will keep our communities safer, and provide hope and a second chance, to those who earn it. In addition to everything else, billions of dollars will be saved. I look forward to signing this into law!&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
America is the greatest Country in the world and my job is to fight for ALL citizens, even those who have made mistakes. Congratulations to the Senate on the bi-partisan passing of a historic Criminal Justice Reform Bill&#8230;.
&#8212; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1075210867678109697?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 19, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet"></div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
&#8230;.This will keep our communities safer, and provide hope and a second chance, to those who earn it. In addition to everything else, billions of dollars will be saved. I look forward to signing this into law!
&#8212; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1075210869007622144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 19, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
The bill, which had strong backing from groups on both the Right and Left, had stalled in the Senate before pressure from Trump and other Republicans, along with a few adjustments to the bill, convinced Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to put it up for vote. The bill is now expected to sail through the House this week. A version of the bill passed easily in the House in May (<a href="http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll215.xml">360-59</a>).
The First Step Act (S. 3649) &#8220;provide[s] for programs to help reduce the risk that prisoners will recidivate upon release from prison&#8221; and, in so doing, reduce the number of inmates overall. The primary focus of the bill is to promote federal rehabilitation efforts, including providing programs designed to prevent recidivism and easing up on statutory sentencing for some drug offenders. Life sentences for three-time drug offenders will be reduced to 25 years.
The <a href="https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/S.%203649%20First%20Step%20Act%20Summary%20-%20As%20Introduced.pdf">Senate Judiciary Committee</a> provided the following summary of the bill&#8217;s key initiatives:
<ul>
<li>Provides for increased programming designed to reduce recidivism and provides incentives for participation in those programs.</li>
<li>Implements a post-sentencing dynamic risk assessment system to determine an inmate&#8217;s risk of committing more crimes upon release from prison.</li>
<li>Establishes eligibility criteria for and incentivizes participation in evidence-based recidivism reduction programs by allowing prisoners to earn time credits for prerelease custody (defined as residential reentry centers or, for low risk prisoners, home confinement). For example, a prisoner may earn 10 days of time credit for every 30 days of successful participation in a recidivism-reduction program or other eligible activity. However, only prisoners classified as minimum or low risk may redeem these time credits to reduce their sentence.</li>
<li>In addition to the exclusion preventing all but those classified as minimum or low risk from redeeming time credits, the bill makes clear that violent and high-risk criminals convicted of certain serious offenses are ineligible for the pre-release custody program, including those convicted of crimes relating to terrorism, murder, sexual exploitation of children, espionage, violent firearms offenses, or those that are organizers, leaders, managers, supervisors in the fentanyl and heroin drug trade. Prisoners are also ineligible to apply time credits if subject to a final order of removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act.</li>
</ul>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/39318/nfl-offers-full-support-trumps-first-step-james-barrett">NFL Offers &#8216;Full Support&#8217; For Trump&#8217;s &#8216;First Step&#8217; Initiative</a>

Trump Celebrates Big Win: &#8216;First Step&#8217; Passes With Strong Bipartisan Support

Republican Party

U.S. Senate

The National Football League announced in a statement Wednesday that it offers its &#8220;full support&#8221; to a Trump administration initiative, the First Step Act, a prison reform act spearheaded by one of the Left&#8217;s least favorite people, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.
In a statement first reported by <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/nfl-applauds-trumps-prison-reform-bill-we-offer-our-full-support/">Mediaite</a>, NFL Vice President of Communications Jocelyn Moore said Wednesday that the league &#8220;applauds&#8221; the Trump initiative. &#8220;The National Football League applauds the leadership of the President and bipartisan Members of Congress on criminal justice reform,&#8221; Moore said in a statement released Wednesday. &#8220;We offer our full support for the revised First Step Act and urge passage this year.&#8221;
The First Step Act (S. 3649) &#8220;provide[s] for programs to help reduce the risk that prisoners will recidivate upon release from prison&#8221; and, in so doing, reduce the number of inmates overall. Here is a summary of its key initiatives provided by the <a href="https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/S.%203649%20First%20Step%20Act%20Summary%20-%20As%20Introduced.pdf">Senate Judiciary</a>:
<ul>
<li>Provides for increased programming designed to reduce recidivism and provides incentives for participation in those programs. </li>
<li>Implements a post-sentencing dynamic risk assessment system to determine an inmate&#8217;s risk of committing more crimes upon release from prison.</li>
<li>Establishes eligibility criteria for and incentivizes participation in evidence-based recidivism reduction programs by allowing prisoners to earn time credits for prerelease custody (defined as residential reentry centers or, for low risk prisoners, home confinement). For example, a prisoner may earn 10 days of time credit for every 30 days of successful participation in a recidivism-reduction program or other eligible activity. However, only prisoners classified as minimum or low risk may redeem these time credits to reduce their sentence. </li>
<li>In addition to the exclusion preventing all but those classified as minimum or low risk from redeeming time credits, the bill makes clear that violent and high-risk criminals convicted of certain serious offenses are ineligible for the pre-release custody program, including those convicted of crimes relating to terrorism, murder, sexual exploitation of children, espionage, violent firearms offenses, or those that are organizers, leaders, managers, supervisors in the fentanyl and heroin drug trade. Prisoners are also ineligible to apply time credits if subject to a final order of removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act.</li>
</ul>
After passing easily in the House in May (<a href="http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll215.xml">360-59</a>), the bill had stalled in the Senate. But amid pressure from Trump and other Republicans, and after some improvements to the bill, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced this week that the Senate will take up the bill as early as this week.
&#8220;At the request of the president and following improvements to the legislation that have been secured by several members, the Senate will take up the revised criminal justice bill this month,&#8221; McConnell said Tuesday.
Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin offered his version of praise to Trump for the bill. &#8220;When you have a president do something that seems out of political character, it can sometimes make a historic difference,&#8221; he said.
In response to McConnell&#8217;s reversal, Trump said he&#8217;s cautiously optimistic that the bill will &#8220;hopefully&#8221; pass, noting the &#8220;tremendous support&#8221; from both Republicans and Democrats the bill has garnered.
The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/us/politics/criminal-justice-reform-bill.html">New York Times</a> reports that proponents of the bill say they believe it will receive as many as 85 votes in the Senate.

NFL Offers &#8216;Full Support&#8217; For Trump&#8217;s &#8216;First Step&#8217; Initiative

A man who was convicted of murdering two 10-year-old schoolgirls in August of 2002 is reportedly claiming to be transgender in hopes that he&#8217;ll be moved to a female prison for a &#8220;cushier life.&#8221;
Ian Huntley was sentenced to 40 years behind bars for the murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, both of whom attended the school where Huntley worked as caretaker.
Huntley murdered the two girls after luring them into his home in Soham, England. During the trial, Huntley claimed Wells was cleaning up in his bathtub after suffering a nosebleed and drowned; he subsequently killed Chapman as he was trying to muffle her screams. He admitted to dumping their bodies into a ditch, cutting off their clothes, and setting their corpses on fire.
Huntley, now 44 years old, is reportedly seeking a transfer out of HMP Frankland into a female prison, where he&#8217;ll identify as a female named Nicola.
&#8220;Huntley believes that he will have a much cushier life in a women&#8217;s prison. But he is mistaken as he will get a far harder time from female prisoners,&#8221; a source <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2018/12/09/ian-huntley-wants-a-sex-change-so-he-can-be-put-in-a-female-prison-8224874/">told</a> the Daily Star.
&#8220;There are now a growing number of trans-prisoners in Frankland and Huntley is desperate to become a member of a group who will offer him a bit of protection,&#8221; the source continued.
Huntley is apparently asking pen-pals to send him women&#8217;s dresses, a blonde wig, and stockings for Christmas so he can pull-off the transgender look.
The murderer is reportedly trying to convince doctors that he is transgender, though it is unclear if he&#8217;s &#8220;made the official request for a sex-change,&#8221; <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2018/12/09/ian-huntley-wants-a-sex-change-so-he-can-be-put-in-a-female-prison-8224874/">reports</a> Metro. &#8203;
A <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/soham-murders-ian-huntley/">report</a> from The Telegraph in 2017 said Huntley had been attacked multiple times by other inmates and was transferred at least once:
<blockquote>
Huntley has been attacked several times in prison, first at Wakefield Prison and also at Frankland Prison, where he was transferred to in 2008.
In 2005, he was scalded with boiling water by fellow inmate Mark Hobson; in 2010 he had his throat slashed.
Damien Fowkes, a former drug addict who was jailed for life in 2002 for a knifepoint robbery, allegedly attacked Huntley with a razor blade attached to a toothbrush a day before a planned search of their prison for weapons.
Huntley needed emergency hospital treatment after being slashed across the throat.
</blockquote>
The report noted that Huntley attempted suicide several times: &#8220;While he was awaiting trial, he was found suffering a fit on the floor of his cell after saving up 29 anti-depressant pills in a box of teabags. In 2006 he was found unconscious in his cell and is believed to have taken an overdose; however, he survived both attempts.&#8221;
The convicted child killer also <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/teenage-rape-victim-who-gave-12447034">raped</a> Katie Bryan, then 15, and conceived a child, Samantha, from the rape. Samantha asked her biological father via a letter why he killed Chapman and Wells. Huntley apparently replied, &#8220;It was the worst day of MY life.&#8221;
<a href="https://metro.co.uk/2018/12/09/ian-huntley-wants-a-sex-change-so-he-can-be-put-in-a-female-prison-8224874/">According</a> to Metro, Samantha vowed to never contact Huntley again.
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(A young girl lights a candle after attending a special service for the missing ten year old schoolgirls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells at St. Andrew&#8217;s church in Soham.)
(Photo by PA Images via GettyImages)

Child Killer Claiming To Be Transgender So He Can Move To Female Prison, Report Says

Gender

Dr. Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., wrote a letter this week in support of a criminal justice reform bill that has bipartisan support and has been endorsed by President Donald Trump.
In a letter obtained by The Daily Wire from the National Diversity Coalition For Trump, King wrote in a &#8220;plea to Congress&#8221; that the &#8220;First Step Act&#8221; is an opportunity to take a &#8220;monumental&#8221; step &#8220;towards assisting and empowering the least of these in America.&#8221;
&#8220;The bill would reduce mandatory minimum sentences for some crimes and grant judges greater discretion in sentencing nonviolent drug offenders,&#8221; a Bloomberg editorial <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-07/first-step-act-mitch-mcconnell-shouldn-t-block-sentencing-reform">said</a> about the bill. &#8220;It would also fund recidivism-reduction programs for low-risk inmates and allow some 2,600 drug offenders to petition for reduced sentences. Perhaps most important, the bill would require more research on criminal justice &#8212; a predicate to reducing guesswork in setting future policy on sentencing.&#8221;
In endorsing the bill, Trump <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-calls-congress-pass-first-step-act/">said</a> in November that the U.S. &#8220;benefits if former inmates are able to reenter society as productive, law-abiding citizens.&#8221;
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PCUvBoPMki0" width="560"></iframe></div>
&#8220;For too long, disenfranchised populations have suffered in a punitive prison system that offers no viable pathways to reentering society,&#8221; King continued in her letter. &#8220;Today, over two million Americans are incarcerated in a system that does not offer the resources to bring out their intellectual and creative genius.&#8221;
King said that while she does not believe the bill is &#8220;comprehensive enough,&#8221; she thinks that it&#8217;s a good step forward.
Although the bill has increasing bipartisan support, not everyone is sold on it.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/first-step-criminal-justice-reform-bill-whats-in-it/">said</a> in a recent op-ed: &#8220;Let there be no doubt: If the bill is passed, thousands of federal offenders, including violent felons and sex offenders, will be released earlier than they would be under current law. Whatever word games the bill&#8217;s proponents use will make no difference to the future victims of these felons.&#8221;
Full text of Dr. Bernice King&#8217;s letter:
<blockquote>
In 1963, while incarcerated in Birmingham, my father, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., challenged the conscience of America when he penned these words &#8220;Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.&#8221; My father wanted us to understand our interrelatedness in addressing social inequalities that infringe on human being&#8217;s ability to live a life of dignity.
We are closing 2018 with an opportunity to take a monumental &#8220;FIRST STEP&#8221; towards assisting and empowering the least of these in America. In the hands of our chosen servant leaders of Congress is the FIRST STEP for Criminal Justice Reform Act that begins to address some serious flaws in America&#8217;s criminal justice system.
For too long, disenfranchised populations have suffered in a punitive prison system that offers no viable pathways to reentering society. Today, over two million Americans are incarcerated in a system that does not offer the resources to bring out their intellectual and creative genius. Invariably, the world at large is impacted. Families are fractured. Children are missing out on relationships with their parents. Furthermore, the average annual cost to incarcerate prisoners is over $32,000. Prisons are draining financial resources that can be used to invest in improving families and communities. The Congressional Budget Office predicts the FIRST STEP Act would reduce the federal prison population by nearly 20% over the next decade.
The FIRST STEP Act can launch a better way to America&#8217;s criminal justice reform. While many have asserted that this bill is not comprehensive enough, to which I also agree, we must also understand that the road to progress is paved with incremental steps.
Over 60 years ago, America&#8217;s Civil Rights Movement perfectly illustrated how small legislative steps &#8211; when multiplied &#8211; paved the way to the monumental progress we have achieved in equal housing, diversity in education, wages disparities, and more. In 1948, President Truman&#8217;s Executive Order ending segregation in the military paved the way for the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision, effectively ending racial segregation in public schools. In 1957, President Eisenhower&#8217;s Civil Rights Act to protect voter rights gave activists in the 1965 Selma March the legislative support needed to protest voter suppression, and prompted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Each small legislative step inspired America to become a better version of itself. Today&#8217;s FIRST STEP Act is a meaningful start for prison reform. We must not prolong justice in this hour.
The FIRST STEP Act would provide federal judges the discretion to augment sentencing guidelines when the mandatory minimum is too harsh for some criminal offenses. The FIRST STEP Act introduces a mentor program between incarcerated youth and volunteers from faith-based or community organizations. Additionally, The FIRST STEP Act will retroactively reform unfair sentencing disparities that affected 2,600 federal prisoners convicted of crack offenses before 2010.
My mother, Coretta Scott King, said, &#8220;Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.&#8221; My parents understood that justice and equality achieved in one generation can be threatened in the next. Thus, they embraced every small victory. Incremental progress served as a foundation for progress well beyond their lifetime.
We find ourselves in a climate of fear &#8211; where reaching across political party aisles in Congress could cause severe backlash that is akin to political suicide. But there comes a time when the cry for humanity stirs so deeply that even fear must adhere to its cry. When faced with political fears, my father said, &#8220;Cowardice asks the question, &#8216;Is it safe?&#8217; Expediency asks the question, &#8216;Is it politic?&#8217; Vanity asks the question, &#8216;Is it popular?&#8217; But, conscience asks the question, &#8216;Is it right?&#8217; And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one&#8217;s conscience tells one that it is right.&#8221;
Some naysayers proclaim Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will never bring this bill up for a vote, and discount his compassion for Civil Rights causes. However, in my research I learned that Senator McConnell has advocated for Civil Rights. As a law student in the 1960s he was present for the signing of the Voting Rights Bill, and was on the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 during my father&#8217;s &#8220;I Have a Dream&#8221; speech. He was so inspired that he began writing editorials advocating for others to support Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement.
There is more to Senator McConnell than the Kavanaugh hearings&#8230; Growing up his parents were involved in the National Urban League, so I know he understands the importance of liberty and justice for all. In 2015, Senator McConnell broke rank with other Senators and provided a pivotal vote in favor of Loretta Lynch to become the first African American woman as an Attorney General.
Our country has experienced many divisive dark days, but God&#8217;s hand has guided us through it all. The bipartisan efforts behind this bill can begin to restore hope in America for many who lost faith in Congress&#8217; ability to ever work together again.
I implore Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring the FIRST STEP Act to a vote before the close of this session.
I am hopeful for America because in order to form a more perfect union, Politicians from diverse ideologies have come together and put differences aside to craft legislation that puts humanity above all else. This bill gives thousands in American prisons a road to rehabilitation, redemption and reconciliation. This bill shows America has compassion for the disenfranchised and marginalized and it stops the inhumane treatment of shackling women who give birth in prison.
I believe our leaders will answer the call to conscience and do the right thing for humanity and ensure the unalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness for ALL Americans. American politics has been weighed down by a &#8220;win at all costs&#8221; mentality. We must come together for this &#8211; WIN &#8211; at all costs. The FIRST STEP Act is critical for America&#8217;s progress.
If you believe in prayer &#8211; PRAY. If you believe in America&#8217;s declaration of liberty and justice for ALL &#8211; Support this bill. America has been at its best when we have come together, and voted together for the good of humanity! In the words of my father, &#8220;We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.&#8221; Join me and encourage Congress to not let political division distract, deter or destroy this opportunity to serve humanity. This bill represents Hope &#8211; Unity &#8211; Redemption.
This year the King Center commemorated 50 years since my father&#8217;s assassination with a theme &#8220;Together We Win with Love for Humanity.&#8221; What better way to close this year and honor Martin Luther King Jr.&#8217;s legacy than to see political lines vanish in support of the compassion and humanity within the FIRST STEP Act.
Let&#8217;s move America forward! I ask members of Congress to Honor My Father&#8217;s Legacy by showing the world we can come together&#8230;because Together We Win&#8230; With Love for Humanity!

Dr. Bernice A. King
CEO, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change
</blockquote>

Martin Luther King Jr.&#8217;s Daughter Writes Letter Supporting Trump-Endorsed Bill

Martin Luther King Jr.

In 2013, a grandma was arrested on a drug charge, misclassified as transgender, and sent to an all-male prison where she was harassed. Now a federal appeals court has reinstated her lawsuit against the doctor and nurse who misgendered her despite a strip-search.
Fior Pichardo de Veloz, who is now an attorney and an elected local official in the Dominican Republic, was visiting Miami to be present at her grandchild&#8217;s birth when she was arrested for a decades-old federal drug warrant she was unaware of, <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article222363520.html">according to the Miami Herald.</a>
<a href="http://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/unpub/files/201713059.pdf">According to the court&#8217;s factual background of the case</a>: 
When originally arrested, Pichardo&#8217;s gender was listed as female. When she was processed at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, she was processed as a female. After being strip-searched by a female officer who said she &#8220;did not notice anything abnormal,&#8221; Pichardo was given a female jumpsuit.
But after Pichardo was sent to the medical unit for a routine checkup due to her high blood pressure history, a nurse asked a corrections officer if Pichardo was actually a woman because she was taking hormone pills to help with symptoms of menopause. 
&#8220;Male inmates take hormone pills to enhance their breasts,&#8221; the nurse, Fatu Kamara Harris, said to the corrections officer. Harris then asked Pichardo what her gender was; she responded she was a woman.
Pichardo was then led to an exam room where Dr. Fredesvindo Rodriguez-Garcia asked her a series of questions about her medical history but did not perform a physical examination, ask her about her gender, or question why she was on hormone pills.
Rodriguez-Garcia later reclassified Pichardo as a man.
Harris, who was not present in the exam room when Rodriguez-Garcia met with Pichardo, later told a jail officer that &#8220;everything fell out&#8221; in the exam, referring to Pichardo&#8217;s nonexistent male genitals. 
The officer protested and called her supervisor, but was unable to go against the doctor&#8217;s orders.
&#8220;Transgender, male parts, female tendencies,&#8221; Harris added to Pichardo&#8217;s file.
Another officer, Kimberly Jones, questioned Harris about the physical examination but the court documents claim Harris replied, &#8220;She&#8217;s a man,&#8221; and walked away.
Pichardo was then transported to the all-male Metro West Detention center where she again tried to affirm her true gender to an officer. &#8220;You are a woman. Good luck if you&#8217;re alive tomorrow,&#8221; the officer reportedly replied.
Pichardo was then placed in a cell with about 40 men where she said she feared for her life, according to the opinion. Pichardo said male inmates called out to her, yelling &#8220;Mami! Mami!&#8221; She told an investigator that she felt &#8220;psychologically assaulted&#8221; because &#8220;everyone looked at her as if she was a piñata.&#8221; Pichardo also said she urinated on herself because she was too afraid to use the toilet.
The court documents also state:
Pichardo was put at the front of the room where the officers &#8220;always&#8221; put &#8220;someone that looks female&#8221; so officers can watch them for protection. One elderly inmate attempted to stand up for Pichardo and tell officers Pichardo was female, but officers did not do anything.
The jail only realized the mistake when Pichardo&#8217;s family members demanded answers. 
Another strip-search was performed where Pichardo says male officers laughed at her and one person even took a photo of her when she was undressed. 
The nurse who strip-searched her confirmed her true gender and Pichardo was transferred back to the correctional center where she was originally processed and misgendered.
Pichardo sued on the grounds that the jail staff violated the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution &#8220;cruel and unusual punishment&#8221; clause. 
Despite a federal judge throwing out the case earlier claiming the staffers from the jail were protected from a trail for negligence, a federal appeals court reinstated the lawsuit against the nurse and doctor who originally misgendered her.
The court added that there was strong evidence that the conduct of the doctor and nurse amounts to &#8220;deliberate indifference.&#8221;
&#8220;Moreover, like Nurse Harris, Dr. Rodriguez, knew that sending a woman to an all-male prison would pose a risk of serious harm to her safety,&#8221; Judge Frank Hull wrote in the unanimous opinion.
&#8220;Every reasonable prison officer and medical personnel would have known that wrongfully misclassifying a biological female as a male inmate and placing that female in the male population of a detention facility was unlawful,&#8221; Hull added.
&#8220;The opinion correctly held, as we believed, that the defendants could not be so struthious as to ignore the overwhelming evidence in front of them that Mrs. Pichardo was in fact female,&#8221; said Pichardo&#8217;s lawyer, Ryan Marks.

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