Philly DA’s 2-tier justice system demands federal scrutiny



Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner calls himself a progressive reformer, but his policies — especially those that give illegal aliens special treatment in criminal cases — endanger public safety and weaken the rule of law.

Because of that threat, the Immigration Reform Law Institute has asked Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Justice Department to investigate Krasner and these reckless practices. By pushing for “immigration-neutral” outcomes instead of equal justice, Krasner not only corrupts the legal process but also puts Philadelphia residents in harm’s way.

By shielding illegal aliens from the legal consequences of serious offenses, Krasner’s policies risk making an already dangerous situation even worse.

Krasner’s policies reflect a larger movement bankrolled by billionaire George Soros, who has poured millions into electing progressive prosecutors across the country. In 2017, Soros funneled nearly $1.7 million through the Philadelphia Justice and Public Safety PAC to help Krasner win the Democratic primary.

This effort fits into Soros’ broader goal of installing district attorneys who push ideological agendas at the expense of public safety. Cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco followed the same pattern, where Soros-backed prosecutors — such as the now-departed George Gascón, Kimberly Foxx, and Chesa Boudin — adopted similar lenient policies toward illegal aliens.

These prosecutors frequently reduce charges or seek lighter sentences to shield noncitizen defendants from deportation, creating a two-tiered justice system that favors illegal immigrants over American citizens.

Krasner’s strategy hinges on the Office of Immigration Counsel, created in 2018 and staffed at taxpayer expense by Stephanie Costa. Her job: help prosecutors reduce “immigration consequences” for noncitizen defendants, even in serious criminal cases.

Records obtained by IRLI show that in 2023, former immigration counsel Caleb Arnold advised on cases involving migrants charged with rape, robbery, strangulation, aggravated assault, and vehicular homicide.

Krasner claimed in 2018 that the office would assist only with “low-level offenders who pose no threat to public safety.” The facts tell a different story. Arnold frequently helped broker plea deals or reduce charges — deliberately avoiding convictions that trigger mandatory deportation. These interventions bypass federal immigration law and keep dangerous individuals in the community, raising the risk of repeat offenses.

RELATED: California prioritizing illegal immigrants over DUI victims — where was their ‘due process’?

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Krasner’s leniency carries obvious risks. When prosecutors reduce charges for illegal aliens to help them avoid deportation, the justice system fails to hold offenders fully accountable — potentially encouraging more crime. A noncitizen charged with rape, for example, might receive a downgraded charge, dodge immigration enforcement, and remain in Philadelphia with the opportunity to reoffend.

This policy puts criminal defendants’ interests above public safety, especially in a city already struggling with violent crime. From 2019 to 2021, robberies and aggravated assaults on Philadelphia’s SEPTA transit system surged by more than 80%. Critics point to Krasner’s soft-on-crime agenda as a driving force behind that surge.

By shielding illegal aliens from the legal consequences of serious offenses, Krasner’s policies risk making an already dangerous situation even worse.

Krasner’s use of immigration status in sentencing decisions also raises questions about fairness and discrimination. The Justice Department recently launched an investigation into Hennepin County, Minnesota, for factoring race into prosecution decisions — signaling a broader crackdown on unequal enforcement. Krasner deserves the same level of scrutiny.

By giving noncitizens special treatment, Krasner discriminates against U.S. citizens. His approach turns justice into a two-tiered system, where punishment hinges not on the crime but on the defendant’s nationality. That violates the foundational principle that justice should be blind.

Krasner’s defenders may claim his policies protect vulnerable communities, but shielding violent offenders from deportation doesn’t protect anyone. It weakens trust in the justice system, demoralizes law enforcement, and endangers the very communities Krasner claims to serve. Victims — regardless of immigration status — deserve a system that values accountability over ideology.

Backed by Soros money and executed through a taxpayer-funded immigration counsel’s office, Krasner’s policies represent a dangerous departure from the prosecutor’s core mission: enforce the law and protect the public. Federal authorities must step in to restore equal justice and uphold the principle that no one — citizen or not — stands above the law.

How California’s crisis could lead to a big political shift



California’s wide range of problems — including declining schools, widening inequality, rising housing prices, and a weak job market — shows the urgent need for reform. The larger question is whether there exists a will to change.

Although the state’s remarkable entrepreneurial economy has kept it afloat, a growing number of residents are concluding that the progressive agenda, pushed by public unions and their well-heeled allies, is failing. Most Californians have an exceptional lack of faith in the state’s direction. Only 40% of California voters approve of the legislature, and almost two-thirds have told pollsters the state is heading in the wrong direction. That helps explain why California residents — including about 1.1 million since 2021 — have been fleeing to other states.

California needs a movement that can stitch together a coalition of conservatives, independents, and, most critically, moderate Democrats.

Unhappiness with the one-party state is particularly intense in the inland areas, which are the only locales now growing and may prove critical to any resurgence. More troubling still, over 70% of California parents feel their children will do less well than they did. Four in 10 are considering an exit. By contrast, seniors, thought to be leaving en masse, are the least likely to express a desire to leave.

In some ways, discontent actually erodes potential support for reform. Conservative voters, notes a recent study, are far more likely to express a desire to move out of the state; the most liberal are the least likely. “Texas is taking away my voters,” laments Shawn Steel, California’s Republican National Committee member.

New awakenings

Given the demographic realities, a successful drive for reform cannot be driven by a marginalized GOP. Instead, what’s needed is a movement that can stitch together a coalition of conservatives, independents (now the state’s second-largest political grouping), and, most critically, moderate Democrats.

Remarkably, this shift has already begun in an unlikely place: the ultra-liberal, overwhelmingly Democratic Bay Area. For years, its most influential residents — billionaires, venture capitalists, and well-paid tech workers — have abetted or tolerated an increasingly ineffective and corrupt regime. Not only was the area poorly governed, but the streets of San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and other cities have become scenes of almost Dickensian squalor.

Over the past two years, tech entrepreneurs and professionals concerned about homelessness and crime worked to get rid of progressive prosecutor Chesa Boudin. Last year, they helped elect Dan Lurie, scion of the Levi Strauss fortune, as mayor, as well as some more moderate members to the board of supervisors. Lurie, of course, faces a major challenge to restore San Francisco’s luster against entrenched progressives and their allies in the media, academia, and the state’s bureaucracy.

Similar pushbacks are evident elsewhere. Californians, by large majorities, recently passed bills to strengthen law enforcement, ditching liberalized sentencing laws passed by Democratic lawmakers and defended by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). Progressive Democrats have been recalled not only in San Francisco but also in Oakland (Alameda County) and Los Angeles, with voters blaming ideology-driven law enforcement for increasing rates of crime and disorder.

Critically, the liberal elites are not the only ones breaking ranks. Pressure for change is also coming from increasingly conservative Asian voters and Jews — who number more than 1 million in the state and largely are revolted by the anti-Semitism rife among some on the progressive left. Protecting property and economic growth is particularly critical to Latino and Asian immigrants — California is home to five of the 10 American counties with the most immigrants — who are more likely to start businesses than native-born Americans.

These minority entrepreneurs and those working for them are unlikely to share the view of progressive intellectuals, who see crime as an expression of injustice and who often excused or even celebrated looting during the summer of 2020. After all, it was largely people from “communities of color” who have borne the brunt of violent crime in cities such as Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Francisco. Minorities also face special challenges doing business here due to regulations that are especially burdensome on smaller, less capitalized businesses. According to the Small Business Regulation Index, California has the worst business climate for small firms in the nation.

The shift among minority voters could prove a critical game-changer, both within the Democratic Party and the still-weak GOP. In Oakland, for example, many minorities backed the removal of Mayor Sheng Thao (D), a progressive committed to lenient policing in what is now California’s most troubled, if not failed, major city.

Latinos, already the state’s largest ethnic group, constituting about 37.7% of the workforce, with expectations of further growth by 2030, seem to be heading toward the right. In the last presidential election, Trump did well in the heavily Latino inland counties and won the “Inland Empire” — the metropolitan area bordering Los Angeles and Orange Counties – the first time a GOP presidential candidate has achieved this in two decades.

Back to basics

After a generation of relentless virtue-signaling, California’s government needs to focus on the basic needs of its citizens: education, energy, housing, water supply, and public safety. As a widely distributed editorial by a small business owner noted, Californians, especially after highly publicized fire response failures in Los Angeles earlier this year, are increasingly willing to demand competent “basic governance” backed by a “ruthless examination of results” to ensure that their government supports “modest aspirations” for a better life.

California once excelled in basic governance, especially in the 1950s and '60s under Democratic Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown. The state managed to cultivate growth while meeting key environmental challenges, starting in the late 1960s, most notably chronic air pollution. In what is justifiably hailed as a “major success,” California helped pioneer clean air regulatory approaches that have vastly reduced most automotive tailpipe emissions as well as eliminated lead and dramatically cut sulfur levels.

All of this starkly contrasts with the poor planning, execution, and catastrophist science evoked to justify the state’s climate agenda. Even Pat Brown’s son, former Gov. Jerry Brown (D), recognized that California has little effect on climate. Given the global nature of the challenge, reducing one state’s emissions by cutting back on industrial activities accomplishes little if those activities move elsewhere, often to locations with fewer restrictions such as China and India.

Rather than focusing on “climate leadership,” Sacramento needs to tackle the immediate causes of record out-migration, including sluggish economic growth and the nation’s highest levels of poverty and homelessness. The great challenges are not combatting global temperature rises but the housing crisis and the need to diversify the economy and improve the failing education system. As these problems have often been worsened by climate policies, there seems little reason for other states and countries to adopt California’s approach as a model.

halbergman via iStock/Getty Images

Fixing housing

California now has the nation’s second-lowest home ownership rate at 55.9%, slightly above New York (55.4%). High interest rates that have helped push home sales to the lowest level in three decades across the country are particularly burdensome in coastal California metros, where prices have risen to nearly 400% above the national average. The government almost owned up to its role in creating the state’s housing crisis — especially through excessive housing regulations and lawfare on developers — earlier this year when Newsom moved to cut red tape so homes could be rebuilt after the Los Angeles fires.

Current state policy — embraced by Yes in My Backyard activists, the greens, and unions — focuses on dense urban development. Projects are held up, for example, for creating too many vehicle miles traveled, even though barely 3.1% of Californians in 2023 took public transit to work, according to the American Community Survey. As a result, much “affordable” development is being steered to densely built areas that have the highest land prices. This is made worse with mandates associated with new projects, such as green building codes and union labor, that raise the price per unit to $1 million or more.

A far more enlightened approach would allow new growth to take place primarily outside city centers in interior areas where land costs are lower and where lower-cost, moderate-density new developments could flourish. These include areas like Riverside/San Bernardino, Yolo County (adjacent to Sacramento), and Solano County, east of San Francisco Bay. This approach would align with the behavior of residents who are already flocking to these areas because they provide lower-income households, often younger black and Latino, with the most favorable home ownership opportunities in the state.Over 71% of all housing units in the Inland Empire are single-family homes, and the aggregate ownership rate is over 63%, far above the state’s dismal 45.8% level.

Without change, the state is socially, fiscally, and economically unsustainable. California needs to return to attracting the young, talented, and ambitious, not just be a magnet for the wealthy or super-educated few.

More than anything, California needs a housing policy that syncs with the needs and preferences of its people, particularly young families. Rather than being consigned to apartments, 70% of Californians prefer single-family residences. The vast majority oppose legislation written by Yes in My Backyard hero Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener banning single-family zoning in much of the state.

Investment in the interior is critical for recreating the old California dream for millions of aspiring households, particularly among minorities who are being driven out of the home ownership market in the coastal metropolitan areas. The only California metropolitan area ranked by the National Association of Realtors as a top 10 pick for Millennials was not hip San Francisco or glamorous Los Angeles, but the more affordable historically “redneck” valley community of Bakersfield.

The numerous housing bills passed by Sacramento have not improved the situation. From 2010 to 2023, permits for single-family homes in California fell to a monthly average of 3,957 units from 8,529 during 1993-2006. California’s housing stock rose by just 7.9% between 2010 and 2023, lower than the national increase (10.3%) and well below housing growth in Arizona (13.8%), Nevada (14.7%), Texas (24%), and Florida (16.2%).

A more successful model can be seen in Texas, which generally advances market-oriented policies that have generated prodigious growth in both single-family and multi-family housing. This has helped the Lone Star State meet the housing needs of its far faster-growing population. A building boom has slowed, and there’s been some healthy decrease in prices in hot markets like Austin. Opening up leased grazing land in state and federal parks — roughly half the state land is owned by governments — could also relieve pressure on land prices. Until California allows for housing that people prefer, high prices and out-migration will continue into the foreseeable future.

Ultimately, California has room to grow, despite the suggestions by some academics that the state is largely “built out.”In reality, California is not “land short,” either in its cities or across its vast interior. Urbanization covers only 5.3% of the state, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, while parks, agricultural land, deserts, and forests make up the bulk of the area.

Diversifying the economy

Even Jerry Brown has remarked that the “Johnny one note” tech economy the state’s tax base depends on could stumble. This would reduce the huge returns on capital gains from the top 1% of filers, who now account for roughly half of all state income tax revenues. This overreliance may be particularly troublesome in the era of artificial intelligence, where tech companies may continue to expand but have less need for people. Indeed, San Francisco County, which boasts many tech jobs, experienced the nation’s largest drop in average weekly wages, 22.6%, between 2021 and 2022.

To expand opportunity and, hence, its tax base, California has to make more of the state attractive to employers. The best prospects, again, will be in inland areas.Today, when firms want to build spaceships, a clear growth industry where California retains significant leadership, as well as battery plants and high-tech and food processing facilities, they often opt to go to Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee, and Texas. Given lower land and housing costs, San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, as well as spots on the Central Coast, should be ideally situated to compete for those jobs.

The current economic pattern creates a situation where AI developers, elite engineers, and venture capitalists may enjoy unprecedented profits, but relatively little trickles down to the mass of Californians. Not all Californians have wealthy parents to subsidize their lifestyle, and few are likely to thrive as AI engineers. To address the dilemmas facing the next generation of Californians, the state needs to focus not just on ephemera, software, and entertainment but on bringing back some of the basic industries that once forged the California dream. In this way, President Trump’s policies could actually help the state, particularly in fields like high-tech defense and space.

In the 1940s, California played a key role in the American “arsenal of democracy.” Today, it could do the same, not so much by producing planes and Liberty ships, but drones, rockets, and space-based defense systems. Indeed, there are now discussions of reviving the state’s once-vaunted shipbuilding industry that buoyed the economy of Solano County — something sure to inspire the ire of the Bay Area’s rich and powerful environmental lobby.

Photo by Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Improving education

Climate and environmentalism are not the only barriers to California’s revival. No problem is more pressing and consequential than the state’s failure to educate California’s 5.9 million public school children. In fiscal year 2023-2024, California will spend about $128 billion on K-12 public education — an amount exceeding the entire budget of every other state except New York. Despite this level of spending, about 75% of California students lack proficiency in core subject areas based on federal education standards.

Two out of three California students do not meet math standards, and more than half do not meet English standards on state assessments. Overall, less than half of California public school students performed at or above grade level for English language arts (reading, writing, etc.), while only 34.62% met or exceeded the math standard on the Smarter Balanced 2023 tests. The failures are particularly clear among minority students. According to the latest California testing results, only 36.08% of Latino students met or exceeded proficiency standards for English language arts. Only 22.69% met or exceeded proficiency standards in math. Latino students, for example, in Florida and Texas do somewhat better in both math and English, even though both states spend less per capita on education than California.

Not surprisingly, many parents object to a system where half of the state’s high school students barely read at grade level. One illustration of discontent has been the growth of the charter school movement. Today, one in nine California schoolchildren attend charter schools (including my younger daughter). The state’s largest school district, the heavily union-dominated Los Angeles Unified School District, has lost roughly 40% of its enrollment over two decades, while the number of students in charters grew from 140,000 in 2010 to 207,000 in 2022.

In addition to removing obstacles to charters, homeschoolers are part of the solution. California homeschool enrollment jumped by 78% in the five-year period before the pandemic and in the Los Angeles Unified School District by 89%. Equally important, some public districts and associated community colleges, as in Long Beach, have already shifted toward a more skills-based approach. Public officials understand that to keep a competitive edge, they need to supply industrial employers with skilled workers. This is all the more crucial as the aerospace workforce is aging — as much as 50% of Boeing’s workforce will be eligible for retirement in five years. In its quest for relevance, Long Beach’s educational partnership addresses the needs of the city’s industrial and trade sectors.

This approach contrasts with the state’s big push to make students take an ethnic studies course designed to promote a progressive and somewhat anti-capitalist, multicultural agenda. They will also be required to embrace the ideology of man-made climate change even if their grasp of basic science is minimal. A “woke” consciousness or deeper ethnic affiliations will not lead to student success later in life. What will count for the students and for California’s economy is gaining the skills that are in demand. You cannot run a high-tech lathe, manage logistics, or design programs for space vehicles with ideology.

More to come

Conventional wisdom on the right considers California to be on the road to inexorable decline. Progressives, not surprisingly, embrace the Golden State as a model while ignoring the regressive, ineffective policies that have driven the state toward a feudal future.

Yet both sides are wrong. California’s current progressive policies have failed, but if the state were governed correctly, it could resurge in ways that would astound the rest of the country and the world. Change is not impossible. As recent elections showed, Californians do not reflexively vote for progressives if they feel their safety or economic interests are on the line.

If change is to come in California, it may not be primarily driven by libertarian or conservative ideologies but by stark realities. Over two-thirds of California cities do not have any funds set aside for retiree health care and other expenses. Twelve of the state’s 15 large cities are in the red, and for many, it is only getting worse. The state overall suffers $1 trillion in pension debt, notes former Democratic state Rep. Joe Nation. U.S. News and World Report places California, despite the tech boom, 42nd in fiscal health among the states. This pension shortfall makes paying for infrastructure, or even teacher salaries, extraordinarily difficult at the state and local levels.

Without change, the state is socially, fiscally, and economically unsustainable, even if a handful of people get very rich and the older homeowners, public employees, and high-end professionals thrive. California needs to return to attracting the young, talented, and ambitious, not just be a magnet for the wealthy or super-educated few.

This can only happen if the state unleashes the animal spirits that long drove its ascendancy. The other alternative may be a more racial, class-based radicalism promoted by the Democratic Socialists of America and their allies. They have their own “cure” for California’s ills. We see this in debates over rebuilding Los Angeles, with progressives pushing for heavily subsidized housing, as with the case of the redevelopment of the Jordan Downs public housing complex, while seeking to densify and expand subsidized housing to once solidly affluent areas like the Palisades.

California has survived past crises — earthquakes and the defense and dot-com busts — and always has managed to reinvent itself. The key elements for success — its astounding physical environment, mild climate, and a tradition for relentless innovation — remain in place, ready to be released once the political constraints are loosened.

Fifty years ago, in her song “California,” Canada-reared Joni Mitchell captured the universal appeal of our remarkable state, not just its sunshine, mountains, and beaches, but also how it gave its residents an unprecedented chance to meet their fondest aspirations. Contrasting her adopted home with the sheer grayness of life elsewhere, she wrote, “My heart cried out for you, California / Oh California, I’m coming home.”

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

One standard for them, another for us — this is ‘forgiveness asymmetry’



Left-wing terrorism is back. Tesla dealerships and charging stations are the targets of a firebombing campaign, quietly supported by opponents of the current administration and their inability to accept political defeat.

While the White House has declared these arsons to be domestic terrorism, the opposition is in no rush to condemn the attacks. Indeed, U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) even framed them as legitimate protest, with zero pushback from his CNN interviewer.

The old ruling class and its left-wing allies will forgive, rehabilitate, and even idolize perpetrators of the worst kinds of political violence.

We shouldn’t be surprised. This sort of thing has happened many times before.

Luigi Mangione, facing life behind bars for the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, is considered a folk hero by many on the left. Legacy media, Democrats, and even some Republicans declared their sympathy for the motivations of staggeringly violent Black Lives Matter riots in 2020.

A few months after the “Summer of Love,” those same people framed the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as an unforgivable “insurrection” against democracy.

It’s all a symptom of what I call “forgiveness asymmetry.”

On the right, many conservatives will enthusiastically purge people who are nominally on their own side, often over mere words — offensive jokes, remarks, and fringe viewpoints.

Meanwhile, the old ruling class and its left-wing allies will forgive, rehabilitate, and even idolize perpetrators of the worst kinds of political violence.

Consider the wave of left-wing terrorism that swept across America in the 1970s and 1980s. In those years, a variety of far-left organizations carried out thousands of bombings, armed robberies, prison breaks, and shoot-outs across the country. These included the killing of police officers, plane hijackings, and the bombing of government buildings.

Despite the widespread death and destruction, many Americans are completely unaware that it happened. Given the partisan slant of the education system, it’s unlikely that you heard about it in a high school history class. You’re also unlikely to have heard about it in college, especially if you attended a campus where the former terrorists were awarded professorships.

Professorships. But first, the history.

Aftermath of a bomb explosion in the U.S. Capitol building on Nov. 8, 1983.Photo by Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

When terror was commonplace

As Vanity Fair correspondent Bryan Burrough recounts in his 2015 book, “Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence,” left-wing political violence was routine 50 years ago:

"People have completely forgotten that in 1972 we had over nineteen hundred domestic bombings in the United States," notes a retired FBI agent, Max Noel. "People don't want to listen to that. They can't believe it. One bombing now and everyone gets excited. In 1972? It was every day. Buildings getting bombed, policemen getting killed. It was commonplace.”

The violence emerged from the political froth of the 1960s student movement, when a radical faction of the far-left protesters decided that sit-ins and placards were not enough to achieve revolutionary change. New methods — violent methods — would be necessary.

The most famous terrorist faction was the Weather Underground, which carried out a string of bombings in the 1970s. Its targets included the Pentagon, the State Department, and a Chicago memorial for fallen police officers. The Weathermen praised the Manson family murders and debated the ethics of killing white babies to avoid bringing more “oppressors” into the world.

The Weather Underground last rose to public attention in 2008 due to then-candidate Barack Obama’s palling around with its co-founders, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. It’s the only time I can remember leftist terrorism breaking into the national news cycle, and it only happened because Republicans forced the issue. It’s not as if legacy media wanted to talk about it.

There were many other groups that are now largely forgotten. There was the May 19th Communist Organization, which bombed government buildings and conducted bank robberies in the 1980s. There was also the Black Liberation Army, which murdered numerous police officers and even hijacked a passenger aircraft in the 1970s. And there was the United Freedom Front, which bombed at least 20 corporate and government buildings in the same decade.

These disparate groups shared a common ideology, born from the radical left-wing politics of the 1960s. It was a potent cocktail of communism, “anti-imperialism” (though not necessarily anti-Soviet imperialism), black liberation, and women’s liberation — the forerunners of what we now call wokeness.

Isn’t it funny that the same people who brushed this decade-long insurgency under the historical rug want us to be mad about one day of trespassing on Jan. 6, 2021?

M19CO, for example, was so named because May 19 was the birthday of both Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X. In its public statements, the Weather Underground promised to “lead white kids into armed revolution” on behalf of black people, against “capitalists” and “imperialism.” The UFF said its bombings were motivated by “racist imperialism in South Africa.”

When we think of wokeness today, we think of black Vikings on TV and transgender activists in Bud Light ads. In the 1970s, it would have conjured images of pipe bombs and police shoot-outs.

The terrorist wave set a trend of targeting high-profile targets. Leftist terrorists bombed the U.S. Capitol building — twice. They bombed the State Department. They bombed police stations, prisons, and banks. The target was always the U.S. government and Western corporations. Corporations, cops, and America itself were the enemy. As stated in a variety of public declarations, their goal was the violent destruction of the racist, capitalist, imperialist United States.

Isn’t it funny that the same people who brushed this decade-long insurgency under the historical rug want us to be mad about one day of trespassing on Jan. 6, 2021?

From terrorists to professors

What’s remarkable about the 1970s terrorism is how quickly its perpetrators were forgiven. Ayers and Dohrn, the pair who started it all, barely suffered any consequences. The FBI investigation of Ayers coincided with public revelations about the bureau's use of illegal wiretaps and warrantless property searches. When it emerged that these tactics were used against the Weather Underground, charges against Ayers were dropped. He never spent a day in jail.

Over the following decades, Columbia University accepted Ayers into its grad school, the University of Illinois awarded him a professorship, and the American Educational Research Association appointed him its vice president for curriculum studies.

School curricula. For your kids.

Dohrn received little more than a slap on the wrist. When she turned herself in to the authorities in 1980, she received a $1,500 fine and three years’ probation. Had she not refused to testify against fellow terrorist Susan Rosenberg, she would have served no time in jail. In the end, she was behind bars for a mere seven months.

A few years later, Dohrn was hired by the prestigious multinational law firm Sidley Austin, even though she had never practiced law before. Asked about this hiring decision, the head of the firm (a pal of her father-in-law) casually remarked, “We often hire friends.” Despite failing to obtain a law license — over lack of contrition for her past actions — she remined at the company for years. The alumni of the FBI’s Most Wanted List, who never showed much contrition in later years, also ended up teaching America’s youth as a law professor at Northwestern University.

And then there’s Susan Rosenberg. A member of M19CO, Rosenberg was an accomplice in one of the most notorious acts of that era’s terrorist wave: the 1981 Brink’s robbery, in which members of M19CO and the Black Liberation Army stole $1.6 million in cash from an armored truck, killing one of its guards and wounding another. Tracked down by police, the robbers killed two officers and wounded another.

Rosenberg did suffer consequences for the Brink’s murders, as well as her role in the 1981 U.S. Senate bombing. Arrested in 1984, she was sentenced to 58 years in prison but only served 16 of them behind bars. Bill Clinton pardoned her on his final day in office in 2001. Kathy Boudin, another participant in the robbery, was paroled soon after.

Yes, the left shamelessly rehabilitated its terrorists and cop-killers. But what can we learn from it?

What did they do later, you ask? Rosenberg, whose M19CO organization also broke serial cop-killer Assata Shakur out of prison in 1979, joined the board of directors of the Thousand Currents Foundation. The foundation played a leading role in getting Black Lives Matter off the ground. The same Black Lives Matter that sparked a season of rioting and violence in the summer of 2020. Those riots left 25 people dead and caused roughly $2 billion in property damage, proving that 1970s ideology is still more than capable of causing death and destruction.

As for Kathy Boudin, Columbia University granted her an adjunct professorship, because who's gonna stop them? Former left-wing terrorists get to be university professors and teach America’s kids. Those are the rules.

Speaking of Kathy Boudin, have you heard of her son, Chesa? He is the now-former district attorney of San Francisco, recalled from office in 2022 because his policy of letting repeat criminals out of jail was too much even for that notoriously progressive city. The scion of terrorists and bank robbers was, for a harrowing moment, in charge of the law.

Both of Chesa’s parents were incarcerated for their role in the deadly 1981 Brink’s robbery, but that didn’t spare him the fate of being raised by militants. The pair who stepped up to be his guardians were none other than Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

The radical upbringing went as expected. Chesa may not share the tactics of his parents and guardians, but boy does he share their radicalism. Before he set his sights on freeing every felon in the Bay Area, Boudin worked for the socialist government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, translating the regime’s propaganda into English.

Should we even be talking about Chesa? It’s wrong to tie children to the crimes of their parents, isn’t it? Of course it is — unless their parents are right-wing critics of Islam. Then, even if they’re completely apolitical themselves, they get doxxed by Taylor Lorenz and run out of their jobs.

Ah yes, the asymmetry of it all.

Supporters of Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, gather outside Manhattan Criminal Court.Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Forgiveness asymmetry laid bare

This brings us to the final, most essential point. It’s all very well to point and sputter. Yes, the left shamelessly rehabilitated its terrorists and cop-killers. But what can we learn from it?

The first is a warning from history. The radical left has no problem with violence. Leftists celebrated the murder of United Healthcare’s CEO. They celebrated the riots of 2020, even though dozens were killed. They celebrated the terrorism of the 1970s and ’80s and worked tirelessly to rehabilitate its perpetrators.

As a recent Pirate Wires story demonstrated, many on the left have no problem with terrorism if it’s used for a “good” cause. There are no principled restrictions on tactics, only targets.

But don’t take my word for it. Read Bill Ayers:

I’m no tactician, but I know that tactics are neutral in themselves — Nazi soldiers blowing up a bridge in occupied France to stop an Allied advance is despicable; partisans blowing up the bridge to prevent the Nazis from overwhelming a village and slaughtering its inhabitants is both defensible and righteous. So it is with insurrections: the goals and purposes matter. January 6, 2021 was a white supremacist insurrection against state power — part of a long American tradition that includes the secessionist insurrection of 1861, the uprising by the White League seeking to overthrow the biracial Reconstruction government of Louisiana in 1894, the violent toppling of the government in Wilmington North Carolina in 1898, and more. Each of these insurrections was in naked defense of white power. By contrast, the Haitian and Cuban revolutions, for example, were emancipatory insurrections designed to move human society forward.

The second thing to consider is how do we respond to these attitudes, which are apparently widespread in politics, the legacy media, and elite academic institutions?

As a bare minimum, we can stop playing their games.

Here’s a thought experiment: Consider the worst kind of right-wing behavior that might be uncovered about someone. Maybe the person dropped the N-word on a livestream. Maybe the person was a member of the Proud Boys or was arrested on Jan. 6, or dabbled in the alt-right in 2016. Maybe the person said something like “normalize Indian hate.”

Of course, it’s fine to disagree with all that. But before you jump behind a campaign to destroy their careers, consider the following: Is it as bad as blowing up government buildings? Is it as bad as murdering cops? Is it as bad as trying to overthrow the United States and replace it with a “decolonized” communist dystopia?

No?

Then I hope you’ll join me in disavowing cancel culture as we’ve come to know it. As Elon Musk said when he rehired DOGE staffer Marko Elez despite his unequivocally racist posts, “To err is human, to forgive divine.”

The thing about unequivocally racist posts is that they’re not bombs and they’re not bullets. And in a world where Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Kathy Boudin get to be college professors, Marko Elezabsolutely gets to be a DOGE staffer. After that, who knows? Maybe we can get him tenure somewhere.

Editor’s note: This article has been adapted from a post that appeared originally on X (formerly Twitter).

Ties Emerge Between Embattled Biden Judicial Nominee Adeel Mangi and Domestic Terrorist

Susan Rosenberg is one of the country's most notorious domestic terrorists. Now, more than two decades after her controversial release from prison, she serves on the advisory board of an anti-prison group alongside embattled judicial nominee Adeel Mangi.

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Police Groups Slam Biden Judicial Pick for Ties to Group That Celebrated Cop Killers as Freedom Fighters

Biden judicial nominee Adeel Mangi already faces headwinds to his nomination over ties to an anti-Israel think tank that hosted terrorists on the anniversary of 9/11. Now, he’s facing the ire of police organizations over his links to a group that hails six cop killers as "freedom fighters."

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Progressive Prosecutor for Ousted Chesa Boudin Launches San Francisco DA Bid

A progressive former prosecutor for San Francisco’s recalled district attorney Chesa Boudin has launched a bid for his old boss’s job. Ryan Khojasteh, 30, jumped into the race on Friday, promising to deliver "real safety" to the progressive city that’s reeling under crime spikes, homelessness, and drug overdoses. Khojasteh is a former public defender who supported his then-boss Boudin through the recall that ousted him

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Embattled Biden Judicial Nominee Helped Lead Anti-Police Nonprofit

A Biden judicial nominee under fire for his work with an anti-Israel think tank has another radical left-wing group on his resume. Adeel Mangi, President Joe Biden’s nominee for the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, served on the board of the Legal Aid Society of New York from 2017 to 2021. The organization is best known for representing indigent clients in New York City, but it has also been behind campaigns to defund police and shut down U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

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Chesa Boudin, Ousted San Francisco DA, Now Pulls Six-Figure Salary at UC Berkeley

Chesa Boudin, the disgraced former district attorney of San Francisco who was ousted in a June 2022 recall election, is earning $210,000 a year at his new job leading a research and advocacy center at UC Berkeley’s law school.

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Berkeley Hires Axed San Francisco Prosecutor Chesa Boudin to Train California Law Students

Chesa Boudin, the disgraced former district attorney of San Francisco who was removed from office by voters, will helm a new research and advocacy center at UC Berkeley’s prestigious law school to help train the next generation of lawyers on criminal justice, the university announced Wednesday.

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Nancy Pelosi Asks For $10 Million Earmark To Bankroll Green Conservancy, Upgrade ‘MLK Fountain’

Pelosi's letter did not specify how the $10 million was to be spent on the project