Democrats ‘defend democracy’ by ditching it



Texas Democrats have once again fled the state — not in the face of danger or persecution, but to block a vote they know they’ll lose.

This time, they’re trying to derail a redistricting plan that would likely establish five more Republican districts. Rather than face the debate, they bolted. Gov. Greg Abbott responded by ordering the Texas Rangers to investigate the absent legislators for potential violations of state law, including bribery.

Voters should recognize that these performative walkouts have nothing to do with democracy or the rule of law. They’re tantrums — undemocratic and unaccountable.

This isn’t a new tactic for Democrats in Texas. In 2003, they fled to a motel in Ardmore, Oklahoma, to block another redistricting vote. Eleven Senate Democrats later fled to New Mexico in a failed attempt to stop the plan. In 2021, Democrats once again abandoned their posts — this time flying to Washington, D.C. — to obstruct a bill that tightened mail-in voting rules and curbed 2020-era voting expansions in Harris County. That bill passed too.

Now they’re repeating the act, claiming to “defend democracy” from Republican gerrymandering while retreating to safe blue havens like Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York. One Democrat compared the new redistricting map to the Holocaust (she later apologized). Others predictably called the plan “racist.” Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries flew to Austin for “closed-door meetings,” and California Gov. Gavin Newsom and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul pledged to pursue their own gerrymanders back home.

The hypocrisy is as plain as it is tedious.

As journalist Matt Kittle noted in the Federalist, this brand of protest isn’t just ineffective — it’s absurd. Wisconsin Democrats tried something similar in 2011, fleeing to Illinois to block a bill that curbed public-sector union power. Then-Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans passed it anyway using a procedural maneuver to overcome the quorum requirement.

Kittle also pointed out the irony: The Democrats’ sanctuary states — Illinois, New York, California — are among the most gerrymandered in the country. Yet those states don’t seem to trouble the “defenders of democracy.”

It’s easy to see why Texas Democrats like Reps. Jasmine Crockett and Al Green want to preserve a system that favors them. What’s harder to see is what they hope to gain from this stunt. They have no leverage. Their absence ensures failure. Even as political theater, it’s weak and self-defeating. It makes them look unserious and incapable of governing.

Rep. Salman Bhojani, one of the Texas Democrats who fled, may not return at all — he reportedly needs to leave the country for a “family medical emergency.” His constituents in Euless should ask: Who’s representing them now?

But most won’t ask. Most don’t even know who Bhojani is. And that’s the deeper problem.

Too many state legislators are anonymous placeholders. They win office by running with a “D” or “R” next to their names. They stay in office because they’ve been there before. Their constituents rarely track their votes or positions — many wouldn’t even recognize their representative if they saw them on TV.

Bhojani faced no opponent in his last election. Apart from donors and staffers, almost no one in Euless likely knows who he is — until now that he’s left the country and quite likely his job.

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Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images

So what kind of democracy is this?

If lawmakers go unchallenged, remain largely unknown, and face no accountability for skipping out on their duties, can we really call this democratic representation? And if redistricting efforts aim to align political boundaries more closely with population centers — rather than carve out safe enclaves for party operatives — might that not restore some of the lost accountability?

At present, most lawmakers serve parties and donors, not voters. The party ensures they run unopposed or draws the district to guarantee victory. The campaign is just a formality. Once elected, they vote the party line and maybe dabble in social media branding.

Right now, this is more a problem for Democrats than Republicans. But that could easily flip. Voters of all stripes should recognize that these performative walkouts have nothing to do with democracy or the rule of law. They’re tantrums — undemocratic and unaccountable.

Republicans in Washington and across red states should follow Texas’ lead: Call the bluff, pass the bills, and begin the work of restoring actual representative government. That’s what voters want — left, right, and center.

When good guys carry, killers lose — and the media looks away



A stabbing at a Michigan Walmart on Saturday was stopped by an armed man — a Marine veteran — who went to the shooting range but “forgot to take his pistol off his hip.”

The New York Times, Associated Press, Washington Post, NPR, NBC News, BBC, and many others completely ignored the gun used to stop the attack. An eyewitness described how others who had tried to stop the attacker were stabbed, but it took the Marine with a gun to stop the attack.

The laws meant to stop criminals end up disarming the innocent instead.

The attack was stopped several minutes before the first responders were able to arrive. One thought is that this hero might get some coverage in the legacy media simply because he is black and the attacker was white.

A disturbing pattern

This case was far from unusual. Between January 2021 and December 2024, concealed handgun permit holders stopped 37 attacks that police said would have turned into mass public shootings if not for their intervention. But they rarely get national news attention.

Unfortunately, after Monday’s attack in New York City, Democrats drew the wrong conclusion. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) responded by calling for a federal assault weapon ban and blaming the tragedy on the absence of such a law.

Their gun control laws ensure they won’t have any armed civilians to save the day. The murderer who killed four people broke numerous gun control laws. He openly carried a rifle that was already illegal to possess or carry in the state.

New York State and New York City prohibit open carry of loaded long guns in public and ban so-called assault weapons, such as AR-15-style rifles. Even concealed-carry permits do not authorize openly carrying a rifle in public.

Meanwhile, the law-abiding victims were defenseless, disarmed by the city’s strict regulations. Currently, only about 6,000 active concealed handgun permits are currently granted in a city with almost seven million adults — less than 1% of adults.

Moreover, carrying a permitted concealed handgun is extremely difficult. The list of places that ban concealed carry is long (e.g., public transportation such as subways, any places that serve alcohol, Times Square, government buildings and educational facilities, and public gatherings). Additionally, the price for obtaining a permit is steep — running at about $770 — for fees to the New York Police Department and the required course.

Gun control doesn’t save lives

The problem is simple: Someone intent on murdering four people won’t be deterred by extra gun control penalties. Even if the killer had survived, he would have already been facing four life sentences, which makes adding a few more years meaningless. For attackers who expect to die during the assault — as most mass public shooters do — those laws carry no weight at all.

But for law-abiding citizens, the consequences are severe. Violating these laws could turn them into felons and upend their entire lives. The laws meant to stop criminals end up disarming the innocent instead.

These murderers take advantage of the laws that ensure they will be the only ones with weapons. Diaries and manifestos of mass public shooters show a disturbing pattern: They deliberately choose locations where they know their victims can’t fight back due to restrictive gun laws.

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Photo by Seeetz via Unsplash

While it remains unknown whether this particular killer made such a calculation, his actions align with a pattern we’ve seen repeatedly in other cases. It isn’t too surprising that 92% of mass public shootings occur in places where guns are banned.

Concealed carry does

Two of the four people murdered in the New York City attack were security guards. But people don't appreciate the extremely difficult job uniformed police have in stopping these active shooting attacks. “A deputy in uniform has a difficult job in stopping these attacks,” said Sheriff Kurt Hoffman in Sarasota County, Florida. He continues:

These terrorists have strategic advantages in determining the time and place of attacks. They can wait for a deputy to leave the area or pick an undefended location. Even when police or deputies are in the right place at the right time, those in uniform who can be readily identified as guards may as well be holding up neon signs saying, "Shoot me first." My deputies know that we cannot be everywhere.

In fact, even though civilians stop more of these active shooting attacks than police officers, the men in blue still pay a steep price. Nineteen police officers were killed in these attacks versus two civilians with permitted concealed handguns. It’s little surprise why surveys of academics who have published peer-reviewed empirical research on firearms show that criminologists and economists strongly support letting people carry concealed handguns to stop mass public shootings.

While politicians rush to call for new laws after each tragedy, they often ignore the basic reality that killers intent on murder are attracted to attack in places with strict gun control. Instead, those laws disarm only the potential victims, leaving them vulnerable and defenseless.

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

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Illegal alien accused of threatening to slit throat of Bondi-appointed US attorney



A U.S. attorney in New York learned firsthand the danger that criminal illegal aliens pose to the community after he was chased and threatened with a knife in downtown Albany earlier this week.

Just before 10 p.m. on Tuesday, John Sarcone, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, had just left his office and was strolling by a Hilton Hotel, enjoying a cigar, when he suddenly spotted a man behaving suspiciously.

"I got my eye on him, then I turn back and I’m in front of the Hilton, and I’m just standing there, and I’m looking at him ... and he then starts yelling at me in his language that I don’t understand," Sarcone later said, according to the Times-Union.

The man then reportedly approached Sarcone, pulled a knife, and lunged in his direction.

'We take these things seriously — whether you’re the US attorney for the Northern District or your name’s John Smith and you live on Morton Avenue.'

Sarcone stepped into the hotel lobby for safety and called Sheriff Craig Apple of Albany County but then went back outdoors to keep an eye on the man. The situation then apparently escalated.

"I didn’t want him to get away, and I yelled out at him," Sarcone recalled. "He turns around, and he starts yelling again ... and then he pulls the knife out, and then there’s this (gesture) across his throat thing, like he’s going to slit my throat, and then comes at me again, and I ran back towards the hotel, and then he stopped and then turned around."

Police quickly arrived on the scene and apprehended the suspect, identified as 40-year-old Saul Morales-Garcia. Sheriff Apple confirmed that Morales-Garcia, a Salvadoran national, is in the U.S. illegally, WNYT reported.

Sarcone was not injured in the incident, but at a hearing on Wednesday, prosecutors demonstrated that they are not playing games. Morales-Garcia has been charged with second-degree attempted murder, third-degree criminal possession of a weapon, and second-degree menacing. The defendant has another court appearance scheduled for next week.

"It’s important that everybody understands that we take these things seriously – whether you’re the U.S. attorney for the Northern District or your name’s John Smith and you live on Morton Avenue," District Attorney Lee Kindlon said outside the courthouse.

Morales-Garcia reportedly told investigators he did not know Sarcone was a federal official. Public defender Vincenzo Sofia argued in court that the evidence did not warrant an attempted murder charge and requested release under probationary supervision, but the judge ordered the defendant held without bail.

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Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The defendant has a lengthy rap sheet both in America and abroad. Morales-Garcia has a felony conviction in El Salvador and has been deported from the U.S. on at least one occasion, in 2010. When he re-entered the U.S. illegally again is unclear.

According to multiple reports, he also has a "criminal record" in at least three states and an active warrant for his arrest.

In April 2022, Morales-Garcia was convicted of a DUI and driving without a license in Monroe County, Georgia. A month later, he apparently failed to appear in court, prompting a bench warrant, but the bench warrant is tied to the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office. Whether the two Georgia incidents are related is unclear, the Times-Union reported.

'Kathy Hochul puts illegals first and New Yorkers last.'

In December 2023, Morales-Garcia was arrested by federal Park Police officers in Virginia and charged with disorderly conduct, engaging in a physically threatening act likely to inflict injury, possessing an open container of alcohol, and being intoxicated in public. Five months later, he was charged with retail theft in a city just outside Philadelphia.

The Times-Union reported that the outcomes of those cases are currently unknown.

ICE agents were reportedly at the courthouse on Wednesday, when Morales-Garcia and at least one other illegal alien were scheduled to appear. It is unclear whether the agents interacted with Morales-Garcia.

The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

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Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images

At least one New York federal lawmaker is speaking out about the alarming incident.

"In Kathy Hochul’s New York, nobody is safe, not even President Trump’s U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of NY John A. Sarcone III, who was 'confronted and chased' by an illegal alien armed with a knife in Albany last night, the Times Union reported," Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) posted to X on Wednesday.

"Three separate times, Hochul signed executive orders to protect violent illegal aliens from deportation. Kathy Hochul puts illegals first and New Yorkers last. We desperately need a governor who puts New Yorkers first and restores law and order to our streets."

In response to a request for comment, Hochul sent Blaze News what appears to be a generic email, promising "to rebuild our communities and continue to move our great state forward."

"I promise to do everything I can, every single day, to create a stronger, safer future for you, our families, and our communities and to make government a force for good once again."

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed Sarcone to the U.S. attorney position back in March. Sarcone previously served on President Donald Trump's campaign legal team in 2016.

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‘Evil bill of death’: New York nears passage of law that fuels suicide culture



On June 9, the New York Senate passed the Medical Aid in Dying Act, which allows terminally ill, mentally competent adults with six months or less to live to request and self-administer life-ending medication. If signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul (D), New York will become the 11th state to legalize medical aid in dying.

This is more evidence that the left is championing a “culture of death” in America, says Glenn Beck. “The more ‘enlightened’ they become ... the more barbaric [policy] actually becomes.”

Ironically, the left’s death-centric policies, whether it's abortion, gender affirming care, or fighting for the rights of violent illegal alien criminals, are always wrapped in platitudes of “compassion.”

Equally ironic is the left’s response when it’s met with resistance: proving how “compassionate and loving [they] are through mob violence and arson and theft and assaulting federal officers,” most recently evidenced by the fiery anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement riots that have ravaged parts of Los Angeles.

Passing a bill that makes it “easier to kill yourself,” when “the U.S. Surgeon General's office calls loneliness and isolation in America an epidemic,” is the opposite of compassion, says Glenn, noting that suicide has continued to steadily increase over the last several decades.

“This bill is assisted suicide, and it is dressed up — as always — as compassion, but it's not mercy; it is absolute madness,” he insists.

Unlike many other states’ laws, New York’s bill does not require a mandatory waiting period after a patient’s request for life-ending medication, meaning that a patient can potentially elect to die on the same day he receives a terminal diagnosis, so long as he fulfills the requirements of a written request, confirmation of a six-month or less terminal prognosis by two physicians, verification of mental competency, and signatures from two impartial witnesses.

“Despair and depression clouds everything! You don't make a decision when you're like that,” condemns Glenn, who knows from experience that severe depression is often akin to “insanity.”

On top of expediting the process, the bill also “prohibits referring to this practice as suicide,” insisting that the procedure be called “a medical practice” and the lethal poison a “medication.”

“The lies are disgusting,” says Glenn, who is horrified yet not totally surprised considering Andrew Cuomo, New York’s former governor, “was killing people in nursing homes” during the COVID pandemic.

Perhaps most disturbing, however, is the bill’s policy when it comes to death certificates.

“When you write out the death certificate of a person who dies through assisted suicide, you are only allowed to list the person's underlying illness or condition as the official cause of death. You cannot say it had anything to do with suicide or any medical aid in dying,” Glenn explains. The only reason for such a policy is to “[hide] the actual stats” so that they can “memory hole suicide.”

Glenn, citing a New York Times op-ed by Columbia University physician and ethicist Dr. Lydia Dugdale, reads, “Instead of investing in the infrastructure of support for the lonely, the depressed, the disabled, and the poor, we offer them a prescription for death. We call it autonomy, but it’s abandonment.”

“The art of dying well cannot be severed from the art of living well, and that includes caring for one another, especially when it is hard, inconvenient, or costly. It is not enough to offer the dying control. We must offer them dignity — not by affirming their despair but by affirming their worth,” Dugdale said.

To the brave New Yorkers who have managed to keep their ethics and common sense, Glenn beseeches: “You are not without hope — as long as you're still in the fight. ... Call your governor's office; urge her to veto this evil bill of death. Choose life!”

To hear more about the bill, watch the clip above.

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Sanctuary Governors Dare Tom Homan To Arrest Them — But Tim Walz Doesn’t Seem Too Keen About Idea.

'I will stand in the way'

Tim Walz grilled for comparing ICE agents to 'Nazi Gestapo'



During a Thursday hearing, former Democratic vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) was brutally grilled by Republican lawmakers for his past comments likening Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to the "Nazi Gestapo."

Walz appeared alongside Democratic Govs. JB Pritzker of Illinois and Kathy Hochul of New York to testify on sanctuary cities before the House Oversight Committee. During the hearing, Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) confronted Walz for comments he made during a commencement ceremony in May where he said, "Donald Trump's modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the street."

'Inflammatory rhetoric such as yours ... is responsible for putting a target on the back of every ICE agent who is risking their life to protect our communities.'

The insinuation Walz made is that federal law enforcement agencies under the direction of President Donald Trump are like the Nazi secret police deployed by Adolf Hitler.

"When you said the words 'modern-day Gestapo,' you were referring to ICE agents," Emmer said. "Gestapo, by the way, sir, was the official secret police of Hitler's Nazi Germany. So you're calling ICE agents modern-day Nazis."

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Governor Walz’s comments comparing ICE agents to the Nazi Gestapo is SICKENING.

ICE agents put their lives and safety on the line to arrest criminal illegal aliens let into our country. https://t.co/wUH9hilTRZ pic.twitter.com/QdxkxmQqcW
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) June 12, 2025

"Given the attacks on ICE agents that took place in Los Angeles over the weekend, don't you regard your dangerous, inflammatory rhetoric as a problem?" Emmer added.

As Emmer pointed out, recent ICE raids in California have been met with violent riots, which he says have been incited by the extreme rhetoric of Walz and other leftist politicians. During these riots, ICE agents and other members of law enforcement have been attacked with rocks, have dealt with arsonists, and have even had details about their location leaked, compromising their safety.

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Allison Robbert/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Walz stammered at Emmer's confrontation and failed to address his past comments.

"It saddens me that you refuse to express regret from comparing ICE to Nazis," Emmer said. "ICE agents are brave Americans who get up every morning, leave their families, and put their lives in harm's way to protect our country, sir. You, at the very least, owe an apology to these dedicated public servants."

"Inflammatory rhetoric such as yours, and the other governors on this panel, is responsible for putting a target on the back of every ICE agent who is risking their life to protect our communities."

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