Media appears to exploit tragic death in North Carolina to advance racial narrative: 'Not a lynching'



A young black man died in a rural area of Vance County, North Carolina, but the media has apparently used details of his death to advance a racial narrative.

Around 10 a.m. on Wednesday, Vance County deputies were notified about a body located near Vanco Mill Road just outside Henderson, North Carolina, a city of 15,000 residents about 45 miles north of Raleigh.

'The young man was not dangling from a tree. He was not swinging from a tree. The rope was wrapped around his neck. It was not a noose. There was not a knot in the rope.'

Though the deceased man had no ID on him, investigators later learned that his name was Javion Magee, a 21-year-old truck driver from the Chicago area. He was found sitting with his back against a "medium-sized" tree and a rope around his neck. The other end of the rope was affixed to the tree.

The detail about the rope sparked many sensational headlines. "Black man found dead with rope around his neck, NC sheriff says," read the headline from WCNC. "Black man found dead against tree with rope around his neck in NC: 'Not a lynching,' sheriff says," said another from ABC11.

The News & Observer went even further and referenced lynching in its headline, even as the outlet noted Magee's death may in fact be a suicide: "As suspicions swell that Black man was lynched in NC, warrant outlines evidence of suicide."

Unfortunately, the evidence released so far does suggest Magee may have taken his own life. Sheriff Curtis Brame told ABC11 that Magee had driven a truckload to a Walmart distribution center hours before his death and then apparently gone to a Walmart store to purchase several items, including the rope later found draped around his neck.

"There's been information put out there that there's a lynching in Vance County," Brame said. "There is not a lynching in Vance County. The young man was not dangling from a tree. He was not swinging from a tree. The rope was wrapped around his neck. It was not a noose. There was not a knot in the rope, so therefore, it was not a lynching here in Vance County."

Brame, who is black, further insisted that Magee's body did not appear to be "disfigured in any form or fashion" when it was found. He told ABC11 that other evidence, such as surveillance footage from Walmart, had not yet been released as the investigation into Magee's death continues.

While Brame stopped short of stating that Magee's death was a suicide, he said that foul play was not suspected.

A preliminary autopsy report released on Friday was similarly inconclusive about suicide. However, the medical examiner did not find any obvious signs of defensive wounds or other scarring, only signs of hemorrhaging around the soft area of Magee's neck, Brame told ABC11.

A toxicology report remains pending. Blaze News left a message for Sheriff Brame seeking more information, but that message was not returned.

Candice Matthews, described by the TRiiBE as "a civil rights activist and state chair for the Texas Democratic Black Caucus" who claims to represent Magee's family, called on federal law enforcement to investigate the incident as a "hate crime."

"We demand the Department of Justice to come in and investigate this. We demand the FBI to come in and investigate this as a hate crime," she said.

"In my opinion, it's a hate crime because this young man had no indication of suicidal ideation," she said, according to WCNC.

Matthews also claimed that even though no official cause of death has been determined, the Vance County Sheriff's Office told Magee's mother and stepfather that he died by suicide.

"A lot of this stuff does not pass the smell test, and that's a problem," Matthews continued. "The entire family is completely mortified and they are hurt, they are. They have a lot of questions, and they just want to know what happened to their loved one."

Other locals likewise suspect racism may have played a role in Magee's death. "I mean, honestly, I think we have to acknowledge that, No. 1, we do live in the South, and there's a deep history of racism and racist acts. And so people are obviously concerned about that," Khalil Gay of Henderson told ABC11.

An X user account named britteney Black rose kapri, who apparently wrote a book entitled "Black Queer Hoe," similarly indicated that Magee had been "lynched." "A Black man was lynched in North Carolina this week. A Black man was lynched in North Carolina this week," kapri wrote on Wednesday.

As of Monday afternoon, kapri's post has over 99,000 likes and 3.7 million impressions.

Brame expressed his condolences to the family but insisted that everyone needs to exercise patience and wait for the facts to come out. "Stay out of the rumor mills," he advised.

KLLM Transport Services, the company which employed Magee at the time of his death, issued a statement about Magee's passing.

"We’d like to express our deepest condolences to the family. Javion was a good employee, and we’re all saddened by the loss. We’re cooperating with authorities in this investigation," said Booth Veazey, director of safety at KLLM Transport Services.

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WATCH: Lara Trump tells Sara Gonzales how she plans to win elections as RNC chair



Lara Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, recently announced her plans to run as the new co-chair for the Republican National Committee in the wake of Ronna McDaniel’s announcement that she’d be stepping down.

Now, Laura joins Sara Gonzales to discuss her plans for rebuilding and rebranding the Republican Party.

“This is a position for which I never imagined I'd run, but I also never imagined our country would be in such a bad spot,” she says. “We really have a must-win election on November 5, and the reality is you cannot win a presidential election without the Republican National Committee.”

She goes on to explain how the key to success will be “changing our approach” when it comes to elections.

“As conservatives ... we want paper ballots; we want voter ID everywhere, but we don't live in that day right now, and the way we get to that spot is electing president Donald Trump, taking back the Senate, and expanding our lead in the House so we can actually make those substantive changes,” she tells Sara.

For now, she says, “we need to make sure that early voting is something we are talking about as conservatives. The first day early voting starts in your state ... get out and vote; then you take someone with you every day up until Election Day to vote” so that the party has “banked votes” and avoids “going into Election Day at a deficit.”

Further, we need “trained poll-watchers ... who can physically handle the ballots” and “count how many ballots are coming into a location and how many are going out, so we don't have miraculous suitcases full of ballots showing up after or on Election Day.”

Perhaps, more than anything, “we need to re-establish trust in this entity — the RNC,” Lara says.

As a Trump family member, Lara says she’ll “be watching every penny and ensuring it goes to causes we care about.”

She also intends to “check out every vendor that the RNC is using” as well as “all of the staff there.”

When Sara asked if she would be open to working with Scott Presler, Lara said, “I think Scott Presler is amazing. What he’s done for voter registration is incredible,” adding that she hopes to “put him in charge of our legal ballot-harvesting operation.”

“[Democrats] have the whole media apparatus behind them,” she explained, adding that it’s “basically their marketing arm.”

“We know that they've been slippery in elections before ... and it's not going to be their first rodeo, so, we've got to play the game even better,” which is why she “loves the idea of Scott Presler.”

To hear more, watch the clip below.


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DHS expects up to 18,000 illegal immigrants a day once Title 42 is lifted



As many as 18,000 migrants could illegally cross the southern border per day once the Trump-era Title 42 regulation is repealed by the Biden administration.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas acknowledged that lifting the regulation will increase strain on federal offices that are already stretched thin in their pursuit to contain the ongoing immigration crisis at the country’s southern border, but the New York Post reported he still intends to move forward with Title 42’s repeal.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) instituted Title 42 during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. It grants border officials the ability to immediately expel migrants trying to illegally enter the U.S. through its shared southern border with Mexico.

While on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Mayorkas said, “Title 42 is a public health authority. So, what we started to do in September of last year was to prepare for its end.”

“We’re not projecting 18,000, but what we do in the department is we plan for different scenarios,” Mayorkas continued. “So, we’re ready for anything.”

When the show’s host, Dana Bash, pressed Mayorkas on whether the Department of Homeland Security would be able to handle an influx of migrants that size, he said the department would be prepared, but the system would be put under “extraordinary strain.”

Mayorkas said, “It is our responsibility to be prepared for different scenarios, and that is what we are doing, and we have incredibly talented and dedicated people. There is no question if in fact we reach that number, that is going to be an extraordinary strain on our system.”

He continued, “That is why the plan we have prepared calls for a number of different actions, not just the domestic arena but also with our partners in the south.”

This past month, in a move that garnered bipartisan criticism, the CDC announced that it would allow Title 42 to expire in late May.

In March 2022, there were more than 220,000 encounters between illegal immigrants and border officials. This is the highest number of any month since the start of Joe Biden’s presidency.

In response to this, lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives took Mayorkas to task over the Biden administration’s inability to end the seemingly perpetual influx of illegal immigrants.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) grilled Mayorkas, telling him that by allowing Title 42 to be repealed he was “going to make it worse.”

Jordan said, “We have a secretary of Homeland Security who is intentionally, deliberately, in a premeditated fashion … executing a plan to overwhelm our country with millions and millions of illegal migrants.”

Beto O'Rourke calls Greg Abbott an 'oligarch' and 'thug,' suggests a statewide gun buyback in Texas



Beto O'Rourke compared current Texas Governor Greg Abbott to a Russian oligarch and proposed a statewide gun buyback program during a Saturday speaking engagement at South by Southwest.

KVUE-10, a local ABC affiliate, reported that O'Rourke was the headline speaker at an event hosted by CEO and co-founder of the Texas Tribune, Evan Smith

Smith asked O'Rourke — who has become known for launching a string of quixotic political campaigns — why he was running for major political office for the third time.

O'Rourke said, "Because I have this extraordinary opportunity to join amazing people in service to my state and to this country. Yet there is no higher honor. I'm grateful for the opportunity, and I love the fact that we're in this race right now."

Smith subsequently asked O'Rourke about his opposition in the gubernatorial campaign — current Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

O'Rourke responded by calling him an "authoritarian."

He said, "I just had the chance to meet with the ambassador from the [European Union]. We talked about the fact that you're seeing the continued rise of authoritarians and thugs across the world, and we have our own right here in the state of Texas."

Smith responded by asking him: "Greg Abbott is a thug in your mind?"

To which O'Rourke responded: "He's a thug. He's an authoritarian. Let me make the case not only to this guy, to his own incompetence, not keep the lights on in the energy capital of the planet last February. But when people like Kelcy Warren and other energy company CEOs made more than $11 billion in profit over five days, selling gas for 200 times the going rate, not only did he not claw back those illegal profits … but he's taking millions of dollars in payoffs from these same people."

O'Rourke added, "He's got his own oligarch here in the state of Texas. You think this stuff only exists in Russia or in other parts of the world?"

Previously, O'Rourke attained a good deal of notoriety for his aggressive stance on gun control.

Notably, during a 2020 Democratic primary debate, he proudly proclaimed, "Hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47."

However, in mid-March, The Hill reported that O'Rourke told reporters that he wants to "defend the Second Amendment" and that he is "not interested in taking anything from anyone."

Now, O'Rourke is suggested that the state of Texas implement a buyback program encouraging people to sell their firearms to the government.

He told Smith, "I don't think anyone should have [assault-style weapons], and if I can find consensus within the Legislature to have a law in the state of Texas that allows us to buy those AK-47s and AR-15s back, we will."

As Smith noted early on in the discussion, this is O'Rourke's third time running for higher office.

In 2018 he attempted to unseat Ted Cruz from the United States Senate, and in 2020 he tried to secure the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

Beto O'Rourke in Conversation with Evan Smith youtu.be

Tech company develops microchip implanted in the body that stores a COVID-19 vaccine passport so it's 'always accessible'



There have been rumors that a COVID-19 passport in the form of a microchip implanted into the body would likely be developed, but that speculation was widely dismissed as a "conspiracy theory." However, the conspiracy theory now appears to be close to reality after a tech company touted a microchip that is implanted into the body that can serve as a COVID-19 vaccine passport.

For years, Swedish start-up Epicenter has specialized in implanting microchips the size of grains of rice into the body that can act as key cards to open doors, public transportation passes, or be a credit card. Metro reported, "According to digital cultures researcher Moa Petersen, around 6,000 people in the country have so far had a chip inserted in their hands."

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Stockholm-based Epicenter has worked on developing an implantable microchip that can be used as a coronavirus vaccine passport.

"A start-up hub in Sweden has showcased a new use for its microchip implants: your Covid-19 vaccination passport," the South China Morning Post reported. "The company Epicenter plans to market the versatility of the technology it spent years developing. The chips use Near-field communication (NFC), which can communicate with any NFC-capable smartphone. The company says the procedure is entirely reversible."

Hannes Sjoblad – Epicenter's "Chief Disruption Officer" – demonstrated the subdermal implant that offered COVID-19 vaccination certification in the SCMP video.

Beep boop beep: Your vaccination record has been verified pic.twitter.com/KQgtC1vsPR
— South China Morning Post (@South China Morning Post) 1639760402

"Implants are very versatile technology that can be used for many different things, and right now it is very convenient to have COVID passport always accessible on your implant," Sjoblad told Ruptly last week.

"In case your phone runs out of battery, it’s always accessible to you," he continued. "So of course, that’s how we use this technology today, next year we are going to use it for something else."

There was no shortage of reactions to the report on the implantable microchip COVID-19 vaccine passport.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) commented on the microchip COVID-19 vaccine passport, "Hey, remember when this was a conspiracy?"

Author Bryan Sharpe wrote, "Mark of the Beast."

Ryan Grim – D.C. bureau chief at The Intercept – asked, "Is this parody or real? Lord."

Host Jesse Lee Peterson responded, "Can't wait til I become a robot!"

Journalist Max Blumenthal noted, "The 'conspiracy theorists' were right again."

YouTube personality Casey Neistat replied, "Just today I was bitching about how stupid paper vaccination cards are and asking for an easier solution.. but this is ahhh… not really what I was thinking."

Young Americans for Liberty tweeted, "It's just 6 feet. It's just a mask. It's just 15 days to slow the spread. It's just a lockdown. It's just a vaccine mandate. It's just a microchip implanted in your arm."

Mississippi governor refuses to participate in nationwide lockdown

Tate Reeves, Mississippi's governor, has stated that the state would refuse to participate in any potential national lockdown in the future due to the pandemic.

South Dakota governor BLASTS Obama

Kristi Noem, the governor of the state of South Dakota, had some harsh words for Barack Obama on Thursday on Twitter.

WATCH: South Carolina woman and her dogs surprised by alligator at her front door

A woman in Charleston County in South Carolina, AKA the Low Country, was surprised to find an alligator hanging out on her front porch on Monday.

Teen reportedly assaulted during California Trump rally; police seek video of incident



Authorities in Pasadena, California, are looking for video of an alleged assault on a teenage girl, according to Newsweek.

The purported attack was said to have taken place Sunday during a Trump rally in South Pasadena.

What are the details?

The unnamed 16-year-old girl was reportedly in attendance at the rally when an unidentified suspect attacked the teen.

It is not known at the time of this reporting whether the teen was a Trump supporter or an antagonizer.

The South Pasadenan reported that the teenage girl said a woman — reportedly some type of street vendor — grabbed her by the hair during the rally. The street vendor reportedly told authorities that the unnamed teen knocked over merchandise sitting on a display table.

Sgt. Robert Bartl of the South Pasadena Police Department told the outlet that an "adult woman operating a Trump paraphernalia concession booth accused a 16-year-old girl of knocking over merchandise that had been sitting on a table."

A second woman, who Bartl identified as a Black Lives Matter demonstrator, then reportedly shoved a male who was with the street vendor.

Bartl added that the street vendor and the purported Black Lives Matter supporter will be charged with misdemeanor assault and battery.

Eyewitness Ixchel Carrizales De Lara said that the teen reportedly "knocked over a couple of the hats out of frustration and she began to walk away. That's when they grabbed her hair, and started pulling her back and pulling her down."

The Pasadenan reported that the rally — which was described as full of "happy warriors who wanted to participate in a nice, peaceful rally in support of our country, the South Pasadena Police Department, and President Trump" — drew about 350 demonstrators.

Now what?

The South Pasadena Police Department is asking any witnesses of the alleged incident to come forward with information or video footage.

In a statement shared on Twitter, the department wrote, "SPPD Detectives Requesting Video of Altercation Between Juvenile and Sidewalk Vendor During Rally on 11/1."

A portion of the advisory on the incident read, "South Pasadena Police Department Detectives are currently investigating an altercation between a juvenile and sidewalk vendor during a rally at Fair Oaks Av. and Mission St. on Sunday, November 1st, at about 5:45 pm."

"If you or somebody you know is in possession of video of the actual altercation, SPPD Detectives would like to obtain it," the advisory added.

The department requests that anyone with information on the incident call detectives at 626-403-7280 or send an email to pddetectives@southpasadenaca.gov.

SPPD Detectives Requesting Video of Altercation Between Juvenile and Sidewalk Vendor During Rally on 11/1. https://t.co/QYZ3RKfgDC
— South Pasadena PD (@South Pasadena PD)1604528734.0

Police chief stabbed in the face with ice pick as he opened his door

A police chief in Bonneau, South Carolina answered his door and was immediately attacked by a man, receiving a wound in the face from an ice pick.