Your Tax Dollars At Work: San Fran Cops Dress Up As Inflatable Chicken To Catch Speeding Drivers
Today in “your tax dollars at work” news, San Francisco police are donning inflatable chicken suits to catch drivers speeding through crosswalks.
SFGate first reported on officer Lt. Jonathan Ozol in costume at a crosswalk on Alemany Boulevard, where Capt. Amy Hurwitz said the goal is to get drivers to yield to pedestrians.
Some drivers didn’t seem to care and failed to yield to the giant inflatable chicken, according to Fox News. Imagine that.
Captain Hurwitz told Fox News: “I don’t want them to get run over. But the costume is so bright, it’s like, how can you miss it?”
“If you don’t see someone in a giant chicken costume, then we really have a problem,” Ozol added. “It’s having an impact. Drivers seem more aware, more cognizant. Certainly when they see the chicken.”
Monday marked the fifth stunt in six months, with officers dressing up as characters like unicorns or Big Bird to cross various intersections.
Capt. Hurwitz noted that each operation led to 30-40 citations, with fines up to $400. Lt. Ozol expressed disappointment at the consistently high numbers.
SFGate first reported last week: “The exercise has been featured in police newsletters, and in fact, after police performed the exercise at the same crosswalk previously, someone with a sense of humor put up a ‘chicken crossing’ sign nearby.”
Meanwhile, while this nonsense is taking place, the Fox report notes that in 2023, homicides in San Francisco increased by 83%, while the overall violent crime rate went up by 4%.
China Panics: Cuts Multiple Rates And Reserve Ratio Requirements, Goes All-In To Prop Up Stocks
This morning, when we reported that a sudden – and extremely overdue – urgency appeared to grip Beijing’s top power echelons in fasttracking a bunch of new monetary stimulus measures, including a cut in the 14-day reverse repo tool, we said to expect much more during today’s impromptu briefing on the economy, attended by the country’s three top financial regulators, which had fueled speculation that China was about to unleash far more efforts to revive growth, among which further cuts to the country’s Reverse Repo rate, and LPR rate but also cuts to the RRR and various other monetary stimulus measures.
That’s precisely what happened moments ago when PBoC Governor Pan Gongsheng unleashed what Bloomberg called a “stimulus blitz”, and what we call “sheer panic”, when he announced a bevy of stimulus measures to prop up the sinking economy and crashing stock market. Among these:
The PBOC will reduce the 7-day reverse repo rate by 20bps.
The PBOC will cut the reserve requirement ratio by 0.5%, a move that will free up1 trillion yuan ($142 billion) in liquidity, Pan said.
China may also cut the RRR further this year by another 0.25 to 0.5% at the appropriate time.
The PBOC will cut the 1 Year MLF rate by 30bps
The PBOC will also lower the rates for existing mortgages and cut the down payment ratio on second homes to 15% from 25%.
The deposit rate will be lowered to “neutralize” the impact on bank margins.
“Monetary policy easing come bolder than expected, with both rate cuts and RRR cuts announcing at the same time,” said Becky Liu, head of China macro strategy at Standard Chartered Plc. “We see room for bolder easing ahead in the coming quarters, following the Fed’s outsized rate cuts.”
Or, to quote Mike Ehrmantraut, no more half measures, just as we predicted on Friday.
But wait, there’s much more: at a time when not even the shoeshine boy wants to be within a ten foot pole of Chinese stocks, the PBOC governor also said that – in a last ditch attempt to bail out the country’s stock market – it will set up a swap facility allowing securities firms, funds and insurance companies to tap liquidity from PBOC to buy stocks. Brokers, funds and insurers will be allowed to pledge assets in exchange for liquidity for funds and buy stocks; the PBOC will also set up a separate specialized refinancing facility for listed companies and major shareholders to buy back shares, raise holdings. In other words, Beijing is greenlighting direct intervention in the stock market to prop up stocks.
According to Goldman, “this is very interesting new way of supporting stock market as so far it’s mainly national teams.”
While the devil will certainly be in the details, China is making it clear that it is not playing around, with Bloomberg reporting that China plans at least 500 billion yuan in liquidity support to stocks!
Over the past two years, Xi Jinping’s government has enacted piecemeal rate cuts that have completely failed to reverse a slowdown in the world’s No. 2 economy, with growth weakening further after grinding to its worst pace in five quarters and the housing market collapsing at an unprecedented pace.
That deterioration, which has translated into growing social unrest and surging labor strikes, has tested the Chinese leadership’s tolerance for missing its high-profile annual target for the second time in three years, at a moment when investor confidence is waning.
In May, China unveiled a laughable property rescue package which not only failed to turn around a years-long real estate slump that’s wiped out an estimated $18 trillion in wealth from households, but somehow made it even worse. Only 29 cities out of 200 urged to participate are heeding Beijing’s call to help absorb an excess of housing. New home prices clocked their biggest decline last month from July since 2014.
Not surprisingly, the central bank governor made the latest announcement at his first high-profile press conference since March, when he defended the government’s growth goal of about 5% alongside other top economic officials.
This year the PBOC chief has displayed a more transparent approach to policy in a bid to stabilize sentiment. Pan used a similar briefing in January to announce a cut to the amount of money banks must hold in reserve two weeks ahead of time, as authorities tried to halt a $6 trillion stock-market rout.
In response to the larger than expected – if not yet bazooka stimulus – the offshore yuan weakened 0.1% as PBOC announced the various rate cuts while China’s 10-year government bond yields declined to 2%, a fresh record low.
The plunge in yields confirms that the market was certainly taken aback with the size of the monetary stimulus, although for the real kick, Beijing will also have to unleash the fiscal firehose, which is also what Standard Chartered’s Becky LIu said when she predicted that the PBOC could take more aggressive action in the future, after a series of surprise rate cuts on Tuesday.
“The possibility for USD-CNY to dip below 7.0 is rising. China rates also have more downside.”
Echoing this view, Lynn Song, chief economist for Greater China at ING, said that China’s 10-year yield could decline to 1.8% should PBOC ease monetary policy further.
“It will be interesting to see if the PBOC steps in again to try and protect the 2% level, but I am personally expecting it to move below 2% at some point,” said Song. “If we are seeing more easing later in the year, it would not surprise me to see it move down to 1.8% or so.”
Tuesday’s RRR cut is “in line with expectations as it has been signaled for some time, but will not have too much of an impact as the issue currently is not banks lacking the funds to lend out but rather limited quality borrowing demand.”
What does today’s barrage of rate cuts mean for the economy? According to Jing Liu HSBC Global Research Greater China Chief Economist, China’s policy rate cuts are to support its 5% growth target goals, and there may be further reductions in the reserve requirement ratio: “This is basically to ensure that China can deliver the 5% growth target. With stronger support now I think we are going to see some kind of lifting effect… Don’t forget we could still have further fiscal stimulus. We still have more than one trillion yuan of quota left to be used up this year.” And with rates at all time lows, China can certainly afford to see yields tick up amid a flood of new debt.
“I personally think they are likely to use ultra long-term bonds because that doesn’t change the longer-term deficit and at the beginning of the year they left room for more operation on that” Liu said adding that “the next move to watch is whether the central government can put money directly into stabilizing the housing market. And whether China can have PPI inflation turn positive relatively soon.”
Xiaojia Zhi, head of research at Credit Agricole CIB, said that a big driver for the Chinese move was the Fed’s 50bp rate cut and the rebound in the yuan, which gave China room to ease monetary policy: “While PBOC rate cut and increase in liquidity would weigh on CNY and CNH, an partial offsetting factor could arrive if there is a boost to sentiment,” she says
While it remains to be seen how long this latest stimmy will last, at least the kneejerk reaction among risk assets was favorable, and the Chinese stock market rose with Chinese property stocks jumping after the PBOC’s announcement. “Good to see policy makers’ proactive moves to help overall economy and to support property market. The 15% down payment for second home is one of the lowest levels in history, which coupled with lower mortgage rate, could help reduce financial burden of homebuyers,” says Raymond Cheng, head of China property research at CGS International Securities Hong Kong.
Meanwhile, Pan’s mentioning of support to buy unsold homes could suggest more implementation of the policy. Overall, the stimulus was positive for the sector near term although yet to see impact on property sales.
Despite all that, the skeptics remain. According to Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp, China’s policymakers are clearly attempting to repair market confidence though more information is needed on the measures themselves. “The cuts were more or less within expectations but what is slightly different this time is a tool to support equity markets,” says Singapore strategist Christopher Wong. “This clearly shows that policymakers are making attempts to repair confidence — but it still remains to be seen if this sees sustained gains or just another one to two days of gains. Equity markets should cheer the move but devil is still in the details.”
Worse, according to ANZ bank head of Asia research Khoon Goh, the easing package – while the most comprehensive to date, “is far from being a bazooka.”
“If the new measures to support the equity market is successful, it could see a return of foreign inflows, supporting the yuan”
“Whether any rally in the equity market can be sustained ultimately lies in the ability for these measures to turn confidence around. Still, markets will welcome this announcement” if only for a few days at which point the selling will resume, as traders do everything in their power to force the PBOC panic to hit boss level.
Which it will: now that China has finally tipped its hand with what appears to be a barrage of monetary easing, it may pretend it won’t do a fiscal bazooka but when this “panicked” stimmy fizzles as it will, as have all previous ones, Beijing will have no choice but to flood the economy with debt, which will then send commodities soaring, and restart China’s export of its favorite commodity – inflation… and just in time for the Fed’s aggressive rate cuts.
In short, 2025 is shaping up like a very exciting year, if only for the second coming of the Arthur Burns Fed.
Japanese F-15s Fire Warning Flares After Russian Spy Plane Violates Airspace 3 Times
US ally Japan just had a close call with a Russian military airplane. The country’s defense ministry has condemned what it says was a blatant violation of Japanese airspace on Monday.
Japan’s defense chief Minoru Kihara in a press briefing described that a Russian Il-38 reconnaissance plane breached Japan’s airspace above Rebun Island in the far north of the Japanese island chain. This is not far off the main northern island of Hokkaido.
“The airspace violation was extremely regrettable,” Kihara said, detailing that in the aftermath Tokyo “strongly protested” to Moscow by diplomatic channels, demanding that future preventative measures be put in place.
Importantly, Japan disclosed that it scrambled multiple F-15 and F-35 fighter jets in response to the airspace violation, and that the Russian aircraft appeared to ignore initial warnings.
That’s when the Japanese fighters fired flares to escalate the warning, after which the Russian plane eventually departed the area.
Japan’s defense ministry described that the aircraft violated sovereign airspace three times during a five-hour total flight. The Russian plane spent up to a minute inside Japan’s airspace during each violation instance.
China and Russia have been conducting joint naval and aerial patrols in the area, putting both US and Japanese forces on high alert. There was a also a recent joint naval sail-through of the area.
The Associated Presswrites of the latest maneuvers, “The Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning, accompanied by two destroyers, sailed between Japan’s westernmost island of Yonaguni and nearby Iriomote, entering close to Japan’s waters.”
According to more, “According to Japan’s military, it scrambled jets nearly 669 times between April 2023 and March 2024, about 70% of the time against Chinese military aircraft, though that did not include airspace violations.”
US Border Agents Find RPGs & IEDs Near Southern Border Amid “Internal Alert” Of “Drastic Escalation” In Weaponry Used By Cartels
An alarming battle between rival factions of the Sinaloa drug cartel has unfolded in northwestern Mexico, near the Biden-Harris administration’s open southern border. The risk of spillover continues to increase as US Border Patrol agents recently discovered a weapons cache of shoulder-fired rocket launchers and improvised explosive devices just across from the Arizona border.
“4 RPGs and 8 IEDs along with a large amount of ammo discovered in a scout site in Mexico just across the Arizona border which butts up against the Ajo area of operation within the Tucson Sector,” NewsNation’s border correspondent Ali Bradley wrote on X on Monday afternoon.
Bradley said, “Border Patrol agents are being warned of the “drastic escalation” in weaponry being used on the south side of the border—According to an internal alert obtained through sources.”
“The fighting within the Sinaloa cartel, spilling over the border with multiple instances of armed men showing up to the southern border in the same area fleeing into the US for safety,” she added.
#EXCLUSIVE 4 RPGs and 8 IEDs along with a large amount of ammo discovered in a scout site in Mexico just across the Arizona border which butts up against the Ajo area of operation within the Tucson Sector.
The eruption in violence near the border is infighting within the Sinaloa cartel, between groups known as the “Mayos” and the “Chapos”. This first began when authorities arrested Joaquín Guzmán López and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada in July.
A tsunami of violence has since been reported, with President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador blaming Zambada’s arrest on the US.
Last Friday, US Ambassador Ken Salazar rejected AMLO’s claim, saying, “What is being seen in Sinaloa is not the fault of the United States,” adding the US cannot be held responsible for “the massacres that we see in different places.”
What’s clear is that cartels are quickly becoming militarized while the Biden-Harris team prided themselves with open southern borders. Meanwhile, Venezuelan prison gangs are running amok in the US, and a new bombshell hearing on Capitol Hill last week revealed Biden-Harris covered up the sharp rise in encounters with suspected terrorists on the border.
It’s become a truism in the past few years that younger people get their news predominantly, if not entirely, from social media. Turns out it’s true, but it may not be an information crisis, as some would have you believe.
Of course, as an old-time newspaperman, I was one of those who thought that the country was not being served well by this increasing dependency on unvetted news sources and the implied repudiation of traditional media. How could the country survive if the next generations turned their back on the trusted voices of the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, NBC, ABC, and “the most trusted name in news” – CNN?
But that was my opinion before Donald Trump was elected president and the legacy media exposed itself for being exactly what Trump said it had become – Fake News. The young people of America may not realize that their distrust of mainstream media was anticipated by Donald Trump, but the more that the old media voices expose their own bias, the closer together Trump and the young men and women of America are getting.
A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 86% of adults between the ages of 18 and 29 prefer to get their news from digital devices. Comparatively, only 8% of that same age group prefers television as their main news source, 2% prefer radio, and 3% prefer newspapers.
The Pew poll also reveals that the youngest adults are not relying entirely on digital devices as their news sources. Although nine out of 10 say they get some of their news from digital devices, nearly half also get some news from TV, 27% from radio, and 18% from newspapers. So if they are rejecting traditional news media, it is not from ignorance but from familiarity.
It should be obvious to anyone paying attention that the mainstream news has tilted so far left that they have almost no point of contact with mainstream America. The disgusting bias against not just Trump but against any conservatives or Republicans is so obvious that fair-minded people can’t make excuses any longer. The latest evidence was the appalling behavior of the ABC moderators of the Sept. 10 debate between Trump and Kamala Harris. Whether the anti-Trump slant was intentional or just the result of institutional bias, it proved young people right to look elsewhere for honest news.
Even more significant than the debate itself was the follow-up. If you as a viewer had noticed (and who couldn’t?) the way ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis aggressively fact-checked Trump, sometimes incorrectly, and let Harris slide on obvious lies such as the “both sides” hoax, you probably tuned in to the post-debate panels on TV expecting the so-called media experts to set the record straight.
But they didn’t. If the post-debate analysis in June had doomed the candidacy of Joe Biden, the punditry in September was immediately and relentlessly pro-Harris, largely ignoring the assist that ABC had given her.
But if, on the other hand, you had been accessing news from YouTube, you would have seen an immediate backlash against ABC. Most ferocious was Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News and NBC newswoman, who now runs her own show on SiriusXM. Her extensive background in TV news gave her the credibility to decry the debate as a media disaster:
I am disgusted. I am ashamed of those moderators at ABC News. David Muir and Linsey Davis did exactly what their bosses wanted them to do. The head of ABC News, Dana Walden, is a close personal friend of Kamala Harris who is responsible for Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, meeting. They did Dana Walden’s bidding. It was three against one on the debate stage this evening…
This was a mistake to trust ABC News with this debate. The Republicans must learn from this mistake the same way the Democrats never agree to moderators they don’t entirely trust. This should be the last time the Republicans ever do this because those two moderators tried to sink Donald Trump tonight.
On X, Kelly wrote, “Why did the moderators need Kamala Harris there at all?” and “This is one of the most biased, unfair debates I have ever seen. Shame on you ABC.”
That last tweet garnered nearly 5 million views. That’s substantially more than CNN’s ratings for the entire debate, which hovered around 4.4 million.
A substantial percentage of CNN viewers probably abandoned the channel immediately after the debate when they heard Jake Tapper deliver a virtual eulogy for the Trump candidacy. Not all of them went to Megyn Kelly’s YouTube channel either, but more young people probably went there than the other TV networks, the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal.
Kelly was not alone among the many alternative voices on YouTube that spoke out in favor of fairness. One of the most interesting features of social media websites is that they use an algorithm to steer news and videos to each user based on their interests. That means if you watch Kelly’s podcast, you will eventually see other conservative news sources directed to your feed.
In my case, it means that I now watch way more YouTube videos than Fox News shows. They range from the raw pro-Trump commentary of Benny Johnson, youthful activism from Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, the establishment point of view of Sean Spicer (Trump’s first press secretary) and radio host Hugh Hewitt, the numerical wizardry of the People’s Pundit (Rich Baris, a conservative pollster), and the multiple other pundits you would never hear of like Dr. Steve Turley (the Patriot Professor), the Body Language Guy (Jesus Enrique Rosas), and the Conservative Twins (black brothers who left the Democratic Party to join the growing trend of young black Republicans).
Trust me, I don’t miss either CNN or Fox News, which both have hidden agendas that come from corporate boardrooms. I would much rather watch news that mirrors the world I am seeing than watch news that is intended to convince me I didn’t see what was right in front of me.
Call it confirmation bias or call it truth-telling, but whatever you call it, the average person is going to seek out news sources that validate what we saw with our own eyes. Young people may be more skeptical of authority by nature, but people of any age will eventually tire of being told by mainstream media things that they know are not true – or even more often, omitting things they think you don’t need to know.
So take my challenge: Tune in to “The Megyn Kelly Show” every day for a week. If you don’t think you are better informed after that week than you have been in decades of following ABC, CBS, and the rest, feel free to retreat back into “The Media Matrix,” whose purpose is to manipulate, mislead, and manage the news.
At the start of our country, the free press was considered a vital component of our democracy – a watchdog that would keep honest the three branches of government and ensure the existence of an informed citizenry.
Those days are long over. Nowadays, the mainstream media’s function is to protect the government and guard the status quo, which is why the alternative media on YouTube, Rumble, and other platforms are so vital to protecting not only the government but our democracy. The answer to the question, “Who will watch the watchmen?” is obvious. It is the citizen journalists and exiled news reporters who reject the mainstream narrative and ask questions that challenge you to think for yourself.
Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont., is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His book “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake” is available from his Amazon author page. Visit him at HeartlandDiaryUSA.com or follow him on Facebook @HeartlandDiaryUSA and on X/Gettr @HeartlandDiary.
Nuclear Is Back: PA Governor Shapiro Pushes For “Fast Track” Re-Open For Three Mile Island
The plan to power AI and data centers using nuclear power just caught another tailwind, just days after we wrote about Microsoft helping bring Three Mile Island back online. And the latest (maybe unexpected) support comes from Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor.
Following Microsoft’s agreement to purchase power from the dormant Three Mile Island nuclear plant, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro urged regulators to prioritize the reactor’s connection to the electrical grid, according to a new report from Barron’s.
In a letter to PJM Interconnection, the grid operator serving Pennsylvania and several other states, Shapiro emphasized that the plant should not face the extended delays typical for new developments, as Microsoft aims to start utilizing the reactor’s energy by 2028.
The energy generated by the reactor, enough to supply about 700,000 homes, will be used to power Microsoft’s data centers, the report says.
PJM Interconnection responded to Shapiro’s concerns, stating that it is developing a “fast track” process to prioritize certain electricity projects, potentially speeding up the reactor’s return to service.
Shapiro wants the reactor to “be allowed to come online as quickly as possible rather than waiting in the queue as if they were an entirely new development,” he wrote.
PJM commented: “PJM was glad to see the planned repowering of Three Mile Island Unit 1. Adding megawatts to the grid during this period of tightening supply/demand conditions will help reliability of the system.”
Recall we wrote last week the owner of Three Mile Island is investing $1.6 billion to revive the plant and has agreed to sell all of its output to Microsoft, which is seeking power for its data centers.
This momentum continues our “Next AI Trade” that we pointed out in April of this year, where we outlined various investment opportunities for powering up America, playing out.
The restart of Three Mile Island, specifically to sell energy to Microsoft to power its data centers, will be the most material advancement in the nuclear/AI thesis since we first outlined it.
Constellation Energy Corp. plans to restart the Three Mile Island reactor by 2028, according to a Friday statement. The reactor, closed in 2019 due to economic challenges, will reopen despite the site’s other unit being shut down nearly 50 years ago after a major nuclear accident, according to Bloomberg.
The Bloomberg report noted that Microsoft has committed to a 20-year energy purchase from a nuclear facility, its first dedicated 100% nuclear energy deal.Financial details were not disclosed.
Constellation Chief Executive Officer Joe Dominguez said: “Policymakers and the market have received a huge wake-up call. There’s no version of the future of this country that doesn’t rely on these nuclear assets.”
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told lawmakers that he is considering the so-called “generals’ plan” to lay total siege to northern Gaza and expel all its Palestinian residents, the Times of Israelreported Monday.
When retired major general Giora Eiland presented the plan last week, he claimed it would “change the reality” on the ground in Gaza. “We have to tell the residents of north Gaza that they have one week to evacuate the territory, which then becomes a military zone, [a zone] in which every figure is a target and, most importantly, no supplies enter this territory.” The remaining Hamas fighters would then be forced to surrender or starve, according to the plan.
Eiland was the former director of the National Security Council and former head of the Planning Department of the Israel Defense Forces.
Israeli national broadcaster Kan reported on Sunday that Netanyahu, in a closed-door meeting with the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said that the plan “makes a lot of sense.”
Eiland claimed that the ethnic cleansing and siege of the north of the strip, where some 300,000 Palestinians still live, is not only an effective military tactic but is also compliant with international law.
“What matters to [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar is land and dignity, and with this maneuver, you take away both land and dignity,” he said.
Eiland has been critical of Israel’s current strategy in the war against Hamas’s military wing and Palestinian civilians in Gaza, saying it has not been harsh enough against the Palestinian population.
“You can’t win a war while this is the situation in Gaza,” he said. “The slogan that ‘only military pressure will bring victory’ has no basis whatsoever. The wars of the 21st century are based on something else. The most important parameter is the population, and those who can control the population win the war.”
In November, Eiland said that the spread of disease in Gaza is good for Israel. “After all, severe epidemics in the southern strip will bring victory closer and reduce fatalities among IDF soldiers,” he wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth.
Likud MK Amit Halevi, a member of the committee, said the Eiland plan marked “the right direction” for Israeli policy in Gaza. “In order to defeat Hamas, we must control the land and the population. There is no other way to victory,” he told the Times of Israel.
The plan does not reveal whether Palestinians could ever return to northern Gaza, one of its backers told CNN.
In October, a leaked document issued by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence recommended the total transfer of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, ensuring they would not be able to return.
The document recommends that Israel evacuate the Gazan population to Sinai during the war, establish tent cities and new cities in northern Sinai to accommodate the deported population, and then create a closed security zone stretching several kilometers inside Egypt. The deported Palestinians would not be allowed to return to any areas near the Israeli border.
In November, Israeli minister Ron Dermer proposed a plan to “thin out” the Gaza population by forcing civilians to flee to Egypt by land or to other parts of Africa and Europe by boat because the “sea is open to them.” Many Israelis wish to conquer and destroy Gaza, ethnically cleanse it of Palestinians, and build settlements for Jews in their place.
Former President Donald Trump said in a new interview that he likely will not run for president again if he loses the 2024 election against Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.
Trump, 78, made the comments during an interview with former CBS News journalist Sharyl Attkisson published on Sept. 22.
“If you’re not successful this time, do you see yourself running again in four years?” she asked the Republican nominee.
“No, I don’t. I think that that will be – that will be it. I don’t see that at all,” Trump said.
“I think that, hopefully, we’re going to be successful [in the 2024 General Election].”
The Epoch Times’ Jack Phillips reports thatin the wide-ranging interview with Attkisson, Trump was also asked about a number of issues, including the economy, inflation, illegal immigration, and the two recent assassination attempts against him.
When asked about his plan to deal with inflation, the former president said: “They come down with energy, and they come down with interest rates. We’re going to get … energy down by 50 percent in 12 months.”
“I’m not just talking about cars. I’m talking about air conditioning, heating, your basic energy, operating a bakery, operating any kind of a business—it’s all having to do with energy.”
Trump also spoke separately to Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade on Sept. 21 about whether he’s concerned about his family’s security in light of the two assassination attempts.
“I do. I do. I don’t talk about it, but I do. I have to worry about family. I have to worry about everybody. I worry about you,” he responded.
Trump then pivoted to illegal immigration, suggesting that millions of people, including convicted criminals, who have come into the United States in recent years have made the country a more dangerous place to live. He made similar, immigration-related comments in his interview with Attkisson.
In the two interviews, Trump provided few details about the two assassination attempts, the most recent of which occurred on Sept. 15 while he was golfing at his Florida golf course. In July, Trump was shot in the ear and narrowly escaped death when a 20-year-old shooter fired at a rally while the former president was speaking in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The FBI is investigating both incidents as assassination attempts against the former president. There have not been any reports indicating that members of Trump’s family have been targeted in similar incidents.
Ryan Routh, the suspect who allegedly tried to assassinate Trump in Florida, is scheduled to make his second court appearance at a federal court on Sept. 23. Prosecutors charged him with firearms-related charges, but he’s likely to face more charges in connection with the apparent assassination attempt.
While Trump was golfing at his West Palm Beach course on Sept. 15, a Secret Service agent spotted a gun barrel sticking through a perimeter fence before shots were fired at Routh, who allegedly fled the scene and was captured on Interstate 95 one county away. The FBI and prosecutors say an SKS-style rifle with a scope, backpacks, food, and a camera were recovered at the site.
Routh, 58, is believed to have been camped at the golf course perimeter for 12 hours, according to prosecutors, citing his cellphone data. Authorities have not publicly commented on a motive.
Numerous social media posts indicate that Routh was an ardent backer of Ukraine in the Russia–Ukraine conflict and had made critical comments about Trump.
In the Pennsylvania shooting, Thomas Matthew Crooks was identified as the shooter. He was shot and killed soon after opening fire at the former president.
Carl Chinn, 65, is a man of deep faith who thought church was a place to go to find peace—until he locked eyes with an angry gunman 28 years ago.
On May 2, 1996, a man carrying a rifle, a handgun, and claiming to have explosives walked into the Focus on the Family ministry in Colorado Springs and took four hostages.
Chinn was one of those hostages, and his experience changed his outlook on the vulnerability of churches from that day forward.
Before then, “security wasn’t even in the back of my mind,” he said.
The suspect, a construction worker, carried out the attack four years after he injured himself while building the ministry’s new 256,000-square-foot facility.
He filed for disability at the time, but his insurance ruled the injury was due to “horseplay” and substantially cut his benefits.
It took four years for the man’s anger to reach critical mass—four years to come back to “exact his form of justice,” Chinn told The Epoch Times.
“He wanted to go out suicide by cop.”
During the hostage situation, the man shot into a wall before police were able to arrest him.
“That was my wake-up call,” Chinn said. “That incident changed the trajectory of my life.”
It also wasn’t the only time he encountered an armed intruder in church.
In 2007, Matthew John Murray, 24, killed two people and wounded two others as he opened fire at a church youth training center in Arvada, Colorado.
Murray evaded law enforcement and later that afternoon he shot and killed two more people and wounded three others at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs before he was fatally shot by a security team member.
Chinn was there on the day of the shooting. He knew one thing about the gunman: “He hated Christians.”
The former building engineer said after the first incident in which he was held hostage, he started reading up on the degree to which attacks were happening in churches across the United States.
Chinn looked at law enforcement databases and found violent attacks were a leading cause of death in churches: Around 1,050 people died out of 2,361 total incidents between 1999 and 2020.
He compiled a list of “deadly force incidents” for the 22-year period and found the No. 1 reason was robbery, with 464 incidents (24.4 percent).
The second-leading cause of fatal force encounters was domestic violence, accounting for nearly 15 percent of all cases.
Five percent of the deadly force incidents were motivated by hatred against houses of worship, Chinn said. Recent incidents show that anti-religious bias is not going away.
On May 5, a man walked up to the pulpit and pointed a gun at Glenn Germany, pastor of the Jesus’ Dwelling Place Church in Braddock, Pennsylvania, while he was preaching.
The man tried to pull the trigger but the gun jammed, according to news reports. Another church member quickly wrestled the gun from him.
In another incident, a man was wounded in the leg after a woman with a history of mental illness began shooting an AK-47 inside the Lakewood Church in Texas on Feb. 11.
Genese Moreno, 36, was killed by police after she opened fire. In a hail of bullets, her 7-year-old son also died.
Chinn, president of the Faith Based Security Network (FBSN) founded in 2017, said that deadly attacks at houses of worship are becoming more commonplace.
He said it’s a sign of the times and an ominous indicator of a society in rapid moral decline.
“We absolutely are seeing more animosity towards faith-based organizations by those who espouse what I would call anti-moral opinions,” Chinn said.
“I believe we are going to continue seeing attacks.”
The FBSN now boasts 800 members from Christian congregations, as well as Jewish synagogues and other religious groups across the nation.
Chinn, who has witnessed a dramatic hardening of public buildings against acts of violence, said attacks against houses of prayer is a growing issue.
“You can hardly walk into a school without being stopped,” Chinn said. “It’s getting harder to do an attack at a school. It’s getting hard to perform an attack on any municipality or government building.”
He said that historically, churches have been the last to shore up their facilities against deadly violence and other potential disruptions
Chinn’s mission as an FBSN instructor of “intentional security readiness” is to make membership organizations “ready, willing, and able to protect the people they love.”
Raising awareness of potential threats, creating security teams and protocols, building security, and using deadly force and non-lethal means are some of the things the FBSN teaches.
“I believe it is an absolute requirement for the coming age,” Chinn said. “I think we’re in for tough times in this country. The divisions are very sharp.”
Chinn found that 118 people had died in 2017 and 88 people died in 2018, according to law enforcement databases. Each year, there were 261 reported incidents.
In 2019, there were 216 total violent incidents and 74 deaths. During the pandemic, there were 178 incidents and 71 deaths.
“I absolutely believe there is a slip in moral character in our country which has lessened the degree of respect for sanctuary-type places,” Chinn said.
“In fact, there’s hatred toward faith-based organizations. There is a cry for something to be more stable. I don’t know what the political solution is.”
Death By Numbers
Each year, the FBI collects data on 49 different types of crime through the National Incident-Based Reporting System with reports from law enforcement agencies in 32 states.
The Dolan Consulting Group, which provides training for law enforcement, examined 17 years of FBI data between 2000 and 2017 and counted 1,652 violent incidents against houses of worship, including robbery, aggravated assault, shootings, stabbings, and bombings.
The 1,652 violent incidents resulted in 155 deaths and 742 injuries over the time period. On average there were 97 incidents per year causing nine deaths and 44 injuries.
“Extrapolating to the whole U.S. population, we estimated that there are actually about 480 incidents of serious violence at places of worship in the U.S. each year,” according to the Dolan Consulting Group.
“These incidents produce about 46 deaths and 218 serious injuries annually. This is a serious problem. As the vast majority of places of worship in the U.S. are Christian churches, it is not surprising that 94 percent of the incidents occurred at Christian churches.”
In 2019, the FBI said that hate crimes motivated by religious bias accounted for 1,650 incidents reported by law enforcement.
Around 60 percent of these incidents were against Jews, 13.3 percent were against Muslims, 4 percent were against Catholics, and 3.6 percent were against other Christians.
Chinn said his organization does not monitor hate crimes, focusing instead on lethal encounters.
“We only track deadly force incidents. When you’re tracking the worst of the worst, the data set changes,” he said.
The Arizona Church Security Network is a group that helps around 300 churches in Arizona with resources and training.
Yellen Meddles: Warns That Policy “Veering Off Course” Could Harm “Economic Trajectory”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that a significant change in current economic policies could damage the American economy.
Writing for The Wall Street Journal in a Sept. 22 article, Yellen said that “veering off course could jeopardize our economic trajectory.”
As Jack Phillips reports via The Epoch Times, Yellen said tax cuts for higher earners “would explode the federal deficit,” repealing investments in “the industries of the future would stunt growth,” and “pursuing nontargeted, nonstrategic international economic policies would raise costs for Americans and cause global turmoil.”
She also touted the federal government’s investments in green energy, calling them “cutting-edge industries,” and praised the vaccination programs launched during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We then navigated additional crises, including the energy shock from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” the U.S. Treasury secretary said.
“And we made critical investments in infrastructure and manufacturing—from clean energy to semiconductors—including in training Americans for jobs in these cutting-edge industries.”
Yellen said these actions helped “reverse the pandemic’s shock to our ability to produce goods and services” and “boosted the economy’s long-run potential output.”
Earlier this month, former President Donald Trump said during an appearance at the Economic Club of New York that he would lead what he described as a “national economic renaissance” by slashing government regulations, increasing tariffs, and cutting government spending as well as corporate taxes if he were to be elected as president in November.
The Republican presidential nominee also proposed a plan to cut down on what he called wasteful government spending and said that he would tap Tesla CEO Elon Musk to head a government efficiency commission.
“I will create a government efficiency commission tasked with completing a complete financial and performance audit of the federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms,” Trump said on Sept. 5.
Vice President Kamala Harris said on Sunday that she would deliver a speech on the economy later this week. There is “more we can do to invest in the aspirations and ambitions of the American people while addressing the challenges they face,” she said.
The Democratic presidential nominee cited the high cost of home ownership and high grocery bills as examples.
“I grew up a middle-class kid and I will never forget where I came from,” the vice president said on Sunday.
In the 2024 contest, Harris has backed away from proposals that she made in her 2020 presidential bid, including banning fracking for natural gas and establishing a single-payer health care system.
Going into November’s election, neither Harris nor Trump has a decisive edge with the public on the economy, according to a Sept. 20 poll by The Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Trump is slightly ahead, with 43 percent of registered voters saying they trust the former president to do a better job handling the economy, while 41 percent of voters chose Harris.
