Florida Governor Ron DeSantis refused to attack Donald Trump this week after the former president critiqued the Republican’s leadership during the Covid pandemic; saying the ultimate verdict is up to the voters.

“I roll out of bed and I have people attacking me from all angles… When you’re an elected executive, you have to steer the ship. People are able to render a judgment on that, whether they re-elect you or not…That verdict has been rendered by the people of the state of Florida,” said DeSantis.

Ron Desantis responds to a question by @henryrodgersdc on recent criticism he's received from Donald Trump:

"People are able to render a judgment on that, whether they re-elect you or not…that verdict has been rendered by the people of the state of Florida." pic.twitter.com/15Ez0SHoSU

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 31, 2023

Watch the Governor’s comments above.

January 31, 2023 at 10:22AM - The First
RON RESPONDS: DeSantis Says ‘Verdict is Up to the Voters’ After Trump Attack
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President Biden repeated a familiar lie during a speech on Monday claiming an Amtrak conductor congratulated him for traveling one million miles on the train commuting between Wilmington, Delaware and Washington, D.C.

Watch Biden tell his tall-tale:

“I was going home as a United States senator–as vice president–and one of the conductors said to me, ‘Hey Joe, big deal, a million–whatever–200–.’ He said, ‘You’ve traveled over a million miles on Amtrak,’ Biden told the audience.

“I said, ‘How the hell do you know that?’ And they added it up there,’ Biden added.

There’s one problem with the story–the conductor who supposedly said this to Biden, Angelo Negroni, retired from Amtrak in 1993 and had died by the time Biden became Vice President.

The Associated Press fact-checked the story back in 2021:

It’s plausible that Biden logged 1.2 million train miles as vice president by early 2016, based on accounts around the time by Biden and David Lienemann, the vice president’s official photographer. But Negri had long retired as an Amtrak conductor, in 1993, and died in May 2014.

This is the eighth time Biden has repeated this false story publicly since being elected president.

January 31, 2023 at 09:57AM - The First
LIAR IN CHIEF: Biden Repeats Debunked Story About Amtrak Conductor
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Joe Biden confused countless Americans this week when he claimed he rode “more than a million miles” on Amtrak while serving as Vice President.

“When I was Vice President I flew over a million miles on Air Force Two. I was uh, going home as a Senator… uh, Vice President… One of the conductors said to me, Big Deal, a million, whatever, two hundred, said you’ve traveled over a million miles on Amtrak… They added it up, out there… Folks look,” claimed the President.

Watch the bizarre address above.

January 31, 2023 at 09:03AM - The First
NOT A JOKE! Biden Mumbles Through Bizarre Rant About Trains
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

Senator Elizabeth Warren ignored the Constitution this week when she called for the District of Columbia to be admitted to the Union as an independent state.

D.C. should be a state.

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) January 30, 2023

The Democrat’s comments are a direct rebuke of the United States Constitution.

Article I, Section 8 states:

“To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings.”

January 31, 2023 at 08:41AM - The First
WHAT CONSTITUTION? Warren Says ‘DC Should Be a State’
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

Memphis, in 2021, had over 300 murders. In 2019, the city’s murder rate per 100,000 was 29.21, according to FBI data. That put it in the top ten violent cities in America. Atlanta was number 22, with a rate of 19.53. In 2021, Cerelyn Davis, Memphis’ first Black chief of police, initiated the SCORPION (“Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods”) unit to clean up the city. It was a spectacular success, until it wasn’t.

By May, 2022, Davis touted SCORPION as the key to her crime reduction effort. From the New York Times:

“We created the new Scorpion unit,” she said, adding: “This unit basically targets some of the hot-spot areas where we saw frequent aggravated assaults and high crime.”

Activists opposed SCORPION because of its heavy-handed methods and “mass pullovers” to root out crime. The unit relied heavily on traffic stops to seize drugs, weapons, and to arrest those who possessed them illegally. Let’s think about that. Anyone—not an expert on policing—who thinks this through might realize it could only end the way it did, with tragedy. If it wasn’t Tyre Nichols’ death, it would have been someone else. Given everything we’ve seen in the news about policing at the city and community level, programs that rely on groups of officers conducting stop, search and seizure arrests day after day inevitably overstep their mandate, typically with very poor, even deadly, results.

Someone is going to run from the police. The police are going to chase them, catch them, and force them to comply. I don’t know all of the details about Tyre Nichols: Why he was stopped; why officers didn’t just send a unit to watch his mother’s house, which was just blocks away from where he was caught and beaten. Since six officers have now been relieved of duty, five have been charged with murder, and the entire SCORPION unit has been disbanded, we can assume Nichols didn’t threaten officers’ safety in such a way as to justify their reaction.

But it’s not just an isolated incidence of “bad policing” here. It’s certainly not racism, at least not in the traditional sense of the word, since the five officers charged are all Black. It’s not even really a denouncement of so-called “police culture.”

“Changing a rule doesn’t change a behavior,” said Katie Ryan, chief of staff for Campaign Zero, a group of academics, policing experts and activists working to end police violence. “The culture of a police department has to shift into actually implementing the policies, not just saying there’s a rule in place.”

Well, the policy of the Memphis PD was to “clean up the streets.” We see how that worked out. 

We always see how it works out when “the streets” are targeted zones where Black people live their lives every day, and “clean up” means stop the maximum number of people for small infractions, to catch enough people that would make certain planned activities, like drug sales, gang activity, robberies and other property crime, more difficult and therefore more likely to be conducted elsewhere—as in outside the city limits. The streets get “cleaned up” in Memphis (or Boston, or Washington, D.C., or Atlanta) but the crime continues, just somewhere else. 

It works until someone is killed because the squad doing the cleaning up gets comfortable with chasing, collaring, and “roughing up” their targets.

After the tragedy, comes the backlash.

Now comes the “defund” protestors, who have their own brand of violence. Then the very cities the leaders sought to clean up end up drenched in blood, or ashes.

There’s a pattern here, but politicians who run on a “law and order” platform, and the senior police officials who work for them, refuse to see it because they want to give the citizens “safe” streets—meaning the citizens who are loudest about crime, until the protestors are louder.

Memphis was just another city going through the same pattern as Baltimore, Minneapolis, or Atlanta. The cities are different but the patterns are the same. They lead to a vicious cycle which not only damages the communities where “clean up” squads operate, but also the police as an institution.

Like in Atlanta. In June 2020, protestors burned a Wendy’s restaurant where Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old Black man, was shot and killed by an officer while Brooks was attempting to flee with the officer’s taser weapon. That episode led to the resignation of Erika Shields, the police chief at the time. Shields, who is white, is now the chief of the Louisville, Kentucky police department. She was very popular with the street beat cops.

The officer who shot Brooks, Garrett Rolfe, was terminated and charges were filed. Less than a year later, and an appeal to the Atlanta Civil Service Board, Rolfe was reinstated, because he “was not offered his right to due process.” By August of 2022, prosecutors dropped charges after it was determined the shooting was justified given the circumstances. But the damage to APD was done. Hundreds of officers fled to other jurisdictions, retired, or left law enforcement for good. The department, according to Chief Rodney Bryant, is short 500 officers.

The pattern continues when officers don’t want to serve in an environment where they are told to “clean up” crime and then someone messes up, and the pendulum swings back toward “defund,” making cops become mental health counselors, and creating byzantine rules of what can be done when, in situations where seconds determine if an officer is a victim, or a violent criminal escapes to terrorize more innocents. Remember that officers do this job day in, day out. They are lied to, threatened, and find themselves in situations where any traffic stop could lead to their own death. If they’re wrong, they could lose their job, or their freedom.

It’s easy to prosecute five cops who beat an unarmed man to death. It’s harder when someone like Garrett Rolfe did the right thing and the department was shaken to its core. But Atlanta needs 500 officers or the whole place will continue to be overrun with violent crime—including fifteen-year-olds shooting a security guard at a high-end mall.

To entice new recruits to serve in Atlanta, in the fall of 2021 then-Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms accepted a proposal to utilize 90 acres of land known as the South River Forest as a new police training facility. The “forest” sits a few blocks from Zoo Atlanta, just outside city limits but inside the “perimeter” loop of Interstate 285 which forms a belt around the city. 

The land boasts a sketchy history: first as a site in the infamous Trail of Tears that saw the expulsion of the Creek Indian tribes, then as plantation land worked by slaves, and for a large part of the 20th century, a prison farm run by the City of Atlanta.

The Atlanta Police Foundation, which is funded by some well-known wealthy Atlantans such as Alex Taylor, CEO of Cox Enterprises, proposed a $90 million plan—$30 million to be paid by the city—to construct an advanced law enforcement training center on South River Forest land. Opposition was fierce. After 14 hours of mostly critical public comments, the City Council approved the proposal, including current Mayor Andre Dickens, who voted for it.

“We’re at this juncture where yes, the vote didn’t go the way that we wanted to, but also, we have built this community and we have activated this community of people who care about this issue and are not going to stop talking about it. We’re not going anywhere,” [climate activist Shehza] Anjum said Wednesday night.

Current Mayor Dickens, a Democrat, ran on a law-and-order platform. Dickens is an engineer with a Georgia Tech education, and he believes he can use critical thinking skills to get out of this cycle of crime and police brutality. Governor Brian Kemp is a White Republican; Dickens is a Black Democrat and they both agree that the South River Forest project is needed, and that protestors won’t stop it.

Anyone could see where this leads. The squatters and their fellow travelers resorted to more and more disruptive and violent behavior as the plans to construct the training facility proceeded. On social media, protestors, some who are associated with Antifa, and many who came from out of state, promoted a “Night of Rage” on January 20th.

"CALL FOR RETALIATION"

Pittsburgh #Antifa propaganda group @PghAutonomy is calling for deadly violence against police & others after one of their comrades was shot dead after shooting a @ga_dps officer outside the #Atlanta autonomous zone. #StopCopCity https://t.co/rWBT9inMuD pic.twitter.com/ilWmA2rzEW

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) January 19, 2023

Far-left group @unoffensive112 is sharing the call for deadly vengeance against police over the shooting death of their comrade at the Atlanta autonomous zone. The militant shot a state trooper before being shot dead by returning police fire. #Antifa https://t.co/w3mTW0ZO7P pic.twitter.com/6QuVVocYAK

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) January 19, 2023

The news is now filled with homages to the protestor who was killed by police when the Georgia Bureau of Investigation acted to expel the squatters. (Just Google “south forest protestors shot at police.”) The man, called “Tortuguita,” is described as a 26-year-old “beloved queer community organizer,” a “forest defender.” There is an argument over who shot first: the Georgia State Patrol claims they returned fire after an officer was shot.

“Tortuguita” has a real name, Manuel Esteban Paez Terán. He is a Venezuelan who attended Florida State University in Tallahassee, having graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in psychology in 2020. He was a leftist activist. Someone shot first, and a GSP officer was struck with a bullet; his body armor saved his life. Such a waste of human potential. In another version of history, someone like Terán—also known as “Manny”—would have been an ideal recruit for a police department interested in defusing situations instead of using overwhelming force.

The protestors are not afraid to burn, shoot, and bully their way into eliciting a response from the authorities. Gov. Kemp has declared a state of emergency over the situation in the South River Forest, which authorizes the activation of up to 1,000 National Guard. It’s hard to escalate beyond the use of military force.

It seems the pattern is hard to break. Citizens want to live free from rampant crime and violence. Politicians vow to clean things up. Police are set on a course where things appear to work, and eventually they make a mistake, because that kind of policing—stop, search, and detain—leads to people who run or fight. Then there’s the backlash. Then there’s the flight of police officers. Then there’s the vow to build a better police force, and the cycle starts over again.

To me, the problem is a political one. Politicians lack the will and the staying power to properly manage policing. I don’t know the solution, but perhaps having a separate structure for public safety, wholly separate from the politics, might be a good place to start. I am a firm believer in federalism, local rule, and local solutions to local problems. But sometimes, a problem is too big to fix locally. When local police become corrupt, the state can act to take over policing.

What should the state, or this nation, do when a large city department succumbs to the vicious cycle of police violence, regression, reactionary leniency, an eruption of crime, then recruiting like mad, attracting more violent, overzealous officers, and right back to brutality? We need to answer this question before every city in America has its own version of SCORPION, Tyre Nichols, and the South River Forest raid.

Follow Steve on Twitter @stevengberman.

The First TV contributor network is a place for vibrant thought and ideas. Opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of The First or The First TV. We want to foster dialogue, create conversation, and debate ideas. See something you like or don’t like? Reach out to the author or to us at [email protected]. 

January 31, 2023 at 05:22AM - Steve Berman
COP CITY: Memphis Is About to Have an Atlanta-Sized Problem | Steve Berman
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Jesse Kelly takes a deep dive into the Doolittle Raid, the 1942 American bombing raid on the Japanese mainland during World War II, led by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle.

Part 1:

Part 2:

January 30, 2023 at 02:06PM - Nick Rizzuto
Jesse Kelly’s History Lesson: The Doolittle Raid
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

Auron MacIntyre is The Blaze contributor that has his own unique name to what Jesse calls the System: The TOTAL State. Rightly named, the Total State seeks to control all aspects of the American peoples’ lives, from what they see on TV to what product they buy, in effort to shuffle individuals into the publicly-accepted belief system and behavior. All-in-all, it is a subtle way of making you afraid to appear as an outcast, giving you little choice but to follow the rulebook to ensure societal acceptance.

January 30, 2023 at 01:51PM - The First
The Total State Controls All Aspects Of Your Life
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

The Department of Justice confirmed Monday that the agency could not release information related to Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified material because doing so could jeopardize the Special Counsel’s ongoing investigation.

From Fox News:

The Justice Department told House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on Monday that it could not disclose information related to the special counsel investigation into President Biden’s improper retention of classified documents because doing so could jeopardize the probe.

Jordan, R-Ohio, launched his first formal investigation as chair of the House Judiciary Committee into Biden’s “mishandling” of classified records and the DOJ’s investigation.

Jordan announced the panel’s investigation after Attorney General Merrick Garland picked former U.S. attorney Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate the matter—escalating it to a formal investigation from a mere review as more classified records were discovered at the president’s Delaware home.

In a letter to Garland, Jordan and Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., demanded answers on the appointment of a special counsel, and questioned the alleged concealment of information by the DOJ. Jordan is demanding all documents and communications regarding the appointment of Hur and between the DOJ and the FBI related to the classified materials.

January 30, 2023 at 01:33PM - The First
BREAKING NOW: DOJ Will Not Cooperate with Jim Jordan’s Probe into Biden
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Economists revised the economic price tag associated with Joe Biden’s plan to cancel student debt this week, saying the proposal would cost taxpayers more than $361 billion over the next decade.

From Fox News:

A key part of President Biden’s student loan debt plan that would cut the monthly bill for certain borrowers could cost up to $361 billion over the next decade, according to new findings from the Penn Wharton Budget Model.   

The proposed rule from the Education Department would overhaul one of the income-driven repayment plans – known as REPAYE – by further reducing borrowers’ payments to a certain percentage of their discretionary income. 

“We cannot return to the same broken system we had before the pandemic, when a million borrowers defaulted on their loans a year and snowballing interest left millions owing more than they initially borrowed,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement.

The plan would reduce monthly obligations for undergraduate borrowers by as much as half, according to the White House; a typical graduate from a four-year university could save as much as $2,000 annually under the plan. 

January 30, 2023 at 12:22PM - The First
REPORT: Economists Say Biden’s Plan to Cancel Student Debt Will Cost Taxpayers $361 BILLION
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Former President Donald Trump unloaded with both barrels on Ron DeSantis early Monday morning, accusing the Florida Governor of being a “globalist” and “unapologetically shutting down Florida and its beaches.”

“Ron DeSanctimonious, who I made Governor in BOTH the Primary & the General, is also a Globalist, & so are his donors,” Trump told followers on his Truth Social platform. “Jeb ‘Low Energy’ Bush was next to him last week. Check PAST!” Bush, the former Governor of Florida, was seated near DeSantis during his inauguration earlier in January.

Trump also criticized DeSantis’ COVID response, something that has earned him praise amongst many conservatives.

“The revelations about Ron DeSanctimonious doing FAR WORSE than many other Republican governors, including that he unapologetically shut down Florida and its beaches, was interesting, indeed,” Trump wrote. “DJT leading BIG!!!!”

Trump’s criticism of DeSantis’s brief closing of beaches in Florida is receiving some pushback. While Governor DeSantis was reopening beaches in April of 2020, Trump was criticizing Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who was reopening hair and nail salons, barbershops, gyms, tattoo parlors and bowling alleys of his state at the same time.

“I told the governor of Georgia Brian Kemp that I disagree strongly with his decision to open certain facilities which are in violation of the phase one guidelines,” Trump said at a White House coronavirus task force press briefing on April 22, 2020. During that same briefing, Trump threatened to intervene if Kemp stepped “out of line” with his administration’s guidelines.

“[I]f I see something totally egregious, totally out of line, I’ll do (something),” Trump told the press.

WATCH--FLASHBACK: Trump Criticizes Georgia for Reopening in April of 2020:

January 30, 2023 at 10:48AM - The First
Trump Unloads on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV