A stock photo of a judge’s gavel. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Politics

By Jack Phillips March 14, 2021 Updated: March 14, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

One of the Democratic Party’s top lawyers, Marc Elias, was hit with sanctions by a federal court for an ethics violation and for submitting a “redundant and misleading” filing.

Marc Elias, a lawyer for Perkins Coie who was involved in elections-related lawsuits during the 2020 elections, was punished and criticized by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit on Thursday. Several of his colleagues were also admonished.

“Appellees did not notify the court that their latest motion to supplement the record filed on February 10, 2021 was nearly identical to the motion to supplement the record filed several months ago by the same attorneys, on September 29, 2020. Critically, Appellees likewise failed to notify the court that their previous and nearly identical motion was denied,” Judge Edith Clement and Judge Jennifer Elrod ruled (pdf). “This inexplicable failure to disclose the earlier denial of their motion violated their duty of candor to the court.”

Elias and the other Perkins Coie LLP attorneys were ordered to pay legal fees and “double costs” to Texas, the order stipulated. The judges also suggested that the lawyers review the section of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct on “Candor Toward the Tribunal” and complete an hour of “Continuing Legal Education in the area of Ethics and Professionalism, specifically candor with the court.”

Perkins Coie told Bloomberg News that it still backs Elias, who notably hired the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which then hired British ex-spy Christopher Steele in 2016—whose infamous dossier, which contained unverified claims and falsehoods, was used by the FBI to surveil former President Donald Trump’s campaign in the “Crossfire Hurricane” operation.

“We do not normally respond to requests for comment on pending litigation, but the firm and the attorneys involved in this matter strongly disagree with the appellate court’s ruling and its order of sanctions in this case,” the firm said in a statement. “The firm fully and completely supports our attorneys in this case.”

In 2020, Elias led a team of attorneys to file lawsuits to expand ballot access in swing states during the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic. Republicans and Trump himself criticized Elias, saying that he was being used by Democrats to “steal” the 2020 election.

The Perkins Coie lawyers represented the Texas Alliance for Retired Americans, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in a suit against Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughes, who was represented by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, according to the Washington Examiner.

They argued that a Democratic bid to re-impose straight-ticket voting in Texas is “shaky” and said Democrats have no evidence. The court ultimately agreed with the Texas Secretary of State’s office and rebuffed the Democrats.

“Elias has no valid explanation for the misleading submissions to the Fifth Circuit. Even when they were notified that they violated ethical rules, they refused to withdraw their motion. They were aware of their violations and blatantly chose to ignore them,” Paxton said Friday in a statement. “I thank the Court for issuing these much-needed sanctions. Perkins Coie cannot continue to mislead the Court, especially in a matter as important as election integrity.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to Elias for comment.Help us spread the truth. Share this article with your friends.

An Aztec dancer participates in a march on May 1, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (David McNew/Getty Images) US News

By GQ Pan March 12, 2021 Updated: March 12, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

The California Department of Education has proposed a new curriculum that would involve teachers leading students in prayers to Aztec gods in an effort to build unity in the classroom.

The latest draft of the proposed Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, which will undergo a vote for approval next week, seeks to “center and place high values” of the traditions and experiences of the pre-Columbian America, and to critique “white supremacy and racism” that led to their marginalization in the modern world.

This guiding narrative is reflected in the design of sample lessons and various class activities, including the model curriculum’s official “ethnic studies community chant,” in which students directly appeal to the deities of the Aztec pantheon for the power to become “warriors” of “love, ecological and social justice.”

In the community chant of “In Lak Ech,” which translates to “You Are My Other Me,” teachers are instructed to first lead the group of students in chanting and clapping to Tezkatlipoka, a cannibalistic wizard-god who, according to the Aztec tradition, brought the downfall to the Toltec civilization in favor of the human-sacrificing Aztecs.

The students then chant to other deities including Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec sun god, seeking “healing epistemologies” and a “revolutionary spirit.” Seeing themselves as people of the sun, the Aztecs believed that Huitzilopochtli needed daily nourishment of human blood and hearts, and brutally sacrificed hundreds of thousands of people in offering to him.

The chant ends with a request for “liberation, transformation, decolonization,” after which students shout “Panche beh! Panche beh!” which translates to “seeking the roots of the truth” or “think critically.”

The document includes a linked to a video showing what a unity chant looks like in practice. The video was taken at Social Justice Humanitas Academy in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where many indigenous songs and chants like In Lak Ech were developed.

Christopher Rufo, the journalist who first reported about the chant to Aztec gods promoted by California’s new curriculum, wrote in his City Journal article that such practice almost certainly violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause that prohibits the state from showing a preference for one religion over others.

“Public schools are prohibited from leading state-sanctioned Christian prayers; they would presumably be similarly prohibited from leading state-sanctioned chants to the Aztec god of human sacrifice,” Rufo wrote.

The curriculum, if approved, would serve as guide to California’s K-12 education system of more than 6 million students. It was originally proposed in 2019 as a part of the state’s effort to teach students about the accomplishments of non-Christian people, groups, and ethnic minorities to address “issues of ethnicity, identity, service, and social justice.”Help us spread the truth. Share this article with your friends

Border Patrol agents apprehend a busload of illegal immigrants in Penitas, Texas, on March 10, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) US News

By Jack Phillips March 14, 2021 Updated: March 14, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said that the White House has refused to tell Texas officials how many illegal immigrants who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border have tested positive for COVID-19.

When asked in a Fox News interview on Sunday about whether illegal immigrants are spreading the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes the COVID-19 disease, the Republican governor responded, “I have not seen any data about what the COVID rate is” while adding that agents have reported to his office that there are illegal immigrants coming across the border with the virus.

“We need the total number of migrants who have been apprehended at the border who have tested positive for COVID-19,” Abbott said, accusing the Biden administration of having “refused” and “failed to give to our state the total number of migrants who have COVID-19.”

“We expect that data,” Abbott added.

In recent weeks, the number of border crossings and the number of illegal immigrants held in federal facilities has sharply increased, with Republicans like Abbott saying that it’s being driven by President Joe Biden’s relaxation in immigration policies.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said that it had 100,441 enforcement encounters at the southwest border, which is almost triple the enforcement actions from February 2020 when Border Patrol encountered about 36,687 individuals. It’s also significantly higher than the 76,545 encounters in February 2019, which was at the beginning of the last border crisis.

It comes as the Biden administration on Saturday announced that it has directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the U.S. southwest border in response to the arrival of “record numbers” of illegal immigrants, including unaccompanied minors.

“I am incredibly proud of the agents of the Border Patrol, who have been working around the clock in difficult circumstances to take care of children temporarily in our care. Yet, as I have said many times, a Border Patrol facility is no place for a child,” Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.

“We are working in partnership with HHS to address the needs of unaccompanied children, which is made only more difficult given the protocols and restrictions required to protect the public health and the health of the children themselves. Our goal is to ensure that unaccompanied children are transferred to HHS as quickly as possible, consistent with legal requirements and in the best interest of the children,” Mayorkas added, referring to the Department of Health and Human Services.

And in early March, about 108 illegal immigrants released by Border Patrol into Texas over a several-week period tested positive for the CCP virus, officials said.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the DHS, which oversees CBP, for comment.

Janita Kan contributed to this report.Help us spread the truth. Share this article with your friends.

Amazon workers are seen at a facility in Douai, France on Feb. 2, 2021. (Michael Spingler/AP Photo) Censorship & Socialism

By Petr Svab March 12, 2021 Updated: March 12, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

The author of a book that criticizes transgender ideology, has said Amazon banned the book from its inventory based on a false argument.

Amazon quietly removed the book, titled “When Harry Became Sally,” last month without explanation. When probed for the reason by several Republican senators, the online retail giant said it has chosen to not sell books “that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness,” in a March 11 letter to the lawmakers obtained by The Wall Street Journal (pdf).

But the book does no such thing, author Ryan Anderson told The Epoch Times.

“Nowhere have I ever said or framed LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness,” he said via email. “The phrase ‘mental illness’ does occur in the book twice—but not in my own voice: once quoting a ‘transwoman’ writing in The New York Times, and once quoting the current university distinguished service professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins.”

Anderson makes a distinction between transgenderism, which he describes as a belief system that’s in major part political, and gender dysphoria, an established mental condition of extreme and persevering discomfort with one’s biological sex. He acknowledges that the discomfort is genuine, not imagined.

“The book also discusses the American Psychiatric Association’s classification of gender dysphoria in the most recent edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Amazon, curiously, still sells that. Gender dysphoria is listed in the most widely respected and consulted book on psychiatric disorders because it is a serious condition that causes great suffering,” he said.

“There is a debate, however, which Amazon is seeking to shut down, about how best to help patients who experience gender dysphoria. ‘When Harry Became Sally’ is an important contribution, praised by medical experts, to that conversation. Amazon’s delisting of it cuts off vital political and cultural discussion about important matters when we need it most.”

Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The claim that the book portrays transgender people as mentally ill has been repeated multiple times since its publication three years ago.

The Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon, ran a story about the book on Feb. 2, 2018, making several false statements that were removed later that day. The article was furnished with a short notice that it “has been updated.”

Matthew Franck, associate director of the James Madison Program at Princeton University who reviewed Anderson’s book, called the article “a journalistic disgrace,” in a series of tweets at the time.

“The newspaper needs to do much more than an anodyne note about an ‘update,’” he said.

Recently, he commented on Twitter that Amazon’s explanation proves its ignorance about the book.

Anderson also noted the parallel with the Post article.

“Three years ago Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post made false statements about me and my book … Now Bezos-owned Amazon is repeating those falsehoods as justification for cancelling my book,” he commented in a March 12 tweet, referring to Amazon’s chief executive Jeff Bezos.

He noted that Amazon’s censorship move comes during a major push to enshrine transgender ideology in law.

“The timing of Amazon’s move is highly suspicious, coming the weekend before Congress voted on a radical transgender bill—the so-called ‘Equality Act’—of which I am one of the most out-spoken critics,” he said in the email. “It seems that Amazon is using its massive power to distort the marketplace of ideas and is deceiving its own customers.”

The act would allow men who identify as women to compete in womens sports as well as women’s locker rooms, restrooms, and showers at any establishment providing service to the public, including schools. It explicitly invalidates religious objections, meaning religious institutions could be forced to hire homosexuals, undermining precepts in orthodox religions against homosexual behavior.

Roughly coinciding with its censorship of Anderson’s book, Amazon updated its policy to ban books that contain “hate speech.” It hasn’t specified what would fall under that label.

The move fits into a pattern across American society of censoring certain political perspectives using methods that result in a culture of self-censorship. A large part of that censorship is imposed by big tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and Google.

“Big Tech offers the Left the holy grail of speech regulation: censorship with no accountability to voters and no constitutional restraints,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) commented in a March 11 tweet. “This is why liberals not-so-secretly love these monopolies. They do the Left’s bidding.”

Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Ken Buck (R-Colo.) recently requested Amazon hand over documents and communications related to censorship and content policing activities. They gave the company until March 25 to respond. Follow Petr on Twitter: @petrsvabHelp us spread the truth. Share this article with your friends

The logo of Google is displayed on a carpet at the entrance hall of Google in Paris, France, on Nov. 18, 2019. (Michel Euler/AP Photo) Censorship & Socialism

By Masooma Haq March 12, 2021 Updated: March 12, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Clay Travis, founder of conservative sports website Outkick Media, says that big tech companies have too much power and are infringing on Americans’ First Amendment rights.

“Big Tech controls the country. And they control the country by deciding what you see. And Big Tech’s power is only growing in the wake of Joe Biden’s election,” Travis told lawmakers at the House Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law Subcommittee at a hearing Friday.

Travis recounted how after President Donald Trump joined his radio show on Aug. 11, 2020, on Outkick the Coverage, traffic for the website soared only to crash the next day.

“Because Facebook killed our traffic. Overnight, our readership vanished on their site. We lost 68 percent of our Facebook users and 76 percent of our new users on the site,” Travis told lawmakers.

He said his team concluded that because of the positive coverage of Trump, his organization was censored and lost thousands of dollars in revenue. Travis said the data from his site proved this.

“If we wrote too often and too favorably about the president, Facebook punished our site,” Travis said during the hearing titled “Reviving Competition, Part 2: Saving the Free and Diverse Press.”

“If we didn’t mention Trump very much, our site traffic grew. The power of Facebook was clear and their message was too: if you post content we don’t like, your audience will vanish.”

As a part of the effort to “save free press,” Antitrust committee Chairman David Cicilline (D-R.I.) and Ranking Member Ken Buck (R-Colo.) reintroduced the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act (JCP Act) in the House this week. The bill creates a temporary safe harbor for smaller news publishers to negotiate fees with online platforms like Google and Facebook—that share their content for free.

Another witness at the hearing, Microsoft President Brad Smith, who said he supports the JCP Act House legislation, criticized Google’s dominance in the digital advertising market.

“News organizations have ad inventory to sell, but they can no longer sell directly to those who want to place ads. Instead, for all practical purposes, they must use Google’s tools, operate on Google’s ad exchanges, contribute data to Google’s operations, and pay Google money,” Smith said in his written testimony.

A companion bill to the JCP Act was also introduced this week in the Senate by Antitrust Subcommittee Chair Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.).

Chairman Cicilline said that this bill would be one in a series of bills that would attempt to reign in Big Tech’s monopoly. He said part of the reason for having the hearing was to see how to improve the bill that was recently introduced.

“Those who won our independence believed that public discussion is a political duty, that the greatest threat to freedom is an uninformed citizenry,” said Cicilline. “And that the freedom of thought and speech is indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth.”

Ranking Member Buck said Big Tech has too much power to decide what information and news consumers get.

“We are now seeing Big Tech making content-related decisions for people around the world, including here in the United States. What content is available to a free citizenry is driven and shaped by the political agendas of these tech corporations, not consumer preferences,” he said.

Others who testified at Friday’s hearing were News Media Alliance President & CEO David Chavern; Graham Media CEO Emily Barr; NewsGuild President Jonathan Schleuss; and journalist and lawyer Glenn Greenwald.Help us spread the truth. Share this article with your friends

President Donald Trump walks off stage after an address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held in the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 28, 2021. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Donald Trump

By Samuel Allegri March 13, 2021 Updated: March 14, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

The Alabama GOP gave former President Donald Trump a framed copy of a resolution the party passed unanimously, declaring him to be “one of the greatest and most effective presidents” in the history of the United States.

The framed resolution was presented to Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday evening.

“Whereas, President Donald J. Trump was one of the greatest and most effective presidents in the 245-year history of this Republic,” the resolution honoring Trump reads at the start.

“President Trump put the American people and the American worker first in all his decisions and policies,” it continues.

It then goes on to mention other achievements by the 45th president, such as “Operation Warp Speed,” the largest tax cuts in American history, and withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), replacing them with the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA.)

“The resolution, basically, it just talks about the greatness of Donald J. Trump, how he made America great again and I hope other states will follow suit,” Perry Hooper Jr., a member of the state party’s executive committee, told Fox News.

Hooper was Trump’s Alabama campaign co-chairman in 2016 and worked on Trump’s campaign finance committee ahead of the 2020 election.

“He’s just done so many great things,” Hooper said. “I was a kid when Reagan was elected and I thought nobody would top the great things Ronald Reagan did. But then comes along Donald J Trump and in my opinion, he’s not just one of the great presidents, he is the greatest president we’ve had in America.”

The resolution also praises Trump for standing up to China and revitalizing American manufacturing.

“He stood up to China,” the resolution states, “bringing back manufacturing industry to the U.S. and by increasing ‘made in the U.S.A.’ production while securing access to new markets for America’s farmers.”

The article also mentions his building up of the military and assigning 220 federal judges “who will interpret the Constitution as written,” as well as confirming three judges to the Supreme court.

It says that Trump showed “strength and leadership” internationally by withdrawing from the “shady” Iran nuclear deal and installing the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.

“President Trump accomplished more in 48 months than Joe Biden did in 48 years as a senator and vice president,” the resolution reads.Help us spread the truth. Share this article with your friends.

People stand in the lobby for Amazon offices in New York, N.Y., on Feb. 14, 2019. (Mark Lennihan/AP Photo) Congress

By Mimi Nguyen Ly March 12, 2021 Updated: March 12, 2021

Two Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee are asking Amazon to answer to allegations of “systemic viewpoint-based discrimination” against conservative viewpoints.

In a letter to current Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Ken Buck (R-Colo.) requested that the prominent cloud services provider turn over documents and information on its alleged censorship activities.

“Big Tech, including Amazon, is engaged in systematic viewpoint-based discrimination. In the unfortunate phenomenon of ‘cancel culture,’ Amazon plays a leading role in silencing and censoring the political speech of conservative Americans,” the lawmakers wrote.

They added, “In just the last several months, Amazon has exhibited a pattern of curtailing, censoring, and removing from its platforms content that espouses conservative viewpoints.”

Jordan is the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee and Buck is the top Republican on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust.

The two allege that Amazon has been “exerting editorial control” over content on its platforms in a way that is “biased against conservatives and conservative viewpoints.”

They listed out several alleged editorial decisions by Amazon that “give the appearance of a coordinated effort to cancel conservative speech” on the big tech company’s platforms.

Three incidences occurred in June 2020. In one instance, Amazon “refused to allow” advertising for a book that was critical of transgender ideology, the two noted. In another case, Amazon’s Kindle e-book self-publishing platform refused to publish a booklet that challenged certain prevailing views on the efficacy of lockdowns imposed amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

In yet another instance of the same month, Amazon temporarily banned President Donald Trump’s account from its video streaming service, Twitch, over comments he made at political rallies. Amazon later disabled Trump’s account indefinitely from Twitch after the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.

Another incident cited by the two GOP Reps include Amazon’s de-platforming of Parler, a competitor to social platform Twitter, that is popular among conservatives.

Jordan and Buck asked the company to produce documents by 5 p.m. on March 25 on seven alleged cases of censorship against conservative viewpoints.

Amazon and Bezos didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment from The Epoch Times. Bezos earlier this year said he is set to step down as CEO in the fall, to be replaced by Andy Jassy, who currently runs the company’s cloud computing business.

Judiciary Committee chair Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Antitrust Subcommittee chair Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), were copied on the letter.

The letter to Amazon comes just over a week after Jordan called on Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, to hold a public committee hearing on “cancel culture,” which would be the first of its kind. Nadler’s office at the time did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.Read MoreJim Jordan Urges Jerry Nadler to Combat the Rise of ‘Cancel Culture’ in America

Jordan, who focused on cancel culture in his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in late February, told The Epoch Times’ American Thought Leaders that free speech won’t exist if the left is the only entity that is allowed to define what speech is.

“That’s the scariest thing happening in the country. If you can’t have a First Amendment real debate, if you can’t speak out, how are you going to win. How are you going to win the tax debate? How are you going to win the border security debate? How are you going to win in any public policy issue? If only one side is allowed to talk? So that’s why we have to fight this more than anything else,” he said.

Public sentiment against big tech censorship and cancel culture has grown louder following the censorship of former Trump and other conservatives, especially in the lead up to and aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, and following the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, amid allegations of voting irregularities and election fraud, and the New York Post’s unfavorable report about then-candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

Online platforms have been accused of using their powers to stamp out or suppress speech they don’t agree with. Trump and a number of other GOP lawmakers have, since last year repeatedly called to limit or remove legal liability protections under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act for companies that are believed to have censored viewpoints they don’t like.

Janita Kan contributed to this report. Follow Mimi on Twitter: @MimiNguyenLyHelp us spread the truth. Share this article with your friends.

A woman rides past the barricades of the “autonomous zone” near where George Floyd died in May 2020, in Minneapolis, on March 10, 2021. (Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images) US News

By Tom Ozimek March 11, 2021 Updated: March 11, 2021

The so-called “autonomous zone” around the site in Minneapolis where George Floyd died last year has become a threat to public safety and a danger to residents and businesses, a police association says.

Retired Sgt. Betsy Brantner Smith, spokeswoman for the National Police Association (NPA), told Fox News in an interview on March 11 about recent incidents around the intersection of E. 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, renamed George Floyd Square in memory of Floyd’s police-custody death.

“George Floyd Square is now an autonomous zone. They just had a homicide there,” Smith told the outlet, adding that violence in the barricaded area has been a constant problem since riots rocked Minneapolis last summer.

Police said a man was shot and killed in the area on March 6. Minneapolis Police Department spokesman John Elder told local outlet KSTP that responding officers “were met with interference” when they approached the zone’s barricades.

Miami-based reporter Brian Entin was recording material outside the zone’s barricades when he was accosted by two activists demanding that he leave.

“You’re going to be in a bad situation here in a second,” one of the activists can be heard saying in the video. “You’re being called out for what you are and you need to get out of here,” the person says.

Entin later interviewed the aunt of 30-year-old Imez Wright, the man who was shot and killed inside the zone.

“Were police able to get in and help him?” Entin asked.

“Police were not allowed to get into that area,” replied the woman, who wasn’t identified by name in the report, who added that her nephew was carried outside the zone before being taken to the hospital, where he later died from his wounds.

She said law enforcement “was not welcome” inside the zone, which she called an “atrocity,” suggesting that her nephew might have survived “had things been different.”

Asked about the atmosphere inside the zone, the woman described it as “volatile” and “militant” and that people wanting to go and support the initiative aren’t particularly welcome.

In her remarks to Fox News, Smith also said there are businesses around George Floyd Square “that get robbed by the same people two to three times a week” and that people inside the zone “just can’t get police services.”

She said the problem is most acute in the vicinity of the Third Precinct, which was burned down.

Retired Seattle police officer Steve Pomper, in a March 9 post on NPA’s website, blamed local authorities for being too lenient.

“The key takeaway here, for everyone, is SPD [Seattle Police Department] officers swiftly reclaimed their police station (unlike Minneapolis, Seattle still had a station to reclaim) and tossed CHOP/CHAZ into the anarcho-communist ash heap of history,” Pomper wrote, referring to Seattle’s now-defunct autonomous zone by its two acronyms—the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest and the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.

“In Minneapolis, insurrectionists destroyed an MPD [Minneapolis Police Department] precinct because the mayor wouldn’t allow the cops to do what they’re trained to do,” Pomper wrote.

On March 8, hundreds of people gathered outside the fortified courthouse in Minneapolis for the first day of the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, who has been charged in Floyd’s death.

Demonstrators chanted, “No justice, no peace!” and speakers implored the jurors to “do the right thing.” Many in the crowd carried banners, some reading “Justice for George Floyd” and “Convict Killer Cops.”

Floyd’s death sparked protests and riots after footage emerged showing that Chauvin restrained Floyd for an extended period with a knee to the neck.

In the interview on Fox News, Smith said Minneapolis is preparing for “inevitable rioting” because “no matter how this case turns out, there likely will be violence.” Follow Tom on Twitter: @OZImekTOMHelp us spread the truth. Share this article with your friends.

Gen. Daniel Hokanson speaks to members of Congress during a hearing in Washington on June 18, 2020. (Chip Somodevilla/Pool/AFP via Getty Images) US News

By Zachary Stieber March 12, 2021 Updated: March 12, 2021

The National Guard’s chief recommended against extending the deployment of personnel in the U.S. Capitol, arguing the military reserve force didn’t have enough volunteers and faced pressing needs within their states, according to a newly published memorandum.

Gen. Daniel Hokanson, the Guard chief, wrote in the memo that officials hadn’t been successful in securing enough volunteers to meet the U.S. Capitol Police’s request for over 2,200 soldiers to remain in Washington. Only 500 had volunteered, he wrote.

States deployed tens of thousands of Guardsmen to the Capitol in the wake of the Jan. 6 breach, reaching a peak of some 26,000 on inauguration day. The number has steadily declined since then, but thousands continue guarding the Capitol, which also remains behind razor-topped wire.

Hokanson noted that states are experienced unprecedented demand for Guard support because of the COVID-19 pandemic, riots, and weather events, along with the typical deployment requirement overseas.

“Additionally, faced with pressing needs within their states, numerous Adjutants General and Governors have expressed their unwillingness to order the involuntary mobilization of NG personnel to man the mission,” he said.

“Moreover, I am concerned that the continued indefinite nature of this requirement may also impede our ability to man future missions as both adjutants general and guardsmen alike may be skeptical about committing to future endeavors,” he added, recommending the pursuit of “other inter-agency law enforcement options.”

The memo was obtained and published by Fox News. It appeared to be from last week.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on March 9 overruled the concerns, signing off on the Capitol Police’s request for continued Guard deployment. Acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman, who made the request, told lawmakers earlier this month that threats to the Capitol, the surrounding area, and members of Congress are increasing.

Maj. Matt Murphy of the National Guard told The Epoch Times via email on Friday: “We cannot discuss internal deliberations that may have taken place as part of the Department of Defense decision-making process. The National Guard will carry out this mission with professionalism for as long as we are required and approved to support.”

The Pentagon didn’t return a request for comment.

John Kirby, the Department of Defense’s press secretary, told reporters on Thursday that Lloyd “doesn’t want our National Guard troops up on Capitol Hill one day longer than they need to be.”

“I don’t think anybody wants to see this become an enduring mission. And by enduring I mean a forever mission. At the same time, he recognizes that there is a legitimate need for them,” he added, calling the Capitol Police’s request “valid.”

Pressed on whether Guardsmen would be forced to serve if enough volunteers weren’t found, Kirby said, “I think the decision for the involuntary activation makes sense on a couple of different levels, and that gets us to May.” Follow Zachary on Twitter: @zackstieberHelp us spread the truth. Share this article with your friends.