On today’s Front Page from The Free Press: The Butcher of Tehran is dead; Francesca Block reports on a Jewish teacher forced to hide from a Bronx mob; Olivia Reingold talks to the independent taking on Portland’s progressive DA; Kat Rosenfield refuses to get mad at Harrison Butker; and much more. 

But first, in our lead story, Michele DeMarco and Joe Nocera report on a crisis within a crisis on the southern border: 

Brian, a U.S. Border Patrol agent who works along the south Texas border, is haunted by something that happened a few years ago. A man—a Mexican cartel member, he believes—emerged from the banks of the Rio Grande carrying two toddlers. The children, a boy and a girl, were wearing nothing but diapers. The man darted across the border, dropped the children fifty feet away, and then raced back into the river to Mexico. 

“I picked up these toddlers and looked fifty yards south,” said Brian, a ten–year veteran of the agency, who, like all agents we spoke to for this story, insisted on using a pseudonym. That’s when he saw six adult migrants running across the border as fast as they could. The children, he realized, had been a decoy. 

Another veteran agent said he’s witnessed the same problem on his watch—and much worse. “We regularly see things that people should never see, like rotting human remains, abuse of every kind, babies and kids dying or dead,” he told The Free Press. 

“Do you know what that does to you over time?” he asked. “You have to shut down a part of yourself to keep going.” 

Three-plus years into the worst border crisis in American history, the men and women of the Border Patrol are facing a crisis of their own. Read the extraordinary story in full here.

Francesca Block reports on an anti-Israel protest at a Bronx high school that got out of control and left a Jewish teacher hiding in her classroom for hours. “I was terrified,” she tells The Free Press. Read on. . . 

Portland has had a—shall we say—patchy relationship with law and order in recent years. In the summer of 2020, Portland—which is one of the whitest cities in America—saw some of the longest and most intense riots in the country. (The first five weeks alone cost local businesses an estimated $23 million.) The city council voted to dramatically cut police funding. Just before all that, in May 2020, Portland elected progressive prosecutor Mike Schmidt to be its DA. 

One guess as to what happened next. 

The homicide rate tripled. As of today, all violent crime is up 17 percent. Open-air drug use became the norm in the city’s downtown. 

The political mood has shifted in Portland, which is why Nathan Vasquez, an independent running for DA on a law-and-order platform, has a shot of booting Schmidt at the ballot box Tuesday. He talks to Free Press reporter Olivia Reingold about why even very progressive Portlanders have changed their tune on public safety and policing, how to balance social justice with safety, and more. Read Olivia’s interview here. 

Salman Rushdie on Palestinian statehood: “If there was a Palestinian state now, it would be ruled by Hamas and we would have a Taliban-like state. A satellite state of Iran. Is that what the progressive movements of the Western left want to create?” (Bild)

Magic Monetary Theory—roughly speaking, the idea that deficits are fake and government debt is a psy op—was once an amusing sideshow. But the joke’s over now that the mainstream left, including Biden administration officials, are taking it seriously, writes Matt Taibbi. (Racket News) 

South Korea is contemplating a radical fix for its fertility crisis: a $70,000 baby bonus. Economist Tyler Cowen investigates whether it could work. (Marginal Revolution) 

Consumer sentiment has hit a six-month low. And, as Josh Barro writes, the economic picture is unlikely to change dramatically before the election. (Washington Post)

Donald Trump will hold a rally in the south Bronx this week, his first rally in New York since 2016. An audacious demonstration of the former president’s multiracial blue-collar appeal, or a campaign getting creative under the constraints of his court schedule? Both, probably. (Fox News)

Will RFK Jr. qualify for next month’s presidential debate? He needs to be on the ballot in enough states to win 270 electoral college votes and register 15 percent in four national polls. His campaign is bullish, while both Trump and Biden’s campaigns appear blindsided by the idea the debate could be anything other than a one-on-one. (ABC) 

Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz has given Bibi Netanyahu an ultimatum: set out a post-war plan by June 12 or he’ll quit the coalition. “While Israeli soldiers are displaying incredible bravery on the front, some of the people who sent them to battle are acting with cowardice and a lack of responsibility,” said Gantz. (Times of Israel) 

Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola debuted his self-financed sci-fi epic Megalopolis at Cannes. In interviews promoting his passion project—which sounds too weird to miss—Coppola took aim at the film industry. “The job is not so much to make good movies, the job is to make sure they pay their debt obligations.” (Variety)  

An appalling video from March 2016 of Sean “Diddy” Combs assaulting his then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura in a hotel has been leaked on the heels of a federal investigation into the rapper for human trafficking. Diddy responded with an apology on Instagram saying, “I’d hit rock bottom.” (CNN) 

AMC networks has added a trigger warning to Goodfellas, cautioning that the mob movie contains “offensive content,” including “cultural stereotypes.” It’s wisepeople, not wiseguy, thank you very much. (New York Post)  

→ “The Butcher of Tehran” is dead: On Sunday, Iranian state media reported that a helicopter carrying President Ebrahim Raisi—a.k.a. The Butcher of Tehran—crashed in a remote part of the country. Raisi was traveling with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Doha days after the October 7 massacre. 

By Sunday night both men were confirmed dead.

Raisi, a Holocaust denier, earned the sobriquet the Butcher of Tehran when he served as the prosecutor general of Tehran between 1989 and 1994. He participated in a so-called death commission that ordered the executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.

Masih Alinejad, an Iranian American journalist and leading critic of the regime, told The Free Press that the families of Raisi’s victims were openly celebrating his death. “On my social media, I see family members of those who were executed as a result of his orders cheering. People in Iran are celebrating; there are fireworks everywhere in different cities. They really see Raisi as an example of the whole system, of the whole regime.” 

Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, told The Free Press that the president’s death will create a succession crisis—both to find a new president and because Raisi, 63, was the leading contender to replace 85-year-old supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei. There will now be a scramble to hold an election for a new president among a reluctant population. All this is against the backdrop of a regime that apparently can’t organize a safe flight for two of its most senior members.

“They will have to call an election within 50 days,” said Brodsky. “That’s a tall order for the Islamic Republic because the Iranian people don’t want an election; they want an end to the Islamic Republic.” —Ben Clerkin

→ Speaking of Masih Alinejad: For those unfamiliar with Masih’s name, we here at The FP consider her one of the bravest women alive. A champion of women’s rights in Iran, Masih now lives in exile in America but remains a hunted woman, moving from safe house to safe house because the Iranian regime keeps trying to assassinate her. But “crazy” is how New York Times reporter Farnaz Fassihi described Masih during a hot mic on a conference call. She also discouraged fellow reporters from interviewing the dissident. Consider that when you read that paper’s coverage of Iran. — Bari Weiss

→ “Okay, well, this is it”: Amid a lot of bad news so far this year, perhaps the most awe-inspiring development is the first Neuralink brain implant. In January, Noland Arbaugh, who is paralyzed from the neck down, had a device attached to his brain that allows him to control a computer using only his thoughts. Arbaugh, on a computer, can play video games, make phone calls, and a lot of other things that the rest of us take for granted. Now, five months after the procedure, Arbaugh has spoken for the first time about how he came to be Neuralink’s first trial patient, and how his life has changed since January. 

He tells Bloomberg’s Ashlee Vance that his faith made it easy to go through with the trial: “I wasn’t worried at all,” Arbaugh told Vance. “I saw so many dots connecting for me that were fitting into this. My accident was such a freak accident, and I’d wondered why it had happened to me and what God had in store for me. When I started doing all the Neuralink stuff, I was like, ‘Okay, well, this is it.’ ” And in an interview with Good Morning America, Arbaugh imagines a day in the not too distant future when “someone can have a spinal cord injury, go into hospital, get surgery, and walk out a couple days later,” adding: “I think it’s gonna happen.” Amid much darkness, progress. 

→ Campus capitulation: It’s well past time for a shower and anyway, summer internships start soon. But just as the protests are fizzling out, with students packing up their ”tentifadas” for the summer, some colleges have decided to negotiate with the Hamas-curious campus cohort. 

The latest to strike a very one-sided bargain with students is Harvard. In exchange for the protesters going home, the college has announced it will consider adopting boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) measures against Israel, setting up a Palestinian Studies Center, and not taking any action against 80 protesters. Harvard student Shabbos Kestenbaum, who is suing the college for failing to tackle antisemitism, told The Free Press that the deal was “an absolute betrayal” that will only incentivize further protests. 

“I’ve been asking for a meeting with the president Alan Garber and college administrators for months,” Kestenbaum said. “Apparently to get a seat at the table I should have been calling for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

“It’s a major victory for the protesters. The message is that if you shout loud enough and make enough noise, you’ll get away with some truly terrible behavior. They have bullied and harassed Jews. Letting them off without punishment will just mean it all starts again in the fall.”

Harvard is only the latest elite school to promise to consider BDS measures. Colleges to have made that concession include:

Princeton, which will also consider ​new academic affiliations with Palestinian scholars, students, and institutions, and a new Palestinian studies course. 

Northwestern, which has also committed to build a house for Muslim student activities and to fundraise for scholarships for Palestinian undergraduates.

Brown University, which agreed to vote on implementing BDS. 

Rutgers, which agreed to accept at least 10 displaced Gazan students and hire additional professors who specialize in Palestinian and Middle Eastern studies.

Johns Hopkins, which will grant amnesty to all student protesters.

University of California, Berkeley, which agreed to ensure that their academic partnerships don’t exhibit anti-Palestinian discrimination, which protesters say is a “pathway to boycott of Israeli university programs.”

University of California, Riverside, which has committed to discontinue business school study programs in Israel. It also promised a “review of Sabra Hummus.”
—Ben Clerkin

→ You don’t need to be mad at Harrison Butker: Perhaps you have heard of Harrison Butker, the 28-year-old Kansas City Chiefs kicker at the center of the latest viral outrage. Butker was the commencement speaker last week at Benedictine College, a Catholic liberal arts school in Kansas, where he appears to have been engaged in some kind of record-setting effort to offend as many progressives as possible in less time than it takes to deliver the average TED Talk. His speech was critical of abortion, IVF, even surrogacy. He told the men to be “unapologetic in your masculinity”; he suggested the women were probably looking forward more to marriage and children than to high-powered careers. Oh, and there was some stuff in there too about the identity of the guys who killed Jesus, if you know what I mean. 

Butker’s speech was very trad and frequently interrupted by the audience, who, rather than being affronted, kept erupting in cheers and applause. Perhaps they did not realize that this speech by a Catholic kicker at a Catholic university wasn’t for them, the Catholic graduating seniors. It was for me, a 42-year-old woman in New England eating peanut butter straight out of the jar because a sandwich seemed like too much work. 

Or at least, that’s what it feels like: for days now, the story of Butker’s speech and subsequent backlash, including a statement of denunciation from the NFL itself, has been the subject of wall-to-wall coverage from The New York Times to People magazine. It’s as if the media has set aside its differences in service of a single unified mission: to make sure I know this happened and that I am good and mad at it. 

Well, fine. I have watched the speech, and true enough, there is little in it I agree with. If Butker broke into my house, tied me to a chair, and forced me to watch the whole thing with my eyelids taped open Clockwork Orange–style, I wouldn’t be thrilled! But he didn’t do this, and as such, I am far less mad at him than I am the shrieking discourse hall monitors demanding I be outraged by it. Not only is it hard to imagine a more joyless—or fruitless— way to spend my limited time on this planet, it’s hard to see how Butker’s comments differ from the hundreds of thousands of speeches delivered to approving crowds every day, in various settings, by faith leaders of all stripes. Given the sheer diversity of ideology in this country, there’s probably something in there to offend everyone! But this is America; isn’t freedom of speech and assembly, no matter how offensive some might find the ideas involved, kind of what we do here? Indeed, the culture of free expression that allowed Butker to speak his mind to an appreciative audience is the same culture that permits me to host weekly discussion salons with my all-female neighborhood watch group, the Kindred Alliance for Rights, Equality, and Nurturing Society (KARENS). . . which for some reason nobody wants to join, but whatever. 

Join us for our next get-together, where we’ll stage a live dramatic reading of the HOA Regulations, Chapter 4, Section 7: Proper Identification and Reporting of Microaggressive Lawn Gnomes. My guess is it will really get the crowds going. —Kat Rosenfield

Rupa Subramanya remembers the man who made her a journalist. “So many of Canada’s commentators are cowards, but Rex Murphy encouraged me to call it as I see it—no matter how much controversy that might cause,” writes Rupa. Read her full tribute here.

Steve recommends Brazilian jiu-jitsu: We are all so full of anxiety and anger with no way to channel it. The answer is Brazilian jiu-jitsu. It’s a form of grappling with historic ties to Japan and Brazil (clearly). You spend every class on a mat fighting not to get choked out or have your arm twisted in a very unnatural way. It may sound terrible, but you will leave the mats healthier in every way, more confident, and happier. 

Don recommends the poetry of Emily Dickinson: It is easy to read and yet deep enough to consume quite some time deciphering just a verse or two. Ms. Dickinson’s cloistered life gave her a lens on the world that is both beautiful and tragic all at once. Make yourself a cuppa and sit down with any one of a dozen anthologies on a rainy day and you’ll have embarked on a journey of the mind and heart.

Whether you prefer to relax with martial arts or poetry or something else, send your recommendations to thefrontpage@thefp.com. 

Oliver Wiseman is a writer and editor for The Free Press. Follow him on X @ollywiseman. 

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Delivering the commencement address to the graduating seniors at Morehouse College today, President Joe Biden addressed the nation. After thanking the mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, and all the people who helped the graduates get to the chairs in front of the stage, Biden recalled Morehouse’s history. The school was founded in 1867 by civil rights leader Reverend William Jefferson White with the help of two other Baptist ministers, the Reverend Richard C. Coulter and the Reverend Edmund Turney, to educate formerly enslaved men. They believed “education would be the great equalizer from slavery to freedom,” Biden said, and they created an institution that would make the term “Morehouse man” continue to stand as a symbol of excellence 157 years later. 

Then Biden turned to a speech that centered on faith. Churches talk a lot about Jesus being buried on Friday and rising from the dead on Sunday, he said, “but we don’t talk enough about Saturday, when… his disciples felt all hope was lost. In our lives and the lives of the nation, we have those Saturdays—to bear witness the day before glory, seeing people’s pain and not looking away. But what work is done on Saturday to move pain to purpose? How can faith get a man, get a nation through what was to come?” 

It’s a truism that anything that happens before we are born is equidistant from our personal experience, mixing the recent past and the ancient past together in a similar vaguely imagined “before” time. Most of today’s college graduates were not born until about 2002 and likely did not pay a great deal of attention to politics until about five years ago. Biden took the opportunity to explain to them what it meant to live through the 1960s. 

He noted that he was the first in his family to graduate from college, paid for with loans. He fell in love, got a law degree, got married and took a job at a “fancy law firm.” 

But his world changed when an assassin murdered the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King—a Morehouse man—and the segregated city of Wilmington, Delaware, erupted with fires, looting, fights, and occasional gunfire. For nine months, the National Guard patrolled the city in combat gear,  “the longest stretch in any American city since the Civil War,” Biden recalled.

“Dr. King’s legacy had a profound impact on me and my generation, whether you’re Black or white,” Biden explained. He left the law firm to become first a public defender and then a county councilman, “working to change our state’s politics to embrace the cause of civil rights.” 

The Democratic Party had historically championed white supremacy, but that alignment was in the process of changing as Democrats had swung behind civil rights and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Biden and his cohort hoped to turn the Delaware Democratic Party toward the new focus on civil rights, he said. In 1972, Biden ran for the Senate and won…barely, in a state Republican president Richard Nixon won with 60% of the vote. 

Biden recalled how, newly elected and hiring staff in Washington, D.C., he got the call telling him that his wife and daughter had been killed in a car accident and that his two sons were gravely injured. The pain of that day hit again 43 years later, he said, when his son Beau died of cancer after living for a year next to a burn pit in Iraq. And he talked of meeting First Lady Jill Biden, “who healed the family in all the broken places. Our family became my redemption,” he said. 

His focus on family and community offered a strong contrast to the Republican emphasis on individualism. “On this walk of life…you come to understand that we don’t know where or what fate will bring you or when,” Biden said. “But we also know we don’t walk alone. When you’ve been a beneficiary of the compassion of your family, your friends, even strangers, you know how much the compassion matters,” he said. “I’ve learned there is no easy optimism, but by faith—by faith, we can find redemption.”

For the graduates, Biden noted, four years ago “felt like one of those Saturdays. The pandemic robbed you of so much. Some of you lost loved ones—mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, who…aren’t able to be here to celebrate with you today….  You missed your high school graduation. You started college just as George Floyd was murdered and there was a reckoning on race. 

“It’s natural to wonder if democracy you hear about actually works for you. 

“What is democracy if Black men are being killed in the street?

“What is democracy if a trail of broken promises still leave[s]…Black communities behind?

“What is democracy if you have to be 10 times better than anyone else to get a fair shot?

“And most of all, what does it mean, as we’ve heard before, to be a Black man who loves his country even if it doesn’t love him back in equal measure?” 

The crowd applauded.

Biden explained that across the Oval Office from his seat behind the Resolute Desk are busts of Dr. King and Senator Robert Kennedy, challenging Biden: “Are we living up to what we say we are as a nation, to end racism and poverty, to deliver jobs and justice, to restore our leadership in the world?” He wears a rosary on his wrist made of Beau’s rosary as a reminder that faith asks us “to hold on to hope, to move heaven and earth to make better days.” 

“[T]hat’s my commitment to you,” he said. “[T]o show you democracy, democracy, democracy is still the way.”

Biden pledged to “call out the poison of white supremacy” and noted that he “stood up…with George Floyd’s family to help create a country where you don’t need to have that talk with your son or grandson as they get pulled over.” The administration is investing in Black communities and reconnecting neighborhoods cut apart by highways decades ago. It has reduced Black child poverty to the lowest rate in history. It is removing lead pipes across the nation to provide clean drinking water to everyone, and investing in high-speed internet to bring all households into the modern era. 

The administration is creating opportunities, Biden said, bringing “good-paying jobs…; capital to start small businesses and loans to buy homes; health insurance, [prescription] drugs, housing that’s more affordable and accessible.” Biden reminded the audience that he had joined workers on a picket line. To applause, he noted that when the Supreme Court blocked his attempt to relieve student debt, he found two other ways to do it. He noted the administration’s historic investment in historically black colleges and universities. 

“We’re opening doors so you can walk into a life of generational wealth, to be providers and leaders for your families and communities.  Today, record numbers of Black Americans have jobs, health insurance, and more [wealth] than ever.”

Then Biden directly addressed the student protests over the Israeli government’s strikes on Gaza. At Morehouse today, one graduate stood with his back to Biden and his fist raised during the president’s speech, and the class valedictorian, DeAngelo Jeremiah Fletcher, who spoke before the president, wore a picture of a Palestinian flag on his mortarboard and called for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, at which Biden applauded.

“In a democracy, we debate and dissent about America’s role in the world,” Biden said. “I want to say this very clearly. I support peaceful, nonviolent protest. Your voices should be heard, and I promise you I hear them.” 

“What’s happening in Gaza…is heartbreaking,” he said, with “[i]nnocent Palestinians caught in the middle” of a fight between Hamas and Israel. He reminded them that he has called “for an immediate ceasefire…to stop the fighting [and] bring the hostages home.” His administration has been working for a deal, as well as to get more aid into Gaza and to rebuild it. Crucially, he added, there is more at stake than “just one ceasefire.” He wants “to build a lasting, durable peace. Because the question is…: What after? What after Hamas? What happens then? What happens in Gaza? What rights do the Palestinian people have?” To applause, he said, “I’m working to make sure we finally get a two-state solution—the only solution—for two people to live in peace, security, and dignity.” 

“This is one of the hardest, most complicated problems in the world,” he said. “I know it angered and frustrates many of you, including my family. But most of all, I know it breaks your heart. It breaks mine as well. Leadership is about fighting through the most intractable problems. It’s about challenging anger, frustration, and heartbreak to find a solution. It’s about doing what you believe is right, even when it’s hard and lonely. You’re all future leaders, every one of you graduating today…. You’ll face complicated, tough moments. In these moments, you’ll listen to others, but you’ll have to decide, guided by knowledge, conviction, principle, and your own moral compass.”

Turning back to the United States, Biden urged the graduates to examine “what happens to you and your family when old ghosts in new garments seize power, extremists come for the freedoms you thought belonged to you and everyone.” He noted attacks on equality in America, and that extremist forces were peddling “a fiction, a caricature [of] what being a man is about—tough talk, abusing power, bigotry. Their idea of being a man is toxic.” 

“But that’s not you,” he continued. “It’s not us. You all know and demonstrate what it really means to be a man. Being a man is about the strength of respect and dignity. It’s about showing up because it’s too late if you have to ask. It’s about giving hate no safe harbor and leaving no one behind and defending freedoms. It’s about standing up to the abuse of power, whether physical, economic, or psychological.” To applause, he added: “It’s about knowing faith without works is dead.”

“The strength and wisdom of faith endures,” Biden said. “And I hope—my hope for you is—my challenge to you is that you still keep the faith so long as you can.” 

“Together, we’re capable of building a democracy worthy of our dreams…a bigger, brighter future that proves the American Dream is big enough for everyone to succeed.”

“Class of 2024, four years ago, it felt probably like Saturday,” Biden concluded. “Four years later, you made it to Sunday, to commencement, to the beginning. And with faith and determination, you can push the sun above the horizon once more….”

“God bless you all,” he said. “We’re expecting a lot from you.”

—

Notes:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/05/19/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-morehouse-college-class-of-2024-commencement-address-atlanta-ga/

https://www.inquirer.com/news/a/wilmington-del-riots-occupation-martin-luther-king-jr-national-guard-20181207.html

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/morehouse-graduation-thanks-god-woke-class-2024-2024-05-19/

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Since launching his campaign to replace Portland’s progressive district attorney last year, Nathan Vasquez says he’s knocked on nearly 20,000 doors to make his pitch. “Hi, I’m running for District Attorney for Multnomah County,” he usually begins his spiel. “The last four years haven’t gone well, but I have a vision to get us back on track.”

What he’s talking about are the four rocky years that have gripped Portland since the summer of racial reckoning in 2020. After video footage of George Floyd’s death spread like wildfire, Portland—one of the whitest cities in America—was roiled by protests for more than a hundred days. In June of that year, only a month after Floyd’s death, the city council voted to strip the city’s police department of $15 million in funding and cut 84 positions, representing 8 percent of its officers. 

In the subsequent years, the homicide rate tripled, car theft soared, and much of downtown was overtaken by open-air drug use. The murder rate has since dropped but violent crime overall remains up 17 percent from 2019 levels. That is why Vasquez, a senior prosecutor for Multnomah County, is challenging his own boss—Mike Schmidt, a registered Democrat who ran on a “bold, progressive vision” to confront “historical and systemic racism.” To Vasquez, a registered independent, Schmidt’s tenure has been a flop—and he says the people of Portland agree.

“A line I hear in Portland on an everyday basis is that people tell me, ‘I’m very progressive, or I’m very liberal, but things have gone too far.’ ”

On Tuesday, voters will decide if they agree with that statement. In 2020, voters elected Schmidt with a nearly 77 percent landslide win. Now, polls show Vasquez leading Schmidt by 19 points when voters were “presented with basic information about the two candidates.” When they face off in Portland’s nonpartisan primary, any candidate that garners more than fifty percent of the vote will win the office. 

“What I believe is that it will be decided next Tuesday,” says Vasquez, who was previously registered as a Republican until he found himself “disgusted” with former president Donald Trump. 

Other progressive district attorneys have already gotten the axe. In 2022, halfway through his term, San Franciscans overwhelmingly voted to recall Chesa Boudin, the former district attorney, who campaigned on a promise to “dismantle our racist system of mass incarceration.” Now, Pamela Price, the district attorney in nearby Alameda County, is facing a recall election this November. The move to recall Price, who campaigned with the slogan “justice with compassion,” comes as violent crime is on the rise in Oakland, where roughly one out of every thirty residents has been the victim of car theft. 

Some of their peers have survived the heat, including José Garza, the district attorney in Travis County, who won his March primary even though the homicide rate is still above pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, Larry Krasner, a George Soros–backed progressive, is still in office in Philadelphia despite having been impeached by Republicans in the state house (he’s now awaiting his trial in the Senate).

Still, the tides seem to be turning. 

A growing share of Americans say crime is one of their top issues heading into this year’s presidential election. In 2021, when President Joe Biden took office, 47 percent of Americans said crime “should be a top priority” for his administration. Now, 58 percent of voters say that crime “should be a top priority for the president.” And the voters seeking stronger law and order are not necessarily the people you’d expect, says Vasquez. 

When I asked him if any of his supporters are the same Portlanders who marched in the streets in 2020, demanding $50 million in cuts to the city’s police department, he said “certainly.”

“A lot of people still want social justice, and that’s a wonderful part of what we’re trying to do,” he added. “But what they also want is a safe community.” 

Olivia Reingold is a writer for The Free Press. Read her piece “Addiction Activists Say They’re ‘Reducing Harm’ in Philly. Locals Say They’re Causing It” and follow her on X @Olivia_Reingold.

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