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Conservatives will do anything to attempt to control or even disrupt elections under the guise of voter fraud, aka the Big Lie and Stop the Steal.

Make no mistake: There’s a grassroots movement brewing to disenfranchise, intimidate, and criminalize Black and brown voters across the nation. If voting rights activists don’t step up, they’ll get away with it.

A prime example is taking place in Texas, where former Houston Police Department Capt. Mark Aguirre ran air conditioner repairman David Lopez off the road, held him at gunpoint, and searched and stole his truck—all because Aguirre believed Lopez was part of a massive conspiracy of secreting 750,000 fraudulent mail-in ballots, Bolts reports.

RELATED STORY: Another Republican caught voting twice in the same election. The latest is Trump aide Matt Mowers

Last year, Lopez filed a civil lawsuit against GOP activist Dr. Steven Hotze for his part in paying for and planning the violent investigation of Lopez, which resulted in Aguirre’s arrest. Hotze runs the nonprofit Liberty Center for God and Country.

According to court documents, Aguirre told police he was part of a “group of private citizens called ‘Liberty Center,’” and that the group was “conducting a civilian investigation into the alleged ballot scheme.”

According to the arrest affidavit, Aguirre told police Lopez was “using Hispanic children to sign the ballots because the children’s fingerprints would not appear in any database.”

Police officers on the scene when Lopez was stopped and searched found nothing inside the truck besides air conditioner parts and tools—exactly the kinds of items Lopez would be expected to have.

The Houston Chronicle reports that Aguirre, who was fired from the police department in 2003 after a raid gone bad, was indicted and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. During his indictment, the Harris County District Attorney’s office claimed Aguirre was paid “a total of $266,400 by the Houston-based Liberty Center for God and Country, with $211,400 of that amount being deposited into his account the day after the incident.”

“He [Aguirre] crossed the line from dirty politics to commission of a violent crime and we are lucky no one was killed … His alleged investigation was backward from the start—first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said.

Of course, Hotze’s camp denies being behind Aguirre’s investigation.

“We would never endorse that, saying go pull someone over, put a gun up to their head and make them open up their truck,” Jared Woodfill, an attorney for Hotze, has said.

But in early April, a gala organized by Hotze and his group was held in Houston to raise money to:

• Hire private detectives to investigate, identify, and expose the criminal vote fraud scheme in Harris County and across Texas.

• Ensure that poll watchers are recruited, hired, and trained for the upcoming elections.

• Fund legal defensive and offensive efforts to Stop Vote Fraud.

• Broadcast radio messages offering rewards to those who expose individuals involved in vote fraud.

Speakers at the “Freedom Gala” were listed as conspiracy theorist and Big Lie guru Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow; GOP Party Chair Cindy Siegel; and Texas GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton.

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Paxton has a long history of working to turn back results in the 2020 presidential election, and Bolts reports that the attorney general has increased pressure to prosecute more voting-related cases, many of which involve Black and brown voters.  

The frightening thing is that it’s not just Texas launching militia-style voter fraud Gestapo.

In January, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed a militarized Office of Election Crimes and Security department that would report directly to him. And in Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law making it illegal to hand out food and water to voters standing in lines.

Gilda Daniels, litigation director for the Advancement Project and author of Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America tells The Appeal, “Whether it’s an armed police officer patrolling a polling place or just having a police car with lights blaring in front of a polling place, all can serve as a form of voter intimidation and certainly can have a chilling effect, particularly in Black and brown communities.”

Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, tells the Bolts the “possibilities are kind of endless for how that could go really badly” when someone is hired to investigate based on beliefs of a stolen election.

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Maryland has become the latest state to take steps to protect its population from the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, as is expected to happen this summer. State legislators expanded abortion rights by overriding Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto over the weekend.

The new Maryland law expands which medical providers can perform abortions, allowing nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, and trained physician assistants in addition to doctors. It also calls for most insurance providers to cover abortion without deductibles or other costs, and puts $3.5 million into a new training program with the mandate to “expand the number of health care professionals with abortion care training and increase the racial and ethnic diversity among health care professionals with abortion care training.”

Maryland isn’t the only state making recent moves to shore up reproductive rights, though.

RELATED STORY: The forced birthers who’ve taken over the Supreme Court, Republican Party are not ‘pro-life’

Last week, Colorado passed the Reproductive Health Equity Act, which will ensure that the basic rights guaranteed by Roe continue in the state. “In the State of Colorado, the serious decision to start or end a pregnancy with medical assistance will remain between a person, their doctor, and their faith,” Gov. Jared Polis said in a statement.

“This bill simply maintains the status quo regardless of what happens at the federal level and preserves all existing constitutional rights and obligations,” Polis specified.

In Michigan, where a 1931 abortion ban is still on the books and could be enforced after the Supreme Court overturns Roe, a Republican-controlled state legislature means there’s no chance legislators will protect reproductive rights. Instead, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is suing in an effort to get the state Supreme Court to overturn the state ban.

If Roe is overturned with the state ban still in effect, Whitmer tweeted as she announced the lawsuit, “nearly 2.2 million women lose access to legal abortion. Let me put that into perspective for you. They lose their reproductive freedom, economic freedom, and are denied the right to chart their own destiny.

”No matter what happens to Roe, I am going to fight like hell and use all the tools I have as governor to ensure reproductive freedom is protected,” she added. “Today in court, I represent all those who deserve the freedom to choose their own future. That’s a fight worth having.”

Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union have also filed a lawsuit seeking to block the 1931 law from being enforced.

This shouldn’t be necessary, though. The Maryland law actually expanding abortion access would be a good thing even without the looming threat from the Trump-McConnell Supreme Court. But the purely defensive move from Colorado and the Hail Mary effort from Whitmer should not be necessary, and would not be if Republicans had not shattered norms by first holding one Supreme Court seat open for close to a year of then-President Barack Obama’s term and then rushing to fill another seat after voting had already started in the 2020 elections.

RELATED STORIES:

GOP states move from banning surgical abortions to focusing on the pill, too

The Trump-packed Supreme Court will toss Roe: Blue states, providers scramble to fill the gaps

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It’s incredibly difficult for me to understand a world where Senate candidate Herschel Walker—a man who’s touted a spray that kills COVID-19, lied about finishing college, and doubts evolution—could beat the incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, a Democrat, and the first Black senator elected to serve in the state. But, as I’ve reported in the past, it’s Georgia, and anything’s possible.

Walker, who is fully supported by former President Donals Trump, has raised a ton of money for his campaign and is the current GOP frontrunner. The question that has currently popped up, among others, is: Where does all of his money come from?

According to Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB), Walker’s personal financial disclosures are murky, which could make it challenging for voters to discern exactly who he’s aligned with.

RELATED STORY: ‘Why Are There Still Apes? Think About It’: Herschel Walker has his doubts about evolution

Walker’s net worth is between $29 million and $65 million, GPB reports. And his income from the end of 2020 to the end of 2021 was reportedly $4 million.

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One example of Walker’s possibly opaque reporting comes from Stephen Spaulding, a senior adviser at Common Cause, a government watchdog organization.

“According to this candidate’s financial disclosure form, no person or entity paid more than $5,000 for any services provided by him—at the same time, he disclosed an interest in an LLC valued at more than $25 million and that provides ‘business consulting and professional services,’” Spaulding told GPB. “This may raise questions for voters trying to screen for conflicts of interest who want to know more about who got what from the consulting and professional consulting firm that bears his name and pays him millions in shareholder income.”

Delaney Marsco, a senior legal counsel for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center told GPB that “The lack of sources of compensation over $5,000 definitely raises some red flags … It’s very odd that there would be somebody who has a consulting firm, has a lot of money from that consulting firm but is not reporting any clients that are paying over $5,000.”

In addition to this latest reporting, Walker has openly admitted to mental health issues, along with accusations from his ex-wife of domestic violence. According to the Associated Press, Walker also has had an ongoing issue inflating his wealth.

But beyond exaggerating or lying, Walker seems mostly unable to comprehend complex political concepts. He appeared on Fox News Sunday, calling himself a “warrior of God” and claiming that President Biden’s administration “decided to give up our energy and now we’re not energy independent anymore,” while clearly advocating for more oil drilling. Obviously, he hasn’t read or doesn’t believe the recent  climate report released on April 4 that essentially gives the planet three years to stop the worst of global warming, or else.

Meanwhile, although Walker was more than willing to chat up Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo Sunday morning, he skipped out on the first major GOP Senate debate on Saturday.

According to ArcaMax, Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, one of Walker’s most well-known GOP opponents, called Walker’s no-show a “shame” and then brought up his domestic violence accusations, arguing that “Anyone who has put their hands on a woman, who has stalked, has threatened police with shootouts does not deserve to be in the U.S. Senate.”

Contractor and veteran Kelvin King added that “Mr. Walker not showing up and not making himself available to the people of Georgia is not serving the people of Georgia … This is an interview process and if you don’t show up for the interview process you don’t get the job.”

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been in a pitched battle with his Republican legislature for weeks over his desire for a new gerrymander that eliminates Democratic House seats with large Black representation. On Monday, the legislature gave in, ceding the map drafting to DeSantis.

DeSantis vetoed an unusual “two-map” bill that had one option that would have carved up the 5th District, held by Democratic Rep. Al Lawson Jr. It was created last time around by the state Supreme Court during redistricting litigation and has a large Black population: about 43%. The map presented to DeSantis back in February would have a 35% Black population. In case that map didn’t pass muster with the state constitution, the legislation had a backup map that preserved the 5th District but made changes elsewhere and still shuffled the population into 18 Trump districts and 10 Biden districts. DeSantis rejected that plan, insistent on obliterating this and another heavily Black and Democratic district, the 10th.

Now the legislature has given up. Senate President Wilton Simpson and state House Speaker Chris Sprowls released a statement Monday indicating that the “Legislative reapportionment staff is not drafting or producing a map for introduction during the special session.” They essentially handed the project over to DeSantis, regardless of their responsibility for redistricting under the state constitution.

RELATED STORY: Morning Digest: Florida House GOP proposes ‘two-map’ bill for Congress, but will it soothe DeSantis?

“We are awaiting a communication from the Governor’s Office with a map that he will support. Our intention is to provide the Governor’s Office opportunities to present that information before House and Senate redistricting committees,” they continued. “We look forward to working with you next week as we complete our constitutional obligation for the 2022 redistricting process.”

Lawson blasted them for “caving to the intimidation of DeSantis and his desire to create additional Republican seats in Congress by eliminating minority-access districts.”

A map already drafted by DeSantis would eliminate the 5th District as well as the 10th, another Democratic district represented by Val Demings. About 28% of its population is Black. That map, critics and the legislature said, is a clear violation of the state constitution’s Fair Districts amendment, passed by voters in 2010. It requires lawmakers to give minority communities the ability to “elect representatives of their choice.”

That could be precisely what DeSantis has in mind: using the current makeup of both the state Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court to overthrow the state amendment and the federal Voting Rights Act, or what’s left of it after previous Supreme Court eviscerations. That’s what state Rep. Joseph Geller, the ranking Democrat on the House redistricting committee, told The Washington Post is going on.

Cecile Scoon, president of the League of Women Voters Florida, condemned the legislature’s cowardice. “It’s very disappointing to see them folding their cards and abdicating their high and honorable responsibility of creating a congressional map,” Scoon said. “They want to stay on the good side of a powerful leader. People are afraid to cross him.”

A former prominent Republican strategist in the state who left the party after Trump was elected had strong words. Mac Stipanovich condemned the state Republicans for “prostrating themselves” for DeSantis. “The legislature has abdicated its responsibility, the leaders in the Republican Party in the legislature have abandoned all principle. It’s just all about maintaining and acquiring power and holding on to office,” said Stipanovich. “What we’re witnessing is a mile marker on the road to one-man rule in Florida, at least for the time being.

“This decision is a function of two things by Republicans. Their ambition, and their fear of being primaried,” Stipanovich said. “DeSantis is as powerful in Florida as Trump was and still is among Republicans nationally. When that sort of thing happens, this is what you get. Gutless, spineless, sycophancy.”

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As Daily Kos continues to cover, Texas Republicans are stomping down hard on some of the most vulnerable people in the state: trans youth. While there is (sadly) much to cover when it comes to anti-trans legislation across the nation, Texas is in a somewhat unique circumstance when it comes to the supportive families of trans youth being investigated on grounds of child abuse.

As a review, we know that Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has directed state agencies to investigate families who support trans youth receiving gender-affirming, safe, and age-appropriate medical care. Abbott’s direction is based on an opinion—which is an analysis of existing law—from Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. Some families say they’ve already been investigated, but a handful of child welfare workers for Texas Child Protective Services (TCPS) told the Texas Tribune in an interview that they’ve already resigned or are actively looking for other work because they don’t want to bend their personal ethics and carry out dirty work on behalf of evil.

RELATED: Fox News is spewing fresh queerphobia with the latest grooming accusations against LGBTQ people

Most social workers who spoke to the Tribune did so anonymously for obvious reasons. It’s a deeply difficult choice, though. On the one hand, people don’t want to investigate into families and send the message to already vulnerable children that there is something potentially wrong with them or their home. On the other hand, by leaving these roles, others may come to fill their shoes, and they might not be as accepting or affirming. And for the workers, there’s also the reality that changing jobs is not an easy feat, especially not if you’re someone who lives with any number of marginalizations that could impact your hiring process. 

One worker, however, did speak to the Tribune on the record. Morgan Davis, an openly trans man, said he ultimately joined the agency to serve as an advocate for young people. He told the outlet that his supervisors, upon assigning him one of these cases, offered to reassign it, but Davis was conflicted. 

“If somebody was going to do it,” Davis told the outlet. “I’m glad it was me.” Davis went on to share that the person who reported the family in question didn’t even agree with the directive, but reported them because of their role as a mandated reporter. He visited once and reported that the family seemed loving and the home seemed safe and clean. He noted that he saw no evidence of abuse or neglect. But that doesn’t mean the family’s case is closed. 

As Davis explained to the Tribune, as well, the family’s lawyer didn’t see it as a potential comfort that a trans man would be doing the investigation, but rather that he condones it.

“It hit me like a thunderbolt,” Davis recalled, adding that by being there “for even a split second, a child could think they’ve done something wrong.”

Shortly after this, Davis resigned, and four other people in his unit have reportedly put in resignation notices, as well. They’re far braver than most Republicans in office will ever be, but it’s up to all of us to speak up in defense of trans youth.

Sign the petition: Demand the Senate pass the Equality Act and protect the LGBTQ community from discrimination.

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While Justice-designate Ketanji Brown Jackson was vowing to recuse from a Harvard affirmative action case the U.S. Supreme Court will hear next term, walking ethics violation Clarence Thomas was supposedly recovering from whatever undisclosed illness that had him hospitalized for a week, and presumably making plans for this, his first public appearance since the illness.
 

That’s not problematic at all, right? It’s just the Supreme Court justice whose wife was egging on a Trump insurrection just a little over a year ago, hanging out with a Trump-endorsed Senate candidate, in the middle of the campaign. The tweeter there is Walker’s campaign spokesperson, who followed up with typical Republican obnoxiousness: “If you are offended that two men who happen to be Black are conservative, you might be racist.” Because of course a Republican isn’t going to be bothered by obvious political corruption.

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The event at which Thomas decided to reappear was for Walker’s award from the Horatio Alger Association, on whose board Thomas sits as an honorary member. How that happened, how Walker—the confessed domestic abuser with violent tendencies that have put him in conflict with law enforcement—qualified for an award based on “perseverance, integrity, and a commitment to excellence,” is slightly mysterious.

That Thomas would pose for a photograph with him, which was then made public by his campaign staff, is less mysterious. Thomas is a rabid partisan, as rabid as his wife, who continues to thumb his nose at the very idea that Supreme Court justices should be bound by any kind of ethics concerns. Like any other Republicans, he pretends to be deeply hurt by the mere suggestion that he’s taking his politics to work every day.

Last September, he complained about the impression that he and his fellow conservatives were playing politics on the court. This, immediately after the court decided in an unsigned, unargued, unprincipled shadow docket ruling to let Texas’s unconstitutional abortion ban continue even as it was being challenged in the courts.

“I think the media makes it sound as though you are just always going right to your personal preference,” Thomas said, at Notre Dame University in Indiana. “So if they think you are anti-abortion or something personally, they think that’s the way you always will come out. They think you’re for this or for that. They think you become like a politician.

“That’s a problem. You’re going to jeopardize any faith in the legal institutions.”

Yes, it’s the media’s fault that the hyperpartisan Supreme Court is losing legitimacy with the American public. That people are talking about reforming the Supreme Court and making it accountable. “You can cavalierly talk about packing or stacking the Court. You can cavalierly talk about doing this or doing that. At some point the institution is going to be compromised,” Thomas said at an event last month. That event? At the foundation created by former Republican Senator Orrin Hatch in Salt Lake City.

“By doing this,” Thomas said, “you continue to chip away at the respect of the institutions that the next generation is going to need if they’re going to have civil society.”

Or you just have a coup and overturn Congress and the White House, sort of like the coup that Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump achieved at the Supreme Court, and you could call it “civil society” while you systematically impose fascism.

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The Supreme Court needs to be reformed. Clarence Thomas is Exhibit A of that need. Congress needs to impose ethics standards—it has deemed itself above the rules the rest of the judiciary has to abide by. Congress needs to expand the court.

RELATED STORIES

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Some of the police officers attacked by the mob former President Donald Trump incited on Jan. 6, 2021 are only now regaining greater mobility in their bodies—461 days since the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

But according to a new report by ABC, attorney for Trump John Eastman took a meeting with a Republican state assembly official in Wisconsin just a few weeks ago. While there, Eastman pushed the official to overturn the 2020 election results by “reclaiming” those electoral votes that went to President Joe Biden. 

RELATED STORY: Jan. 6 committee wrestling with criminal referral for Trump

The meeting was reportedly held on March 16 between Eastman and Robin Vos, the GOP speaker for the Wisconsin state assembly, as well as a number of pro-Trump activists, including right-wing activist Jefferson Davis. Davis has been a vocal advocate of election fraud conspiracy theories central to Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 results. 

Other attendees reportedly included Douglas Frank, a friend to pro-Trump MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell; Shawn Smith, one of Lindell’s reported financial backers; and Ivan Raiklin, a U.S. Army Reserve lieutenant colonel with close ties to Michael Flynn, Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser and Q-Anon enthusiast. Raiklin’s political advocacy put him under an internal review by the Army in December 2021.

Lindell did not attend the meeting with Eastman, Frank, Smith, and Raiklin. 

Eastman told ABC he would not discuss the meeting.

“By explicit request from Speaker Vos, that meeting was confidential, so I am not able to make any comment,” he said Tuesday. 

An attorney for Eastman did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Daily Kos, nor did Vos. 

The Jan. 6 committee declined to comment to Daily Kos on Tuesday.

For the last several months, the committee has been slogging it out in court with Eastman as he fought to keep thousands of emails away from the probe. He rebuffed an initial subpoena from the committee, but the probe maneuvered around him and subpoenaed his professional emails from his tenure at his ex-employer, Chapman University.

Ultimately, a federal judge cut Eastman’s obfuscation short and in the course of reviewing some of the attorney’s emails, found information that led him to believe Trump and Eastman “more likely than not” engaged in a federal crime by trying to stop Biden’s victory from being certified. 

Eastman’s March 16 engagement is not his first get-together with Trump allies or election fraud conspiracy theory peddlers since he was first subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee. 

As noted by ABC, a month before his appointment in Wisconsin, Eastman was in Castle Rock, Colorado, meeting with activists bent on ousting the state’s Democratic secretary, Jena Griswold. Republicans in the Colorado legislature have been stumping hard on election fraud conspiracy for weeks to reverse their defeats. 

All the while, Trump has continued to push bunk election fraud claims and call for new investigations by state officials.

A day after Eastman’s meeting with Vos, Trump issued a statement through his chief spokeswoman, Liz Harrington, on Twitter.

Vos “just said there was widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election but that the state legislature cannot do anything about it. Wrong!” Trump said on March 17. 

The twice-impeached ex-president continued: “If you rob the diamonds from a jewelry store, if you get caught, you have to give the diamonds back,  votes should be no different.” 

Trump demanded that Vos “do the right thing and correct the crime of the century—immediately.” 

Meanwhile, the government watchdog group American Oversight has successfully sued Vos for access to tens of thousands of pages of emails from the Wisconsin state assembly. The oversight group was interested in reviewing the many inquiries that were made to the assembly about the 2020 election.

On Monday, the Wisconsin Examiner reported in-depth on Vos’ communications during that time. Many of the emails had been deleted, 

Emails showed messages sent and received between Vos and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and other election fraud conspiracy theory-peddling lawyers like Victoria Toensing. 

Giuliani was subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee this Jan. 18 for his records and deposition. The former New York City mayor was often the public face of Trump’s plan to install “alternate electors”  and according to at least one prosecutor in the 2020 election battleground state of Michigan, Giuliani also pressured him to seize voting machines and send them to Trump’s team.

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The White House is unveiling new policies to bring down gas prices following President Joe Biden’s March announcement that the administration would release 1 million barrels of oil a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Tuesday’s announcement, coming as Biden visits an Iowa ethanol plant, will be an Environmental Protection Agency waiver allowing the summer sale of E15, gas blended with ethanol. E15 is usually barred from summer sales due to air pollution rules, but the White House believes that its use will lower gas prices by 10 cents a gallon. 

“At the end of the day prices are too high, American families are feeling that,” Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, said Monday. “We need to take every action we can to try to make things more affordable and provide some relief as the Fed acts the way we anticipate it will.” Average gas prices have already dropped from $4.33 a month ago to $4.11 on Monday, but clearly more relief is needed.

Inflation remains a major economic concern for people in the U.S., and a major political concern for the Biden administration. Prices in March were 8.5% above March 2021, and 1.2% above February 2022. There had been signs earlier in 2022 that inflation was beginning to ease, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has instead driven it up for energy and food in particular. Shutdowns of some Chinese manufacturing facilities due to COVID-19 have also kept inflation high.

Food and energy are major expenses for most households, so inflation in those areas hits particularly hard. One significant area in which inflation is easing, though, is used cars, which dropped 3.8% in March. With new car availability affected by supply chain issues—in particular a semiconductor shortage—prices for used cars have spiked. 

Some supply chain issues have appeared to be easing, but the lockdown in Shanghai, which is a major manufacturing and export hub for China, is not a promising sign.

While all of this is very real bad news for U.S. consumers, we do also have to talk about what gets talked about less.

And when we talk about the effect of rising prices on U.S. households, we also have to talk about the longer-term effect of stagnating wages. As just one example, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and has been for well over a decade—because Republicans block any attempt to raise it. The minimum wage isn’t the only factor in stagnating wages, but it’s a damn good example of the problem.

This isn’t the only way that Republican—and Sen. Joe Manchin’s—obstruction of Democratic policy priorities is making inflation hit families harder. For six months, the expanded child tax credit was a major boost to 36 million families with kids. Democrats other than Manchin wanted to extend that, while every single Republican opposed it. Biden also had plans to help with affordable housing and child care, but again, Manchin and Republicans have tanked that. So when we hear about inflation, we’re hearing about its impact after a long list of policies that could help working people deal with inflation have been knocked out as possibilities. With the environmentally problematic E15 waiver, Biden is working with what he has given Republican obstruction in Congress. 

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Multiple people were shot this morning at the 36th Street stop in Sunset Park. 

Preliminary reports indicated that five people were shot, a law enforcement official said. The police were seeking a man with a gas mask and an orange construction vest, the official said.

Initial reports say several undetonated devices were found inside the subway station.

Stay tuned for more details, we’ll update this story as they become available. 

WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES BELOW

The suspect threw smoke grenades and still has not been apprehended. From NBC New York:

Police described the suspected shooter as a man about 5 feet 5 inches tall and 180 pounds. He fled the scene and has not been caught. Cops believe he acted alone. A motive is under investigation, though the manhunt for the gunman is the top priority.

Another detail from the NBC New York report:

Some of the wounded jumped on another train to flee to the next station, sources said.

Video shows a train arriving at the station filled with smoke and injured people.

NYPD says there are no active explosive devices, pushing back on the initial reports.

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Tucker Carlson is at it again. From hating on women to hating on the homeless, he’s now targeting teachers who discuss gender identity. In a segment of Tucker Carlson Tonight that aired Friday, Carlson said anyone talking about sex to kindergartners ‘should be beaten up.’

Calling for parents to resort to violence, he said: ”I don’t understand where the men are. Like where are the dads? You know, some teacher’s pushing sex values on your third grader. Why don’t you go in and thrash the teacher? Like this is an agent of the government pushing someone else’s values on your kid about sex, like where’s the pushback?”

The comment came as he defended new legislation in Florida, coined the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, that blocks teachers from discussing issues of gender identity and sexual orientation with children in kindergarten through third grade. Both Carslon and Republican Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance were discussing the bill and gender topics in the classroom. Vance, like other GOP officials, took to accusing Democrats of “sexualizing” children by discussing issues of gender.

“If you don’t want to be called a groomer, don’t try to sexualize 6-, 7-year-old children. It’s really that simple,” Vance said. “At the end of the day, like you said, this is about parental rights. What kind of country do you want to live in—where families control what values their children grow up in, or where Joe Biden and the pharmaceutical companies get to do that?”

The comments made are not a surprise. Carlson has been targeting teachers for some time and has always encouraged violence on his show toward those who don’t agree with his views.

He made similar comments in a March segment.

“You shouldn’t be talking to kindergartners about gender identity, especially if you’re not their parents. That’s creepy,” Carlson said. “You should be arrested for that, in fact. You talk to a normal person’s kids about sex in kindergarten, you get beaten up. You should be beaten up, please.”

The March comment came out in conversation with Matt Walsh, a political commentator for the conservative news site The Daily Wire.  They both referred to the topic of gender identity in schools as “madness,” and accused teachers of grooming children.

“Look, there’s a reason why Democrats are treating this bill like it’s the apocalypse,” Walsh said. “All we’re telling them is you can’t groom young children and to them it’s Armageddon, and that’s because they know they have to indoctrinate the kids into this madness very, very young.”

Carlson agreed at the time, responding: “You can’t commit sexual abuse against my kindergartners, and that’s what this is. It’s sexual abuse. You’re not allowed to commit it, and if you do, there are consequences. There should be real consequences. Like for real, I think.”

But Carlson is not the only one advocating harm to teachers. 

Multiple people associated with Fox News have made comments condemning teachers who not only teach about gender but LGBTQ issues and critical race theory. 

Some have even gone as far as making social media content that spreads false information to evoke violence.

Conservatives seem to have no boundaries and will stop at nothing to spread hate in the country.