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      Crime coverage on Fox News halved once US midterms were over

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      Crime coverage on Fox News halved once US midterms were overJust a week after elections, number of weekly segments focused on crime slashed in half on Rupert Murdoch’s flagship network In the weeks leading up to the US midterm elections, the message from Fox News was clear: violent crime is surging, cities are dangerous hellscapes and Democrats are responsible.With the vote over, however, the rightwing news channel appeared to decide things weren’t that bad after all, and decreased its coverage of violent crime by 50% compared with the pre-election average.Murdoch v Trump: Rupert’s papers kick Donald, but Fox won’t play ballRead moreMedia Matters for America, a media watchdog, found that each week from Labor Day until the Friday before the Tuesday 8 November vote, the network averaged 141 segments on crime across weekdays. The blanket crime coverage matched the Republican party’s efforts to depict violent crime as out of control, and portray Democrats as responsible.In the week of the midterms, however, once voting was over, Fox News aired just 71 segments on violent crime, Media Matters reported.“I think this shows pretty clearly that the amount of Fox coverage of violent crime doesn’t really have anything to do with the level of violent crime in America – it has to do with the political benefits,” said Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters.“It crescendoed right before election day, and then once the election was over, so was America’s crime crisis no longer the subject of maximum concern that it had been in the previous weeks.”Media Matters noted that Fox News crime coverage had increased somewhat in recent days after the shooting at the University of Virginia and the student killings in Idaho, but said “the coverage was notably less focused on painting Democratic cities as crime-infested”.Fox News declined to comment.Gertz said Tucker Carlson, Fox News’ most-watched host, had a big part to play in the coverage – and in how Republicans across the country used crime as an issue. In a monologue in August, Carlson advised Republican politicians to focus their campaigns on “law and order”, which he said would result in a “red wave” in the midterms.Republicans did just that, spending millions on ads which highlighted instances of violent crime and portrayed Democrats, like John Fetterman, running for US Senate in Pennsylvania, as responsible. The Washington Post reported that Republicans spent nearly $50m on ads focused on crime between 5 September and 25 October, far outspending Democrats on the issue.The network’s focus on a singular issue in the lead-up to an election is nothing new, Gertz said. He said ahead of the 2014 midterm elections the Ebola outbreak became a repeated issue on Fox News, with the network blaming Barack Obama for the spread of the virus.In 2016 Hillary Clinton’s emails became the hot topic, while in 2018 Fox News picked up on a so-called “migrant caravan”, using it to bolster Donald Trump’s midterm election sell that the country needed to elect more Republicans to enact tougher immigration laws.“It’s a play that they’ve run over and over again in elections over the past decade,” Gertz said.“Fox does this every time they come up with some sort of message that they want to push, and they try to get Republicans to adopt it, and they try to get the mainstream press to adopt it as well,” he added.“And so the question becomes: to what extent is the mainstream press going to take the bait and turn it into a multiplier effect – where they are repeating Fox’s message and the debate in the final days of the elections is turning on whatever Fox wanted to talk about?”It seems this time neither the mainstream media nor voters took the bait.Carlson’s “red wave” failed to materialize in the midterm vote, as Republican candidates largely underperformed expectations.Fetterman, the target of repeated attacks by Fox News and numerous crime ads from his opponent, Mehmet Oz, won his race by almost 5%, and while having been predicted to make significant gains in Congress, Republicans only narrowly took control of the House, and Democrats retained the Senate.TopicsFox NewsUS crimeUS midterm elections 2022US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Delaware man sentenced for joining US Capitol riots while on Tinder date

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      Delaware man sentenced for joining US Capitol riots while on Tinder dateAfter news of attack was reported on TV at his date’s house, man took Uber to Capitol and climbed through broken window to enter A Delaware man was sentenced to jail time for joining the January 6 Capitol attacks after seeing the violence unfold on a Tinder date’s television.Jeffrey Schaefer was sentenced to 30 days in jail and ordered to pay a $2,000 fine on Friday after prosecutors argued that he participated in the Capitol attacks after watching the rioting happen on TV while at his date’s house.Oath Keepers called for ‘violent overthrow’ of US government, trial hearsRead moreAccording to court filings, Schaefer was initially at the house of a woman he had met on Tinder on 6 January 2021 in Alexandria, Virginia, about 20 minutes outside of Washington DC.Schaefer then reportedly saw the attack on the Capitol on television and called an Uber to take him there so he could participate.When Schaefer arrived at the Capitol, prosecutors say that he climbed a short wall and gained access to the Capitol building through a broken window.Schaefer stayed in the Capitol building for about 28 minutes, chanting with other rioters and taking several photos and videos before exiting.“THIS IS UNREAL,” Schaefer wrote in one Facebook post that included a picture of rioters outside the Capitol.Prosecutors pieced together Schaefer’s time spent in the Capitol based on surveillance footage and social media posts he made leading up to the January 6 riots and while inside the building.During an interview with the FBI in June 2022, Schaefer admitted that he was interested in the rioting before going to see his Tinder date on 6 January.Schaefer was arrested on 13 January 2022. On 2 August 2022, Schaefer pleaded guilty to one count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, with three additional charges against him dropped as part of a plea deal.During his defense argument, Schaefer’s lawyer, Joshua Insley, criticized Donald Trump and said Schaefer was manipulated by lies about the legitimacy of the 2020 election, reported KSL-TV, a local news affiliate.“While Mr Schaefer accepts responsibility for his actions, he was guided and urged every step of the way by no less of an authority than the president of the United States and a majority of Republican senators and congressman that continued to repeat the ‘big lie’ that the election had been stolen by the Democrats,” Insley argued.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS crimeDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      The attack on Paul Pelosi should be a moment of national reckoning | Jill Filipovic

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      The attack on Paul Pelosi should be a moment of national reckoning Jill FilipovicAll political violence is a problem, but in terms of sheer numbers, rightwing extremism is a much more significant problem than leftwing radicalism Much of American life has gotten coarser, uglier and crueler in the years since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016. Even with Trump out of office, his legacy persists, and it erodes American life every day.On Friday, in a grisly act of political violence, a man broke into the home of the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, one of the US right’s most vilified political figures, and attacked her husband with a hammer, fracturing his skull and leaving him with serious injuries. The attacker, 42-year-old David DePape, was reportedly carrying zip ties and duct tape and yelling: “Where’s Nancy?”Paul Pelosi is lucky he wasn’t killed – a hammer to the skull can certainly do the job, especially when the victim is an elderly man. And while I imagine that Nancy Pelosi is feeling enormous grief and guilt over the fact that her husband was nearly murdered in an attack that seemed aimed at her, she’s also lucky she wasn’t home at the time of the assault.Such an extreme act should shock the conscience of the nation. Instead, it has shown just how immune to human decency and empathy the Trumpist right has become. Trump’s son Donald Jr tweeted an image of a pair of men’s underwear and a hammer with the caption “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready”.His father has thus far remained silent, as have many Republican elected officials. Conservatives in the media, meanwhile, are working overtime to deny that the right holds any responsibility here, chalking this up to a random act of violence and arguing that sometimes leftists are violent, too.That’s not totally wrong: a mentally disturbed man was arrested outside supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house with a gun this past summer, and another shot at a bunch of Republican congressmen at baseball practice in 2017, nearly killing Representative Steve Scalise.But there are a few major differences, not least among them the fact that rightwing political violence is much more common than leftwing political violence, and that rightwing violence is much more likely to be fatal than leftwing violence. In the US, rightwing extremists aren’t just more dangerous than leftwing ones, but are more dangerous than Islamic radicals and those inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaida. Since 1994, a majority of terrorist plots within the US were hatched by rightwing radicals.All political violence is a problem. But in terms of sheer numbers, rightwing violence is a much more significant problem than leftwing violence.That may be, in part, because of the right wing’s broad permission structure when it comes to unchecked misogyny, threatening and menacing political opponents, and refusing to forcefully condemn violent acts. When Scalise was shot and Kavanaugh was threatened, prominent Democrats didn’t sit in silence. Bernie Sanders, who was reportedly the favored candidate of the man who shot Scalise, immediately came out after the shooting to say, “I am sickened by this despicable act,” and emphasized that “real change can only come about through nonviolent action.” When the man menacing Kavanaugh was arrested, Joe Biden condemned the man’s actions in no uncertain terms, and supported expanded security measures for supreme court justices.And prominent liberals with national platforms and connections to Democratic administrations didn’t suggest dressing up as a bloody Steve Scalise or a dead Brett Kavanaugh on Halloween. The only prominent liberal to make such a tasteless joke – which had nothing to do with an actual assassination attempt – was the famously vulgar comedian Kathy Griffin, who posted a gory photo of herself holding the fake severed head of Donald Trump; for that, she lost most of her professional work and was booted from her television gigs, investigated by the Secret Service and, according to her, threatened with a charge of conspiracy to assassinate the president of the United States.By contrast, threatening and menacing Democrats has become a staple not just of conservative big mouths on YouTube and talk radio, but of Republicans seeking office. Trump, notoriously, used his rallies to encourage supporters to chant “lock her up” about Hillary Clinton. Republican representative Paul Gosar tweeted a bizarre cartoon video of him killing the Democrat representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and threatening President Biden; he refused to apologize for it, and his actions were not broadly condemned on the right.The Republican representative from Georgia Marjorie Taylor Greene has said that Pelosi has committed treason, a crime “punishable by death”. The Minnesota Republican representative Tom Emmer tweeted a video of himself shooting a gun, along with the words “Exercising my Second Amendment rights” and the hashtag #FirePelosi. Blake Masters, a Republican who is running for a Senate seat in Arizona, has published campaign ads in which he is holding guns (in one of the ads, he specifies: “It wasn’t designed for hunting – this is designed to kill people”) and has said that when it comes to what he believes is a war between left and right, “You can recite an eloquent poem about pacifism right before they line you up against the wall and shoot you.”Republican Eric Greitens ran for Senate with an ad featuring him armed and breaking down a door, saying: “Get a Rino-hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.” (Rino stands for “Republican in name only”, slang for moderate members of the GOP.)There is also the fact of rightwing violence against women, which seems less and less like a political liability. Republicans do not have a total lock on misogynist violence, but the number of GOP candidates accused of abuse and assault is truly stunning – and so too is the party’s general shrug in response. This seems to be another outcome of the presidency of a man who bragged on video about sexually assaulting women: abusing women and girls is simply not a disqualifier for those on the Republican ticket.And finally, there is the rightwing conspiracy-mongering that predictably draws in those who are untethered to reality, and the related rhetoric that makes fixing the invented problem a kind of life-and-death battle of good versus evil. The anti-abortion movement truly pioneered this strategy, claiming abortion is murder and likening abortion clinics to Hitler’s extermination factories during the Holocaust.The outcome of telling people that millions of babies were being literally murdered in this clinic down the street was a predictable one: clinics attacked, women menaced and harassed, doctors and other workers murdered. And instead of losing, the anti-abortion terrorists won: the Republican party agreed with their political aims and Republican presidents appointed anti-abortion supreme court justices, and abortion is no longer a protected constitutional right.The US right has gotten even more unhinged in recent years, with many Trump supporters embracing the QAnon conspiracy theories, believing Democrats are trafficking children through pizza restaurants and in Wayfair furniture, and even mainstream Republicans are joining in on Trump’s “Stop the Steal” refrain that the 2020 election was stolen (it wasn’t).When you promulgate totally baseless, crazy ideas and convince your followers that the mainstream media are lying to them and that political opponents aren’t just ideologically different but are literally a threat to your life, and then you insist on living in a country where people can be armed to the teeth, it’s tough to act surprised when your followers are crazy and violent.There is a pattern here that you just don’t see on the left: the fetishization of deadly weapons; violence against women that goes unpunished by the party and its supporters; the kind of troubling conspiracy theories that are catnip for crazies and that demand extreme action in response; and the fantasizing about murdering one’s political opponents, all tossed into the cauldron together.It’s not a coincidence, given the hyper-masculine misogyny element to all of this, that much of the violent rightwing fantasizing is directed at women, Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez chief among them. This isn’t the first time Nancy Pelosi was targeted by violent rightwing men. During the January 6 insurrection in 2021, she was a target of the rioters who broke into the Capitol building and wandered the halls calling her name in the kind of singsong voices usually reserved for horror movies: “Nancy, oh Nancy! Where are you, Nancy?”Republicans have largely refused to reckon with what happened on January 6. And even now, they are treating the Pelosi attack like a sideshow instead of the real warning it is. Just hours after Pelosi’s husband took a hammer to the head and as he was undergoing surgery to repair his cracked skull, Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, told an audience of rally-goers: “There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re going to send [Pelosi] back to be with him in California.”The attack on Paul Pelosi should be a moment of reckoning. For the past several years, it has felt like the wheels on this bus are getting progressively looser, and the risks of conflict, both political and interpersonal, rising higher. Depending on how Republicans react to this moment, it could simply be a footnote – a bad and tragic act, but one without lasting national effects – or one of those historical inflection points we look back on as indicative of the dangerous turn the nation was about to make.
      Jill Filipovic is the author of OK Boomer, Let’s Talk
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      Paul Pelosi attack suspect charged with attempted kidnapping and assault

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      Paul Pelosi attack suspect charged with attempted kidnapping and assaultSuspect who faces state and federal charges told police he wanted to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage and ‘break her kneecaps’ The man accused of attacking Paul Pelosi, the husband of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, told police he wanted to hold the congresswoman hostage and “break her kneecaps”, authorities in California said on Monday afternoon.David DePape, 42, confronted a sleeping Paul Pelosi in the couple’s San Francisco townhouse bedroom shortly before 2.30am last Friday morning, according to a federal affidavit filed in court on Monday.Federal prosecutors have filed two charges against DePape, days after police say he broke into the Pelosis’ home and struck the Democratic House of Representatives leader’s 82-year-old husband in the head with a hammer.Paul Pelosi was left seriously injured in the attack and was in surgery for several hours on Friday, as his wife hurried back from Washington DC to the hospital where he was taken. He was operated on for a fractured skull as well as suffering serious wounding to his arms and hands.DePape is charged federally with influencing, impeding or retaliating against a federal official by threatening or injuring a family member. He also faces one count of attempted kidnapping of a US official on account of the performance of official duties. The charges carry sentences of up to 30 years if there is a conviction.DePape also faces multiple charges at the state level – including attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, burglary, elder abuse and threatening a public official. Those charges were filed separately by the San Francisco district attorney, Brooke Jenkins, on Monday.Jenkins called the attack “politically motivated” and said the state charges are punishable by a prison sentence of 13 years to life.Jenkins rejected numerous conspiracy theories that swirled into the public domain over the weekend and on Monday, despite bipartisan condemnation of the attack from national political leaders on Friday, and an outcry over the rise in political violence and threats to lawmakers, their staff and families in a bitterly divided society.Jenkins confirmed that the assailant was targeting Nancy Pelosi when he broke into the couple’s home. She wasn’t there and DePape, after calling out “Where’s Nancy?”, confronted Paul Pelosi with a hammer.The justice department’s complaint contained some harrowing details, including more information about Paul Pelosi and DePape wrestling over a hammer when police showed up, which officers shouted at them to drop.“DePape pulled the hammer from Pelosi’s hand and swung the hammer, striking Pelosi in the head. Officers immediately went inside and were able to restrain DePape,” the complaint stated.Police found zip ties in the Pelosi residence that they said belonged to DePape, as well as retrieving from the suspect’s backpack “a roll of tape, white rope, one hammer, one pair of rubber and cloth gloves, and a journal”.The justice department reported that Paul Pelosi said he had never seen DePape before. “DePape came into Pelosi’s bedroom and stated he wanted to talk to Nancy.“When Pelosi told him that Nancy was not there, DePape stated that he would sit and wait. Pelosi stated that his wife would not be home for several days and then DePape reiterated that he would wait. Pelosi was able to go into the bathroom which is when he was able to call 911.”San Francisco police further reported, according to the justice department, that DePape said he was going to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage and talk to her.“If Nancy were to tell DePape the ‘truth’, he would let her go, and if she ‘lied’, he was going to break ‘her kneecaps’,” the police recounted, adding that: “‘DePape was certain that Nancy would not have told the “truth’. In the course of the interview, DePape articulated he viewed Nancy as the ‘leader of the pack’ of lies told by the Democratic party. DePape also later explained that by breaking Nancy’s kneecaps, she would then have to be wheeled into Congress, which would show other members of Congress there were consequences to actions,” according to the complaint.When Paul Pelosi managed to dial 911, officials have highlighted how the quick actions of the dispatcher may have saved his life.With the line left open by Pelosi, the dispatcher could hear the conversation between him and his assailant. Two minutes later, the police arrived.“I truly believe, based on what I know, that it was lifesaving,” Jenkins told ABC News.She had told reporters on Sunday that there was no evidence of any connection between the assailant and his victim, despite far-fetched theories being peddled by the right, amplified by the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, which drew criticism from liberals.The FBI on Monday bolstered Jenkins’s countering of conspiratorial claims.Congressman Eric Swalwell decried a rising tide of violent threats against lawmakers and said his chief of staff spends many hours each week dealing with it.The Associated Press contributed reportingTopicsNancy PelosiCaliforniaUS crimeSan FranciscoUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Somebody’s going to die’: Democrats warn of political violence after Paul Pelosi attack

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      ‘Somebody’s going to die’: Democrats warn of political violence after Paul Pelosi attackDire warnings after hammer assault on speaker’s husband and amid concern that security does not adequately reflect threats Democratic politicians have ramped up their warnings about the threat of political violence in America after a man bludgeoned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 82-year-old husband with a hammer in their California home on Friday.The dire warnings come amid longstanding concern that security services provided do not adequately reflect ongoing threats, especially as midterm elections loom. The Associated Press reported on Sunday that Paul Pelosi’s assailant had been carrying zip ties when he broke in.“Somebody is going to die,” Debbie Dingell, a Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, told the news website Axios. Dingell said that in 2020, after Fox News’s Tucker Carlson broadcast a segment on her, “I had men outside my home with assault weapons that night.”Mike Quigley, a Democratic congressman from Illinois, similarly told Axios that the savage assault “is confirming what members know: we are completely vulnerable at a time when the risks are increasing.” Quigley also said: “We need more ways to protect members and their families.”Indeed, the attack on Paul Pelosi appeared to have been intended for Nancy Pelosi, –Joe Biden said on Saturday. Authorities said that the attacker demanded “Where is Nancy?”; the veteran congresswoman was in Washington DC with her security detail when the assault took place.On the day of the attack, a US joint intelligence bulletin warned that there was a “heightened threat’ to the midterm contests, fueled by a rise in domestic violent extremism, or DVE, and driven by ideological grievances and access to potential targets,” according to CBS’s Nicole Sganga.The man charged in the assault, David DePape, might have expressed his political ire – which largely mirrored far-right taking points – in recent online missives. An internet user with the handle “daviddepape” voiced support of the former US president Donald Trump and seeming belief in the conspiracy theory QAnon.Insurrectionists invaded and vandalized Pelosi’s office during the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol by extreme Trump supporters. The rioters had been inspired by the then president, attacking law enforcement in an attempt to overturn Biden’s win.Some Capitol rioters sought out Pelosi, shouting her name; she escaped with other politicians and subsequently spearheaded efforts to secure the Capitol so that Congress could certify Biden’s victory.New York City police warned on Thursday that extremists might target politicians, polling sites, and political events in advance of the 2022 midterm elections. Threats have increased dramatically in recent years, with the US Capitol police reporting that they investigated 9,625 threats against lawmakers in 2021 – an approximately threefold increase from 2017.“I’m a rank-and-file member who served on a Mueller investigation and had death threats,” Kelly Armstrong, a Republican representative from North Dakota, told Axios. “I think everybody has to take it seriously.”There have been steps taken to address increasing threats against members of Congress, such as the House sergeant at arms’ announcement in July that all US Representatives will receive a $10,000 security allowance, but these measures have been criticized as insufficient. Pramila Jayapal, a Democratic congress member from Washington, said this summer that the allotment would not cover the recommended security measures for her home, per Axios.There have also been calls for legislative solutions to security concerns, but the attitude toward these concerns might stall along party lines. Mike Sherrill, a Democratic lawmaker from New Jersey, has introduced a bill that would permit judges to protect their personal information, following a 2020 shooting in New Jersey that left a judge’s son dead and her husband injured.Should Republicans win a majority in Congress, however, Capitol security will change; Republican Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, has criticized the placement of metal detectors outside the House chamber following the January 6 attack. McCarthy has hinted that he would remove them if he were in charge, Axios noted.TopicsUS CongressUS midterm elections 2022US politicsHouse of RepresentativesUS SenateUS crimenewsReuse this content More

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      A secret bathroom 911 call: how Paul Pelosi saved his own life

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      A secret bathroom 911 call: how Paul Pelosi saved his own life House speaker’s husband told alleged intruder that he needed to use restroom and spoke in ‘code’ to alert authorities of problem Paul Pelosi, the husband of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who was attacked with a hammer during an invasion of their California home, saved his life after secretly telephoning for help from the bathroom.According to Politico, Paul Pelosi told the alleged intruder – identified by authorities as David DePape – that he needed to use the restroom. Paul Pelosi’s mobile phone was charging in the bathroom at the time; the 82-year-old then made a surreptitious call to 911, and remained connected.The emergency services dispatcher, Heather Grimes, heard an exchange between Paul Pelosi and his attacker as he spoke in “code” to alert the authorities there was a problem. “What’s going on? Why are you here? What are you going to do to me?” Pelosi reportedly said while on the call.A suspicious Grimes then notified police for a wellness check.“It is really thanks to Mr Pelosi having the ability to make that call, and truly the attention and the instincts of that dispatcher to realize that something was wrong in that situation and to make the police call a priority so they got there within two minutes to respond to this situation,” Brooke Jenkins, San Francisco’s district attorney, told CNN.The San Francisco police chief, William Scott, said that officers arrived to the Pelosis home and saw Paul Pelosi and DePape holding a hammer. “The suspect pulled the hammer away from Mr. Pelosi and violently assaulted him with it,” Politico quoted Scott as saying. “Our officers immediately tackled the suspect, disarmed him, took him into custody, requested emergency backup and rendered medical aid.”Paul Pelosi suffered a skull fracture as well as injuries to his hands and right arm during the attack. He underwent surgery and is expected to fully recover.President Joe Biden said Saturday that it appeared the attack was targeting Nancy Pelosi. DePape allegedly said “Where is Nancy?” after invading their home.The attack on Paul Pelosi has intensified lawmakers’ calls for increased protection for their families. As threats against US politicians have risen sharply over the past several years, lawmakers are also seeing their families targeted.Lawmakers’ security details do not extend to their families when they are not with them. Some lawmakers have received supplemental protection from police departments in their home districts, but others have had to seek private security, CNN reported.TopicsNancy PelosiCaliforniaUS politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS crimefeaturesReuse this content More

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      Biden says it appears attack on Paul Pelosi intended for House Speaker

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      Biden says it appears attack on Paul Pelosi intended for House SpeakerSpeaker’s husband underwent surgery for skull fracture as political figures unite in condemnation of violence A man accused of clubbing the husband of the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi,’ over the head with a hammer and threatening his life while demanding “Where is Nancy?” now faces charges of attempted murder and other felonies a day after the violent break-in at the couple’s San Francisco home.Attack on Pelosi’s husband heightens fears of increasing US political violenceRead morePaul Pelosi, 82, underwent surgery for a skull fracture and injuries to his right arm and hands, though doctors expect a full recovery.Joe Biden on Saturday afternoon said Pelosi was “doing better” after his surgery. The US president told reporters it looked like the attack had been intended for Nancy Pelosi and he urged all politicians to contemn political violence.The assault stoked fears about political violence less than two weeks ahead of midterm elections on 8 November that will decide control of the House of Representatives and US Senate, coming amid the most vitriolic and polarized US political climate in decades.The 82-year-old House speaker herself was in Washington with her protective detail at the time of the assault, but she flew back to San Francisco on Friday afternoon and went to the hospital.Police identified the man arrested at the scene by officers who intervened in the attack as David DePape, 42. He, too, was hospitalized with minor injuries, although police have spoken to him and he is expected to be formally charged by the San Francisco district attorney on Monday.He was booked into custody on suspicion of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, battery, burglary and several other felonies.The San Francisco police chief, William Scott, told a Friday night news briefing that police detectives, assisted by FBI agents, had yet to determine exactly what precipitated the home invasion but said: “We know this was not a random act.“A statement from Nancy Pelosi’s spokesperson, Drew Hammill, said Pelosi’s husband had been attacked “by an assailant who acted with force, and threatened his life while demanding to see the speaker.”Scott said the intruder, wielding a hammer, forced his way into the Pelosis’ townhouse in the city’s Pacific Heights neighborhood through a rear door shortly before 2.30am on Friday morning.Police were dispatched after a cryptic emergency 911 call from the residence. CNN reported that Paul Pelosi managed to call 911 and used coded language as he spoke to the dispatcher.Scott credited the 911 operator with using her experience and intuition to “figure out that there was more to this incident than what she was being told” by the caller, so she dispatched police urgently. Scott called her decision “life-saving”.He recounted that police arriving at the scene caught a glimpse through the front door of DePape and Pelosi struggling over a hammer. As the officers yelled at both men to drop the tool, DePape yanked the hammer away and was seen striking Pelosi at least once, the chief said.The officers then arrested Depape. Scott condemned violence against politicians and their loved ones saying they “did not sign up for this” and called the attack on Pelosi “intentional and wrong”.“Everybody should be disgusted,” he said.In recent online posts, an internet user named “daviddepape” expressed support for former US president Donald Trump and embraced the cult-like conspiracy theory QAnon.The posts included references to “satanic pedophilia”, antisemitic tropes and criticism of women, transgender people and censorship by tech companies.He also railed against the prosecution of white former police officer Derek Chauvin, CNN reported, for the racist murder of George Floyd in 2020, a crime that sparked a racial reckoning and a reflowering of the Black Lives Matter movement.Older messages promoted quartz crystals and hemp bracelets. Reuters could not confirm that the posts were created by the man arrested on Friday.Friday’s incident came a day after New York City police warned that extremists could target politicians, political events and polling sites ahead of the midterm elections, and threats have risen sharply.US faces new era of political violence as threats against lawmakers riseRead moreThe US Capitol police said they investigated 9,625 threats against lawmakers from both parties in 2021, nearly a threefold increase from 2017, amid security concerns.Pelosi’s office was invaded and ransacked during the 6 January 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol by extremist supporters of Trump, who had been incited by the-then Republican president, as they attacked law enforcement and sought to overturn Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election. Some of those who invaded the building hunted for the speaker, calling out her name.She had escaped with other lawmakers and then from a place of hiding led efforts to get the halls and chambers of the Capitol re-secured and back in action so that Congress could certify Joe Biden’s presidential election victory, which it did in the early hours of 7 January.In January 2021, the Pelosis’ home was vandalized with graffiti saying “Cancel rent” and “We want everything” painted on the house and a pig’s head left in front of the garage, media reported.The home of the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, was also vandalized.McConnell contributed to bipartisan condemnation, saying he was “horrified and disgusted” by Friday’s violence.Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, whom insurrectionists threatened to hang on January 6, a notion reportedly endorsed by Trump, because he was willing to follow protocol and certify Biden’s victory, tweeted on Friday. He condemned the attack on Paul Pelosi as an outrage and said “there can be no tolerance for violence against public officials or their families.”Speaking at a campaign event in Pennsylvania on Friday evening, Biden told the crowd: “Enough is enough.“Every person of good conscience needs to clearly and unambiguously stand up against violence in our politics, regardless of what your politics are,” the US president said.Vice-President Kamala Harris was once the district attorney for San Francisco. On Saturday, she told an election campaign event in Baltimore that “there’s some scary stuff happening.”She said in place of vigorous but fair debate, “powerful people, so-called leaders, have been using the bully pulpit … to divide our country, in a way that is propagating hate,” adding that people needed to make their voices heard to articulate that “we won’t stand for that.”TopicsNancy PelosiSan FranciscoUS politicsUS crimenewsReuse this content More

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      Barack Obama reacts to attack on 'good friend' Paul Pelosi – video

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      At a rally in Georgia, Barack Obama commented on the violent attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband. The former US president said Paul Pelosi was a ‘good friend’ and condemned politicians who ‘stir up division to make folks as angry and as afraid of one another … for their own advantage’.
      Pelosi was attacked with a hammer after an intruder entered his home in San Francisco, demanding to see his wife, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who was in Washington. The attack has prompted fears of growing political violence in the US before the midterm elections on 8 November

      Paul Pelosi in hospital with skull fracture after attack

      Attack heightens fears of increasing US political violence More