Gym Jordan and some other House Republicans, including Matt Gaetz and George Santos, were in Manhattan today to hold some sort of “hearing” on crime in Alvin Bragg’s district. The report at Rolling Stone suggests it was a madhouse. Access was highly restricted, including to the press, so I’m assuming the purpose of this was to generate something that will be shown on Fox News and possibly nowhere else. From Rolling Stone:
“What the fuck is going on here?” one reporter whispered to a colleague.
Indeed, that was also the question of the hour, given crime statistics in Manhattan. New York Police Department data indicates that homicides are down nine percent in Manhattan year-to-date. Shootings have dropped 14 percent in the same period, and robbery and burglary are down in the borough by 10 and 23 percent, respectively.
There’s a nifty chart of crime rates in U.S. cities based on FBI crime data that somebody maintains on Wikipedia. You can look up which cities have the highest rates of homicides, rapes, whatever. Currently, these are the top ten U.S. cities for violent crime. The numbers are the rate of murders, rapes, robberies, and assaults per 100,000 population.
St. Louis, Missouri, 2,082.29
Detroit, Michigan, 2,056.67
Baltimore, Maryland, 2,027.01
Memphis, Tennessee, 2,003.32
Kansas City, Missouri, 1,724.31
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1,597.36
Cleveland, Ohio, 1,556.76*
Stockton, California, 1,414.56
Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1,369.14
Indianapolis, Indiana, 1,333.96
The much-maligned Chicago is #17 at 1,098.86, which puts it in between #16 Minneapolis and #18 Houston. New York City is #59, with 538.90.
If you want the list for homicides only, the top ten are St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Kansas City, Cleveland*, Memphis, Newark, and Cincinnati*.
*Ohio is Gym Jordan’s home state. I see that the New York Daily News is running a big headline saying that Ohio’s murder rates are far higher than New York’s, but it’s behind a subscription paywall.
In other news: The Dominion trial was supposed to start this morning, but it’s delayed until tomorrow. Some news outlets are reporting that the people who are supposed to know stuff, whoever they are, say the delay is to discuss the possibility of a settlement. There’s no official word of this from the court.
Mediaite is reporting that Trump is warning Rupert Murdoch to testify the 2020 election was stolen from him.
In an all-caps post on Truth Social, Trump urged Murdoch to “EXPOSE THE TRUTH ON CHEATING IN THE 2020 ELECTION.” Fox is the defendant in a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion, which says that Fox knowingly amplified false claims about the company in order to promote Trump’s disproven theories about how the election was stolen from him and handed to Joe Biden. According to Trump, Fox’s acknowledgement that the election was not stolen from him represents a legal liability.
“FOX NEWS IS IN BIG TROUBLE IF THEY DO NOT EXPOSE THE TRUTH ON CHEATING IN THE 2020 ELECTION. THEY SHOULD DO WHAT’S RIGHT FOR AMERICA. WHEN RUPERT MURDOCH SAYS THAT THERE WAS NO CHEATING IN LIGHT OF THE MASSIVE PROOF THAT WAS THERE, IT IS RIDICULOUS AND VERY HARMFUL TO THE FOX CASE,” argued Trump, before addressing Murdoch directly. “RUPERT, JUST TELL THE TRUTH AND GOOD THINGS WILL HAPPEN. THE ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLLEN…YOU KNOW IT, & SO DOES EVERYONE ELSE!”
Unfortunately for Trump, I suspect Rupert will listen to his own lawyers, thanks much. And “stollen” is German Christmas bread.