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On Friday, we had a difficult but important discussion here about the media, Democrats, and their “see-no-evil” approach to urban crime and disorder. The very next day, video emerges of a young, female Ukrainian refugee being stabbed in the neck and left to bleed out on a train in Charlotte, NC late last month. The woman, Iryna Zarutska, 23, had escaped a war zone to come work in America. She was murdered not by Vladimir Putin, but by Decarlos Brown, a violent career criminal with 14 previous arrests who — according to the CCTV video — got up from his seat and decided to kill her for no apparent reason. She was completely defenseless and didn’t even see it coming.
In the end, she would have had a better chance against the Russians…. and that should deeply shame us, as Americans.
You are forgiven if you have no idea what I am talking about. This story has gotten some local coverage, and has since been picked up by the right-wing tabloid press. But my compatriots in the lamestream media have thus far ignored it, for the exact reasons we so presciently noted on Friday: the killer is black and the victim is white. If the roles were reversed, do you think this story would not be on the homepage of the Times, Post, CNN, NBC, etc. right now? Even with the Ukraine connection, none of those outlets have even touched this story yet, based on my cursory Googling.
That will change today. President Trump was asked about Zarutska’s murder last night on his way back from the US Open and said he would look into it, as even he — the country’s #1 consumer of news media — was unaware of the crime. So expect some presidential tweets and furor today directed at the governor of North Carolina and the mayor of Charlotte, both of whom — conveniently for Trump — happen to be Democrats. And honestly, good. Along with the judge who let Brown out on bail despite having an open case for assaulting another woman, these politicians should need to answer for why this guy was on the street. Frankly, there should be resignations over this. (Newsflash: there won’t be.)
Look, violent crime is a fact of life in America. As many of you reminded me on Friday, we are a country with more guns than people. But this particular crime didn’t even require a gun. It just required a violent maniac with a pocket knife, riding the light rail and coming across a defenseless young woman. That it was recorded on video makes it all the more visceral. Democrats, particularly those who want to be president one day, have got to come up with an answer for what to do about this problem. And the answer cannot be some form of “Akshually…the data shows violent crime is coming down in Chicago/NYC/Charlotte/name your city.”
When a white cop nonchalantly suffocated a black man under his knee, recorded for the world to see, it did not matter that the statistics showed that most white cops didn’t murder black men for sport. The George Floyd video “told a story” about America that data could not tell. Likewise, the video of this poor young woman is telling us a story about this country that no data or number-crunching could. That story is that a woman can flee a literal war only to be senselessly killed in an American city by an American career criminal who was free to do so because of policy choices made by elected officials.
There’s also something about this having happened on the train that makes it even worse. I’ve always believed that crimes committed on public transit should be treated especially harshly, because they are such a blatant violation of the social compact. If you live in a city, you are making a pact with your fellow citizens every day that you’re going to travel in a confined space together, and with that physical closeness comes certain responsibilities. When you break those rules, you are violating that social pact for everyone and should be punished for it. (This is why I never give money to panhandlers on the subway, no matter how desperate they look. Take it above ground, fella.)
Progressives can talk all they want about investing in things like public infrastructure, but if people are too scared of being murdered for looking at someone the wrong way (or in this case not even that), as they take the train or bus to and from work, then it doesn’t quite matter how fast or convenient that public transit is, does it? I am begging my fellow libs to take this issue seriously if they ever want to win an election again.
Will America Ever Have a Moderate President Again?
As Zohran Mamdani greeted supporters following his upset victory over Andrew Cuomo in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary in June, the chants erupting around him weren’t about pragmatism or compromise—they were about housing, justice and revenge against a system he said had failed ordinary people.
“This wasn’t just a primary,” Mamdani told the crowd. “This was a referendum on a crumbling status quo.”
The 33-year-old democratic socialist’s victory wasn’t just a local surprise; it symbolizes a broader political shift. Across the nation, more voters—urban and rural, working-class and professional—are rejecting technocratic centrism in favor of leaders who promise to fight, not finesse.
For decades, “moderation” in U.S. politics was synonymous with stability. The Reagan era’s embrace of supply-side economics in the 1980s set a conservative template; the Clinton years extended it through “Third Way” centrism—balanced budgets, free trade, welfare reform. The pitch: a steady hand at the wheel. Read more.
Also happening:
FEMA: Several employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have filed whistleblower complaints after being put on administrative leave shortly after signing a public letter of dissent last week. “I believe this is retaliatory behavior and is meant to silence and intimidate me and the rest of my coworkers,” James Stroud, a statistician with FEMA, and among those who signed the letter and was subsequently placed on leave, told Newsweek. Read more.Tariffs: The pace of Chinese export growth slowed sharply in August, Beijing’s customs agency said, as President Donald Trump’s tariffs squeezed outgoing trade. Chinese goods exports reached $321.8 billion in August, a 4.4 percent increase compared to the same month last year. That was down from a 7.2 percent jump in July, and a sharp drop in exports to the U.S. was the primary driver of that decline. Read more.
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