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The Anti-Defamation League’s annual report on extremist killings in the United States, released Wednesday, found that individuals linked to right-wing extremist movements committed every single extremist-related murder in the country in 2018.


Right-wing extremists killed 50 people last year, mostly with firearms, making them responsible for more deaths than in any year since 1995, according to the ADL’s data.

The report focuses on incidents like the February mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida, committed by a teenager who expressed sympathy towards white supremacist ideology; the massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue by an avowed anti-Semite; and the shooting spree at a Tallahassee yoga studio by a man bent on committing violence against women.

Guns were responsible for 42 of the 50 deaths documented by the ADL.

“The white supremacist attack in Pittsburgh should serve as a wake-up call to everyone about the deadly consequences of hateful rhetoric,” ADL CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt said in a statement accompanying the report’s release. “It’s time for our nation’s leaders to appropriately recognize the severity of the threat and to devote the necessary resources to address the scourge of right-wing extremism.”

The ADL only includes in its count incidents in which there is “positive evidence connecting the murderer to an extremist group or movement,” rather than just a killing committed by someone who has expressed racist, anti-Semitic, or other hateful comments. They are categorized by their “primary” ideology, meaning the one they seem most driven by, most recently followed, or that clearly drove the murder they carried out.

The ADL said they are now tracking murders committed by followers of the involuntary celibate or “incel” movement. While not all “incels” are violent, men like the Tallahassee yoga studio shooter openly express their desire to hurt and kill women who they feel have deprived them of sex or loving relationships.

As the ADL notes, “the deaths described here represent merely the tip of a pyramid of extremist violence and crime in the United States; for each person killed by an extremist, many more are wounded or injured in attempted murders and assaults. Extremists engage in a wide variety of other crimes related to their causes, from threats and harassment to white collar crime.”

Just over the past week, a man was arrested in Utah for threatening to kill “as many girls as I see” on the weekend of nationwide Women’s Marches. Three men were arrested in upstate New York for plotting to attack a rural Muslim community with explosive devices.

The Hoarse Whisperer
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Mike Pence reportedly fled the Senate chamber with hands over both eyes before calling Mother to confess his eyes had sinned.

MUELLER NEWS: Mueller's Grand Jury is meetin' today (Thursday) which is a bit unusual. WaPo reporter Spencer Hsu notes the last time they met on Thursday was the day before the last batch of indictments were rolled out on Friday.

Mike Pence reportedly fled the Senate chamber with hands over both eyes before calling Mother to confess his eyes had sinned.

The newly installed official who oversees elections in the critical swing state of Florida resigned on Thursday after a newspaper obtained photos of him dressed in blackface at a 2005 Halloween party.

The official, Michael Ertel, a Republican who had served as Florida’s secretary of state for only two weeks and two days, confirmed to The Tallahassee Democrat that he was the person in the photographs of a white man in a T-shirt with “Katrina Victim” written on it.

Along with blackface makeup, Mr. Ertel is wearing red lipstick, earrings and a New Orleans Saints bandanna in the photos. They were taken two months after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, a city that is 60 percent black.

When shown the photographs, Mr. Ertel told The Democrat, “There’s nothing I can say.”

The photographs evoked an ugly history of white people blackening their faces to mock African-Americans in minstrel shows and movies. That same nerve was struck by a photo widely shared on social media that showed Kentucky high school students dressed all in black and wearing black paint on their bodies and faces as they yelled at a black player from an opposing basketball team.

The school, Covington Catholic, is under a microscope after a confrontation between a group of its students and a Native American elder in Washington over the weekend.

And at the University of Oklahoma, students involved in filming and posting a video showing a woman applying blackface were expelled this week.

Mr. Ertel, 49, had been the supervisor of elections for Seminole County since February 2005 when Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, appointed him secretary of state in December. Before resigning, he had testified before a state legislative committee on Thursday about election lawsuits.

The newly installed official who oversees elections in the critical swing state of Florida resigned on Thursday after a newspaper obtained photos of him dressed in blackface at a 2005 Halloween party.

there’s another massive “border crossing” phenomenon afoot — and Trump has not said a word about it. We’re talking about thousands of US citizens crossing the border each day in search of affordable health care.

At just one checkpoint in Yuma, Arizona, up to 6,000 Americans cross the border every day and enter the bustling Mexican town of Los Algodones, seeking heath care.

Unlike the Trump administration that seeks to build a wall between the countries, Los Algodones welcomes Americans seeking dental care with open arms.

Los Algodones has to be seen to believed. There are more dentists per capita than anywhere else in the world. It seems like every square foot of public space wall is covered with advertisements promising quality and affordable dental care, vision care and prescription drugs. The community’s economy is built to serve the flood of “dental refugees” — mostly senior citizens from the US and Canada seeking major dental care they cannot afford in their own countries, even with insurance.

The costs savings are hard to debate. Dental work in Mexico is on average two-thirds less than in the US and customers may save 80 percent or more on some costly operations. Those savings derive partially from Mexico’s less expensive real estate and labor costs, but also, Mexico’s dentists don’t graduate with a ton of student debt.

The government provides basically tuition-free education. “When we get out of school, we have to pay the government, but we do it by one year of free service, and that’s it,” Miguel Ibarreche of the Sani Dental Group, one of Mexico’s largest dental clinic companies, told NPR.

If you casually compare the magnitude of border crossings, the crisis of the US’s for-profit healthcare system becomes apparent. According to US Customs and Border Protection, border crossings of Mexican and Central American refugees — the border crossings Trump and Fox News rage about 24/7 — ranged from 20,000 to roughly 60,000 people per month in 2018. In Los Algodones alone, nearly five times as many American dental refugees are going the opposite way. To get an idea of the absurdity, one could argue there are more people currently fleeing the US’s health care system than refugees seeking asylum from extreme violence and state terror in Central America.

To get an idea of the absurdity, one could argue there are more people currently fleeing the US’s health care system than refugees seeking asylum from extreme violence and state terror in Central America.

Florida's Secretary of State Michael Ertel has resigned after photos emerged of him in blackface dressed as a victim of Hurricane Katrina.

The images, printed by the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper, were allegedly taken at a Halloween party in 2005.

Mr Ertel - wearing a bandana and a shirt with "Katrina Victim" written on the front - was a local supervisor of elections at the time.

Hurricane Katrina killed nearly 2,000 people, most of them in Louisiana.

The secretary's of state's responsibilities include overseeing elections in Florida and promoting its economic interests around the world.

Mr Ertle was appointed in the role in December by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis.

"There's nothing I can say," Mr Ertel said when approached by the Tallahassee Democrat for comment about the photos.

Long-time Trump ally and former campaign adviser Roger Stone has been arrested in Florida, charged with seven counts in the Mueller probe, including obstruction and witness-tampering.

Mr Stone is scheduled to appear in court later in the city of Fort Lauderdale.