Claim: Stricter national gun laws would have prevented a string of mass shootings in California.

Who said it: Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.), Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), the Washington Post.

Why it matters: California has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation and leaders who like to export their policies to the rest of the country. Newsom and congressional Democrats have spent the past week arguing that state laws won’t deter mass shooters unless the federal government steps up with its own restrictions.

Context: Americans are rattled by three consecutive mass shootings that killed 18 people in California over the course of three days in January. The first shooter used an illegal assault rifle featuring a prohibited silencer and 30-round magazine. The second shooter’s gun was registered legally but also had a 30-round magazine that is barred in California. Police have not identified the weapon used in the third shooting, but they believe it was likely the result of a gang fight.

Analysis: There is no evidence that stricter national gun laws would have prevented these shootings. All three either involved already-banned weapons, or were the result of gang-related criminal activity. A Department of Justice study from 2016 found that 43 percent of criminals bought their guns through the black market, compared with the 10 percent who went to retailers.

Experts with the Rockefeller Institute of Government recently acknowledged that data show most gun laws, including assault-rifle bans, don’t prevent mass shootings. Just look at California. Newsom often credits the state’s many gun restrictions for reducing the gun death rate to 37 percent below the national average. Yet violent crime and murders are still prevalent. The state records higher violent crime than the national average, while gun-related homicides surged by 52 percent from 2019 to 2021.

This is not to say that all gun laws are pointless. They keep lethal weapons out of the hands of criminals and the mentally disturbed. Safety measures prevent accidents and harm to children. But they cannot stop bad people from doing bad things.

The post FACT CHECK: Would Stricter National Gun Laws Have Stopped California’s Mass Shootings? appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Throughout President Joe Biden’s classified documents scandal, the White House has insisted that the president is taking the matter “seriously.”

After FBI agents on Wednesday searched Biden’s vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., for classified documents, the Biden administration hammered a new point: The White House is being “cooperative”—a word spokesman Ian Sams repeated a dozen times during a brief media gaggle on the White House lawn.

Sams, who has led White House communications regarding the documents scandal, is best known for modeling the “Grillary Clinton” aprons sold by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

READ MORE: This Overlooked Detail Suggests Biden’s Classified Document Scandal Could Bring Down His Presidency

The post WATCH: The White House Really Wants You to Know Biden Is Being ‘Cooperative’ With Docs Investigators appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

(NewsNation) — For days, a group of migrants has been choosing to sleep outside in the cold rather than utilize a new shelter at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in New York City.

One of the reasons the migrants are refusing to move is the location. Central Manhattan is an active and easy to get to area. It’s a five-minute walk from a subway station that can take you anywhere in the city.

The migrants say the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, which is in an old industrial area, is too isolated and will prevent them from continuing to work or build a community.

“I think people are going to stay here as long as it takes to get a decent shelter in New York City,” said activist Jose Carlos. “If you are an asylum seeker the state should be able to give you your rights but also dignified conditions.”

Commissioner Manuel Castro, the head of immigrant affairs, addressed the concerns of these migrant men who were asked to leave the Watson Hotel to make room for women and children.

“It’s temperature control, they’ll have access to food, they have access to all kinds of services,” Castro said. “In fact, they have access to free ferry and bus services that will take them to transportation.”

The city is growing frustrated with what they say is “misinformation.”

Photos and videos of the new shelter show 1,000 beds side-by-side.

This is in contrast to the men calling the conditions “prison-like.”

“I came here when I heard the rumors that it was too cold,” said Mayor Eric Adams. “My brother here has on shorts. It’s warm inside. About food not being there: we have healthy food inside. Snacks. We just need to stop the anxiety. These men want to work want to pursue the American dream. We are thankful to the people of New York City.”

The city says they are providing transportation from the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal to Midtown Manhattan.

Comissioner Castro said they can use other services or leave.

“The initial reports that asylum seekers heard was that we were setting up detention centers,” Castro said. “Again, no one’s being detained, forcibly moved. They have the choice to go to a regular homeless services system or to continue using the hertz.”

(NewsNation) — On Wednesday, the jury in the double homicide trial of South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh viewed video taken from his 22-year-old son Paul’s phone.

Considered one of the state’s most important pieces of evidence, the prosecution says the video from the phone was taken minutes before Paul was killed.

The video shows Paul in the kennels on the family’s Moselle hunting lodge trying to get a video of a dog’s tail.

But what could be extremely important in the trial is what’s heard in the background.

According to State Law Enforcement Division Lt. Britt Dove, a cellphone data analyst, three different voices are heard in the video.

Prosecutors argue one of those voices is Alex Murdaugh’s, which places him at the murder scene with both his son and wife Maggie moments before their murders.

In the courtroom, Murdaugh cried while listening to the voices.

Murdaugh previously told investigators he’d fallen asleep inside the main house yards away and hadn’t seen his wife and son until finding their bodies.

The jury also heard a detailed second-by-second analysis of data from Alex, Paul and Maggie’s cellphones.

The jury looked confused by some of the times and numbers in the expert’s testimony.

The evidence included a change in Maggie’s phone’s orientation from portrait to landscape after the state says she died.

But on cross-examination, the defense got an admission out of the data expert that undercuts the prosecution’s argument that after the murders Murdaugh had handled his wife’s phone.

Murdaugh’s defense used that same data to suggest that Murdaugh’s phone and his wife’s phone were not together when her iPhone recorded a final change in orientation, indicating it may have been tossed on the side of the road about a half-mile from the family’s property.

Brazil’s Congress on Wednesday re-elected the leaders of both chambers, in a key win for leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s legislative agenda.

Senator Rodrigo Pacheco drew 49 votes out of the 41 he needed to defeat an ally of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro, avoiding a dramatic setback for Lula.

Rogerio Marinho, who was a minister of Bolsonaro’s Cabinet, received 32 votes.

In his speech shortly after the re-election, Pacheco, who during Bolsonaro’s government positioned himself as a defender of democracy and the Brazilian electoral system, repeated that the country needs pacification and that the three branches of government need to work in harmony.

But he stressed that “pacification does not mean omission or leniency.

“Pacification does not mean inflaming the population with untrue narratives or solutions that generate institutional instability. Pacification does not mean remaining silent before anti-democratic acts,” he said, referring to the attacks by Bolsonaro supporters on the headquarters of the Three Branches of Power on January 8.

The win came despite the efforts made by Bolsonaro to back Marinho’s campaign for Senate president. The former president, who has not returned from Florida since his term ended on Jan. 1, spoke by telephone on Monday with a meeting of his party, the Liberal Party (PL).

Control of either chamber by the opposition could have hampered approval of Lula’s priorities, starting with temporary decrees he has signed that extend social welfare payments for poor families and reduce taxes on fuels.

In the lower house, Speaker Arthur Lira of the center-right Popular Party (PP) won his re-election by a wide margin, after having secured the support of Lula’s Workers Party and others in his center-left coalition, along with some of Bolsonaro’s allies.

Lira, who drew 464 votes out of the 257 needed, had previously allied with Bolsonaro, but was quick to recognize Lula’s narrow election victory and congratulate him, starting a constructive dialogue during the presidential transition.

All legislation must pass through Lira’s desk to get started in Congress, including impeachment efforts, which Bolsonaro allies are already planning.

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Ukrainian authorities raided an influential billionaire’s home on Wednesday, part of what President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said was a drive to root out corruption and help the country meet Western standards of clean governance.

Separate raids were carried out at the Tax Office and on the home of a former interior minister, two days before Kyiv hosts a summit with the European Union where it wants to show it is cracking down after years of chronic corruption.

Ukraine sees the summit as key to hopes of one day joining the bloc, a goal that has grown more urgent following Russia’s invasion, and has also embarked on a political shake-up in which over a dozen officials quit or were sacked.

Zelenskiy pledged further action to ensure clean operations of state, citing, in particular, the defence ministry.

“Unfortunately, there are some sectors where the only way to guarantee lawfulness is changing top officials along with institutional change,” he said in a video address.

“There will be as many changes as is necessary so that at last people will not end up getting dirty in their positions.”

Security officials searched the home of businessman Ihor Kolomoiskiy, a one-time Zelenskiy ally, in what several media outlets said was a probe into possible financial crimes.

Kolomoiskiy could not immediately be reached for comment. He has previously denied any wrongdoing.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) later said it had uncovered a scheme to embezzle more than $1 billion at oil producer Ukrnafta and oil refining company Ukrtatnafta, companies that Kolomoiskiy used to partly own.

Photographs circulating on social media appeared to show Kolomoiskiy looking on in the presence of at least one SBU officer inside a wooden home. Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the images.

David Arakhamia, a member of Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People party, confirmed the search of Kolomoiskiy’s home as well as separate raids at the Tax Office and the home of Arsen Avakov, a former interior minister.

Arakhamia said the entire management of the Customs Service was set to be dismissed and that senior defence ministry officials had been served with notices informing them they were suspects in a case.

“The country will change during the war. If someone is not ready for change, then the state itself will come and help them change,” Arakhamia wrote on Telegram.

The Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement “corruption in a time of war is looting” and four senior current and former officials had been served “notices of suspicion”, along with Ukrtatnafta’s senior management.

The head of the State Bureau of Investigation said the law enforcement action was “only the beginning”.

Zelenskiy presided over the first major political shake-up of the war last week after an outcry over a corruption scandal involving an army food contract.

He was elected in 2019 on an anti-corruption ticket and in late 2021 launched a crackdown on wealthy businessmen known as “oligarchs” who wield influence.

The Federal Reserve said on Wednesday it had turned a key corner in the fight against high inflation, but that “victory” would still require its benchmark overnight interest rate to be increased further and remain elevated at least through 2023.

In announcing its latest policy decision, the U.S. central bank scaled back to a quarter-percentage-point rate increase after a year of larger hikes and swept aside in its statement the long list of reasons, from war to the pandemic, that were driving prices higher to say simply that “inflation has eased.”

Yet policymakers also projected “ongoing increases” in borrowing costs would be needed, a still open-ended commitment that did not yet pinpoint when the rate hikes might stop, and pushed back against an expectation in financial markets that the Fed would pause soon and, indeed, cut rates later this year.

Investors nevertheless took a dovish cue from remarks by Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who referred repeatedly during a news conference to the “disinflationary” process that now appeared to be underway. Equity markets rose as Powell spoke and investors slightly boosted bets for coming rate cuts.

Meanwhile, Powell insisted that rate cuts are not in the offing, and took pains to walk what has become an increasingly fine line between the flow of data showing inflation in steady decline with the need to keep the public and investors attuned to the fact that interest rates will continue rising.

“We can now say for the first time that the disinflationary process has started,” Powell told reporters after the end of the Fed’s latest two-day policy meeting, with goods prices slowing, pandemic-related shortages easing, and supply chains getting back to normal. “This is a good thing.”

From a peak of nearly 7% in June, the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation was 5% in December, still well above its 2% target but heading steadily in the right direction.

Yet “it’s just the early stages,” Powell said. “We’re going to be cautious about declaring victory and … sending signals that we think that the game is won, because we’ve got a long way to go.”

Important segments of the economy, including broad swaths of the service sector, have yet to see inflation slow, the Fed chief said, while a high level of job openings and still-strong wage increases showed the labor market was “extremely tight.”

“The labor market continues to be out of balance,” Powell said, flagging the fact that Fed officials feel it is likely that the unemployment rate will need to rise from its current low level of 3.5% for inflation to complete the journey back to the 2% level.

The Fed’s statement on Wednesday marked its first explicit acknowledgment of slowing inflation after a year in which prices accelerated much faster than anticipated – requiring a series of rapid three-quarters-of-a-percentage point and half-percentage-point rate increases to match the outbreak of rising prices.

Dynamics that the Fed during the past year has said were driving prices higher, including the pandemic, were either dropped from the statement altogether or, in the case of the war in Ukraine, cited only as a source of “global uncertainty” rather than inflation.

The rate hikes imposed by the Fed since March have now totaled 4.5 percentage points, with the policy rate now in a range between 4.50% and 4.75%, the highest since 2007. That is reflected in an array of consumer borrowing costs from home mortgages to car loans.

The full impact of that monetary policy tightening has yet to be felt in the economy, but has so far been absorbed without derailing the “modest” economic growth and “robust” job gains that the Fed cited in its latest statement.

It is in part that resilience that has the central bank poised for “ongoing increases” in its policy interest rate.

With inflation still high and demand in the economy stronger than many anticipated, Powell said it remains unclear just how much higher rates will need to go. As of December, Fed policymakers projected a peak policy rate in a range between 5.00% and 5.25%, consistent with what Powell said, as an aside during his news conference, were likely a “couple” more rate hikes to come.

Stocks, modestly lower ahead of the Fed rate decision, turned sharply higher as Powell spoke. The benchmark S&P 500 (.SPX) index ended the day with just over a 1% gain.

At the same time, the yield on the 2-year Treasury note , the maturity most sensitive to Fed policy expectations, dropped abruptly and traded down more than 10 basis points at 4.10%. The U.S. dollar slid against a basket of major trading partner currencies.

“If you were hoping for clear signs of an upcoming pause in interest rate hikes, you were left wanting. The Federal Reserve retained the phrase ‘ongoing increases’ in their statement, leaving their options open depending on what upcoming economic data says,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.

The Fed statement indicated that any future rate increases would be in quarter-percentage-point increments, dropping a reference to the “pace” of future increases and instead referring to the “extent” of rate changes.

Fed policymakers hope the central bank can continue nudging inflation lower without triggering a deep recession or causing a substantial rise in unemployment.

The Fed did not issue new economic projections from its policymakers on Wednesday, but did reaffirm its commitment to its 2% average inflation target as part of its annual review of operating principles.

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(NewsNation) — The suspect in a violent kidnapping in Oregon killed two men before being cornered by officers and fatally shooting himself, police said Wednesday.

Grants Pass Police Chief Warren Hensman said Benjamin Obadiah Foster, 36, died at a hospital Tuesday night, hours after he shot himself while hiding in a crawlspace underneath a house.

Foster was the subject of a nationwide manhunt, wanted on charges of attempted murder, kidnapping, and assault in the second degree after a woman was found unconscious, bound and near death in a house in Grants Pass on Jan. 24. On Wednesday, she remained hospitalized in critical condition.

Foster narrowly eluded a police raid last Thursday in the unincorporated community of Wolf Creek, then was seen Tuesday in the same neighborhood where the woman was found. 

This led police to perform well-being checks, alerting local residents to their search for Foster, who authorities called “extremely dangerous.”

It was during well-being checks that police observed through an open window the deceased bodies of Richard Lee Barron Jr. and Donald Owen Griffith.

Oregon State Police Capt. Kyle Kennedy said the two men lived together in the unincorporated community of Sunny Valley and apparently did not know Foster, who police said left a gruesome scene and stole some of the victims’ belongings, including their dog.

Police said an initial, ongoing investigation indicated they both died from blunt force trauma.

Officers from four agencies assembled a SWAT team while attempting to secure Foster’s surrender.

Foster barricaded himself under the house as police arrived in full force.

“We had to cut into the floorboards,” Hensman said.

Foster then shot himself, was taken into custody and died at a hospital, police said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.