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Hakeem Jeffries Urged on Protests: Getting One Protestor Killed

Well, of course. The news has been filled with stories like this, below, from Democrat leaders: House Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in January 2025, on the Trump agenda: “That’s not acceptable. We are going to fight it legislatively. We are going to fight it in the courts. We’re going to fight it in the streets.” Then there was this, as reported in Axios after interviewing Democrat lawmakers: “What we’re hearing: The grassroots wants more. ‘Some of them have suggested … what we really need to do is be willing to get shot’ when visiting ICE facilities or federal agencies, a third House Democrat told Axios.” And then there was this, also from Axios, after talking to House Democrats: “Our own base is telling us that what we’re doing is not good enough … [that] there needs to be blood to grab the attention of the press and the public,” the lawmaker said. “A fourth House Democrat said constituents have told them ‘civility isn’t working’ and to prepare for ‘violence … to fight to protect our democracy.’” And then there was this from NBC News: “Out of power, Democratic lawmakers take to the streets to rally opposition to Trump.” Stories like this litter the Internet. And now? Now, having urged leftists to “prepare for violence” and that “there needs to be blood to grab the attention of the press and the public”? Now the Dems have gotten their wish. In this instance, the demand from Democrats that “there needs to be blood to grab the attention of the press and the public” has been answered. In this instance, the answer comes in the form of the blood of a 37-year-old protesting mom named Renee Nicole Macklin Good. Good had driven into a protest area. This report, from MSN and accompanied by video, says: “Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that Macklin Good tried to run over immigration officers with her as ‘domestic terrorism.’” For those who were around in the long ago, the memory stirs of another shooting of protesting left-wingers. That would be in May of 1970, when left-wing college students of the day, infuriated by the news that then-President Nixon was sending in U.S. troops to Cambodia to assist in the neighboring Vietnam War, took to the streets and college campuses en masse to try and shut the country down. In the protest at Ohio’s Kent State University, the protest was out of control enough that it had the governor of Ohio summoning the Ohio National Guard to the campus to restore order. Alas, not unlike this recent Minneapolis shooting, things got out of hand, and the National Guard wound up firing on Kent State’s protesting kids, killing four and wounding nine. And then all h..e..double L role broke loose, shutting down hundreds of universities and colleges across the country. As a college student myself at Pennsylvania’s Franklin and Marshall College, classes were called off early, and my fellow students and myself sent home, ending the spring semester early. All of which is to say, the American left has a predilection for inviting violence when their point of view is not winning the day. And this inevitably ends badly. The bottom line here is both simple and old. It’s perfectly acceptable for any group to oppose an agenda they don’t like legislatively or in the courts. Protests, if peaceful, are fine. But quite clearly, when protests harbor those who want to incite violence, there can easily be bloodshed. And safe to say, when a Democrat member of Congress tells an Axios reporter that “there needs to be blood to grab the attention of the press and the public,” it is almost inevitable that they will get their wish. Now, they have. That would be the blood of a 37-year-old Mom who apparently listened to the siren call of Democrat leaders and chose to put herself in the middle of a protest that quickly turned violent. One would hope that at least one result of this tragedy is the need to stop violence in these protests, whether they are in Minneapolis or anywhere else in America. And no matter the subject of the protest. The answer? That would be, among other things, to stop the calls for people to get shot. Stop the calls that there “needs to be blood to grab the attention of the press and the public.” Stop it. Stop it, stop it, stop it. Now. And oh yes. An apology from Hakeem Jeffries would be appropriate. READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Trump Rescues Venezuela The Trump-Kennedy Center Kerfuffle A Conservative’s Christmas Reading List