MSM Blackout on Iryna Zarutska’s Murder. GoFundMe Fundraiser for Her Stabber. Not Giving Peace (Vigil) a Chance. No Such Thing as a Free Bus. And More
As Hot Air’s Beege Welborn observes, the horrific video of a young woman being stabbed to death on a train isn’t a Netflix creation.
It is a surveillance tape. It captured the death of Iryna Zarutska, 23, who escaped war-ravaged Kyiv, only to be killed in Charlotte, North Carolina, by a homeless man with a violent criminal history. Iryna was taking Charlotte Area Transit System’s light rail train home from her job at a pizza parlor. In a post headlined “The Unspeakable Evil Progressives Have Unleashed Strikes in Charlotte,” Welborn describes the tape shows:
Unbeknownst to Iryna, when she found a seat and pulled out her phone, besides being a turnstile jumper, the man slouched across the two seats directly behind her, whom someone described as ‘looking emotional,’ was a monster. A deranged beast who would suddenly do something so unspeakably savage to the slender wisp of a girl in the seat before him that it beggars description.
The girl who left the war-torn devastation of her home country in search of something better and safer, and started over in the Queen City.
The U.K. Telegraph also described tape:
The footage shows suspect Decarlos Brown Jr. appearing agitated and restless in his seat as Ms Zarutska sits in front of him wearing her pizzeria uniform.
Five minutes into her journey, Brown pulls out a fold-out pocket knife, stands up, and swings his arm high before allegedly stabbing her three times in the neck.
Then, outrageously, the Telegraph suggests that “right-wing influencers” have taken up the case to accuse the legacy media of ignoring the case. News flash: the legacy media is ignoring Iryna’s killing. You can find it in the Hindustan Times but not in the New York Times or Washington Post (at least as of early Monday morning). Glenn Reynolds explains why on Substack:
The truth is, this story just hurts the narrative. The black-on-white angle hurts, but the real problem is that Decarlos Brown, Jr., is a repeat violent offender who has spun through the revolving door of the criminal justice system for years, a man with 14 arrests, many for violent crimes such as larceny, armed robbery, and violent threats. But despite being regularly arrested, he was repeatedly released.
Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles said that you can’t arrest your way out of these problems. Well, not if you keep letting people go, anyway.
National Review’s George Leef writes that the Charlotte killing “inconveniences” the leftist media. PJ Media’s Stephen Kruiser calls the MSM blackout “pure evil”:
Really all I want to do is punch something. The nightmarish video from Charlotte, N.C. of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska being murdered by a psychopath who was roaming freely thanks to the Democrats’ violent felon fetish is sickening and infuriating.
Speaking of sickening and infuriating, GoFundMe had a fundraiser for the Charlotte stabbing—but not for Iryna and her devastated family:
“While what happened on the Blue Line was a tragedy, what we mustn’t lose sight of is the fact that Decarlos Brown Jr. was failed categorically by the judicial system and the mental health services of North Carolina, and as such is not entirely to blame for what happened,” one page claimed.
The GoFundMe page, entitled “Raise Funds to Stop the Injustice Against Decarlos Brown Jr.,” has been taken down. I also found Mary Harrington’s Unherd piece unpalatable. Just to digress somewhat, Russia yesterday released its worst drone attack so far on Kyiv, for the first time striking a government building.
Metro Menaces. Decarlos Brown isn’t the only person who shouldn’t have been roaming the streets. “Meet the worst transit terrors in NYC with more than 5,000 busts between them — and most still roaming streets” is the headline of a New York Post exclusive. Meanwhile, two seventeen-year-olds have been arrested for the shooting death of Capitol Hill intern Eric Tarpinian-Jachym, and a third suspect is still being sought. They have been charged as adults. The charge is premeditated first-degree murder while armed.
Is Nothing Sacred? The White House Peace Vigil is no more:
Federal law enforcement officials on Sunday dismantled parts of the White House Peace Vigil, widely considered the longest continuous act of political protest in U.S. history, about 36 hours after President Donald Trump ordered: “Take it down. Take it down today. Right now.”
The peace vigil — a call for nuclear disarmament and an end to global conflict — has maintained its position in Lafayette Square, just across Pennsylvania Avenue and visible from the north side of the White House, for more than 40 years. It has survived seven U.S. presidents, countless global conflicts, hurricanes and blizzards, heat waves and floods.
When GOP Congressman Jeff van Drew first called attention to the Peace Vigil, President Trump assumed it was a homeless encampment—an eminently reasonable assumption. But believe it or not, all the vigil keepers maintain residences elsewhere. But what does this mean for nuclear disarmament?
While we’re semi-on the topic of war and peace, the Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins writes that restoring the name “Department of War” to the former Defense Department is a “good start” and has other suggestions to end euphemisms in government:
Treasury should become the Dollar Printing Like Confetti Department. In 1971 an ounce of gold cost $35—now it’s more than $3,600. Penny-postcard stamps cost 61 cents. That’s a lot of confetti. Complicit is the Federal Reserve, better named the Federal Preserve for Economic Ph.D.s. Now Mr. Trump wants to use them as the interest rate-slashing Federal Punch Bowl Filler. Watch your wallet. And given how many revisions we see on jobs data, let’s call the Bureau of Labor Statistics the Wild A— Guessing Gang.
No one really knows what the Agriculture Department does. I suggest a new name: the High-Fructose Corn Syrup Subsidizer. …
The Education Department, which apparently is still around, is better as the Remedial Instructor Full Employment group. English teachers might suggest probity and veracity in naming conventions. Or not. More than half of Americans have literacy below a sixth-grade level. There are 30 schools in Illinois with zero students reading at grade level. Alternatively, we could call it the Raise College Tuition Annually Department, done effectively by the federal guarantee of student loans.
A government department in the spotlight lately is the Health and Human Services Department. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a raucous hearing before a Senate Committee last week. The Free Press has a star-studded podcast on whether Kennedy is a success or failure at HHS. The New York Post’s Miranda Devine writes about why the food industry and the Left really hate RFK Jr.
Steven Koonin’s Wall Street Journal piece, headlined “At Last, Clarity on Climate,” argues that a Department of Energy report is drawing predictable criticism from politicized scientists. Another valuable Wall Street Journal column this morning is Allysia Finley’s on “America’s ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Economy,” which says everything from personal credit cards to mortgages and government budgets is overly reliant on debt.
While some of us are looking for “I Heart Monroe Doctrine” T-shirts in the wake of the U.S. strike on a speedboat that sent death-dealing drugs and eleven Tren de Aragua members to Davy Jones’ Locker, Senator Rand Paul does not appear to be among the fans of the aforementioned event. Senator Paul has ripped Vice President J.D. Vance’s assertion that executing these cartel members is a good use of military resources. Paul argues that they should have had trials.
The New York Post’s Charles Gasparino has a weekend piece saying that New York should exercise the “nuclear option” and let Zohran Mamdani win the mayor’s race so the city can hit bottom and start to rebuild. Of course, they aren’t letting Mamdani win—he’s walking all over them. Fox’s Kennedy and Natalie Dowziky say on Reason that Mamdani’s free buses could break the city’s budget. Oh, and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib delivered a rousing speech that glorified terrorists and killers at the recent People’s Conference for Palestine.
Happy Monday!
