“Given the uncontrolled violence we’ve come to associate with Trump supporters, we’re going to keep looking until there’s something to report. “
New York, November 13 – Post-election investigation has found that less than a week after the United States elected Donald Trump as its next president, violent acts against minorities or political opponents remain unlawful in most jurisdictions.
Staffers from news organizations based in New York and Los Angeles collaborated on a project to determine what impact Trump’s election is having on legislation or enforcement of crimes directed at members of specific identity groups in the wake of the contentious campaign characterized by charges of racism. The group found that at least in the states and cities they had checked, it is still punishable by law to engage in acts that target members of minorities – and in almost all cases, anyone else – for violence, intimidation, or other harassing behavior.
“We obviously have not looked at every jurisdiction, and there are a lot of them,” reported Dan Barry of the New York Times. “But the six of us – five from the Times and one from the LA Times – spent the better part of twenty minutes looking for towns, counties, cities, or other jurisdictions that have seized on Trump’s election as a pretext to engage in legalization of the wanton racist violence we know is just simmering beneath the surface, thanks to his campaign rhetoric. We found nothing as of this morning. So far we haven’t found anything has changed in terms of town ordinances or anything, but that’s clearly just a matter of time, given the uncontrolled violence we’ve come to associate with Trump supporters. We’re going to keep looking until there’s something to report. ”
Adam Nagourney, also of the Times, stressed the challenges of the ongoing monitoring effort. “It might be difficult to zero in properly,” he warned, “because some incidents might superficially resemble exactly the kind of development we’re looking for.” As an example, Nagourney cited the often-violent protests by Clinton supporters now raging in cities across the country – and how the violence taking place during and around those protests, and the heated rhetoric emanating from them, might prompt the uninformed observer to conclude the events are informed by hate.
“Of course nothing could be further from the truth,” he rushed to clarify, “because it is axiomatic that Clinton’s supporters are progressive, tolerant beacons of democratic sensibility. Violence and hate can only stem from that basket of deplorables and the people who enable them. So we’re going to keep our eyes and ears open, and the two coasts of America will know soon enough when those backward Trump supporters start to engage in stereotyping and assaults on American values.”
Nagourney also stressed that intimidation of Jewish students at universities would not be counted, not least because no one appears to care whether that violates institution policy.
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