Yesterday, there was a curious aspect to the coverage of the video of a woman attacking a young man for wearing a MAGA hat. Ignored by many mainstream outlets, conservative news sites described the woman as a “Karen” who got “karma.” The video below was viewed as a funny payback as the woman fell while chasing the man from the New York subway car. However, the incident is not karma but a crime. This is political violence perpetrated on the New York subway, and yet no one in New York seems to be calling for the arrest of this person.
If you watch the video, the woman starts by harassing the young man in the subway car. She is shown yelling, “If you f—-ing voted for Trump, you’re a racist!… He’s a racist!”
One can dismiss the verbal attacks as an exercise of free speech. However, she then grabs and comes into contact with the young man (around the 45 second mark) as she chases him from the car:
I get the sense of karma as the woman does a face plant on the subway platform while trying to continue her attack on the fleeing individual.
However, this should be neither funny nor acceptable. It is political violence and the woman appears to believe that she has a license in New York City to assault anyone wearing a MAGA hat.
This is where what I call “rage rhetoric” turns into political violence. As I wrote in my book, “The indispensable Right,” that is the curious aspect of rage:
“What few today want to admit is that they like it. They like the freedom that it affords, the ability to hate and harass without a sense of responsibility. It is evident all around us as people engage in language and conduct that they repudiate in others. We have become a nation of rage addicts; flailing against anyone or anything that stands in opposition to our own truths.
Like all addictions, there is not only a dependency on rage but an intolerance for opposing views. The difference between rage and reason is often one’s own views. If one agrees with underlying grievance, rage is viewed as passion or justified fury at injustice. If one disagrees with those views, it takes on a more threatening and unhinged quality. We seem to spend much of our time today raging at each other. Despite the amplification of views on both sides, there is also an increasing intolerance for opposing views. Those views are treated as simply harmful and offensive—and, therefore, intolerable. Indeed, to voice free speech principles in a time of rage is to invite the rage of the mob.”
There should be zero tolerance for political violence like this on New York subways. Answer me this: if this was a man chasing and assaulting a woman from a subway car for wearing a Harris-Walz hat, would there be the same relative silence in terms of an investigation and criminal charges?
When this person moved from verbal assaults to actual physical assaults, it became a crime, not karma.
The problem is that New York only has an assault law, not a battery law. You can pursue battery as a civil tort in New York, but few Trump supporters would have faith in receiving a fair hearing before a New York jury on such a case.
The New York assault law allows for third degrees of assault charges. However, even the lowest charge of assault in the third degree requires that the individual intentionally or recklessly causes physical injury to another person.
§ 120.00 Assault in the third degree.
A person is guilty of assault in the third degree when:
1. With intent to cause physical injury to another person, he causes such injury to such person or to a third person; or
2. He recklessly causes physical injury to another person; or
3. With criminal negligence, he causes physical injury to another person by means of a deadly weapon or a dangerous instrument.
Assault in the third degree is a class A misdemeanor.
This could be established by the fact that she appears to grab and possibly strike the victim. However, the law is vague and prosecutors could claim that the touching was insufficient to bring a viable case.
There is also criminal harassment under Penal § 240.26:
§ 240.26 Harassment in the second degree.
A person is guilty of harassment in the second degree when, with intent to harass, annoy or alarm another person:
1. He or she strikes, shoves, kicks or otherwise subjects such other person to physical contact, or attempts or threatens to do the same; or
2. He or she follows a person in or about a public place or places; or
3. He or she engages in a course of conduct or repeatedly commits acts which alarm or seriously annoy such other person and which serve no legitimate purpose.
…
Harassment in the second degree is a violation.
I have always had qualms about some of this language in terms of vagueness and free speech, particularly subsection 3. However, subsection 1 clearly applies to physical assaults for the purpose of harassment.
The point is that police have the ability to charge this type of political violence. Yet, there is nothing but crickets from Democratic New York politicians and prosecutors. A video shows a citizen being struck and chased from the subway for wearing a MAGA hat and it is either ignored or treated as another humorous event on the New York subway system.
When did political violence become just a cost of riding the subway for conservatives or libertarians? The lack of outrage shows how this age of rage has dulled our senses to such extreme conduct. This is about conduct not speech. When this person went from raving to assault, she crossed over into the criminal code. The problem is that such protections are only meaningful if New York prosecutors and police are prepared to enforce them.
I hope that the NYPD will take this seriously and announce a search for this culprit. Otherwise, the enforcement of the criminal code becomes little more than a matter of fleeting karma.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
No disrespect to you, or to your profession, Mr. Turley. But methinks that some of our political complications and failures of understanding, is from the sheer abundance of machinating Lawyers. Perhaps the foremost reason? Good luck to all!
I can never understand how these leftist psychopaths keep getting away with this. If this Karen ‘grabbed my hat and came into contact’ with me on the subway, i then have a right to defend myself. Karen would have instantly ‘come into contact’ with the floor of that subway. Thus endeth the lesson…..
Jonathan Turley is one of few people that understand the law inside and out. Thank you, sir
And then Alvin Bragg would’ve prosecuted YOU like he prosecuted Daniel Penny.
James Boasberg = Scumbagwormmeat.
Boasberg is Corrupt to the Core. Wife: Elizabeth “Liddy” Manson (as in Charles Manson) is the founder of an abortion NGO that is funded, indirectly, by USAID and George Soros. More Scumbagwormmeat. Daughter: Katherine Boarsberg works for a 501(c)3 called “Partners for Justice” that gives criminal illegal aliens and gang members legal advice.
Conculsion: Boasberg = Depraved x Degenerate x Filthy x Scumbagwormmeat. The equation is ineluctible.
You are correct – this is ‘funny’ at first viewing but only funny in that this attacker did a face plant — there could have been tragic outcomes — New York City was once the epitome of a world-class city — the 1950’s and earlier —- it isn’t any longer and unless and until its voters restore balance and common sense to day to day conduct in the city, it will further deteriorate —even the New York Stock Exchange, founded in 1792, is laying the groundwork for moving out of Manhattan — and it looks like it will re-locate in Texas in the coming years. This would have been unthinkable until now!
#9. Add to that, Chicago, L.A., Detroit, San Francisco, Seattle, and so on and so forth. Among the many reasons for said decline, is the essential fact that they, the urban holding tanks for millions who do not have real or meaningful employment, are basically obsolete. They no longer function for the very purpose they were conceived and built. Which was to house the working public near where they worked and where food and other essentials would be located within easily accessible distances. Decades of liberal leftist extremism of globalism, corrupt and maleficent governance, Marxist and anti-American cultural attacks funded by Mega-Democrat Donors like Soro’s, the Rockefeller Brothers, et al., who have also placed subversives throughout the Federal Courts system, and what do we get?
Obsolete cities that have no purpose other than to serve as a money laundromat for the ideological left extremists who raise taxes and dole out taxpayer money as stipends to their captive urban flock.
Yes because I am sure the economy will go gang busters and the MAGA nation will discover the wealth they’ve always felt entitled to when American cities crumble to the dust and the trad wife paradise on the hill emerges.
Perceptive.
Gabbard doesn’t know shit from
shinola. Neither does the rest of the Trump “administration”.
Es
On topic: The extermination of Maggots in subways now seems like a convenience.
ROFL
There are TWO former Democrats AND recent Democratic presidential candidates in the Trump Cabinet.
Gabbard is a 20+ year vetaran who rose fromt he ranks to be a Lt Col.
She was a congressmen from Hawaii for many years. She gave the nominating speech for Barack Obama at the Democratic convention, She was a chair person in the DNC who resigned because the DNC was rigging the rules to corronate Hillary and remove the choice of Democratic presidential candidate from the voters, When did we see that before ?
While the recentaccidental inclusion of a journalist in high level communications was an embarrassment – the operations themselves were very successful.
TDS
And yet she’s national security director. And you, an anonymous whiner.
Deep thoughts…LOL
I love this New York Times story’s tagline:
-How the White House Is Using Semantics to Downplay the Signal Leak-
Now isn’t that something else. The infamous gangsters of Journalism the NYT talking about ‘the use of semantics’ … The Times wrote the playbook on ‘the use of semantics’. Every twisted piece They print is a pure convoluted concoction of conjecture 🔥
The Atlantic feels the need to pour salt into the wound. If it’s such a serious “leak” of National Security, why not publish it.
So they did: The Atlantic: -Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal-
The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg should be given the Firing Squad for hypocritical-hypochondria 🔥
Proof In-Print They Hate America
Re.
The New York Times
How the White House Is Using Semantics to Downplay the Signal Leak
Hegseth’s Leak Would Have Warned the Enemy. The White House Is Using Semantics to Obscure That.
War plan or battle plan? Classified or not? The answers to those questions amount to a distinction without much of a difference.
By David E. Sanger
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/us/politics/hegseth-signal-war-plan-leak-white-house.html
The Atlantic
Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal
By Jeffrey Goldberg & Shane Harris
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/signal-group-chat-attack-plans-hegseth-goldberg/682176/
See for yourself: Google News: Top stories
[Link] news.google.com/stories/CAAqNggKIjBDQklTSGpvSmMzUnZjbmt0TXpZd1NoRUtEd2lQNGZ2Q0RSSGhJWnNfWHdiSzhTZ0FQAQ?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen
NYT: “All the News that’s Print to Fit”
George (cosplaying as a confused Marxist Useful Idiot), asking about the law firms stripped of their clearances: What did they do that was immoral or unethical?
One example, Marc Elias at one of those firms: as the agent for Obama/Clinton/and the DNC, illegally laundered the money they paid the two illegally hired foreign spies that Clinton and Obama hired to write and “leak” their illegal “Trump-Russia Dossier”.
Marc Elias then fraudulently declared the $6 MILLION that he laundered through that law firm to those illegally hired foreign spies as payments for “legal fees” in hopes of hiding his/Clinton/Obama’s felonies under FEC law.
There’s more George – but knock yourself out and go read the Professional Code Of Conduct for Marc Elias and the rest of the Democrat lawyers who are lawyers by virtue of their membership in the Washington DC Bar Association.
You would be asking “Why aren’t Elias and these other Democrat lawyers and law firms already sitting in jail cells with the J6 trespassers, paraders, and rioters” – except you’re a Cheap Fake American.
George let his inner retard out with this one: It still raises the question of why they used Signal instead of a more secure government authorized communications channel.
Dear George: It was the administration of The Oval Office House Plant, Bribery Biden, that put Signal in place as a secure government authorized communications channel! What’s your next question!!!!
Biden-era memo advises ‘highly targeted’ officials to use Signal for communications
https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/biden-era-memo-advises-highly-targeted-officials-use-signal
George, why have you never had a problem with Clinton and Obama using unsecured and illegal personal email accounts and phones as their communications channel FOR FOUR YEARS????
You are the lowest grade of Cheap Fake American.
MAGA = incompetence
DNC trolls = impotent incels
MAGA, aka Donald J. Trump is so incompetent that he has put the Democrats in a position where they
support gangster cartels,
support illegal immigration.
support the killing of hundreds of thousands of Americans with fentanyl,
support sex change operations on children,
support killing babies,
support men in women’s sports,
support stealing their neighbor’s tax money,
support arsonists,
support internal combustion engines,
supporting Hamas baby killers,
and made Jasmine Crockett is the leader of the Democrat Party.
If the Democrats ever want to gain any credibility with Americans, they need to start agreeing with President Trump.
Gigi, Dennis, George, etc will shortly be ranting about the PA Senate special election that a Democrat narrowly won in a Trump + 15 district.
Everyone in the world is looking for evidence beyond polls of where people are.
I fully expect the left to be claiming this is proof that polls are wrong and Republicans are in deep trouble.
Other special elections have suggested the opposite. But it is hard to judge from special elections.
Turnout patters are different from national elections, and different from midterms.
Further as this particular spacial election clearly indicates – local elections hinge on very local issues.
How do I know ? Because I voted in that special Election yesterday – and I and my entire family voted for the Democrat.
Why ? Because this particular republican candidate is really loathed by the people in this county.
Josh Parsons claims to be MAGA – but he is the epitomy of everything that George and Gigi and Dennis say about MAGA republicans that is not true.
He has clawed his way to a position as a big fish in a little pound – not by being popular with people but by favoring chronies.
He has held a number of elected positions, all of which he has used to do things that Republicans claim they oppose.
This country is deeply Republican – though the city is democrat. It has sent real limited government conservatives to congress most of my entire lifetime. In the 70’s we voted a school board out for adding the luxury of a pool to a new HS Gym.
Regardless, My point is that yesterday Lancaster County voted Against Josh Parson’s future political ambitions.
This had nothing to do with Trump, or Republicans nationwide or in PA. The hope of the many republicans and independents who voted against Parson is that this is the end of his political carreer and that the Lancaster GOP will get the message and return to the same limited govenrment conservatism that characterized this county in the past.
It was not at all difficult for me to Vote against Parson’s But it was difficult for me to vote for the democrat rather than the libertarian on the ballot.
The libertarian was a popular well liked local mayor. But he was not going to defeat Parson. Ultimately the Democrat was not troublesome enough to vote against him too, And it was important to defeat Parsons.
Parson’s is a destructive force in Lancaster politics and hopefully the Lancaster GOP will get the message and purge him and those few like him from power. Josh Parson’s political career is hopefully over – and that is a good thing.
While those Like Gigi and talking heads – I beleive the Guardian is already trying to claim this election means something, will celebrate this as meaning something that it does not.
Even that is beneficial – Parson’s has lost a seat that should have been an easy win for anyone with an R following their name.
A seat that went 15pts for Trump a few months ago.
He has thus managed to nationally embarrass himself. If that makes the GOP look bad and results in his personal political demise – that would be wonderful.
I expect to here Gigi, and Dennis and George attaching more significance to this than it has.
For those here who have read my posts. My vote against Parsons sjould clarify that this election was about Parsons. Not Trump, not MAGA though Parson’s falsely claims to be MAGA it is about getting rid of one of the most unethical and obnoxious politicians to hold power in this county.
John Say, thanks for that explanation. The more important special election result was for the PA House seat. If it had flipped, the GOP would have regained control of the House and had a chance at passing school choice for the first time in many years. Shapiro ran on a promise to approve it if the General Assembly passed it. And the PA Senate has or would but the House won’t with its one-seat majority of Dems acting at the behest of the teachers unions.
Estovir, old airborne dog and the man with cats disappeared?
I was wondering that myself, except for the man with cats. He’s still around.
They probably decided to step away and save sanity. I don’t blame them, with some of the idiots (on both sides, but mostly Gigi and alts) in these comments
I can not speak to local elections outside my locality.
But Josh Parson is hated by a large minority of Republicans. While his loss is still surprising.
it is purely a local issue.
As I said – every member of my family and everyone I know voted against Parsons, Further we voted FOR the Democrat – not because we favor democrats, but because these were not protest votes. Josh Parson had to lose.
What hopefully follows is the national and State GOP telling the Local GOP that Parson’s and his cronies Carrers are over.
This was sort of a Tea Party event – where a significant minroty of Republicans were sufficiently adamant about Not Parson’s,
that they were willing to allow the democrat to win in a Trump +15 district.
This is a special election. I beleive there will be a normal election for this seat in 2026. This is a very Red region. It is unlikely that the Democrat will win re-election – unless the local GOP runs another lousy candidate.
If My recollecation is correct Shapiro was presented with a school choice bill shortly after taking office and in a surprise move veto’d it.
I do not think Shapiro is as popular in PA as democrats claim. While he has not alienated Pensylvanians as much as the prior Democrat – Wolf
he beat a very weak opponent, to become governor. He has not been absolutely horrible. There are far worse democrat governors.
And the GOP will have to run someone very strong to defeat him in 2026. But PA is a purple state slowly turning red.
Shapiro was presented with a school choice bill shortly after taking office and in a surprise move veto’d it
No, what happened is that the Dems got a one-seat majority in the House and never included school choice in the budget. Contrary to Shapiro’s promise, he didn’t pressure the Dems to include it. He was never presented with a bill. The House would never have done that with Dem control. The whole time he’s been governor, the Dems have controlled the PA House.
But that doesn’t mean he’d veto a bill, he’s just not pressuring for one.
Wow, Leavitt is going all Baghdad Bob on the media. Hilarious.
The Atlantic’s release of the full discussion including the classified war plans is making Hegseth a proven liar. No surprise there.
Nothing I have seen, nothing you have linked has made any of this more than an embarrasment.
George you must think everyone but you is incredibly stupid.
The instant that Goldberg went public – every single person on the Stram Goldberg intercepted knew they would be asked to speak, possibly even testify, AND that Goldberg had the actual chain.
No one was going to lie.
These people are NOT as stupid as you are.
“ Nothing I have seen, nothing you have linked has made any of this more than an embarrasment.”
It was more than that. It was also a serious security breach. I thought you were smarter than that.
“ George you must think everyone but you is incredibly stupid.”
No, just those who thought they were in a secure app and those defending their incompetence. It’s pretty self explanatory.
“ The instant that Goldberg went public – every single person on the Stram Goldberg intercepted knew they would be asked to speak, possibly even testify, AND that Goldberg had the actual chain.”
The instant they realized Goldberg went public they knew they fvcked up in the worst possible way. They were apparenlty too stupid not to notice there was somone in that chain they didn’t know. The heads of the CIA and NSA were oblivious to it. That is not a sign of competence. They were not supposed to be discussing classified operations on a commercial app.
“ No one was going to lie.
These people are NOT as stupid as you are.”
No one “was” going to lie, but they did. These people think everyone else is stupid enough to buy into their excuses. Defending their stupidity in their decision to use an unathorized app instead of government authorized channels designed specifically for this type of thing shows exceptionally poor judgment. Looking even stupider is Hegseth declaring the discussion is 100% OPSEC while a reporter with no security clearance was seeing it in real time. Who knows who else they didn’t see. If this occurred during Biden’s administration you can bet you would be howling for prosecution and prison time and declare it the worst security breach ever. The excuses and spin is not working. They are have already been caught lying.
George owned himself with this: No, just those who thought they were in a secure app and those defending their incompetence. It’s pretty self explanatory.
What’s self-explanatory is you’re so incompetent that you’re completely unaware that the use of Signal by senior officials was set up by Biden, and the installation of Signal on senior officials devices by government cybersecurity bureaucrats was enacted during the time of Biden.
Biden-era memo advises ‘highly targeted’ officials to use Signal for communications
https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/biden-era-memo-advises-highly-targeted-officials-use-signal
Signal was approved for communication use by Biden administration
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ratcliffe-signal-was-approved-for-communication-use-by-biden-administration/ar-AA1BDk92
Signal was authorized and set up by Bribery Biden, George. The Biden administration used it for years, George. And the civil service crypto technicians who installed it on this administrations devices were the exact same ones who had been installing it on Biden’s devices.
George thinks that the leftover tech bureaucrats that deal with communications, the ones that installed Signal on their devices, warned the incoming Trump administration that they allowed the Biden administration to use Signal all four yeats – but it was no longer secure once Trump’s administration used the same app they put on their phones.
What’s stupid is George strutting around naked like the kiddy’s story about The Emperor’s New Clothes, believing that people don’t see him as a naked liar – but a credible, honest person who has earned at least a tiny bit of credibility here.
George, this is why your family tells people your mother lost her baby during childbirth. You are a Cheap Fake American Marxist, lying like your last name is Biden.
George – you do understand that your arguments are self contradictory ?
ONVIOUSLY, OBVIOUSLY it wasn’t an accident for crissake. The meeting was sabotaged presumably by an aide. Jeez…
George posted: The Atlantic’s release of the full discussion including the classified war plans
George, your lies aren’t keeping up with The Atlantic’s lies. The Atlantic doesn’t say a word about “war plans”. The Atlantic doesn’t say anything about “classified”.
What they say is “well… the Trump administration said it wasn’t classified, we could go ahead and publish them – but we claim they should have been classified”.
Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/signal-group-chat-attack-plans-hegseth-goldberg/682176/
Next time George, acknowledge that you have the reading comprehension of a Marxist Monkey – or the alternative: you’re a lying Cheap Fake American Democrat.
George is paid to make liberals look stupid.