jacob news

I ended last week�s blog by writing, �We shall see.� This week I can confidently say that we saw. I am referencing my concerns that President Trump would not follow through on his proposal to ban bump stocks and look into further gun reforms. The President has kept his promise and has gone even further to promote his approval of certain gun reforms. President Trump meeting with members of Congress on Wednesday. There was an extraordinary  meeting today at the White House between the President and members of Congress where Trump  stated his support for a series of policies that the NRA and many Republicans strongly oppose. These policies include: raising the minimum age at which a person can buy a gun from 18 to 21, universal background checks, keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, and he even shot down a bill heavily prioritized by the NRA that would allow for a person with a concealed-carry license to have that license be recognized in every state. He even...

President Trump holding a listening session at the White House to discuss gun control on Wednesday. Before I get into the main subject of this blog tonight, I wanted to air my grievances surrounding one particular story that has been floating around the internet. There is a claim being pedaled by Info Wars (the notorious far right conspiracy outlet) and other organizations that the students speaking up about gun reform are �crisis actors� and are being coached to spew liberal propaganda.   As I listened to Alex Jones (the head of Info Wars) make this  claim and attack the character of these students, I disregarded it as ridiculous rhetoric and continued on with my day. Then I saw it on  CNN a few hours later. I started looking into the comment sections filled with people agreeing and promoting the theory, further legitimizing Alex Jones and rebuking the students who survived a school shooting . As I did this, a rage grew inside of me.      ...

A lot of people are angry right now. They are angry because of the constant cycle of mass shootings in our country and the inability of our government to respond and create change. A lot of that anger has been directed at lawmakers and rightfully so. This morning, one of those lawmakers was in Summerville. So, I decided to ask him some questions and see what his plans were to protect the public from more shootings. I also asked him about offshore drilling and President Trump.             Mark Sanford (R) represents District 1 of South Carolina in the US House of Representatives. He has had a long and complicated relationship with South Carolina, serving as governor until 2011. During his time as governor, he was most notably involved in an extramarital affair and disappeared for six days in Argentina with a mistress. While  in office he became well-known for initially rejecting the money allotted to South Carolina by President...

As I listened to All Things Considered on NPR on the way home from school today, news  broke of a school shooting near Miami, Florida. At the time, only four people had been admitted to a local hospital as a result of the incident and there had been no mention of fatalities, only several injuries. I didn�t think much of it at the time. Like most Americans, I have grown accustomed to news of these kinds of attacks. When I started watching news coverage of the event on CNN and CBS and eventually the nightly news on CBS, it was being  reported that seventeen kids had died. That number might rise even more throughout the next few hours.             The shooting was carried out by an eighteen-year old who was expelled from the school that he attacked. He pulled a fire alarm minutes before dismissal and fired into the crowd of students evacuating the building because of the alarm. He also chose to target a smaller, more isolat...

This has been a busy week both locally and nationally. Here in South Carolina  another Democrat entered the gubernatorial race, Republican gubernatorial candidate Catherine Templeton  bragged about her families �confederate roots,� a prominent Black Lives Matter leader from Charleston was  shot and killed in New Orleans, and a train crash near Columbia  killed two people and injured over 170 passengers. Nationally� well, I think if I were to try and make a list of what has happened over this past week on the national level I would be here for a while. Instead I�ll just a list a few topics I considered discussing on this week�s blog. 1.      The President ordering a military parade (like any good totalitarian should). 2.      The bipartisan deal reached by the Senate (and Nancy Pelosi�s really really long speech). 3.      The memo war (how it accomplished nothing). 4.      The gerryman...