White House aides announced Friday evening that President Barack Obama will be cutting short his visit to Europe, and flying back to the United States one day early, and will then travel to Dallas.
He’s expected to visit Dallas early next week, where five cops were killed Thursday evening by a racist, anti-cop African-American gunman. The attack was launched at a march organized by the Black Lives Matter movement, which Obama has strongly supported.
According to the White House press office;
On Saturday, the President will depart [Poland] for Madrid, Spain, where he will spend the night. The President will participate in meetings with his Spanish counterpart and other government officials on Sunday then travel to Rota [a U.S. military base in Spain] as previously scheduled to speak to military personnel serving there. The President will return to Washington on Sunday night – one day earlier than planned. The President will no longer travel to [the city of] Seville.
The announcement emphasized the president’s claimed political support for cops.
The President has accepted an invitation from Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings to travel to Dallas early next week. Later in the week, at the White House, the President will continue the work to bring people together to support our police officers and communities, and find common ground by discussing policy ideas for addressing the persistent racial disparities in our criminal justice system. We’ll have more details about next week’s activities as soon as they are available.
The “common ground” described by the press release, however, is likely very small.
Since 2014, Obama has pushed to for the unpopular goal of federalizing state and local police force, via the adoption of federal policing guidelines. To establish this so-called “ObamaLaw” regime, the Department of Justice is using its control over funding for state and local police forces to cajole, persuade and pressure local politicians to adopt Obama’s preferred policing rules, which would reduce law enforcement and jail penalties.
Also, the racial disparities claimed by the press release may not exist. That’s partly because young black men are both more likely to get shot by police because they more likely to be involved in criminal activities. A November 2011 report by the Justice Department showed that young African-American men are just 1 percent of the population, yet are responsible for 27 percent of murders in the nation.