THE TABOO THAT KILLED IRYNA ZARUTSKA:

Zarutska’s murder has received a striking lack of coverage from most mainstream media outlets, and while on one hand this is hardly surprising—there are tens of thousands of homicides in this country every year, and only a handful of these ever become national news—it’s hard not to see the silence of the press on this matter as representative of a certain bias in what kinds of American crime stories are deemed worthy of public attention. It’s hard not to compare, for instance, the media response to the death of Iryna Zarutska last month with its coverage of the May 2023 encounter on the New York City subway between Daniel Penny and Jordan Neely—who, like Brown, was black, homeless, mentally ill, and prone to violent outbursts on public transit.

Then, as now, there was a sense that it was in bad taste—if not outright racist—to acknowledge that men like Brown and Neely are a familiar presence in American urban public spaces, and that this presence is not a good thing. Then, as now, the progressive party line was that it’s “real corny” and “a mark of low moral character” to admit that you are discomfited by encountering people on public transit who behave in ways that telegraph the imminent possibility of violence, or confrontation, or the lower-grade-but-still-unpleasant spectacle of seeing someone evacuate his bowels onto the seat where, but for your instinctive choice to herd your family down the car, your 3-year-old toddler would still have been sitting.

The problem with this taboo around certain uncomfortable truths about public disorder is that when you make discussing those truths a thing that is Simply Not Done by decent progressive people, you leave the field of discourse wide open to the kind of person who cares about neither progressive politics nor decency. That is where we are now.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy asks why the left doesn’t demand safe mass transit:

Liberals want you to ride public transportation. They hate cars, they hate airplanes. So wouldn’t it make sense to then make it safe?

But they disregard the working men and women and instead they fight for the crime and homelessness that reside on these trains.@POTUS has it… pic.twitter.com/yYCVgKY2JU

— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) September 9, 2025

Press Secretary Karoline Leavit calls out the DNC-MSM for their silence:

THIS is how it’s done.

Karoline Leavitt calls out the Fake News and Democrats TO THEIR FACES for ignoring and fueling the murder of Iryna Zarutska:

“Many outlets in this room decided her murder was not worth reporting on originally because it does not fit a preferred… pic.twitter.com/X3ZaeMR0qs

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 9, 2025