One individual familiar with internal agency discussions said the Biden administration's dismissive approach to Cuban and Haitian migrants is shaped in part by the agency's limited resources. The job of processing thousands of migrants per week on the southern border will require an all-hands effort from immigration officials that leaves little flexibility to address a potential surge from those trying to escape the dueling Caribbean crises.
Dem Officials in Border City Say Biden Immigration Policy Poses COVID Threat
Texas city says DHS is releasing migrants daily without testing
Joseph Simonson • July 20, 2021 5:00 amThe Democrat-run city of Laredo, Texas, claims President Joe Biden's immigration policies blatantly disregard safety protocols implemented to stop the spread of COVID-19 and could risk killing Americans.
The city attorney’s office alleged in a July 16 lawsuit that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been releasing migrants into Laredo daily, a policy that undermines public health. Federal officials told Laredo that Customs and Border Protection plans on doubling the number of migrants brought to the city to manage overflow at other DHS facilities, according to the complaint.
"Not every apprehended person is tested for COVID-19 as part of [DHS’s] processing procedure before they are legally released from immigration custody and into the general public," the lawsuit says. "Therefore, many, if not most, go untested and risk spreading the disease to … the general public after their release."
Laredo’s lawsuit comes as the Biden administration struggles with a surge of the COVID-19 Delta variant. Situated directly on the southern border, with an almost 100 percent Latino population, the city claims the "flood" of migrants "has caused irreparable harm and injury to our community given little to no hospital availability." The Delta variant makes up a majority of new coronavirus cases in the United States and Latin America.
The White House did not return a request for comment.
The city is asking federal courts to block DHS from transporting migrants to the city, as well as a permanent order barring migrant arrivals until Laredo shelters have the capacity to accommodate them. Rising coronavirus outbreaks in detention facilities have prompted fears from Border Protection and DHS agents tasked with processing migrants.
Biden has blamed Republican officials and social media sites for hindering pandemic health measures and vaccination efforts. But the historically high number of migrants from around the world attempting to cross into the country could constitute the largest risk to public health. The number of migrants who tested positive for COVID-19 increased by roughly 340 percent between March and May. Among Democrats in Laredo, the strain on public resources means even allies of the Biden administration feel compelled to take legal action to avert what they believe could be a catastrophe.
"Unfortunately, the federal government has left this public health concern to be tackled by our local government with no consideration of the city’s little to no resources nor regard for the deadly ramifications it could have on the country," the lawsuit says.
The outcry from Democrats in Laredo has yet to deter administration officials. The White House is working to repeal Title 42, a Centers for Disease Control-directed law that gives the federal government broad authority to stop migrants from entering the country. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called the law ineffective in a June memo. But congressional Republicans warned Biden on June 25 that ending Title 42 would cause "the border crisis [to] reach an irreversible climax."
"Without Title 42, the already inundated facilities would explode with migrants, and our nation would suffer lasting and irreparable consequences," a group of Republican lawmakers wrote in a letter to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.
Biden Admin to Border Agents: Prepare for the Flood
Docs say 1,200 migrant families expected to be processed each day
Joseph Simonson • July 16, 2021 5:00 amThe Biden administration is telling immigration agents to prepare to process hundreds of thousands of migrant families and asylum claims as the White House moves to reverse Trump-era border and coronavirus policies, according to internal documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
A senior federal official who spoke with the Free Beacon expects Biden to end Title 42—a law used by former president Trump's Centers for Disease Control to block migrants from entering the country—sometime this month. As part of the preparation for that policy reversal, senior Department of Homeland Security officials warned staff that they will have to process up to 1,200 family units a day. That number of family units works out to 312,000 a year, assuming the border does not see any future surges. Following their release from custody, those migrants are in effect free to stay, said one DHS official, because many immigrants skip their immigration court hearings sometimes scheduled two years after they are initially detained.
"Border Patrol agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and customs officers are stretched thin trying to protect and secure our border," said the official. "Asking them to process roughly 6,000 people a week undoubtedly strain already thin resources and increase human trafficking and drug smuggling."
The internal directive further damaged morale within national security agencies where staff already feel overwhelmed with initiatives ordered by the Biden administration. These policies all seem focused on the singular purpose of letting in as many migrants as possible and forcing staff attention away from security threats entering the country.
Those who spoke with the Free Beacon described an agency undergoing a dramatic transformation under Biden and Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Some now question their mission as they prepare for humanitarian crises on the border after the end of Title 42 and Trump's "Remain in Mexico Policy."
"All of these people will become permanent residents. There's no political will from the Biden administration to deport families once they're already admitted. The White House knows that," a DHS official said. "The end of Title 42 will result in de facto open borders."
Agents on the southern border noted that the president and the CDC are warning about the COVID-19 Delta variant while the federal government ends critical policies that allowed law enforcement to ensure migrants who carry disease are not allowed entry into the country. At the same time, Mayorkas has taken a harsher attitude toward Cubans and Haitians wishing to escape chaos and violence in their home countries.
"The time is never right to attempt migration by sea," Mayorkas said Tuesday. "To those who risk their lives doing so, this risk is not worth taking. Allow me to be clear: If you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States."
One individual familiar with internal agency discussions said the Biden administration's dismissive approach to Cuban and Haitian migrants is shaped in part by the agency's limited resources. The job of processing thousands of migrants per week on the southern border will require an all-hands effort from immigration officials that leaves little flexibility to address a potential surge from those trying to escape the dueling Caribbean crises.
"The heavy lifting we've been doing since January portends that this is unlike anything we've ever seen, especially because we're utilizing Border Patrol and discussing bringing in ICE to help. The lift across all of DHS is pretty unprecedented," an individual familiar with the plan said.
Neither the Biden administration nor Department of Homeland Security returned requests for comment.
More Than 500K Illegal Immigrants Crossed Southern Border Since Kamala Harris Named ‘Border Czar’
Andrew Stiles • June 25, 2021 12:43 pmVice President Kamala Harris finally visited the southern border, three months after being put in charge of solving the immigration crisis. In that time, more than half-a-million illegal immigrants were apprehended at the southern border.
Upon arriving in El Paso on Friday, the vice president continued to attack journalists for asking questions about why she waited so long to make the trip. "It's not my first trip, I've been to the border many times," Harris snapped, apparently referring to previous visits she made as a senator.
Since President Joe Biden made Harris his "border czar" on March 24, illegal immigrants have crossed the southern border at a record rate of nearly 180,000 per month, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
CBP agents apprehended 178,854 illegal immigrants at the southern border in April, which at the time was the highest monthly figure since April 2000. At least it was until the following month, when CBP agents apprehended 180,034 illegal immigrants attempting to enter the country.
When the CBP data for June is reported next month, the total number of illegal crossings since late March is likely to surpass 500,000, which would mark a tremendous increase compared with last year. During that same three-month period (April-June) in 2020, CBP apprehended just 73,392 illegal immigrants. The 2020 numbers were likely deflated due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but CBP reported just 146,210 illegal border crossings for that same three-month period in 2018, significantly below this year's figure.
Harris has come under fire for not taking the border crisis seriously. She has on several occasions laughed like a maniac in response to questions about her refusal to visit the border until now. During an interview with NBC's Lester Holt earlier this month, Harris falsely claimed "we've been to the border" and attacked the journalist for asking about it.
"This whole thing about the border. We've been to the border. We've been to the border," Harris said, contrary to the facts.
When Holt pointed out that she had not, in fact, been to the border, Harris lashed out in a manner unbecoming of an elected official. "I—and I haven't been to Europe. And I mean, I don't—I don't understand the point that you're making," Harris said.
The vice president's decision to finally visit the border is unlikely to silence Harris's critics who contend that she is a terrible politician who has no idea what she's doing.
Ted Cruz: Rising Coronavirus Rates in Texas Due in ‘Significant Part’ to Illegal Aliens
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said Sunday the rates of COVID-19 infection are rising in his home state due “in significant part” to illegal aliens the Biden administration is releasing.
Cruz was asked at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit whether he thought the rates in Texas were rising due to lower vaccination rates or illegal immigration.
Cruz responded that while both were factors, he believed the border crisis in Texas was significantly contributing to the rise in rates.
“We have a border crisis in the state of Texas. We’re seeing it first-hand…500,000 people have crossed into this country illegally in the first six months. We’re on pace for over two million people this year. That is the highest rate of illegal immigration in 20 years,” he said.
He said when he visited the border of the Rio Grande Valley a couple of months ago with 19 senators, they visited a tent facility that with COVID protocols in place, could house 250 people.
“We visited, it had over 4,200 people packed into that 1700% in excess of its capacity,” he said. He added:
These are the Biden cages. We saw little boys and little girls lying side by side, not six feet apart, not three feet apart. They weren’t six inches apart, cramped side by side in the Biden cages. And I can tell you in that facility, when we visited it, the rate of COVID positivity was over 10%. You’re packing children in cages with a lot of them having COVID and four of them getting COVID and the Biden Administration is ignoring the law and releasing into our communities — people that have COVID, most of whom are coming across this border who are not vaccinated.
He added that the Biden administration is considering ending Title 42, an authority that allowed immigration officials to rapidly expel illegal immigrants who would otherwise be held in congregate settings in order to prevent the transmission of COVID-19.
“So yes, you better believe the rising COVID ratess are due in significant part to illegal aliens that the Biden administration is releasing in Texas, that have COVID rates seven times higher than the U.S. population,” he said.
“And we need to stop being boneheaded and ignoring the science, which is what the administration is doing,” he added.
Cruz said that he believes in vaccines and is vaccinated, but that he also believed in individual liberty and that government should not force people to get vaccinated.
“I think we have individual responsibility. We can make an assessment based on our health situation. I’m encouraging Texans to get vaccinated. I want to beat this damn disease. This disease is serious,” he said.
Recently, dozens of Democrat state representatives fled Texas for Washington, D.C., to deprive the state legislature of a quorum to conduct business and vote on voter integrity laws. They posted photos of themselves on planes and buses not wearing masks. As of Monday, at least five tested positive for COVID-19 while in Washington, D.C., despite being vaccinated.
Some visited with Vice President Kamala Harris, who went to Walter Reed on Sunday and has not appeared in public since, as Breitbart News has reported.
Report: Biden Uses Military Base to Fly Nearly 800 Border Crossers into U.S.
President Joe Biden’s administration has used a United States military base in Texas to fly nearly 800 border crossers into the United States.
Last week, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson revealed that the Biden administration has been using Laughlin Air Force Base, east of Del Rio, Texas, to fly border crossers into the U.S. interior.
Carlson said the Pentagon confirmed to him that the secretive operation is occurring under the guise of the Department of Homeland Security’s “mission.” The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, though, refused to disclose where in the U.S. border crossers are being flown.
While still not disclosing where the migrants are being flown in the U.S., DHS officials confirmed to San Antonio Express-News that about 780 border crossers were flown into the U.S. via Laughlin Air Force Base since June 29.
The use of a military base is only one way the Biden administration is keeping border crossers in the U.S. rather than returning them to their native countries.
For months, Breitbart News has chronicled the Biden administration’s expansive Catch and Release operation through which at least tens of thousands of illegal aliens are being briefly detained, put up in migrant hotels, then bused or flown into the U.S. interior with only the promise that they will show up to their asylum hearings months, or a year, later.
In June, Breitbart News reported that it is not only border crossing family units that are being resettled via the Catch and Release operation. The Biden administration is busing and flying single male adult border crossers into U.S. cities that remain undisclosed to American citizens.
The latest available data, from February 19 to April 22, reveals the Biden administration has flown about 7,200 border crossers into the U.S. interior on domestic commercial flights. Border crossers are allowed to bypass photo identification requirements, boarding flights without a photo ID, and do not have to prove they are negative for the Chinese coronavirus.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Urgent action is necessary to stop the US Delta variant surge!
The United States is in the midst of a major new upsurge of the COVID-19 pandemic that has already taken the lives of 624,000 people. Over the past month, daily cases have increased 250 percent, driving a rise in hospitalizations and a significant increase in the daily death rate.
“The Delta (4th) wave in the United States is already showing it to be on a path to its the worst yet” in major hotspots, noted Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at the Scripps Research Institution.
The surge is concentrated in the poorest sections of the country, including Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Florida and Nevada, where vaccination rates are lowest. In Missouri, the tenth-poorest state in the country which has one of the lowest vaccination rates, hospitals are at the highest occupancy at any point of the pandemic. “We only get beds available when someone dies, which happens several times a day,” Terrence Coulter, the critical-care medical director at CoxHealth, told the Atlantic.
The rise in cases is caused by the Delta variant of COVID-19, which not only spreads more rapidly, but reproduces much more aggressively inside infected people. A study published earlier this month noted that the viral load of people infected with the Delta variant was 1,000 times greater than those infected by the initial variant of the disease.
The surge in sections of the country with the lowest vaccination rates has been accompanied by a troubling growth in so-called “breakthrough” infections among vaccinated people. According to official figures from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 791 fully vaccinated people have died from COVID-19 in the US so far, and 5,000 have been hospitalized.
Three fully vaccinated athletes inside the Olympic village in Tokyo and one staff member tested positive over the weekend, raising the threat of new outbreaks at the world’s premiere sporting event. In recent days, three fully vaccinated members of the Texas House delegation in Washington, D.C., tested positive after traveling maskless on a chartered airplane.
Moreover, less than half of the population in the US is fully vaccinated. While the media blames this fact on people who do not want to get the vaccine, the ruling class has been unwilling to organize the type of public education and mass distribution program that is required.
In recent days, it has become clear that the US government expects the upsurge that has already taken place in southern states to be merely the prelude to a new wave of the pandemic.
“This is just going to spread through the population,” Trump’s former FDA director Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Friday. He pointed to an internal CDC model showing “an increasing epidemic, a wave of infection from this Delta variant moving through the population over the next two months.”
“The assumptions built into those models is no mitigation, no mandates for masks, no closures of businesses,” Gottlieb added. “I think that’s likely to be the norm.”
What Gottlieb is describing is the deliberate mass infection of the American population, allowing tens or hundreds of thousands more to die. The Trump-appointed FDA director was not describing some ideal world that would exist if the COVID-19 denier Trump was still in power, but the actual policies of the Biden administration.
On May 13, the CDC, under pressure from the Biden administration, announced that it was no longer recommending that vaccinated people wear masks, triggering the effective abandonment of all social distancing measures by businesses, states and municipalities throughout the country.
The World Socialist Web Site, in a position consistent with the World Health Organization and leading public health experts, opposed the CDC’s decision, warning that it would lead to a new resurgence of the pandemic. Less than two months later, these warnings are being confirmed.
Facing the disastrous outcome of the White House’s policies, Biden’s CDC Director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, was asked last week, “Is there any consideration, any scenario in which you might want to reverse yourself on reopening schools?”
Walensky replied, “I remain emphatic that our schools need to open in the fall. They need to open for full, in-person learning.” When asked again, “CDC is not recommending people who are fully vaccinated wear masks?” Walensky responded, “We are not.”
The Biden administration’s open opposition to masking and the end to all social distancing measures is virtually indistinguishable from the policies of former US President Donald Trump, whose disastrous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic was a major factor in Biden’s victory.
“220,000 Americans dead,” Biden said in his opening remarks at the second presidential debate. “Anyone is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America.” He added, “I will take care of this. I will end this.”
But since Inauguration Day, a further 196,000 people have died of COVID-19. That is, almost as many Americans have died under Biden as had died when Biden proclaimed “anyone responsible” for such mass death had forfeited his right to be president.
The president who pledged to “follow the science” is rejecting the demands of scientists, discouraging mask-wearing and peddling pseudo-science that children cannot be infected with COVID-19 and that schools are not centers for the transmission of the disease.
Tens of millions of people voted for Biden in the belief that he would take the measures necessary to stop the pandemic. But these promises were empty, because Biden, like Trump, represents the interests of the financial oligarchy that has massively enriched itself as hundreds of thousands have died.
It is urgently necessary to draw the lessons of the year and a half that has elapsed since the start of the pandemic. Under the banner of “herd immunity,” capitalist governments throughout the world made the calculated decision to sacrifice millions of lives because saving them would have impinged on the profit interests of the financial oligarchy.
With more than four million deaths, the mass of humanity is no closer to eradicating the pandemic than it was in March. Rather, the uncontained spread of the disease has led to the development of ever-more-dangerous variants.
Stopping the pandemic requires a radically different approach. This means the closure of schools and nonessential businesses, with full compensation for all those who lose any wage or small business income. This must be combined with the allocation of vast social resources to ensure that every case of COVID-19 is meticulously tracked and that every infected person is given a safe and comfortable place to quarantine—with full financial compensation—until they are no longer infectious.
It is a fundamental fact that, despite the unanimous consensus of scientists on the measures necessary to contain COVID-19, there is only one political party in the United States calling for the stopping of nonessential production: the Socialist Equality Party, affiliated with the International Committee of the Fourth International that publishes the World Socialist Web Site. That is because the Socialist Equality Party does not accept the economic prerogatives of the capitalist class.
If COVID-19 is to be contained, it will only be through a mass mobilization of the working class to demand urgent measures to stop the pandemic, whatever the cost to the wealth of the financial oligarchy. The ill-gotten gains made by America’s billionaires while hundreds of thousands died must be seized and used to fund the measures necessary to stop the pandemic.
As the disease rips through workplaces, workers will form rank-and-file committees to demand the closure of non-essential production and the enforcement of critical safety guidelines. Teachers must and will resist the efforts to reopen schools for in-person learning under conditions in which the pandemic is still spreading.
Mark Levin: Joe Biden ‘Is a Human Pandemic’
During this week’s broadcast of FNC’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” conservative talker Mark Levin, author of “American Marxism,” warned against President Joe Biden’s so-called progressive policies, adding they were a threat to America’s prosperity.
“My reaction to the agenda is that Joe Biden and his merry group of proletariat supporters there in the White House are destroying this country,” he said. “If I’m communist China, and I’m communist North Korea, and I’m communist Cuba, and I’m communists Venezuela, if I’m the regime in Iran, and so forth, all of our enemies, I’m sitting back and I’m laughing, because Joe Biden is destroying this country from within, and I don’t have to raise a finger.”
“He is a human pandemic,” Levin added. “He’s done more damage to this country in six months than communist China could ever do to us. And he is a grave threat, and his administration is a grave threat. They’re a threat to our civil liberties and free speech. They’re a threat to our economic system. They’re a threat to our sovereignty, open border. This man hasn’t even traveled to the Southern border to see what his policies are doing, because he doesn’t give a damn. He knows what they’re doing, this push for critical race theory and this — and this LatCrit, and all the other things I talk about in ‘American Marxism.'”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poo
BREAKING TRUMP NEWS 1PM 7/18/21 | MSNBC Breaking News Today July 18, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJEpDX4Yd4I
COVID LOS ANGELES
This Week with George Stephanopoulos 7/18/21 | ABC Breaking News Today July 18, 2021
CAN'T AFFORD YOUR HEALTH CARE? IT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE PAYING FOR MEXICO'S
Already, taxpayers are forced to subsidize about $18.5 billion of yearly medical costs for illegal aliens living in the U.S., according to estimates by Chris Conover, formerly of the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University.
11. Biden’s Open Border
Biden is changing two Trump policies which not only signal the border is open for a flood of immigrants who cannot be held outside the country while their claims are processed, but assure that they will be released to go around the country. Worse, as the administration warns of a COVID-19 Delta variant (which so impressed Los Angeles and Las Vegas pols that they demand masking again), the rejection of the Trump policies on admitting immigrants with COVID-19 now means that migrants who carry the disease are free to enter the country.
Really, it’s crazy overload, but I doubt this is the end of it.
Ten (Plus One) Signs that the Age of Biden is Upon Us
We are living in a weird world of constant deception and bizarre government policies. Sometimes the liars are easily exposed, usually the policies are facially absurd, and this week there are 10 such examples.
1. Claiming that the U.S. is responsible for Cuba’s failed state
Pinning the blame for Cuba’s failures on the U.S. is the argument of people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. (The other being the nonsense about Cuba’s great medical care and universal literacy.) In a pithy tweet, James Pethokoukis makes hash of this nonsense.
James Pethokoukis
@JimPethokoukis
Jul 16
Again, saying a socialist economy would work great -- if only it were allowed to trade with the rich capitalist country nearby is not the killer argument that socialists think it is
Babalu blog, which tirelessly covers Cuba, reports on the rebellion going on there and its reasons (none of which have to do with U.S. sanctions, which do not in any event cover food or medicine purchases) summarizes the week’s rebellion on Cuba.
This sudden eruption of dissent was caused by a perfect storm of calamities, all of which have revealed the Big Lie of the revolution. Lately, life in Cuba has become more unbearable than ever for just about every Cuban. The crisis is due to a long string of blunders and catastrophes, linked like beads on a rosary from hell: The loss of revenue from Venezuela, a collapsed economy, gargantuan foreign debt, a disastrous sugar harvest, uncontrolled inflation, a plague that is intensifying in Cuba rather than abating, a crumbling health care system, medication shortages, food shortages, water shortages, electricity blackouts, and increased repression, to name but a few. Never mind the sanctions by the United States or the so-called embargo that Cuba’s military junta and many of the world’s news outlets are blaming for the current crisis. These are inconsequential factors, a decoy skillfully manipulated by the oligarchs in order to distract from their own ineptitude and the congenital defects of the communism they embraced. These protesters know the ultimate cause of their distress is their lack of freedom in all spheres of life, which is nothing new.
2. Claiming that BLM cares about Blacks and police oppression of them
Not only does the rebellion in Cuba reveal the shortcomings of this socialist hellhole, but it forces Black Lives Matter to reveal its Marxist sympathies. Despite ample evidence of police state brutality against the largely Brown and Black protestors, BLM has not raised a single objection. This prompts the satire site Babylon Bee to suggest the organization change its name to “Black and Brown Lives Matter Unless They are Protesting Communism.” Cuba’s leadership is after all lily White and from the outset of the revolution Castro and Che Guevara showed no sympathy to Cuban Blacks. The psychotic sadist Guevara, whose portrait adorns T-shirts and other gear worn by rich Hollywood figures and American leftists everywhere was clearest on the animus to Blacks.
After the Revolution's victory in 1959, he famously said, "We're going to do for blacks exactly what blacks did for the revolution. By which I mean: nothing."
And no, it wasn't just hard feelings over how Cuban blacks had supported the biracial dictator Fulgencio Batista. With Guevara it was more of a conviction, as we can glean from another quote. Speaking of blacks he said: "The ***** is indolent and lazy, and spends his money on frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent."
Maybe, instead of defacing the statue in Philadelphia of Matthias Baldwin, an abolitionist who early on funded a school for Black children and fought for Black voting rights, BLM members ought to deface those posters of Che which are found on every college campus and in every leftwing street demonstration.
3. Higher Education is Always a Fit Subject for Ridicule
At the same time, the left pushes for everyone to get a college education -- prepared for higher level work or not -- while arguing that this (they think) ticket to riches is a venue full of racism and rape. This week, the claim is made at University of North Carolina, where I can state with a fair degree of certainty the complainers are infinitely safer than they’d be on the streets of Chicago. In a similar vein, civil rights groups that fought for police body cams now oppose them, probably because they are more reliable than the usual fake and unreliable eyewitness reports of friends and family of the perps.
4. Georgia Peach
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who when it mattered denounced the Trump election challenge, claiming it was a perfect election in Georgia, has now admitted the election was far from it.
He tweeted “Fulton County’s continued failures have gone on long enough with no accountability. Rick Barron and Ralph Jones, Fulton’s registration chief, must be fired and removed from Fulton’s elections leadership immediately. Fulton’s voters and the people of Georgia deserve better.”
5. Minority Party Rights
In order to prevent a quorum to vote on election reform, Texas Democrats, a minority in the state legislature, fled the state (unmasked) on a private plane to Washington, D.C. (Three of them have now tested positive for Covid.) The hypocrisy is clear to me even if they are missing hypocrisy detection filters. They say they came here to demand an end to the filibuster on the ground that it allows a minority to control the agenda. (Let me know if any reporter interviewing them, points out this irony.)
6. Global Warming and the Great Plastic Scare
Global warming, as always, is a ripe area for factual discrepancy from partisan hype.
...a new report that shows greenhouse gas emissions are not an American or Western problem. They are primarily a Chinese problem. A study from Sun Yat-sen University in China found that more than half of the world’s urban greenhouse gas emissions are generated in only 25 big cities, and 23 of them are located in China. In other words, if the entire developed world cut its greenhouse gas emissions as activists, politicians, journalists, and celebrities have demanded, nothing would change regarding the climate. (This assumes human carbon dioxide emissions are responsible for warming the planet, which is a load of speculation that’s yet to be proved.)
And yet the great reset would impoverish the West and leave China to continue to emit most of the greenhouse gas emissions.
While revenue-greedy politicians charge taxes for single-use plastic grocery bags (certainly creating greater opportunities for bacterial infections by those utilizing reusable bags) ban plastic straws, and conscientious homeowners wash and reuse baggies to save the oceans, their attention would be better focuses across the Pacific Ocean.
The same source that notes where carbon emissions are greatest repeats a known but well-buried fact.
The data show 90% of ocean plastic pours into the sea from ‘the top 10 rivers with the highest loads’ of plastic debris, according to the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany. None are in the U.S., which contributes only about 1% percent of all plastic debris found at sea. Eight of them though are in Asia, while two are in Africa.
7. What Causes COVID Spikes and What Doesn’t?
The same kind of jerks that once claimed Black Lives Matter protests do not and did not lead to a spike in COVID-19, now claim that Cuban protestors do not have that magical disease protection aura.
8. Elections and Prosecutorial Halts
I would suppose that when there is evidence that the adult child of a presidential candidate is involved in substantial wrongdoing in the middle of a political campaign it might be wise for prosecutors to hold off rather than influence an election. In any event, that’s the explanation for prosecutor U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s not investigating Hunter before the election.
On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman reminds us how selectively this non-election interference ploy is played.
There was the ridiculous Russian Collusion case against Donald Trump in 2016 which federal prosecutors “managed to keep the fantastical case alive through the next congressional election cycle”; James Comey’s bizarre exoneration and just as bizarre reopening of the case against Hillary Clinton; and the outrageous prosecutorial misconduct by which Department of Justice lawyers got a conviction against Senator Ted Stevens less than two weeks before Election Day. (A conviction that cost Stevens his reelection and that greased the skids for ObamaCare.)
In any event, as Freeman asks, when will be a good time to investigate Hunter Biden?
As for today’s U.S. attorney in Delaware who refrained from pressing the Biden case last year, Mr. Weiss seems to be a dedicated public servant. This week’s Politico account spends many paragraphs explaining what a straight shooter he is. It all sounds very plausible and let’s hope it’s true. But a year after Mr. Weiss held off on the Biden inquiry, is there any evidence of a vigorous new search for the facts? The news from Main Justice is not entirely reassuring. Politico notes:
In December, Hunter Biden hired Chris Clark, a partner at the national firm of Latham & Watkins, as his defense attorney.
In January, upon taking office, Biden appointed Nicholas McQuaid to be the interim head of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department. Until his appointment, McQuaid had also been a partner at Latham, where he had worked on some cases with Clark. Justice Department conflict of interest rules would require McQuaid to receive a waiver to participate in oversight of the Hunter Biden probe. A DOJ spokesman, Joshua Stueve, declined to say whether McQuaid had received a waiver or recused himself from the case. Clark did not respond to a request for comment.
When is a good time to investigate Biden finances?
9. Big Tech and White House Message Coordination (i.e., Censorship)
James Freeman also notes this week’s admission by White House spokesperson Psaki that Big Tech and government agencies are coordinating to monitor and censor content on Facebook and other platforms. Politico reports that “Biden-allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee” were not only joining in the censorship program but as well were going to work with SMS carriers to monitor and “dispel misinformation about vaccines sent over social media and text messages.”
Ben Weingarten tweets reminding us how this works:
Reminder: The government ‘protecting you’ from ‘misinformation and disinformation’ used the Steele dossier--the ultimate misinformation/disinformation doc--to seek to bring down its political foe par excellence via Russiagate, the ultimate misinformation/disinformation campaign.”
10. The Lies About January 6 Slowly Are Exposed
This week, then-Capitol Police chief Steven A. Sund debunked the claim that the evacuations of the Capitol Buildings were caused by the pro-Trump demonstrations. Instead, he said that the evacuations were actually caused by the discovery of pipe bombs at the DNC and RNC headquarters located not far from the Capitol. To my knowledge no one has been charged or arrested with placing those bombs and no one has claimed any of the many arrestees being held in unconscionable conditions for months had a thing to do with the bombs even though there are security videos of the guy who planted them.
11. Biden’s Open Border
Biden is changing two Trump policies which not only signal the border is open for a flood of immigrants who cannot be held outside the country while their claims are processed, but assure that they will be released to go around the country. Worse, as the administration warns of a COVID-19 Delta variant (which so impressed Los Angeles and Las Vegas pols that they demand masking again), the rejection of the Trump policies on admitting immigrants with COVID-19 now means that migrants who carry the disease are free to enter the country.
Really, it’s crazy overload, but I doubt this is the end of it.
Biden’s HHS Nominee Does Not Rule Out Taxpayer-Funded Healthcare for Illegal Aliens
President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, dodged a question on whether he would push to provide American taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits to illegal aliens.
This week, during a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, Becerra was asked by Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) about his previous support for decriminalizing illegal immigration and providing illegal aliens with taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits.
Becerra, though, dodged the question by saying he would follow the parameters of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, which he said allows “very rare” cases of illegal aliens to receive benefits.
The exchange went as follows:
DAINES: You’re on record for pushing for allowing illegal immigrants to receive taxpayer-funded healthcare and for decriminalizing illegal entry into the United States. This coupled with President Biden’s radical plan for granting citizenship to those who are here illegally would potentially lead to hundreds of thousands, if not potentially millions, more people flooding into our country. [Emphasis added]
As you know, in 2016, California passed a law requiring covered Californians to apply for … waivers to allow illegal immigrants to purchase health insurance in the marketplace. This waiver was withdrawn after President Trump’s election. [Emphasis added]
My question is this: Will you attempt to use the waiver authority contained in the Affordable Care Act to grant healthcare benefits to illegal immigrants? [Emphasis added]
BECERRA: Senator, I can tell you that where the law, as it stands now as I see it, it does not allow those who are unauthorized in this country to receive taxpayer-paid benefits except in very rare circumstances and it will be my job to make sure that we are following and enforcing the law. And I can commit to you that that is what we will do. [Emphasis added]
In a letter to Biden, 11 Senate Republicans and 64 House Republicans asked the president to withdraw Becerra’s nomination to be HHS Secretary, citing his support for taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits for illegal aliens, among other issues.
“Mr. Becerra seeks to decriminalize illegal immigration, which would extend expensive government benefits like Medicaid to anyone who illegally crosses our borders,” the letter states.
A Politico report this week suggested Becerra is eyeing plans to provide illegal aliens with taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits should he lead HHS.
“He’s one of those individuals that had exceedingly deep convictions about the need to cover the undocumented individuals in all of our communities,” former Rep. Charles Gonzalez (D-TX) told Politico of Becerra.
Should Becerra become HHS Secretary, he could let illegal aliens onto Obamacare exchanges while pressuring states to pursue similar policies to those in California. Likewise, Becerra could open Obamacare exchanges to particular subgroups of illegal aliens, like those enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
As Breitbart News reported, forcing taxpayers to provide healthcare to all illegal aliens would cost citizens anywhere between $23 billion to $66 billion every single year — potentially a $660 billion bill for taxpayers every decade, without adjusting for inflation and the increasing number of illegal aliens.
Cost is only the first issue facing taxpayers. Medical experts have admitted providing healthcare to illegal aliens would ensure a never-ending flood of illegal aliens arriving at the southern border with “serious health problems” and local hospitals would have to cover the costs.
Already, taxpayers are forced to subsidize about $18.5 billion of yearly medical costs for illegal aliens living in the U.S., according to estimates by Chris Conover, formerly of the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University.
When U.S. voters were polled by CNN on the issue in July 2019, nearly 6-in-10 said they were opposed to such a policy, including 63 percent of swing voters and 61 percent of self-described “moderates.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
JOHN BINDER
3,818
Tucker Carlson: Joe Biden Using Military to Fly Illegal Aliens to U.S.
President Joe Biden’s administration is using the United States Armed Forces to help fly illegal aliens into the interior of the U.S., Fox News’s Tucker Carlson reveals.
On Wednesday evening, Carlson unveiled internal emails in which Lt. Col. Matthew Burrows informs military personnel that commercial planes at Laughlin Air Force Base, east of Del Rio, Texas, will board and fly illegal aliens into the U.S. interior.
Burrows, Carlson noted, asked personnel to keep the operation from becoming public.
“This show has confirmed that the Biden administration has enlisted the U.S. military, secretly, around our country,” Carlson said. That is happening at Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas. We know it’s happening there because a man called Lt. Col. Matthew Burrows sent his subordinates spelling it out very clearly.”
Burrows’ email reads, “Over the next few days, weeks, or months, you may see passenger aircraft on our ramp transporting undocumented non-citizens. Please review the attached public affairs guidance on the issue” [Emphasis added].
“Burrows’ email then instructed uniformed military personnel to hide what was happening on the base from the country they’re sworn to serve,” Carlson continued:
Carlson said the Pentagon confirmed to him that the secretive operation is occurring under the guise of the Department of Homeland Security’s “mission.” The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, though, refused to disclose where in the U.S. illegal aliens are being flown.
“ICE did not deny they were using Laughlin Air Force Base to relocate large numbers of foreign nationals into the interior of our country and do it secretly,” Carlson said. “The question is, where are all these people going? Several times, ICE promised us additional details. But in the end, we never heard back. Apparently, Americans do not have a right to know where foreign nationals are being resettled in their own country.”
“What you’re watching is demographic transformation in our country without our consent and in violation of our laws. That is happening,” Carlson continued.
For months, Breitbart News has chronicled the Biden administration’s expansive Catch and Release operation through which at least tens of thousands of illegal aliens are being briefly detained, put up in migrant hotels, then bused or flown into the U.S. interior with only the promise that they will show up to their asylum hearings months, or a year, later.
In June, Breitbart News reported that it is not only border crossing family units that are being resettled via the Catch and Release operation. The Biden administration is busing and flying single male adult border crossers into U.S. cities that remain undisclosed to American citizens.
The latest available data, from February 19 to April 22, reveals that the Biden administration has flown about 7,200 border-crossers into the U.S. interior on domestic commercial flights. Border crossers are allowed to bypass photo identification requirements, boarding flights without a photo ID, and do not have to prove they are negative for the Chinese coronavirus.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
No Silver Lining: Wages Fell While Inflation Soared This Spring
A rapid rise in prices over the past year has not been matched by wage gains, indicating American workers are losing ground, data from the Department of Labor showed Friday.
Median weekly earnings of the nation’s 113.6 million full-time wage and salary workers were $990 in the second quarter of 2021 , the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This was 1.2 percent lower than a year earlier.
That compares with a gain of 4.8 percent in the Consumer Price Index over the same period.
That means inflation-adjusted wages are down six percent. Or, to flip it around, wage-adjusted prices are up six percent.
Either way you look at it, it is bad news for American workers.
Adding to the furstration of workers and employers, on average enhanced unemployment benefits pays around $620, which means many unemployed are receiving nearly 2/3 of the median weekly wage for people working full time.
In fact, unemployment pays significantly more than the median wage of $596 per week for women aged 16 to 24 and close to the $643 paid to their male peers. No wonder employers say it is hard to find new workers.
730K Migrants Apprehended This Year in Texas-Based Border Sectors
Agents in the five Texas-based Border Patrol sectors apprehended more than 730,000 so far this fiscal year. The apprehensions account for more than two-thirds of the more than one million migrants apprehended along the U.S. southwestern border with Mexico.
Border Patrol agents assigned to the five Texas-based sectors apprehended 732,573 migrants during the first nine months of Fiscal Year 21, according to information released on Friday in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Southwest Land Border Encounters Report. This is up from 155,246 apprehended during the same period during the previous year — an increase of nearly 372 percent.
The information comes as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis prepares to meet with Texas Governor Greg Abbott in Del Rio, Texas, on Saturday. DeSantis is one of several Republican governors who responded to Abbott’s request for assistance in securing the border as reported by Breitbart Texas in June.
“The immigration issue and the border issue is not just the number one issue of Texas, it’s the number one issue in America,” Governor Abbott told Breitbart in a one-on-one interview shortly before he announced the creation of a Task Force on Border and Homeland Security. “And so all of these other governors, they hear the same concerns that we hear about in Texas.”
The governor pledged the full resources of the State of Texas to stop the lawlessness along the southern border. He said they will use existing state laws along with the authority of the State of Emergency declaration made earlier this month to crack down on those illegally crossing the border can creating havoc along the way.
“The bottom line is, because of the current administration’s complete abandonment of enforcing the laws passed that were passed by the United States Congress, concerning immigration, there is an unprecedented increase in people coming across the border,” Abbott told a group of Texas sheriffs during a task force briefing in Austin on July 10. He concluded, saying, “Even though the federal government may have abandoned their responsibility, we have not.”
The governor created the task force to provide assistance to Texas border sheriffs, county judges, mayors, property rights organizations, concern citizen groups, and border-area prosecutors.
Members of the task force will include the:
- Office of the Governor
- Office of the Attorney General of Texas
- Texas Department of Public Safety
- Texas Division of Emergency Management
- Texas Military Department
- Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
- Texas Commission on Law Enforcement
- Texas Commission on Jail Standards
The CBP report above clearly illustrates the disproportionate burden placed on Texans as a direct result of the Biden administration’s changes in border security and immigration policies. From February, Biden’s first full month in office, until June, migrant apprehensions increased from 97,639 to 178,416 — an increase of nearly 83 percent. More than two-thirds of those apprehensions took place in Texas-based Border Patrol sectors.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Face
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