Monday, January 18, 2021

HAS TRUMP STOLEN THE WHITE HOUSE CHINA? - SAYS HE DOESN'T WANT BIDEN TO SEE WHAT A SLOB HE WAS WHILE LIVING IN THE PEOPLES' WHITE HOUSE

 

Bill Barr: Challenging Election Legitimacy ‘Precipitated’ Capitol Siege

US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (R) listens while Attorney General William Barr speaks during a press conference about the release of the Mueller Report at the Department of Justice April 18, 2019, in Washington, DC. - US Attorney General Bill Barr said Thursday that the White House fully cooperated …
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images
1:34

Former Attorney General William Barr said in a newly-released interview that challenging the legitimacy of the 2020 White House election result “precipitated” the deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol earlier January.

Barr told ITV News.

Regardless of which side of the political spectrum is involved, we just cannot tolerate violence interfering with the processes of government. I think that when you start suppressing free speech, when people lose confidence in the media, and also when they lose faith in the integrity of elections – you are going to have some people resort to violence.

Barr previously criticized President Donald Trump’s conduct to a group of his supporters storming the Capitol, calling it a “betrayal of his office and supporters” adding that “orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable.”

The former Trump official made the remarks to the Associated Press.

Barr left his post as head of the Justice Department in December, shortly after declaring that his agency found no evidence of widespread election fraud during the election. Even as President-elect Joe Biden is set to ascend to the White House this week, President Trump continues to allege such fraud.

Barr is said to have told President Trump that allegations of voter fraud were “bullshit,” according to Axois.

“I’m a pretty informed legal observer and I can’t fucking figure out what the theory is here,” Barr reportedly added. “It’s just scattershot. It’s all over the hill and gone.”

Trump Will Not Invite the Bidens to the White House Before Inauguration

A view of the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 2, 2020. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Susan Walsh/AP Photo
1:31

President Donald Trump will not invite President-elect Joe Biden to the White House ahead of the inauguration Wednesday, according to reports.

Typically, the sitting president invites his successor to the White House ahead of the inauguration. The sitting first lady welcomes the incoming first lady for tea and a tour of the building.

Both President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama welcomed the Trumps to the White House ahead of the inauguration ceremony after President Donald Trump beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Few expected Trump to invite Biden after announcing he would not attend the inauguration.

Trump’s snub of the Bidens is the latest example of a rocky transition to the new administration.

Biden has not appeared angry with the break in tradition. Earlier in January, he said he was pleased Trump would not attend his inauguration with the other living former presidents.

“One of the few things he and I have ever agreed on,” he replied when reporters asked him about Trump’s decision not to attend the inauguration. “It’s a good thing — him not showing up.”

CNN reports White House chief usher Timothy Harleth will welcome the Bidens to the White House after the inauguration ceremony.

The Trumps have decided to leave the White House the morning of the Inauguration and travel aboard Air Force One to their home at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

Rob Reiner: Trump Is a ‘Lifetime Criminal’ Who Is Getting a ‘Cut of the Action’ for Each Pardon

Joe Scarnici/Getty Images
Joe Scarnici/Getty Images
1:36

The impending inauguration of Joe Biden has not dulled filmmaker Rob Reiner’s zeal for attacking President Donald Trump. On Monday, the Hollywood director called the commander in chief a “lifetime criminal,” alleging without evidence that the president is receiving “a cut of the action” for each person he pardons.

President Trump is expected to issue a slate of executive pardons in his final days in office, with various reports stating that the president is preparing as many as 100 pardons and commutations. Despite rumors, the president isn’t reportedly considering pardoning himself.

Rob Reiner alleged Monday that President Trump is surely getting a “cut of the action” for each pardon he grants, implying that Trump is expecting something in return from each person he pardons. “A criminal right to the very end,” the filmmaker wrote.

Rob Reiner, who endorsed and campaigned for Joe Biden, has regularly made false statements about the president and his supporters, with no penalty from Twitter. He repeatedly called the president a murderer and his supporters “white supremacists.”

The Princess Bride director recently pressured Congress to impeach the president, telling lawmakers that if they don’t oust the president during his remaining days in office, they will be supporting sedition, which is a federal crime.

Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com

How do pardons work? Yahoo News Explains

On Jan. 20, Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States, and President Trump will lose a power many think he’ll use between now and then — the power to pardon. So how exactly do presidential pardons work? Yahoo News explains.

Trump, in wave of Tuesday pardons, so far not planning to pardon himself: source

Steve Holland

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump at this point is opting not to issue a pardon for himself as he prepares an expansive list of more than 100 pardons and commutations for release on Tuesday, a source familiar with the effort said.

White House advisers have said Trump has privately debated with advisers whether to take the extraordinary step of issuing a pardon for himself but some administration officials have cautioned Trump against a self-pardon because it would make him look guilty.

Many scholars have said a self-pardon would be unconstitutional because it violates the basic principle that nobody should be the judge in his or her own case.

Others have argued that a self-pardon is constitutional because the pardon power is very broadly worded in the Constitution. Historical texts made clear that the nation̢۪s 18th century founders discussed self-pardons, but opted not to include an explicit limitation on that power.

Trump was impeached by the Democratic-led House of Representatives last week on charges of inciting the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by pro-Trump protesters. His case is to face a Senate trial and if convicted, he could be disqualified from seeking another run for the presidency in 2024.

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said so far Trump does not plan to pardon himself and also does not plan to issue preemptive pardons for members of his family, another subject he has discussed privately with advisers.

Trump, who has already issued two waves of pardons in the past month, met advisers on Sunday to finalize a list of more than 100 pardons and commutations, the source said.

CNN reported that Dr Salomon Melgen, a prominent eye doctor from Palm Beach who is in prison after being convicted on dozens of counts of health care fraud, is expected to be on the clemency list.

The source said the clemencies were expected to be issued on Trump's last full day in office on Tuesday. Skipping the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, Trump leaves on Wednesday morning to begin his post-presidency at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. His presidency ends at noon on Wednesday.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Robert Birsel)

TEXAS PREPARES TO FIGHT BIDEN'S LA RAZA INVASION FOR MORE "CHEAP' DEM VOTER WORKERS

 

Texas Readies for Lawsuits Against Joe Biden’s Incoming Administration

US President-elect Joe Biden speaks during a campagin rally to support Democratic Senate candidates in Atlanta, Georgia on December 15, 2020. - US President-elect Joe Biden travelled to Georgia to campaign for Democratic Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) (Photo by JIM …
JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
2:36

Texas is reportedly preparing for lawsuits against Joe Biden’s incoming administration, the San Antonio Express-News reported Friday.

During his first 100 days in office, President-elect Joe Biden has “vowed to roll back the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, push policies addressing climate change and potentially forgive student debt for thousands of Americans,” the article stated.

Biden has also said he will advocate for a mask mandate and wants Congress to pass another huge stimulus package.

“And in the longer term, Biden has talked about rewriting the tax code to raise taxes on the rich,” the report continued, adding that “Texas is almost certain to fight him every step of the way”:

The state is about to be back on the front lines battling against the federal government, a long tradition for its Republican leaders, from former Gov. Rick Perry to Gov. Greg Abbott — who as the state’s attorney general famously said, “I go into the office, I sue the federal government and I go home.”

As Biden takes office next week, many expect the state to pick up where it left off after suing the Obama administration dozens of times to stop initiatives such as the Clean Power Plan, scrap protections for immigrants brought to the country illegally as children and end the Affordable Care Act.

In a Facebook post on Sunday, Gov. Abbott shared the Express-News article, commenting, “Texas will take action whenever the federal government encroaches on state’s rights, or interferes with constitutionally rights, or private property rights or the right to earn a living.”

Meanwhile, a recent national survey indicates that a majority of Republicans want congressional leaders to challenge Biden on important issues.

“Nearly six in 10 (59%) Republicans questioned in a Pew Research Center poll urge GOP leaders in Congress to stand up to the incoming president, even if it’s harder to address critical issues facing the country,” Fox News reported.

Robert Henneke, general counsel at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) told the Express-News that “Litigation challenging unconstitutional action from the Biden administration will be a central issue.”

“Where the new administration seeks to go out of bounds of what powers have been delegated to it, or enacts policies and rules that aren’t supported by data and science, I expect that we’ll be chief among those challenging those type of policies,” he concluded.


Analysis: House Democrats March in Radical Lockstep on Immigration

immigrant DACA donald trump
AP/Jose Luis Magana
4:01

House Democrats are in lockstep on attempting to pass expansions of legal immigration, crippling enforcement measures, and amnesty for illegal aliens, a new analysis finds.

The analysis conducted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) reviewed ten pieces of legislation last year, including the amnesties known as the American Dream and Promise Act, the Venezuela TPS Act of 2019, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2019, and the HEROES Act and how each member of Congress voted.

The average Democrat in Congress, the analysis found, voted 98 percent of the time for the legislation with just two percent of Democrats on average voting in opposition. Meanwhile, the average Republican voted against the legislation about 90 percent of the time.

While 119 Democrats voted to pass all ten pieces of legislation, 51 House Republicans, FAIR notes, voted 100 percent of the time against the legislation, including:

Mike Rogers (AL-03), Robert Aderholt (AL-04), Mo Brooks (AL-05), Gary Palmer (AL-06), Paul Gosar (AZ-04), Andy Biggs (AZ-05), Tom McClintock (CA-04), Neal Dunn (FL-02), Bill Posey (FL-08), Dan Webster (FL-11), Greg Steube (FL-17), Buddy Carter (GA-0), Drew Ferguson (GA-03), Barry Loudermilk (GA-11), Rick Allen (GA-12), Steve Scalise (LA-01), Mike Johnson (LA-04), Ralph Abraham (LA-05), Garret Graves (LA-06), Andy Harris (MD-01), Jack Bergman (MI-01), Bill Huizenga (MI-02), Trent Kelly (MS-01), Virginia Foxx (NC-05), Richard Hudson (NC-08), Adrian Smith (NE-03), Warren Davidson (OH-08), John Joyce (PA-13), Jeff Duncan (SC-03), Ralph Norman (SC-05), Dusty Johnson (SD-01), Tim Burchett (TN-02), Scott DesJarlais (TN-04), Mark Green (TN-07), David Kustoff (TN-08), Louie Gohmert (TX-01), Ron Wright (TX-06), Jodey Arrington (TX-19), Chip Roy (TX-21), Michael Burgess (TX-26), Michael Cloud (TX-27), Glenn Grothman (WI-06), Alex Mooney (WV-02), and Liz Cheney (WY-01).

Though none of the legislation was passed in the last Congress, FAIR President Dan Stein said with President-elect Joe Biden set to be inaugurated and Democrats regaining control of the Senate, he expects a major push for amnesty and an expansion of legal immigration levels.

Stein said in a statement:

Amid a crippling pandemic that threatens the health and economic security of the American people, it is highly likely that we will see a serious effort by congressional Democrats and the Biden administration to promote a mass amnesty for illegal aliens, significant increases in immigration admissions, and elimination of meaningful controls at the border.

Already, Biden is gearing up to introduce an amnesty plan that is likely to give a pathway to American citizenship to the majority of the 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the United States. The plan would come as 18 million Americans remain jobless and another 6.2 million are underemployed.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


Joe Biden’s Amnesty Strategy Hides the Money by Denying Border Safeguards

DACA
Neil Munro, Breitbart News
7:20

President-elect Joe Biden’s draft immigration plan does not include any protections for Americans, while it offers the huge prize of American citizenship to at least 11 million migrants from around the world, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

The January 15 report says:

The proposed legislation would not contain any provisions directly linking an expansion of immigration with stepped-up enforcement and security measures, said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center Immigrant Justice Fund, who has been consulted on the proposal by Biden staffers.

“This notion concerning immigration enforcement and giving Republicans everything they kept asking for … was flawed from the beginning,” Hincapié told the newspaper.

The measure “will not seek to trade immigration relief for enforcement, and that’s huge,” Lorella Praeli, who was brought to the United States as an illegal immigrant by her Peruvian parents. Praeli is a pro-migration advocate and has close ties to Biden’s pro-migration appointees.

But the shocking exclusion of safeguards may merely be a negotiating tactic that helps journalists and GOP legislators to keep the debate away from the economic damage caused by amnesty.

In 2013, pro-migration advocates minimized safeguards in the early draft of their “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill. This tactic helped the media to focus the deep public criticism of the bill around the security gap.

Just before the floor debate, the bill’s authors announced a big-spending security plan — the Hoeven-Corker amendment. The planned surprise allowed the advocates to claim they had answered all security criticisms of the bill — and it helped them rush the bill through the Senate, 68 votes to 32 votes, in June 2013.

In reality, the Hoeven-Corker amendment was a magicians’ trick intended to divert media attention from the legal loopholes in the bill, and the economic shift caused the bill’s deliberate inflation of the labor supply.

For example, the bill did not prevent the catch and release of migrants at the border, did not close the “Unaccompanied Alien Child” loophole, and did not protect American graduates from visa worker outsourcing. In fact, the bill allowed an unlimited supply of foreign college graduates into the jobs needed by American graduates, even as it promised to build just 350 miles of a claimed border wall.

The trick amendment was named after two GOP senators who claimed to be saving Americans from illegal migration — the now-retired Sen. Bob Corker from Tennessee and the still-incumbent Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND).

Most importantly, the Hoeven-Corker trick helped Democrats and reporters keep the public’s attention away from the money that would have been sucked from Americans’ wages and shifted over to investors’ stock portfolios.

A last-minute, little-mentioned report by the Congressional Budget Office revealed that the Gang of Eight amnesty bill would have reduced wage earners’ share of new national income and would have increased the share that went to investors.

Those investors included Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who was a major advocate of the 2013 bill and is now backing the planned 2021 bill.

“The bill would increase the rate of growth of the labor force, [so] average wages would be held down in the first decade after enactment,” the CBO report said. The flood of immigrant labor would boost corporate sales and revenues, and so spike the stock market, the CBO report said.

“The rate of return on capital would be higher [than on labor] under the legislation than under current law throughout the next two decades,” according to the report titled “The Economic Impact of S. 744.”

The same point about the supply, demand, and wages of American labor was repeated in a January 2020 CBO report: “Among people with less education, a large percentage are foreign-born. Consequently, immigration has exerted downward pressure on the wages of relatively low-skilled workers who are already in the country, regardless of their birthplace.”

Many polls show that cheap labor migration is deeply unpopular because Americans know that it is used by companies to displace Americans and to cut their wages.

Economists recognize that migration moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, and from the heartland states to the coastal states that are home to many investors and Democratic donors.

That economic transfer has shriveled the wealth and health of many red states, and so helped Donald Trump defeat the GOP establishment and get elected in 2016. The same economic shift boosted Trump’s support among working-class whites, blacks, and Latinos in 2020.

The multiracialcross-sexnonracistclass-based opposition to cheap labor migration coexists with generally favorable personal feelings toward legal immigrants and toward immigration in theory — despite the media magnification of many skewed polls and articles that still push the 1950’s “Nation of Immigrants” claim.

However, establishment journalists have ignored the evidence of deep and broad opposition to cheap labor migration — and the inflow of temporary contract workers — into the jobs young and old Americans need. Similarly, the reports by the Los Angeles Times and Politico ignored the huge economic impact of migration.

But few politicians believe the pro-amnesty tales offered by lobbyists, donors, and reporters — partly because Senate Democrats lost a net five Senate seats after Sen. Chuck Schumer, (D-NY), pushed the 2013 amnesty through the Senate.

That disastrous mistake by Schumer and his media allies kept the Democrats in the minority for six years — and it also persuaded the American public to back Donald Trump in 2016.

In contrast, GOP House Leader Rep. John Boehner bottled up Schumer’s amnesty in 2014, kept control of the House in 2014, and so provided Trump’s GOP with clear majorities in the House and Senate throughout 2017 and 2018.

But Boehner’s pro-migration successor, House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan, lost Boehner’s Houe majority in 2018 after opposing Trump’s populist agenda.

Many Democrats know their proposed amnesty is very unpopular. Politico reported January 15:

Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) said a “piecemeal” approach is not an option. “The administration has a very limited window of opportunity before House members begin running for reelection,” she said. “Every day that passes is a day that the window shuts just an inch more…We’ve got to get it done in one fell swoop.”

On January 19, GOP senators will have a chance to slow Biden’s amnesty push when they hold a confirmation hearing with Alejandro Mayorkas, who was nominated by Biden to run the Department of Homeland Security.

The Mayorkas hearing is being chaired by Sen. Rob Portman R-OH) and also includes Sen. Josh Hawley (D-MO) and Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL).


Tom Cotton Warns Republicans: ‘Don’t Be Fooled’ by Joe Biden’s Amnesty Plan

Thousands of Honduran migrants push through the police fence as they attempt to cross the border at El Florido in Guatemala forming the first migrant caravan of the year on it's way to the United States on January 15, 2021. - Some 3,000 people left Honduras on foot January 15 …
Photo by JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP via Getty Images
4:37

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) is warning House and Senate Republicans not to be “fooled” by President-elect Joe Biden’s upcoming amnesty plan for the 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the United States, which he says will provide lip service to federal immigration enforcement.

Last week, open borders activists suggested that Biden’s upcoming amnesty plan is the “most aggressive agenda” they have seen in years. The plan is expected to provide amnesty to nearly all illegal aliens living in the U.S. and potentially expand legal immigration, a staple of the corporate lobby’s outsourcing goals.

Cotton, author of the RAISE Act to boost U.S. wages by reducing legal immigration, urged Republicans that the plan will likely “add a fig leaf of ‘security’ and ‘enforcement'” and will be labeled as a “‘compromise'” piece of legislation despite being “the most radical immigration bill in American history.”

Cotton slammed the plan as prioritizing the interests of corporate special interests pursuing cheap foreign labor over the needs of 18 million jobless Americans and another more than six million underemployed Americans.

“Joe Biden is wasting no time trying to enact his radical immigration agenda,” Cotton said. “He’s unveiling his draft immigration bill this week, and it’s what you’d expect from the party of open borders: Total amnesty, no regard for the health or security of Americans, and zero enforcement.”

Cotton continued:

The Biden plan is bad for American workers and bad for economic recovery. American unemployment is sharply increasing with over a million new unemployment claims in the first week of January. Bringing in more immigrant labor will only worsen the problem & further reduce wages.
[Emphasis added]

Biden also plans to immediately undo pandemic border closures. The lack of testing and controls at the border will mean a massive increase in the spread of the virus. Americans understand this, which is why 78 percent support keeping the borders closed. [Emphasis added]

Let’s be clear: Joe Biden is prioritizing amnesty ahead of the pandemic or getting Americans back to work. We can’t let him get away with it.
[Emphasis added]

Cotton also noted that Biden is set to introduce his amnesty plan as a caravan of approximately 6,500 foreign nationals, primarily from Central America, is on the move across the region in an effort to rush the U.S.-Mexico border.

Guatemala’s security forces have attempted to push the caravan back.

“Joe Biden’s bill would provide amnesty & citizenship for millions of illegal aliens, allowing them to jump ahead of law-abiding immigrants who followed the rules,” Cotton said. “There are already thousands more rushing toward our southern border to take advantage of Joe Biden’s amnesty plan.”

Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Susan Collins (R-ME) have previously suggested that they are open to working with the incoming Biden administration on striking an amnesty deal. Likewise, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) reportedly told colleagues in November 2020 that finding “common ground” with Biden on immigration “would benefit all of us.”

An amnesty would flood the labor market with millions of legalized foreign competitors for U.S. jobs against a growing number of jobless working and middle class Americans.

Economists have found that their job opportunities and wages can be easily diminished by high immigration levels.

One particular study by the Center for Immigration Studies’ Steven Camarota revealed that for every one percent increase in the immigrant portion of American workers’ occupation, their weekly wages are cut by perhaps 0.5 percent. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by potentially 8.75 percent, since more than 17 percent of the workforce is foreign-born.

The high immigration policy is a boon for giant corporations, real estate investors, Wall Street, university systems, and Big Agriculture that can cash in on an economy that offers low wages to an inflated labor market where employers hold bargaining power over employees.

During his four years in office, President Trump sought to reserve this corporatist trend by tightening the labor market to hike U.S. wages for the lowest of earners and transferring bargaining power to American workers who could bid for jobs rather than employers bidding for workers.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


Corporate Donor Class Pushes Alejandro Mayorkas DHS Confirmation

Alejandro Mayorkas, President Obama's nominee to become deputy secretary of the Homeland Security Department, is sworn in on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, July 25, 2013, prior to testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on his nomination. Mayorkas strongly denied allegations that he had helped …
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
4:03

The donor class is urging a quick confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Alejandro Mayorkas.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will meet on Tuesday for Mayorkas’s confirmation hearing. The former Obama administration official has the backing of corporate special interest groups and billionaire donors who regularly lobby to inflate the United States labor market via immigration to cut U.S. wages.

“He was also a key resource for the business community during his tenure as director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Suzanne Clark said in a statement. “As Secretary, Mayorkas would on day one be a seasoned contributor to the Biden administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.” Clark then stated, “The Chamber strongly supports the nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas.”

Executives with the Chamber of Commerce, in statements this month, said they are interested in working with Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on amnesty for illegal aliens and expanding legal immigration levels.

Likewise, billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s New American Economy (NAE) group voiced its support for Mayorkas’s confirmation soon after Biden announced his nomination. NAE lobbies members of Congress on behalf of corporate special interests to expand immigration to the U.S.

“Alejandro Mayorkas understands the contributions immigrant communities make to our society and economy, and he has the experience to lead the Department of Homeland Security at such a crucial turning point,” the group’s executive director, Jeremy Robbins, said. “We look forward to working with him to build a smart, fair, humane immigration system that reflects American values.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us, which seeks more immigration to the U.S. to fill tech jobs with foreign workers, previously stated its backing of Mayorkas.

“He has previously been confirmed three times by the United States Senate, and we urge his swift confirmation to ensure there is a Senate-confirmed leader of DHS at this critical time,” FWD.us President Todd Schulte said.

The American Business Immigration Coalition (ABIC), which hosted Mayorkas for a seminar, has been actively lobbying Senate Republicans to approve Biden’s pick. ABIC is made up of Republican donors and business executives.

Mayorkas’s widespread support among the business lobby and donor class comes as they have fought President Trump’s asylum reforms, travel bans, visa rules, and refugee resettlement cutbacks. Mayorkas, oppositely, has had an exceptionally friendly relationship with corporate special interests.

In recent years, Mayorkas represented corporations such as T-Mobile, Sprint, Uber, Airbnb, Intuit, Cisco Systems, and the Wall Street firm Blackstone. Specifically, Mayorkas helped T-Mobile and Sprint during their billion-dollar merger, which has already resulted in thousands of layoffs of Americans while experts expect 30,000 Americans in total to lose their jobs.

Previously, Mayorkas served as deputy secretary at DHS under the Obama administration, during which time the Inspector General (IG) unveiled that he had improperly helped secure EB-5 visas for well-connected wealthy foreign nationals.

In 2015, the IG noted that multiple staffers at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had reported Mayorkas for intervening in three specific EB-5 visa cases in which foreign investors had been denied visas. In each case, Mayorkas intervened on behalf of the foreign investors to appeal the decisions and secure them visas.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

Big Business: Joe Biden’s Amnesty for Illegal Aliens Is a Legislative Priority

immigration
AP/Ross D. Franklin
3:41

The big business lobby is cheerleading President-elect Joe Biden’s massive amnesty plan for the 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the United States, calling the initiative one of their many “priorities.”

Biden floated the amnesty plan with a number of open borders and business lobbying groups during a meeting this week. Some executives with the groups are calling the amnesty “the most aggressive” plan they have seen while working on Capitol Hill, suggesting it includes not only legislation, but executive orders to legalize most of the illegal alien population.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents corporate interests, tells Axios the amnesty plan is among the many priorities they want from the Biden administration.

Axios reports:

Suzanne Clark, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told me that the #1 desire she hears from members, including small businesses, is “more responsible adults in the room governing.”

Clark said key parts of the early Biden agenda — pandemic relief, vaccines, infrastructure, trade, immigration, workforce — “are all business priorities.”

The statement mimics that of the Chamber’s CEO Thomas Donohue, who said this week he is interested in working with Biden to not only provide amnesty to illegal aliens, but to expand the number of legal immigrants admitted to the U.S. every year.

Annually, more than 1.2 million legal immigrants are awarded green cards, and another 1.4 million foreign nationals are given visas. These totals are in addition to the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who are added to the U.S. population every year.

Such an amnesty would be a boon to the corporate interests that the Chamber represents as the business lobby, Wall Street investors, and Big Tech seek to slash wages and widen profit margins by inflating the U.S. labor market with millions of foreign competitors to working and middle class Americans.

NumbersUSA, which advocates on behalf of American workers, said the fact that U.S. wages are “finally rising after decades of stagnation and real wage decreases in many manual labor jobs” is “exactly why Joe Biden is intent on flooding [the] labor market with foreign workers”:

Today, 18 million Americans are jobless, and another 6.2 million are underemployed, all of whom want full-time jobs with competitive wages and good benefits. Their chances of securing higher wages and more job opportunities are crushed by the mass inflow of illegal and legal immigration.

One particular study by the Center for Immigration Studies’ Steven Camarota revealed that for every one percent increase in the immigrant portion of American workers’ occupation, their weekly wages are cut by perhaps 0.5 percent. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by potentially 8.75 percent because more than 17 percent of the workforce is foreign-born.

Biden’s amnesty plan would need to garner support from a handful of 28 House Democrats who barely won their seats in the 2020 election and who will be up for reelection again in 2022. Those Democrats include Reps. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), Lauren Underwood (D-IL), Cindy Axne (D-IA), Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), Angie Craig (D-MN), and Conor Lamb (D-PA).

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


Joe Biden Weighs Amnesty Plan for Illegal Aliens in Meeting with Open Borders Lobby

Amnesty for DACA
Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images
3:18

President-elect Joe Biden is laying the groundwork for an amnesty for 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the United States, meeting with open borders lobbying groups and sanctuary city politicians to discuss a legislative strategy.

On Thursday, Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris met with a handful of cabinet nominees, executives with open borders lobbying groups, and sanctuary city politicians about “his day one plans to introduce immigration reform legislation and protect DACA recipients,” according to a readout of the meeting.

Biden’s meeting included Xavier Becerra, his nominee to lead Health and Human Services (HHS), who as California attorney general has implemented one of the strictest sanctuary state policies in the nation — even going as far as to say the state would prosecute employers who cooperate with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

The meeting also included Los Angeles, California Mayor Eric Garcetti, who oversees a sanctuary city policy that frees back into the community hundreds of criminal illegal aliens every week from local jails.

Alida Garcia with Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us attended the meeting. As Breitbart News has chronicled, FWD.us is one of the leading pressure groups to expand the number of foreign visa workers that corporations are allowed to import to take high-paying, white-collar U.S. jobs.

Other executives with the open borders lobbying groups in attendance included:

  • Sindy Benavides, President of LULAC
  • Alida Garcia, Vice President of Advocacy of FWD.us
  • Domingo Garcia, Board Chair, LULAC
  • Maria Teresa Kumar, President & CEO of Voto Latino
  • Henry R. Munoz III, co-Founder of Latino Victory
  • Janet Murguia, President of UnidosUS
  • Nathalie Rayes, President & CEO of Latino Victory Fund
  • Tom Saenz, President of MALDEF
  • Hector Sanchez, President of Mi Familia Vota

The business lobby, which regularly seeks an expansion of legal immigration levels to widen profit margins by cutting U.S. wages, was represented by an executive with the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Biden’s advisers have already begun meeting with House Democrats to talk about a legislative pathway for an amnesty for millions of illegal aliens. Aside from an amnesty that would burden 18 million jobless Americans with increased foreign competition in the U.S. labor market, Biden is eyeing an end to President Trump’s reforms at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The plans include ending the Centers for Disease Control’s Title 42 order and Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which ensures that federal immigration officials can return border crossers to their native countries within hours and forces Mexico to house asylum applicants so they are not released into the interior of the U.S.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

Biden’s DHS Pick Oversaw Corporate Merger, Leaving Thousands Laid Off

WILMINGTON, DE - NOVEMBER 24:  Secretary of Homeland Security nominee Alejandro Mayorkas speaks after being introduced by President-elect Joe Biden as he introduces key foreign policy and national security nominees and appointments at the Queen Theatre on November 24, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware. As President-elect Biden waits to receive official national …
Mark Makela/Getty Images
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Alejandro Mayorkas, President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), helped with a corporate merger that is leaving thousands of Americans laid off.

In 2018, multinational telecommunication conglomerates T-Mobile and Sprint sought approval from the federal government to merge in a $23 billion deal. The merger, union representatives warned, would result in more than 30,000 Americans losing their jobs and continue monopolistic trends of concentrated corporate power.

A year later, the Trump administration via the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the T-Mobile/Sprint merger. As a corporate lawyer with Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, Mayorkas was part of a team to help implement the merger by April 1, 2020.

“WilmerHale called upon the deep experience of its lawyers knowledgeable in antitrust, congressional matters, trials, state attorneys general investigations, and federal regulatory agencies to help bring the merger to fruition,” a statement from the firm reads after the merger was completed in April 2020, citing Mayorkas’ involvement.

As union representatives expected, the merger is resulting in layoffs for Americans. When the merger was finalized with Mayorkas’s help, T-Mobile CEO John Legere claimed it would be “jobs positive from Day One and every day thereafter.”

Just three months after the merger’s finalization, though, it was projected that about 1,200 to 2,000 retail locations would be closed across the United States, resulting in at least 6,000 U.S. jobs. Likewise, about 4,500 Americans are losing their jobs at Sprint’s headquarters in Kansas and T-Mobile’s headquarters in Washington.

That same month, T-Mobile executives told 400 American workers over a conference call that they would be losing their jobs, according to audio of the call obtained by TechCrunch.

Mayorkas’s involvement with the merger is the latest in his resumé to come to light following the release of financial disclosure reports. Mayorkas also worked as a corporate attorney representing the likes of Uber, Airbnb, Cisco Systems, Intuit, and the Wall Street firm Blackstone.

Previously, Mayorkas served as deputy secretary at DHS under the Obama administration, where the Inspector General (IG) at the time unveiled that he had improperly helped secure EB-5 visas for well-connected wealthy foreign nationals.

In 2015, the IG noted that Mayorkas had been reported by multiple staffers at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency for intervening in three specific EB-5 visa cases where foreign investors had been denied visas. In each of the cases, Mayorkas intervened on behalf of the foreign investors in order to appeal the decisions and secure them visas.

Likewise, a report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) found that Mayorkas ignored asylum fraud while heading USCIS, where oftentimes no asylum fraud cases were referred to the U.S. attorney’s office for years.

Biden is now seeking a fast-track Senate approval process for Mayorkas.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


Bush, Obama DHS Chiefs Praise Joe Biden’s DHS Nominee

President-elect Joe Biden's Homeland Security Secretary nominee Alejandro Mayorkas speaks at The Queen theater, Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2020, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
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Four former homeland security chiefs have endorsed President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for homeland security because he helped deliver work permits to roughly 800,000 illegal migrants.

“We each know [nominee Alejandro] Mayorkas as a man of character, integrity, experience and compassion … he helped create and administer the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals [DACA] program,” said the January 12 Washington Post op-ed by former DHS secretaries Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff, Janet Napolitano, and Jeh Johnson.

The DACA program provided work permits to roughly 800,000 illegal migrants during the post-2008 economic recession, even as many millions of Americans had lost jobs, wages, and homes. 

“The president-elect could not have found a more qualified person to be the next homeland security secretary,” said the four former secretaries, all of whom worked for Presidents George W. Bush or President Barack Obama — despite evidence of multiple scandals in Mayorkas’ record.

“The swampiest of the swamp,” responded John Miano, a lawyer with the Immigration Law Reform Institute, who is suing to block some of Mayorkas’ pre-2017 policies. “Bush, Obama, Biden, it’s all the same cast of characters, destroying working Americans from the beginning, and they’re now getting back into power,” he said.

Mayorkas faces a fast-track confirmation hearing on January 19 before several GOP members, including Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Mitt Romney of Utah, and Rick Scott of Florida.

When Mayorkas worked for Obama, “everything that came out of his office was to screw working Americans,” said Miano, whose lawsuits against Mayorkas’ cheap labor policies are still being passed back and forth among judges who do not want to rule against the visa worker programs. “That’s what we expect we’re going to be seeing from the Biden administration.”

The four secretaries will likely portray their op-ed as a favor to Mayorkas that can be repaid to clients by Mayorkas if he is confirmed, Miano added.

The four former DHS secretaries will have many opportunities to trade favors, in part, because they have been active supporters of the unpopular work visa programs, which allow CEOs to replace American graduates with cheap and compliant foreign workers. 

For example, Chertoff recently defended the visa worker programs that have pushed at least one million American graduates out of jobs. “I happen to believe there is a place for legal migration, and for people to be coming in temporarily with a visa to do work that Americans need to have done and that will not be done by American citizens,” he told Axios on December 18.

Until August 1, Napolitano was the chancellor of the huge Univerity of California system that opposed curbs on the award of visas and work permits to the foreign customers of the universities via the huge Optional Practical Training program that Chertoff helped to create.

Their op-ed denounced Trump’s DHS political priorities — which include the protection of Americans’ labor markets — saying, “DHS should not be beholden to a president’s political agenda; it exists for the protection of the American people on land, at sea, in the air and in cyberspace.”

The pro-migration agenda shared by the four authors and Mayorkas is being applauded by many establishment figures, including the multi-billion dollar widow of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Inc.

Migration is a boon for wealthy Americans because it moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, and from the central states to the coastal states.

Migration also allows investors and CEOs to skimp on labor-saving technology, sideline U.S. minorities, ignore disabled peopleexploit stoop labor in the fields, shortchange labor in the cities, impose tight control and pay cuts on American professionals.

Migration also helps corral technological innovation by minimizing the employment of American graduates, undermine  Americans’ labor rights, and redirect progressive journalists to cheerlead for Wall Street’s priorities and claims.

“The fact we have all these swamp creatures supporting him,” said Miano, “should tell us that he is an agent of the establishment who will screw the average working American.”



As COVID cases surge: Sharp rise in new US unemployment claims

In the first full week of 2021 new claims for unemployment benefits increased sharply amid the rising toll of the pandemic, with adjusted first-time unemployment claims reached 965,000 for the week ending January 9.

That is the highest weekly number since last August and it was the largest week over week gain in new filings since March. The raw number of new claims surged 231,335 to reach 1.151 million last week. Economists tend to place more confidence in the unadjusted numbers, since the disruptions caused by the pandemic has made the adjusted figure, based on seasonal fluctuations, less reliable.

City workers and volunteers gather fruit to load into cars at a food distribution site, Wednesday, Jan 13, 2021, in Miami Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

New weekly claims for the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program also rose last week, increasing by 100,000 to 284,470. The PUA provides benefits to the self-employed and “gig workers” who are not typically covered by regular unemployment benefits. This follows reports that the US lost 140,000 jobs in December, the first such monthly decline since March.

In addition, the number of continuing claims for unemployment benefits rose to 5.3 million from 5.1 million, indicating a rise in the long-term jobless. It was the first time that the number had risen since November, having declined through the summer and into fall.

The Economic Policy Institute said the actual situation is even worse than indicated by official figures, estimating that 26.8 million workers have lost their jobs or seen their hours cut due to the pandemic.

These numbers continue to be historically without precedent and point to immense economic instability and the increasingly dire conditions facing wide sectors of the population. This week the US Federal Reserve reported that an estimated 20 percent of workers in the bottom one-quarter of income earners are currently without work. Workers in this category tend to be in the leisure and hospitality industry, such as restaurants and bars, that have been hard hit by the pandemic.

In typically understated language, Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard spoke of the “uneven” nature of the so-called recovery. “The damage from COVID-19 is concentrated among already challenged groups,” she said. Obliquely noting that stimulus measures have served mainly to enrich billionaires, she added, “The K-shaped recovery remains highly uneven, with certain sectors and groups experiencing substantial hardship.”

An economic analyst quoted by the Wall Street Journal remarked, “What we’re seeing in unemployment claims is a reminder that we’re likely to lose more jobs before we get to the end of this crisis.” Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, a large accounting and advisory firm, added, “the rising unemployment class combined with the job losses in December pointed to a further deterioration in the economic picture.”

Another analyst cited by the New York Times said, “We’re in a deep economic hole, and we’re digging in the wrong direction.” The economist, Daniel Zhao, with the career site Glassdoor, noted, “The report obviously shows that the rise in claims is worse than expected, and there is reason to think that things are going to get worse before they are going to get better.”

Consumer spending, another measure of economic well-being, declined in November, the first decrease in seven months. Household income fell as well.

In a further attack on the poorest sections of the working class, the Federal Reserve has said it may allow inflation to rise above the current rate of 2 percent annually, presenting it as the only alternative to a further rise in joblessness. In fact, the inflation rate on basic necessities such as food is already much higher. The official Consumer Price Index showed an overall 3.9 percent increase in food prices in 2020. Meat, poultry and fish prices were up 4.6 percent and dairy 4.4 percent. According to a report in Bloomberg, global food prices reached a six-year high in December and are likely to keep increasing.

It has not escaped the notice of workers that throughout the pandemic the fortunes of the world’s super-wealthy have soared even as devastation is visited on the mass of the world’s population. Even the attack last week on Congress by a mob of fascists or the surge in COVID-19 deaths to over 4,000 a day could not halt the upward trend in the financial markets. The worse-than-expected unemployment figures had the same effect. The market welcomed the rise in economic hardship, calculating it makes further economic stimulus measures more likely.

The response of the US government to the economic meltdown has been to shovel more money into the coffers of big business through the purchase of corporate assets, holding interest rates near zero and providing other forms of welfare for the super-rich. This policy will be continued and indeed expanded under a Biden administration.

While the Democrats and Republicans squabbled for months over a paltry rise in unemployment benefits, they voted unanimously for a massive bailout for the rich. Rarely has the urgent need for a socialist reorganization of society been posed so starkly. The continuation of the economic and political domination of the class of billionaires promises only further and greater catastrophes both social and economic.

Meanwhile, many workers have still not received the paltry $300 weekly supplement to state unemployment benefits enacted by Congress with much fanfare in December after lengthy delays. The program will end March 14. About half of US states have not yet issued the payments. The state of Ohio, for example, says it doesn’t expect that most claimants will receive payments until the end of the month. Some 293,000 Georgia residents who exhausted PUA benefits will not get their extensions processed until near the end of January.

According to the Labor Department at least 18.4 million were on unemployment benefits on all programs combined, in late December. Only a little more than half of the 22 million jobs lost in March have been regained in the nine-month interval.

Millions are behind on their rent and could face eviction in coming months. The pandemic assistance passed by Congress in December only extended the federal moratorium on evictions until January 31. In addition, the federal relief bill only offered a minuscule $1.3 billion in rent relief for renters facing eviction, a fraction of the arrears owed.

With the deadline approaching, housing advocates are raising alarms. The New York-based Care For the Homeless (CFH) warned that the end of the moratorium will not only lead to a rise in homelessness, but further the spread of COVID-19 as families are forced into unsafe accommodations.

CFH notes, “A nationwide study published by the Journal of Urban Health shows the correlation between housing stability and public health. They looked at data from 44 states between the months of April and September 2020 and found that lifting eviction moratoriums led to increased COVID-19 incidences and mortality rates in the United States.”

It cited statistics to show that states such as Kentucky and Pennsylvania that imposed longer eviction moratoriums experience lower COVID-19 mortality rates while states like Texas, which lifted the statewide ban early, had a much higher mortality rate.

This situation calls for bold action by the working class. The Socialist Equality Party calls for emergency relief to all those who have lost income due to the pandemic, including artists, the self-employed and small business. This must be combined with the shutdown of all nonessential industry with full economic support for displaced workers until the pandemic is contained. All essential workers must be provided protection against the virus, including the supervision of workplace conditions by democratically elected committees of rank-and-file workers not controlled by the pro-corporate unions.