When nations die, they do so with surprising speed. Ernest Hemingway made a similar observation when a person in his novel was asked how he went bankrupt, and his reply was, "Gradually, then suddenly."
Nations are built upon classical values — perseverance, self-reliance, and honor. A great nation is one whose values have made it unusually prosperous. In its latter days, the nation becomes hollowed out and burdened with a costly, top-heavy government. The middle class is expected to provide generosity to the masses.
The United States shows aspects of a once great power past its prime. It is socially and politically divided, aware of the necessity for changes, unable or unwilling to make them, and losing the conviction in the shared goals that earlier invigorated it.
The decay that started gradually decades ago is now metastasizing at warp speed. The United States, ripped apart internally, has become ever less willing and able to lead internationally. The doctrines that built the United States and Western civilization, assimilated from ancient cultures over thousands of years, are being methodically dissolved. America is entering an uncharted, revolutionary time. The foundation of American life, abundant food, energy autonomy, a sound economy, sound education at all levels, and enforceable and equal application of the law, are eroding.
Our society is "fundamentally changing," and these changes are not for the better. Hard-left fanatics have absorbed the Democrat party and are transforming the country with woke and equality-of-result agendas. Prosperity and leisure have misled a complacent society into thinking the modern age no longer needs to worry about law and order.
As we recoil from spontaneous street violence and looting, Americans are coming to learn just how degraded the foundations of their society have become. Criminals walk out with stolen merchandise without fear of the law or even the outrage of witnesses. Defunding the police has discharged a torrent of criminals into the streets. Downgrading felonies, no cash bail, and no jail time are spiking violent crime. Lawlessness has become a political matter where race, ideology, and politics decide how the law will be enforced.
At the border, millions of people enter our country illegally. Joe Biden is shamefully welcoming an unvetted third-world population into our country to dilute and displace native-born Americans. No country can exist without a border, much less allow foreign crime cartels to control it while killing 100,000 citizens with drugs yearly.
The FBI is more likely to go after parents at school board meetings than those threatening the homes of Supreme Court justices. CIA and FBI directors lie under oath without consequence. They mislead the public and deceive Congress with stories of fake dossiers. They contract private news organizations to censor stories they do not like and writers whom they fear. And the IRS is weaponized against political opponents of the Democrats.
Possibly a million homeless people now live on our streets. Our major cities are cesspools of human filth with open sewers, garbage-strewn streets, and drugged out drifters.
Grocery shelves are increasingly bare, and many food items are now beyond people's budgets. Fuel costs are reaching record levels, new cars and homes are unaffordable, and inflation is at a 40-year high. The necessary medicine of high interest rates to bring down inflation is nearly as painful as the inflation itself.
The federal government spends $1.29 for every dollar in tax revenues it receives, and a quarter of IRS revenues are now needed to cover interest payments on the debt. Economic doom, market collapse, and bank runs are not far from people's minds.
China is leading BRICS countries to replace the dollar's standing as the world's reserve currency. Any success they attain will lessen demand for dollars and possibly collapse the dollar's exchange rate.
Moreover, the Chinese Communist Party authorities think they have a chance to bolster their power and change the world order in their favor. Because China's broad geopolitical interests are on the rise, a pressing question is how to check China's ambitions at a time of division and discord in America. China's current foreign policy could not happen without its substantial military forces and three-decades-long economic growth, underwritten by its exports to America.
Sensing American weakness, the CCP may invade Taiwan before Joe Biden leaves office. Are the American people willing to fight over Taiwan or freedom of navigation issues near Chinese-claimed islands? What are we truly ready to fight for? When that happens, are we prepared for economic devastation to the U.S. and the world? Meanwhile, thousands of Chinese sleeper agents are crossing our open southern border to cause mayhem when called upon to do so.
Today's threat arises from a disintegrating world order. More than at any other recent time, many dangerous intersecting events are happening at a time when the United States is unprepared to deal with them.
And it all culminates with the elections in November 2024. Democrats can win only by cheating, and since they did it successfully in 2020, you can expect them to do it again. While some election integrity measures have been increased in some states, almost nothing has been done anywhere to require open-source computer programming code of voting machines so we can be assured they are counting votes correctly. Moreover, nothing has been done to prevent voting machines from being hacked to alter election outcomes. At this point, the left has become brazenly indifferent as to whether anyone even knows of its cheating. Court challenges almost always go the leftists' way.
Regardless of who is declared the winner, there will be unrest. There could be a breakdown in civil order nationwide. If the left loses, leftists will riot and loot in a replay of the 2020 BLM riots. If the right loses, this will be a turning point, as we can't go on being lied to and threatened by the left. Another stolen election will break our country.
The decay that began slowly long ago is now upon us in full force. The only election historically comparable to 2024 was in 1860, and that one was followed by a civil war. We must defend our freedom and our country and protect it with everything we have or lose it all. We must be involved and understand that if we lose the election in 2024, America, as we know it, is over. To save the nation, all constitutionally minded Americans must see the danger and gird themselves for what lies ahead.
Jeff Lukens is a West Point graduate, U.S. Army veteran, and conservative activist. He can be reached at jplukens@hotmail.com.
Image: Michael Theis via Flickr , CC BY-ND 2.0 .
Chicago’s Brandon Johnson Welcomes Illegal Aliens as Black Residents Rail Against Mass Immigration
FOX 32 Chicago/Scott Olson/Joe Raedle/Getty Images 3:06
Newly sworn-in Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) welcomed border crossers and illegal aliens to the sanctuary city in his inaugural address on Monday just as black Chicagoans protest illegal immigration flooding their neighborhoods.
Since August 2022, thousands of border crossers and illegal aliens have inundated Chicago — many arriving with illnesses like COVID-19 and without any ties to the city — spurring former Mayor Lori Lightfoot to declare a state of emergency last week.
Already, Chicago officials have opened police stations and abandoned schools to border crossers and illegal aliens, paid for by local taxpayers. Despite Lightfoot saying the city is at a “breaking point,” Johnson said there is more than enough room for border crossers and illegal aliens.
“We don’t want our story to be told that we were unable to house the unhoused or provide safe harbor for those who are seeking refuge here because enough room for everyone in the city of Chicago, whether you are seeking asylum or you are looking for a fully funded neighborhood,” Johnson said in his address.
The remarks sharply break from black Chicagoans who wield significant political power. Late last week, many attended a town hall meeting at the former South Shore High School where city officials want to house potentially hundreds of migrants.
“Looking at the numbers coming out of city hall and the state of Illinois, upwards of $150 million for six months,” one resident explained:
We believe that $150 million would have been, in some way, eligible to come into our community to help our crime problem , help our economic problem, and help with our housing issues. And as we’re all aware, black people are the largest number of homeless in Chicago so if you’re going to help anyone, help the current black homeless first. [Emphasis added]
VIDEO
At the town hall, one black Chicagoan held a sign that read “BUILD THE WALL 2024,” a sign of support for closing the United States-Mexico border to illegal immigration rather than President Joe Biden’s current approach of releasing tens of thousands of border crossers and illegal aliens into American communities every month.
Chicago residents are so fed up with illegal immigration that a group has filed a lawsuit against the city to stop them from housing border crossers and illegal aliens in the South Shore neighborhood.
“It is a slap in the face that we as citizens of the United States of America do not have the resources and support but you’re going to bring people who are not citizens here in our community, in our buildings that we pay taxes for that you took away from us,” one Chicago resident told local media.
“… at the end of the day, if Chicago can’t take care of its own, why should they take care of others? If the resources are given to others, why can’t the resources be given to us?” another Chicago resident asked.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here .
Migrant Apprehensions Jump to 182K in Last Full Month of Title 42 Mario Tama/Getty Images 3:45
Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 182,000 migrants during the month of April — the last full month of the CDC’s Title 42 migrant expulsion program. The latest report from CBP confirms Breitbart Texas’ article on May 3 revealing the third straight month of increased apprehensions along the border.
The apprehension of migrants who crossed the border between ports of entry began to increase dramatically in the final days of April. U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz tweeted that during the final 72 hours of April, agents apprehended 22,220 migrants — 7,406 per day. By the end of the month, agents apprehended a total of 182,114 migrants, according to the CBP Southwest Land Border Encounters Report for April.
CBP officials reported that about 35 percent of the apprehended migrants were expelled under Title 42, a program that ended on May 11. The apprehensions included 124,599 single adults. Of those, approximately 46 percent were processed for expulsion under Title 42.
Family unit apprehensions increased by 28 percent over March to a total of 45,891 migrants. The apprehension of unaccompanied minors fell slightly to 11,478 in April from 58,964 in March, the report states.
The El Paso Sector continued to lead in April migrant apprehensions as agents took 41,894 migrants into custody. This was followed by the Rio Grande Valley Sector (37,796), the Tucson Sector (33,894), San Diego Sector (25,093), and Del Rio Sector (20,124).
The April apprehensions brought the Fiscal Year total to 1,234,930 migrants — up 1.4 percent over the same seven-month period one year ago. These numbers do not include another 453,000 migrants classified as known got-aways.
The largest number of migrants came from Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of Central America (54,766). The next largest demographic group was Venezuelan migrants (25,514).
The number of apprehensions continued to increase during the first ten days of May.
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 .
Mayorkas Welcomed Record Surge of Migrants in April Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images, JOAQUIN SARMIENTO/AFP via Getty Images 7:08
President Joe Biden’s border deputies welcomed a record surge of economic migrants in April, shortly before they lifted the Title 42 barrier on May 11.
Alejandro Mayorkas’ Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the record inflow on May 17, saying that 137,374 migrants were admitted during the month, before the flood of roughly 40,000 migrants through the border in the days before May 11.
The April inflow exceeded the 135,211 migrants who were admitted in April 2022.
Biden’s April 2023 inflow is 87 times as many as were admitted by President Donald Trump in April 2020.
The April inflow number also excludes the roughly 50,000 migrants who were invited to take Biden’s parole pathways, and it excludes the roughly 60,000 young migrants who sneaked past the thinly monitored border. All together, Biden’s deputies have allowed 250,000 migrants in April. — or roughly two migrants for every three U.S. births.
Since January 2021, Biden’s deputies have admitted roughly 4.5 million migrants across the southern border.
The migration is expected to remain high even after the administration imposed supposedly tough border rules on May 11. The May numbers will be hidden until early June.
Biden’s deputies want more economic migrants to get through the border, despite the huge pocketbook and status damage to ordinary Americans and their children. So they have twisted U.S. laws to open up a series of doorways to help deliver the extra workers, consumers, renters, and government clients to the party’s donors and unions — despite the migration caps set in 1990 by Congress.
On May 11, for example, Biden’s pro-migration border secretary, the Cuban-born Alejandro Mayorkas, was asked about the taxpayer cost of migration. He dodged the question and argued that U.S. investors should be allowed to hire cheap workers from poor countries — such as Columbia in South America — instead of being forced to fairly compete for American white-collar and blue-collar employees in a level U.S. labor market:
Let me turn that question around … I’m going to turn it around to match the question that an international partner asked of me and the question that the international partner asked of me is ‘What is the economic cost of your broken immigration system?’ Since there are businesses around this country that are desperate for workers, there are … desperate workers in foreign countries that are looking for jobs in the United States, where they can earn money lawfully and send much-needed remittances back home. ‘What is the cost of a broken immigration system?’ That is the question I am asked and that is the question that I pose to Congress, because it is extraordinar[ily high].
CBS News
Mayrokas, however, is also a fierce zealot for foreign migration regardless of the damage to Americans and America. On May 17, he explained his ideological motives in a graduation speech to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy:
My drive has been defined by a very clear purpose. My mother’s and father’s life journeys were defined by displacement. My mother was twice a refugee, first from war-torn Europe and, 19 years later, with my father, my sister, and me from the communist takeover of Cuba.
My mother lost most of her family to the Nazi concentration camps, and she never really regained her sense of security. In Cuba, my father lost the business he had started, as well as the chance to be by his mother’s side when she passed. My parents were both extraordinary people – principled and kind beyond measure. They instilled in me the values by which they lived unflinchingly … They are the primary engine of my drive, and the primary reason why I work so hard, my purpose.
But even many Democratic voters are alarmed by Mayorkas’s policies, and more Republicans are denouncing his pro-poverty policies.
“Think of the effects that this has on working Americans’ wages to have 10 million more people who shouldn’t be here competing for jobs,” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) said on May 13 . He added:
Think about what this does for housing prices, when you have to house 10 million people that shouldn’t be here, that drives up the costs of housing when interest rates are already through the roof … This is economic warfare and theft of the American dream from American citizens, that is the big problem here and that’s why we have to keep fighting it.
“Nobody has a right to immigrate to this country,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said on May 10 as he signed his sweeping state-level law curbing illegal migration in Florida’s jobs and housing. He continued:
We determine as Americans what type of immigration system benefits our country, but when you’re doing immigration, it’s not for their benefit as foreigners, it’s for your benefit as Americans.
So if there’s legal immigration that’s harming Americans, we shouldn’t do that either. For example, some of these H-1B visas, they would fire American tech workers and hire foreigners at lower wages. I don’t agree with that. I think that’s wrong.
Extraction Migration
The federal government has long operated an unpopular economic policy of Extraction Migration . This colonialism-like policy extracts vast amounts of human resources from needy countries, reduces beneficial trade , and uses the imported workers, renters, and consumers to grow Wall Street and the economy.
The migrant inflow has successfully forced down Americans’ wages and also boosted rents and housing prices . The inflow has also pushed many native-born Americans out of careers in a wide variety of business sectors and contributed to the rising death rate of poor Americans.
The lethal policy also sucks jobs and wealth from heartland states by subsidizing coastal investors with a flood of low-wage workers, high-occupancy renters, and government-aided consumers.
The population inflow also reduces the political clout of native-born Americans, because the population replacement allows elites to divorce themselves from the needs and interests of ordinary Americans.
VIDEO
In many speeches, Mayorkas says he is building a mass migration system to deliver foreign workers to wealthy employers and investors and providing “equity ” to poor foreigners. The nation’s border laws are subordinate to elite opinion about “the values of our country ,” Mayorkas claims.
Migration — and especially, labor migration — is obviously unpopular among voters .
For example, a 54 percent majority of Americans say Biden is allowing a southern border invasion, according to an August 2022 poll commissioned by the left-of-center National Public Radio (NPR). The 54 percent “Invasion” majority included 76 percent of Republicans, 46 percent of independents, and even 40 percent of Democrats.
Hundreds of Border Crossers to Soon Enjoy Living in Manhattan’s Iconic Roosevelt Hotel, Paid for by Taxpayers John Lamparski/Spencer Platt/Getty Images 2:17
Hundreds of border crossers and illegal aliens
will soon enjoy living in New York City’s iconic
Roosevelt Hotel — paid for by the city’s
taxpayers.
Since the spring of 2022, more than 60,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have arrived in the sanctuary city of New York City, with most being bused directly from Texas by Gov. Greg Abbott (R) in an effort to save his state the financial burden of illegal immigration.
As New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) has scrambled to handle the influx, his office has turned the city’s coffers into a slush fund for the powerful hotel and real estate industry, which also serves as some of his biggest political donors.
The latest decision will have close to 1,000 border crossers and illegal aliens soon living in Manhattan’s iconic Roosevelt Hotel, which first opened in 1924 and is named after former President Theodore Roosevelt.
This week, Adams will open the Roosevelt Hotel as a welcome center for newly arrived border crossers and illegal aliens before eventually opening almost 200 rooms to migrant families with children.
Eventually, the hotel is set to house close to 1,000 border crossers and illegal aliens. The cost will fall exclusively on New Yorkers, who will foot an annual $75 million bill to convert the Roosevelt Hotel into a migrant shelter.
The hotels-to-migrant-shelters policy by Adams is proving lucrative for the powerful real estate and hotel industry in New York City. Once closed hotels are now opening as migrant shelters, enticed by city contracts and fronted by taxpayers.
An attorney for a financial district hotel, also now housing border crossers and illegal aliens, told NBC New York that the city contract is providing “substantially more revenue” for the hotel’s owners than if they rented rooms to tourists.
In total, New Yorkers are expected to spend $4 billion on illegal migrants by next year.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here .
California, in Deficit, Considers Unemployment Benefits for ‘Undocumented’ Workers MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images 2:36
The California state legislature is considering a bill that would grant unemployed workers who are illegally in the country access to unemployment benefits — even though the state is running a massive budget deficit.
As Breitbart News reported earlier this week, California’s fiscus has fallen in the space of one year from a surplus of $100 billion, partly based on federal cash for coronavirus relief, to a staggering deficit of $32 billion.
In his revised budget, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) cautioned legislators to maintain “prudence.” But under SB 227 , “excluded” workers who are in the country illegally would be able to receive $300 per week in benefits.
As Fox News reported , proponents say migrant workers “deserve” the benefits, despite entering the U.S. unlawfully:
In March, the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors unanimously adopted a resolution supporting the statewide bill.
“We cannot take people’s money, take people’s taxes, take people’s labor and then deny them the very benefits and rights that they deserve and that they have earned,” Supervisor Shamann Walton said at a protest before the board met.
Payroll taxes on illegal immigrants contribute $485 million a year to the state’s Unemployment Insurance system, according to the Safety Net for All Coalition, a group of over 120 organizations across California seeking to expand welfare programs for undocumented workers. The weekly checks plus administrative expenses in the proposed legislation [are] estimated to cost $356 million in state funds.
California’s unemployment insurance program is already controversial, having lost $30 billion in fraudulent claims during the pandemic. The state recently defaulted on a federal loan to cover a shortfall in benefits.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’ . He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election . He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak .
D.C. Taxpayers Fund Laundry Service for Poor Migrants Michael Robinson Chávez/The Washington Post via Getty 4:07
An estimated $15 million has been spent by Washington, DC, residents to provide hotels, meals, laundry, English classes, and security to roughly 1,300 illegal migrants who have been welcomed by President Joe Biden and the city’s Democratic government.
The Washington Post reported on May 11 the illegal population and the bills are rising fast in the small city of 310,000 households:
A contract with a soul food restaurant to provide three meals a day for the hotel families is budgeted for $3.6 million, while an agreement with SAMU First Response, a D.C. nonprofit, to coordinate mental health counseling and other services in the city is expected to cost $1.7 million, DHS said. Laundry at the hotels, covered by another contract, costs about $1.1 million, while security to keep outsiders out of the areas of the hotels where the migrants stay is budgeted for $4.5 million. The cumulative hotel bill alone is projected to reach $12 million by October, DHS said.
The city’s bills are also rising because 340 foreign children have been added to the schools. That policy adds roughly $4 million in costs to the failing school system , which serves a local population with many prosperous whites and many poor black Americans . Roughly one-sixth of the city’s residents live in poverty as the city officials accept more poor migrants.
Pro-migration Democratic politicians are feeling political opposition from working-class Americans in New York , New Jersey, and Chicago.
Mandi Rivera and her children Jahir Emanuel Buada, 9, left, and Javier Andres Buada, 7, wait for a bus during their one and a half hour morning commute to school in Washington, DC, on April 11, 2023. Mandi and her family are from Venezuela. Families of migrants are staying at hotels that are being administered by the District. (Michael Robinson Chávez/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The Washington Post showed local politicians complaining as Americans are being forced to pay for the administration’s border gateway:
“I don’t think anybody could tell you where we’re going,” D.C. Council member Robert C. White Jr. (D-At Large) said, noting that the city is facing budget cuts to programs designed to serve its existing poor and homeless population.
The economic migrants are too poor and unskilled to support themselves without welfare in the high-cost, high-rent city. The Post described one migrant family from Peru:
[Arianmi] Ramírez said that with help from volunteers from the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, she and her husband [and one child] have tried finding a place. So far, none of the rents have been within their reach. “I would love to live in a house, but even an apartment with at least two rooms would be better,” said Ramírez, who supplements the income her husband receives from his temporary construction job by selling the Venezuelan snacks she prepares in the room’s tiny kitchenette to other hotel residents.
The husband’s “temporary construction job” would have been awarded to Americans at higher wages if Biden had not accepted the illegals. The Post did not calculate the pocketbook impact on D.C. residents.
The Washington Post article also ignores the impact of Biden’s migration on the city’s rising rents .
Meanwhile, in a separate article, the Washington Post reported on May 5 that homelessness in D.C. spiked by 12 percent over the last year to 4,410 people
The new figures also represent a stark turnaround from recent years, which saw consecutive drops in the District’s homeless population. The DHS maintains that the recent figures reflect national economic pressures such as inflation and the end of pandemic-era programs and protections.
Biden’s deputies are smuggling many more economic migrants into the country via multiple illegal and quasi-legal routes. including the asylum route for people who are repressed b hostile governments.
During the next 12 months, the inflow is scheduled to bring in at least 800,000 poor migrants above the legal cap of one million migrants set by Congress. in 1990.
The total is equal to one migrant for every two births.
VIDEO: Biden-Deployed Soldier Opens Texas Border Gate, Allows Migrants to Enter Government Surveillance Video via Fox News 3:16
A U.S. National Guard soldier deployed to the Texas border by the Biden administration is seen in a video unlocking a border barrier gate to allow a large group of migrants to enter. The soldier is not a member of the Texas National Guard deployed by Governor Greg Abbott, officials stated.
A video tweeted by Fox LA reporter Bill Melugin shows a female soldier opening a gate in a border fence near Eagle Pass, Texas. The date on the video is May 15, shortly after the end of the CDC Title-42 migrant expulsion protocol.
The video shows the soldier opening the gate in what appears to be a Texas-built border fence along the Rio Grande. The soldier steps back as the gate swings open and a large group of migrants begin to enter.
The migrants line up to wait for Border Patrol agents who will process the migrants and place them on the bus for transportation to an Eagle Pass processing facility.
Melugin tweeted that Texas National Guard officials told him the soldier is a Missouri National Guard member deployed to assist Border Patrol agents under Title 10 by the Biden administration. She is not an Operation Lone Star-deployed soldier.
A second video shows the migrants lining up to be processed by the Border Patrol agents. A CBP bus stands by to provide transportation to a processing center in Eagle Pass.
On May 15, Del Rio Sector agents apprehended 650 migrants, according to a law enforcement report obtained by Breitbart Texas. The group shown crossing in the video above would account for a significant portion of these apprehensions.
Agents along the entire southwest border with Mexico apprehended more than 4,800 migrants who crossed the border between ports of entry. This is the fifth straight of declining apprehensions following the end of the Title 42 program.
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.
The result is that today there are upwards of 40 million illegal aliens in the country, with millions more crossing the border every year.
Like the gun data, the data on illegal aliens isn’t hard to understand. It’s pretty simple math. The phones alone that the Biden administration gives to illegals cost $360,000 every day while, in the aggregate, illegal aliens cost Americans $250 billion per year . To put that in perspective, the wall Trump wanted to build was estimated to have a price tag of under $25 billion .
For Decades, Democrats Have Been Ignoring Evidence And Facts
About 20 years ago, I read a piece about the North Miami police department eliminating the swimming requirement for the police . With a working knowledge of geography and having visited Miami many times, I thought this was a bit odd and kind of a bad idea. After all, North Miami has hundreds of miles of canals, lakes, and beaches . Predictably, the reason the requirement was being dropped was that “blacks are less likely than whites to know how to swim because of economic disparities between the groups…” In other words, the change was because not enough blacks were qualified to become police.
That was long before the cancer of wokeness had taken hold of much of America. I was dumbfounded. Nobody with a functioning brain would have looked at that situation and said we must eliminate a key element of the job requirements to let more members of “X group” join. But that’s what the people in charge decided. If someone with a functioning brain were actually in charge, he would have said something like, “If our goal is to have a more diverse workforce…” (a questionable assertion in the first place) “and not enough otherwise qualified black candidates can pass the swim test, maybe we should simply take those candidates who meet the other requirements and teach them how to swim.”
But that’s not what they did. And that is just another demonstration that Democrats aren’t actually serious people seeking to help the communities they represent. No, their goal was to cater to the “equity” crowd, even before it had a name. And they have continued to do so for the last two decades.
Image: Drowning by Blake Cheek (cropped). Unsplash license.
Take gun control. Democrats have been gun-grabbing for decades. They use every mass shooting as a lever to try and wrest guns out of American hands and eviscerate the Second Amendment. While it is certainly the case that gun violence is a problem in America, the reality is, it’s not the guns, it’s the criminals and the Democrats who pamper them.
There are 350 million people in the United States. Of those, there are 280 million adults, 90 million of whom say they own at least one of America’s 400 million guns, with an average of almost 5 guns each. And how frequently do those 90 million gun owners commit crimes with those guns? Not very often .
It’s estimated that more than 80% of gun crimes are committed by people who came into possession of their weapons illegally , which means that, conservatively, legal gun owners perpetrated only 20% of gun crimes. There are almost 100,000 shootings in the United States annually (not counting suicides). If we assume that 20% of those shootings were by legal gun owners, that would be 20,000 shootings. To put that in perspective, that would mean that .0002% of legal gun owners commit crimes with their weapons, or conversely, 99.9998% of legal gun owners never use their guns in crimes….
As a matter of fact, despite what the Democrat media tell you , “Good guys with guns” help stop between one-third and one-half of all active shooter incidents nationwide. But Democrats work continuously to take guns away from all of those apparently “violence eschewing” citizens while at the same time seeking to free actual violent criminals from jail or prison or not send them there in the first place—even as those they free are the ones who actually commit most of the crimes and the worst crimes , and it’s not even close .
Making matters worse, Democrats rarely seek to focus on the strong correlation between anti-depressants and violence , particularly with young people . They would rather preen in front of cameras and accuse Republicans of having blood on their hands than focus on the real issues that spill so much blood.
And there is indeed much blood on Democrats’ hands. In what must seem counterintuitive to them, more gun control results in more mass shooting deaths. California is a perfect example. As it’s become more difficult for law-abiding Californians to legally obtain guns over the decades, to the point where it’s actually almost impossible to exercise the right , the rate at which the state exceeds the rest of the country has skyrocketed :
From 2010 on, California’s per capita rate of mass public shootings was 43% higher than the rate in Texas and 29% higher than in the rest of the United States. Since 2020, the rate in California is 276% higher than in Texas and 100% higher than in the rest of the U.S.
That is partially because there are fewer of those “Good guys with guns.” In Los Angeles County, where one mass shooting already took place this year, there is one gun permit for every 5,660 adults, and in San Mateo County, where another mass shooting occurred, there is one permit for every 24,630 adults. By comparison, there is one permit holder for every nine people in the 43 right-to-carry states.
Whether it’s murder on a small scale or a large, this data would only matter if someone were actually interested in solving the problem and reducing the amount of bloodshed. Needless to say, Democrats rarely look at the data and then conclude that making it easier to allow law-abiding citizens to own weapons might actually help reduce said bloodshed.
Then there’s the border. The Democrat party, led by Liar in Chief Joe Biden, tells us that the American border is secure while Americans watch thousands of illegal immigrants stream across the border every single day. Those poor “asylum seekers” are given phones , have to promise to return to court to adjudicate their cases—sometimes in 5 or 10 years —and are sent on their merry ways. Of course, many of those never even bother to show up for court . And hundreds of thousands more are simply released without even being given a court date . To make things even more ridiculous, while they’re busy gaslighting the entire country, Democrats are shivving their single most solid constituency.
Of course, the border is not a new problem. In 1986, Ronald Reagan signed the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which granted asylum to 2.7 million illegal aliens in return for securing the border. Democrats took the asylum and screwed Reagan and the nation on securing the border. Since then, no president other than Trump has had any interest in securing the border, and he was stymied at every single turn by Democrats and leftist judges. The result is that today there are upwards of 40 million illegal aliens in the country, with millions more crossing the border every year.
Like the gun data, the data on illegal aliens isn’t hard to understand. It’s pretty simple math. The phones alone that the Biden administration gives to illegals cost $360,000 every day while, in the aggregate, illegal aliens cost Americans $250 billion per year . To put that in perspective, the wall Trump wanted to build was estimated to have a price tag of under $25 billion .
And now, it’s only going to get worse with Biden ending the Trump era Title 42, which was the equivalent of trying to stop your car by dragging your feet on the ground, a la Fred Flintstone. But now that Title 42 is gone, Biden is sending 1,500 Army troops to help…let even more illegals in !
Whether it’s standing on shore as victims drown in Miami, not allowing armed citizens to protect themselves and their communities, or simply ignoring the costs associated with illegal immigration, it’s clear that Democrats aren’t serious people and don’t care about the average American. Given that Democrats demonstrate their disdain for citizens every single day, one wonders why anyone votes for them. Stockholm Syndrome, anyone?
Follow Vince on Twitter at ImperfectUSA
Even Democrats are starting to notice. New York City mayor Eric Adams—who once said that "New York City is, and has always been, a city of immigrants" and pledged that his government would "reflect that"— now says there is "no room" in his city for migrants.
Another line they cut into: Illegals get free public housing as impoverished Americans wait
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/another_line_they_cut_into_illegals_get_free_public_housing_as_impoverished_americans_wait.html
By Monica Showalter
Want some perspective on why so many blue sanctuary cities have so many homeless encampments hovering around?
Try the reality that illegal immigrants are routinely given free public housing by the U.S., based on the fact that they are uneducated, unskilled, and largely unemployable. Those are the criteria, and now importing poverty has never been easier. Shockingly, this comes as millions of poor Americans are out in the cold awaiting that housing that the original law was intended to help.
Try the reality that illegal immigrants are routinely given free public housing by the U.S., based on the fact that they are uneducated, unskilled, and largely unemployable. Those are the criteria, and now importing poverty has never been easier. Shockingly, this comes as millions of poor Americans are out in the cold awaiting that housing that the original law was intended to help.
Thus, the tent cities, and by coincidence, the worst of these emerging shantytowns are in blue sanctuary cities loaded with illegal immigrants - Orange County, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, New York
J.D. Vance: GOP Must Call Out Illegal Immigration as ‘Economic Warfare’ Against Working Americans
NYC Mayor Eric Adams Tells Outraged Parents to Deal with Adult Migrants Living in Public School Gyms Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service/Spencer Platt/Getty Images 2:35
New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) says outraged parents will have to deal with border crossers and illegal aliens living in their children’s public school gyms for the time being.
As Breitbart News reported , Adams has started carrying out a policy that converts a number of public school gyms into migrant shelters with potentially hundreds of border crossers and illegal aliens living on campuses as school children are attending classes.
Outraged parents and students protested on Tuesday outside some of the schools where Adams has started housing migrants, including PS 188 in Coney Island and PS 17 in Williamsburg, providing them with free food as recess is cut for students.
“Our children deserve to have the academics … how are they going to do that when our kids are having to worry about who they are around? We’re going to get hurt. And our teachers as well are having to suffer because now they are stuck in the position where they can’t even get our kids help,” one parent said.
Christopher Leon Johnson via Storyful Adams, in a statement, shrugged off the protests and effectively told parents that they will have to deal with their children sharing school campuses with newly arrived border crossers and illegal aliens.
“This is one of the last places we want to look at. None of us are comfortable with having to take these drastic steps,” Adams told NY1 News:
Each gym, the 20 gyms that we are looking at, we have not made a final determination on all the gyms , but that we are looking at are separate from the actual school buildings. They are independent from the school buildings.
Likewise, in a separate statement, Adams warned that “every city service” meant for New Yorkers will be impacted by waves of border crossers and illegal aliens arriving in the sanctuary city, though he defended that policy.
“We have [been] a sanctuary city for over 40 years, and when you think about … the law that was put in place or the agreement that was put in place, no one anticipated having 4,200 people come in one week to the city,” Adams said .
Since the spring of 2022, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and other governors have bused over 60,000 border crossers and illegal aliens to New York City. The cost to New Yorkers, by the middle of next year, is expected to hit $4 billion .
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here .
The Biden Administration's Newspeak on the Border
The end of Title 42 brought a record number of migrants to the southern border, including an Afghan terrorist caught trying to sneak into California and a child who died in the custody of Health and Human Services—the second minor who has perished on the Biden administration's watch.
Sounds like a humanitarian tragedy, a policy disaster, a political nightmare. But not if you hear the Biden administration tell it! Speaking at a swanky fundraiser in Atlanta on Friday as this scene was playing out, Vice President Kamala Harris—President Joe Biden named her border czar , remember?—declared that things down south are "going rather smoothly."
We'd hate to hear what "bumpy" looks like. President Biden, meanwhile—he's on vacation in Rehoboth Beach—said that things at the border are going "much better than you all expected." Low bar.
Elections have consequences, and the situation on the southern border is a direct result of policies Biden and Harris put in place on their first day in office. Border wall construction came to a halt, and among other things the Biden administration put an end to the "Remain in Mexico" policy that required asylum seekers to wait in a third country until their claims were adjudicated.
Our colleague Joe Simonson was in the border city of Brownsville, Texas, last week, and he saw the situation firsthand . Some holding facilities reached more than 200 percent capacity over the weekend. Conditions in at least one of those facilities was so poor that a 17-year-old child from Honduras died, and the Biden administration has cut most of the migrants loose. It's the administration's only answer.
Even Democrats are starting to notice. New York City mayor Eric Adams—who once said that "New York City is, and has always been, a city of immigrants" and pledged that his government would "reflect that"—now says there is "no room" in his city for migrants.
Adams is converting public school gyms and shuttered prisons into shelters for aliens arriving by the hundreds. "No city should be going through this," Adams said.
No country should, either.
CAN'T MAKE ENDS MEEET? THE INVASION OF 50 MILLION ILLEGALS SERVED TO DEPRESS YOUR WAGES? BECOME AN ILLEGAL AND VOTE FOR WIDER OPEN BORDERS!
Higher mortgages, rents, car payments, grocery bills, and monthly expenses are financially draining U.S. households at a breathtaking pace. The cost of living continues to rise much faster than our salaries, and our purchasing power isn't the same as it used to be just a few years back. Today we're paying more for everything and consuming way less than we have historically. At this point, the overwhelming majority of Americans are stressed about money, and that may not change anytime soon. We're coping with increasing responsibilities at work but we're not being compensated accordingly. Adding all that to a scenario of inflation and the threat of another severe recession and we understand why even middle-and-upper-income earners are going broke, while low-income families are buried up to their heads in debt. This is America today, and we're being warned that many more challenges are still ahead.
In March, a new NPR and Marist poll revealed that 38% of Americans say their personal finances have gotten worse over the past 12 months. That's an 8-point jump since February. The findings reflect the rapid pace at which conditions are deteriorating for U.S. families. Although officials say economic fundamentals are improving, the public isn’t seeing that being reflected on their grocery bills or at the pump.
A growing number of Americans say they can’t pay their bills in full every month, according to the Census Bureau's most recent Household Pulse survey. About 36% of consumers say it has been "very difficult" for them to pay their usual bills in the last month. That represents a 14% increase compared with a year earlier, and is higher than even in the early months of the pandemic, the data shows. As a result, they are taking on more and more debt to cover their bare necessities.
Meanwhile, the Working Poor Families Project reports that in America today over 53 million people, including 24 million children, are living in a low-income family. From 2020 to 2023, the share of working families who became low-income (below 200 percent of the official poverty threshold) increased from 28 percent to 31 percent. While there was an increase of 2.2 million people since 2020, the number of children in low-income working families rose by more than 500,000 in just one year.
All of these numbers are proof that living conditions in America have never been so complicated. We have actually gotten poorer than our parents and grandparents as our opportunities for growth shrank in the face of fewer middle-class jobs, inflation, rising interest rates, stock market volatility, and the housing bubble. It's hard to see how we climb out of the hole we're shoved into, but Americans have proven to be one of the most resilient people in the world. Hopefully, our nation finds its strength back to start turning things around before it's too late. In today's video, we d ecided to compile several numbers that reveal just how much economic suffering is happening out there.
Report: Homeless Americans Kicked Out of NY Hotel to Make Room for Migrants Joe Raedle/Getty Images 2:32
Homeless Americans are reportedly being kicked out of hotels in New York as New York City buses border crossers and illegal aliens to neighboring counties to put them up, for free, in hotels that are enjoying lucrative contracts.
According to the New York Post , two homeless couples were recently told they would have to find another place to stay by executives at the Ramada Inn in Yonkers which sits in Westchester County, New York — where New York City Eric Adams (D) has started busing migrants.
“I don’t got no place to go,” one of the homeless Americans told the Post . “I don’t have any family here. I don’t know nobody. and I’m disabled. Come on, it’s not fair.”
One of the couples has an 18-month-old baby and must now find another place to stay after spending $150 per night at the hotel for the last two weeks.
“The migrants’ are not having to pay out of their own pocket, and I’m having to pay out of my own pocket — and then I have to leave whenever [hotel executives] say,” the mother told the Post .
Another homeless American booted from the hotel said he was born in the United States and, thus, should get priority ahead of those new arrivals who just arrived in the U.S. days ago via the southern border.
he evictions are occurring as Adams has started busing border crossers and illegal aliens to Westchester County and Orange County, both of which sit above Manhattan. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) suggested this week that New Yorkers may soon see migrants living in tents across the city.
“You’re gonna start seeing people living in tents — not just on the border, but on the streets of New York,” Hochul said, stating that the state is “bursting at the seams” due to illegal immigration.
Homeless Americans are not the only ones to be kicked out of hotels in New York to make room for border crossers and illegal aliens. Late last week, reports circulated that 20 homeless veterans were kicked out of the Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh, New York, so that migrants could get their rooms.
Likewise, Americans with wedding plans have said their guests have had their hotel rooms canceled at the hotel at the same time that the property started taking in border crossers and illegal aliens.
Related: Migrants Refuse to Leave NYC Hotel, Demand Taxpayers Give Them “Permanent Homes”
@datainput via Storyful John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here .
New York City Begins Turning Public School Gyms into Migrant Shelters Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images/Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg 2:33
The sanctuary city of New York City has started transforming public school gyms into migrant shelters for newly arrived adult border crossers and illegal aliens.
Since the spring of 2022, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and other governors have bused over 60,000 border crossers and illegal aliens to New York City.
Flashback — NYC Mayor Eric Adams: “Stop Sending” Migrant Buses! “We Have Our Own Issues Here”
Mayor Eric Adams / Facebook In response, Mayor Eric Adams (D) has opened nearly 100 so-called “emergency shelters,” though the majority are luxury hotels to which the city has given lucrative contracts to house newly arrived migrants.
Related: Migrants REFUSE to Leave NYC Hotel, Demand Taxpayers Give Them “Permanent Homes”
@datainput via Storyful Now, Adams has started turning public school gymnasiums into migrant shelters that will house hundreds of adult border crossers and illegal aliens, according to ABC7 New York.
Public school gyms, such as PS 188 in Coney Island and PS 17 in Williamsburg, will each house adult migrants despite there being school children in remarkably close proximity. PS 188, in particular, already has nearly 100 migrants staying in its gym.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea because it’s inside of a school,” a parent of a PS 188 student told local media, while a student’s sister said, “God forbid a kid goes missing. What’s Eric Adams going to say? I’m sorry? No, something needs to be done.”
Adams plans to fill a former school in Staten Island with at least 300 border crossers and illegal aliens. He is also gearing up to turn PS 172 in Sunset Park and PS 189 in Crown Heights into migrant shelters.
The cost of New York City’s insistence to provide expansive housing and care to newly arrived border crossers and illegal aliens comes at the expense of New Yorkers, who are set to foot a four-billion-dollar bill.
Already, every day, New Yorkers are being charged five million dollars.
Flashback: Sanctuary NYC Dem Mayor Complains Asylum Seekers Will “Impact Every Area of Life”
Mayor Eric Adams / Facebook John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here .
“We are going to continue to make sure that, if migrants come into our state, we will send them to the sanctuary cites that have given them pre-consent to come and live off of their taxpayers, and not ours.”
NY Hotels Boot Homeless Veterans to Shelter Released Migrants File Photo by Robert Alexander/Getty Images 3:12
Upstate New York hotels began kicking homeless veterans from their properties to make room for migrants being bused to the region from New York City. The homeless veterans, many Vietnam-era veterans, were receiving temporary shelter in the hotels through the efforts of a nonprofit agency.
The New York Post reports that nearly two dozen homeless veterans “have been booted from the upstate hotels to make room for migrants.” One of the hotels told a 24-year-old Afghanistan war veteran their temporary housing was being pulled out from under them and they would have to move somewhere else.
Sharon Toney-Finch, CEO of the Yerik Israel Toney Foundation, told the New York Post , “Our veterans have been placed in another hotel due to what’s going on with the immigrants.”
Toney-Finch said they moved the veterans from the Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh, New York, to other nearby motels and hotels. The properties were located about 20 minutes from where they were displaced.
Orange County, New York, is now the target of a migrant busing campaign by New York City Mayor Eric Adams. The mayor is moving the migrants out of his sanctuary city to Upstate New York to relieve migrant overcrowding in his city.
Migrants board a city bus to a shelter intake center after traveling on a bus from Del Rio, Texas, to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City on Saturday, May 13, 2023. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The veterans had been placed in the first hotel under a four-week temporary housing program while the nonprofit agency attempted to find another solution for their housing needs. The veterans were about two weeks into the program “when they got the boot,” Toony-Finch stated.
“A lot of them are Vietnam veterans. We do help them on a constant basis to get them benefits and help them find a place in society,” she explained, adding, “Now we have to work from ground zero. We just lost that trust [with the vets].”
Republican New York State Assemblyman Brian Maher told the Post , “Shining a light on this is important because we need to make sure these hotels know how important it is to respect the service of our veterans before they kick [them] out of hotels to make room.”
New York Democrat Congressman Pat Ryan, whose 18th congressional district covers the northern suburbs and exurbs of New York City, took to social media to condemn the “incompetence” of city officials in displacing the homeless veterans.
New York Republican Congressman Marc Molinaro also took to social media to denounce the “absolutely inexcusable” treatment of the homeless veterans, which he described as “the result of incompetence and lack of compassion.”
Tooney-Finch said the hotel made the move to expel the veterans based on money. “They get paid more [for the migrants],” she stated. “That’s so unfair, because at the end of the day, we are a small nonprofit, and we do pay $88 a day for a veteran to be there.”
It is not clear what the city is paying for the housing of the bused migrants from New York City.
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
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