SINEMA'S STATE MAY BE INVADED BY NARCOMEX, BUT SHE'S GOING TO WORK HARD WITH NAFTA BIDEN TO WIDEN THE INVASION!
160 Migrants from 10 Countries Apprehended near Border in Arizona over Thanksgiving Weekend
Chamber of Commerce, Corporate Donors Make Last-Ditch Effort to Ram Amnesty Through Lame Duck Congress
The United States Chamber of Commerce and corporate donors are making a last-ditch effort, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, to ram an amnesty for illegal aliens through the lame duck session of Congress.
As Breitbart News reported, Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) have proposed a plan that would give amnesty to at least two million illegal aliens — those enrolled and eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) — and bring hundreds of thousands more foreign workers into the U.S. labor market.
Tillis told NBC News that to get the amnesty passed, Congress needs to approve the measure immediately in the lame duck session as it will become difficult in next year’s split Republican House and Democrat Senate.
The donor class has been enlisted to help with the amnesty push.
The Chamber of Commerce is lobbying lawmakers to back the Tillis-Sinema plan. The Chamber’s political action committee (PAC) gave Tillis $7,500 in his 2020 reelection bid and has donated $3,500 to Sinema since 2018.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) speaks during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee hearing to examine social media’s impact on homeland security, Sept. 14, 2022, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
“We look forward to working with [Sens. Tillis and Sinema] over the next few weeks to move legislation forward that provides critical resources to properly secure our border, enacts much-needed reforms to our asylum laws, improves the operation of our legal immigration system, and brings real, lasting relief to Dreamers across the country,” Jon Baselice with the Chamber told NBC News.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) on Capitol Hill January 27, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Leigh Vogel-Pool/Getty Images)
Likewise, the American Hotel and Lodging Association is dropping a six-figure ad campaign in Arizona, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia to promote the amnesty. The group’s PAC donated $10,000 to Tillis in 2020 and has given Sinema $7,500 since 2018.
The Koch network has also thrown their donor weight behind the amnesty, encouraging lawmakers to sign on as cosponsors or back the plan. In 2020, the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity Action PAC spent nearly $2.5 million against Tillis’s Democrat opponent.
The National Restaurant Association is set to launch a major ad campaign supporting the amnesty. The group’s PAC has spent more than $17,500 backing Sinema since 2018 and gave $5,000 to Tillis in his 2020 reelection bid.
Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — considered a longtime proponent of amnesty — said the Tillis-Sinema plan has no chance of making it out of the Senate during the lame duck session.
“That’s not going anywhere; that’s a pipe dream,” Graham told NBC News. “You’ve got to do something with the border, you can’t just start legalizing people. I appreciate them working on it — there’s a deal to be done down the road — but it’s not money, it’s policy.”
Independent analysis has shown that amnesty, in addition to more legal immigration, is a net loss for Americans’ job security and wages.
In 2013, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis stated that the “Gang of Eight” amnesty plan would “slightly” push down wages for American workers. Another CBO analysis, published in 2020, stated that “immigration has exerted downward pressure on the wages of relatively low-skilled workers who are already in the country, regardless of their birthplace.”
Other research finds current legal immigration to the U.S. results in more than $530 billion worth of lost wages for Americans.
Recent peer-reviewed research by economist Christoph Albert acknowledges that “as immigrants accept lower wages, they are preferably chosen by firms and therefore have higher job finding rates than natives, consistent with evidence found in US data.”
Every year, the U.S. gives green cards to more than a million foreign nationals who can eventually sponsor an unlimited number of foreign relatives for green cards — a process known as “chain migration.” In addition, more than a million are brought to the U.S. on temporary work visas to take America jobs and millions of illegal aliens are arriving at the southern border annually. Many are being released into the U.S. interior where they can secure work permits.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Tester, Manchin, and Sinema Face Blame for Any Post-Title 42 Chaos
Biden’s appeal of court order wouldn't have been needed if just one of them voted in August for a Title 42 amendment
CDC orders directing the expulsion of illegal entrants, issued pursuant to Title 42 of the U.S. Code in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, are currently scheduled to end by court order on December 21, at which point DHS expects up to 18,000 migrants to enter illegally every day. The administration is making an 11th hour bid to continue Title 42, but if it ends — and the expected chaos ensues — key Democratic senators, including Jon Tester (Mont.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), and Kirsten Sinema (Ariz.) as well as others will be to blame.
Title 42. With a global Covid-19 pandemic looming, CDC issued its first Title 42 expulsion order on March 20, 2020, which it followed up with similar orders in April, May, and October of that year.
Those Title 42 orders are not immigration- or border-related per se, but rather are health orders, intended to curb the introduction and spread of the novel coronavirus into and throughout the United States.
The purpose of those orders is two-fold: To prevent foreign nationals with Covid-19 from entering illegally and spreading the disease throughout the country, and to prevent illegal migrants from being held in “congregate settings” (like Border Patrol processing centers) where they could infect other aliens and U.S. government officers.
While Biden quickly reversed most of the policies that the Trump administration had implemented that had allowed DHS to gain control of the border, he left those Title 42 orders in place, at least in part and at least for a while.
“In part” because the Biden administration exempted unaccompanied alien children (UACs) from expulsion under Title 42, first by practice and then by an amendment to the CDC’s Title 42 order, though that exemption was challenged by state plaintiffs in Texas.
Also “in part” because the Biden administration enforced those “mandatory” Title 42 expulsion orders more sparingly than Trump had.
More than 87 percent of illegal entrants at the Southwest border who were subject to Title 42 were expelled under Trump, but only about 58 percent of the nearly 1.375 million aliens apprehended by Border Patrol at the U.S.-Mexico line between February and September 2021 were expelled under Title 42. Expulsions declined even more in FY 2022, when fewer than 48 percent of the more than 2.2 million illegal migrants apprehended at the Southwest border were expelled under Title 42.
“At least for a while” because on April 6, 2022, the administration published a notice in the Federal Register that it would be terminating Title 42, effective May 23. That was challenged by state plaintiffs, and on May 20, Judge Robert Summerhays of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana enjoined CDC’s attempts to end Title 42.
The day Judge Summerhays issued that order, the administration filed an appeal of the court’s order with the Fifth Circuit, which is currently pending.
Judge Sullivan and DOJ’s Notice of Appeal. In the interim, however, the administration has continued to expel illegal migrants under Title 42, albeit at increasingly lower rates. In October, for example, just 37.4 percent of aliens apprehended by Border Patrol at the Southwest border (76,402 out of more than 204,000) were expelled under the CDC orders.
It was in that context, on November 17, that Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (USDC) issued an order in Huisha-Huisha v. Mayorkas, vacating and enjoining Title 42. He later made that order effective on December 21.
That appeared to be the end of Title 42, until December 7, when DOJ notified the USDC that it would be appealing Judge Sullivan’s order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (D.C. Circuit).
In a companion notice, DOJ advised the USDC that as soon as it could docket its appeal with the D.C. Circuit, it would be asking the circuit court to hold the case in abeyance until the Fifth Circuit decides the administration’s appeal of Judge Summerhays’ order and until CDC can issue a new regulation implementing Title 42 (which was at issue before Judge Sullivan).
If the D.C. Circuit grants that request (which is a big “if”), Title 42 will continue, at least unless and until the Fifth Circuit vacates Judge Summerhays’ order. That said, if the Fifth Circuit were to vacate his order, Title 42 would end.
None of This Would Have Been Necessary. Note, however, that none of this would have been necessary had any one of several Democratic senators — including Tester, Manchin, and Sinema, or Sens. Cortez-Masto (Nev.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.), or Raphael Warnock (Ga.) — voted for an August 6 amendment offered by Sen. Jim Lankford (R-Okla.) on that would have extended Title 42.
Lankford offered that as an amendment to H.R. 5376, the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022”, which as I have explained previously lavishes hundreds of billions of dollars on climate-related causes and funds 87,000 new IRS employees.
H.R. 5376 was presented as a “reconciliation” bill, which gave it special treatment in the Senate. Usually (and I will spare you the details), bills must receive 60 votes in the Senate to pass, but reconciliation bills — and amendments thereto that are found to be “in order” under Senate rules — can be passed with a simple 51-vote majority.
Lankford’s amendment, which was found to be in order, would have funded an extension of Title 42 until 120 days after the expiration of the termination of the Covid-19 public health emergency declaration. The first such declaration was issued on January 31, 2020, and there have been 10 others without break since then, the most recent issued on October 13 (which remains in effect).
Lankford explained:
Title 42 authority is the last line of defense that our Border Patrol agents have to protect our Nation, and my Democratic colleagues said they agreed with that idea back in April. The situation has only worsened since that time so surely they will agree with me more today.
His Democratic colleagues did not agree with him, however, and his amendment failed on a party-line vote, 50 to 50.
In other words, had Tester, Sinema, Manchin, Cortez-Masto, Kelly, Hassan, or Warnock — or any other Democratic senator for that matter — voted for the Lankford amendment, it would have passed, and given Democrats’ enthusiasm for H.R. 5376, would have become law.
To provide the Democrats with cover, however, Tester immediately offered a separate amendment, which was almost identical except that it did not contain the funding element that was necessary for the Lankford amendment to be found in order.
Absent that funding element, the Tester amendment was subject to a point of order by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), triggering an up or down vote that would have required 60 senators’ agreement to have been accepted.
Every Republican senator voted to accept the Tester amendment, as did six Democrats: Tester, Sinema, Cortez-Masto, Hassan, Kelly, and Warnock — the latter four in seemingly tight reelection bids.
Fifty-six is four less than 60, so the Tester amendment failed, as Lankford had anticipated, explaining before the vote on the Tester amendment: “This is the reason people get so angry at Washington, D.C., because people will say: Oh, I didn't really mean to do that; I meant to do this.” There is some truth to that statement.
Sinema-Tillis. Somewhat ironically, however, Sinema is now offering a quasi-Title 42 migrant expulsion provision, which would remain in effect for one year, as part of a proposal that she is floating with Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).
A rough outline of that proposal reveals that it would grant amnesty to two million (or more) so-called “DREAMers”, aliens unlawfully present who could prove that they were brought to this country as children and place them on a path to citizenship.
Except for provisions that would authorize a handful of new Border Patrol agents and CBP officers, there is little in that proposal — aside from the quasi-Title 42 provision — that would do much if anything to stop the unabated humanitarian disaster at the Southwest border. In fact, in toto, it would simply make our immigration system worse.
The Border Hangs in the Balance. The future of Title 42 hangs on the D.C. Circuit’s decision whether to hold Judge Sullivan’s order ending Title 42 on December 21 in abeyance. Given that Title 42 is all that stands between the current chaos at the Southwest border and the effective erasure of that border, there is a lot riding on that decision. An 11th-hour race to the courts, however, would not have been necessary had any one of many Democratic senators simply voted to continue Title 42 in August.
Tillis: Bipartisan Immigration Deal Will Seal the Border, Provide ‘Path to Citizenship’ for DREAMers
Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) said Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom” that his bipartisan immigration deal crafted with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) will boost security at the border while providing a pathway to citizenship for the DREAMers.
Anchor Dana Perino asked, “You are working on some legislation. What do you want to accomplish?”
Tillis said, “We want to seal the border. We want to prevent 2 million crossings every year – with Title 42 going away, potentially many more than that. We want to protect our border patrol agents. We lost one this week trying to go after some of the people you just described. They are evading border patrol. They are not presenting themselves for asylum and trying to get to this country to continue the expansion of the cartel’s illegal actions. We want to reduce Fentanyl coming across the border and secure the border. And we want to make sure that the crisis at the border, that the president has to understand exists, has to be solved.”
He added, “The 800 million a year that the cartels are making for human trafficking is aiding and abetting the flood of Fentanyl to this country. I think that when we’re talking about what we’re talking about proposing here is simply looking at a small portion of the population that even President Trump supported as a path to citizenship. Here is what they have to do. They have to be in school. They have to be gainfully employed. They can be in the military. They can’t have a criminal record and never have been on any sort of federal assistance. These are people that came to this country as minors who are now doctors, scientists, teachers, hundreds serving in the military. I think the American people understand this is very different than this concept of amnesty. This will give them a path, and it is not automatic. They will have to work and maintain those high standards. And for that, we get a closed border, and we shut down the cartels. That seems to me like something worth working on.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
Sinema’s maneuver and the Democrats’ response are but the latest expression of this right-wing, anti-working class trajectory.
VIDEO
Watters: I guarantee you Satan went to law school
Raiding Arizona
A few weeks ago, Julie Kelly tweeted that FBI director Christopher Wray has scheduled a “bureau-wide call with all 36,000+ FBI employees” this month. This is without recent precedent and if true, I hope it’s to announce his resignation. He should, of course, because the agency he heads has been engaged in more lawbreaking and unconstitutional conduct than I can easily document in the space allotted me here. I can imagine the blather he’d spout along the lines of resigning to avoid a witch-hunt which would damage the reputation of the agency. If such a meeting does take place and he does resign, it will be only to minimize the damage to himself from his incompetent management of an agency which under his watch has grown out of control, operated as a partisan secret police of the Democratic party, and rightly earned the distrust of citizens.
The FBI agent in charge of the D.C. office silently resigned just this week. His conduct is illustrative of the Stasi-like operations the FBI under Wray has been engaged in.
[Steve] D’Antuono was the FBI agent in charge of the investigations into both the Gov. Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. He came under fire when two of the defendants in the Whitmer case were acquitted. At the time, there were allegations that the FBI had effectively entrapped them into taking part in the plot.
His resignation was preceded a few months earlier by the resignation of another high-level FBI agent, Timothy Thibault, for his role in keeping hidden from the public the Biden family graft and corruption documented and preserved in the Hunter Biden laptop.
Both resignations occurred in anticipation of expected congressional investigations into the operations of an agency that has without question come off the rails.
These resignations are not unique. It has been reported that after an internal review 665 FBI personnel “have resigned or retired to avoid accountability in misconduct probes over the past two decades.”
Whatever the nature of the misconduct involved in those cases, the recent partisan meddling of the agency seems beyond precedent, and more evidence of this is coming as Elon Musk (working with Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi) sorts through the files of Twitter.
Other bloggers like Andy Ngo are digging in, too.
the head of Twitter’s censorship scheme to shadowban conservative accounts and posts across the platform previously worked as an operative for the FBI and CIA.
According to a now-unavailable LinkedIn profile discovered by journalist Andy Ngo, Jeff Carlton, whose prior work included serving as a federal intelligence officer, became the leading member of Twitter’s Strategic Response Team (SRT) last month. As revealed in a batch of “Twitter Files” released by reporter Bari Weiss on Thursday, SRT is one of the main groups at Twitter tasked with shadowbanning conservative accounts and tweets on the platform.
It is already clear from what they have found and reported on that federal agencies, including the FBI and CDC, dictated to willing partisans 
inside Twitter orders to limit posts and posters who deviated from the Democratic party line and hid things like the Hunter laptop to promote Biden’s candidacy in 2020. While colluding with Federal offices to limit free speech, Twitter officials lied to Congress about its censorship program and turned a blind eye to child sex trafficking, left-wing calls to violence, and anti-Semitism.
There will certainly be more to come now that Musk has fired James Baker, former disgraced FBI general counsel (criminally investigated but never charged for malfeasance in that position) who as Twitter’s deputy general counsel worked inside Twitter’s headquarters to hide evidence of wrongdoing from his new boss.
As this continues, we have a striking new development regarding the Arizona election.
Kari Lake just filed a 70-page complaint charging that there were hundreds of thousands of illegal votes counted in the midterm election in Arizona.
The complaint seems well-documented, and, unlike too many post-election complaints, this one makes a credible argument that the fraud was so extensive it provably affected the election results which must, therefore, be overturned.
Among the key points Lake makes are these:
• “59% of Maricopa County precincts had broken tabulators or printers on election day disenfranchising voters, and tens of thousands of illegal mail-in ballots were counted that did not pass signature verification requirements.”
• “The number of illegal votes cast in Arizona’s general election on November 8, 2022, far exceeds the 17,117 vote margin between Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Democrat gubernatorial candidate Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, certified at the official state canvass on December 5, 2022.”
In support of her claim, Lake has detailed witness affidavits from various tabulation and vote centers and whistleblowers from Dominion and Runback Election Services.
A Rasmussen poll indicates that 72% of voters agreed with Lake’s claim that her election was “botched.” Cynics -- maybe realists is a better categorization -- keep arguing that we can’t vote ourselves out of the present governance mess. This would be a tragic failure if true. If people think we cannot determine our fate through elections, they will stop bothering to vote and such widespread disaffection would not bode well for a continuation of the American experiment in representative government. It looks as if Lake and her team have presented the strongest possible evidence in support of her contention and the judiciary will do a great disservice to all of us if it fails to give serious and credible resolution of her claims.
Sen. Sanders: Kyrsten Sinema Is a Corporate Dem with No Guts to Take on Special Interests
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that his colleague Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) did not have the guts to take on special interest because she is a corporate Democrat.
Anchor Dana Bash said, “I want to talk about some of those issues in a second, but first, you were a very important figure on the campaign trail for progressives ahead of the midterms as you normally are. I’m sure you’re going to be campaigning for candidates in 2024. The outgoing Arizona Democratic Party official, one of them says he expects Democrats will run their own candidate against her. Is that a good idea? Would you support a Democratic opponent against Senator Sinema?”
Sanders said, “I support progressive candidates all over this country, people who have the guts to take on powerful special interests.”
He added, “I don’t know what’s going to be happening in Arizona. We will see who they nominate. But certainly, it is something I’ll take a hard look at.”
Bash asked, “Does she have the guts to take on powerful special interests?”
Sanders said, “No, she doesn’t. She’s a corporate Democrat who has, along with Senator Manchin, sabotaged enormously important legislation.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
Senator Kyrsten Sinema declares herself an “independent” to push the Democrats further to the right
Early Friday morning, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona announced that she had resigned from the Democratic Party and registered as an independent. The move came less than three days after incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia narrowly defeated Republican Herschel Walker in a runoff election, giving the Democrat a full six-year term and strengthening Democratic control of Congress’ upper chamber, with an outright 51-49 majority of seats.
Sinema’s announcement deflated attempts to portray Warnock’s win as a victory for “progressive values” and underscored the fact that the Democratic Party and the two-party system as a whole are lurching further to the right coming out of the midterm elections.
A former Green Party activist and antiwar protester, Sinema occupied a position on the right flank of the Democratic Party during three terms in the House of Representatives and her term in the Senate, which began with her election in 2018. Having publicly identified herself as bisexual, Sinema combines support for LGBTQ rights with slavish support for corporate interests when it comes to fiscal and tax policy.
As a Democratic senator, she teamed up with Joe Manchin of West Virginia to block passage of any significant social reform measures or tax increases on corporations and the rich in a Senate divided 50-50 between the two parties and requiring unanimous Democratic support to overcome solid Republican opposition.
This included opposing a $15 federal minimum wage as part of Biden’s subsequently ditched “Build Back Better” plan and withholding her vote for the August 2022 Inflation Reduction Act until the White House agreed to drop a $14 billion tax increase on hedge fund and private equity managers, and exclude major manufacturers from a 15 percent minimum tax on corporations. According to the nonprofit OpenSecrets, Sinema is the top recipient of campaign cash from the investment industry, having taken in $2.2 million from 2017 to 2022.
More precisely, Sinema and Manchin provided the pretext for the Biden administration and the Democratic Party to drop reform proposals used to help get elected which, however, were staunchly opposed by the corporate/financial elite.
She makes a practice of ostentatiously chatting with Republican supporters of the failed coup leader Donald Trump on the floor of the Senate and calls House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy “a friend.”
In September, as the midterm congressional elections were shifting into high gear, Sinema accepted an invitation from Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to speak at his McConnell Center at the University of Louisville, where McConnell called her “the most effective first-term senator” he had seen in his nearly 40-year Senate career.
Last January, the Arizona Democratic Party censured Sinema for opposing any loosening of the anti-democratic Senate filibuster rule, which effectively establishes a 60-vote threshold for passage of most legislation, so as to facilitate legislation protecting voting rights against Republican efforts to restrict the franchise in the name of election “integrity.”
A poll taken by the American Association of Retired Persons in September showed that just 37 percent of Arizona Democrats had a favorable opinion of Sinema, compared to 57 percent who had an unfavorable one. She is no less unpopular among Arizona Republicans and independents.
In an op-ed piece in the Arizona Republic on Friday, Sinema presented her decision to leave the Democratic Party as an affirmation of “independence,” “bipartisanship” and a level-headed approach to getting things done and solving problems. She denounced the two parties’ “rigid partisanship” and accommodation to “extreme” elements.
In the Arizona Republic column and subsequent interviews, she indicated that as an independent she would not caucus with the Republicans or the Democrats but would receive her committee assignments from the Democratic leadership and continue to work with the Democratic caucus, including on the confirmation of judicial and other nominees.
In an interview with Politico, she said, “I don’t anticipate that anything will change about the Senate structure. … Nothing will change about my values or my behavior.”
This suggests that, despite her leaving the Democratic Party, nominally reducing the party’s majority to 50-49, the Democrats will be able to have a one-seat majority on Senate committees in the incoming 118th Congress, as opposed to the outgoing Congress, where committee seats were divided 50-50.
This procedural advantage will not be used to address the burning issues facing working people—inflation, declining real wages, understaffing, forced overtime, brutal working conditions, the ongoing ravages of COVID-19 and Long COVID—but rather to shore up Republican support for the escalating war against Russia in Ukraine and the preparations for war against China, in large part by making concessions to GOP demands for further social cuts and sharper attacks on immigrants.
Politico reported that Sinema informed Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer of her decision on Thursday. The Biden White House rushed to embrace the ex-Democrat following her announcement on Friday. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called Sinema a “key partner on some of the historic legislation President Biden has championed over the last 20 months.”
“We understand that her decision to register as an independent in Arizona does not change the new Democratic majority control of the Senate, and we have every reason to expect that we will continue to work successfully with her,” Jean-Pierre added.
In any event, Sinema’s move strengthens the position of Manchin. Should the multi-millionaire coal business owner and recipient of millions in fossil fuel campaign cash join with Sinema and both switch parties or caucus with the Republicans as independents, control of the Senate would flip to the GOP. Moreover, there are currently 11 Democratic senators from states with a Republican governor who could appoint a Republican replacement in the event of a vacancy, should any of these resign or die unexpectedly.
As for the political calculations driving Sinema’s decision, these seem to be focused on a possible reelection bid when her current Senate term expires in 2024. Deeply unpopular among Arizona Democrats, she would face a near-certain primary challenge by the more “left” Representative Ruben Gallego, with little likelihood of victory. Sinema may be calculating that given the prospect of a Republican victory in a three-way race for the Arizona Senate seat, should she run for reelection as an independent, the feckless Democrats will agree in the end to back her “independent” campaign.
These sordid and wholly undemocratic maneuvers underscore the imperviousness of the entire capitalist political system to any progressive change and the urgent need for the working class to break from the Democrats and the corporate-controlled two-party system.
To the extent that the midterm elections, monopolized by two right-wing parties of Wall Street and the military/intelligence complex and massively manipulated by corporate campaign cash, could be said to reflect popular sentiment, they evinced broad popular opposition to the fascistic politics of the Trump-dominated Republican Party. Virtually all of Trump’s hand-picked, election-denying candidates in contested elections were defeated.
Nevertheless, disgust with the pro-war, pro-corporate policies of the Biden administration and the failure of the Democrats to indict Trump or his top coup co-conspirators enabled the Republicans to regain control of the House.
The rightward lurch of Biden and the Democrats has been amply demonstrated in the weeks since the November 8 general election. What have been the main developments?
·Within days of the vote, a series of federal court rulings blocked implementation of Biden’s modest and partial student debt relief plan. The Democrats have made no appeal to popular anger over the scuttling of the plan and effectively abandoned it.
· Biden immediately got to work organizing a bipartisan vote by Congress, backed by the union bureaucracies, to ban a strike by 120,000 rail workers and impose a company-dictated contract voted down by tens of thousands of the workers. That bill was passed in record time and signed into law on December 2.
· On the same day, the Democratic National Committee endorsed a plan proposed by Biden for a new Democratic primary elections schedule, putting reliably Republican South Carolina first, with its relatively large African American Democratic voter base, doubling down on an electoral strategy that cedes the “white working class” to the Republicans and focuses on minorities, students and wealthy suburbanites on the basis of identity politics.
· This week, on Wednesday, the House Democratic caucus elevated Representative Abigail Spanberger—a former CIA agent, militarist, opponent of police reform and vocal antisocialist—to head a new post to represent the more than 50 members holding closely contested seats.
· On Thursday, the lame duck Democratic-controlled House overwhelmingly passed, in a bipartisan vote, the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act increasing the military budget to a record $858 billion.
Sinema’s maneuver and the Democrats’ response are but the latest expression of this right-wing, anti-working class trajectory.
DID SINEMA HELP THE LOOTERS OR JUST SUCK THEIR BRIBES?
More precisely, Sinema and Manchin provided the pretext for the Biden administration and the Democratic Party to drop reform proposals used to help get elected which, however, were staunchly opposed by the corporate/financial elite.
Congressional Report: Financial Technology Companies Fueled Billions in PPP Fraud
A congressional report has found that obscure financial technology companies “with little to no oversight from lenders” have fueled rampant Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) fraud. The report estimates a total fraud of about $64 billion, with fintechs contributing significantly to that total.
Little-known financial tech companies, also known as “fintechs,” have taken ” billions in fees from taxpayers while becoming easy targets for those who sought to defraud the PPP,” an investigation by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis found.
The Select Subcommittee began its probe following reports that “fintechs participating in the PPP approved a high volume of fraudulent PPP loan applications.”
The PPP, which passed Congress in the spring of 2020, offered unprecedented support for small business owners to help them maintain operations and keep their employees throughout the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.
No more than three years after the PPP went into effect, however, it is clear that small business owners were not the only ones to benefit from this program.
“At least tens of billions of dollars in PPP funds were likely disbursed to ineligible or fraudulent applicants, often with the involvement of fintechs, causing tremendous harm to taxpayers,” the congressional report states.
The report added that “fintechs were given extraordinary responsibility in administering the nation’s largest pandemic relief program — a responsibility that some of the fintechs that facilitated the highest volumes of loans were either unable or unwilling to fulfill.”
“Many of these companies appear to have failed to stop obvious and preventable fraud, leading to the needless loss of taxpayer dollars,” the congressional report reads.
One fintech called Kabbage had furloughed half of its employees who were tasked with assessing risk and reviewing accounts. Nonetheless, Kabbage continued funding PPP loans by outsourcing the work to “temporary contractors,” the report said.
“Despite the risk of fraud, Kabbage made staffing reductions throughout 2020 that likely weakened its capacity to address fraud,” the report read. “Press reports indicate that Kabbage furloughed employees in March 2020, anticipating a contraction in business during the pandemic, but that participation in the program ‘saved’ the struggling fintech.”
“After Kabbage’s acquisition by American Express in October 2020, PPP borrowers were left at the mercy of an underfunded and understaffed spin-off company that failed to properly service their loans and would later file for bankruptcy,” the report added.
Another fintech called Womply had fraud prevention practices described by lending partners as systems that were “put together with duct tape and gum.” The fintech was also accused of allowing “rampant fraud” to infiltrate the PPP.
A third fintech called Blueacorn — which received more than $1 billion in taxpayer dollars via PPP processing fees — gave its employees little to no training on the loan underwriting process. They weren’t even instructed on how to spot a fake driver’s license.
Blueacorn loan reviewers who spoke to the Select Subcommittee said they had received poor training, and were pressured to “push through” PPP loans, even if they doubted the authenticity of the loan’s supporting documentation.
A former Blueacorn loan reviewer added that the company’s reviewers were “submitting PPP loans to the SBA the first minute of the first day” of their employment, despite having “no formal or informal training on loan underwriting.”
Additionally, these reviewers had “no training on how to properly identify and report fake government identification such as a driver’s license,” the ex-Blueacorn loan reviewer said.
The reviewers were also told “the faster the better,” and that each loan application review “should take you less than 30 seconds,” the congressional report said.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
160 Migrants from 10 Countries Apprehended near Border in Arizona over Thanksgiving Weekend
Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended nearly 160 migrants from at least ten different countries along the border wall. Agents also interdicted a human smuggling attempt where the driver fled to avoid apprehension.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, Ajo Station agents encountered a group of 56 migrants who crossed the border near the Port of Lukeville. Tucson Sector Chief Patrol Agent John R. Modlin tweeted photos of the apprehension and reported the group of migrants apprehended on Saturday came from five different nations.
On Friday, Ajo Station agents encountered three groups of migrants in the same area, Modlin tweeted. The groups totaled 101 migrants from ten different countries.
Elsewhere in the sector, Tucson Station agents engaged in a pursuit of a human smuggler driving a great sedan. The agents assisted police officers from Marana, Arizona.
The vehicle finally stopped and migrants jumped out and fled into the brush, Modlin stated. A search of the area with a K-9 and a CBP Air and Marine Operations helicopter aircrew led to the apprehension of twelve migrants.
In total, the agents apprehended 169 migrants from at least ten different countries.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Face
Tillis-Sinema Plan: Amnesty for 2 Million Illegal Aliens, More Foreign Workers in American Jobs
A plan by Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) would permanently bring millions more foreign workers into the United States labor market, via amnesty and green card provisions, for employers to hire over qualified Americans.
The Tillis-Sinema plan, a summary of which has been obtained by Breitbart News, would provide “Conditional Permanent Residence (CPR) Status” to about two million illegal aliens who have lived in the U.S. “since June 15, 2018, were under 18 when they entered the U.S., and were no older than 38 on June 15, 2012.”
Eventually, those illegal aliens with CPR status would be eligible for green cards and, after five years, naturalized American citizenship. Experts tell Breitbart News that the number of illegal aliens who would get amnesty under the plan is likely to be much higher than the approximate two million pitched by Tillis and Sinema.
Those given naturalized American citizenship would be barred from participating in the process known as “chain migration” where newly naturalized citizens can sponsor for green cards an unlimited number of foreign relatives.
In addition, the plan seeks to bring hundreds of thousands more foreign workers to the U.S. labor market to hold American jobs by imposing a “recapture employment-based visas” system. Tillis and Sinema estimate that some 200,000 employment-based green cards would become available for foreign workers under their plan.
These immigration expansion components are coupled with enticing pay raises for U.S. Border Patrol. Specifically, the plan would boost Border Patrol salaries by 14 percent and a requirement that 600 additional agents are hired every year “until staffing needs are met nationwide.”
Asylum reforms are also included in the plan, such as preserving the Title 42 border control for a year, barring illegal aliens from future immigration benefits if they fail to show up to their scheduled asylum court hearings, and more funds for deportation efforts for illegal aliens who are not eligible for asylum after having been released into the U.S. interior.
The National Border Patrol Union Council suggested in a post that they would be open to considering such a plan and thanked Tillis and Sinema for their work on the issue. The union has previously, on a number of occasions, denounced amnesty as a driver of waves of illegal immigration.
Meanwhile, a coalition of far-left House Democrats have said they will oppose the Tillis-Sinema plan because it includes too many federal immigration enforcement components.
“We cannot at this time, in good conscience, support the current framework,” Reps. Luis Correa (D-CA), Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), and Chuy GarcÃa (D-IL) said in a joint statement.
The mass migration lobby is hellbent on getting an amnesty through the lame duck Congress as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), vying to be Speaker in the new Congress, has repeatedly said that he will not consider any plans providing amnesty to illegal aliens.
Matthew Perdie / Breitbart News, Jack Knudsen / Breitbart NewsPrior independent analysis has shown that amnesty, in addition to more immigration, is a net loss for Americans’ job security and wages.
In 2013, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis stated that the “Gang of Eight” amnesty plan would “slightly” push down wages for American workers. Another CBO analysis, published in 2020, stated that “immigration has exerted downward pressure on the wages of relatively low-skilled workers who are already in the country, regardless of their birthplace.”
Other research finds current legal immigration to the U.S. results in more than $530 billion worth of lost wages for Americans.
Recent peer-reviewed research by economist Christoph Albert acknowledges that “as immigrants accept lower wages, they are preferably chosen by firms and therefore have higher job finding rates than natives, consistent with evidence found in US data.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
