After four years under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, a number of U.S. Border Patrol agents have threatened to quit if Harris is elected as president this November. This comes after tens of millions of illegal immigrants have crossed the border, causing an influx in crime, terror threats, sex trafficking, drug smuggling, and more. While the agents are fearing an election in Harris’s favor, illegal immigrants are publicly announcing their fear of Republican nominee Donald Trump winning.
The migrants are concerned, should Trump be elected, that he will strengthen border policies, making it harder for illegal crossings. To get ahead of that, roughly 2,000 hopped on a caravan headed straight to America on Sunday. The convoy of men, women, and children, which left from Tapachula, Mexico earlier this month, has made its way across Latin America — including people from Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, and Africa.
“In the last two years,” the New York Post wrote, approximately “1.3 million migrants have made it into the U.S. using the likes of Biden’s CBP One app and other legal avenues under the Biden-Harris administration” that have made it easier for immigrants to apply for asylum and enter the country. However, this hasn’t stopped millions from still sneaking into the U.S. illegally. The outlet added that “Sunday’s caravan is just the latest to start its way across Mexico in recent weeks, but also the largest in recent days.”
Earlier this month, two other caravans left Mexico, one carrying roughly 600 to 800 migrants, another carrying about 1,000. As such, among the three caravans is a total of almost 4,000 immigrants. Border Report noted an estimate of an additional 40,000 migrants that are still in southern Mexico.
Former President Donald Trump has made it clear that closing the border is his “first priority” if he wins the election. As part of that promise, he has said he will deport millions of illegal immigrants who have entered the U.S. “We have no choice,” Trump stated in a July interview. “[W]e have to get the criminals out. These are murderers. These are drug dealers. These are people that will take women and put them in the trunk of a car and sell them to the highest bidder.”
On the other hand, Harris, who has been in office for the nearly four years since the border crisis escalated to its current standing, has only offered vague policies to address the issue if she were elected as president. In September, she gave a speech in Arizona where she said, “Those who cross our borders unlawfully will be apprehended and removed and barred from re-entering for five years.” As the official Democratic presidential nominee, Harris took a trip to the border where she claimed she would “do more to secure our border, to reduce illegal border crossings” and “will take further action to keep the border closed between ports of entry.”
Illegal immigration has consistently polled as one of the top issues for voters this election season, and yet, many do not know how to respond to the current events. However, in a comment to The Washington Stand, David Closson, director of Family Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview, offered some ways to analyze the ongoing border crisis.
“The old adage that elections have consequences is proven correct every four years,” he said. Regarding the caravans that are bringing thousands of immigrants to America, Closson emphasized how “it is noteworthy that thousands of immigrants perceive that a Trump victory on November 5th will represent a return to policies that were more restrictive when it comes to immigration.” He continued, “The optics of large caravans headed north to our southern border is the precise image that the Harris-Walz campaign does not want to see, [even though] it is true that the Biden-Harris administration has been more lax on immigration than the Trump administration.”
“It’s not surprising that people fleeing from desperate situations would perceive Trump’s win as a narrowing window through which they could enter the country without being turned away,” Closson observed. He went on to highlight the importance of Christians to understand what the Bible has to say on matters such as immigration. He referred to Romans 13 and Titus 3 to explain how Scripture teaches that “a Christian framework for government understands that the state exists to punish wrongdoing and promote good. A fundamental task of government is to provide for the common welfare, which includes protecting its citizens.”
According to Closson, this biblical framework should help Christians see that citizens are not being protected, because “the broken border represents an increasing threat to the health and safety of Americans that has led to all sorts of human suffering. Christians should rightly be concerned about a porous southern border that is exploited by the enemies of the United States.” However, Closson insisted, “In the same breath, Christians understand that all people are made in God’s image.”
He continued, “This is one of the reasons why Christians don’t use dehumanizing rhetoric to refer to people who are legitimately trying to pursue a better life. We also need to recognize that the United States can’t grant asylum to everyone in the world who wants to come to this country.”
Closson concluded that “Christians are the people that can say two things: One, all people have dignity and value and should be respected. But two, we need to be the people that are really careful about what immigration policies we support, because we recognize that national sovereignty, as well as the health and safety of our citizens, is at stake.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
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“Music is the only industry where you don’t need to know what you’re doing to get ahead. Well, that and politics.” — Gene Simmons
“Real music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward.” — Dmitri Shostakovich
“Music is critical in our lives and culture. It’s the inspiration that drives us. It’s also the window to our souls. It’s a reflection as to who we are, what we stand for, and where we’re going.” — Bill Walton
Music is telling us everything.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) wants to rid the earth of animals because they allegedly cause problems with the climate…even though animals were put on the earth before man. Crazy huh?
Blackbird, Rocky Raccoon – The Beatles
Who Let the Dogs Out – Baha Men
WEF also tells us that we’re going to eat bugs in the future. There are already ground grasshoppers and various other creepy crawlies being put in processed foods. Ranchers are being put out of business and chicken farms destroyed.
Thank God I’m a Country Boy – John Denver
Just look at the list of food processing plants that have burned down, been blown up or otherwise destroyed under Joe Biden’s administration in 2021-2022. Check out the US map showing every destroyed processing plant.
Blueberry Hill – Fats Domino
Certainly, it appears that the prognostications of WEF, and other One World Order promoters are being helped along with purposeful destruction. Resilient supply chains are necessary to our national security and survival and economic security.
Destruction to bring about the future desired by the unelected elitists?
Eve of Destruction – Barry McQuire
Government Spying on Citizens
The U.S. government has long been afraid of the American people. This is why the 4th amendment has been ignored and the government is watching us.
The 2002 movie, Minority Report, was about knowing every human’s thought and response to stimuli. Privacy was a thing of the past, the government spied on you in every way. Here we are 22 years later and there are auto license readers everywhere, cameras at intersections, cameras inside and outside businesses and in apartment buildings. Police cars are able to drive by your home and know everything about you via computer.
In communist Red China, the CCP can track a person no matter where they are and we thought that was only in the TV series, Person of Interest, with Jim Caviezel.
How about Google? You are the product with Google, they track every command, every text, every video, they own YouTube, take your phone with you and they know where you’ve been. If you use Gmail, they know every single email you’ve ever written. It’s exploitative, Google uses your personal profile to sell ads.
Cities and counties use drones to check homeowners and see if they’ve made property improvements and if so, they raise your real estate taxes. No, we never own our property, the county government owns it.
Madame Vice President Harris wants to send police into the homes of firearm owners to make sure firearms are properly secured. And, how many people have said, “But I have nothing to hide.” Really? A totally stupid and foolish statement. You’d allow the Stasi into your home to make sure you are properly storing your firearms like Madame VP Harris wants to do?
Everyone has something that is no one else’s business and that they want to keep private, but the government in all its bloated bureaucracy is afraid of the people. Thus, they need to know everything about you and what you own, think, care about and rely on.
One-Hundred Years of Music
They’ve warned us in the past what they’re going to do, through movies, television, articles and most importantly, through music.
Music has so many genres, from country and rock to blues and opera.
Up until the 1960s, music was about love, unrequited love, yearning, blessings, loss, marriage, patriotism, home and family.
Baby boomers surely remember these tunes…
1920 – Louis Armstrong – West End Blues – Jazz, blues and ragtime.
1925 – Gene Austin – Yes Sir, That’s My Baby
1930s – Big Bands – Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman
Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday, Ethel Waters, Cole Porter
1938 – Kate Smith – Irving Berlin’s God Bless America
1939 – Judy Garland – Somewhere Over the Rainbow
1941 – The Ink Spots – I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire
Andrews Sisters, Lena Horne, Dinah Shore, Woody Guthrie, Peggy Lee
1954 – The Chordettes – Mr. Sandman, Lollipop
The Kingstone Trio, Bill Haley and the Comets, Elvis Presley, Nat King Cole
1960 – Chubby Checker – The Twist – Classic Rock, British Invasion. Surf Music
The Beatles – Hey Jude, I Want to Hold Your Hand
Vietnam Brought Change
Yes, the 30s also had Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger singing about labor struggles, but no decade matched the 60s for the number of songs calling for action and change.
The 60s became a decade of death starting with the assassination of Medger Evers in June 1963. Bob Dylan’s, “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” was released in 1964, with lyrics about Evers’ murder.
Arlo Guthrie, filling the footsteps of his dad with “Alice’s Restaurant.” Then, we saw the changes because of the Nam War, so it seemed. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy’s murder opened eyes and the distrust got rolling.
Here are the top ten culture changing songs of the 1960s, but the songs that stand out are those written after the assassination of JFK.
Sam Cooke’s, “A Change Gonna Come” in 1964, Barry McQuire’s “Eve of Destruction” in 1965, and Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son.” The decade of war was also the decade of the march for civil rights and full freedom for black Americans.
Pete Seeger’s “Bring ‘em Home” was released in 1966.
In 1968, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated.
“War,” produced and co-written, by Norman Jesse Whitfield in 1970 was first sung by the Temptations. Whitfield was a producer and songwriter who worked with The Temptations from 1966 to 1974, producing nearly all their great music.
And in 1971, “American Pie” by Don McLean.
Listen to the Music
America has never been in a more destructive and dissolute arena as we are today. Was it forecast? Of course. Through movies, television and music, we have been forewarned of what is coming, not just through the Lord’s Word, like John Rich’s latest, number, “Revelation,” but by current events shaping our future.
In 2003, Les and Loretta Fradkin wrote lyrics far more prescient of our future than many other artists. Les put those lyrics to fabulous music that warned of despair and drudgery, obsolescence, loss and a system crash.
The music is dynamite, the lyrics foretelling a frightening future.
Everything is Wrong, alludes to society and cultural decay, nothing is right, and everything is wrong. The people know, but they don’t react.
Promoting rot, a gordian knot,
Lawyers and accountants, and God knows what!
The Gordian Knot is a metaphor for a seemingly intractable problem which can only be solved by brute force. Collapse is coming, will anyone react before the whole thing blows?
Kamala/Walz or Trump/Vance? Communist slavery or Freedom and liberty?
Obsolete is an unemployment anthem. What used to be a living wage for a job well done has now been replaced by automation. The job is gone. With AI, more will disappear. What can you do? They lie to you and tell those coal miners they’ll find work in computers. Right…starvation and devastation are the end result.
Obsolete, their life felt so complete
And now they can’t compete, Obsolete
Like Climate Change and the Green New Deal? No more ranchers, no more farmers, all must be made obsolete to save the planet. Insects are plentiful, now they’re being raised for your latest palate delicacies.
“Rocky Mountain Micro Ranch is Colorado’s first and only edible insect farm. We raise crickets and mealworms to sell to restaurants and food manufacturers.”
I feed dried mealworms to my Bluebirds! We don’t put them on our dinner plates!
The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization has said that the world’s demand for protein from beef and even chicken is unsustainable. Protein from bugs is one possible solution.
Really? Six thousand years of animals and now all of a sudden, they’re unsustainable.
Rehearsals for Retirement is all about what we’re suffering through today with the overwhelming inflation, the open border, the illegal aliens flooding our country, rampant crime, and the inability to make the money stretch like it used to. Retirement? Are you kidding? The future is uncertain and if the Stalinists retain power, we’ll be lucky to even have a job, much less think about those “golden years.”
Wall Street swallowed my dreams,
That dot com stock was not what it seems
I’m in a sandwich generation where a buck is not a buck
All we’re eating is inflation, and my family’s out of luck
System Crash is not about the stock market alone, but about the entire country. We are 35 trillion in debt and adding another trillion every three months. It can’t last forever and there are no spending cuts from the House. Control is nonexistent. The U.S. Department of Treasury oversees the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Flooding our country with worthless paper that has no backing is reminiscent of the Weimer Republic where people on fixed incomes or pensioners found their incomes could not keep up with the massive inflation.
System Crash, they stole all our hope now we got no cash
System failed; large dreams died they were bought wholesale
Lost control, beat us to the punch found an old loophole
Someday if it’s not too late, gotta find a way to a system update
Harris just gave 157 million to Lebanon. Since 2022, we have given 175 billion to Ukraine, a war that was unnecessary and was avoidable. An agreement had been made between Putin and Zelensky to avoid war, but Biden sent Boris Johnson to Zelensky to back out of the agreement.
Last March, Biden freed up Iran’s access to $10 billion from their previously inaccessible bank accounts, right after they murdered three U.S. soldiers. President Obama chose appeasement and cash payoffs with Iran instead of strength and accountability.
On November 1, 2020, President Trump was clear when he said, “Iran’s hostilities substantially increased after the foolish Iran nuclear deal was signed in 2013 and they were given $150 billion, not to mention $1.8 billion in cash. … Then, Iran went on a terror spree, funded by the money from the deal and created hell in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq. The missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration.”
A former senior intelligence official who said that much of the $1.8 billion cash payoff from the Obama administration was used explicitly to fund terrorism as an additional “screw you” from the leaders of Iran — including Soleimani — to the United States. The rest of the money, he believes, ended up in the bank accounts of corrupt Iranian leaders and terrorists.
Now, Israel is fighting for the entire free world, and the American government is funding their terrorist enemies.
How is it that American tax dollars can be given away without the oversight of the House of Representatives? No one ever answers that question.
We’re spending billions upon billions, housing, feeding and educating upwards of 22 million illegal aliens who have broken the law and entered our country.
Conclusion
Are you listening to the music? A crash is imminent. General Michael T. Flynn has warned us as well. We cannot sustain the spending, the invasion, the inflation, the crime, and the diseases entering our country.
Movies, television and music. They tell us about the times we’re living through.
Twenty-two years ago, Les and Loretta Fradkin wrote the lyrics to the music, System Crash. That crash is on the horizon.
Obama has been in control for the last four years with a senile and debilitated Joe Biden. He will easily be in control for another four years, should Harris be selected via illegal alien and mail-in ballots.
Who would you rather have in charge if that System Crash happens? Businessman Donald J. Trump or Willie Brown’s former girlfriend?
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Former President Donald Trump is maintaining a small lead over Vice President Kamala Harris among an unlikely demographic as her campaign reportedly worries about her chances in key swing states, according to a new Arab News/YouGov poll obtained by Semafor.
In a new Arab News/YouGov poll, 45% of Arab American voters said they are more likely to vote for Trump, compared to 43% who said they will likely vote for Harris. More Arab Americans, 39%, think Trump will “successfully resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict,” compared to Harris who has 33% of the community’s support on this question, the poll shows. Two weeks before the election, the Harris campaign is worried about the vice president’s chances in the “blue wall,” such as Michigan, where the Muslim community is prominent, three sources with knowledge of the campaign’s strategy told NBC News.
“There has been a thought that maybe Michigan or Wisconsin will fall off,” a senior Harris campaign official told NBC News, emphasizing that there are real concerns over her path to victory if Michigan goes for Trump while Wisconsin and Pennsylvania stay blue.
Of likely Arab American voters, 4% of respondents said they would cast their vote for third-party candidate Jill Stein and 6% said they were still undecided, according to the poll. Arab News/YouGov surveyed 500 Arab Americans nationally between Sept. 26 and Oct. 1 2024 and the poll has a margin of error of 5.93%.
🧵 President Trump took to Truth Social to voice concerns that Arab-Americans are disaffected with Kamala Harris.
The Daily Caller recently did a deep dive on dissatisfaction with Harris in Muslim communities in Michigan that touched on some of the same concerns. pic.twitter.com/QQS0X3zGwt
Muslim Americans in Michigan are making an effort to flip the state for Trump in protest of the Biden-Harris administration’s Middle East policy. One activist organization, Drive for 75, has calculated that if 75% of its community can turn out to the polls then the vice president has a 99.9% chance of losing, Rex Nazarko, who is heading up the effort, previously told the Daily Caller.
“What was a guarantee for [a Harris loss] to happen? We tried with different percentages and different turnouts, and with the 75% number, again, accounting only for the Muslim community, not other communities, not other allies, not other progressives. It essentially guaranteed a 99.9% likelihood of the vice president losing the election in Michigan, if 75% of [the community turned out],” Nazarko told the Caller, explaining that they ran numerous mathematical simulations to inform their strategy.
“We ran that simulation 10,000 times, and almost every time that was the case. So that’s how we got the Drive for 75 call to action and idea,” he explained.
As a part of the effort to flip the state, Muslim activist organizations are pushing their community to vote for Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein, or even Trump, they told the Daily Caller. Abandon Harris, one of those groups trying to spoil Harris’ election chances, threw its support behind Stein, who also has the backing of some socialist groups in the U.S. due to her anti-capitalist economic positioning.
“We need to be clear about what our goals are, we are not in a position to win the White House. But we do have a real opportunity to win something historic. We could deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan,” Kshama Sawant, a former Seattle City Council Member and self-described socialist, said to cheers at a recent rally for Stein.
A Harris campaign spokesperson denied NBC News’ report that there were concerns over their ability to win Michigan.
“We absolutely are competing to win Michigan,” Harris campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt told NBC News, pointing to the vice president’s recent stops in the state. “We think we will win Michigan.”
The vice president has recently campaigned across key swing states including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin alongside former Republican Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney.
Alongside Cheney, her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney previously endorsed Harris, though the endorsement might not have the positive effect the campaign is hoping to have, one Michigander told the Caller.
“Here’s the new thing going around, people are saying that, ‘hello, she’s been endorsed by Dick Cheney.’ That tells you everything you need to know about this woman: that her intentions are war,” Vice chair of the 12th Congressional District Republican Committee Stephanie Butler, who is married to a Muslim, told the Caller.
Trump took to TruthSocial Monday to give a message to Arab and Muslim American voters ahead of the election on Harris’ Middle East policy.
“Arab Voters are very upset that Comrade Kamala Harris, the Worst Vice President in the History of the United States and a Low IQ individual, is campaigning with ‘dumb as a rock’ War Hawk, Liz Cheney, who, like her father, the man that pushed Bush to ridiculously go to War in the Middle East, also wants to go to War with every Muslim Country known to mankind,” Trump wrote.
“If Kamala gets four more years, the Middle East will spend the next four decades going up in flames, and your kids will be going off to war, maybe even a Third World War, something that will never happen with President Donald J. Trump in charge. For our country’s sake, and for your kids, Vote Trump for PEACE!” the former president wrote.
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Florida sues Biden admin over alleged refusal to help state purge noncitizens from voter rolls
Adam Shaw | Fox | 10-17-24
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The state of Florida is suing the Biden administration over what it claims is a refusal to verify immigration records so that the Sunshine State can ensure the integrity of its voter rolls and prevent noncitizens from voting.
In a lawsuit, obtained first by Fox News Digital, the state argues that DHS is mandated to respond to an inquiry from state or local governments seeking to verify the immigration status of anyone in their jurisdiction for a purpose authorized by law.
“Because the federal government is refusing to comply with these obligations and frustrating Florida’s ability to maintain the integrity of its elections, Florida files this suit,” the lawsuit says.
Florida says it “has an obligation to maintain accurate and current voter registration records” and also notes the impact of the crisis at the southern border, which brought millions of noncitizens into the U.S.
It argues that it cannot track and maintain immigration information on its own. States can verify status through a DHS program called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program. According to the lawsuit, DHS and Florida have an agreement to allow the state to use SAVE to verify immigration and citizenship status for people on the voter registration rolls.
The lawsuit claims that Florida’s Department of State identified a number of individuals for whom it had evidence that they were not citizens, but couldn’t run a search via SAVE as it doesn’t have unique identifiers.
The state says it reached out to DHS’ U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) requesting the verification of those people, but was denied.
“Thus, Florida has identified a subset of individuals for whom it cannot verify citizenship or immigration status through SAVE and for whom DHS refuses to verify citizenship or immigration status through other means,” the state says. DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The state is seeking an order saying the refusal to provide Florida with a response is unlawful, a declaration that they are entitled to a response and an order requiring DHS to respond to the inquiry.
“Voting is a right granted to American citizens—not illegal immigrants or other noncitizens. The Biden-Harris administration has allowed millions of illegal immigrants into the country, and we must ensure that only citizens are on our voter rolls,” Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody. “I am taking legal action against the Department of Homeland Security and Secretary Mayorkas to ensure Florida is able to maintain the integrity of our state’s voter rolls.”
“The Florida Constitution is clear that only citizens can vote in our elections. Florida is calling on the federal government to dismantle the barriers blocking the states from obtaining critical information needed to prevent non-citizens from voting in our elections,” said Florida Secretary of State, Cord Byrd. “We are going to prevail in our effort to uphold the law and uphold the Constitution’s guarantee of one citizen, one vote.”
A similar lawsuit was filed by the state of Ohio, requesting access to multiple DHS databases.
It marks the latest in a continued back and forth between GOP-led states and the Biden administration over concerns about noncitizen voting. A number of states have made efforts to remove noncitizen voters from the rolls, but some have fallen foul of the administration.
The Department of Justice has sued both Alabama and Virginia over those states’ efforts to remove noncitizens, arguing that they have violated the Quiet Period Provision, which says that states must complete maintenance no later than 90 days before the election.
In a statement responding to the lawsuit against his state, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin called the lawsuit “politically motivated.”
Those who knew and loved Joshua Wilkerson described the 18-year-old as friendly, “solid in his faith,” and eager to help other students in his Houston-area high school. “Joshua had never been in a fight in his life,” said his mother.
That all changed on November 16, 2010.
A fellow student and acquaintance named Hermilo Moralez asked him for a ride home. Police say after they arrived, the 19-year-old illegal immigrant from Belize launched an unprovoked attack on Wilkerson, who had driven Moralez home numerous times in the past. Moralez, a skilled martial artist, punched Wilkerson in the face and “kicked so hard in the stomach that it sent his spleen into his spine, and sliced it in two,” his mother testified to Congress. Moralez beat him with a wooden rod and injured his classmate so extensively that police categorized the injuries as torture. Even Moralez called his assault “very violent,” court records show.
Moralez then tied Wilkerson’s body, drove Wilkerson’s truck to a remote location, and set him on fire. “At one point, Hermilo stated that Joshua kind of ‘melted’ into the ground,” say court documents.
While propounding numerous alibis, the killer tried to blame the victim. “The suspect claims Josh began to come on to him in a sexual manner and that’s how the fight started, but we don’t believe that information is very credible,” said Lt. Onesimo Lopez, a local police officer.
“This was our family’s 9/11 terrorist attack by a foreign invader,” his mother, Laura Wilkerson, testified to the U.S. Senate in 2015.
While her son’s killer has been convicted, sentenced, and will spend decades in U.S. prison, he is far from alone. A growing number of illegal immigrants has committed crimes against U.S. citizens or tried to turn America’s taxpayer-funded public schools into recruiting grounds for transnational criminal organizations such as Tren de Aragua.
A recent example took place in a familiar location: the Loudoun County public schools in Virginia. The school board became infamous after a male student wearing a skirt raped and attempted to sodomize a 15-year-old girl inside a restroom at Stone Bridge High School on May 28, 2021. When her father complained, school board officials had him arrested. They had transferred the teenage perpetrator to another school, where they say he victimized another female student.
The Loudoun County School Board built on his reputation for silencing parents’ concerns at its October 8 meeting, when parents complained about the district allowed a young man with a troubling history to return to school. Last year, police arrested the teenager — reportedly an illegal immigrant with ties to the violent criminal gang MS-13 — for bringing a gun to Blue Ridge Middle School and threatening to kill another student. Once again, when concerned parents spoke out, the board cut their microphones and ruled them out of order, citing the safety and privacy of the illegal immigrant.
“Where’s the protection and the safety for our children who are in school with other children who have [made] known threats, who have been arrested and who are back in the school?” asked a parent, Abbie Platt, at the school board meeting.
Even The Washington Post admits such parental fears are not misplaced. Members of MS-13 have murdered and assaulted numerous students in the nation’s high schools. During his first State of the Union address, President Donald Trump said the names of two MS-13 victims: Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens, killed by MS-13 in September 2016.
“She used to tell me, ‘Ma, they are taking over the school. It’s like they’re everywhere,’” said Cuevas’ mother, Evelyn Rodriguez.
“From New York to Virginia to Texas, schools in areas racked by MS-13 violence are now struggling with a sobering question. What to do when the gang isn’t just in your community, but in your classrooms?” asked the newspaper.
In addition to crimes, gangs use schools as recruiting grounds for minors, who cannot be tried as adults. “Definitely gang involvement is a real thing in some communities,” testified Sheena Rodriguez of the president of the Alliance for a Safe Texas at a June 4 hearing of the House Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education Subcommittee. “Many,” she said, “have criminal histories, affiliation with gangs, or are actually adults who are potentially infiltrating our communities and schools.”
The problem is only growing, as illegal immigrants have brought between 500,000 and one million students into the U.S. public school system. The surge of unexpected enrollments has depleted local tax bases, overwhelmed school officials, and too often deprived American students of a quality education. Yet America’s uncontrolled border is also claiming innocent American lives.
Sometimes the crimes involve adults who target teenagers. Last December, 23-year-old Rafael Govea Romero, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, stabbed 16-year-old high school cheerleader Lizbeth Medina to death in Edna, Texas. Authorities believe Romero, who was on probation for burglary at the time of his arrest for capital murder, broke into Medina’s apartment for robbery and, when he found the teenager at home, stabbed her in the abdomen. Medina’s mother was unaware of the crime until her daughter did not participate in the Christmas parade with the rest of her squad that afternoon and returned home to find her child’s lacerated body in her bathtub.
“This government continues to fail or even recognize that we have an issue. Americans are dying daily at the hands of criminals that we don’t even know are here,” Wilkerson boldly told U.S. senators. “You’re elected by Americans, not any other country. You should be for Americans.”
No one is certain how often illegal immigrants assault or kill American students. But “one is too many, and it was entirely preventable if the government had been doing its job and enforcing our laws,” Ira Mehlman, media director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), told The Washington Stand.
“There is also culpability at the local level, because” liberal states and cities advertise themselves as “proud sanctuary jurisdictions and bend over backwards to accommodate illegal aliens rather than cooperate with federal law enforcement on those rare instances when they actually want to remove somebody,” Mehlman told TWS. “Especially under this administration, Mayorkas has essentially said once you are here, unless you’re a truly violent criminal, they are not coming for you. So when ICE issues a detainer request, that ought to be a serious indication to a sanctuary jurisdiction that this poses a serious danger. And yet very often they ignore it.”
Not only do federal officials ignore the problem, critics say, they facilitate it. Wilkerson testified that under policies favored by Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris, her son’s classmate fit a preferred demographic in American society. “Hermilo Moralez was brought here illegally by his illegal parents when he was 10 years old, so he fit the ‘DREAM’ kid description,” she said. The 2024 Democratic Party platform and Kamala Harris have promised amnesty for DREAMers, as well as “a pathway to citizenship” for the rest of the nation’s illegal immigrant population.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives subsequently impeached the Biden-Harris administration’s Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, for his failure to control the southern border. But the Democrat-controlled Senate dismissed the charges without a vote.
Liberal schools sometimes respond by punishing American students for speaking out, even in a joking way. School officials gave Christian McGhee — a 16-year-old student at Central Davidson High School in Lexington, North Carolina — a three-day suspension for using the term “illegal alien.” His English teacher had given an assignment to write about an alien, to which he asked, “Like space aliens or illegal aliens without green cards?” When some of his Hispanic fellow students took offense, his teacher allegedly accused him of “racism,” although McGhee did not mention any ethnicity.
On behalf of those targeted by illegal immigrant crime, Wilkerson wants not merely America’s grief but its protection. “I know you will sympathize with our story, but I want more than that. I want you to be angry that America’s borders are wide open. America does not know who is in this country. It is time to put Americans first. Close the borders, figure out who is really here. Keep statistics. Realize that we are at war right here in this country,” Wilkerson testified.
Mehlman said the federal government has robust resources at its disposal, if it wished to use them.
An incoming president should “repeal those policy memos that Mayorkas put out in 2021 essentially making all illegal aliens untouchable by ICE. He basically said unless you meet certain very narrow criteria, you are going to be allowed to stay here,” Mehlman told TWS. “The other thing is, they can go after sanctuary jurisdictions. Under a law passed in 1996 sanctuary jurisdictions are actually outlawed, but nobody ever enforces that law against those jurisdictions that shields illegal aliens and violent criminals.”
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 encoded into federal law (8 U.S. Code §1373) that “a [f]ederal, [s]tate, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.”
“These sanctuary jurisdictions are always looking for federal grant money,” noted Mehlman. “That’s how you enforce it.”
The victims agree that action is overdue. “Sanctuary city policies scream to the criminal element of illegals in this country: ‘Come to our town USA, we’ll protect you from our terrible policemen. We’ll protect you from these tough American laws,’” said Wilkerson.
Former President Donald Trump has vowed to “carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” if elected.
“I will outlaw sanctuary cities. They will be over,” the 45th president told a responsive crowd in Greenville, North Carolina, early Monday evening. He pledged to end all migrant flights, which have imported illegal immigrants into 45 U.S. cities, approximately two-thirds of them in Republican-leaning or swing states — including an estimated 326,000 to Florida. “And I will ban all welfare and federal benefits for illegals. I will restore every Trump border policy and immediately expel all illegals who violate our border.”
Experts like Mehlman say these policies will add new layers of protections to help safeguard U.S. citizens, especially young people, from illegal immigrant crime. But those already affected will never be the same.
“Our family is shattered,” Wilkerson testified. “My surviving kids have changed. Everything about us has changed. It’s by the grace of God that in our broken hearts we have a stream of memories of the loving relationship that we had with Joshua.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-10-22 12:52:052024-10-22 12:52:05Crimes against American Schoolchildren Rise as Illegal Immigration Increases
Experts are sounding the alarm on the fact that the sex trafficking of minors has more than tripled under the Biden-Harris administration. “Biden’s border policies have led to an explosion in the forced prostitution of migrants in the U.S.,” wrote The Free Press’s investigative reporter Madeleine Rowley. In fact, added an informant from the nonprofit Shepherd’s Watch, “Nearly all … sex-trafficking rings now are migrant girls,” with a notable explosion of online sex-trafficking ads of women “within the first three months of the border being open.”
During “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” last week, Rowley explained how there’s no doubt the rise in sex trafficking “is directly tied to Biden opening the border.” Criminals are smuggling women and girls “across the border promising them a better life, promising them jobs, only to trick them and force them into prostitution after they have crossed the border.” As Family Research Council President Tony Perkins highlighted, unaccompanied “minors … are entrapped in this” by being handed off by the federal government directly “into the custody of people who are going to abuse them and exploit them.”
According to Rowley’s research, there were roughly 137,000 unaccompanied minors that crossed the border in 2023 alone. “[T]he government is tasked with vetting the sponsors that these children are released to,” she said. While “a lot of the times they’re released to … people that they know,” they’re often “released to what they call ‘category ‘three sponsors’ or ‘unrelated sponsors,’” many of whom are unvetted or the ones doing the trafficking.
It’s “just absolutely shocking and heartbreaking that our government is facilitating the exploitation of women and children,” Perkins sighed. But as guest host Jody Hice explained on Friday’s episode of “Washington Watch,” “This story certainly has been going on for years,” which only makes it that much more shocking as “new details continue to emerge that paint an absolutely heartbreaking picture of the abuse that is taking place.”
“Within the last week,” Breitbart reported, “158 unaccompanied migrant children have been sent across the Rio Grande into the small town of Eagle Pass.” These children range between the ages of five and 17 years old. According to Tara Rodas, a whistleblower who formerly worked for the Department of Health and Human Services, this crisis is not merely being allowed by the government but is being fueled by the government. “[W]hat we now know,” said Rodas, is that this “is government sponsored, taxpayer-funded child trafficking.”
“I can assure you,” she stated, “I never thought I’d be saying that.” Hice agreed, “It’s just absolutely unthinkable.” He went on to note how if it were not for whistleblowers, such as Rodas, exposing these realities, “[W]e would not even be aware of what’s been going on.” Providing further details, Rodas explained how “at the beginning of 2021, the Biden-Harris administration made a call to all federal employees,” asking them to help with the crisis of unaccompanied minors crossing the border. Rodas volunteered to offer a hand.
“I thought I was going to be coloring and doing puzzles with children,” she said. “I’m a Spanish speaker, and I thought I could be that person who would be there to greet the children and, … find out what are their plans about coming to America and living the American dream.” However, “it didn’t take very long for those illusions to evaporate,” Rodas explained, because the “children began to tell us the truth.” What those kids revealed is that many of them did not know who they were being sent to. It became clear, as Rodas described, that they were “lured here under the promise that they’re going to” get rich, only to get thrown into “modern day slavery.”
Through her first-hand experience with these children, Rodas detailed how they had “reported being sexually abused [and] being pimped out by their sponsors” — some of which “are actually gang members” from “violent criminal organizations.” It’s nothing short of “horrific,” she sighed, especially considering that taxpayer dollars are going into “vulnerable children … being shipped to known bad actors.” It’s as if we’ve become “the FedEx of children from the border to traffickers,” she lamented.
“[I]t’s a shocking story,” Rodas contended, and “people need to know about” it. “This is not humanitarian. This isn’t helping the children. They’re in slavery.” And this is why it’s appropriate to call it “government sponsored, taxpayer funded child trafficking,” Hice added, arguing how it explains how “such a horrifying thing has now become a partisan issue.” Rodas agreed, noting that “everybody should want to protect and defend children.”
Ultimately, Rodas argued, “[I]f you’re not in the box of protect and defend children … that puts you outside of all political realms.” This crisis is not a matter of red and blue, she insisted, but “we’re talking about good versus evil.” The problem is that “failed policies and policy makers” are at the heart of this “crisis because they rolled back the ability for people to come across the border,” she described. “They made it simple so that vetting is not being done. And then they opened the floodgates for these children to come across” and be taken to criminals.
It’s “unbelievable,” Hice groaned. In order to stop this crisis from getting worse, Rodas urged, “We need people who are going to put sane policies in place. We need to rescue children, and we need to seriously prosecute criminals.” And we also need people, Hice concluded, who are willing to continue putting a “spotlight on this and … deal with it courageously.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-10-22 12:52:042024-10-22 12:52:04The Government Has Become the ‘FedEx of Children from the Border to Traffickers’: Expert
The illegal immigration crisis facing the U.S. has drastically worsened ever since Vice President Kamala Harris was appointed the incumbent administration’s “border czar” in 2021.
Terrorist threats are on the rise, violent migrant gangs are roaming the streets, small towns are being decimated by state-sanctioned immigrant dumpings, American children are being slain by migrants, and migrant children are being sex trafficked by gangs and cartels.
But according to reports, the crisis could deepen further if Harris were to win November’s election.
According to The New York Post, U.S. Border Patrol agents are “threatening” to resign in droves if Harris is elected president. “I’m not doing this sh** again … four years of hell,” one agent said. The Post noted that he is “nowhere near retirement,” but is “absolutely sure” that he would quit if Harris were to win in November. Another agent warned, “Lots of guys who can retire will go. If Trump wins, they’ll stay.”
One agent anticipated that his colleagues with five to 10 years of Border Patrol experience will try to find other jobs, while those who have served at least 20 years will simply walk away. “We will have another exodus just because we will have a bunch of 20-year agents saying ‘peace out,’” he said.
Another agent said that no one wants to work Border Patrol under the Biden-Harris administration because the administration undermines the job. “Under this administration, they’ve done everything they could to make our job as inefficient as possible. They can’t outwardly tell us not to do our job, but when you’re watching criminals come in and get released, it sucks,” he commented.
Border Patrol has been steadily hemorrhaging agents ever since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021. Over a quarter of agents, totaling more than 4,000, have quit, leaving the crucial agency with roughly 19,000 employees. On average, more than 1,200 Border Patrol agents have resigned per year under the policies of Biden and his “border czar,” Harris.
The National Border Patrol Council, the largest union representing Border Patrol agents, has been openly critical of Harris’ failure to address the surging border crisis and has warned that, as president, she would continue to do damage.
Late last month, when Harris visited Douglas, Arizona, for a campaign event, she made numerous claims regarding the nation’s southern border and its security, including taking credit for increasing overtime pay for Border Patrol agents. “This couldn’t be further from the truth. As with all things border-related, she was nowhere to be found when we needed her,” the National Border Patrol Council quickly responded.
The council continued, “Vice President Harris has ignored the border problem she created for over three years. She goes down there for 20 minutes for a photo op and decides to repeat some of the things the [National Border Patrol Council] has said before. But again, where has she been the last 3-1/2 years?”
When Trump himself visited Arizona on Sunday, the council formally endorsed him. Its president, Brandon Judd, said that Biden and Harris treat the U.S. border as “nothing more than an imaginary line in which crossing it illegally carries no penalty,” adding that the policies of Biden or Harris will make America into a nation “where lawlessness will reign, and where enforcement of laws will become a pastime.”
Trump, however, is “the polar opposite,” Judd said. “He has worked tirelessly and against great opposition to make this country safe, to make our neighborhoods safe, and most importantly, make our children safe,” he continued. Biden and Harris offer only “rhetoric,” the border patrol group president quipped, but “President Donald Trump, on the other hand, has accomplishments.”
It’s election season in America, and that means early voting, absentee ballots, and making sure your voter registration is current.
It’s also a test of how well each state maintains its voter rolls, its election systems, and the ways each state assures its elections are conducted and counted fairly.
A new report from the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) counts at least fifty threats to election integrity. The report, just out this week, categorizes fifty different threats to election integrity according to whether they concern the influence of “dark money,” lawfare operations, voter fraud, or election fraud. The report documents examples of each and offers potential solutions.
On the most recent episode of The Drill Down, Peter Schweizer and co-host Eric Eggers tackle the many ways elections can be rigged and, more importantly, how to make sure that it doesn’t happen.
Many states have been conscientious about cleaning their voter rolls — removing deceased voters, voters who have left the state, voters who are not U.S. citizens but who were registered through their driver’s license applications, and so forth.
States such as Michigan, however, have not been so fastidious, as the GAI report and the Drill Down hosts explain. “We always talk about this because this continues to be a problem in [battleground] states that are poised to matter,” says co-host Eric Eggers. “In Michigan, we’re seeing the number of counties with voter registration rates over 100 percent.”
Eggers wrote a book in 2018 called FRAUD that detailed many of the different types of election rigging and fixing that have taken place in U.S. history. That book, however, was published two years before the 2020 COVID pandemic, and rule changes made by some states that were ostensibly to make voting safer during the pandemic had the effect of making election security much harder to ensure.
GAI’s report covers how those rule changes, which many states have since been repealed or replaced, may have affected the 2020 outcome and threaten the integrity of the 2024 presidential election.
“We’re now seeing 53 counties in Michigan with more than 100% registration, which obviously means there are some names on there that don’t belong there,” Eggers says. He notes this isn’t always the fault of local or state election officials. Technically, it is the voter’s responsibility to call up their previous state’s registrar and ask to be removed from their voter rolls. “The book I wrote in 2018 came about because of a report [GAI] did that focused on duplication in voter rolls. We found more than two thousand instances of double voting in 2016 in Florida alone.” That report from 2017 is available on GAI’s website here.
GAI’s new report explains how those rule changes, which in many states have since been repealed or replaced, may have affected the 2020 outcome and threaten the integrity of the 2024 presidential election. The report divides the risks to our elections into five categories:
“Dark money” such as “Zuckerbucks” that is used for public election administration.
Lawfare operations that use taxpayer resources to “weaponize the justice system against challengers to incumbents.
“Get Out the Vote” operations that use nonprofit status to target voters from a preferred political party.
Vote Fraud by people who double-vote, fraudulently vote someone else’s ballot, or vote without being eligible to vote.
Election Fraud that seeks to fix elections by illegal activities that take place during the counting or collection of ballots.
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The violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua has found a new tactic for exploiting the U.S. legal system: recruiting and training minors to commit crimes for them. In New York, for instance, a 2018 “Raise the Age” law eliminates bail for juvenile crimes, leading to an explosion in foreign-gang-related crime committed by minors in New York City. “Never mistake this: that the cartels and gangs — they all understand how American law works. They are experts at this,” warned Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) on “Washington Watch” Tuesday.
In recent days, New York City police have arrested 20 minors as young as 11 years old in connection with 50 crimes, but all the offenders are back on the streets — or, perhaps more accurately, in city-run homeless shelters. They “started off … doing some snatches in the parks and stuff, but then it escalated,” Biggs described. “They started doing some strong-arm robberies, and now they’re brandishing weapons. And they’re being so bold about it as to show videos on social media of what they are doing.”
Why so bold? “They understand that in New York … you have lenient prosecutor[s],” said Biggs. “The police officers are making the arrests, but the prosecutors are letting them out. They’re not making the charges.” On top of over-lenient laws, Soros-funded prosecutors simply refuse to prosecute some small crimes in the name of racial justice. In Manhattan, where most of these crimes have taken place, the local prosecutor’s office is overseen by District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D).
The lack of prosecution “provides an additional incentive to go ahead and commit these crimes,” argued Biggs. “Let’s just face it: if the border was secure, they wouldn’t be here in the first place. But they are here, and those people … that should be charging them are failing.”
The law is a teacher. And the lesson these school-age foreigners are learning is that there are no consequences for breaking laws in the United States. So, their consciences grow more callous, and their misconduct grows more flagrant. And the only way to stop this vicious cycle is for local governments to effectively enforce laws that uphold civic order and justice — the whole purpose of government (Romans 13:3-4).
These delinquent youth are part of a subset of the Tren de Aragua gang calling itself “Los Diablos de la 42” (The Devils of 42nd Street). Forty-Second Street cuts straight across midtown Manhattan, running right by Times Square, Grand Central Station, the United Nations, the Chrysler Building, Madame Tussauds, the Port Authority offices, and the flagship branch of the New York City Library. This contrasts with the typical image of an urban gang operating in an inner-city slum, which maintains control because the police dare not visit that part of town. New York City has a gang of teen criminals committing increasingly violent crimes in important, highly visible tourist destinations, and it can’t or won’t do anything about it.
“These are migrant young people that have come to this country, that are here in city-funded shelters,” observed Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “They’re exploiting our lax judicial system, our criminal justice system.”
New York City is not the only American city where Tren de Aragua is terrorizing U.S. citizens. The “very dangerous gang” is doing “the same thing in Aurora, Colorado, El Paso, and Chicago,” said Biggs. “They understand very clearly that the prosecutors are not going to prosecute” in certain progressive jurisdictions, and this has allowed them to “emerge as a real criminal organization.”
When government officials refuse to prosecute crime, “local communities continue to pay the price,” Perkins lamented. In Aurora, Colo., Tren de Aragua has reportedly taken over whole apartment complexes, prompting some residents to leave. Recently released footage shows gang members beating one apartment complex employee. Biggs said immigration remains a top concern for Arizona voters, right next to the economy, “because we are providing all of these benefits to illegal aliens, but we’re leaving the American people to struggle.”
That remark broaches another layer of governmental failure, which is the federal government’s role in abetting these gangs of criminals, who aren’t even legally in the U.S. to begin with. Tren de Aragua and other foreign criminal organizations are “actually communicating with one another … on their government-funded cell phones that have been given to them as they come into the country,” Perkins explains. “Americans have to wake up and realize this is insanity. We’re funding people who come into this country illegally to terrorize American citizens.”
The Biden-Harris administration has effectively entered into “a tacit partnership” with the cartels, Biggs agreed. “They’re giving phones. They’re giving housing. They’re giving medical care.”
On top of that, “We transport them. We are the logistics arm of the cartels,” he continued. “Pre-Biden [administration], if a cartel had been contracted to bring somebody and smuggle them into the country, they actually had to get them to the location. That doesn’t happen anymore. They just have to get them to the border. Because if you get them to the border, this administration will grant them parole status … and we will transport them wherever they want to go.”
This border transportation pipeline is entirely separate from the CBP One app, which the Department of Homeland Security created without congressional authorization, Biggs observed. The app offers free air flights into the U.S. to residents of four troubled nations — without even the hassle of securing transport to the southern border. The four nations so favored by the Biden administration are Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. By the way, does anyone want to guess how a Venezuelan gang managed to slip into the United States?
All this misbehavior on the part of the Biden administration raises a question Biggs has been asking for years: “Where are they getting the money?” The answer Biggs encountered repeatedly was that the money was “coming from FEMA,” he said. “And so we’ve known about this for quite some time.”
Under the Biden-Harris administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has spent more than $1 billion “to resettle migrants into this country,” said Perkins, “yet now they’re crying, ‘Congress has to come back because we’re out of money [for hurricane relief].’ … It’s not a lack of resources. It is [a lack of] competency.”
None of this federal malfeasance is what the American people want or what their elected representatives approved. In fact, the Biden-Harris administration is “violating the law every time they grant a parole status, because they’re doing it on a collective basis, and that law was meant to provide on a singular, case-by-case, unique basis,” Biggs argued.
For ideological, political, or strategic reasons, the Biden-Harris administration has pursued a policy of importing illegal immigrants as fast as possible, without legislative authority and without performing what should be commonsense vetting. “They’ve released these people into the country — literally millions of people,” said Biggs. “And, of those millions, hundreds of thousands of them are criminals.”
Is it really too much to ask the federal government to not help violent criminals enter the country, who will exploit America’s justice system and terrorize America’s citizens?
In a recent exchange with vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance (R), ABC News anchor Martha Raddatz tried to minimize the issue of violent crime committed by gangs of illegal immigrants, saying, “I know exactly what happened. I’m going to stop you. The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes.” Vance responded, “Only, Martha? Do you hear yourself? Only a handful of apartment complexes were taken over by Venezuelan gangs …? Americans are so fed up with what’s going on, and they have every right to be.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
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Vice President Kamala Harris tried to cram a stream of anti-Trump allegations into her Fox News interview with Bret Baier, frequently talking over him before concluding the interview in a litany of shouted claims about how former President Donald Trump presented an existential threat to democracy. Meanwhile, she dodged questions about taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prison inmates and illegal immigrants, amnesty for potentially tens of millions of illegal immigrants, how she would differ from Joe Biden, and whether her open borders policies contributed to the deaths of numerous young American women.
Harris attempted to brush off Baier’s efforts to receive an answer to his questions by implying that he secretly knew she was right, at one point leading the top-rated news anchor to reply, “What are you talking about?”
News consumers hoping to get a concrete idea of what a President Harris would do in office were sorely disappointed on issue after issue. “Are you still in support of using taxpayer dollars to help prison inmates or detained illegal aliens to transition to another gender?” asked Baier at one point.
“I will follow the law,” she replied — an answer she gave to numerous policy questions, ignoring the fact that presidents pass, interpret, and enforce the law.
She later claimed the controversial policy of inflicting transgender procedures on federal prisoners is “a law that Donald Trump actually followed.” The Trump administration actually watered down the Obama-Biden administration’s interpretation of federal law which called transgender “transitions” for prisoners “necessary.” The first transgender surgery carried out in federal prisons took place in 2022, during the Biden-Harris administration.
“Kamala Harris has forcefully advocated for transgender inmates to be able to get transition surgeries, President Trump never has,” clarified Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.
In fact, candidate Harris bragged to a transgender pressure group that, as California attorney general, “I pushed for that policy” to assure inmates had “access to the medical care that they desired,” adding she may have been the “first in the country” to do so.
On Wednesday, the vice president brushed aside the Trump campaign’s attempts to distance itself from the prison procedures.
“Well, you know what? You got to take responsible [sic] for what happened in your administration,” declared Harris.
Observers predicted the line would come back to haunt the incumbent vice president, who has presided over 40-year-high inflation rates, long periods of wage deterioration, historically unprecedented numbers of illegal border crossings, the invasion of U.S. apartment buildings by transnational criminal gangs, and record-breaking numbers of American deaths from drug overdoses.
Harris’s eyes darted back-and-forth when asked, “When did you first notice Joe Biden’s mental faculties were diminished?”
“He has the judgment and the experience to do exactly what he has done,” Harris replied.
“Joe Biden is not on the ballot,” she added. At one point, Harris responded, “Let me be very clear: My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.” But she failed to specify a single policy she would change or to list any mistake of the hyphenated Biden-Harris administration.
The two also clashed over the open border policies enacted during Harris’s tenure in office, which kicked off with more than 90 executive actions undoing Trump administration border security policies. An unprecedented wave of more than 10 million illegal border crossings followed, in addition to new amnesty and “parole” programs, such as the one that placed tens of thousands of Haitians in Springfield, Ohio.
“Looking back, do you regret the decision to terminate Remain in Mexico at the beginning of your administration?” asked Baier.
Harris referenced two pieces of legislation that bookend the Biden-Harris administration, without any mention of the years in between. In an answer that nearly mirrored a response she gave to Charlemagne Tha God earlier in the week, Harris noted that among her administration’s first actions was the introduction of a mass amnesty bill. The administration supported the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, which would have granted amnesty to at least 11 million illegal immigrants over eight years. Despite Democratic control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, the bill never came up for a vote.
She also alleged that Donald Trump bears responsibility for the border situation for opposing a bill negotiated by Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.), which would have allowed 1.8 million illegal immigrants into the country each year, among other proposals that border hawks disliked.
Baier repeatedly attempted to turn the interview back to Harris, her record, and her policies. He noted that among the six million or more illegal immigrants released into the U.S. homeland by the Biden-Harris administration were those who assaulted and killed U.S. citizens Jocelyn Gary, Rachel Moran, and Laken Riley. When Baier asked if Harris owed their families an apology, she replied she felt “sorry for their loss.”
During a Fox News town hall with Harris Faulkner, Trump laid down a radically different immigration plan. “We’re going to end all sanctuary cities in the United States, and we’re going to go back to normalcy, and we’re going to have law and order,” he said, to massive cheers. The former president has also promised a mass deportation of illegal immigrants, a policy supported by the majority of Americans.
Baier kept up the pressure, citing a recent poll which found that 79% of Americans believe the nation is on the wrong track, and “that track follows three and a half years of you being vice president,” said Baier. “If you’re turning the page, you’ve been in office for three and a half years.”
“And Trump has been running for office,” replied Harris, echoing her response that she had “never been to Europe” during her disastrous interview with NBC News host Lester Holt.
When Baier pushed Harris over her responsibility for her actions, she replied, “You and I both know what I’m talking about. You and I both know what I’m talking about.”
“I actually don’t. What are you talking about?” replied an inquisitive Baier.
He later asked Harris about the eight out of 10 Americans who believe Biden-Harris administration policies have sapped American strength. “Are they misguided? Are they stupid?” asked Baier.
“No, God, I would never say that,” replied Harris, apparently taking the Lord’s Name in vain.
Harris then accused Donald Trump of “suggesting he would turn the American military on the American people.” Harris Faulkner asked Trump about that allegation earlier in the day. “I’m not threatening anybody,” he replied, noting that he has “been investigated more than Alphonse Capone. It’s called weaponization of government.”
As the interview came to a conclusion, Harris began yelling, waving her hands, and screaming at Baier while insisting it is Donald Trump who is “misguided,” “unstable,” and “mentally not stable.” Harris filibustered Baier, refusing to yield as he tried to redirect her to the original topic. “I have a lot more to say” about Donald Trump, Harris complained.
Baier expressed his regret that the interview lacked substance, to which Harris replied “I invite everyone to go” to her campaign website.
“I tried to redirect numerous times without interrupting too much,” said Baier after the interview. He also noted the Harris campaign tried to shorten the interview significantly.
“We were supposed to start at 5 p.m. This was the time they gave us. Originally, we were going to do 25 or 30 minutes. They came in and said, ‘Well, maybe 20,’ so it was already getting whittled down. And then the vice president showed up about 5:15. We were pushing the envelope to be able to turn it around for the top of the 6 o’clock” hour. “I had a lot of other questions,” Baier added.
Baier also revealed that Harris’s campaign aides pushed him hard to “wrap,” or end the interview early. “I’m talking, like four people, waving their hands like, ‘It’s gotta stop!’” he said.
The interview went so poorly that shortly after its conclusion Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance advised his “Democratic friends: maybe you should consider swapping Kamala Harris for Joe Biden.” The Trump War Room retweeted the entire interview with the message, “Our newest ad just dropped.”
“Kamala’s not used to real interviews. It shows,” said Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah). “She is melting under the spotlight,” said Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump and founder of America First Legal.
Democrats and members of the liberal media tried to defend Harris’s performance. Harris campaign senior adviser and former adviser to Barack Obama David Plouffe called the exchange “an ambush.” MSNBC hostess Mika Brzezinski posted on X that “@KamalaHarris did a great job” during “a rude and misleading interview.” Brzezinski also accused Baier of “performing for an audience of one,” implying Baier tailored his questions to please Trump — although MSNBC hosts have reported receiving texts from Democratic White House officials live on the air.
CNN’s Brian Stelter predicted, “A lot of viewers are going to come away saying, ‘Wow, she’s willing to do that. That’s a sign of toughness and strength.’” The host of “The Situation Room,” Wolf Blitzer, agreed with Stelter that Harris’s performance was “impressive indeed.”
Media headlines repeatedly referred to the interview as “testy.”
“It was a little tense,” Baier told Sean Hannity, adding the video — which showed Harris pausing, stuttering, and looking around frantically at times — was unedited. “I think she had a mission,” said Baier. She wanted to have a viral moment … and I think she might have gotten that.”
Harris, who has attempted to pitch her candidacy to the relatively narrow slither of Never Trump Republicans who lined up behind former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in the primaries, has also discussed interviewing on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
“Maybe she’ll come back,” said Baier. “I don’t know whether she will or not, but I hope she does.”
“I think I understand why they don’t want tough interviews, and this will probably be the last one,” replied Hannity.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-10-17 18:51:322024-10-17 18:51:32‘What Are You Talking About?’: Harris Confuses, Shouts Down Host during Fox News Interview
As Americans continue to feel the relentless grip of inflation, it’s hard to ignore its toll on everyday life. Inflation has surged another 2.1% since our June 2024 report, reaching 21.1%. Yet, the Biden-Harris administration seems to turn a blind eye to the very people it claims to support.
The fact is that 78% of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck, struggling under the weight of rising prices.
Inflation under Trump was a mere 1.4%, but by the end of Biden’s first year in office, it had spiked to 7.1%, a four-decade high—and the trajectory hasn’t slowed since.
Two-thirds of all Americans have had to cut spending, leading to the recession; nearly half have been forced to dip into retirement savings to survive, and they are just one unplanned bill away from personal catastrophe.
The root causes of this economic pain are glaringly clear.
Housing affordability has plummeted, with 63% of Americans unable to buy a home or even afford rent due to skyrocketing prices and soaring interest rates. These inflated housing costs are fueled by a severe shortage of homes, driven entirely by the unmitigated influx of over 20+ million illegal immigrants, placing further strain on an already overwhelmed market. The prime rate has climbed from 3.25% in March 2020 to an astronomical 8.5% in 2024, making homeownership a distant dream for millions beyond the shortages.
To make matters worse, 87% of these undocumented individuals live entirely on government subsidies—at the expense of hardworking Americans who are struggling to pay their bills. Meanwhile, citizens are forced to drain their savings to cover the ever-increasing burden of Bidenflation.
The picture isn’t any better at the gas pump. Gas prices have surged from a national average of $3.14 in December 2020 to $5.26 in April 2024, now at around $4.57. This is a direct consequence of the administration’s policies, particularly its war on oil and gas, which reversed Trump’s historic achievement of energy independence and created artificial supply constraints.
The Harris campaign promotes its imaginary “opportunity economy,” advocating for raising taxes on the middle and upper classes to redistribute wealth to the bottom. These unaffordable policies have directly led to our economic decline under her current administration.
Who is gaining opportunities in the Biden-Harris economy now? Only the top 1% benefit because they have the economic flexibility to move their money around, while the rest of America either struggles or is hunkering down, waiting for opportunities to surface in a better environment.
The current economic environment feels eerily reminiscent of the Obama era, when Main Street, America, became a ghost town with small businesses boarded up. This was deemed “the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.”
Under similar conditions, Main Street faces a new wave of hardships as families and small businesses struggle to stay afloat.
Under Trump, all Americans benefited from policies that boosted growth and lifted wages. The stark contrast in economic outcomes under the current administration is undeniable.
Biden and Harris have consistently advocated for policies that hurt the very people they claim to champion, instead creating an economy where survival, not prosperity, is the new normal.
Only proven leadership can turn this ship around, and it’s up to Americans to ensure they vote for a future where the dream of prosperity is still alive for EVERY AMERICAN.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-10-16 17:51:572024-10-16 17:51:5778% of Americans Barely Surviving—We Won’t Survive Another Year
While Americans are still struggling to recover from a devastating hurricane season, Democrats are signaling that they approve of federal agencies giving relief money — not to their fellow Americans — but to migrants.
According to a Rasmussen Reports survey published Monday, the majority of likely voters (59%) want the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to focus its resources on American citizens, but 29% approve of FEMA spending money on migrants. A majority (59%) of Democrat voters approve of FEMA diverting resources from Americans to migrants, while only 8% of Republican voters and less than 20% of Independent voters do the same.
While a majority (61%) of voters have a favorable view of FEMA and its Hurricane Helene disaster response, Democrats are the most likely (at 82%) to rate government agencies favorably, as opposed to only 45% of Republicans and 42% of Independent voters. Rasmussen Reports noted, “Among all voters who have a very favorable opinion of FEMA, 68% think spending FEMA money to help immigrants is a good idea.”
The survey follows reports of widespread mismanagement, misallocation of funds, and inaction on FEMA’s part in response to Hurricane Helene, which destroyed a 500-mile swath of homes, towns, and cities in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and parts of Tennessee and Virginia.
Following Hurricane Helene’s landfall, FEMA and other government officials reportedly blocked private American citizens from providing help to impacted areas, especially in the western region of North Carolina. Private citizens conducting search and rescue missions, carrying supplies, or attempting to provide transportation were halted by FEMA and, in some cases, threatened with arrest. Reports have also suggested that FEMA employees are working regular nine-to-five hours, staying in hotels that are then denied to victims of the hurricane, and confiscating supplies and donations, diverting them to immigrant communities instead of to American citizens.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been criticized for announcing that FEMA is almost out of funding and does not have the money to last through the remainder of the hurricane season. However, the agency has spent $1.4 billion since 2022 on illegal immigrants. On Monday night’s episode of “Washington Watch,” former Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf, who helped oversee FEMA during the Trump administration, said, “As the Secretary of Homeland Security, part of your job … is to show those impacted that for the most part, the federal government hears you and we’re there to help you as best we can using the authorities that we have.”
He continued, “One of the first things [Mayorkas] says on the way down to North Carolina is ‘We’re out of money, FEMA doesn’t have enough money,’ which I would say is the exact wrong message to send to the people that are hurting in North Carolina.” Wolf added, “They want to know that the government is on their side and is doing everything possible to make sure that they get the assistance they need in such devastating, devastating times.”
Wolf also explained that Mayorkas’s claims of FEMA being out of money may not be “accurate,” noting that the agency has “access to over $20 billion to draw from. And so, the amount of money that they have obligated versus what they have actually spent — they’ve obligated a good amount. What they’ve actually spent is very low.”
He continued, “Now is not the time to talk about ‘We need to replenish what we call the Disaster Relief Fund.’ Now is the time to help individuals on the ground.” He explained that after resources have actually been depleted in hurricane relief efforts, FEMA can ask Congress to supplement the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF). “And Congress is there to do that. They’ve done that historically. There’s little debate. The only debate is how much? They’re always making sure that we take care of those impacted most,” he said. Wolf added, “Frankly, I think there’s more than enough funding to get them through that period of time, and then they can certainly come back after that.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-10-16 17:51:562024-10-16 17:51:56Dems Support FEMA Funds Being Diverted to Migrants
Much has been made about what’s at stake in the upcoming 2024 election, and rightfully so. The last three and a half years have seen wars emerge on almost every continent, a dramatically weakened dollar with persistently high inflation and declining standard of living, the deterioration of military readiness, a wide-open southern border, the politicization of our legal system, an unprecedented all-out assault on the unborn and those standing up for life, attacks on religious freedom, a disconcerting rise in political violence, and more. As a result, just 28% of Americans say the country is on the right track, and they are primed to make their voice heard.
Presidential Election
The presidential election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump has generated most of the attention and campaign spending and will be the main driver of turnout among voters. Every day, there are several new national and battleground polls released to the public, and in general they show a race within the margin of error (give or take 2-4 points depending on the specific poll) at the national level. Harris currently enjoys a two-point edge in the head-to-head polling average at RealClearPolitics. However, this lead is not enough to allow the vice president to rest on her laurels. During this time in 2020, then-candidate Joe Biden led then-President Trump by 10 points, and Hillary Clinton led Trump by 5.8 points. The former would go on to win (thanks in large part to relaxed mail-in voting rules) by less than 85,000 votes and the latter would go on to lose by less than 45,000 votes. Harris is polling significantly behind the other Democratic candidates to have faced off against Donald Trump at this point in the election.
The Democratic candidate has traditionally won the national popular vote, but because of the wisdom of our Founding Fathers, the Electoral College is determinative. If you live in a state like Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin, you are no doubt tired of the ads and text messages. Both campaigns know your vote will be important for their candidate to prevail in your state, which could likely determine the outcome of the election. The two-point lead Harris enjoys in the national popular vote translates, at this moment, to an Electoral College loss. At the time this was written, the RealClearPolitics average for the battleground states would give Trump a win in the electoral college 296-242, with the key battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Michigan in the Republican’s column. Among the battleground states Harris is currently projected to carry, Wisconsin and Nevada, she is trailing Biden’s 2020 performance in the polling by five points in each state — again, not where the Harris campaign wants to be.
Control of the U.S. Senate
Sixty-one percent of Americans agree the country is on the wrong track, and while this portends trouble ahead for the Harris campaign in persuading voters to continue the Biden-Harris policies in a Kamala Harris administration, it does translate to some anti-incumbent sentiment among voters, which plays to the benefit of Senate Republicans hoping to take the majority in the upper chamber in Congress. With a slim 51-49 seat majority, the Senate Democrats stand severely disadvantaged this election. Of the 34 Senate seats up for a vote this cycle, 23 are held by Democrats, many of which are in states that are also highly competitive at the presidential level. Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Wisconsin all have Senate Democrats running for reelection in tough matchups — in particular, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are incredibly tight at the moment with incumbents Sen. Bob Casey, Jr., (D-Pa.) and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) leading their Republican challengers by a mere three points.
In other states, like West Virginia, Montana, and Ohio, Democratic candidates for Senate are running at a disadvantage because their states are expected to vote for Trump by more than 10 points, endangering Democratic incumbents Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mt.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). Tester, for example, is trailing his Republican challenger, Tim Sheehy, by seven points. Brown, on the other hand, is doing better in the public polling, leading Republican Bernie Moreno by just two points. West Virginia will not be competitive, as former Governor Jim Justice is favored to win this race comfortably.
In Michigan, incumbent Senator Debbie Stabenow (D) announced she would not run for reelection, which has pitted Democratic Representative Elissa Slotkin against former Republican Representative Mike Rogers, and in Arizona, Democrat-turned-Independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema announced she would also not run for reelection, creating a match-up between Democratic Representative Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake. The Michigan race is a toss-up, with Slotkin leading in the public polling average by less than two points. In Arizona, Gallego leads by just under seven points. Both states feature prominently in the Electoral College calculus of the Harris and Trump campaigns, so it’s possible the coattails of whichever presidential candidate wins the state will play an outsized role in who wins these races; this is true more so for Michigan than Arizona, because Lake is trailing outside the margin of error.
Republican Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) are also running this year and are facing well-financed challengers, but both are the favorites in their respective races. If the GOP doesn’t lose in either Texas or Florida and wins the Senate races they are expected to win in West Virginia and Montana they will take overcontrol of the Senate with 51 seats. Bernie Moreno in Ohio is likely to benefit from Trump’s coattails in that state, which would bring the GOP to 52 seats. With few exceptions, ticket-splitting is all but gone these days. So, if Trump were to carry Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Wisconsin, and carry Republican Senate candidates over the finish line with him the GOP would have 57 seats in the Senate. Some GOP candidates in a few of these states are polling far enough behind Trump that were he to win some of these states his coattails might not be enough to deliver for them, however.
Control of the U.S. House of Representatives
After redistricting in 2020, the number of competitive races in the House of Representatives dipped. Gone are the days of 40-60 seat swings like we saw in the Tea Party era. This year, Cook Political Report has identified just 26 toss-up races in the U.S. House of Representatives. Of these 26, Republicans are defending 14, and Democrats are defending 12. For the current razor-thin, three-seat Republican majority , winning every one of these toss-up races is a must. With just 23% of voters approving of the job Congress is doing, the GOP is swimming against the tide to keep their majority.
Since there are 435 members in the U.S. House of Representatives, pollsters ask respondents to state whether they prefer a “generic Republican” or “generic Democrat” to represent them in Congress to get a sense of how the race for the majority House will play out. Now, the RealClearPolitics generic congressional vote average shows Democrats leading by just one point. In 2022, when the GOP won back control of the House of Representatives after the Democrats held the House since the 2018 midterm elections, the GOP had a three-point lead in the generic congressional polling at this time in the 2022 midterm elections. This victory for the GOP in wresting the speaker’s gavel from Nancy Pelosi was earned by winning just a four-seat majority by a mere 4,500 votes. It doesn’t get much closer than that. I think we’re likely to see a similarly paper-thin result decide which party controls the House this November.
Unlike the Senate, where a presidential candidate’s coattails can be decisive, most of the toss-up races in the House are in states that are not particularly competitive at the statewide or presidential level. Each individual candidate will have to win or lose in their own foxhole. Alaska, California, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Washington account for 16 of the 24 most competitive House races and will not see a competitive result at the presidential or Senate level, or do not have a competitive Senate race. GOP incumbents in these states will have to win in an environment of supercharged Democrat turnout, and vice versa for Democrat incumbents in toss-up races in Republican states. If you’re the GOP, of particular concern are GOP incumbents in California and New York. There are eight GOP incumbents between these two states alone, and both states are likely to go for Kamala Harris by as much as 20 points, or more. Combine anti-incumbent sentiment with deep blue states and you have a strong headwind for GOP incumbents in these states.
Conclusion
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans, have updated their voter registration or registered to vote for the first time this year. All this data is important and tells us some early signs of how the election will go. Florida, for example, once the preeminent swing state, is now firmly in the grip of the GOP, as Florida Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than a million voters. Pennsylvania, a state that as recently as 2008 had 1.2 million more Democrats than Republicans and was once firmly within the Democrats’ Rust Belt “blue wall” has replaced Florida as the preeminent swing state, and Democrats have the lowest voter registration edge they have ever held in the Keystone State: 343,000 voters. Republicans have been winning the voter registration battle elsewhere as well.
Similarly, early vote data shows a dramatic decline in the number of mail-in ballots requested compared to 2020. Using Pennsylvania again as an example, the 2020 election saw a total of 2.7 million mail-in ballots requested, or 39% of the total vote came from mail. So far this cycle, just 1.4 million mail-in ballots have been requested (mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania can be requested until October 29th, so this number will go up. But it will likely not be anywhere close to the 2.7 million number from 2020). Mail-in voting is likely to play a smaller role in the 2024 election than it did in the 2020 election when so many were still dealing with COVID-19.
Then there’s the campaign spending. Kamala Harris’s campaign has raised $678 million to Donald Trump’s $313 million. The Democratic National Committee similarly enjoys a fundraising advantage over its Republican counterparts, raking in $385 million to the Republican National Committee’s $331 million. The Republicans enjoy a slight campaign finance edge in the Senate contests, outraising their Democrat counterparts $200 million to $173 million. In the House, the National Republican Congressional Committee raised $183 million to the Democrats’ $250 million. This all amounts to billions of dollars flooding the airways and cell phone towers with campaign messaging.
All of this to say, the respective candidates and political parties have their own advantages and disadvantages. It’s incredibly difficult to say which advantages will determine outcomes, whether it’s a campaign cash advantage or public polling, voter registration or mail-in ballot requests, we will not know for sure until election night. Right now, the presidential race looks like it’s trending toward Donald Trump, the Senate is securely within reach of the Republicans, and the speaker’s gavel is at risk of being handed back over to the Democrats. If that’s the case, then we’ll look back and say 2024 was clearly an anti-incumbent election, and the country is asking for change. If Harris wins, the Democrats retain control of the Senate, and win back the House, then we can say campaign funding is the decisive factor in elections. If Trump wins, the GOP wins the Senate, and retains control of the House, we can say it was a repudiation of the Biden-era with its excessive social engineering, abortion extremism, runaway spending, foreign policy blunders, and all.
As followers of Christ, we know God is sovereign. This is not an excuse for inaction, but an acknowledgement that no election outcome surprises Him. The best day of the republic still falls short of the glory of the New Heaven and New Earth to come. We should pray for righteous leaders to prevail in November and pray that our nation would once again humble itself before the Lord acknowledging how far we have fallen from His righteous standard. The 2024 elections are incredibly important because of the stark differences in worldview represented by the major parties, but their importance pales in comparison to the work needed to repair our nation’s spiritual walls.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-10-16 07:52:322024-10-16 07:52:32State of the 2024 Election
The Biden-Harris administration has hauled two Republican states into court to prevent them from removing noncitizens from the voter rolls.
As part of last Friday’s news dump, the administration’s Department of Justice announced on October 11 that it had sued the Commonwealth of Virginia over an order from to purge “noncitizens” from the ballot.
On August 7, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) issued Executive Order 35, which called for the state to assure every registered voter is a legal U.S. citizen. “This isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue, it’s an American and Virginian issue. Every legal vote deserves to be counted without being watered down by illegal votes or inaccurate machines. In Virginia, we don’t play games and our model for election security is working,” said Youngkin at the time.
The Biden-Harris administration sued, claiming the action violates the National Voter Registration Act’s 90-day Quiet Period Provision, which says states must curtail all such actions 90 days before an election. The DOJ filed a similar lawsuit on September 27 against the state of Alabama, after Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen (R) announced he had instituted a “process to remove noncitizens registered to vote in Alabama,” on August 13.
“Only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote in U.S. federal elections. That fact is not in dispute, and there is no evidence of widespread noncitizen voting in the United States. But that is not what this case is about,” claims the government’s legal complaint against Virginia.
Yet in announcing the Alabama lawsuit, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said, “The right to vote is one of the most sacred rights in our democracy.”
As this reporter has noted at The Washington Stand:
In Pennsylvania, Department of State official Jonathan Marks testified that noncitizens voluntarily told the state they had illegally voted 544 times in elections held between 2000 and 2017 — representing one of every 172,000 votes cast in the swing state.
An official review of Georgia’s voting rolls found 1,634 noncitizens had attempted to register to vote in the swing state between 1997 and 2002.
Virginia removed 5,556 noncitizens from its voting rolls between 2011 and 2017. Noncitizens had voted 7,474 times between 1988 and 2017, officials found.
North Carolina voter rolls showed 1,454 registered voters who “did not appear to be naturalized before Election Day 2014,” according to the Public Interest Legal Foundation, and “89 attempted to vote.”
The action is virtually unprecedented. The Obama administration sued to stop then-Florida Governor Rick Scott from removing noncitizens (at Judicial Watch’s behest) in 2012. Conversely, the Trump and George W. Bush administrations sued states or localities (Kentucky, New York City, Maine, Missouri) for failing to maintain accurate voting lists, including removing noncitizens and the deceased.
A majority of Americans worry that voter fraud will impact the 2024 election, according to a NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released earlier this month. Overall, 58% of Americans shared their concerns about election integrity in next month’s election, although that is driven by an overwhelming concern from Republicans. In all, 86% of Republicans, and 55% of registered Independents, say illegal voting could impact the election, as compared to 33% of Democrats (and just 29% of confirmed Kamala Harris voters).
Once cast, there is no way to differentiate which ballot belongs to a specific person; voter fraud is permanent. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said the House must pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act to address this “clear and very real threat” to election integrity.
“The reason our movement is called election integrity is not just based on policy and procedures, but also on the character of the individuals who comprise it,” said Election Integrity Network Executive Director Kerri Toloczko in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand.
“Thousands of patriotic Americans have given selflessly of their time to become experts on their states’ election codes,” said Toloczko in a separate instance. “They have tirelessly worked in the trenches on all the aspects of the election process, researching state and county voter rolls; finding thousands of ineligible registrations, mistakes, errors, duplicates, and the like; are volunteering to serve as poll workers and observers; and who love this country so much that they are willing to take the abuse leveled at them by the corporate media, the Democratic Party, state governments, and even the federal government.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-10-16 07:52:312024-10-16 07:52:31Biden-Harris Admin Sues to Stop States from Removing Noncitizens from Voting Rolls
On October 7, Hamas declared war on Israel. On October 8, their supporters declared war on America.
Canary Mission has been fighting antisemitism for a decade. During this time, one constant remains: where there is antisemitism, there is also a deep-seated hatred of America and the West.
Organizations such as Within Our Lifetime (WOL), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, Samidoun and many others view the destruction of the State of Israel as the gateway to achieving the destruction of America.
Over the past year, these organizations have revealed their disturbing agenda to destroy America. Their tactics include violence against law enforcement, businesses, and civilians, along with acts of vandalism and efforts to disrupt key infrastructure like bridges, highways, and airports. They promote extremism by publicly displaying Hamas and Hezbollah flags while burning U.S. and Israeli flags.
This groundbreaking report primarily has two functions:
First, it highlights the strategies and tactics outlined at the “People’s Conference for Palestine,” held in Detroit, Michigan, May 24-26, 2024, where over 100 organizations and 3,000 participants gathered to make concrete plans for anti-American action.
Second, it names key players behind the conference and the disruption that has plagued universities and public spaces over the past year.
The Palestinian-American movement orchestrating the noisy protests, violent rallies and destructive occupations of college campuses has promised to “escalate”. It seeks to bring the United States to its knees. As they say, “Empire [USA] must fall.”
These threats to the U.S. can no longer be ignored by law enforcement, government officials and concerned citizens.
Key Findings
“Bringing the War Home”: The Anti-Israel Movement’s Broader Agenda
The People’s Conference for Palestine
Guest Appearance from Rashida Tlaib
Anti-Americanism
Multi-Faceted Strategy Against Zionism and the West
Leading Anti-Israel Activist Taher Herzallah Calls for Sacrifice in the Struggle
After Attempted In-Person Hosting, a Terrorist Joins Remotely
Student Movement as the Vanguard of Anti-American, Pro-Terror Advocacy
The People’s Conference for Palestine
On May 24-26, 2024, the People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit, Michigan convened more than 3,000 participants from across the U.S., Europe, the West Bank and Gaza, raising more than $165,000 in attendance fees to be forwarded to Gaza.
The conference speakers reflected upon the strategies that the Palestinian movement has refined over decades, while also providing a platform to analyze progress made in the last year and discuss the next steps for the movement.
The conference was open about its agenda: to coordinate a mass movement to cause the collapse of America from within. The welcome message on its website reads: “Our goal for this conference is to provide a space to evaluate, strategize, and prepare for the requirements of the next phase of our struggle.”
“All backers of Zionism, Israel, and US imperialism have been put on notice.”
Fifteen organizations composed the steering committee of the Conference: The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), The US Palestinian Community Network, The People’s Forum, Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Palestinian Feminist Collective, Answer Coalition, Arab Resource and Organizing Center, International Jewish anti-Zionist Network, Writers Against the War on Gaza, Healthcare Workers for Palestine, Palestine Popular University, Palestinian American Women’s Association, and The National Alliance against Racist and Political Repression.
The conference featured PFLP operative Wissam Rafeedie as a speaker. He participated remotely because he was denied a visa to the U.S.
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) made an appearance at the conference, using her speech to promote civil disobedience and spread lies and propaganda about the Israeli government. Tlaib encouraged the conference attendees and the anti-Israel movement as a whole in her speech, proclaiming: “I don’t need to tell you that you’re on the right side. I don’t need to, but I’ll be damned if I wait 10 years before they apologize to all of you for doing what was right at this moment.”
Tlaib concluded by saying, “We have to march. We have to boycott. We have to do civil disobedience … We’re gonna march and we’re gonna move Congress and we’re gonna move the White House because they have no other option. We’re not going anywhere. Thank you so much.”
Rashida Tlaib Professional Michigan Black4Palestine, BDS Cooley-Law, Wayne State, Western Michigan University (WMU) Rashida Tlaib blamed Israel for Hamas war crimes against Israeli civilians, including mass murder, rape of women, beheadings of babies and kidnappings of the elderly, carried out on October 7, 2023. In the following days, Tlaib spread hatred of Israel after it declared war against Hamas.
Jeremy Corbyn, a former British member of parliament and leader of the Labour party, joined the conference via a pre-recorded video welcoming conference attendees.
The keynote speaker at the conference was the widow of deceased terrorist Walid Daqqa. Daqqa, a Palestinian-Israeli citizen died of terminal cancer in his 38th year of incarceration in an Israeli prison. He was convicted for his commanding in the PFLP’s kidnap, torture, disfigurement, castration and murder of a 19-year-old Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984.
Conference speakers proudly identified with Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian regime, urged attendees to take revolutionary action in order to cause chaos within U.S. political structures and plotted strategies for the violent destruction of the State of Israel.
Mohammed Nabulsi
Mohammed Nabulsi, an organizer with PYM and one of the main conference organizers, introduced the conference as follows:
“…the People’s Conference for Palestine provides us an important opportunity for all of us to reflect on the work that we’ve done so far and so that we may craft a path forward that truly brings this Zionist state and its military and its imperialist backers to their knees.”
Nabulsi further defined the goal of the conference in his opening keynote speech:
Mohammed Nabulsi Professional Texas BDS, PSC, PYM, SJP Texas-Law, Texas-Austin, NSJ
Mohammed Hisam Nabulsi is an anti-Israel activist who called for chaos in American cities and glorified terrorism in 2024. He celebrated intifada violence, honored terrorists, disrupted campus events and spread hatred of Israel.
“…serve as an opportunity for us as a movement to develop shared politics, a politics that centers the condition of our people on the ground, our people’s right to resist the relationship between U.S. imperialism and Zionism, the various sectors of our movement and the role of popular education and service of liberation.
“This conference will allow us to reflect on our strengths and weaknesses, on our achievements and failures. It will allow us to develop greater political cohesion and understanding across the movement. It will allow us to chart a path forward of resistance and struggle within the belly of the beast.
“This conference is an opportunity for us to consolidate and concretize what our resistance will look like, to develop shared vision and understanding of what our role must be.”
Speakers emphasized the successes of the student and activist-led movement across the U.S. and the world since October 7 and the need to plan the next stage.
Taher Herzallah
Taher Herzallah, associate director of outreach & grassroots organizing for AMP was a main organizer and key speaker at the conference.
He explained, “For me, the most important thing is the longevity and the maintenance and the growth of our powerful movement. And the things that threaten those are numerous.”
Herzallah added: “We are an integral part of the Palestinian liberation struggle and the people who came to North America, the Palestinians who came to the United States, understood their role immediately upon arrival.”
He continued, “...I want to make it clear that the Palestinian diaspora in North America has committed its martyrs for this cause.”
Herzallah further explained, “We must expect Zionists to be Zionists. We must expect Zionists and the U.S. government to intensify their attacks on all of us. This is a given. The world has changed in ways that does not suit them. And they are going crazy realizing that they’ve spent all these years and billions of dollars to prop up this project of theirs. And they’re still losing.
They’re losing a public narrative battle.
“They’re losing their ability to control us. And this means that now the gloves are off and quite frankly anything is possible. I caution you of the days to come. Because they will not be easy. There are people among us today who might not be with us next year at this conference. And this is a reality. Because the liberation struggle requires sacrifice. And I know everyone here is prepared to make that sacrifice.”
Anti-Zionism to Anti-Americanism
The movement views anti-Zionism as a gateway to their broader anti-American ideology, with the destruction of Israel viewed as the first step in dismantling Western hegemony. It perceives no redeeming value in America, advocating instead for its complete destruction rather than reform. Organized and highly motivated, the movement is against Western values and works systematically to undermine them.
Speakers at the People’s Conference for Palestine frequently emphasized that their ultimate goal is not only the defeat of Zionism but also the dismantling of Western power structures.
The following quotes demonstrate the movement’s goal of dismantling Western hegemony, starting with Israel and ending with the U.S.:
“We know that Zionism has killed us, has displaced us, has destroyed our lives in Palestine. And the long tentacles of Zionism have always reached deep into the American heartland. Like no other place in the world. Zionism has penetrated the depths of American society, economics and politics for decades.” (see video)
“In North America on Turtle Island, the Palestinian people who were forced into diaspora, even prior to the advent of the State of Israel, have been a thorn in the side of the Zionist project and American imperialism for quite some time.” (see video)
Yara Shoufani, PhD student at York University and an organizer with PYM
“And, of course, we know that the United States is also trying to destroy Palestinian revolution, not only in Palestine but also here. We have seen police repression, we have seen surveillance, I mean, we had visas just for a conference, this conference, we had visas denied for speakers. And so we know that U.S. Empire is trying to actively intervene against our organizations, against our movements. And this attempt to crush Palestinian revolution here actually should tell us just how powerful we are, and just how much we scare them, because the Palestinian revolution is a gateway to struggle, and it radicalizes us and shows us clearly who our enemies are.We have comrades in the movement, who a year ago may have illusions about reforming U.S. Empire and today through the Palestinian revolution, see clearly that there is no reforming the U.S. empire.” (see video)
Raja Abdelhaq, Muslim Palestinian political activist, community organizer and researcher
“… Israel is the first line of resistance, the first line of defense, for the American empire.” (see video)
Brian Becker, national director of the ANSWER Coalition
“… our goal is transformation, not just on Palestine, but to eliminate a system of endless war, a system of colonialism, a system of imperialism and to create a new world.” (see video)
Manolo de los Santos, founder of the People’s Forum, researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
“We know more than ever that the Palestinian movement in the United States is serving as an anchor for our larger mass anti-imperialist movements. (see video)
“I believe that the strategy, though it hasn’t been articulated, or even coherent in this way, was to wage a battle on every front, agitating and implicating the broader institutional life within the West.” (see video)
Ghassan Abu-Sittah, Palestinian-British doctor (banned from entering EU countries), who spoke at the conference via video conference because he was refused a U.S. entry visa.
“The genocidal project seems to be like an iceberg, where Israel is the most visible tip of the iceberg. But the rest of the genocidal iceberg is made out of these countries that constitute the axis of genocide, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Australia.” (see video)
Anti-American Rhetoric of the Movement
The anti-Israel movement calls the United States “Empire,” “the beast” or “the enemy” in its strategic discussions. Their rhetoric often incorporates terms like “colonial,” “imperial” and “capitalist,” casting America as a symbol of global oppression and positioning their cause as part of a broader anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist struggle.
The following represent key quotes from the conference that highlight anti-American rhetoric:
Nadya Tannous “We are here because we’ve been moved to action. And this panel y’all is talking about what is next. To strike at the heart of Empire.” (see video)
Ibtihal Malley, graduate student and organizer with PYM“We have a commitment to strengthening ourselves as organizers, and strengthening our movement, especially right here in the belly of the beast.” (see video)
Rama (Ali) Kased, community organizer, writer and assistant professor of race and resistance studies at San Francisco State University“As trained organizers, activists, agents for Palestinian liberation, this panel will allow us to ask the questions about our time, place and conditions here in North America, in the U.S., the belly of the beast, the heart of Empire.” (see video)
Yara Shoufani “This moment they are shaking. Our organizing can bring imperialism into crisis and our organizing is bringing imperialism into crisis.” (see video)
Hana Masri, researcher, educator and organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement“Because we are here in the belly of the insatiable imperial beast, we know that we have a very particular role to play in the struggle for Palestinian liberation, and for all people’s freedom from the cruelty of the colonialist capitalist world order that our government is so directly responsible for.” (see video)
Manolo de los Santos “We are here to tell them, to tell our enemies, that we are organizing our anger, that we are building out of this movement, out of this moment, out of this conference, a real mass anti-imperialist movement in the belly of the beast.” (see video)
Celine Qussiny, organizer with PYM, former leader of SJP University of California, Irvine“We will be hitting Empire where it hurts most, so we invite you all to join us in this campaign.” (see video)“We know that the power of the people can and will bring Empire to its knees.” (see video)
Open Advocacy for the Destruction of the West
The anti-Israel movement has long glorified violence and terrorism as rightful and necessary elements of their “resistance,” often expressed through the chants popularized by the extremist anti-Israel group Within Our Lifetime (WOL), which advocates “Palestinian resistance and liberation By Any Means Necessary.”
“Resistance and liberation” is not limited to Israel; it extends to the West as a whole, primarily targeting the United States. The rhetoric emphasizes the destruction of both America and Israel as interconnected goals, pursued “by any means necessary,” including outright violence.
This approach parallels the Iranian calls of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America,” where the destruction of both entities is seen as inherently linked, with these slogans consistently chanted in unison to symbolize their shared ideological objective.
Throughout the People’s Conference for Palestine, speakers expressed this ideology explicitly:
Layan Fuleihan, education director of The People’s Forum, editor of 1804 Books in New York City“There can be no mistake that US imperialism and Zionism represent a project of death. And the people, those of us in this room, the mass movement for Palestine, the billions across the globe, who share this vision, we represent a project of victory.” (see video)
Taher Herzallah “In the United States, Palestinians and our allies have been fighting a difficult and deadly war against Zionism for more than a century as well.” (see video)
Raja Abdelhaq “What was really essential in this conversation today is the 1979 Islamic revolution and Iran. It not only put an end to American and Western hegemony in Iran, at large, but also gave a kind of renewed spirit to a revolution against Western hegemony from an Islamic perspective…“Since then, I think it was made clear that Iran as a country, as a state, as a model of revolution against Western hegemony…created an amazing or very close relationship with the Palestinian leadership, specifically at that time with Yasser Arafat as the de facto leader of the Palestinian struggle, and later with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PFLP and other Palestinian factions.” (see video)
Strategies and Tactics of the Movement
The People’s Conference for Palestine featured numerous sessions outlining the various tactics used by the movement. One of the key sessions, titled “Palestine and Internationalism,” featured Manolo De Los Santos, who emphasized the need for a multi-faceted approach to bringing “down this empire [the United States]”:
“Our struggle for liberation is not going to be won in one battle. It’s not in one moment, it’s not in one day, it’s not in one confrontation, and not with one tactic. Our liberation will be won with the accumulation of all efforts of all struggles, the bringing together of the fight to end the U.S. blockade on Cuba and Venezuela.
“We have to bring down this empire with 1 million cuts. And those 1 million cuts have to come from every sector of struggle in this room.” (see video)
Three-Pronged Strategy
The Palestinian movement worldwide has employed and adopted a multi-faceted strategy originally used by the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.
The strategy involves:
Garnering International Support
Mass Mobilization
Armed Struggle
The pro-Palestinian movement in America has implemented these tactics in the form of mass rallies, open support for “resistance” (a euphemism for terrorism), shutdowns of critical infrastructure, campus protests, and targeting of politicians—all with the aim of weakening the United States from within.
During the “Palestine and Internationalism” session, Mandla Radebe, associate professor at the University of Johannesburg and chair of the South African Communist Party in the Gauteng province, discussed these three pillars. Though intended originally for anti-apartheid efforts, Radebe indicated that the Palestinian movement is applying the same tactics—albeit with the objective of far more destructive purposes.
“It is precisely the reason why we believe that international solidarity as one of the pillars of the struggle that helped us to defeat apartheid in South Africa is one of the critical things that we have to help the people of Palestine with. Of course, our struggle stood on three legs.
“In particular, it was the international solidarity, it was the mass mobilization inside the country, but most importantly, it was the armed struggle, because if the enemy refuses to die, it must be killed.”
This model is being actively applied to further destabilize Israel and its Western allies.
International Support
On the surface, gaining sympathy and support for an internationally designated terror organization—one that recently committed the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, committed brutal war crimes, murdered mothers, fathers, elderly, children and babies in cold blood, and took hundreds of Israeli and foreign nationals hostage—might seem like a nearly impossible task.
Yet, the movement has found ways to influence the narrative. Both globally, and in America, it has been enormously successful.
Anti-Israel activists understand their significant role in warping public perception of the conflict and thereby apply international pressure on Israel. An essential aspect of this support has been driving a wedge between Israel and its Western allies, particularly the United States.
Nadya Tannous, a PYM organizer and moderator of the “Palestine and Internationalism” session at The People’s Conference for Palestine, opened with the following remarks:
“We opened this conference three days ago with a plenary on Zionism and imperialism, y’all remember that? And we opened with an analytical grounding, to identify what we’re up against, and we never forgot. But the question as we close is, what do we do with this?
“And the answer is internationalism, because together we fight our enemies. We can strengthen the movement that breaks imperialist alliances, like the one between the US and Israel, and together we can win this.”
Another significant voice at the conference was Mustafa Barghouti, who spoke during a session titled “The War on Palestine.” Barghouti – the secretary-general and co-founder of the Palestinian National Initiative, Member of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), and president of the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees – was denied a visa to the U.S.
Barghouti detailed the crucial role for the Palestinian diaspora, highlighting three key “arenas” of focus:
“And there are three arenas which I feel are very important for our diaspora. The first one is to continue to bring to everybody in the world the true narrative about the reality of Palestine, and the true narrative about the heroism and the struggle of the Palestinian people.
“Second, it’s to do everything that one can do to influence the people with media, with social activities and especially to influence the younger generation.
“And third, to transfer this wonderful and amazing energy that we have seen in different universities, that we have seen in the streets of different cities in the United States, to transform all of that into a powerful boycott, divestment, sanctions movement against the Israeli establishment in every possible way. BDS is the way, boycott divestment sanctions is the way to translate solidarity into a material effect that affects Israel. And it is a movement that is growing worldwide now everywhere in the world, in Europe, in Asia, and Latin America, and North America, everywhere.”
Targeting Political Structures
A key aspect of leveraging international support involves targeting political structures in the West, particularly the American ruling class and the Democratic Party. The movement seeks to generate social and political crises that weaken U.S. policy and support for Israel. Speakers at the conference emphasized these tactics as instrumental in challenging the Biden-Harris administration and creating divisions within the political establishment.
Mohammad Nabulsi: “I believe our fundamental role is to generate political and social crisis within the American ruling class… What does it mean to generate crisis for the ruling class of this country? It means to make this continued prosecution of this war politically, socially and economically untenable.“…It means to create further divisions, ruptures, conflicts, problems for and amongst the Western ruling class, the Biden administration, the Democratic Party and the base of the Democratic Party. In my opinion, this is the main constellation of actors, organizations, and forces that we have actually targeted. I believe that most, if not all of the tactics utilized can be understood through this framework as creating and generating crisis.” (see video)“In my opinion, what we’ve seen these last eight months, is that all of the strategies pursued have benefited us…I’m not big on electoralism, I’m not big on…the Democratic Party…But I’ve also now understood that the role of the Uncommitted Votes movement…” (see video)
Layan Fuleihan: “Just a month ago, this movement, this very same movement that’s brought us all in the room together, created such a political crisis for Biden at the White House that he actually went in public, and said that the invasion of Rafah would actually be his red line. And that he would consider stopping the shipments of weapons to the State of Israel.” (see video)
Intersectional and Strategic Alliances
Establishing intersectional and strategic alliances with a wide array of groups, including minority groups, Marxist/Leninists, feminists, LGBTQ organizations and Indigenous advocacy groups, is a key component of gaining international support.
These alliances create the facade of a united front against Western and Zionist influence while positioning the Palestinian struggle as part of a broader global resistance against oppression and imperialism. The movement emphasizes that solidarity across different struggles amplifies their collective strength, enabling them to challenge powerful state structures, particularly the United States and Israel.
Ibtihal Malley, a PYM organizer and former member of SJP and Columbia University Apartheid Divest, spoke about the importance of solidarity in maintaining strength against “the U.S. empire.”
“I think it’s important that we push back against this narrative that our movement is fragmented and recognize that as the more unified we are, the stronger our movement is, and the bigger threat that we present to the US empire and our complicit institutions.”
Ghaied Hijaz, a student at Birzeit University in Ramallah, emphasized how crucial these alliances are:
“As Palestinians and allies we need to continue organizing and fighting on every front—in the campuses, in the streets, and on the battlegrounds of academia, law, media, and every other front. The continuation, accumulation, and diversity of the confrontations are the only way to pressure the United States and the Israeli occupation to halt this extermination.
“Either we fight the battle together as united free people or we are slaughtered individually under the fangs of the oppressive system of tyranny and injustice.”
This concept of solidarity was echoed by Wisam Rafeedie in Session 8: “How Do Movements Achieve Transformation.” Rafeedie highlighted how alliances can be formed across struggles based on shared experiences of oppression:
“As for the racially discriminatory Zionist policy, a common denominator can be achieved with all those who are and still part of the struggle against racial discrimination against Black people…a common denominator can also be achieved with the Indigenous populations of the US, this land, who were subjected to the most horrific genocide in history.
“…a common denominator can also be reflected with the poor migrants of Latin America, which is also a class-based struggle because they suffer from a policy of impoverishment and class exploitation by the capitalist class.”
Dominico Vega, secretary-general of Anakbayan USA, spoke at the conference during the Palestine and Internationalism session, highlighting how the Palestinian struggle serves as a model and a source of inspiration for other movements:
“Even us being invited here as Anakbayan USA, has been such a great privilege to be able to hear the lessons that the Palestinian movement for liberation has learned in the past eight months. It has been a great boon to us, and something that we’ll definitely have to discuss as a movement, or as ourselves as Filipinos, to see how we can continue to wage joint struggle against US imperialism.”
Vega provided a closing statement during the same session that reinforced the significance of international solidarity as a core tactic:
“Let’s remember that one of the most powerful tools that we have is international solidarity. And one of the most concrete ways that we can express international solidarity is by waging our own struggles for national liberation and winning them. Long live international solidarity!”
The impact of this international pressure became particularly evident on the first anniversary of October 7th. Gal Hirsch, the Israeli government hostage point-man, emphasized how international actions are influencing negotiations with Hamas. Hirsch highlighted how global pressure undermines Israel’s ability to make progress on hostage deals:
“There is a direct and immediate connection between pressure on Israel and Hamas’s appetite for negotiations [for a hostage deal].”
“When there is international pressure on us, in the UN for instance, in the Security Council, from different government officials, from the International Criminal Court, from the International Court of Justice, in the hope of taking advantage of tensions between us and Iran, or between Hezbollah… and us, the idea of ‘no daylight between us and our allies’ is important. Very important.”
“Hamas identifies every ‘daylight,’ every sliver of light, and whenever it identifies ideas like ‘we won’t give you ammunition,’ arms embargos, removing reservations about the ICC, this doesn’t help us to reach a hostage deal.”
Mass Mobilization
At the People’s Conference for Palestine, mass mobilization with the aim of creating disruptions nationwide was highlighted as a crucial component in destabilizing America and the West. Flooding the streets with supporters hinders daily life. Shutting down bridges, highways, and airports falls into the category of blocking state-run roads, which is a crime, usually a state misdemeanor.
Mohammad Nabulsiemphasized the importance of mass mobilization as a central tactic during the conference:
“You all know, mass mobilizations is the primary tactic. It’s pouring people, thousands and millions into the streets. Street shutdowns through unsanctioned marches, bridge and train shutdowns, airport caravans and shutdowns, encampments, building takeovers, targeting of weapons manufacturers, all of these different things, shutting down events, bird-dogging—all of the things that we’ve seen throughout these last eight months.”
Yara Shoufani also spoke about the disruptive power of mass mobilization:
“You’ve marched in the streets and you’ve disrupted politicians in their workplaces and in their homes. You’ve shut down bridges, highways, and airports… You have disrupted the sham of U.S. democracy, initiating the largest percentage of uncommitted votes in recent history.
“We have made the situation untenable for the empire’s ruling classes and the political establishment, not allowing Biden a minute of peace, making it so he cannot visit a single city, not to campaign, not to fundraise without being disrupted.”
The NY-based pro-terror organization Within Our Lifetime (WOL) has been at the forefront of these mass mobilizations in the U.S., particularly in New York City. In the summer of 2021, during Operation Guardian of the Walls, WOL mastered the art of city disruptions, successfully leading shutdowns in key areas of NYC. By September 2021, WOL founder and leader Nerdeen Kiswani boldly declared:
“We don’t need tens of thousands of people to shut down and disrupt this city…as long as Palestinians are resisting colonization by any means necessary, we must do the same here in New York City. We have to up the stakes!”
WOL has perfected these mass mobilization tactics, staging disruptions nationwide while continuing to wreak havoc on New York City, where it has targeted major infrastructure, including:
Grand Central Station
Penn Station
The Manhattan Bridge
JFK Airport
Fatima Mohammed, a WOL leader (who was made famous by her virulently antisemitic and anti-Israel commence address at CUNY Law School in 2023), reiterated the movement’s commitment to disruption in a January 1, 2024 tweet:
“Expect us everywhere, at any time, at any day, during holidays and busy seasons—in the streets, airports, and stations. Until we get justice, this city will not rest. And if that bothers you—go cry about it to [President Joe] Biden who’s butchering our people.”
WOL’s activities are not an extension of what was discussed at the conference; they are the direct realization of the strategic goal of turning American streets into battlegrounds.
Mobilizing a Student Movement
Campus activism has become a key element in the movement’s strategy, pushing an anti-American, anti-capitalist and anti-Western narrative at American universities.
Universities have now become one of the movement’s main battlegrounds, serving as the center stage for aggressive advocacy and indoctrination, particularly since the events of October 7.
Beginning on April 17, 2024, with the first encampment at Columbia University, this influence reached its peak when over 140 pro-Hamas encampments were set up at North American universities, and over 20 more globally. The encampments became known as the “student intifada,” explicitly borrowing a term associated with terrorist violence.
Protesters at these encampments harassed Jewish students and professors, blocked them from campus facilities and shouted antisemitic slogans. They occupied campus grounds, in most cases illegally, caused property damage, violently took over buildings, celebrated terrorism and promoted the BDS movement.
Broader Implications of the Student Movement
The People’s Conference for Palestine hosted a session titled “The Student Intifada: Zionism Off Our Campus,” which explicitly addressed the role of the student movement in the broader anti-Israel cause. Introducing the session, Mohammad Nabulsi said,
“Many of us organizers…got our start [in] the student movement. That’s where we were forged. That’s where we were made to become who we are today. Those were the most formative and transformative experiences of our lives. And it’s important because the student movement has always produced the future leaders of our struggle, of every struggle, you know, and that includes the Palestinian struggle.”
Nidaa Lafi, the moderator of the session and a PYM organizer and former SJP officer at the University of Texas at Dallas, highlighted the impact of student movements since October 8th:
“For the past eight months and particularly the last month and a half, the student movement has played a crucial role in re-energizing the broader movements for Palestinian liberation both in the US and around the world.
“What began as a small encampment at Columbia University quickly spurred into a chain of escalations on college campuses with clear goals: ending our institutions’ complicity in the ongoing brutal genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, confronting administrations with a moral crisis, and proving to students and our society at large just how far our institutions are willing to go to protect their financial interests and protect the agenda of the empire.” (video source)
“Defining a new character for the struggle for Palestinian Liberation in the diaspora, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and other student groups have risen to meet the demands of this moment, pressuring every institution and every body that is complicit in genocide and making Palestine unavoidable in every sense of the word…The student movement has historically been at the forefront of the struggle.”
Roua Daas, an SJP organizer at Pennsylvania State University, spoke about how students have used various forms of disruption to “bring the war home”:
“We have worked to agitate our campuses and to illuminate these forces. And we have done this in several ways. Students have used divestment not only as a strategy for material change—not only as a way to weaken the State of Israel—but also as a pressure point to reveal the non-democracy and the US Imperial agenda to the public.
“Students have also used mass demonstrations and disruptions on public property to capture public attention, and then force the state and police to repress us in full public view… And student organizers have encouraged other students on their campus and the general public to question or outright turn against the state.
Students have brought the war home.”
The student movement, emboldened by outside organizers and amplified by social media, has become a powerful force for the Palestinian movement. The influence and disruption caused by this segment of the movement are not merely incidental; they are strategically orchestrated to leverage educational institutions as battlegrounds to challenge and destabilize Western, particularly American, political and cultural support for Israel.
The anti-Israel movement has become a significant and growing influence on educational institutions, not only at universities but also in K-12 education, where anti-Israel activists – including but not limited to those in New York City, California and Philadelphia – are pushing their agenda on the youngest generation.
Armed Struggle
A central strategy of the movement is armed struggle. It involves both supporting actual terrorism and whitewashing and glorifying these violent acts to make them palatable, even admirable, to a broader Western audience.
By framing terrorism as a legitimate form of “resistance” and “martyrdom” as praiseworthy, the movement deliberately avoids Western norms and definitions that identify such violence as inherently evil.
Instead, they create a narrative where terrorism becomes a noble fight for freedom, attracting sympathy and support worldwide.
This strategy began In May 2021, when WOL launched a campaign titled “Globalize the Intifada.” The campaign was designed to rally support for violent resistance against Israel and call for the “liberation of Palestine by any means necessary.” It explicitly embraced terrorism under the guise of “resistance,” aiming to normalize it both domestically and internationally.
Since the Hamas attack on October 7, this ideology has taken on a life of its own across the movement with the glorification of the horrific massacre.
WOL’s founder and leader Nerdeen Kiswani made a clear and unequivocal statement on Instagram the day of the attack pushing this narrative:
“If you support Palestine, understand that necessitates supporting our right to defend ourselves and liberate our homeland by any means necessary… Freedom has only ever been achieved through resistance.” — October 7, 2023
According to the anti-Israel groups behind the October 8 celebrations, the Hamas massacre was a justified act of an oppressed people rising up against their oppressors. The grotesque events on the ground were reframed with the misleading slogan: “Resistance is justified when people are occupied.”
The war crimes Hamas perpetrated and broadcasted in real-time on October 7 were immediately rebranded on October 8 by the movement as “resistance.”
At The People’s Conference for Palestine, these sentiments were ubiquitous and could be heard from:
Mustafa Barghouti “Resistance in all its forms, resistance is our right, resistance is our way, and resistance is our guarantee to succeed in our future.” (see video)
“Al Aqsa flood, which came on the seventh of October, actually represented a continuation of a true new kind of uprising that started in 2015 in the occupied territories… Regardless of how many sacrifices we had to make, in reality, what we have seen since the seventh of October is a return to the roots of the issue, to the roots of the problem, to the roots of why we are suffering as Palestinians.” (see video)
Eugene Puryear, host on Breakthrough News “And I think it’s important that we just continue to lift up the Palestinian political prisoners, to demand that they all be released, to push back against this ridiculous propaganda. They are not terrorists, they are freedom fighters, and that has to be continually underlined.” (see video)
Wissam Rafeedie “Hamas is actually part of the Palestinian People’s Liberation Movement, like all the resistance factions, both Islamic and leftist… I want to assure everyone that there is no longer a place for the two-state solution for any Palestinian. The only solution is one democratic Palestinian state on all Palestinian land, which will end the Zionist project in Palestine.” (see video)
Mohammed Nabulsi “We begin today by extending our salutations to our people in Palestine and to our noble steadfast resistance who continues to defend our people and honors our dignity and struggle. Eternal glory to our martyrs, speedy recovery to our wounded, and freedom for our steadfast prisoners. Over the last eight months, we the Palestinian people have demonstrated to the entire world that the only way we can author our own history and to transform our present reality is the path of unity through resistance.” (see video)
Abdeljawad Omar, lecturer at Birzeit University “Resistance, including armed resistance, inspires, like the inspiration that we take from a bomb that is being placed at the gallows of a high-tech tank.” (see video)
Raja Abdelhaq “And these people, and this so-called Axis of Resistance, and the people around the region understand that Israel is an extension of American and Western hegemony, an extension of European colonialism, an extension of American imperialism. So, in order for us, and for the region, and for the resistance to end American hegemony in the region, to end American neocolonialism in the region, they must stand up to Israel because Israel is the first line of resistance, the first line of defense, for the American empire.” (see video)
Tara Alami “We understand the Palestinian resistance as being formed by the freedom fighter, the militant resistance fighter. But it’s also every Palestinian who chooses direct confrontation with the Zionist state…And that’s what popular resistance truly means, direct confrontation with the Zionist enemy at every sector of Palestinian society, with the participation of all Palestinians.” (see video)
Yara Shoufani “Our struggle is a long struggle and one that stands on the shoulders of thousands of martyrs and thousands of fighters who have committed and who are committing their lives to lay the ground for the revolution we see ahead of us today.” (see video)
Conclusion
This report describes the “resistance” movement in the U.S. that is focused on disrupting the American way of life and is dedicated to its destruction.
According to international and U.S. law, what this movement calls “resistance” is actually terrorism. To distort this fact is dangerous. The savagery – including violence, murder, rape and torture – committed on October 7 by Hamas was of a unique kind.
It is unconscionable that these actions and the ideology behind them are being promoted on America’s streets and campuses, especially targeting (and brainwashing) the younger generation.
While it was once considered extremist to openly call for the violent destruction of the entire West, the cadre advocating this idea has successfully normalized it in academia. It has been promoted in allied intersectional identity groups – Marxist/Leninists, Islamists, feminists, LGBTQs and Indigenous advocacy organizations.
The anti-Israel movement and their allied groups push the idea that global justice and the end of all oppression will only be brought about through “decolonization,” a code word for murder as well as the dismantlement of any system associated with colonialism or “oppressive” power. This includes the entirety of Western civilization, particularly the United States.
The People’s Conference for Palestine provided a clear window into this movement’s objectives and belief system. However, it should be noted that there are many more players and extensive organizing taking place beyond the conference.
Americans should be alarmed by this movement’s stated goals and tactics. Americans should be scared by their embrace of violence and acceptance of terror.
The anti-Israel project is a gateway to their goal of bringing down the West, and they are in the process of escalating by moving into the next stage by “Bringing the War Home.”
The chaos that overtook America this past year will continue and increase unless concrete action is taken against this movement.
Speakers and Organizers
Celine Qussiny Eugene Puryear Hana Masri Husayn Karimi Huwaida Arraf Ibtihal Malley Iman Abid Jennifer Mogannam Ju-Hyun Park Lara Kiswani Lara Sheehi Layan Fuleihan Lina Assi Lylla Younes Manolo De Los Santos Mnar Adely Mohammed Nabulsi Monadel Herzallah Nadya Tannous Nidaa Lafi Rabab Abdulhadi Raja Abdulhaq Rama Kased Rashida Tlaib Roua Daas Sarah Abdelshamy Taher Herzallah Tamar Ghabin Tara Alami Yara Shoufani
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-10-15 18:59:322024-10-15 18:59:32NEW VIDEO REPORT: “Bringing the War Home”
‘We would have to, in any election … make sure that all the rules have been followed,’ Democrat Rep. Jan Schakowsky stated.
Despite continually disparaging anyone who questioned election outcomes, Rep. Jamie Raskin and a few of his colleagues told Axios they can’t say with certainty whether they will certify the results if former President Donald Trump wins the 2024 election.
Raskin told Axios in an interview that he would “obviously accept” the results of the election if it were a “free, fair and honest election.” But he then claimed that he “definitely” does not take for granted that Trump will, as described by Axios, “use free, fair and honest means to secure a victory.”
Raskin also told Axios that Trump “is doing whatever he can to try to interfere with the process, whether we’re talking about manipulating electoral college counts in Nebraska or manipulating vote count in Georgia or imposing other kinds of impediments.”
For years, Raskin and his fellow Democrats have continually labeled Trump and anyone who questioned the results of the 2020 election a “threat to democracy” and an “insurrectionist,” but Raskin’s comments signal that the whole “denying election results is a threat to democracy” schtick may be falling by the wayside.
Raskin wasn’t alone in his election denialism, with Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., who objected to the 2005 electors for George W. Bush, saying she doesn’t trust Trump and that “we would have to, in any election … make sure that all the rules have been followed.”
House Rules Committee Ranking Member Jim McGovern (who objected to Trump electors in 2017), told Axios Democrats would certify a Trump win “assuming everything goes the way we expect it to.”
“We have to see how it all happens,” McGovern told Axios, adding that he expects Democrats “would” certify the results.
Election denialism is nothing new for Democrats. In fact, their performative Jan. 6 Committee appointed Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson as chairman — but Thompson denied the results of the 2004 election and voted against the Ohio certification of Bush’s win. Raskin himself challenged the certification of Trump’s victory in 2017, arguing that “10 of the 29 electoral votes cast by Florida were cast by electors not lawfully certified because they violated Florida’s prohibition against dual officeholders.”
Despite their own election denialism, Democrats have resorted to lawfare and bullying to force Republicans into relinquishing their right to question problematic election administration.
Attorney General Merrick Garland recently boasted that his office has prosecuted nearly 1,500 Americans for protesting the 2020 election and warned others they will face similar lawfare should they dare question the administration of the upcoming election.
Meanwhile Republicans who question the conduct of questionable election practices are smeared by the propaganda press and their Democrat allies as election “deniers.” It’s a tactic designed to silence legitimate concerns about election administration.
Surely if Democrats have legitimate cause for concern about the integrity of an election they reserve the right to question the administration, but if they were legitimately concerned about “free” and “fair” elections, they’d be sounding the alarm about unsafe election practices right now.
Consider, for example, that the Georgia State Election Board found in May that Fulton County double-scanned more than 3,000 ballots during the 2020 presidential recount. In the wake of finding such insecure election practices, the State Election Board passed a series of rules designed to ensure that ballot counts are accurate before certification. Except Democrats, backed by Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, have sued the board because of the new rules. If Raskin is so deeply concerned about “fair” elections, surely he would defend the state board’s efforts to ensure that all legitimate votes are counted, right?
Wrong. Instead, Raskin smeared the Georgia process while speaking to Axios.
“[Trump] is doing whatever he can to … [manipulate] vote count in Georgia,” Raskin reportedly said.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-10-15 18:59:302024-10-15 18:59:30After Criminalizing Election “Denial” and Screaming About J6 And Democracy For Years, Top Democrats Threaten Not To Certify A Trump Election Victory
Nearly one-third of the cameras in Border Patrol’s primary surveillance system along the southern U.S. border are currently nonfunctional, according to an internal memo obtained by NBC News.
The memo indicates that out of approximately 500 cameras mounted on surveillance towers along the U.S.-Mexico border, around 150 are inoperative due to a variety of technical issues, according to NBC News. Officials, speaking under the condition of anonymity, cited old equipment and a backlog of repair requests as primary reasons for the widespread camera failures.
Since their inception in 2011, the malfunctioning cameras of the Remote Video Surveillance Systems have been crucial in enabling Border Patrol to effectively monitor extensive border regions without the need for significant ground personnel, the outlet reported. Despite recent repair efforts, more than 150 camera repair requests remain unresolved, leading to surveillance gaps in key border sectors and heightening safety and security concerns in areas without visual monitoring.
Exclusive: Nearly one-third of the cameras in the Border Patrol’s primary surveillance system along the southern U.S. border are not working, according to an internal agency memo sent in early October. https://t.co/Rxyhf61sEs
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has reportedly installed about 300 new towers equipped with advanced technology, including artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, NBC News reported. A CBP spokesperson emphasized that these upgrades are part of a broader effort to modernize border surveillance and reduce reliance on manual monitoring by agents.
The internal memo also pointed fingers at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the agency responsible for servicing and repairing the camera systems, accusing it of failing to meet the Border Patrol’s needs effectively, NBC reported. Border Patrol leadership is considering replacing the FAA with a private contractor that could potentially offer more reliable technical support for the surveillance cameras.
The breakdown in camera functionality and the subsequent repair delays have led to calls for increased funding and resources as the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly requested additional funds from Congress to restore and upgrade surveillance systems along the border, NBC News reported.
The FAA and CBP did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
The official union of the U.S. Border Patrol announced its endorsement of former President Donald Trump during a rally on Sunday in Arizona.
The National Border Patrol Council, which represents roughly 18,000 Border patrol agents across the country, endorsed Trump during a campaign rally in Prescott Valley, Arizona. The Border Patrol Union endorsed Trump in 2016 — the first time the union had ever endorsed a presidential candidate — and gave him their nod of approval again in 2020.
“If we allow Border Czar Harris to win this election, every city, every community in this great country, is going to go to hell,” Paul Perez, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said on Sunday. “The untold millions of people, unvetted, who she has allowed into this country that are committing murders, rapes, robberies, burglaries, and every other crime will continue to put our country in peril.
“Only one man can fix that and that is Donald J. Trump. He has always stood with the men and women who protect this border,” Perez continued. “On behalf of the 16,000 men and women represented by the National Border Patrol Council, we strongly support and endorse Donald J. Trump for President of the United States.”
Perez added that Trump was a man who knows what it’s like to put “his life on the line for what is right,” during his endorsement speech, and heavily criticized what the southern border would look like under a potential Harris administration.
The third consecutive endorsement by the Border Patrol union comes as Trump has continued to make immigration enforcement a hallmark of his campaign. The Republican candidate doubled down on this agenda, with a pledge during his Sunday rally to hire an additional 10,000 Border Patrol agents, immediately green-light a 10% raise for agents and offer them a signing bonus.
More than seven million migrants have been apprehended by Border Patrol agents across the U.S.-Mexico border during the Biden-Harris administration, according to latest data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The border crisis that has taken place during the current administration has left Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running neck-and-neck with the former president, with consistently low poll numbers on border issues with voters.
Former Border Patrol leaders who have testified before Congress and spoken to the Daily Caller News Foundation allege that senior members of the Biden-Harris administration actively tried to keep details of the immigration crisis out of sight of the public.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-10-15 06:51:412024-10-15 06:51:41‘Only One Man Can Fix That’: Border Patrol Union Endorses Trump
The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday indicted an Afghan national living in Oklahoma City “for conspiring to conduct an Election Day terrorist attack in the United States on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization (FTO).” Along with his wife’s juvenile brother, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi plotted to attack “large gatherings of people” and “die as martyrs.”
The FBI foiled the plot with a months-long sting operation, according to Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.). They arrested Tawhedi and his co-conspirator after they purchased two AK-47 rifles, magazines, and ammunition from a “confidential human source” and “other FBI assets.”
The good news is that U.S. law enforcement foiled a potentially deadly and disruptive terrorist plot. The bad news is that the episode shows “just how vulnerable we are for attack,” said Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.) on Wednesday’s “Washington Watch.”
Election Vulnerability
A terrorist attack on Election Day would harm America far beyond any lives taken in the attack. It would infect our civic institutions with fear, further eroding social trust and public confidence in our elections.
As necessary as ballot security is for free and fair elections, voter security is even more fundamental. Voters who feel unsafe or intimidated at polling places may refrain from voting or change their votes, undermining the ability of elections to accurately record the will of the people. This is the reason behind laws requiring secret ballots or laws prohibiting certain campaign activities too close to a polling location.
If Islamist terrorists start attacking polling locations on Election Day, how many American voters will become more nervous about waiting in line to vote — as sitting targets? “‘Vulnerable’ is a key word,” agreed Family Research Council Action President Jody Hice. “Underline that, highlight it, and circle it.”
The ugly truth is that the U.S. government possibly could have prevented Tawhedi from forming this would-be terrorist plot in the first place. Tawhedi reportedly “entered the United States in 2021 under a special visa,” observed Hice, “which again underscores the Biden-Harris administration’s repeated failures to manage the entire immigration vetting process.”
Botched Withdrawal
In 2021, the Biden-Harris administration determined that, come hell or high water, they would remove all American troops from Afghanistan by an arbitrary and unfeasible date. This decision, made against the advice of senior military officials, effectively abandoned the country’s fledgling democratic government — not to mention the nation’s women — to the cruel mercy of the Taliban, a band of Islamist extremists who had previously sheltered al-Qaeda training camps.
America’s chaotic withdrawal left pro-American Afghans hanging in the wind. The Taliban would surely hunt down and kill men who served as guides for U.S. troops, for instance, or Christians. So some Afghans legitimately qualified for political asylum in America.
But, to meet the previously determined, arbitrary deadline for the evacuation of U.S. troops, the U.S. State Department had neither time nor manpower to either vet or evacuate Afghans in need of U.S. asylum. Several anecdotes suggest that the State Department provided “little to no help of any consequence” to congressmen and private citizens striving to evacuate Afghans, as Hice, then a congressman, recalled his own experience.
The U.S. State Department did grant special visas to a number of people flown out of Afghanistan. But these flights were loaded hastily and without adequate vetting. In fact, “because of the debacle of the way that this country withdrew and then the lack of vetting that took place,” the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General said the “process [was] ripe for people to fall through the cracks,” explained Brecheen. “So you’ve had heightened numbers of people with this special visa,” but some of them may have come to the U.S. with bad intentions.
Some people who should have been evacuated were left behind or stranded in refugee camps in other countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Meanwhile, some people received visas and boarded flights who had no basis to claim asylum in the U.S. By the end of the evacuation process, the Taliban controlled the airport where refugee flights boarded, which means they controlled who could or couldn’t board the flights. Tawhedi’s is an obvious case in which the system failed; Brecheen’s office is chasing down how he got a visa and what kind, but they have not yet received an answer.
Border Vulnerability
Boarding special evacuation flights from Afghanistan is not the only way that would-be terrorists with harmful intentions can make their way into America. “What happened with Afghanistan has shown the American people — in addition to what’s coming across the southern border — just how vulnerable we are for attack,” said Brecheen.
According to data released late last month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has on its docket more than 660,000 illegal immigrants with a criminal history. This includes more than 400,000 convicted criminals and more than 200,000 with pending criminal charges who are no longer in ICE custody. These numbers include not only Central Americans fleeing crime and poverty in their home countries, but people from all over the world. Just last week, law enforcement agents apprehended 40 people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Turkey, and India at the southern border. Earlier this year, DHS discovered that over 400 illegal immigrants had been smuggled into the country through an ISIS-affiliated network, and the whereabouts of 50 remain unknown.
Proponents of illegal immigration — words that shouldn’t even belong together — like to claim that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. Setting aside the fact that illegally entering the country is itself a crime, this claim misses two key points. First, every crime committed by an illegal immigrant in the U.S. is one the government could have prevented by barring that individual from entering the country — something that should at the very least be done for individuals with a violent criminal history.
Second, it only takes one bad actor, with the right plan, resources, and execution, to inflict devastation. It took years for the FBI to detect Tawhedi’s plot and then more months to catch him. How many other would-be terrorists are on the loose in America? And how many of them are law enforcement agencies able to track and capture?
In some nations around the world, violence and intimidation in elections are common, even expected — especially those with minimal history of fair and free elections. When America extends an unconditional invitation to residents of those countries to enter our country, we run the risk of elections in our country resembling the elections in theirs (it doesn’t take a voter registration card to intimidate poll-goers). This is obviously not in the best interest of America.
This is not to say that all immigrants are bad for America and our tradition of popular election, nor that everyone in foreign nations opposes free and fair elections. Rather, it suggests that America should discriminate between immigrants — not based upon any unreasonable categories, but based upon their goodwill toward our country and their willingness to abide by our laws. If an immigrant is glad to join American society, then America should be glad to have him. But if an immigrant hates America and contemplates violence against our people or our institutions, we shouldn’t let him into our country.
This should be common sense. And it is roughly what our current immigration law tries to achieve. Alas, the Biden-Harris administration has ignored that law and unwisely pursued a policy of allowing the maximum number of immigrants into our country, regardless of their intentions. This policy will not end well, and an ISIS terror plot in Oklahoma City on Election Day — though foiled, fortunately — is only the beginning.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-10-12 15:51:342024-10-12 15:51:34Afghan National in U.S. Plotted ISIS Terror Attack on Election Day
The biggest problem with America’s broken border policy is that it perfectly reflects the values of the Biden-Harris administration, an immigration expert told a group of Christian conservative leaders.
“They’ve said for three years now that they have designed an immigration system that comports with their values,” explained Chad Wolf, acting secretary the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration and now executive director of the America First Policy Institute, at the 2024 Pray Vote Stand Summit (PVSS) in Washington, D.C., last Saturday.
While a values-based immigration policy may sound appealing, especially to people of faith, Wolf told PVSS that the devil’s in the details. The Left’s anti-American “values” clash radically with the views of most Americans.
The Left’s first immigration-based “value is anyone and everyone should be able to come to the United States, full-stop,” said Wolf. If someone can reach American shores, they should be able to emigrate. Since America is a proposition nation — a “nation of immigrants” with no historic roots in Western Christian culture — the United States should serve as a home for anyone of any background or viewpoint.
Secondly, the Left believes that “anyone should be able to seek asylum here in the United States — and we may be the only country that people seek asylum in, which is a crazy notion. There’s a lot of other safe countries around the world that a lot of these illegal aliens actually travel through to get to the United States,” he said. Numerous alleged “refugees” from Nicaragua, Honduras, or Guatemala pass through Mexico en route to the United States. “Why aren’t you seeking asylum there?” asked Wolf. “They’re forum shopping. They want to come here to the United States for other reasons,” primarily for economic reasons, “and they’re using the asylum system to get there.”
Immigration experts have long documented the abuse of the asylum system, as Western liberals coach economic migrants on what to say in order to obtain asylum status, making them harder to remove.
The Left’s final values-based immigration policy, said Wolf, is that once illegal immigrants “get here, they shouldn’t be removed, that it’s okay that under almost no circumstance should they be removed from the United States.” You can see the results playing out today, he said. “There’s 1.5 million people with a final order of removal today who have said, ‘Nope. You know what, I’m not going to listen to that immigration judge. I’m just going to stay here in the United States.’ And we’re not removing them. There’s no deterrence in our immigration enforcement posture right now. And I think that needs to change, because otherwise, it’s going to continue to be abused.”
“Their values seem to be out of step with most Americans,” Wolf told PVSS. Indeed, polls show a majority of Americans favor mass deportations.
Instead, this administration has incentivized a mass influx of illegal immigrants, said Wolf. “During three-and-a-half to four years, you have about 12 million folks who have illegally come across that border: 10 million have been encountered, and about two million are what we call gotaways — these are folks that don’t come into contact with law enforcement. We don’t know who they are. We don’t know why they wanted to come to the United States. And most importantly, we don’t know where they are today. And this is only increasing.”
“It’s not because Congress passed any bill, because they didn’t. It’s because” the Biden-Harris administration “took certain actions that incentivized people to come here,” he said. “You saw about 94 executive actions taken by the Biden-Harris administration that caused this crisis. Now they have been in overdrive trying to explain that they didn’t cause the crisis, that it was either Republicans or it was the weather cycles, or it was all these other global migration … concerns or reasons, but it’s actually their actions that that” brought about the historic illegal immigration crisis.
“This is all by design. This isn’t because they’re incompetent. This isn’t because they’re bad at their job,” Wolf told the Christian conservative audience. “They have put a plan in place from day one, and they continue to execute that plan.”
The moderator, Jody Hice, senior vice president of Family Research Council, agreed U.S. immigration policy represents “a self-inflicted injury.”
FRC Action President Tony Perkins thanked Wolf for helping Americans in “accurately defining the problem.” He reminded Americans that “personnel is policy. We need to make sure we have the right people in place to have the right policies.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-10-11 00:51:492024-10-11 00:51:49Democrats’ Immigration Values ‘Out of Step with Most Americans’: Trump Border Official
