Romanian migrants who are in the country illegally, some of whom are known to have crossed the southern border, are committing crimes in several areas of the country, according to law enforcement alerts obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
A surge of Romanian illegal migrants has been recorded at both the southern and northern borders of the U.S., many of whom were apprehended and found to have criminal histories, Border Patrol officials told the DCNF.
“They all claim asylum/credible fear, just like everyone else. Hoping that we’ll process them and release them to the NGOs,” one Border Patrol official told the DCNF.
Romanian migrants in the country illegally, some of whom are known to have crossed the southern border, are suspected of crimes across the country, according to internal law enforcement alerts obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The law enforcement alerts, which span from Florida to Pennsylvania and New York, warn of Romanians who have committed financial crimes and are known to be in the country illegally, and have deportation orders. Border Patrol recorded 5,895 encounters of Romanian migrants in fiscal year 2022 at the southern border, up from 4,029 in fiscal year 2021 and 266 in fiscal year 2020, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.
When they have to report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Romanian migrants often give addresses of hotels or other temporary housing that make it impossible to track them, one agency official told the DCNF.
“Romanians are involved in a lot of fraud. To avoid detection, they tend to give temporary addresses and/or just quit reporting,” the ICE official, who is based on the west coast, said.
A local sheriff’s office in Florida sent out an alert in February seeking information on two suspects who crossed the southern border illegally from Romania, one of whom “completed a sleight of hand” by only paying for $3,600 of the $9,600 for the purchase of eight gold coins.
The two were later seen at another coin vendor in Florida.
“Subject crossed illegally through the southwest border and was subsequently apprehended by Border Patrol,” a note on the alert for the two suspects, who were both identified as Romanian, read.
In April, Florida law enforcement stopped a vehicle with two Romanian nationals they discovered were in the U.S. illegally who possessed “fraudulent passports, fraudulent credit cards, $4,000 in U.S. currency, covert cameras concealed to hide (for possible ATM PIN harvesting), (3) skimming devices, a thumb drive, and an ATM pin pad cling device,” an official alert stated.
A device seized from the vehicle possessed bank information of “thousands of victims.”
“Customs and Border Patrol placed an immigration detainer on the subjects and an FCIC/NCIC check confirmed that one of them has an active INTERPOL warrant out of Sweden for theft,” the alert states.
One senior Border Patrol official working along the southern border said many of them have criminal histories that mainly include theft, larceny, fraud, domestic violence and driving under the influence when they’re apprehended.
“They all have criminal records when they show up. Rarely single adults. They usually show up in family units, and it’s a pain in the ass too get approval for family separation, so that we can house, prosecute the offender,” the senior Border Patrol official told the DCNF.
“They all claim asylum/credible fear, just like everyone else. Hoping that we’ll process them and release them to the NGOs,” the official said.
A Border Patrol agent also working along the northern border, which has also experienced an uptick in Romanians illegally crossing, told the DCNF that many of them have “INTERPOL [International Criminal Police Organization] hits,” adding that those subjects are “removed.”
“Last one we caught had an asylum court date, but missed it because he decided to go back to Romania,” the agent said.
An international alert in February notified law enforcement of three Romanians with “open cases with ICE for deportation.” The three individuals were part of an operation to install “skimming devices” in Pennsylvania Walmart self-checkouts.
Yonkers Police arrested the group in New York, which also had “pawn records” showing they sold “numerous pieces of jewelry, to include a Rolex watch and gold coins,” the alert stated.
EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
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.com2023-06-06 00:51:402023-06-06 00:51:40Romanians Are Flooding The Border At Record Numbers And Committing Fraud Across The U.S.
The terrorist who killed three IDF soldiers on the Egyptian border was carrying a Quran, knife, and six magazines.
By: Israel National News Jun 4, 2023:
New details are coming out about the attack on the Egyptian border early Saturday morning, which left three IDF soldiers, Ori Yitzhak Illouz, Lia Bin-Nun, and Ohad Dahan, dead.
Among the items the terrorist had on his person was a Quran, which may be a sign that he had become radicalized. The IDF estimates that that drove him to carry out the attack.
Galei Tzahal reported that a knife was found on the terrorist, with which he cut the zip ties that held the gate he entered closed. He was also found to have six weapon magazines, showing that the attack was well-planned.
Maariv published details about the terrorist’s plan of action: he walked a distance of about six kilometers (approx. 3.7 miles) from the installment where he was based, climbed a cliff, and arrived at the border fence while carrying a backpack full of gear. Using one of the knives in his possession, he opened a gate on the fence, which was meant to be opened quickly and was closed using only a zip tie, and approached the soldiers who did not notice him.
At this point, the terrorist opened fire at them and killed Lia Bin-Nun and Ori Yitzhak Illouz. The soldiers at the guard post were shot at around 6:00 AM, while the last time they were heard from was shortly after 4:00. A few minutes before 9:00 that morning, the platoon commander arrived to switch shifts and discovered the gruesome scene.
It was also found that at around 6:00 AM, an additional guard post in the area reported hearing gunshots, but the report did not receive any special attention since the sound of gunshots is commonplace in the area. Once the two bodies were discovered, a large number of forces were called to the area, at the same time, the terrorist was identified in Israeli territory. The inquiry into the incident found that during the firefight in which SSgt. Ohad Dahan was killed the terrorist was the first to fire.
The Brigade Commander’s mobile command center closed in on the terrorist after he was identified by a drone, exited the vehicle, and the terrorist opened fire from a distance of a few hundred meters. The initial fire hit Ohad, and according to IDF sources, the fire was not precise.
Three Israeli soldiers were killed today in a terror attack on the border with Egypt by an Egyptian policeman who infiltrated into Israel. A joint investigation with Egypt is currently underway.
The 3 soldiers have been named as: Staff Sgt. Ori Yitzhak Iluz (20) Staff Sgt. Ohad… pic.twitter.com/NTUxfReV0W
🇮🇱🇪🇬Updates about the terror attack on the Israel-Egypt border:
The Egyptian terrorist was carrying a knife and six firearm cartridges.
The Israeli commander Ohad Dahan was driving in a military vehicle to research, when the surveillance drone alarmed about the suspicious… pic.twitter.com/WVgMClSlhg
StopAntisemitism is heartbroken to hear of a terror attack on the Israel – Egypt border in which an Egyptian policeman infiltrated into Israel and murdered three IDF soldiers, including 19 year old Leah Ben Nun.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-06-05 11:51:592023-06-05 11:51:59Armed With Quran, an AK-47 and 6 Magazines, Jihadi Murders Three Israeli Soldiers
Elon Musk shared a Federalist article on Twitter this week that detailed how “Zuckbucks” were used to influence the outcome of the 2020 election, and leftists are livid.
On Tuesday, the Twitter CEO linked to an October 2021 article, written by Federalist contributor William Doyle, that examines how Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave hundreds of millions of dollars to nonprofits such as the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) and the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR) leading up to the 2020 presidential contest. CTCL and CEIR then poured these “Zuckbucks” into local election offices in battleground states around the country to change how elections were administered, such as by expanding unsupervised election protocols like mail-in voting and the use of ballot drop boxes.
Notably, Doyle’s article examines how these grants were heavily skewed toward Democrat-majority counties, essentially making it a massive, privately funded Democrat get-out-the-vote operation. Organizations such as the Capital Research Center have also released detailed analyses on the partisan distribution of these funds.
While Musk simply referred to the article as “interesting,” that was apparently too much for Washington Post columnist Philip Bump to handle. In response, Bump penned an article titled, “Musk shares baseless election claim with millions of Twitter users,” in which he attempted to smear the Twitter CEO and discredit The Federalist’s article.
“This is a common way in which Musk elevates right-wing rhetoric. He’ll often engage with fringe voices by declaring their commentary to be “concerning” — suggesting it’s just something worth mulling over,” complained Bump in melodramatic fashion.
But then Bump openly admits the purpose of “Zuckbucks” wasn’t to help election offices “promote safe and reliable voting” during the Covid outbreak, as CTCL and CEIR originally claimed, but to increase voter turnout in Democrat-majority areas.
Much of the analysis in the Federalist article centers on the idea that these investments were larger in more-Democratic counties, using that as a peg for the argument that the investments were partisan and critical to Biden’s success.
But that argument is easily countered. CTCL’s investments were often in heavily Democratic areas — because those areas often have lower turnout rates. If you want to increase turnout, the smartest place to try to do so is places where turnout is lowest. In the United States, that’s often lower-income communities and communities that have high populations of Black and Hispanic residents, two groups that often vote heavily Democratic.
In trying to explain away the disparities in “Zuckbucks” distribution, Bump instead admits a Democrat get-out-the-vote effort is exactly what happened. While Zuckerberg’s donations to CTCL and CEIR were marketed as just a good-faith initiative to ensure Covid didn’t disrupt local election administration, House Republicans later discovered that less than 1 percent of CTCL’s 2020 funds were spent on personal protective equipment.
“The argument has gone from: Private funding from CTCL for election administration offices was only meant to help the elections run smoothly,” to “CTCL poured money into Democratic strongholds to boost turnout and that’s a good thing,” tweeted Jason Snead, the executive director of the Honest Elections Project.
Whether they realize it or not, Bump and the Post are admitting the main purpose of “Zuckbucks” was to boost turnout among voters in Democrat strongholds. It’s a remarkable fact that, for once, the Post got right.
***** This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.
TAKE ACTION
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2023-06-05 02:28:002023-06-05 02:28:00WaPo Accidentally Admits ‘Zuckbucks’ Were Used To Turn Out Likely-Democrat Voters In 2020
The World Health Organization (WHO), which isbeholden to and enamored of the genocidal Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and whose horrendous advice triggered the destructive COVID-19 measures such as masking and lockdowns, has more awful advice for you. According to the WHO, “sexuality education starts from birth.”
It’s never too early to teach your infant about sex and how they should chop off body parts! And this is the organization to which governments (including the Biden administration) want to givecomplete control over pandemic responses in future?
Notice the mention in the screenshot below of “early childhood masturbation” and “gender identity.”
“[The UK Telegraph, May 13] Outrage over WHO advice on sexuality for infants
Guide argues that ‘sexuality education starts from birth’
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is under pressure to withdraw guidance for schools recommending that toddlers ‘ask questions about sexuality’ and ‘explore gender identities.’”
“They destroyed my life for a lie—now they’re threatening me with 24 years potential prison over January 6. But it’s not just me on trial, not just me they want to crush—it’s all of us.” — John Strand, Artist • Activist • American.
If you have not heard the story of John Strand then please visit his website to understand why he is being targeted. Watch what really happened on January 6th, 2021 at the Capitol.
What happened to him can happen to all of us. #We’reNext!
On September 27th, 2022, a Washington, D.C. jury declared me guilty of all five J6 charges brought against me by the federal government.
I will appeal every charge.
I am completely innocent of these charges, both as a legal matter and as a moral matter before God.
I know this with absolutely certainty, because the law requires mens rea[sic] to convict a person of these charges; I alone know my true intent and my state of mind during the events of January 6th, and they were never inappropriate or criminal. As I testified at my trial, my sole purpose for being in D.C. that week and in the vicinity of the Capitol that day was to protect and support my employer in fulfilling her prearranged and permitted speaking obligations.
I did not condone or encourage any of the violent or criminal activities at the time, and now that I have learned much more specifically of the trauma and damages inflicted on brave officers and other innocent persons, I am even more deeply grieved and angered by the terrible actions of some that caused so much pain and destruction for so many. This unlawful and inexcusable behavior greatly undermined the noble pursuit of upholding the rule of law, which was the primary purpose of many prior protests in 2020 leading up to January 6, and of the protest scheduled on that day as well.
I am grateful to the judge presiding over my case for handling the courtroom in a fair and reasonable manner, and for kindly permitting me to remain on pre-trial release conditions pending my sentencing.
It is with immense gratitude that I acknowledge the Herculean efforts of Mr. Stephen Brennwald and my entire legal defense team, as well as the fervent prayers and support of my family and many American citizens across the nation. I humbly request your continued prayers as I follow God’s calling in my life to stand for truth and pursue justice, both on my own behalf and for every American.
To God be the glory.
🇺🇸 #WeAreJ6
THE TRUTH IS ON TRIAL
John writes,
Corruption and selective prosecution are the hallmarks of a totalitarian regime; they excuse their behavior by classifying it as “lawful”…but they arbitrarily determine when, where, and who to apply only those laws that advance their agenda, and they maliciously change and control both definitions and access to information. Thanks to Tucker Carlson, we can see they knowingly lied, and actively hid exculpatory evidence–an explicit and outrageous violation of the law.
In reality, this is a complete subversion of the rule of law, violating the sacred Constitutional principle of Equal Protection. They operate using lies and confusion to keep the public compliant—and to crush any dissent.
RULE OF LAW IS ON TRIAL
J6 is just the most recent political opportunity instigated and weaponized to target anyone departing from the regime’s approved narrative and their ruthless agenda, and to further terrorize and demoralize the public into instinctive self-censorship—intimidating them from even the thought of exercising independence and free speech.
FREE SPEECH IS ON TRIAL
Sadly, it has largely succeeded—most Americans, even those generally committed to classical values and Constitutional integrity, have wilted into silence and apathetic disassociation, abandoning the hundreds of innocent citizens caught in the tyrannical machinery. Most defendants have succumbed to the intense pressures of a completely biased and weaponized DOJ, accepting abhorrent plea deals under threat of certain conviction by an utterly dishonest and politicized kangaroo court circus.
IT MUST STOP.
Which means, it must BE stopped, by a choice—an intentional decision to disrupt the endless momentum of the runaway totalitarian bureaucratic state.
Amen. May God protect John and the many others who have been falsely imprisoned for simply attending a mostly peaceful rally in Washington, D.C. on January 6th, 2021.
The only violence done on J6 was done by the Capitol police and others who killed Ashly Babbit. This violence continues and is aimed at “we the people” by our own government.
Who will speak for we the people?
The only way to free John and the other J6 political prisoners is to elect a patriot to become president.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-06-04 23:51:142023-06-04 23:51:14J6 Patriot John Strand’s Story of Persecution and Prosecution for Doing Nothing Wrong
J6 Unmasked: Silent Capitol Police security footage altered by adding audio from another source during a montage that aired at the select committee’s first primetime hearing last June.
By: John Solomon and Nicholas Ballasy, Just The News, June 2, 2023:
The Democrat-led House Select Committee to Investigate Jan. 6 doctored a key piece of its evidence, adding audio to silent U.S. Capitol Police security footage used to create a dramatic video montage for the opening of its primetime hearings last summer, according to a Just the News review of the original raw footage and interviews.
In 2021, the Muslim Brotherhood praised Democrats for siding with jihad terrorists against Zionist attacks. Their gratitude wasn’t far fetched. For the first time, Gallup has found this year that “Democrats’ sympathies in Middle East shift to Palestinians.” In fact, the Palestinian “resistance” has become a key element of the Democrat platform.
To reflect that fact, Jill Biden, on her first trip to the region as First Lady, includedJordan, Egypt, and Morocco on her tour agenda, but she snubbed Israel.
The Zionist Organization of America has blasted the Biden Administration’s “phony, dangerous antisemitism strategy” that the ZOA says enables antisemitism.
First Lady Jill Biden plans to avoid Israel during her trip to the Middle East, North Africa, and the Iberian Peninsula.
In a Tuesday thread on Twitter, the president’s wife revealed that she is visiting the Muslim-majority countries “to build on our longstanding partnerships and meet with young people across the region” to discuss the future.
She highlighted attending the wedding of Jordanian King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein’s son, Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah, who is set to marry Saudi-born Rajwa Al Saif on June 1 at Zahran Palace.
Jill Biden’s trip will also include Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, and Portugal, The Associated Press reported.
“Government to government, people to people, and heart to heart, we will continue to strengthen our relationships in the region and reaffirm our commitment to the future of young people around the world,” the first lady stated….
EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-06-04 10:51:422023-06-04 10:51:42Jill Biden Snubs Israel on First Visit to Middle East as First Lady
That is the big picture, the big takeaway so far from the war in Ukraine.
After fifteen months of war, Russia has failed in all of its war goals. It failed to topple the government of Ukraine. It failed to take Kiev. It failed to extend by much the territory it already held in the Donbas region. It failed to take Odessa. And the few cities the Russians did manage to take are today in ruins (witness: Mariopol and Bakhmut).
The Russians also failed diplomatically to deter NATO from coming to Ukraine’s aide.
If Putin was seeking to prevent NATO expansion to the East – as he has always said – then he failed big time, because NATO is now knocking on his doorstep all up and down the Finnish corridor in ways unthinkable just a few years ago.
If Putin was hoping to deter NATO from aiding Ukraine for fear of escalation – possibly, nuclear escalation – he also failed.
First, it was long-range HIMARS rockets. If you send them to Ukraine, we could go nuclear.
We sent them to Ukraine and Putin did not go nuclear.
Then it was Patriot missile batteries. If you send them to Ukraine, we could go nuclear.
We sent them to Ukraine and Putin did not go nuclear.
Then it was Leopard tanks, and artillery, and Armored Fighting Vehicles, and no Russian escalation. Today it is F-16s, and they are on the way.
NATO does not seem to fear Russian nuclear threats any more. That’s a pretty big strategic fail on Putin’s part.
But is Putin willing to take a deal? First, someone has got to offer him one. Biden and the chicken hawks in Congress (think: Lindsay Graham) have to offer him a deal. And they aren’t in the mood. They still talk of total victory for Ukraine. They still dream of fighting Russia to the blood of the last Ukrainian. It’s pretty despicable, actually.
I discuss this and French President Macron’s comic efforts to dance across the world stage, and increasing Chinese security paranoia, on this week’s Prophecy Today Weekend.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-06-02 21:52:142023-06-02 21:52:14PODCAST: Russia Has Failed
Biden and the Democrats are funding the murder of Jews.
The Muslim terrorist campaign, funded by foreign aid from the United States, continues. The latest casualty is Meir Tamari.
(JNS) – A 32-year-old Israeli man was killed on Tuesday in a terrorist shooting near the Jewish community of Hermesh in northwestern Samaria.
The victim, identified as Meir Tamari, sustained a bullet wound to the upper body, medics said. He received treatment at the scene before being evacuated by helicopter to Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera, where he was pronounced dead.
Tamari is survived by his wife and two children, ages one and three.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the shooting.
Meir Tamari is the 20th victim of Islamic terrorism in Israel so far this year. That tops the combined number of Israeli deaths in all of 2019 and 2020 under Trump. At this rate, there will likely be more Israelis killed in 2023 than during the entire Trump administration.
As I wrote earlier this year, this is due to the Biden administration’s decision to provide political support and funding for the terrorists.
In Feb 2019, President Trump’s total cutoff of aid became official. That year, 10 Israelis or people in Israeli controlled areas were killed in stabbings, shootings, rocket and other attacks, down from 12 the previous year, and 15 in 2017, and 16 in 2016.
In 2020 however only three Israelis were killed.
More murders comes down to more money.
The Trump administration cut off aid to the PLO’s Palestinian Authority and Congress passed the Taylor Force Act banning funds from going to finance Pay-to-Slay.
Throughout all this, PLO leadership have been consistent in refusing to stop financing terrorism.
“We will neither reduce nor prevent [payment] of allowances to the families of martyrs, prisoners and released prisoners, as some seek, and if we had only a single penny left, we would pay it to families of the martyrs and prisoners,” Abbas had bragged. By “martyrs”, he meant those Islamic terrorists who were killed while carrying out terrorist attacks.
Despite this, the Biden administration had restored aid and rebuilt diplomatic relations. Biden and Blinken have met with Abbas. And while they have attacked Israel over everything from letting Jews pray on the Temple Mount (due to Jewish prayers offending Muslim sensibilities) to democratic judicial reform that will limit the unilateral authority of pro-terrorist judges, Biden and Blinken have had nothing to say to the terrorists about the program funding the murder of Jews.
Terrorists are paid based on the length of their prison sentence. That means successful killers can earn $2,000 to $3,000 a month in a part of the world where the average salary is around $700 a month. It’s five times more profitable to be a terrorist than a teacher.
The Palestinian Authority calls for the murder of Jews, praises it and then rewards it.
And the Biden administration rewards the Palestinian Authority.
In a statement carried by Palestinian media, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group, loosely linked to the Palestinian Authority’s ruling Fatah party, claimed responsibility for the deadly attack.
“We affirm that this operation and others will not be the final response to our martyrs,” the statement read.
Biden and the Democrats are funding the murder of Jews.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-06-01 08:51:532023-06-01 08:51:53More Israelis Have Been Killed in 5 Months of Biden Than 2 Years of Trump
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is saying that the state will not enforce a resolution that has been passed in the state legislature banning electronic voting machines.
Arizona Sen. Anthony Kern introduced the resolution to ensure that “no voting system or component or subcomponent of a voting system or component… may be used or purchased as the primary method for casting, recording and tabulating ballots used in any election held in this state for federal office” unless certain transparency measures were introduced.
The measure was approved by the Arizona House and Senate, much to the approval of patriotic Arizona Sen. Wendy Rogers, who touted the resolution on many different conservative radio shows and podcasts on Monday.
However, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes issued a statement claiming that the government would not enforce the resolution and continue business as usual for elections in years to come.
“Senate Concurrent Resolution 1037, which expresses a desire to restrict the use of certain electronic voting machines, is non-binding and does not have the force of law. Election equipment must be certified by the federal and state government by specific requirements outlined in federal and state law,” Fontes said in his statement.
“That certification process is being followed in Arizona and all applicable election equipment being used in Arizona is certified. If those requirements or certification process were to be changed, it would require a regular bill to be passed by the legislature and signed by the governor—which is not the case for this non-binding resolution. We defer to the Attorney General’s office on all other legal questions,” he added.
Big League Politicshas reported on how a majority of Arizona voters believe that fraud occurred affected the results of the 2022 midterm elections:…..
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2023-06-01 02:26:002023-06-01 02:26:00Arizona Secretary of State Says Resolution Banning the Use of Voting Machines Will Not Be Enforced
Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz will retire next month, according to an internal agency email obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Ortiz will retire from the federal government effective June 30, according to the email. The Border Patrol Chief has overseen the agency during record surges in illegal immigration, with Border Patrol agents recording more than 2.2 million illegal migrant encounters in fiscal year 2022 at the southern border, according to agency data.
“After a 32-year Border Patrol career spanning multiple Sectors, HQ tours, and overseas assignments in Afghanistan, I have decided to retire from federal service on June 30th,” Ortiz wrote in the email.
Multiple agents confirmed the authenticity of the email to the DCNF, and that Ortiz would step down June 30.
“Serving as your Chief has been one of the greatest honors and privileges I have had and please know I will always champion this agency, its mission, and the people who make the Border Patrol everything that it is,” Ortiz wrote.
So far in fiscal year 2023, agents have recorded more than 1.2 million encounters.
Border Patrol agents have also apprehended 196 individuals whose names appear on the terror watchlist between October 2021 and April 2023.
Amid the influx of migrants at the southern border, Ortiz testified that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) lacked “operational control” of the area, contradicting DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
“Chief Ortiz has been a great leader of the men and women of the United States Border Patrol for the past two years, and at every level of the organization throughout his three decades of service. He embodies the core values of vigilance, service to country, and integrity, as well as the Border Patrol’s motto: honor first. His steady leadership and operational expertise have greatly benefited the agency, the Department, and the nation — and will continue to influence the Border Patrol well into the future,” Mayorkas said of Ortiz’s retirement in a statement shared with the DCNF.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
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.com2023-05-31 08:51:172023-05-31 08:51:17Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz To Retire
As the mullah’s brutality grows more gruesome and widespread, Biden moves to reward the villiany.
The Biden Administration continues it’s immoral appeasement of Iran. They are apparently close to authorizing a deal that would release billions of dollars of Iran’s frozen assets in Iraq and South Korea. Once received by Iran’s leaders, this money will be used to modernize Iran’s military, fund more terrorism, and dominate it’s people even more. How long before Israel is forced to take military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities? The Biden Administration is a total disgrace.
Talks between Iran and the US on the release of Tehran’s frozen assets could result in a deal soon, a source with direct knowledge of the talks told Iran International. Apparently, the talks that have made progress focused on Iranian funds held in Iraq and South Korea. The money in Iraqi banks could be as much as $10 billion or more by most recent estimates mentioned by Iranian officials. Iraq imports natural gas and electricity from Iran but is barred by US sanctions to make dollar transfers to Tehran.
South Korea holds $7 billion, which it owes for importing Iranian oil prior to full US sanctions imposed in May 2019.
The Biden administration only has one Iran policy – to support the regime in its effort to become a nuclear power and a regional hegemon. Everything else is a deliberate distraction. https://t.co/BRPEo7Th7e
#Iran’s Regime’s New Hijab Bill Seeks to Silence Women
This bill is among a wide range of measures the regime has taken to crack down on women, who have played a leading role in nationwide protests in recent years.https://t.co/jXSSnshj63
Iranian-born model Mahlagha Jaberi arrived to Cannes Film Festival wearing a dress that resembled a noose – to draw attention to awful executions taking place in Iran.
More than 200 people were executed in Iran this year alone.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-05-30 19:51:102023-05-30 19:51:10BRUTAL: Biden Regime To Reach a Deal ‘Soon’ To Release Iran’s Frozen Funds As Public Executions Rise
Every day, innocent children are trapped in the horrifying world of trafficking and exploitation. It’s a grim reality that’s unfolding in our very own neighborhoods. But together, we have the power to end this.
We’re excited to announce our upcoming counter-trafficking operations which aim to strike at the heart of child exploitation networks.
This mission is vast, the stakes are high, and we need your help to make it a success.
Stay tuned for details after the operations!
We Can’t Do This Alone!
Can we count on your support for our upcoming operation in the USA?
We are asking those who are able to donateany amount you’re able!
On average, 1 operation will put 20 bad guys behind bars.
On average, 1 child predator will abuse 70 children.
Left unchallenged, that’s about 1,400 children that would be abused by those 20 bad guys.
The harrowing reality is that child trafficking is one of the fastest-growing crimes in the world, and it’s happening right here, in our country. Every day, countless innocent children are lured into this vicious trap of exploitation and abuse. It is our duty to protect them, and we need your help to do it.
Our Solution:
We’re preparing for 2 upcoming missions in partnership with local law enforcement agencies to conduct counter-trafficking operations targeting child predators and traffickers. Our goal is to apprehend and bring to justice those who exploit children and shatter the illicit networks that enable these horrific crimes.
But this mission is unlike any we’ve undertaken before. The scope is larger, the stakes are higher, and the cost is greater. To make this mission a success, we need the support of generous individuals like you.
How You Can Help:
Your generous donation will provide us with the resources we need to:
Train law enforcement and NGO partners in the latest counter-trafficking tactics
Develop and use advanced technology to track and apprehend predators
Support the legal processes that ensure these criminals face justice
Conduct awareness campaigns to educate the public about the prevalence of child trafficking in the USA, what to look for, and how to protect children and prevent future exploitation
Join Us in the Fight Against Child Trafficking in the USA
This is more than a call to donate – this is a call to action. A call to stand up against child exploitation, to shield our children from harm, and to ensure that every child has the chance to live freely and safely.
Your donation today could mean a safer tomorrow for countless children. Please click here to “Donate” and make your contribution.
With your help, we can bring an end to child exploitation. Stand with us, support our volunteer work, and together let’s protect our children.
*Donations to Vets4ChildRescue.org are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.*
Breitbart’sAshley Oliver on May 11, 2023 published the following,
The House passed a comprehensive border package Thursday, the same day the Biden administration strips border officials of one of the last tools to stem waves of illegal migration.
The vote for H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act of 2023, passed 219 to 213 with no Democrat support. Two Republicans, Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and John Duarte (R-CA), defected.
“This bill secures the border from President Biden’s record crossings, record carelessness, and record chaos,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said at a press conference after the bill’s passage.
The legislation comes as the already overwhelmed southern border experiences heightened levels of disorder because of the looming end to Title 42, a Trump-era policy border officials relied on to quickly expel illegal migrants in the name of coronavirus.
The policy is expiring when the declared national public health emergency expires Thursday night.
“It’s going to be chaotic for a while,” Biden admitted in a press conference Tuesday, claiming the administration was doing all they could to address what is expected to be a rush of hundreds of thousands migrants who have been waiting in Mexico.
Field reports from agents across the southern border verify the enormity of this tidal wave of illegal aliens coming now. Huge groups are overwhelming stations and it is completely out of control. Massive releases beginning and it’s going to get much worse.
Thanks Biden.
— Border Patrol Union – NBPC (@BPUnion) May 10, 2023
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-05-30 18:51:212023-05-30 18:51:21The House Passed a Sweeping Border Bill to Stop ‘Invasion’ on May 11th, 2023. Where does it stand today?
The progressive and now radical left has tightened its control over the political life of America, especially since the highly suspicious elections of 2020 and 2022. The most astute conservative thinkers, however, have long recognized that theleft’s conquest of culture came before its political conquest, best represented in Breitbart’s phrase “Politics is downstream of culture.”
Academia, Hollywood, the corporate media, the judiciary, and now the military are firmly in the grip of leftists and their repugnant anti-American ideology. Chronologically, higher education was the first to fall. Since the 1960s, colleges and universities have been turning out batch after batch of indoctrinated young adults, who then scatter into various professions and infect them with the pathology now called ‘wokism’.
In response to this, some conservatives seem to advocate an abandonment approach: don’t send your children to college, don’t let them watch Hollywood movies, don’t shop in stores owned by woke corporations. As a temporary strategy, this is just fine. I support people not attending progressive and far leftist colleges or watching stupid movies, most of which have no aesthetic or cultural merit anyway, or using the services of wacky-woke corporations. But this is not a long-term strategy.
The progressive and radical left have been playing their game of cultural conquest since the 1930s. Their strategy is paying off royally. Regarding academia, this is what Antonio Gramsci called “the long march of the Intellectuals”. The left seemed to understand, way before Andrew Breitbart came along, that if you control culture, you’ll inevitably come to control politics. That said, it must be acknowledged that in some cases our institutions may not be reclaimable. The 2024 election will show us whether political institutions are a lost cause or not.
The point here is this: Conservatives cannot simply extract themselves from cultural institutions in the hope of remaining healthy and unaffected by the godless and un-American woke culture. The reason is simple: if the left controls our cultural institutions, it creates and distributes culture.
In some cases, I believe the strategy must be a wholesale replacement of cultural institutions. For example, citizen journalism replacing corporate media. Simply stop watching and reading any form of corporate media and engaging progressive social media platforms. Seek and consume honest and ethical citizen journalism of which there is much to choose from. This, at the moment at least, seems to be working pretty well.
A majority of Americans are repulsed by the obvious ideological agenda of the mainstream media and are turning to other, less dishonest sources.
Other institutions, like Hollywood or higher education, are more difficult. Conservatives cannot, for purely practical reasons, create an alternative to Hollywood or higher education which will be equally as viable as honest citizen journalism competing with and displacing corporate media. Interestingly, though, crowd funding the series The Chosen and the movie The Jesus Revolution has been spectacularly successful and indicates a broad-based appetite for cultural renewal among many Americans and in other countries. Similarly, the huge movement away from public school (and teacher union) indoctrination of America’s children by every socioeconomic parental cohort speaks volumes of how culture can be reformed and recaptured in the American tradition.
So, what are we to do for long term victory in the battle for the soul of America? Strangely, I think the answer lies in a reversal of Breitbart’s formula: culture is (now) downstream of politics. It’s the classic formula of every totalitarian regime – and yes, that’s where we are headed. Take control of government by strong political victory, especially the federal executive branch and its administrative leviathan.
If you control government as the radical left now does, you control funding for education and many other cultural institutions. That translates to increased funding for woke curricula, clubs, and activism in both American universities and international universities (such as $787 million American dollars for gender studies at Kabul University). If you control government, you can weaponize the Justice Department to go after your political opponents and prosecute certain causes (such as the pro-life movement and parents against the sexualization of their children in public schools under Biden).
The left has unquestionably made culture a form of politics. No longer is culture or its creations a space to reflect on, study, or experience the sources of both our shared humanity and our shared citizenship. Nor will it ever be with a massive, censorship-driven, radical leftist government at the center of society. Culture is now an authoritarian tool for promoting woke politics aiming for tyrannical control over this nation’s citizens.
Winning the 2024 presidential election (and the United States Congress) is the only formula for taking back the culture.If the left wins in 2024, it will continue to make all forms of culture simply a form of politics using an increasingly weaponized administrative state under its control. Of course, I’m not advocating that we take back the White House and Congress to conduct a sort of reverse-conquest of cultural institutions. I don’t believe we need to, since the majority of Americans reject this obscene woke ideology and retain the American values that founded the Republic.
The work of the next conservative government, possibly under the leadership of Trump, will be to cleanse the government of corruption and remove the government from where it ought not to be: people’s homes, schools, churches, and social media platforms. Imagine, for example, what parents might do in reforming their school systems without a weaponized Justice Department labeling them “domestic terrorists” and threatening to pursue legal action against them. Take our government back, reign in the corruption, and letthe American people pour into our cultural institutions and reform them without fear of a weaponized ruling class now threatening our God-given rights and Constitutional system.
TAKE ACTION
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2023-05-30 02:30:002023-05-30 02:30:00Why Politics is More Important than Culture Right Now
Several authors of a Soros-funded Penn Biden Center report advocating for increasing the number of refugees allowed into the country now work in the Biden administration, handling immigration and national security policy.
The Penn Biden Center and the National Conference on Citizenship published a 2020 report, which was funded by a $259,050 grant from Open Society Foundations, recommending increasing the number of refugees permitted to come to the U.S. and easing restrictions on refugee eligibility, actions the White House has since taken. The report was led by Ariana Berengaut, who now serves as senior adviser to national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and Eric Hysen, who was sworn in as chief information officer (CIO) for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in February 2021; Rosanna Kim, who serves as senior adviser for the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) since January 2021, also contributed to the report.
Soros, a major donor to left-wing causes and candidates, founded Open Society Foundations and remains a major funder of the organization.
Of the report’s recommendations highlighting how the U.S. government should expand the refugee system, several proposals have been implemented during the authors’ tenures in the Biden administration, including increasing cooperation with the United Nations (UN) to work with the U.S. to bring in more refugees, increasing the number of Latin American and Caribbean refugees and expanding refugee processing in the Western hemisphere.
For instance, the report recommended raising the refugee cap to 125,000, which President Joe Biden later did in fiscal years 2022 and 2023. The Trump administration had previously slashed the refugee cap to 15,000, a historic low for the U.S. government, which Biden increased to 62,500 in fiscal year 2021.
“The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) is at a crossroads. Under the Trump Administration, years of assault on the program have slashed admissions to historic lows, effectively eviscerating a bipartisan tradition of extending a lifeline to the world’s most vulnerable people. If a new president is sworn into office in January 2021, he will likely arrive with a mandate to significantly increase refugee admissions levels,” a summary of the report stated.
Consistent with the report’s recommendation, DHS and the State Department, during Hysen and Kim’s tenures, jointly expanded “processing of refugees from the Western hemisphere” by recently announcing the creation of processing centers in Latin America ahead of the end of Title 42, a Trump-era border policy, on May 11. The centers, which have UN officials working there, determine whether a migrant is eligible for refugee status in either the U.S., Canada or Spain.
The Biden White House also raised the number of Latin American and Caribbean refugees the U.S. would accept to 15,000 in fiscal years 2022 and 2023.
“Under the Obama Administration, the average size of the LAC regional cap was roughly 4,400 with projected arrivals consistently falling significantly short (in FY16, a cap of 3,000 was set with only 1,500 refugees projected to arrive). A new administration should significantly raise the regional LAC cap for admissions as an early demonstration of U.S. commitment to addressing the magnitude and severity of protection needs in the region, particularly in response to refugees fleeing the Northern Triangle countries and Venezuela,” the report stated.
Moreover, the White House restarted the Central American Minors Program, which the report requested, to allow children living in Central America to seek refugee status and live in the U.S. in March 2021. In April, DHS announced that it’s expanding the program to allow certain previous program applicants to reapply.
The White House, the National Security Council’s office, DHS, Hysen and the State Department didn’t respond to requests for comment.
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https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-05-29 17:51:212023-05-29 17:51:21Soros Funded A Biden Center Report On Letting More Refugees Into The U.S. Some Of Its Authors Now Work For Biden
The war in Ukraine, brutally slogging along some 5,000 miles from the U.S., involves another people but it serves as a reminder to Americans of what it takes to keep one’s country safe, free, and prosperous. It also reminds us that there are dangers in this world that can only be stopped by people willing to put themselves in harm’s way to protect the rest of us.
People are the heart of a nation’s strength, especially those comparatively few who step forward to serve their community and their country in military service. Wars are rather rare, but the nation’s future can hang in the balance when war comes and the loss of life that results in defeating an enemy can number in the thousands, sometimes the tens of thousands.
Our history is punctuated with such crises and sacrifices. Citizen-patriots rose to the challenge of securing America’s birth nearly 250 years ago, with some 8,000 new Americans giving their all to defend our fledgling republic.
The Civil War, two world wars, operations against terrorists who have attacked America at home and Americans abroad, and wars to protect U.S. interests not just in our hemisphere but also in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, have resulted in the loss of nearly 700,000 Americans.
These men and women did not seek death; it came to them through their service. Their motivations included protecting the lives of those they loved; defending their homeland that has provided opportunity and freedom previously unknown in history; and facing dangers loyally alongside their brothers and sisters with whom they trained, deployed, and surged into combat as they answered their nation’s call.
These warriors were someone’s son or daughter; they might have been a husband or wife, father or mother, sister or brother. They were surely friends. They meant something to someone, and their loss struck deep to those whose lives they touched. These realities are why we have memorials to the fallen; cemeteries dedicated to their internment; poems, books, songs, and speeches written in their honor; and specific occasions, like Memorial Day, set aside on which to reflect on all of this.
This Memorial Day, take a moment to think about what our country would be like without the sacrifice made by those who ensured our birth as a nation, who maintained our union, and who have defended our homeland and way of life across two and a half centuries.
Many people serve in a vast number of ways. But some have served to the point of making the ultimate sacrifice. Remembering them is the point of Memorial Day…..
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2023-05-29 02:32:002023-05-29 02:32:00In Praise of Americans Who Have Given Their All
Our antennas are hot wired into identifying who is good for us and who is against us. Gelman is not in the good for us category.
Susie Gelman is absolutely the wrong candidate for US Ambassador to Israel.
Ambassador to the Palestinian Authority maybe, but not to Israel.
In her role as chair of the Israel Policy Forum (someone will have to explain to me how she ever got that position) Gelman professed to love Israel as she works tirelessly against the best interests of Israel.
Israel Policy Forum, like JStreet, attempts to impose left-wing radical policies on Israel. Susie Gelman embodies their unacceptable ideas.
She has worked to undermine the current Bibi government which she views as “extremist.”
Gelman has called Israel’s Independence Day as “Nakba Day.”
How can someone who wrote in 2018 that the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem was “the highest level of brazen partisanship in U.S.-Israel relations since Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress in 2015 in which he expressed his opposition to the Iran nuclear deal,” even agree to accept the position sit in that embassy as the US Ambassador to Israel?
That would be the height of personal and political hypocrisy by Susie Gelman.
It would also indicate to Israel that we have an American enemy sitting in our capital.
In her role as Ambassador to Israel she is likely to implement the Biden administration’s intention to “provide 5,000 Palestinians with commando training in Jordan and then deploy them to northern Samaria, and perhaps the South Hebron Hills.”
I live in Netanya very close to the Mediterranean Sea and I look at those South Hebron Hills from my living room and from my study, the place where I wrote this report. If I can see them, American trained Palestinian gunmen can see me and my hometown.
Netanya is a town that has a tragic history of foolish American policies imposed on Israel and, as one of the founders of the Netanya Terror Victims organization, I say never again.
Our antennas are hot wired into identifying who is good for us and who is against us, and Gelman does not fit into the good for us category.
Wealthy Gelman and her husband have established a foundation that funds anti-Israel leftist causes. Her money has gotten her positions of influence and power within the Democrat party hierarchy.
As David Greenfield, researcher, and respected journalist, summarized, Gelman, sitting in her role in Jerusalem, would be in a position to wage diplomatic war against Israel.
If Biden or Blinken nominate Gelman to this role it will be perceived as a provocative act against the elected government of Israel.
Susie Gelman is absolutely the wrong candidate to be the next US Ambassador to Israel.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-05-28 15:51:222023-05-28 15:51:22NO to Gelman as U.S. Ambassador to Israel
WASHINGTON, DC — Warning against unconstitutional power grabs and overreaches by the IRS, The Rutherford Institute has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to restrict the tax agency’s authority to carry out warrantless searches of innocent taxpayers’ bank accounts and financial records as part of its efforts to identify and pursue the funds of associated family members and friends with delinquent taxes.
In an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court in Polselli v. IRS, The Rutherford Institute and Cato Institute argue that the sweeping investigatory power wielded by the IRS—to circumvent the Fourth Amendment by carrying out warrantless searches of the bank accounts and records of innocent people merely because they may be associated with a delinquent taxpayer—offends every constitutional sensibility on the right to privacy.
“The Supreme Court needs to rein in the IRS’ unconstitutional power grabs,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “This practice of investigating the bank records of innocent taxpayers because they may have family members or associates who are delinquent on their taxes is merely a perverse form of guilt by association. At a minimum, Fourth Amendment protections should not disappear just because sensitive information is shared with third parties, such as banks and attorneys.”
The case arose after an IRS Revenue Officer, seeking to collect underpaid federal taxes by Remo Polselli, served summonses on the banks of Polselli’s wife and attorney in order to find account and financial records concerning Polselli. The IRS agent did not notify Polselli’s wife or attorney of the summonses, but the banks voluntarily did so. Polselli’s wife and attorney subsequently filed motions in federal district court to quash the IRS’s summonses. In siding with the IRS, the district court held that Polselli’s wife and attorney are not entitled to notice of the summons and have no right to even be heard on their motions to quash the summonses. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed and, not wanting to “significantly impede the IRS’s ‘expansive information-gathering authority,’” interpreted a federal statute to rule that the IRS may summon the recordkeeper of any person without notice to that person if the summons was issued in aid of the collection of an assessment against a delinquent taxpayer. Although the Sixth Circuit acknowledged that the IRS may be able to access information regarding blameless third parties, which could then be shared with the Department of Justice for a criminal prosecution, the court brushed aside such concerns as “conjectural fears.”
In support of the appeals by Polselli’s wife and attorney to the Supreme Court, attorneys for The Rutherford Institute and Cato argued that the statute should be interpreted consistent with the Fourth Amendment’s privacy values and protections against unreasonable searches so that the IRS cannot sweep up sensitive information of innocent people who coincidentally happen to have the same employer, lawyer, or accountant as a delinquent taxpayer.
Ethan H. Townsend, Michael B. Kimberly, and Emmett A. Witkovsky-Eldred of McDermott Will & Emery LLP advanced the arguments in the amicus brief in Polselli v. Internal Revenue Service.
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2023-05-28 02:26:002023-05-28 02:26:00On The Front Lines
Contrasting recruitment videos for the Marines and the Army are clues to difficulties in meeting quotas.
The US military is facing a recruitment crisis. It is so severe that in September, Senator Thom Thillis referred to an “inflection point” for the voluntary-force model, threatening over a half century of precedent.
In 2022, the Army failed to meet its recruitment goals across the board: active duty, reserves, and National Guard were thousands of personnel below target. The Navy met its recruiting quota for enlisted personnel, but not for officers. The Air Force met its recruiting quota for active duty, but not the reserves or National Guard. The Marine Corps barely hit its targets for active duty and reserves.
There are a few theories about the causes of this recruiting predicament, which is at its worse since the post-Vietnam era. Direct causes might be record-low unemployment rates, Covid-era restrictions that limited recruiters’ access to the public, and an increase in both mental and physical health problems among young people.
The Public Interest Fellowship’s Garrett Exner, a former Marines special operations officer, points to cultural shifts in American schooling, such as lower standards and refusal to subject students to any kind of adversity. Stuart Scheller, the outspoken Marine veteran and author, blames poor military leadership and misdirected shifts in financial incentives for servicemen.
While these hypotheses probably have some degree of truth, they do not explain why some services are better at recruiting than others: the Marine Corps, after all, made all its quotas, while the Army didn’t meet any of its recruiting goals. The Marine Corps’s success is surprising for many reasons: it has the highest physical fitness standards for retention—significantly higher than that of the Navy and Air Force, and a reputation for physical and psychological duress that eclipses the other services. Moreover, the military occupational specialties (career specialties) available to Marine recruits is dwarfed by the Army’s, which casts the widest net for competencies among the services. At a time when obesity alone prohibits a shocking percentage of American young people from serving, the Marine Corps’s recruiting performance is especially puzzling.
An explanation for the military’s recruitment challenges (and the Marine Corps’s comparative success) goes deeper than trends in the labour market. Ultimately, the civic honour on which voluntary service depends has quietly been eroding some time, and it is being replaced by an ethos of individual self-fulfilment. Tragically, different parts of the military have absorbed this mentality to different degrees. Recent recruiting ads—one by the Marines and one by the Army—offer glimpses into these broader cultural shifts and the challenges that they pose to the US military.
Which purpose?
“Battle to Belong” is an online recruitment ad for the Marines that depicts young Americans’ sense of alienation and nihilism with splendid accuracy. It was released on YouTube in September 2020, after months of Covid-era lockdowns and mere weeks after the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests. Teens were spending an average of nearly eight hours a day on screens outside of their Zoom classroom-time. At the time of this writing in February 2023, the ad had over 350,000 views on YouTube.
“Battle to Belong” opens with a young man walking down an urban street littered with advertisements and floating widgets. “Searching for meaning in a relentless world,” begins the baritone narrator, “Always connected, but somehow alone.” These words establish that meaning is the object of the protagonist’s search and that a fog of empty, virtual relationships obscures his goal.
Then a malevolent digital clone of the protagonist stops him in his path. “Trapped by illusion,” the narrator continues, as the clone offers our protagonist virtual distractions and a menacing look. Shouting, the young man lunges through the hologram clone and falls into the mud at Marine Corps boot camp. “We offer another path where the battle to belong begins.” As the music swells and the protagonist completes the gruelling training, the voice continues, “Awakened by a calling, united by purpose, defined by the cause you fight for. No one can ever take away what it means to be among the few, the proud, the Marines.”
This commercial defies expectation in two significant ways. First, it fully acknowledges America’s social decline, and presents the Marines as a way out of that decline. Other advertisements, on the other hand, tend to suggest protection of the homeland as the compelling reason for enlisting. Instead, this Marine Corps commercial presents contemporary American life as culturally indistinct, grey, and alienating. Service offers an escape from home, not a fight to defend it.
Second, and relatedly, its argument for joining the military makes no explicit reference to the official Marine Corps mission—“the protection of our Nation and the advancement of its ideals.” Instead, the Marine Corps is attractive because it provides a purpose at all. Its uses words like “path,” “calling,” “purpose,” and “cause,” but it leaves the specific goal undefined, an afterthought. The incentive to join the Marine Corps is not to serve or accomplish an end, but to merely belong.
The case the ad makes for joining the Marines is brilliant: it presents fundamental human needs, purpose and belonging, both of which are currently unfulfilled. It offers respite to potential recruits who feel desperately lonely and purposeless, not only because Covid restrictions abolished their everyday work and social lives, but also because the Internet encourages the cultivation of a shallow and harmful parallel identity. The Marine Corps obviously understands the corrosive effects of digital media. The young man’s hologram version of himself is clearly a threat to his well-being.
Yet the ad’s unwillingness to define military service in patriotic instead of purely psychological terms leaves undesirable possibilities open. If the purpose of service is to pursue a feeling of belonging, who cares what the purported aim of it is? Is the current population of recruits unable to grasp the moral value of the mission? Do they find it unworthy?
Serve yourself
If the 2020 Marine Corps ad can be faulted for mild banality, the Army’s YouTube ad, “Emma: The Calling”, shamelessly presents the Army as one among many morally equivalent paths for self-fulfilment. The ad has many millions more views than “Battle to Belong,” despite being released almost a year later. But its reception was so poor the Army turned off the video’s comment section. Even Senator Ted Cruz responded, saying “Holy crap. Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea. . .”
“The Calling” depicts a real soldier, Corporal Emma Malonelord, who works with the Patriot Missile Defense System. Despite the gravity of Malonelord’s occupation, the ad employs colourful, visually inoffensive, and almost playful cartoons. Malonelord’s narration heightens this discordance:
“It begins in California, with a little girl raised by two moms. Although I had a fairly typical childhood … I also marched for equality. I like to think I’ve been defending freedom from an early age.”
After describing one of her mothers’ arduous recovery from paralysis and her parents’ wedding, she tells us that she graduated top of her class from high school and joined other “strong women” at her UC Davis sorority. She continues:
But as graduation approached, I began feeling I had been handed so much in life—a sorority girl stereotype. Sure, I had spent my life around inspiring women, but what had I really achieved on my own . . . I needed my own adventures, my own challenge. And after meeting with an Army recruiter, I found it. A way to prove my inner strength, and maybe shatter some stereotypes along the way.
The Army ad pitches two ideas in ways that may have the reverse effect of that intended. First and more laudably, “The Calling” posits that one should join the Army to defend equality and freedom. But in presenting gay marriage as the paramount manifestations of these principles, the commercial immediately alienates potential recruits with traditional values or reasonable ethical concerns.
Its second and far less commendable assertion is that one should join the Army to prove oneself a strong woman. This argument begins hopefully enough with the phrase: “I had been handed so much in life.” A generous interpretation of Malonelord’s statement is that it’s an expression of gratitude to America and her desire to give back. But it becomes clear that this isn’t what Malonelord means: she goes on to compare her dearth of accomplishments at graduation to the activities of her fellow sorority sisters, who, she reports, climbed Everest and studied abroad in Italy. It’s as though her friends’ expensive (if challenging) personal experiences and her military service are all morally equivalent activities on the path to finding themselves.
To Malonelord, and by extension, to the Army, service is an avenue to “shatter stereotypes,” flex one’s personal capabilities, and compare favourably to others, rather than a morally resonant act of personal sacrifice to serve one’s nation. This attention-seeking outlook recalls the online narcissism that “Battle to Belong” so incisively rejects.
The oath
Contemporary recruitment messaging is troubling. America’s military must draw on cultural reservoirs that prize self-sacrifice and the honour due to country. After all, The Oath of Enlistment speaks of bearing faith and allegiance, recognizes a higher power, and insists on selfless service to the Constitution against her enemies. All recruitment efforts must ultimately attempt to persuade young Americans to take this oath at possible risk of life and limb, and the near-certain prospect of fear, physical strain, boredom, and homesickness.
Of course, people join the military for a variety of reasons and serve honourably once they join. The opportunities to improve oneself, through access to education and medical benefits, to escape poverty, and to file for naturalization are among the multitude of incentives service members pursue. Every American owes a debt of gratitude to all service members, whatever their initial incentives for joining.
Yet low recruitment rates and these commercials’ reluctance to mention the stated purpose of the military suggest that the reservoir of virtues on which voluntary service depends is running dry. A nation that is habitually excoriated by its political and intellectual leaders for such things as “perpetuating the unbearable human cost of systemic racism”, demonstrating “arrogance” in foreign affairs, wrongfully occupying ancestral land, and failing to address “the destructive nature of a system that is fuelled by uncontrolled greed” (capitalism), while hesitating to celebrate its contributions to humanity, will inevitably struggle to rouse a genuine sense of duty from its youth.
To succeed at drawing in recruits, the military doesn’t necessarily need to make the oath’s normative content its central message, as it once did. The Marine Corps’s focus on the foundational human need for belonging is effective because it describes the transcendent value of character and self-sacrifice and carefully avoids the true yet controversial claim that America and its principles are their worthy beneficiaries.
Nonetheless, it’s alarming that the military must resort to generic appeals to meaning and belonging in order to recruit successfully. America’s national security is contingent on an all-volunteer force. While some may find the Marine Corps’s call to belong compelling, this draw will not sustain the personnel needs of the entire armed services; after all, all kinds of careers, activities, and communities can give people the same sense of fulfilment.
Recruiters rely on Americans who believe in the moral pre-eminence of the United States and its constitutional principles. Our institutions—especially schools—must instil and embrace these truths: America’s national security cannot wait.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-05-26 12:51:252023-05-26 12:51:25The U.S. Military Depends on Virtues that are Fading
