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Russia Pledges to Help Venezuela and Cuba Overcome ‘Illegal’ U.S. Sanctions

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Thursday that his government will do everything possible to help Cuba and Venezuela overcome the economic difficulties faced by the latest round of U.S. sanctions.

Ryabkov (pictured) told reporters the latest round of U.S. sanctions was illegal and that Russia would do everything in power to support the far-left regimes in both Cuba and Venezuela.

“We are concerned over the continuing actions by the United States toward the countries of the Latin American region. We see the sanctions as absolutely unlawful and illegitimate,” he said, according to Russian propaganda outlet Sputnik. “We will oppose them. Venezuela and Cuba are our allies and strategic partners in the region. We will do everything we can to let them feel our support.”

On Wednesday, White House National Security Adviser John Bolton announced a fresh round of sanctions against the Maduro regime and the communist government in Havana. The sanctions included new limits on remittances to Cuba and its access to foreign currency, as well as new sanctions on the Central Bank of Venezuela that prohibit its access to U.S. dollars.

“Under this administration, we don’t throw dictators lifelines. We take them away,” said Bolton at an event to mark the 58th anniversary of the failed liberation effort at Bay of Pigs. “Through the Treasury Department, we will also implement changes to end the use of ‘U-turn transactions’, which allow the regime to circumvent sanctions and obtain access to hard currency and the US banking system.”

Russia has over recent years proven a vital ally to both Castro and Maduro, providing financial and military support to both regimes. Last month, Russian troops arrived in Caracas to help bolster Maduro’s authority amid widespread calls for him to step down as the country suffers the worst economic and humanitarian crisis in its history.

Following U.S. condemnation of the exchange, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that troops would remain in the country as “for as long as needed” and accused the U.S. of trying to “stage a coup” in the country through the threat of military action.

“They are involved in the implementation of agreements in the sphere of military and technical cooperation,” she said at the time.  “Russia is not changing the balance of power in the region, Russia is not threatening anyone, unlike citizens in Washington whom I have just quoted.”

Since January, the U.S. has stepped up efforts to remove the Maduro regime from power in Venezuela, mainly through recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the country’s legitimate president and imposing a range of economic sanctions aimed at squeezing the regime’s external revenues. President Donald Trump has warned Russia to leave the country, while repeatedly insisting that “all options are on the table” for instigating a transition to democracy, including the possibility of military force.

“Russia has to get out,” Trump said during a meeting with Guaidó’s wife Fabiana Rosales in the White House last month.  “Venezuela was and is still a country with tremendous potential where people are starving. They’re getting killed. They’re being beaten. What’s going on there is unfathomable.”

Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com.

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Study: Nearly 1M Migrant Children Could Enter U.S. Before 2020 Election

Nearly one million migrant children could enter the United States, either unaccompanied or with their border crossing parents, before the 2020 election if projected rates of illegal immigration pan out, new research finds.

Current illegal immigration projections by Princeton Policy Advisors researcher Steven Kopits predicts that there could be about 1.28 million border apprehensions this calendar year — a rate of illegal immigration that would exceed every fiscal year of former Presidents George W. Bush and Obama.

Kopits’ finds that up to 300,000 migrant children could enter the country by the time school begins in September for most students under a scenario where illegal immigration continues at projected rates throughout the next year and a half.

Assuming 80 percent of these migrant children enroll in school, the U.S. could be faced with absorbing 240,000 new migrant school students across the country –and specifically states like California, New York, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, and New Jersey — this coming school year, alone.

For the 2019 to 2020 school year, for instance, California would be forced to absorb about 50,000 new migrant students. Likewise, Texas would see an influx of about 36,000 migrant students.

Fast forward to the beginning of the next school year, September 2020 to June 2021, and the U.S. could have nearly a million new migrant children in the country before the 2020 presidential election, about 800,000 of which could enroll in school systems, under the mass migration scenario.

(Princeton Policy Advisors)

“Should the situation not be resolved and asylum seeking continue at the pace we anticipate for the coming year, by September 2020, nearly 1,000,000 asylum children could be in the US (arriving Jan. 2019 – Aug. 2020),” Kopits writes.

This translates to California’s public school system having to take about 168,000 new migrant students at the beginning of next year’s school year while Florida would see an influx of about 59,000 and for New Jersey, an influx of about 36,000. Texas would see an influx of about 120,000 new migrant students.

Skyrocketing illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border has not only strained public resources but could choke 4 percent wage hikes that President Trump has delivered to America’s blue collar and working class.

Experts like former Secretary of State Kris Kobach have warned that if illegal immigration levels continue to rise over this year and throughout 2020, those wage hikes will be depleted by a saturated labor market with more cheap, foreign workers competing against Americans.

Every year, the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million illegal and legal immigrants, with more than 70 percent arriving through chain migration. In 2017, the foreign-born population reached a record high of 44.5 million. By 2023, the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the legal and illegal immigrant population of the U.S. will make up nearly 15 percent of the entire U.S. population.

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

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Conservative Activist Laura Loomer Files Lawsuit Against Twitter and CAIR

Conservative activist Laura Loomer filed a lawsuit today against the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Twitter.

This comes after CAIR officials reportedly pushed Twitter to ban the conservative Jewish activist.

Activist and Journalist Brings Claims in Florida Court Detailing Twitter’s Collusion with Hamas Front Group CAIR to Silence and De-Platform Her

CAIR’s “Favorite Daughters” Reps Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib Implicated

  • Laura Loomer was permanently banned by Twitter in November, 2018 for a factual tweet about Ilhan Omar and intervention by CAIR to protect Omar from criticism
  • Loomer has since been banned by Twitter, PayPal, Venmo, GoFundMe, Medium, Uber, Uber Eats, Lyft, TeeSpring
  • CAIR is a front for HAMAS and the Muslim Brotherhood in America
  • CAIR endorsed Ilhan Omar and lobbied to have Loomer banned on Twitter

Read more here.

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Trump Triggers Media During Barr Press Conference With ‘Game Of Thrones’ Meme

President Donald Trump triggered members of the left-wing media on Thursday morning by posting a meme as Attorney General William Barr gave a positive news conference about the results of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
"No Collusion. No Obstruction. For The Haters And The Radical Left Democrats–Game Over," Trump tweeted in a photoshopped image from "The Game of Thrones."

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First fire alarm at Notre Dame sounded 23 minutes before second alarm, when fire was detected

Odd and destined to feed conspiracy theories because any oddness in a major catastrophe, especially one with political or cultural implications, ultimately feeds conspiracy theories.

The first fire alarm on Monday was set off at 6:20 p.m., and checks were carried out but no fire was found, Mr. Heitz said.

A second alarm went off at 6:43 p.m., he said, and fire was discovered in the wooden framework of the attic, ancient beams beneath the lead roof known as the “forest.”…

The cathedral’s rector, Msgr. Patrick Chauvet, said on Tuesday that fire monitors routinely inspected the cathedral. “Three times a day they go up, under the wooden roof, to make an assessment,” he told France Inter, a radio station.

He also said there was an on-site firefighter at the cathedral, although he did not say how often that person was there, where that person was normally stationed, or whether that person was present on Monday.

The sinister theory here, I guess, would be that some saboteur slipped up to the “attic” and set a fire, triggering the 6:20 alarm, but the fledgling fire burned itself out before firefighters arrived. So the saboteur waited for them to leave and then set a second fire, this one more successful. It would take mind-boggling brazenness to try to burn down the cathedral not once but twice, though, especially with firefighters having just been on the scene. And how you would go about doing this at a major tourist hub like the cathedral with no one spotting you is unfathomable to me. There was an arsonist in the “attic” for half an hour, with personnel sniffing around after the first alarm to try to detect a fire, and no one noticed anything? Seems unlikely.

Investigators say there’s no evidence of sabotage right now. Instead, they’re apparently looking at restoration work that was going on in the spire:

The focus of prosecutors is currently on contractors Le Bras Freres, whose owner Julien Le Bras last year boasted his firm’s goal was ‘to keep as many old items as possible and not to put the building at risk’ after they were awarded a €5.7m (£5m, $6.5m) contract as part of the cathedral’s restoration project.

Detectives investigating the catastrophic blaze are today interviewing specialist restorers who were carrying out works on the cathedral spire when the inferno broke out.

Another quarter-assed theory: Maybe work was going on which, unbeknownst to the contractors, was causing part of the roof to heat up. The heat may have triggered the first alarm, causing work to stop and the roof to cool down before it ignited. When no fire was found and work resumed, maybe it continued this time after the second alarm sounded and this time ignition was achieved. That is, after the first alarm revealed no fire, workers might have assumed there was a problem with the alarm system instead of recognizing that something was generating heat within the roof.

We’re in the dark and the investigation will be “long and complicated” due to the fact that the spot of ignition was apparently destroyed with the rest of the roof. Ed notes via email that although the Times piece quoted up top claims that “checks were carried out” after the first alarm sounded, it doesn’t specifically say that trained firefighters carried out those checks. Was it the on-site firefighter who did so? The “fire monitors” who carry out regular checks? Or was it someone less well-trained? (When an alarm sounds, notes the Times, the on-site firefighter can dispatch a “security agent” to check it out.) It may be that the fire was still in the smoldering stage when the first alarm sounded and whoever investigated simply didn’t recognize that anything was burning. It might have taken 23 more minutes before flame and smoke were visible, at which point it was too late.

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Donald Trump Jr. Shoots First Arrow at Obama Over 2016 Spying on Opponent’s Campaign

Democrat Party leaders and the liberal media had a collective meltdown last week following Attorney General Bill Barr’s announcement that the Obama administration was likely spying on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

This was news to Democrats who were counting on a phony Russia collusion special counsel and deep state coup to remove Trump as president.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Steny Hoyer and House Judicial Chairman continued to lash out at the Attorney General following the news that was already public for the past half year by FOX News viewers and Gateway Pundit readers.

Gateway Pundit readers knew about the Obama administration’s spying on the Trump campaign for over a year now. The FBI was spying on the opposition party’s campaign 100 days before the election. The spying was based on a phony Russian dossier that was paid for by Democrats and Hillary Clinton.

Obama was spying on the opposition party candidate in the 2016 election.
This was likely criminal behavior for a sitting president.

On Thursday Donald Trump Jr. took the first shot at Barack Obama by retweeting a 2013 Obama tweet.

Don Jr.’s brother Eric retweeted this…

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Snowflake College Students Are ‘Shaking’ Over Thought Of Mike Pence Speaking At Their Commencement (VIDEO)

Snowflake college students are ‘shaking’ over the thought of Vice President Mike Pence speaking at their commencement ceremony.

3,500 students and alumni at Taylor University in Pence’s home state of Indiana have signed a change.org petition to cancel Pence’s invitation to speak at the university’s May-commencement ceremony.

The petition claims, “Trump-Pence Administration’s policies…” are “not consistent with the Christian ethic of love we hold dear.”

One snowflake student said, “I am physically shaking…I feel personally attacked.”

This is unsurprising, given that American universities have become literal “safe spaces.”

However, the Taylor administration is standing by its decision to have Pence speak.

Paul Haines, the President of Taylor, praised Vice President Pence as “a Christian brother whose life and values have exemplified what we strive to instill in our graduates.”

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Seattle Imposes Ad Ban to Annul Pamela Geller’s Free Speech Lawsuit Victory 

Officials who oversee Seattle’s transit system moved to ban political, religious, and other ads from its facilities and public transportation vehicles soon after Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) prevailed in a freedom of speech lawsuit against the city, earning the right to run FBI’s Most Wanted terrorist posters, Breitbart News has learned.

“People should realize that this is a struggle for the very foundation of any free society: the freedom of speech. If there is a group you can’t criticize, then that group can impose tyranny over you. If we lose this free speech battle, all our other freedoms are lost” Geller recently told Breitbart News via email.

She argued the advertisement ban sidestepped the September 2018 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling in AFDI’s favor, which allowed the group to advertise the Most Wanted terrorist list in Seattle.

However, the new restrictions, dubbed the “Geller ban” and instituted in December 2018 by the King County Department of Transportation’s Transit Division that oversees Seattle’s public transportation system, have ended up preventing AFDI from running the terrorist wanted ads, Geller pointed out, noting that her free speech lawsuit victory was bittersweet.

Before the appeal court’s ruling, judges had denied AFDI the right to place public service ads featuring images of the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists on Seattle’s public transportation system, due to a perceived disparagement of Islam.

The city’s rejection prompted AFDI to sue the King County Metro system for its suppression of free speech.

“We won the right to run the FBI wanted terrorist poster that Seattle prevailed upon the FBI to withdraw [ in 2013]. And as soon as we triumphed, Seattle transit imposed the infamous Geller ban, banning political, religious and cause-related ads in Seattle (following NY, Washington DC, Boston, Miami, Chicago, San Francisco, etc),” Geller told Breitbart News in the email.

In a document outlining the transit agency’s advertising restrictions, King County officials noted that the policy bans advertising on transit facilities and vehicles that fall within the categories of political, religious, government (except for the county’s), and other forms of “speech.”

“They banned all political ads, as that was the only course of action they could possibly take in order to continue to avoid running my ads,” Geller said. “They’re so determined to continue whitewashing Islam and denying and obfuscating the roots of jihad terror that they are willing to lose immense amounts of revenue from all political advertising.”

Transit agency officials argued that their “viewpoint neutral” ban seeks to prohibit “advertisements that interfere with and divert resources from transit operations, that detract from transit purposes by creating substantial controversy, and/or that pose significant risks of harm, inconvenience, or annoyance to transit passengers, operators, and vehicles.”

“Such advertisements create an environment that is not conducive to achieving increased revenue for the benefit of the transit system or to preserving and enhancing the security, safety, comfort, and convenience of its operations,” the officials added.

Responding to the agency’s argument Geller noted, “I see ads that annoy me all the time. If that is the criterion [for the ban], whose annoyance counts, and whose doesn’t, and why?”

She told Breitbart News that King County’s decision to ban FBI wanted posters featuring some jihadis amounts to the “enforcement of Sharia blasphemy law in another American city.”

King County officials described the transit agency’s advertising ban as  “restrictions” that “foster the maintenance of a professional advertising environment that maximizes advertising, revenue, and protects the interests of the captive audience that uses Metro’s transit services.”

In other words, the county’s transportation department believes that banning certain ads will allow the county to generate more revenue.

“The ban will, obviously, drastically curtail their ad revenues. To argue otherwise is plain deception” Geller noted.

Nevertheless, the county asserted that the advertising policy intends to fulfill the following goals:

Maximizing advertising revenue; maintaining a position of neutrality and preventing the appearance of favoritism or endorsement by the county; preventing the risk of imposing objectionable, inappropriate or harmful view on a captive audience; preserving the value of the advertising space; maximizing ridership and maintaining a safe environment for transit customers and other members of the public; avoiding claims of discrimination and maintaining a non-discriminatory environment for riders; preventing any harm or abuse that may result from running objectionable, inappropriate, or harmful advertisements; [and] reducing the diversion of resources from transit operations that is caused by objectionable, inappropriate or harmful advertisements.

Geller vowed to keep fighting for free speech all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary to ensure Seattle upholds the appeal court’s ruling.

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John Carroll University Student Newspaper Revises Guidelines to Censor Conservative Catholic Editor

John Carroll University’s student newspaper, the Carroll News, is revising its editorial guidelines in an effort to censor speech after students took offense to a conservative Catholic student editor expressing his views in the newspaper. The newspaper then released a statement chastising the editor, suggesting that “free speech” should make everybody “feel safe in its harmony,” and that the Catholic student’s views are in “direct conflict” with the mission of the Jesuit university. The editor has since resigned from his position.

Students at John Carroll University (JCU) took offense to an op-ed published in The Carroll News by editor Declan Leary, who criticized a new magazine, entitled, Loud & Proud Zine, after it had first criticized him for expressing his views about a JCU-funded drag show last semester. Leary argued that a Catholic university is not an appropriate location for hosting such events.

“For about 30 pages — various contributors — including students, faculty members and three drag performers —– rant about how some scary conservative establishment (whose face is, of course, yours truly) is trying to repress them,” wrote Leary, “the issue isn’t that they’re being repressed; it’s just that nobody really wants to listen to them.”

The student’s op-ed sparked outrage among students, who then reported Leary to the school’s “Bias Response Team,” prompting the university to react by sending an email alerting the campus community of Leary’s opinion piece, claiming that it had caused “feelings of tremendous sorrow, anger, and fear.”

“Some feel unsafe and unwelcome. Many find themselves questioning whether they are valued as members of this campus community,” said JCU in its email obtained by Breitbart News.

The email had been referring to the supposed safety concerns belonging to the “LGBTQIA+” community, disregarding any potential safety concerns that could result from the conservative student being publicly called out to the entire campus community.

“Like who tf do YOU THINK YOU ARE criticizing someone’s art that has symbolic meaning to their personal identity? Literally, fight me,” tweeted one self-proclaimed JCU student, in response to one of the criticisms in Leary’s op-ed.

“If we’re not allowed to criticize art anymore because it has personal meaning to the artist, there are a lot of art critics (all of them) who’ll need to find new jobs,” responded Leary, “P.S. calls to violence… classy.”

The university went on to affirm its commitment to the “LGBTQIA+ community” and assured students that JCU would “work diligently to heal the wounds plaguing our campus community” and “create a space going forward.”

The Carroll News then followed suit by releasing a similar statement, informing the public that the newspaper’s staff manual would be revised to “ensure this issue does not recur in the future,” and that all editors will be “held accountable” to the new rules curtailing speech in the student newspaper.

“Violations of the new code will result in disciplinary action that could lead to removal from staff,” affirmed the student newspaper.

The student newspaper then went on to call out Leary by name, and even took it upon itself to claim that the student’s views are in “direct conflict” with the university’s mission. “Opinion/Editorial Editor Declan Leary’s tone and choice of language in his writing has repeatedly been in direct conflict with the mission of the University,” affirmed The Carroll News.

The revised guidelines have effectively forced Leary to resign from his position as editor, as expressing his opinions will no longer be permissible in the student newspaper next semester.

“I was told that if I stayed, I would be subject to very strict rules for what I’m allowed to say moving forward,” said Leary of his resignation to Breitbart News, “Obviously, that’s not something I’m willing to stand for.”

The student newspaper had also claimed that “free speech” should make everybody “feel safe in its harmony,” and that it is “not meant to demean or make anyone’s identity feel threatened.”

The strict rules against language that “demeans” others’ identity, however, does not appear to apply while demeaning Catholics, as student writers seem to continue publishing pieces chastising Leary over his personal views.

“From the time I began writing for The Carroll News, I received a great deal of support from conservative students who felt more comfortable opposing the progressive orthodoxy of the campus because they saw me standing for conservative beliefs in spite of the significant backlash,” said Leary to Breitbart News.

“This is not just an attempt to shut me down; it is an attempt to shut down everybody like me,” added Leary, who also noted that he is “currently inquiring about the dishonesty of the newspaper’s statement on the matter.”

“They place the blame on me despite their approval of every word I wrote, and they claim to be pursuing new standards despite publishing targeted attacks against me in that very same issue,” said Leary.

The Carroll News did not respond to Breitbart News’ request for clarification on why its staff felt it was appropriate to name a specific student to the entire campus community while questioning a subjective viewpoint of that student in suggesting that his opinions are in direct conflict with the university’s mission.

John Carroll University did not respond to Breitbart New’s multiple requests for comment.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo and on Instagram.

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