It took CNN host Jake Tapper three attempts to get a straight answer from Robert "Beto" O’Rourke on whether it should be a crime to illegally cross the United States border with Mexico.
The line of questioning from Tapper was based on a few months old policy proposal by Julian Castro, who wants to decriminalize unauthorized border crossings and begin treating them as civil offenses. O’Rourke was asked whether he agrees with Castro that laws making it a crime to cross the border should be repealed, but failed to come to a conclusion.
"I don’t know if it should be repealed but we should acknowledge that most of those arriving at the border now, especially from Central America, are at the most desperate and vulnerable moment and they pose no threat or harm to this country," O’Rourke began, before detailing one of his policies for how to deal with the border.
Tapper followed up in an attempt to "get a straight answer" on the question, but was again side-stepped by O’Rourke, who answered by saying he thinks drug smugglers and human traffickers need to be detained.
"I think what I’m saying is that in the vast majority of cases, there is no need to incarcerate or to detain migrant families and especially children," O’Rourke said. "But if somebody is attempting to smuggle human beings into the United States, if they are attempting to cross illegal drugs into this country, I want to make sure that we have the legal mechanism necessary to hold them accountable and to detain them to make sure they do not pose a threat to this country or to our communities."
Tapper followed up a third time with O’Rourke, who insisted he had already answered the question.
"Yeah, I’ve answered the question," O’Rourke said. "I do not think it should be repealed but I’m trying to get to the heart of the issue, which is to treat people humanly, and that we improve our security not through walls and through cages, but by making sure that those who are at the most vulnerable who are trying to follow our asylum laws are able to do that."
CNN credited O’Rourke for coming out against decriminalizing border crossings, without mentioning the effort Tapper exerted to get an answer from O’Rourke.
Former President Obama’s weird careening around Europe is starting to have the look of a spygate rationale.
Following his earlier meetings, publicly known, with President Emmanuel Macron of France, and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, he’s now meeting secretly with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, in what might just be a bid for the two of them to get their stories straight. Italy, recall, is the nation that elected a Trump-like new government, following the deep state collaborations of the earlier government, and the new government has fired four Italian intelligence officials, apparently over a spygate bid to pin Russian collusion charges, falsely, on President Trump via planted emails, in a Machiavellian bid to get him thrown out of office.
That’s the suggestion from Joe Hoft over at GatewayPundit, which has a long and involved piece about the former president’s latest travels, citing quite a few open sources. He begins:
Earlier this month Italian Prime Minister Conte asked for the resignations of four top intelligence officials after his call with President Donald Trump.
And now another Internet Sleuth has uncovered some shocking news related to the recent removal of these top Italian intelligence ministers from their positions as top spies in the government.
Spygate figure George Papadopoulos, the low level Trump aide who was targeted in the Mueller dragnet as well as in FBI surveillance, seems to think this might be what’s going on. He tweeted:
Two weeks after I exposed Italy’s role in spygate, Obama is heading to Italy today to meet with the former Italian prime minister who weaponized his intel assets against us. Keep focused, America. The real headlines are now coming out. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
The report is long and involved and well-supported with primary documents from a variety of sources. What it looks like here is Obama scrambling to get his story straight with the Italians one step ahead of the lawmen seeking to uncover the origins of the entire spygate fiasco. He’s met with Merkel. He’s met with Macron. He’s keeping close to the luxury palace pad in the south of France. And he’s sure as heck not saying anything, just secretly meeting with the spygate partners in Europe, looking less Louis XIV and more like a Medici prince.
This looks like one worth watching for it’s outcome. Read the whole thing here.
Former President Obama’s weird careening around Europe is starting to have the look of a spygate rationale.
Following his earlier meetings, publicly known, with President Emmanuel Macron of France, and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, he’s now meeting secretly with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, in what might just be a bid for the two of them to get their stories straight. Italy, recall, is the nation that elected a Trump-like new government, following the deep state collaborations of the earlier government, and the new government has fired four Italian intelligence officials, apparently over a spygate bid to pin Russian collusion charges, falsely, on President Trump via planted emails, in a Machiavellian bid to get him thrown out of office.
That’s the suggestion from Joe Hoft over at GatewayPundit, which has a long and involved piece about the former president’s latest travels, citing quite a few open sources. He begins:
Earlier this month Italian Prime Minister Conte asked for the resignations of four top intelligence officials after his call with President Donald Trump.
And now another Internet Sleuth has uncovered some shocking news related to the recent removal of these top Italian intelligence ministers from their positions as top spies in the government.
Spygate figure George Papadopoulos, the low level Trump aide who was targeted in the Mueller dragnet as well as in FBI surveillance, seems to think this might be what’s going on. He tweeted:
Two weeks after I exposed Italy’s role in spygate, Obama is heading to Italy today to meet with the former Italian prime minister who weaponized his intel assets against us. Keep focused, America. The real headlines are now coming out. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
The report is long and involved and well-supported with primary documents from a variety of sources. What it looks like here is Obama scrambling to get his story straight with the Italians one step ahead of the lawmen seeking to uncover the origins of the entire spygate fiasco. He’s met with Merkel. He’s met with Macron. He’s keeping close to the luxury palace pad in the south of France. And he’s sure as heck not saying anything, just secretly meeting with the spygate partners in Europe, looking less Louis XIV and more like a Medici prince.
This looks like one worth watching for it’s outcome. Read the whole thing here.
President Donald Trump will reportedly kick off his 2020 re-election campaign at a rally Tuesday evening in Florida, and people are already lining up for what they hope will be a momentous event.
The Supreme Court on Monday tossed out a lower court ruling against two Oregon bakers who had refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.
The case involved Melissa and Aaron Klein of Oregon, who shut down their small baker after a state agency fined them $135,000 for refusing to bake a wedding cake for two lesbians. The agency said the Kleins had violated the state’s public accommodation law.
The Kleins, though, cited their Christian beliefs as the reason they would not provide services for the gay couple. The case followed another from last year, in which Supreme Court justices ruled in favor of a Colorado baker.
The high court sent the Klein case back to a lower court “for further consideration in light of” their Colorado decision.
The Oregon case involved Rachel Bowman-Cryer, who went to the Sweet Cakes by Melissa in Gresham, Oregon, in January 2013 and inquired about a wedding cake. When Aaron Klein asked for the name of the groom, Bowman-Cryer said there wasn’t one. Klein told her the bakery does not bake cakes for gay weddings.
The Kleins were ordered to pay $135,000 to the couple for “discriminating against them in violation of a state public accommodations statute,” Fox News reported. The couple was forced to shut down their bakery.
After the Supreme Court’s decision not to take up the case, First Liberty, which represented the couple, lauded the decision.
“This is a victory for Aaron and Melissa Klein and for religious liberty for all Americans,” First Liberty president Kelly Shackelford said in a statement. “The Constitution protects speech, popular or not, from condemnation by the government. The message from the Court is clear, government hostility toward religious Americans will not be tolerated.”
Last June, the high court delivered a similar victory to Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cake Shop in Colorado. The justices sent that case back to a lower court “after finding the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had acted with religious animus when investigating the baker’s actions,” the Washington Post reported.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said in the court’s majority opinion that there was improper religious bias by some Colorado officials against the baker. Future courts, he added, would need to address the rights of those with religious objections to same-sex marriage along with the rights of gay people, who “cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth,” the Post wrote.
“The high court took the same tack last year in the florist’s case,” the Associated Press wrote. “Taking a second look at the case, the Washington Supreme Court concluded earlier in June that there was no animosity toward religion in court rulings that florist Barronelle Stutzman broke the state’s anti-discrimination laws by refusing on religious grounds to provide flowers for the wedding of a gay couple. Stutzman owns Arlene’s Flowers in Richland, Washington. The justices could consider Stutzman’s appeal in the fall.”
As the crisis at the southern border drags on, congressional Republicans in both chambers are putting pressure on their Democratic colleagues to give President Trump the emergency funding he’s requested to deal with it.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Monday morning on Fox News that he would bring up the administration’s $4.5 billion emergency border funding for a vote, putting Senate Democrats on record.
“I’m going to bring it up free-standing next week and see if they really aren’t interested in dealing with this mass of humanity that we have to take care of at the border,” McConnell said on Fox & Friends. “What’s the objection? This is not about the wall but about the humanitarian crisis.”
The emergency border funding request contains no money for the wall or for border security, but merely requests resources for overburdened federal immigration officials and departments to better deal with “the immediate humanitarian crisis,” as one administration official put it, precipitated by the surge of people claiming asylum at America’s southern border.
The measure includes $3.3 billion for humanitarian resources like diapers, clothing, food, and bed space for unaccompanied alien children (UACs), while $1.1 billion would go toward operations and support to address the crisis: detention beds, personnel costs, and human smuggling investigations. $178 million would go to things like technology upgrades.
However, that request went out weeks ago, and Congress hasn’t yet acted on it despite the fact that federal facilities are unquestionably overwhelmed, the executive branch says.
“It has been six weeks since the Administration requested emergency supplemental funding and Congress has yet to act. Since May 1, the day the Administration submitted this request, over 144,000 migrants have crossed our southern border illegally,” a statement from Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan last week says. “While the Department is doing everything we can to maximize our resources and personnel in a Department-wide emergency response, the surge of families and unaccompanied children migration has created an unsustainable strain on DHS personnel working to protect our borders.”
Meanwhile, conservative members of the House of Representatives have been working to put pressure on their Democratic colleagues to bring the supplemental request up for a House vote. Last week, a group of Republicans led by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, used procedural tactics to substantially slow down the House’s work on an important spending bill.
This week, Roy and others have also scheduled a press conference at the Capitol Building on Tuesday calling on House leaders to allow a vote on the emergency package.
“Migrants and Americans are suffering while [the House] refuses to address the humanitarian crisis on our southern border,” Roy’s office says. “How can we look the American people in the eye and tell them that what we have done (nothing) is enough? We can’t.”
The Supreme Court refused to take up a high-profile religious liberty case involving a family of Christian bakers on Monday and instead sent it back to the lower courts for further consideration in light of the high court’s ruling in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.
The case of Aaron and Melissa Klein, whose Oregon bakery became a major focal point of the national debate about religious liberty and the LGBT movement, has been remanded to the Oregon Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court also tossed out the Court of Appeals’ previous decision to uphold a $135,000 fine against the couple because of their refusal to participate in a same-sex wedding ceremony in 2013 by making a cake for it.
Those standing behind the Kleins are chalking up Monday’s Supreme Court order as a big win.
“This is a victory for Aaron and Melissa Klein and for religious liberty for all Americans,” said First Liberty president, CEO and chief counsel Kelly Shackelford, whose organization is representing the Kleins along with Boyden Gray & Associates, in an emailed statement. “The Constitution protects speech, popular or not, from condemnation by the government. The message from the Court is clear, government hostility toward religious Americans will not be tolerated.”
The case is to be re-evaluated in light of the Supreme Court’s June 2018 narrow decision in the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which reversed a decision by the Colorado Court of appeals in a similar religious liberty case.
However, since and despite the 2018 ruling, Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips has been sued multiple times for alleged discrimination. Earlier this year, the state of Colorado dropped a lawsuit it brought against Phillips for refusing to bake a cake for a gender transition just weeks after last year’s ruling. Last week, the same transgender individual behind the previous lawsuit sued Phillips for allegedly refusing to sell a birthday cake; an attorney representing Phillips dismissed the claim as “yet another desperate attempt to harass” the baker.
Monday on “Fox & Friends,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) discussed the crisis at the United States’ southern border.
McConnell agreed with President Donald Trump that Mexico has done more to fix illegal immigration than congressional Democrats.
“[I]t’s safe to say the president is getting more cooperation out of Mexico than congressional Democrats,” he said.
McConnell added the reasoning behind the lack of cooperation from the Democrats is because they are “suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome” and they do not want to see him win on any issues.
He explained, “Whatever he’s for, they are reflexively against.”
President Donald Trump is shaking up the nation’s green card process by warning legal immigrants and citizens not to recklessly “sponsor” foreigners who cannot pay their way in the United States.
The warning reflects the White House’s emphasis on curbing the award of green cards and citizenship to unskilled and poor migrants who will burden Americans by consuming more government aid and welfare than they produce in taxes.
Under prior presidents, including Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, migrants in the United States have been allowed to freely apply for green cards via the “Adjustment of Status” process.
This “AoS” process is a continuous, unrecognized amnesty because it gives green cards to roughly 550,000 people each year, including many illegals and people who overstay their legal visas. Illegals also use the AoS process to get temporary work permits. In 2018, for example, 257,376 work permits were handed out to a variety of people who applied for AoS.
One of the few curbs on the AoS amnesty is a requirement that applicants find a sponsor who will repay the taxpayers for any aid and welfare consumed by the AoS applicant. This curb, however, is unused because officials rarely require the sponsors to repay taxpayers when the would-be immigrants do not earn enough wages to stay off welfare.
But officials will now enforce the sponsorship rule, says Ken Cuccinelli, the new head of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. On June 14, he issued a warning statement on Twitter (emphasis added):
Officers will now be required to remind individuals at their adjustment of status interviews of their sponsors’ responsibilities under existing law and regulations. Our officers must remind applicants and sponsors that the Affidavit of Support is a legal and enforceable contract between the sponsor and the federal government. The sponsor must be willing and able to financially support the intending immigrant as outlined by law and regulations (see INA 213A and 8 CFR 213a). If the sponsored immigrant receives any federal means-tested public benefits, the sponsor will be expected to reimburse the benefits-granting agency for every dollar of benefits received by the immigrant.
Over the next several months, federal agencies will develop and implement guidance on the presidential memorandum to make sure that agencies enforce these requirements.
The policy may deter immigrants and citizens from sponsoring unskilled migrants, thus reducing the scale and cost of low-skilled immigration that is imposed on Americans, said Jessica Vaughan, policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies. “A normal person will think twice and say ‘Whoa, I don’t think I want to take on that [financial sponsorship] responsibility,’” she said.
“This is a really good change. … It is about making people qualify [for green cards] based on their likelihood of being self-supporting, and [about] not approving people who will go to the nearest welfare office,” she told Breitbart New Tonight on June 14.
The sponsor agreements have been “a joke” for many years, she said. Promises from families and or from a “very good friend” have been accepted by USCIS officials, she stated. But the “law has been on the books since the 1980s,” she said, adding, and “now we’re going to hold you to it.”
The new push for enforcement of existing laws is part of the administration’s effort to protect Americans from migrants who game the immigration system. Cuccinelli’s statement said:
The President has made it a priority to ensure that every individual who seeks to come to the United States is self-sufficient, temporarily or permanently. The principle of self-sufficiency has been enshrined in our immigration laws since the 1800s, and we as an agency must ensure that immigrants who become part of this great country abide by this principle.
An affidavit of support is a legal and enforceable contract between the sponsor and the federal government. Read more about how @USCIS will take action to implement the @POTUS directive to enforce the law and protect American taxpayers: https://t.co/E6MeT8TRQu
— USCIS Acting Director Ken Cuccinelli (@USCISCuccinelli) June 15, 2019
In May 2018, USCIS announced that it would require face-to-face interviews with people who ask for AoS because of marriage– or job-related claims. The decision was made to curb fraudulent marriages, as well as prevent fraud by low-wage foreign visa-workers.
One common AoS problem, according to officials, is that many illegals submit fake or incomplete “skeletal” AoS applications because of long-standing rules that state that temporary work permits should be granted to every AoS applicant.
The Department of Justice is also trying to curb lawsuits that are intended to keep AoS applications from being rejected.
Immigration Numbers:
Each year, roughly four million young Americans join the workforce after graduating from high school or university.
But the federal government then imports about 1.1 million legal immigrants and refreshes a resident population of roughly 1.5 million white-collar visa workers — including approximately one million H-1B workers — and approximately 500,000 blue-collar visa workers.
The government also prints more than one million work permits for foreigners, tolerates about eight million illegal workers, and does not punish companies for employing the hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants who sneak across the border or overstay their legal visas each year.
This policy of inflating the labor supply boosts economic growth for investors because it ensures that employers do not have to compete for American workers by offering higher wages and better working conditions.
This policy of flooding the market with cheap, foreign, white-collar graduates and blue-collar labor also shifts enormous wealth from young employees towards older investors, even as it also widens wealth gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, and hurts children’s schools and college educations. It also pushes Americans away from high-tech careers and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions. The labor policy also moves business investment and wealth from the Heartland to the coastal cities, explodes rents and housing costs, shrivels real estate values in the Midwest, and rewards investors for creating low-tech, labor-intensive workplaces.
President Donald Trump’s supporters began lining up in Florida on Monday morning ahead of his scheduled campaign launch on Tuesday.
Local media reported eight Trump supporters began to camp out at 2:30 a.m. Monday as the first in line at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida.
On Twitter, Trump said the rally would be “record-setting” after the campaign received over 100,000 ticket requests. The arena sits 20,000.
“Our Country is doing great, far beyond what the haters & losers thought possible – and it will only get better!” Trump wrote.
The campaign plans to kick off the event at 10:00 a.m. with food trucks, live music, and will set up big screens outside the stadium for Trump’s speech.
“Inside and out, the excitement at this Trump rally will be something to remember as President Trump makes history,” Campaign Chief Operating Officer Michael Glassner said in a statement to reporters.
Big Rally tomorrow night in Orlando, Florida, looks to be setting records. We are building large movie screens outside to take care of everybody. Over 100,000 requests. Our Country is doing great, far beyond what the haters & losers thought possible – and it will only get better!
A powerful anti-cancer agent that was found in scarce quantities in sea sponges has finally been synthesized in a laboratory in sufficient quantities that it can undergo serious studies.
