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Pierce Corcoran was killed in December and one of the final messages he left behind has spurred his family on to fight for the safety of every American.

His mother, father, and sister shared with Breitbart News the story of Pierce and the illegal alien who killed him. The accounts were filmed the morning after the family tried to visit House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Capitol Hill and were turned away. It was in the middle of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history and while Democrats refused to even negotiate funding for border security and a border barrier.

Pierce Corcoran, 22, was killed less than a month ago, December 29, 2018, when authorities say an unlicensed illegal alien smashed headfirst into the vehicle Pierce was driving.

“He kept us on our toes since the moment he came into this world,” angel mom Wendy Corcoran said of her youngest child.

“He looked at things really simple, ya know there’s right and there’s wrong,” angel dad D.J. Corcoran said. “He was just starting to develop into a young man.” Pierce and his girlfriend were “crazy about” each other and he had bought a ring for her before he was killed.

Angel sister Avery Corcoran said he would always make a point, even when he was busy, to talk, “He made you feel special.”

The family recounted each of their own experiences of the day that Pierce was struck and killed. D.J. Corcoran, a firefighter, was out of town for another job. He received a notification of a back wreck back home, knew his son drove that route, and tried to call, but couldn’t get a hold of his son. 

“I just wanted to be with my family,” said D.J. of the moment he got the news. Firefighters from precincts on the route between D.J. and home ferried him car to car to get the shocked father back to the rest of his family.

Wendy Corcoran recalled the knock on the door that was firefighters coming to tell her that her son was in a wreck and “didn’t make it.” She agonized over how to tell her husband and other children, “how am I going to repeat the words I just heard?”

Avery recalled visiting the impound lot where her brother’s mangled car had been taken. She looked inside and wedged there between the windshield and dash was her brother’s journal covered in shattered glass. 

“This is my life and my actions still matter,” she recalled reading in that journal, some of the final words her brother had written. The family wear buttons with Pierce’s photo and the words “my actions still matter.”

D.J. recalled seeing his son in the morgue the next day, “I remember just looking at my baby and just laying there and it was hard.”

“It’s still new and we are still dealing with the reality every day that, that there’s not going to be another family picture with him in it, another vacation with him there, another holiday, another birthday, so for us, it’s the worst time we’ve ever had to face,” said Wendy.

D.J. expressed that the family doesn’t harbor hate for the offender, but that there was neglect. He empathized with other angel families and recalled trying to voice their experiences to House Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Schumer. Neither legislator would meet with the families.

The partial government shutdown temporarily ended Friday with Democrats still refusing to fund border security or a border barrier.

President Donald Trump warned in his reopening announcement that if Democrats and Republicans in Congress are unable to reach an agreement on funding these vital border measures by February 15, he will either allow the government to shut down again or will exercise the option of declaring a national emergency to build a border barrier and begin securing the U.S. southern border.

Michelle Moons is a White House Correspondent for Breitbart News — follow on Twitter @MichelleDiana and Facebook

When Sen. Dianne Feinstein told Amy Coney Barrett, who is now confirmed as a judge for the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and is a potential Supreme Court nominee, that “dogma lives loudly within” her and “that’s of concern,” she wasn’t voicing concern over the nominee’s religious orthodoxy as much as she was revealing her own.

After all, Catholicism, unlike progressivism, has never inhibited anyone from faithfully executing her constitutional duties — which the judge has done with far more conviction than Feinstein. Maybe Barrett should have been asking the questions.

Recently, by unanimous consent, the Senate approved a Ben Sasse resolution that declares that it is unconstitutional to reject nominees because of their membership to the Knights of Columbus. This move was instigated by a similar incident, when Democratic Sens. Kamala Harris and Mazie Hirono criticized President Donald Trump’s nominee for the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska, Brian Buescher, for being a bit too Catholic for their liking. The Knights of Columbus, a benevolent society that still clings to antiquated notions about the dignity of human life — from the very beginning to the very end — doesn’t exactly adhere to the new progressive moral canon.

Unlike many friends on the right, I’m less offended by questions regarding dogma and belief. It’s true that the Constitution explicitly states that a federal government officeholder or employee can’t be required to adhere to or accept any particular religion or doctrine as a prerequisite to holding a federal office or job. But it’s also true that the clause directly preceding that clause requires every federal and state official to take an oath to support the Constitution. Rejecting someone over his faith alone is unquestionably a religious test. Merely asking a nominee whether her beliefs might stop her from fulfilling her constitutional duties is a relevant question.

For many liberals, though, the problem is that the beliefs of many Catholics and other adherents of various Christian theologies — or, for that matter, Jewish ones, as well — are increasingly undermining progressive ideals, not constitutional ones.

As Beto O’Rourke might ask, do the principles of the Constitution “still work”? When it comes to religious freedom, they most certainly do not. It’s progressive dogma that led a Harvard-educated Washington Post editor to incredulously ask how traditional Christian schools can even “happen” in contemporary American society. She was questioning not merely whether second lady Karen Pence is right or wrong to teach at a Christian school — after all, Americans are free to be critical of people’s faith — but how a school that adheres to the teachings of a church that counter progressive dogma can exist at all.

This is the same progressive moral dogma that justifies yearslong attacks on the livelihood of Christian bakers and florists. It’s the same dogma that justifies coercing nuns to pay for the rite of birth control. If one doesn’t adhere to these commandments, the state, the most powerful institution in the world, will sue them into submission.

In this regard, liberals also like to claim that those who do allow traditional faith to inform their political views are somehow undermining a tenet of American life. (Well, as long as that traditional faith can’t be utilized for left-wing agenda items, such as immigration and socialized health care.) As it goes, some of us, even nonbelievers, prefer the teachings of Jesus to those of Marx — which, in the non-celestial world, means free will over coercion. Whatever the case, our backgrounds and beliefs always color our opinions.

The Democratic presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard, an apostate on this issue, recently argued in an op-ed that if the Knights of Columbus are a disqualifying group, “then President John F. Kennedy, and the ‘liberal lion of the Senate’ Ted Kennedy would have been ‘unqualified’ for the same reasons.”

Well, not exactly the same reason. The anti-Catholicism of the past was predicated on an aversion to new immigrants, conspiracies about the pope, and a general long-standing theological distrust among religious denominations. In the political arena today, only the latter of those reasons is in play, and the denomination isn’t Protestant. The “liberal lion of the Senate” wouldn’t be disqualified by today’s standards, because in public life, at least, he was a doctrinal liberal.

“There are many people on the left who act like every political fight is going to bring about heaven or hell on earth — and so there are a lot of folks for whom politics is a religion,” Sasse said after his resolution passed. Progressives are the most zealous moralists. And these lines of questioning from Democrats, increasingly prevalent in political discourse, are an attempt to create the impression that faithful Christians, whose beliefs are at odds with newly sanctified cultural mores, are incapable of doing their jobs.

Sasse is right. Political bellum sacrum is here. We’re just not looking at the right people.

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When establishment media believes the narrative they push on the public, they can get themselves into trouble. As an example of this, it appears CNN may have thought they had a slam dunk of a story to bash President Donald Trump over — with furloughed workers as guests.

They were wrong. And just how wrong they were became clear in an interview that went in a very different direction from what CNN seems to have expected.

CNN’s Victor Blackwell introduced the topic of the partial government shutdown and border wall funding by referencing a statement from Trump. In it, Trump said he had support from furloughed workers.

“Many of those workers have said to me and communicated, ‘stay out until you get the funding for the wall,’” Trump said, according to ABC News. “These federal workers want the wall. The only one that doesn’t want the wall are the Democrats.”

Blackwell asked his guests, federal law enforcement officers Charles and Jill Gilbert, if Trump actually had their support. Both had continued to work without pay during the partial government shutdown.

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Their response appears to have left Blackwell a bit stumped. As he continued to question them, and even tried to set them up to answer a certain way, they didn’t play along — which left Blackwell silenced at one point and struggling for words.

Charles made it clear that Trump has their support. He also explained why Trump had it and why they felt the wall was worth the sacrifice.

“If its going to defend our country and keep illegals out, keep people from hurting my children, (people) that don’t belong here, yes, I’m all for the wall,’ he said. He added that he would support another shutdown in three weeks if it comes to that.

The couple did not blame Trump, but did point at Congress for the trouble. Jill used the example of their prison work to explain what Congress needs to do.

“We don’t stop what we’re doing in a prison. Our daily operations continue to go regardless if we like someone or not,” she said.

“We still have to have a working relationship with that person. If we don’t like them, we can tell ’em we don’t like them, but we’re still gonna walk out that front door with them, regardless of what happens in that prison.”

The couple did express some frustration over being used as pawns by Congress. They said they hoped that federal workers would one day be exempted from being used by warring parties of elected officials.

Jill seemed certain that the shutdown would be reinstated. She said without an exemption, federal workers going without pay will continue to be a talking point held over their head that gives the warring parties power to continue to war with each other.

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The Democrats have three weeks to come to a resolution with Republicans. And such a resolution will need to include wall funding or the partial government shutdown will be reinstated.

If the Democrats continue to resist approving the funding, which they have done previously, federal workers will again be held hostage by partisan politics. And despite the narrative being run by establishment media, it appears people like the Gilberts, even when used as pawns by Congress, will continue to support the president in his quest to keep America safe.

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The four GOP Senators picked for the border security conference committee are not leaders in the high-risk immigration issue, ensuring that Senate Majority Leader and the president will decide the next stage of the immigraiton and border wall controversy.

The GOP Senators on the border security panel are Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, West Virginia’s Shelley Moore Capito, North Dakota’s Sen. John Hoeven, and Missouri’s Sen. Roy Blunt, a source told Breitbart News. The four members each have earned a B rating from the mainstream NumbersUSA advocacy group, which favors a reduction in legal immigration.

The panel of four Republicans and three Democrats is slated to negotiate a bipartisan response by February 15 to the President’s demand for $5.7 billion in border wall funds.

The GOP side of the panel was picked by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and notably does not include the leading members of the GOP’s pro-amnesty cheap labor caucus, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, Sen. James Lankford, Sen. Thom Tillis, or Sen. Cory Gardner.

The three Democrats include two of their experts on the immigration issue, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy. The third Democratic member is Montana Sen. Jon Tester.

Durbin recognizes the high-risk unpredictability of the migration issue, partly because he was one of the leaders in the disastrous “Gang of Eight” cheap labor amnesty push. That push helped the Democrats lose nine Senate seats in November 2014, and also helped Donald Trump destroy Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign in 2016.

The Senate panel is expected to play a central — but not decisive — role in the next three weeks as President Donald Trump and his advisers — plus McConnell — decide whether they should keep raising the price they are willing to pay hostile Democrats to win a small extension of the border wall

For example, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, has reportedly suggested the President will offer a plan to provide amnesty to roughly 1.8 million young migrants. The Kushner plan would include the 800,000 registered DACA migrants — but it would also tempt many migrants to cross the border in the hope of getting an amnesty during Trump’s reelection campaign.

McClatchy news says Jared Kushner is offering an amnesty for 1.8M+ migrants. The amnesty would give green cards to at least 800K unregistered migrants, so would invite a border rush by people claiming eligibility. The rush would come before 2020 election. https://t.co/c996eC6Oyd

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) January 25, 2019

GOP-affiliated business lobbies want amnesties partly because they would get a new influx of extra consumers and workers. But the business lobbyists also know that it Trump endorses amnesties during the next three weeks, he would surrender his political leverage to push for his “Four Pillars” reforms in 2020.

The business groups are also pushing hard for Kushner and Trump to approve a huge new inflow of visa workers, via the H-1B or OPT programs. The extra visa workers would please Wall Street and many donors — but would also alienate many of the suburban professionals and young graduates whom Trump needs to win in 2020.

Tech Billionaires urge fast-track green cards for 400,000 contract visa-workers – and many more later. Just guessing here, but maybe most Americans prefer fewer visa workers for biz & higher salaries for their families? https://t.co/yXhMswXOXK

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) December 8, 2018

The business groups are using a series of industry-funded polls to win support in the White House. But those polls hide other polls of deep emotional opposition among Trump’s supporters and among swing voters to any border policy which increases migration, raises crime or lower wages.

The President’s allies among the immigration reform groups also do not want the Senate panel or White House officials to push for a large amnesty in exchange for a short wall. Instead, the groups generally prefer a reformist policy that will curb migration — with the aid of better barriers on the border — and so help push up voters’ wages before Trump’s reelection campaign in 2020.

“One thing we’ve always said is that a fixation on the wall is myopic,” said R.J. Haumann, policy director at NumersUSA. “Barriers are part of the solution, but there are bigger and better solutions to these problems,” he said, adding that Trump’s reelection will be aided when wages rise.

Another option is for the president to declare a national emergency — without granting any concessions to Democrats or business — and then order his agencies to build additional miles of a wall using unspent funds. The option would ensure a backlash in Washington D.C. but is likely to survive a court challenge. 

Trump Has Legal Authority to Declare Border Emergency to Build the Wall https://t.co/TQi1Kpekvs via @BreitbartNews

— Ken Klukowski (@kenklukowski) January 25, 2019

The President’s agency appointees are also pushing ahead with a variety of solutions, including the construction of better fences and the rollout of regulatory changes.

The most important regulatory change is the new “Remain in Mexico” policy, which may allow the president to shrink the catch-and-release practices at the border and also deeply damage the cartel’s labor-trafficking business. “That is a very big deal — hopefully, it does not get struck down in the courts,” said Haumann. 

This ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy could be more effective in blocking job-seeking ‘asylum’ migrants than the border well – if it survives progressives’ legal attacks, congressional caveats, and does not cause too many problems for Mexican officials. https://t.co/POJ9S8sfy4

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) January 25, 2019

Progressive opponents of the Remain in Mexico policy say it is creating “a legal wall” against the economic migrants who claim asylum to activate the catch-and-release loopholes in the border wall.

Those pro-migration claims echo the Democrats’ visceral opposition to any border wall, which is increasingly being described by no-deal progressives as an unacceptable symbol of GOP racism towards non-white migrants.

That no-deal stance leaves the Democrats vulnerable in 2020 to a presidential campaign which portrays them as more concerned about migrants than about Americans’ wallets and neighborhoods.

Nationwide, the bipartisan establishment’s economic policy of using legal migration to boost economic growth shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with cheap white-collar and blue-collar foreign labor. That flood of outside labor spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor of blue-collar and white-collar employees.

The cheap labor policy widens wealth gaps, reduces high tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high tech careers, and sidelines at least five million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.

Immigration also steers investment and wealth away from towns in Heartland states because coastal investors can more easily hire and supervise the large immigrant populations who prefer to live in coastal cities. In turn, that investment flow drives up coastal real estate prices, pricing poor U.S. whites, Latinos, and blacks out of prosperous cities, such as Berkeley and Oakland.

Angel Mom Mary Ann Mendoza says Americans who have been victimized by illegal aliens are living proof that United States needs a wall along the southern border to stop illegal immigration.

On Friday, President Trump announced he would reopen the federal government by signing a three-week funding bill that does not include money for his proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Mendoza — who co-founded Angel Families after her 32-year-old son Brandon Mendoza was killed by a drunk illegal alien who was driving the wrong way down a highway in Mesa, Arizona — told Breitbart News in an exclusive statement that it is Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) who are “holding Americans hostage” by refusing to support any measures to curb mass illegal immigration.

“Angel Families, Border Patrol, DHS, ranchers and all other citizens affected by illegal alien crime are the proof [Pelosi and Schumer] need,” Mendoza said.

The latest polling from Harvard/Harris finds that more than 80 percent of American voters either strongly or somewhat support a crackdown on illegal alien crime, including 96 percent of Republicans, 70 percent of Democrats, and 79 percent of swing voters.

@SpeakerPelosi guess who’s credit rating is NON EXISTENT? EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN KILLED BY AN ILLEGAL ALIEN IN OUR COUNTRY….4000+ annually lose their lives and credit rating. They are DEAD because of NO BORDER SECURITY! BRANDON ‘S LIFE MATTERS pic.twitter.com/9k90lcc6cl

— ❌Angel Mom Mary Ann Mendoza ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (@mamendoza480) January 24, 2019

“If hundreds of thousands of American citizens affected annually by illegal alien crime isn’t enough to make every man, woman, and young adult take notice and listen to what could happen to any of them in the blink of an eye — and make our elected officials stand up and protect us over illegal aliens illegally present in our country — I don’t know what else to do,” Mendoza continued.

Mendoza said the president’s plan to form a negotiating committee to strike a deal that he hopes will at least partially fund construction of a border wall will reveal, starkly, who elected Democrats represent.

“Denial is not the answer,” Mendoza said. “Step up and acknowledge our hardships, loss, and lack of protection. If Democrats refuse to negotiate during this temporary fix, Americans will now know for certain who they fight fo, and it isn’t you and I.”

Illegal immigration at the southern border, for December 2018, has increased 81 percent compared to this same month the year before. Additionally, there were about 22,000 illegal alien minors who crossed the southern border last month.

Meanwhile, drug overdoses in 2017 killed an unprecedented 72,287 U.S. residents, nearly three times the number of individuals killed by global terrorism. Nearly 50,000 of those deadly overdoses were caused by either heroin or fentanyl.

Last year, alone, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency arrested nearly 2,000 convicted and suspected illegal alien killers, leaving behind countless American and legal immigrant victims.

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