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Former police officer and Turning Point USA Director of Urban Engagement Brandon Tatum told Breitbart News on Sunday securing the United States border is crucial, as the nation is also dealing with the severe consequences of illegal drugs pouring into the country.

Tatum spoke to Breitbart News in Los Angeles, California, at Candace Owens’ first Blexit event of 2019. He said that securing the United States border is “absolutely invaluable,” given what he has seen as a police officer in Arizona.

“The six years I was a police officer, I saw such an influx in heroin and Fentanyl, that it was outrageous,” said Tatum, “Just to give you an idea, every police officer in the entire police department had to carry Narcan, which is something that they shoot into your nose to bring you back to life if you overdose on heroin.”

“With the Fentanyl out, it became so bad, that every time we test drugs, we now have to wear a full body suit and a mask — because of the effects of Fentanyl — if it seeps through your skin or if you inhale it, you can die,” continued Tatum.

“It is absolutely invaluable for us to not only build a wall — to help our border patrol, but also — to let everybody in the world know you’re not just going to come in our country uncontested,” said the former police officer.

Tatum added that the black community has been hearing “one side” for a long time, and that it needs to change.

“My premise is for us to expose people to another reality, and give them the opportunity to make decisions on their own,” said Tatum of the Blexit movement, “We want to give them positive information — good sources, and then they can make the conscious decision, as adults, to go and do the things that they think are necessary for their communities.”

Tatum said that he hopes Blexit will result in a big turnout of voters, but that he especially hopes it will expose African Americans to the truth of the negative impact that the Democrat Party has had on their communities.

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

Dartmouth Professor Jeff Sharlet argued in favor of “doxxing” the Covington Catholic High School students in a tweet this week.

In a Tuesday-night tweet, Dartmouth English Professor Jeff Sharlet argued that the personal information of students from Covington Catholic High School should be released online. The students came under fire last week after a storm of misleading news reports led the masses to believe that they had behaved inappropriately at a rally in Washington D.C.

“I’ll have no problem with someone doxxing these boys,” Sharlet wrote, according to a report from The College Fix. Sharlet has since locked down his Twitter account, making it inaccessible to anyone who wasn’t already following him.

“Doxing” refers to the public release of an individual’s private information. Often, the private information is released in the hopes that someone will harm the individual that is being targeted.

Sharlet was immediately criticized by liberal Yale Professor Nicholas Christakis, who famously faced off against a far-left student mob after his wife criticized a Yale policy on offensive Halloween costumes.

“I haven’t followed this case closely. But mob justice is not justice. At least that my opinion,” Christakis wrote.  “Would you say the same thing about the doxxing of (often minority) students on campuses by the right? Plus, the point of justice is that it not be impassioned.

I haven’t followed this case closely. But mob justice is not justice. At least that my opinion.

— Nicholas A. Christakis (@NAChristakis) January 19, 2019

After the criticism started to pile up, Sharlet doubled down, arguing that the Covington students are worse than the “violent anti-semitic bullies” that he knew as a child.

“I grew up a nearly singular Jew amidst some violent anti-Semitic bullies. The Covington creeps are worse. I never saw anything that grotesque in my working class white, fairly racist high school,” Sharlet tweeted.

Stay tuned to Breitbart News for more updates on this story.

 

A California judge sentenced an illegal alien on Tuesday to 401 years to life in prison for his role in carrying out multiple sex crimes.

Macario Cerda, 39, received the sentence after a jury found him guilty in December of several sex crimes— including three counts of forcible rape, seven counts of lewd acts upon a child under 14 years old, one count of kidnapping to commit rape, and one count of criminal threats.

Cerda— who had been in a relationship with the victim’s mother— allegedly raped his victim in 2013 after he forced her into his van and drove her to a remote area.

The victim hopped into the driver’s seat of the van and drove the vehicle away when Cerda was not looking. Tulare County Sheriff’s deputies eventually caught up with Cerda and arrested him.

Officials who investigated the 2013 rape found that Cerda had previously raped the victim in 2010, when she was still a minor, authorities said. The rape resulted in a pregnancy, and later the birth of a child.

The victim’s younger sister also told authorities that Cerda raped her and abused her in 2009, adding that she had been a minor at the time of the incident.

When the younger sister gave her impact statement in court, she described the crimes Cerda had committed against her and family and forgave him for his actions.

Cerda had also asked the judge to “never grant him any possibility at being deported because he has crawled his way back into the States illegally way too many times.”

“Behind the closed doors of this family, the women and girls suffered greatly from the ongoing and horrific violence at the hands of Cerda,” the Tulare County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

The 39-year-old illegal alien had been deported from the U.S. before, and illegally re-entered the country five months after his deportation shortly before he committed his crimes.

Free speech social network Gab has secured a new payment processor following its blacklisting from major payment services, including PayPal and Stripe, which left accepting mailed payments the site’s only recourse.

Gab announced the new payment processor in a statement on Tuesday.

“Gab.com operates on one rule: if political speech is legal in the United States, that speech is allowed on Gab,” the company declared. “Companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter, Netflix, Patreon, Square, and Stripe disagree with this proposition, and believe not only that it is morally correct to dictate to Internet users what opinions we are and are not allowed to hold, but that it is morally correct to deplatform any company that disagrees with the California consensus, and actively suppress opinions, as well as the people who express them, where their users’ beliefs don’t accord with corporate interests.”

“The only thing censorship accomplishes is the elimination of reasoned argument and self-sorting into filter bubbles. Accordingly, Gab does not censor controversial opinions that are protected by the First Amendment, and we never will,” Gab continued. “People everywhere are waking up to the significant danger of allowing banks and large technology companies to police their opinions and what they are and are not allowed to see. Companies like our own, like our DNS hosting provider epik.com, and our new payment processor, 2nd Amendment Processing, recognize both the danger of kowtowing to online mobs and the significant upside potential of serving as the backbone of the free and open Internet.”

Gab then concluded, “We are immensely pleased to be working with 2nd Amendment Processing, a company that recognizes that freedom of speech is not a means to an end, but an end unto itself, and we recommend 2nd Amendment Processing to any company with difficulty securing payment processing services for political reasons.”

In his own statement, 2nd Amendment Processing CEO Thomas Troyer declared, “When I heard Gab’s story on Breitbart News Daily of how they were being blocked by many financial services companies and banks, I knew instantly I had to fight for them and their 1st Amendment rights just like we fight for our customers within the firearms industry and the protection of the 2nd Amendment. We, after all, believe the 2nd Amendment protects the all other Amendments, so this just made sense to us.”

Gab CEO Andrew Torba added in a statement to Breitbart News, “To our critics, we say this: the best way to combat hate speech is persuasion, not repression; more and better speech, not censorship. We welcome our critics on the far left to join the site and exercise their First Amendment rights, which we will always protect.”

In October, Gab was blacklisted by its payment processors, web host, and Go Daddy, prompting the social network to temporarily go offline.

Gab has also been blacklisted by Apple and Google, which have repeatedly rejected Gab’s mobile app from their stores.

Gab is not the only alternative social network to have faced blacklisting, with YouTube alternative BitChute being blacklisted from PayPal in November.

Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington, or like his page at Facebook.

(CNSNews.com) — Last Thursday, Jan. 17, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stated that undercover video footage filmed by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), which showed Planned Parenthood employees discussing the sale of tissue from aborted fetuses, was “authentic” and “not deceptively edited.”

The federal appeals court also vacated an injunction by a district court, which had barred the Texas Health and Human Services Commission’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) from terminating Medicaid provider agreements with Planned Parenthood affiliates throughout Texas. The federal appeals court sent the case back to the district court.

In its opinion, the federal appeals court wrote, “The district court stated, inaccurately, that the CMP video had not been authenticated and suggested that it may have been edited.”

“In fact, the record reflects that OIG had submitted a report from a forensic firm concluding that the video was authentic and not deceptively edited,” the court added in a footnote. “And the plaintiffs did not identify any particular omission or addition in the video footage.”

In 2015, the CMP, a pro-life organization, released several hours of undercover video footage that showed employees and doctors from various Planned Parenthood affiliates discussing potential research partnerships with individuals who expressed interest in obtaining body parts of fetuses aborted during the second trimester of pregnancy and paying a handling and shipping fee for those parts.

After the footage was released, the OIG sent Planned Parenthood affiliates a notice of termination of their Medicaid agreements. The OIG argued that the affiliates had violated “accepted medical standards, as reflected in federal and state law,” and were no longer “qualified to provide medical services in a professionally competent, safe, legal and ethical manner.”

The violations included altering abortion procedures to obtain “targeted” tissue samples for researchers, “deviating from accepted standards” to procure samples, misrepresenting “activity related to fetal tissue procurements” and “a willingness to charge more than the costs incurred for procuring fetal tissue.”

The Planned Parenthood affiliates then sued, winning a preliminary injunction that stopped the OIG from terminating the Medicaid agreements. The OIG appealed, and, last Thursday, the appeals court vacated the injunction.

In response to the appeals court’s ruling, Planned Parenthood Texas Votes Executive Director Yvonne Gutierrez said the organization was evaluating its options “for seeking further relief” in the district court.

“This is not a loss on the merits, although we are disappointed in the ruling,” Gutierrez said.

Planned Parenthood Texas Votes said, “Blocking access to Planned Parenthood would hurt people in communities who are struggling to get by the most. That’s why Planned Parenthood & its patients will continue to fight for it to stay in the Medicaid program.”

CMP founder David Daleiden wrote that the court’s decision “vindicated” the CMP’s “citizen journalism work” by “debunking Planned Parenthood’s smear that the videos were ‘heavily edited’ or ‘doctored.’”

“Now, it is time for the U.S. Department of Justice to do its job and hold Planned Parenthood accountable to the law,” Daleiden added.

Since the videos were released in 2015, Planned Parenthood has claimed CMP’s footage was heavily and deceptively edited. Many mainstream news outlets have reported that the footage was altered or distorted, using, as the basis for these claims, a Fusion GPS report that was commissioned and funded by Planned Parenthood.

Some Democrats are starting to get tired of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s vendetta against President Donald Trump as the partial government shutdown drags on.

The shutdown hinges on the left’s unwillingness to comply with Trump’s demand for funding for a border wall.

Initially, Democrats were happy to rally behind Pelosi’s stance against Trump, but some of the party’s representatives are now showing signs of fatigue.

Newly-elected Michigan Democrat, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, suggested that Pelosi should come to a deal with Trump, according to MLive.

Slotkin said that party leaders should just “get in the damn room” with Trump to negotiate a compromise.

TRENDING: Judge Scorches Election Officials After Discovering They Illegally Allowed Migrant To Vote

But that’s easier said than done for someone like Pelosi, who seems to have a personal vendetta against Trump.

Last week, Pelosi infamously asked Trump to reschedule or cancel the annual State of the Union address, scheduled for Jan. 29.

The Democrat leader cited “security” concerns as her reason, but it’s obvious even to liberals that she was just trying to make a jab at Trump.

However, Pelosi received push back from some Democrats for her unnecessary attack.

Democrat House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told Fox News on Tuesday that he would be open to Trump delivering the State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress.

Hoyer had also contradicted Pelosi on statements about the border wall last week.

“Look, I don’t think this is an issue of morality, it’s an issue of does it work,” Hoyer told Fox News in contradiction to Pelosi’s claim that the border wall is immoral.

Hoyer also admitted that the border wall works “in some places.”

Another Democrat is even going as far as explicitly calling on fellow lawmakers to build the wall.

RELATED: Don’t Tell Leftists, But Here’s a Massive Border Barrier the EU Spent Millions on

“Give Trump the money,” Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson told KFGO’s “News & Views” on Tuesday.

“I’d give him the whole thing … and put strings on it so you make sure he puts the wall where it needs to be. Why are we fighting over this? We’re going to build that wall anyway, at some time,” Peterson added.

While Peterson is more moderate than some of his Democratic peers, it won’t be long until more Democrats ask Pelosi to give in.

Clearly, Pelosi is being unreasonable — and even Democrats are catching on.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

In 1976, Gerald Ford won 15 percent of the black vote. That’s the most of any recent Republican presidential candidate. In most elections, blacks give Democrats over 90 percent of their votes. It’s not unreasonable to ask what have blacks gained from such unquestioning loyalty to the Democratic Party. After all, the absolute worst public safety conditions and other urban amenities for blacks are in cities that have been controlled by Democrats for decades. Let’s look at it.

What cities are the deadliest for blacks? The Trace, an independent nonprofit news organization, answers that question. Using 2017 data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program, The Trace listed the 20 major U.S. cities with the highest homicide rates — factoring in both the number of people murdered in cities and their populations. Chicago, with 589 murders in 2018 — one murder every 15 hours — is often called the nation’s murder capital. But that’s dead wrong.

In 2017, St. Louis had the nation’s highest murder rate, at 66.1 homicides per 100,000 residents. Baltimore came in second, with 55.8 murders per 100,000 people. Detroit was third, with 39.8 murders per 100,000 people. Other cities with high murder rates included New Orleans; Kansas City, Missouri; Cleveland; Memphis, Tennessee; and Newark, New Jersey. With 24.1 murders per 100,000 residents, Chicago ranked ninth in the nation. It was followed by Cincinnati and Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., was 17th.

Now here’s the kicker. Of the 20 most dangerous major cities, all but one had a Democratic mayor. In many of these cities, the Democratic Party has ruled for a half-century or more. Only Tulsa, Oklahoma, with 17.3 murders per 100,000 residents, had a Republican mayor.

Who knows what conclusion can be drawn from the finding that the most murderous cities have been controlled by Democrats — and often black Democrats? I am not suggesting that Democratic control causes murder and mayhem. What I am saying is that murder, mayhem and other violent crime are not reduced by the election of black or white Democrats to run our cities. That means one cannot dismiss out of hand a question then-candidate Donald Trump asked black Americans in a 2016 campaign speech in Michigan: “What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump? … What the hell do you have to lose?”

Violent crime is not the only problem for blacks in our major cities. Because of high crime, poor schools and a less pleasant environment, cities are losing their economic base and their most productive people in droves. When World War II ended, Washington, D.C.’s population was about 900,000; today it’s about 694,000. In 1950, Baltimore’s population was almost 950,000; today it’s around 612,000. Detroit’s 1950 population was close to 1.85 million; today it’s down to 673,000. Camden, New Jersey’s 1950 population was nearly 125,000; today it has fallen to 75,000. St. Louis’ 1950 population was more than 856,000; today it’s less than 309,000. A similar story of population decline can be found in most of our formerly large and prosperous cities. In some cities, the population decline since 1950 is well over 50 percent. In addition to Detroit and St. Louis, those would include Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

During the 1960s and ’70s, academic liberals, civil rights advocates and others blamed the exodus on racism — “white flight” to the suburbs to avoid blacks. However, since the ’70s, blacks have been fleeing some cities at higher rates than whites. The five cities whose suburbs have the fastest-growing black populations are Miami, Dallas, Washington, Houston and Atlanta (http://tinyurl.com/y8avphy5). It turns out — and reasonably so — that blacks, like whites, want better and safer schools for their kids and don’t like to be mugged or have their property vandalized. And just like the case with white people, if they have the means, black people can’t wait to leave troubled cities.

Bobby Hesley — a Catholic speaker, writer and conservative political commentator — writes, “Black people are finally starting to wake up and unplug themselves from the Liberal Matrix that has ruled their reality for over a half a century.” I say good! It’s unwise to be a one-party people in a two-party system.

If you’re Christian, shut up.

That’s been the unmistakable message of our current culture in recent weeks.

Karen Pence has been lambasted for her decision to teach at a Christian school. Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, after asking a judicial nominee about his membership in the Catholic Knights of Columbus, has tied the organization to the “alt right.”

And a group of teenage Catholic schoolboys waiting for a bus at the March for Life, who didn’t know the mob-approved way to handle a Native American activist walking up to them, are fighting for their reputations.

Of course, this isn’t really about Karen Pence, or judicial nominee Brian Buescher, or the Covington Catholic High boys.

It’s about intimidating everyone else.

It’s telling the husband or wife of an up-and-coming lawmaker that if they want to teach at a school, it’s probably better they choose a non-Christian one, unless they want their spouse someday ensnared in a media cycle over LGBT discrimination.

It’s telling the law student who dreams of someday becoming a judge that no matter how appealing he finds joining a Catholic charitable organization, it’s probably better for his career ambitions if he doesn’t.

And it’s telling schools and students and parents that no matter if they are willing to deal with the expense and trouble of hauling dozens or hundreds of students to Washington, D.C., on buses and having them sleep on gym floors, it still might not be a good idea—because the students’ future reputations, careers, and college prospects could all be gone with one viral video.

No, that wouldn’t happen if the students came to Washington to fight for gun control or raise awareness of climate change.

Just if they’re there to speak up for the babies who can’t.

When President Donald Trump was elected—in a shock for conventional D.C. wisdom—it become obvious that there were plenty of silent Americans who, in the privacy of the ballot box, dared to defy the politically correct, woke cultural leaders of our time.

But it’s not enough to vote.

I’m glad Karen Pence, the vice president’s wife, isn’t backing down and resigning. I’m thrilled Brian Buescher is remaining a member of the Knights of Columbus, and that Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., introduced a resolution saying there’s nothing wrong with a judge being in the Knights. I’m heartened that the Covington students are fighting back, and saying they did nothing wrong.

But they can’t do this all on their own.

About 70 percent of Americans are Christian, according to the Pew Research Center.

They—and everyone who believes in religious freedom—need to start speaking up.

You don’t have to agree with Buescher’s judicial philosophy to say that in the United States, there should be no religious test for judges.

You don’t have to have attended a Catholic school or be pro-life to say that a group of teen boys being awkward around an activist—an activist who later that weekend tried to bring a group of protesters to disrupt a Catholic Mass at the basilica in D.C.—should not be a news story, much less a reputation destroyer.

You don’t have to agree with Immanuel Christian School’s faith tenets to defend Karen Pence’s right to choose the school where she wants to teach.

You know what breeds intolerance? Silence. It’s easy for someone to kvetch about the Covington boys or mock the second lady as a bigot at the water cooler if he has no reason to believe any other colleague will speak up.

We need to take a lesson from the left’s playbook.

Here’s what liberals do really well: They share their stories. And they make it personal.

We need to do the same.

Did your son or daughter go to the March for Life? Talk about it. Share how proud you were that they cared enough about the lives of unborn babies to be on a bus for 20 hours and sleep on a crowded gym floor.

And share how scared you are that they, too, could become targets of social media acvistists and mainstream media because they didn’t know the appropriate public relations strategy to deal with a protest.

Does it make you feel like an alien in your own country that what you hear from the pews on Sunday could make you ineligible to do certain jobs in our system? Express that anxiety. Tell the truth about how you don’t like being treated like a second-class citizen in your own nation.

Are you appalled that your mom’s job at a Christian school could get her branded as a bigot? Say that. Share the facts: Plenty of Christian denominations adhere to 2,000 years of sexual morality, and demand no sex outside of marriage—whether you’re straight or LGBT.

If we keep talking, things will change.

Because people know that if their colleague Kelly is pro-life, or their hair stylist Melissa is Christian, or their neighbor Bob teaches at a Christian school, they will think twice.

That doesn’t mean they will agree with Kelly or Melissa or Bob.

But it does mean they will realize it’s unfair to assume all pro-lifers hate women, or that all Christians hate LGBT people. They will realize it’s more complex than the woke leaders of social media say it is.

And then we can have real discussions and real dialogues, person to person.

I get that it’s hard. I’m often more of a coward than I’d like to be—even with the job security of working at a conservative news outlet. It’s hard to speak up sometimes, especially if you’re scared people will judge you or there will be hidden consequences—promotions that never occur, networking that abruptly stops.

But we don’t have a choice.

Right now, thought leaders in the United States are working overtime to make it clear: Stand up for your Christian beliefs, your pro-life beliefs—and you will pay.

But we can rise up, too.

If there’s one thing we should have learned in this era of Trump, it’s that standing up to bullies works.

And we need to—because there’s nothing American about a future where holding certain religious beliefs makes you a second-class citizen.