53percenter's Blog

The media and the left — who can tell the difference? — often push a narrative that all Hispanics are united against President Trump, but a DACA recipient just set the record straight.

Hilario Yanez was able to stay in the United States by taking part in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which was created in 2012 by then-President Barack Obama. You’d think that might make Yanez a “poster child” for opposing President Donald Trump … but he has a very different message.

“I came here when I was a year old. And my mom brought me here through no fault of my own. I couldn’t make my own decision. I grew up undocumented. I grew up homeless,” Yanez said Tuesday during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.”

Check it out here:

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Yet Yanez isn’t pinning his future on liberalism.

“It was my conservative values that made me who I am today, and as a result, I’m a first generation college graduate and I have an incredible job as well,” he explained.

Then he dropped a bombshell:

Counter to the frequent narrative, a surprising number of DACA participants stand with Donald Trump on the border security issue.

“Look, I agree with the president and I talk to hundreds and thousands of dreamers,” Yanez said.”I think we’re all in agreement that safety is, should be, our number one priority. I think the president has every right to do that,” he said, referring to border security plans like the southern wall.

“I think when he became president, his first mission and priority was to protect the American people and … the dreamer community, you know, many of them, hundreds and thousands that I speak to, … agree that the president is doing the right thing.”

When asked what he would say to Democrat leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he had a very clear message.

“Well, what I would say is that, you know, ‘enough is enough,’” he said.

“I think it’s time for us to not come together as Democrats and Republicans, but as Americans.

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“We need to put the American people first, and we also need to put certainty for the dreamers, once and for all.”

Yanez pointed out that immigration and border reform wasn’t a conservative or liberal-only issue.

“I think if anyone is against a compromise or against a deal, then they don’t want to see the president succeed or America succeed,” Yanez said.

“And then, also, they don’t want to bring certainty for the dreamers as well.”

If liberals truly care about child immigrants who were brought into the U.S. when they were too young to have a say, they must include them when talking about border security.

Yanez has a strong, if unexpected, argument.

Unrestricted immigration is not sustainable and brings many problems — and the Hispanic community is hurt by the porous border’s impact on crime, poverty, and unemployment, too.

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

WASHINGTON, DC — North Korea remains at the top of a list of 50 countries where at least 245 million Christians are facing “extreme persecution” this year, up 14 percent from 215 million at the beginning of 2018, the World Wide Watch List (WWL) released on Wednesday by Open Doors, a group that monitors the mistreatment of Christ followers, revealed.

At the Heritage Foundation, David Curry, the president and CEO of Open Doors, unveiled the 2019 WWL that ranks the top 50 “most dangerous” countries to follow Jesus, noting that women are especially targeted. 

“The Open Doors World Watch List which you will see today is the most comprehensive grassroots study of what is happening around the world to restrict religious freedom, particularly for Christians,” he explained, adding “The data proves conclusively that Christian women are the most exploited group on the face of the earth.”

Curry highlighted several trends that are currently fueling the mistreatment of Christians, including the rise of authoritarianism and spread of radical Islam, particularly into sub-Saharan Africa. 

“Radical Islam is the driver behind eight of the top 10 on the World Watch List this year, four of which are from Africa,” the Open Doors chief proclaimed.

“Africa is now a major epicenter of violence against Christians,” he observed.

Last year, worldwide persecution resulted in 4,136 deaths, 1,266 attacks on worshipping centers, and the detention 2,625 individuals, the report revealed. The number of deaths increased by about 35 percent from 3,066 at the beginning of 2018.

“Christians were killed for faith-related reasons. On average, that’s 11 Christians killed every day for their faith,” Open Doors noted. 

Overall, one in 9 Christians across the world suffered from “high levels of persecution,” the organization added.

North Korea remained at the top of the list for the 18th year in a row. 

Curry noted: 

North Korea is number one on the World Watch List again and number one in the use of authoritarian tactics. It’s illegal to own a bible. The very suggestion that you’re a Christian can get you arrested with neighborhood watches again using old school communist tactics to control people. The use of authoritarian methods is a major trend on this year’s World Watch List and it’s a worrisome trend. We believe that churches must be sacred from authoritarian tactics.

This year, Open Doors listed 11 countries where Christians are experiencing “extreme persecution”: North Korea, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Pakistan, Sudan, Eritrea, Yemen, Iran, India, and Syria. 

“For the first time since the start of the World Watch List, India has entered the top 10,” Open Doors pointed out. 

Open Doors’ report thus argues that India is a worse place to practice Christianity than China, where persecution against followers of Jesus has intensified under Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, who has vowed to “Sinicize” the country’s religions or make them more Chinese by instilling core communist values. 

“China jumped 16 spots, from 43 to 27,” the monitor group reported. 

Referring to both India and China, the Open Doors report said:

Each of these countries is home to more than a billion people, so these trends are distressing. Hindu nationalists in India continue to attack Christians with what seems like no consequences, and in China, the increased power of the government and the rule of Xi Jinping continue to make open worship difficult in some parts of the country.

Open Doors described the persecution of Christians in China as the worst it has been for more than a decade, with at least 50 million people facing some form of repression this year as the Xi administration tightens its grip over religious worship, the Guardian found.

The watchdog group, alluding to the estimated 65 million Christians in India, reported:  

Christians have been targeted by Hindu nationalist extremists more each year. Since the current ruling party took power in 2014, attacks have increased, and Hindu radicals believe they can attack Christians with no consequences. The view of the nationalists is that to be Indian is to be Hindu, so any other faith— including Christianity—is viewed as non-Indian. Additionally, in some regions of the country, converts to Christianity from Hinduism experience extreme persecution, discrimination and violence.

Hindu nationalist groups in India are reportedly affiliated with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Curry pointed out: 

The BJP party, which is the ruling party, Prime Minister Modi’s party has created a radical Hindu agenda within India that seeks to push out the Christian faith and anything other than the Hindu faith. They’re not hiding it. It’s not a secret. It’s their agenda and they have created an environment where people have impunity to attack churches — hundreds of churches have been attacked. 

He went on to urge “influential business people in America of Indian descent…to speak out about the discrimination against Christians in India.”

“We believe the international community is beginning to wake up to this discrimination within India … because this is a massive human rights violation and Indian needs to be held to account if they want to be part of the international business community,” Curry added. 

The Open Doors chief also urged the United States and other Western nations to defend and promote religious freedom. 

Curry told reporters:

People around the world are losing their freedom to choose their faith and we have to pay attention. Religious freedom is the key to what it means to be free. It is the key to what it means to be human and we believe at Open Doors that everyone should have the right to choose their own faith or if they want to have no faith at all. The United States and the Western world can lead in defending and promoting religious freedom.

Open Doors released its WWL assessment one day after the United States government marked 2019’s Religious Freedom Day on Tuesday.

There goes that talking point.

Eventual good news for federal employees: the president has signed the shutdown back pay bill. pic.twitter.com/LERL5s5JDG

— Tamara Keith (@tamarakeithNPR) January 16, 2019

Pelosi doesn’t care about who she hurts, she’s trying to shut down the SOTU because she’s afraid Trump can use it to argue for the wall. She never even contacted the Secret Service or the DHS.

Via Daily Caller:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter Wednesday to the White House asking for a postponement of the annual State of the Union address until after the government shutdown has ended. Pelosi cited security concerns over the speech due to “hamstrung” security agencies.

Pelosi wrote:

The U.S. Secret Service was designated as the lead federal agency responsible for coordinating, planning, exercising, and implementing security for National Special Security Events. However, both the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security [DHS] have not been funded for 26 days now — with critical departments hamstrung by furloughs. Sadly, given the security concerns and unless government re-opens this week, I suggest that we work together to determine another suitable date after government has re-opened for this address or for you to consider delivering your State of the Union address in writing to the Congress on January 29th.

However, multiple DHS officials and Secret Service veterans have said that Pelosi is not being truthful in her remarks and weaponizing the Secret Service for political reasons.

Former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino tells The Daily Caller that Pelosi owes the Secret Service an apology and that the shutdown has nothing to do with agency readiness.

Keep reading…

http://bit.ly/2TSfJ4v

Busted.

Via Daily Caller:

The Secret Service was never contacted by Nancy Pelosi’s office or other Democratic congressional leadership regarding their ability to protect the president, members of the administration and Congress during the State of the Union, according to a senior law enforcement official at the Department of Homeland Security.

According to the official who spoke to the The Daily Caller, Pelosi made the decision unilaterally without contacting the Secret Service or DHS. “The Secret Service was never contacted by congressional leadership regarding our security plan or the Secret Service’s ability to carry it out,” the senior law enforcement official said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter Wednesday to the White House asking for a postponement of the annual State of the Union address, citing congressional security concerns because of “hamstrung” security agencies on account of the government shutdown. The letter read, in part:

The U.S. Secret Service was designated as the lead federal agency responsible for coordinating, planning, exercising, and implementing security for National Special Security Events. However, both the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security [DHS] have not been funded for 26 days now — with critical departments hamstrung by furloughs. Sadly, given the security concerns and unless government re-opens this week, I suggest that we work together to determine another suitable date after government has re-opened for this address or for you to consider delivering your State of the Union address in writing to the Congress on January 29th.

Multiple DHS officials and Secret Service veterans have said that Pelosi is not being truthful in her claim that Secret Service is incapable of protecting the president during the State of the Union.

Keep reading…

The optics for the latest caravan don’t get much worse than this: Honduran border police arrested a 26-year-old fugitive they said was leading it and hauled him off to prison to serve the 15-year term that came of his 2015 conviction. 

Caravan leader Juan Carlos Molina’s crime?  Raping a younger than 12-year-old, his own little cousin, sneaking into her home as she awaited her mother’s return from a late-working job with the door to her home ajar to let her back in, according to Honduras’s Diario La Tribuna (story in Spanish).  If she had to leave the door open, it’s quite likely it’s because she had to go to sleep, meaning the rape was a bedroom invasion rape of a young girl, which is every girl’s (and woman’s) worst nightmare.

The raped girl then got pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy.  Cops matched Molina’s DNA to that of the infant, and that secured his conviction.

Having skipped his court dates, he became a fugitive, and now he’s out leading caravans these days, undoubtedly with women and children to head into the U.S.  Putting him in with women and children anywhere is revolting in the extreme, but here he was, expecting to get away with it because it was the media-untouchable caravan.  Some of caravaners he led may have valid asylum claims, but it’s a hard fact that he was running from his crimes and ready to file an asylum claim for free entry into the U.S.

Sound like the kind of people we should be letting in, for even two seconds?  These are the very people whose sob stories the media lap up as they report on caravaners as merely asylum-seekers running from crime.  Nobody ever mentions that some of them are the crime, other than angry Mexican residents who experience it firsthand and who are lashing out now.  According to the open borders crowd, and according to our laws, it’s all good if a guy like Molina gets in, because, well, he has a “right” to file an asylum case, and if he sneaks in to do it, he has a “right” to stay here for the duration.

Good luck to all the little 12-year-olds in whatever vicinity he planned to wait out his asylum claim in. 

Fortunately, the Honduran cops got him.

The whole sickening spectacle highlights that migrant caravans really are loaded with criminals, and if the leader is a criminal, criminals have a “safe space.”

U.S. Homeland Security surveillance identified about 600 criminals from the last caravan as the media pooh-poohed the reports, and those were the ones the U.S. knew about.  The ones they didn’t know about are people who would have been let in, or else would have broken in (something that comes natural to criminals) and then been allowed to stay by legal default.

It defies belief to think there are no criminals in this group hell-bent on getting into the States by extra-legal means.  And for every criminal, you can bet there were quite a few female enablers from that single-mom-with-kids community the press is so anxious to promote as the harmless face of the caravan.

Now the Mexican government is warning that the caravans have become magnets for criminals, because they’re now a money-making opportunity.

In a jaw-dropping news item utterly ignored by the mainstream press here, a top Mexican migration official told La Razón, a left-leaning Mexican newspaper, that criminals were coming to dominate the caravans now, with open borders activists agreeing.

Via Google Translate (which came out pretty good this time), La Razón reported: 

The Undersecretary of Human Rights, Migration and Population of the Ministry of the Interior (Segob), Alejandro Encinas, said he did not doubt that some organizations profit economically from migrant caravans, but also said that there are some criminal groups that want to get involved in the Exodus.

“I do not doubt it, and not only that (profit), there are some criminal groups that want to get involved unduly in these marches,” he said.

The official told La Razón that the Mexican government is following up on the new caravan that left early yesterday morning in Honduras. “Already left today (yesterday) in the early morning a contingent of slightly more than 500 people, right now (noon yesterday) amount to just over a thousand and we are monitoring,” he said.

In this regard, Jorge Andrade, founder of the migrant group You Are Us, said that what the official said “is an open secret”.

“What Alejandro Encinas says is an open secret, because these groups have been identified for seven years; Even the National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH) has conducted studies on migrant violence, “he said.

In an interview with this newspaper, the anthropologist also said that for organized crime the Central American migrant represents large amounts of money.

Somewhere, somehow, this truth has got to eventually get out.  The press isn’t reporting it.  But the fact remains: the caravan problem is becoming a criminal enterprise, and criminals, extremely violent ones, are among its leaders.

If that, and this arrest, is not a case for a wall, what is it going to take?

The optics for the latest caravan don’t get much worse than this: Honduran border police arrested a 26-year-old fugitive they said was leading it and hauled him off to prison to serve the 15-year term that came of his 2015 conviction. 

Caravan leader Juan Carlos Molina’s crime?  Raping a younger than 12-year-old, his own little cousin, sneaking into her home as she awaited her mother’s return from a late-working job with the door to her home ajar to let her back in, according to Honduras’s Diario La Tribuna (story in Spanish).  If she had to leave the door open, it’s quite likely it’s because she had to go to sleep, meaning the rape was a bedroom invasion rape of a young girl, which is every girl’s (and woman’s) worst nightmare.

The raped girl then got pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy.  Cops matched Molina’s DNA to that of the infant, and that secured his conviction.

Having skipped his court dates, he became a fugitive, and now he’s out leading caravans these days, undoubtedly with women and children to head into the U.S.  Putting him in with women and children anywhere is revolting in the extreme, but here he was, expecting to get away with it because it was the media-untouchable caravan.  Some of caravaners he led may have valid asylum claims, but it’s a hard fact that he was running from his crimes and ready to file an asylum claim for free entry into the U.S.

Sound like the kind of people we should be letting in, for even two seconds?  These are the very people whose sob stories the media lap up as they report on caravaners as merely asylum-seekers running from crime.  Nobody ever mentions that some of them are the crime, other than angry Mexican residents who experience it firsthand and who are lashing out now.  According to the open borders crowd, and according to our laws, it’s all good if a guy like Molina gets in, because, well, he has a “right” to file an asylum case, and if he sneaks in to do it, he has a “right” to stay here for the duration.

Good luck to all the little 12-year-olds in whatever vicinity he planned to wait out his asylum claim in. 

Fortunately, the Honduran cops got him.

The whole sickening spectacle highlights that migrant caravans really are loaded with criminals, and if the leader is a criminal, criminals have a “safe space.”

U.S. Homeland Security surveillance identified about 600 criminals from the last caravan as the media pooh-poohed the reports, and those were the ones the U.S. knew about.  The ones they didn’t know about are people who would have been let in, or else would have broken in (something that comes natural to criminals) and then been allowed to stay by legal default.

It defies belief to think there are no criminals in this group hell-bent on getting into the States by extra-legal means.  And for every criminal, you can bet there were quite a few female enablers from that single-mom-with-kids community the press is so anxious to promote as the harmless face of the caravan.

Now the Mexican government is warning that the caravans have become magnets for criminals, because they’re now a money-making opportunity.

In a jaw-dropping news item utterly ignored by the mainstream press here, a top Mexican migration official told La Razón, a left-leaning Mexican newspaper, that criminals were coming to dominate the caravans now, with open borders activists agreeing.

Via Google Translate (which came out pretty good this time), La Razón reported: 

The Undersecretary of Human Rights, Migration and Population of the Ministry of the Interior (Segob), Alejandro Encinas, said he did not doubt that some organizations profit economically from migrant caravans, but also said that there are some criminal groups that want to get involved in the Exodus.

“I do not doubt it, and not only that (profit), there are some criminal groups that want to get involved unduly in these marches,” he said.

The official told La Razón that the Mexican government is following up on the new caravan that left early yesterday morning in Honduras. “Already left today (yesterday) in the early morning a contingent of slightly more than 500 people, right now (noon yesterday) amount to just over a thousand and we are monitoring,” he said.

In this regard, Jorge Andrade, founder of the migrant group You Are Us, said that what the official said “is an open secret”.

“What Alejandro Encinas says is an open secret, because these groups have been identified for seven years; Even the National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH) has conducted studies on migrant violence, “he said.

In an interview with this newspaper, the anthropologist also said that for organized crime the Central American migrant represents large amounts of money.

Somewhere, somehow, this truth has got to eventually get out.  The press isn’t reporting it.  But the fact remains: the caravan problem is becoming a criminal enterprise, and criminals, extremely violent ones, are among its leaders.

If that, and this arrest, is not a case for a wall, what is it going to take?

You’d never know it from media coverage of the climate change issue, but over the past year, several “facts” about global warming have been debunked entirely or were radically altered.

Almost all Democratic candidates who ran in the midterm elections tried to push climate change as a major issue.  It didn’t work, but time after time, Democrats repeated the same half-truths and myths that have been used for years to push a radical global warming agenda. 

The Global Warming Policy Forum, a London-based think-tank, supports “open and skeptical” science and policy research, as well as a balanced approach to the question of climate change.  This kind of hardheaded realism is badly needed to counter the outright hysteria of climate alarmists.  The GWPF came up with a list of the 12 debunked climate scares of 2018.  Here are a few:

PARIS (AFP) – Earth’s surface will almost certainly not warm up four or five degrees Celsius by 2100, according to a study released Wednesday (Jan 17) which, if correct, voids worst-case UN climate change predictions.

A revised calculation of how greenhouse gases drive up the planet’s temperature reduces the range of possible end-of-century outcomes by more than half, researchers said in the report, published in the journal Nature.

This is the most persistent myth advanced by climate change hysterics – that unless we do something now about global warming, we’ll all be dead by 2100.  That may have been the prediction a decade ago, but gradually, over the years, even the IPCC predictions have become less dire.

You may recall the above report by the BBC, which described how bad last year’s Atlantic hurricane season was, before commenting at the end: “A warmer world is bringing us a greater number of hurricanes and a greater risk of a hurricane becoming the most powerful category 5.”  I fired off a complaint, which at first they did their best to dodge.  After my refusal to accept their reply, they have now been forced to back down.

In fact, no major hurricane made landfall in the U.S. between 2005 and 2017.  And the prediction that storms would become more severe just hasn’t panned out.

NASA glaciologist Jay Zwally says his new study will show, once again, the eastern Antarctic ice sheet is gaining enough ice to offset losses in the west.

The question of polar ice growth or shrinkage – either the North or the South Pole – continues to bedevil scientists.  But climate hysterics have accepted as an article of faith that the ice is disappearing.  And then there are the poor, starving polar bears:

The narrative behind the viral photo of a polar bear starving, reportedly thanks to climate change, has been called into question by the National Geographic photographer who took it in the first place.

Try, try again, guys.

The issue of “coral bleaching” is a favorite of hysterics.  This issue also can be dropped from the alarmists’ agenda:

Coral bleaching has been a regular feature of the Great Barrier Reef for the past 400 years, with evidence of repeated mass events dating back to well before Euro­pean settlement and the start of the industrial revolution.

What runs through all these myths is the political calculation that people, scared to death, will hand politicians and bureaucrats enormous power to control our lives by controlling energy.  It’s really just a simple power grab played out on a planetwide scale.  But as long as skeptical scientists aren’t put in jail or burned at the stake for their beliefs, that power grab will be stymied.

You’d never know it from media coverage of the climate change issue, but over the past year, several “facts” about global warming have been debunked entirely or were radically altered.

Almost all Democratic candidates who ran in the midterm elections tried to push climate change as a major issue.  It didn’t work, but time after time, Democrats repeated the same half-truths and myths that have been used for years to push a radical global warming agenda. 

The Global Warming Policy Forum, a London-based think-tank, supports “open and skeptical” science and policy research, as well as a balanced approach to the question of climate change.  This kind of hardheaded realism is badly needed to counter the outright hysteria of climate alarmists.  The GWPF came up with a list of the 12 debunked climate scares of 2018.  Here are a few:

PARIS (AFP) – Earth’s surface will almost certainly not warm up four or five degrees Celsius by 2100, according to a study released Wednesday (Jan 17) which, if correct, voids worst-case UN climate change predictions.

A revised calculation of how greenhouse gases drive up the planet’s temperature reduces the range of possible end-of-century outcomes by more than half, researchers said in the report, published in the journal Nature.

This is the most persistent myth advanced by climate change hysterics – that unless we do something now about global warming, we’ll all be dead by 2100.  That may have been the prediction a decade ago, but gradually, over the years, even the IPCC predictions have become less dire.

You may recall the above report by the BBC, which described how bad last year’s Atlantic hurricane season was, before commenting at the end: “A warmer world is bringing us a greater number of hurricanes and a greater risk of a hurricane becoming the most powerful category 5.”  I fired off a complaint, which at first they did their best to dodge.  After my refusal to accept their reply, they have now been forced to back down.

In fact, no major hurricane made landfall in the U.S. between 2005 and 2017.  And the prediction that storms would become more severe just hasn’t panned out.

NASA glaciologist Jay Zwally says his new study will show, once again, the eastern Antarctic ice sheet is gaining enough ice to offset losses in the west.

The question of polar ice growth or shrinkage – either the North or the South Pole – continues to bedevil scientists.  But climate hysterics have accepted as an article of faith that the ice is disappearing.  And then there are the poor, starving polar bears:

The narrative behind the viral photo of a polar bear starving, reportedly thanks to climate change, has been called into question by the National Geographic photographer who took it in the first place.

Try, try again, guys.

The issue of “coral bleaching” is a favorite of hysterics.  This issue also can be dropped from the alarmists’ agenda:

Coral bleaching has been a regular feature of the Great Barrier Reef for the past 400 years, with evidence of repeated mass events dating back to well before Euro­pean settlement and the start of the industrial revolution.

What runs through all these myths is the political calculation that people, scared to death, will hand politicians and bureaucrats enormous power to control our lives by controlling energy.  It’s really just a simple power grab played out on a planetwide scale.  But as long as skeptical scientists aren’t put in jail or burned at the stake for their beliefs, that power grab will be stymied.