NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. overdose deaths finally stopped climbing last year. And they apparently fell a little — the first such decline in nearly three decades.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday posted the preliminary numbers showing nearly 68,000 drug overdose deaths were reported last year. The number may go up as more investigations are completed, but the agency expects the tally will end up below 69,000.
Overdose deaths have been climbing each year since 1990, topping 70,000 in 2017.
Any leveling off or decline in overdose deaths is good news, but the overdose death rate is still about seven times higher than it was a generation ago.
The improvement was driven by a drop in deaths from heroin and prescription painkillers. Overdose deaths often involve more than one drug.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is helping bring Christians and Yazidis in Iraq back from the brink of extinction fomented by a genocidal campaign at the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), religious minority representatives declared this week at the second Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom convened by the Department of State.
The U.S. government has officially determined that ISIS committed genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities during its reign of terror in the Middle East that began in 2014, prompting the Trump administration to launch a multi-million-dollar program to help the victims. Several religious leaders and organizations warned that the two groups were facing extinction in the wake of the ISIS genocide.
Echoing Yazidis activists and a U.S.-based Syriac Catholic Iraqi priest who spoke to Breitbart News, a Chaldean Catholic priest from a parish in a Christian Iraqi town indicated that hope for the future along with security improvements have returned to religious minority communities devastated by ISIS, courtesy of the Trump administration efforts.
Their comments came during the three-day ministerial summit launched by the State Department on Tuesday.
While delivering a speech during the event on Wednesday, Fr. Thabet Habib Youssef, a Chaldean Catholic priest from the town of Karamles in Iraq’s Nineveh province, thanked the Trump administration for its assistance.
The priest, known as Fr. Thabet, said:
I wish to give thanks to the government of the United States for including us in this important conference and a special thanks to the administration of President Trump for his concern and commitment to the persecuted minority communities in Iraq.
…
I can say this conference gives us hope. Our greatest fear in the early years was that the world would forget us. This conference tells us we are not forgotten.
Nearly half of the Christian families who fled Karamles, liberated by U.S. and local forces in November 2016, have returned and Fr. Thabet expects many more to come back in the coming year.
Although ISIS burned down the homes and churches in the Christian town, “We are determined to return and rebuild,” he proclaimed.
“Today we have 45 percent of our families returned and we hope in this next year we will see many more,” he added.
He went on to say that the Iraqi government needs to do more to bring about “real change and support for the protection, safety, and equal rights for the minority communities of Iraq.”
The U.S.-funded nation-building efforts, coupled with assistance from the Catholic group Knights of Columbus and the government of Hungary, have rendered the town of Karamles a “story of success and we are optimistic it will survive,” Thabet also said.
Northern Iraq’s Nineveh province is the historical homeland of Iraqi Christians and home to the largest concentration of religious minorities in the country. Sinjar, the ancestral home of Yazidis, is also located in Nineveh province.
Yazidis bore the brunt of ISIS’s genocidal campaign. 350,000 of them remain displaced in Iraqi Kurdistan and 3,000 of their women, many sold into sexual slavery, remain missing, Nadia Murad, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient who survived the jihadis group’s atrocities noted during the ministerial summit Tuesday.
Haider Elias – the president of Yazda, a U.S.-based global Yazidi non-governmental organization (NGO) – told Breitbart News that the situation for Yazidis is starting to change under the Trump administration, noting that the U.S. government is trying to bring them back to Sinjar.
“These things are going to potentially change the lives of Yazidis and their view that it’s going to be a good place for them to live,” he added.
Elias noted that security has improved in Sinjar, a town decimated by ISIS jihadists when they captured large swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014.
“The security situation has changed for the better in the Sinjar area. ISIS has been defeated thankfully. … Half of Yazidi lands used to be under ISIS control before the [Trump] administration took over and what has happened recently is every single Yazidi village has been liberated from ISIS,” he told Breitbart News.
Although the U.S. completely annihilated the ISIS territorial caliphate in March, the jihadi group remains an insurgency menace, the Pentagon’s inspector general has warned.
“Yazidis are still facing the threat of genocide. ISIS has been defeated militarily, but they have not lost their ideology, manpower, and support,” Hadi Pir, the vice-president of the Yazda NGO, acknowledged.
Yazda is benefiting from the Trump administration’s decision to directly assist religious minorities through U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) and faith-based partners instead of paying for U.N. programs that can divert money to other projects, a move praised by the Christians and Yazidis alike.
“The U.S. has always been a symbol of freedom for persecuted people around the world. If minorities like Yazidis and Christians would have vanished from the Middle East, it would show the world the United States is not invested in promoting its values and a lot of people would lose hope,” Pir told Breitbart News.
“But now that this administration has intervened, the hope is back,” he added.
Echoing the Yazidi activist, Fr. Muntaser Haddad from the U.S.-based St. Ephrem Syriac Catholic Church said that the Christian community in Iraq is also optimistic about their future.
The priest, originally from the Christian Iraqi town of Qaraqosh in Nineveh province, told Breitbart News, “There is hope among the Christians in the Middle East now that the United States is helping them.”
The future of Christianity and other religious minorities in the Middle East is contingent upon the continued assistance of the United States, the priest indicated.
During the ministerial summit, however, Fr. Thabet warned against “the problem of the culture of dependency,” adding:
There is a time and place for humanitarian aid and assistance as displaced minorities of Iraq have needed in these past years. However, as Christians, we believe that every person is called to a life of dignity, including the dignity of work and responsibility for themselves as human beings.
Much of the Middle East has already been made to be a place of permanent beggars. We all know the result, and it’s not good.
The Trump administration has devoted $340 million to supports religious minorities in Iraq alone, Michael Harvey, the assistant administrator for USAID’s Middle East bureau said on Wednesday
The American taxpayer funds have been used for nation-building efforts of areas devastated by ISIS.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) introduced legislation to support the terror-funded BDS movement on Wednesday.
BDS stands for the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel. A visit to the BDS website (www.BDSmovement.net) quickly reveals that BDS has a far more radical goal: eliminating Israel as a Jewish state. This is not an exaggeration. This is something BDS leaders readily admit.
The proposed legislation by Ilhan Omar compares Israel to:
** Nazi Germany
** Imperial Japan
** Soviet Russia
The @IlhanMN@RashidaTlaib@repjohnlewis pro-BDS bill implicitly compares Israel to * Nazi Germany * Imperial Japan * The USSR All enemies of the US, 2 that the US actually defeated in war.
Israel is, of course, a US ally and basically always has been. Details, details. pic.twitter.com/JU1gbRBzLp
GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) spoke out against Ilhan Omar and her radical support for the BDS movement.
Zeldin confronted Ilhan Omar for supporting the anti-Semitic proposal.
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) says “Socialist Democrats” are advocating a $15 minimum wage while supporting a “tsunami of illegal alien labor” that crushes the wages of American workers.
During a speech on the House floor, Brooks blasted Democrat proponents of a $15 minimum wage for their support of wage suppression via the country’s mass illegal and legal immigration policy that brings more than 1.5 million mostly low-skilled foreign nationals to the U.S. every year to compete for jobs and lower wages for America’s working and middle class.
Brooks said:
Socialist Democrats support open borders. Open borders mean a literal tsunami of illegal alien labor that artificially inflates the labor supply and suppresses American wages. This is Economics 101. [Emphasis added]
If the supply goes up, everything else being constant, the price goes down. The way to raise wages is simple. America must stop importing cheap foreign labor that takes American jobs from American workers and suppresses the wages of hard-working Americans who need that money for their families. [Emphasis added]
The question is, do we care enough about American family incomes to secure our borders and stop the flood of illegal alien labor that suppresses American wages? Of course not. Instead, there are those who seek an imperial decree for a $15/hour minimum wage. [Emphasis added]
Brooks noted Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis which estimates that nearly four million American workers will lose their jobs due to an increase of the minimum wage to $15.
“The policies being advocated today really are advocating the firing of as many as 3.7 million American workers from their jobs,” Brooks said. “That’s like firing the entire population of the State of Oklahoma … If the advocates of this legislation really cared about American workers, they would not fire them.”
Extensive research by economists like George Borjas and analyst Steven Camarota reveals that the country’s current mass legal immigration system burdens U.S. taxpayers and America’s working and middle class while redistributing about $500 billion in wealth every year to major employers and newly arrived immigrants. Similarly, research has revealed how Americans’ wages are crushed by the country’s high immigration levels.
For every one-percent increase in the immigrant portion of American workers’ occupations, their weekly wages are cut by about 0.5 percent, Camarota finds. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by perhaps 8.75 percent.
Today, about 17.5 percent of the American workforce is made up of foreign born workers. About 7.8 million of these foreign born workers are illegal aliens living in the U.S., according to the latest analysis by Pew Research Center.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
CNN’s Chris Cuomo couldn’t hold it together on Wednesday night’s Cuomo Primetime while interviewing Trump 2020 Campaign National Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
Cuomo appeared to completely lose his mind as he repeatedly demanded to know if McEnany would still support President Trump if he declared that he was a racist. McEnany refused to answer the absurd question, which visibly frustrated the CNN talking head.
“Kayleigh, if the president said ‘the reason I’m saying these things is because I’m a racist,’ I know he hasn’t said that, I know he doesn’t believe that — hypothetically, if he said that, would it change your support for him?” Cuomo asked.
McEnany responded by telling the CNN host that it was absurd for him to “even ask that question.” She pointed out that the Democrats have been attempting to paint the president as a racist since June of 2015, when he first came down the escalator to announce that he was running.
Still, Cuomo kept interrupting her and demanding to know why she wouldn’t answer the question.
“I’m not going to play these games,” an exasperated McEnany finally declared. “I won’t allow you to attach a label to the president, even hypothetically, that is patently false and untrue.”
Cuomo, growing more visibly angry, demanded, “how is it patently false when what he just said is patently racist?”
McEnany went on to list the ways in which Trump has shown that he is not racist over the years — and noting how the perception of him only changed “when you at CNN, and others, started calling him a racist. That is false. It is untrue. President Trump’s history defeats that.” As the host kept interrupting, she held her ground and asserted that they continuously take him out of context.
Kevin McAleenan, Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, will testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform Thursday morning, answering questions about “the Trump Administration’s child separation policy, the treatment of immigrants detained in U.S. government facilities, and related issues.”
Follow Breitbart News for updates on this hearing and breaking immigration news.
One unanticipated side effect of the political moment we are currently living through is that it has made all participants very honest — particularly Democrats and leftists.
The party that, for years, eye-rolled at allegations of socialism is now practically being run by a self-identified Democratic Socialist. Democratic candidates for president are open and eager to eliminate private health insurance, embracing a position even further to the left than systems in the United Kingdom and Canada. All 10 candidates in the second Democrat debate last month went on record supporting open borders. And Bernie Sanders earnestly believes that most Americans actually want to pay more in taxes.
In just the latest episode of truth-telling this week, Planned Parenthood is finally giving up its long-running charade as a women’s health organization and is admitting that it is merely a for-profit abortion advocacy group.
The organization publicly dismissed its president over “philosophical differences.” Those differences, according to a letter posted by the ousted head, Dr. Leana Wen, stem from the fact that Wen apparently thought she was working for a women’s healthcare organization that also performed abortions — rather than an abortion advocacy organization with an overtly political agenda.
“I came to Planned Parenthood to run a national healthcare organization,” Wen said in her resignation letter. “The new board has determined that the priority of Planned Parenthood moving forward is to double down on abortion rights advocacy.”
This is a startling admission from Planned Parenthood, which for years has insisted that it is, first and foremost, focused on an all-encompassing view of women’s health. “This is health care,” claimed a recent public relations campaign. The group has maintained for years that abortion only constitutes 3% of its services.
In Wen, Planned Parenthood found an unapologetic advocate for abortion services. However, she also reportedly balked at the rapacious way the organization wanted to advocate, and celebrate, abortions — in addition to its emphatic embrace of a deeply progressive over-arching philosophy. According to reporting from BuzzFeed, Wen routinely deleted the word “sexual” from the phrase “sexual and reproductive healthcare” in Planned Parenthood press releases and documents, and resisted using abortion as a stand-alone term — adding “abortion care” or rewording it entirely.
Wen also apparently refused to use “trans-inclusive” language, like saying “people,” instead of “women,” and worried that such a progressive posture would “isolate people in the Midwest.”
All of this, including alleged mismanagement, led to Wen’s dismissal.
Her departure comes on the heels of Planned Parenthood stating it is “not going to comply” with new rules from the Trump administration, which block federal funds from organizations that refer women for abortion. After stating for years that this money was critical to its healthcare mission of breast cancer screenings, wellness exams, and screening for sexually transmitted diseases, Planned Parenthood is now forgoing the funds — solely so it can continue to refer women for abortions.
In taking these steps, Planned Parenthood finally unmasks itself as the abortion-focused advocacy group it has always been, and joins the Democratic Party in being honest about the terms of the abortion debate in America.
Abortion that is “safe, legal, and rare” — the mantra of the Clinton years — has been enthusiastically replaced by abortion that is unlimited, unrestricted, and unregulated. Earlier this year, 44 Senate Democrats went on the record opposing medical care to infants born alive after a botched abortion. Democrats for president are now attacking consensus policies which, for decades, have prevented Congress from using taxpayer money for abortion.
The Democrats and their allies are no longer hiding behind a veil of moderation when it comes to abortion. At least they’re finally being honest with voters about it.
According to recent polling, “the squad” of four outspoken leftist congresswomen are “toxic” to the Democratic Party and far less popular among voters than the liberal establishment media has portrayed them to be. The group of freshmen representatives — comprised of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and…
President Trump ripped the far-left members of the Squad during Wednesday night’s rally in Greenville, North Carolina and took shots at ringleader Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), particularly for calling contemporary America “garbage,” noting that the comment might be worse than Hillary Clinton’s infamous “deplorables” gaffe.
Trump went after Ocasio-Cortez – shortened to “Cortez” for the sake of brevity – for launching “outrageous” attacks against U.S. border agents, and he called out Democrats for refusing to initially acknowledge the humanitarian crisis on the southern border.
“So Cortez also– she said essentially Nazis are running concentration camps,” Trump said to a chorus of boos.
“And when Mike Pence went down just a few days ago with members of Congress and the media, and you look at those so-called horrible concentration camps, they said, ‘Wow. These places are clean. Wow. They have air conditioning. They have water,’” he continued.
“These people come from rough places, and I’ll tell you what. Some of them said we’ve never lived like this before. They have water. They have air-conditioning. They have things they have never seen,” he said before slamming Ocasio-Cortez for perpetuating the lie that migrants are forced to drink from toilets.
“And we listen to her talking about drinking water from toilets, which was a lie, which was a lie,” Trump said, triggering additional boos.
From there, Trump called out the New York lawmaker for putting illegal immigrants above American citizens.
“Cortez said that illegal immigrants are more American than any person who seeks to keep them out, ever will be. Can you believe that?” Trump asked. “That’s what she said.”
“She described contemporary America as – that’s you, that’s me, that’s all of us– as ‘garbage.’ Remember deplorables? That sounds worse. I think that’s worse. But we’ll save it for whoever’s going to be the nominee,” he added.
During an appearance at the South by Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas in March, Ocasio-Cortez said (emphasis added):
I think the thing that is really hard for people to sometimes see is that when we are on this path of a slow erosion and a slow, slow, slow, just like move away from what we’ve always been … you know, you won’t even realize that you’ve drifted a hundred miles. So, when someone’s talking about our core, it’s like ‘oh this is radical,’ but this isn’t radical, this is what we’ve always been.
“It’s just that now we’ve strayed so far away from what has really made us powerful, and just, and good, and equitable, and productive. And so I think all of these things sound radical compared to where we are, but where we are is not a good thing. And this idea of like 10 percent better from garbage, is, shouldn’t be what we settle for. It’s like this like—it feels like ‘moderate’ is not a stance, it’s just an attitude toward life of like ‘hmmm.’
In January, the freshman Democrat told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that illegal immigrants who are “trying to seek refuge and seek opportunity in the United States of America with nothing but the shirt on their backs are acting more American than any person who seeks to keep them out ever will be.”
Good catch. And more than a little troubling. Via Free Beacon: An Iranian national was caught by the Trump administration attempting to smuggle materials that can be used to enrich uranium, the key component in a nuclear weapon, out of the U.S., according to the Justice Department. Behzad Pourghannad allegedly attempted to smuggle carbon fiber […]
