53percenter's Blog

A college rugby team may miss its championship match due to California state regulations preventing state-funded travel to states that they deem to have laws discriminating against the LGBT community.

The California State University, Chico men’s rugby team is scrambling to find about $40,000 for funds to allow the trip to travel.

“We knew that state dollars would not be able to help our team get to where they needed to go,” Chico State’s Director of Recreational Sports, Kendall Ross, told Fox40.​

“Because of the location, those dollars just cannot be used for travel,” Ross added.

The California law, Assembly Bill 1887, went into effect in 2017. The law states that California is “a leader in protecting civil rights and preventing discrimination” and should not support or finance “discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people,” The Daily Wire previously reported.​

The travel ban targets Alabama, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas. The ban applies to California “state agencies, departments, boards, authorities, and commissions, including an agency, department, board, authority, or commission of the University of California, the Board of Regents of the University of California, and the California State University.”

North Carolina was added onto the list due to its controversial “bathroom bill,” despite the law being repealed in 2017. In a statement, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said that the repeal “does not cure the infirmity of this type of discrimination.”

The Men’s D1AA championship will take place on May 4 in Matthews, North Carolina. The Chico Wildcats will have the opportunity to face the current champion, Dartmouth College.​

The team’s head coach, Lucas Bradbury, said that they were having a difficult time organizing travel plans in a short amount of time.

“We have an extremely short amount of time to organize 32 people on a plane, to get enough to house in a hotel, to get ground transport,” Bradbury said.

The university only partially funds the team due to being a club team and claims they missed out on about $15,000 for the travel expenses.

Bradbury said that donations are coming in from supporters in the rugby community all over the world.

“We do actually have some people in Australia who have donated and people from London who have donated and people from South Africa,” Bradbury said.

In a Facebook post on the team’s page, the club asked for help.

“Please donate to our National Play-off in North Carolina,” the team wrote. “California State law says, no state funding can be spent in a ‘restricted state’ North Carolina, is a restricted state, therefore the Club had access to roughly $15,000, but now doesn’t. The club itself will hit the $39,000 mark that is needed to travel, but not without you. Players will be working hard in our community, doing fundraising drives and begging if need be.”

Next Tuesday, the team will hold a fundraiser at Parkside Tap House where 15% of net sales will be donated to the team, the group posted on a Facebook event page.

“Come help send your Chico State Wildcats to Nationals!” The team wrote. “Come for a fun, family-friendly evening filled with good food and great times for a worthy cause! Starting at 5:30, 15% of net sales will be donated to Chico State Men’s Rugby to help send them to the D1AA Spring Championship in North Carolina on May 4th.”

According to the fundraising page, the team has raised $35,000 so far.

The Iglesia Pentecostal Church de Bethlehem in Pennsylvania burned for the second time on Thursday — after the first was determined arson.

Another “heartbreaking” blaze consumed the church roof in the wee hours of Thursday morning. “They already burned what we love so much, the inside, you know so what else I guess until they see it to the ground. I guess they won’t let it go,” church leader and pastor’s daughter Nitza Colon told CNN affiliate WFMZ. “I said ‘who would do such a thing, I mean what else can they burn in the building?’”

The previous fire began just two days before, early Tuesday morning, in the church’s sanctuary. After a brief investigation, the Bethlehem city fire marshal determined that it was deliberately started. The motive, however, remains unclear.

Wilmer J. Ortiz Torres, 43, — a former member of the parish — was arrested Friday for arson, burglary, and trespassing, according to WFMZ. Bethlehem police chief Mark DiLuzio said that Torres may have had personal issues with the church.

No injuries were reported, and the second fire burned itself out before firefighters could arrive to extinguish it.

A police statement confirmed that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) would be assisting with the investigation and had offered a $5,000 reward for information before an arrest had been made.

WFMZ reported, “It appears to be an isolated incident and police do not believe there is an ongoing danger to the community.”

As the investigation and repairs continue, First Presbyterian Church of Bethlehem will offer congregants a space to worship.

A married couple in Tijuana reportedly involved in the drug trade was executed while their 17-year-old daughter was raped after being lured into a trap by cartel gunmen.

Jaqueline and Andrés Martínez were summoned to a meeting on April 10, with an associate they were allegedly involved with in the drug trade. Prior to driving to a residence in colonia Pedregal de Santa Julia, the couple picked up their 17-year-old daughter at school and had her join them. Upon arrival, they were met by cartel gunmen. The couple was immediately separated from their daughter so she could be taken into a room and raped by two of the men, according to a new report and Breitbart law enforcement sources. The cartel gunmen originally started to strangle the daughter with a piece of rope but later decided to let her live, prior to the rape. The couple had their hands and feet bound and forced into the trunk of their car. The couple was then executed with at least one gunshot each to the head, according to a report.

After cartel gunmen finished raping the 17-year-old, they ordered her to leave the property and take the vehicle she arrived in. She was told that her parents were in the trunk. The daughter drove away and eventually stopped at a gas station in a traumatized state. She asked for help and told the station attendants that her parents were inside the trunk. The station summoned the police, who noticed blood dripping from the rear area of the vehicle. Police discovered two deceased adults partially covered in blankets, according to recently released information by the state attorney general’s office.

Jaqueline and Andrés Martínez were married for approximately 20 years and owned a wholesale merchandising business. They were also involved in trafficking drugs into the United States, according to the state attorney general’s office. Once investigators located the residence where the double murder and rape took place, the cartel gunmen had already fled.

Breitbart News reports extensively about the ongoing cartel violence in Tijuana with shocking numbers of homicides to include a record-breaking year in 2018, which totaled 2,518. By comparison, San Diego tallied 35 the same period.

A recent study released in March by the Citizen Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice (El Consejo Ciudadano para la Seguridad Pública y la Justicia Penal) listed Tijuana as the deadliest city in the world per capita, based on its 2018 registered homicide count. The bloodshed is generally related to turf wars involving Cártel Tijuana Nueva Generación (CTNG), aligned with El Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, against the Sinaloa Cartel.

Robert Arce is a retired Phoenix Police detective with extensive experience working Mexican organized crime and street gangs. Arce has worked in the Balkans, Iraq, Haiti, and recently completed a three-year assignment in Monterrey, Mexico, working out of the Consulate for the United States Department of State, International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Program, where he was the Regional Program Manager for Northeast Mexico (Coahuila, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Durango, San Luis Potosi, Zacatecas.) You can follow him on Twitter. He can be reached at robertrarce@gmail.com.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Thursday apparently mistook one of the most prominent Democrats in the House as a Republican, and mocked him for taking a photo with a cardboard cutout of her in a tweet.

The freshman congresswoman shared a tweet by the Republican Party of Kentucky that featured the House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-KY) taking a photo next to a cardboard cutout of her.

Apparently not realizing who Yarmuth was, she mocked him by tweeting, “GOP: Let’s pose our older male members next to cardboard cutouts of young female legislators”:

Ocasio-Cortez apparently doesn’t recognize Rep. John Yarmuth, the congressman in that picture. He’s a Democrat. pic.twitter.com/MoXzxtX2eS

— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) April 25, 2019

After Twitter users began to point out her mistake, she deleted the tweet.

It is not the first time the 29-year-old Democrat has made an embarrassing gaffe on Twitter. She mixed up the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan just last month.

Afghanistan War* my apologies

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 5, 2019

Ocasio-Cortez said recently on Yahoo’s Skullduggery podcast that she writes all her own tweets.

Her mistaking Yarmuth for an “older male” member of the Republican Party will likely not endear her to Democrat membership, who have increasingly made disparaging comments about her.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) recently said a “glass of water with a D” next to it could have won Ocasio-Cortez’s district.

Mark Levin mocked former Vice President Joe Biden’s whiteness as a liability within a “radicalized Democrat Party” in a Thursday interview with host Alex Marlow on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily.

“Joe Biden is an empty suit,” said Levin. “Joe Biden has tried this before. Joe Biden really stands for nothing. … This is a man who got elected to the Wilmington City Council right out of law school, got elected to the Senate when he was 29, sworn in when he was 30. He’s never created a job in his entire life. He’s never produced anything. He’s never done anything other than be a gasbag.”

LISTEN:

Levin continued, “He’s a very, very nasty man. When he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he tried to destroy Robert Bork. He tried to destroy Clarence Thomas and a whole host of nominees for the circuit court. We know he is quite a dumb man. He did very poorly in his academics. He cheated. He’s plagiarized in terms of running for President of the United States. He’s lied about his academic record.”

Levin addressed Biden’s challenges in pursuing the Democrat Party’s presidential nomination, given the left’s racial politics.

“Today he is upset that he is a white man,” noted Levin. “He is trying to fit into what is a radicalized Democrat Party. This is his third run at it. He’s becoming the Harold Stassen of the Democrat Party.”

In March, Biden called for a “change” to “white man’s culture,” which he described as pathologized on matters of sexual assault.

“I don’t really know why [Joe Biden] is running,” stated Levin, rejecting left-wing and partisan Democrat news media characterizations of Biden as a “blue-collar” champion. “I know the commentators say he could take up the blue-collar vote. I don’t know what he’s done for blue-collar workers any time in his life. He was vice president to Barack Obama. They lost a ton of jobs in manufacturing and elsewhere, and the reason is high taxes, high regulations, and all that type of stuff. So he’s a job killer.”

Joe Biden “is going to run as if he is the answer to our racial divide,” said Marlow.

Levin replied, “Some information’s been found in recent months, I believe even audio, where he was defending the segregationist view on busing. I don’t mean taking up the constitutional issue. I’ve always been against it myself for constitutional reasons, but he was playing footsie with segregationists. I don’t remember Trump ever doing that.”

In August 2012, during the year’s presidential campaign, Biden deployed a southern accent in telling a mostly black audience that then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney wanted to “put y’all back in chains.”

Breitbart News Daily broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter @rkraychik.

On this date in 1976, Cubs outfielder Rick Monday made what may be his most famous play when he ran out into left-field and snatched away an American flag from protesters who were trying to burn it.

On April 25, a pair of anti-American protesters ran out onto the field at Dodger Stadium and tried to burn an American flag in protest against the nation during that Bi-Centennial year.

Monday was tossing the ball with left fielder José Cardenal when the protesters invaded the field. Monday, though, wasn’t having the protesters’ nonsense and he quickly ran over to grab Old Glory away from the two.

The veteran Cubs player ran the flag toward the Dodgers’ dugout and handed it to Dodgers pitcher Doug Rau.

On this date 43 years ago, @Cubs outfielder Rick Monday saved the American flag from being burned by protestors. pic.twitter.com/gUtkvmHtaV

— Sporting News (@sportingnews) April 25, 2019

Police quickly rounded up the two protesters, William Thomas, and his 11-year-old son. Thomas was arrested and charged with trespassing.

By the time Monday came up to bat that day at the top of the 5th inning, he was lavished with a standing ovation by the fans in the stands.

“If you’re going to burn the flag, don’t do it around me. I’ve been to too many veterans’ hospitals and seen too many broken bodies of guys who tried to protect it,” Monday said after the game.

The next month, the Dodgers presented Monday with the flag he saved during “Rick Monday Day” on May 4, 1976. Monday says he still has that flag in his collection of baseball memorabilia.

In 2016, Monday threw out the first pitch at Dodger Stadium on the 40th anniversary of his flag-saving act.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.

The watchdog group StopAntiSemitism.org — which describes itself as a group that “exposes anti-Semitism in all facets of American society through social media platforms and mobilizes Americans through petitions that call to action” — currently has nearly 34,000 signatures for a Change.org petition entitled, “Call on US AG & Antisemitism Envoy Carr to Probe Hamas Affiliated CAIR Ties in Congress.”

The petition makes claims about the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and mentions that CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation case, which was the biggest terror financing case in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice. The petition then ends with a call for U.S. Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism Elan Carr to “investigate” any ties between freshman congresswomen Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and CAIR.

The investigation that the petition calls for may or may not be legitimate. After all, Omar and Tlaib do not in any way hide their affiliations with CAIR.

Regardless, according to StopAntiSemitism.org, the petition is being censored by Change.org.

A press release obtained by The Daily Wire from StopAntiSemitism.org claims the following:

Change.org is aggressively censoring a petition that calls for action against anti-Semitism, which was posted by the watchdog group StopAntisemitism.org. Over the past year, Stop Antisemitism has frequently used the Change.org platform to issue public petitions calling out anti-Semites who threaten and undermine the security of Jewish people and the broader values of the United States. Stop Antisemitism’s past and current petitions are endorsed by nearly 100,000 individuals. …

While Change.org admitted by email on April 3, 2019, that user searches and comments on the petition were disabled, the company has not corrected these issues nor addressed the other allegations. Zachor Legal Institute received a response from Change.org that ignored all substantive questions and concerns raised by its letter.

“Change.org is at odds with its own rules, procedures and guidelines. They refuse to provide substantive responses or uphold their stated mission.” Zachor Legal Institute President Marc Greendorfer said. “The company that claims to empower individuals around the world to be agents of positive change is complicit in our problems.”

The press release also claims that “[t]he option for users to contribute funds to promote the petition after signing it is unavailable” and that “[s]ome users reported that they are unable to sign the petition.”

As The Daily Wire has reported extensively, Omar has frequently trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes and peddled conspiracy theories since joining Congress. For example, The Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra reported in March on her serial peddling of the age-old dual loyalty canard:

Embattled Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) ignited another firestorm on Sunday when she made anti-Semitic comments to a Jewish member of Congress, accusing the congresswoman of wanting her to have dual loyalties to Israel. …

On Sunday, Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), who is also Jewish, also called out Omar for her anti-Semitic remarks from last week, tweeting: “Lawmakers must be able to debate w/o prejudice or bigotry. I am saddened that Rep. Omar continues to mischaracterize support for Israel. I urge her to retract this statement and engage in further dialogue with the Jewish community on why these comments are so hurtful.”

Omar responded: “Our democracy is built on debate, Congresswoman! I should not be expected to have allegiance/pledge support to a foreign country in order to serve my country in Congress or serve on committee. The people of the 5th elected me to serve their interest. I am sure we agree on that!”

While the United States experiences an “unprecedented” bogus asylum claim-driven migrant influx crisis at our beleaguered southwestern border, less attention is often paid to the contraband that seeps over that porous border — at the behest of the transnational gangs, trafficking rings, and cartels — every single day.

Fentanyl, which is an extremely lethal drug, is perhaps the prime example of the incredibly harmful effects of cartels having “operational control of the border” — as freshman congressman Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) described the situation in his maiden House floor speech. Daniel Horowitz wrote last year at Conservative Review about the fentanyl epidemic:

Rather than a steady decline in fatalities from overdoses to match the decline in prescription opioids, everything went bonkers from 2013 to the present, after the public and politicians turned against the use of prescription opioids. We saw a spike in deaths of unfathomable proportions, getting worse every year through 2014, 2015, and 2016. The level of fatalities doubled and tripled in those states as, not surprisingly, heroin and fentanyl flooded the market. …

The [drug] epidemic we are facing today is not from prescription opioids, at least not more than it has been for an entire generation. The number of prescriptions has already been reduced dramatically, and the overdose rate has leveled off and even dropped in some of the most affected states since 2016, like Ohio. Almost the entirety of the increased fatalities above the long-term existing trajectory beginning in 2012 were from illicit drugs and mainly from the most dangerous one – heroin. Then, as heroin use began to skyrocket in 2013-2014, we began to see the growth of the cursed synthetic drug – fentanyl – which is 50-100 times stronger than morphine and can kill in small quantities. It’s often laced into heroin. In pretty much every state, fentanyl has skyrocketed to such a level that it has overtaken heroin as the leading drug killer. Cocaine and meth overdoses have also gone up a lot but are not nearly as serious.

Now, Jordan Schachtel of Blaze Media reports that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers announced this week that they interdicted another large shipment of fentanyl that smugglers had attempted to sneak across the border:

Feds announced Tuesday that officials had intercepted 26 pounds of fentanyl, an extremely potent and frequently lethal drug, that was hidden inside of a truck subject to a secondary inspection at the Juarez-Lincoln International Bridge. The bridge separates Laredo, Texas, from the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo.

A KGNS-TV report added that a canine unit sniffed out 10 separate packages that contained fentanyl, and that the drugs had an estimated street value of $728,000. The case has been turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for further investigation, according to CBP.

“Our frontline CBP officers continued to remain vigilant amid heavy Semana Santa traffic and that dedication to the border security mission yielded a significant seizure of fentanyl,” Port Director Albert Flores of the Laredo Port of Entry said in a statement.

The Daily Wire has reported before on the fentanyl crisis. In January, The Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra reported on a record-setting fentanyl seizure of 254 pounds:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials announced on Thursday that officers made a record-breaking seizure of fentanyl on the U.S.-Mexico border that was enough to kill tens of millions of Americans.

“According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a canine officer alerted other officers to the presence of 254 pounds of fentanyl hidden inside an 18-wheeler carrying cucumbers, during a secondary inspection at the Mariposa port of entry just past noon on Saturday,” The Arizona Republic reported.

“This is the largest fentanyl seizure in any port of entry,” CBP official Guadalupe Ramirez said. “In CBP, in the history of CBP, this is the largest fentanyl seizure.”