Biden administration officials including President Joe Biden warned over the weekend that Hamasโ attack on Israel has resulted in an increased threat of terrorism within U.S. borders. FBI Director Christopher Wray warned on Saturday that the โheightened environmentโ presented by the fighting in Israel and Gaza has caused โan increase in reported threats.โ
โWeโve got to be on the lookout, especially for lone actors who may take inspiration from recent events to commit violence of their own,โ Wray said during his address at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference. โIโd encourage you to stay vigilant because as the first line of defense protecting our communities, youโre often the first to see the signs that someone may be mobilizing to violence.โ
Biden similarly confirmed during a โ60 Minutesโ sit-down that Americans are at greater risk of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil after the events of the last week and a half.
โBecause of what weโre seeing in the Middle East, is the threat of terrorism in the United States increased?โ CBSโs Scott Pelley asked.
โYes,โ Biden replied. โI had a meeting this morning with the Homeland Security people, with the FBI, in the Situation Room for the better of part of an hour to discuss how we make sure that we prevent a lone wolf and or any coordinated effort to try to do what was done in synagogues before, do what was done to Jews in the street.โ
Biden claimed that his administration is โmaking a major effort to make sure that doesnโt happen,โ yet he has no concrete plans to cut off the biggest potential terrorist pipeline into the United States.
Hamaโs โglobal day of rageโ prompted terrorist attacks and anti-Israel demonstrations not just in France, China, Jordan, Iran, and Italy, but also in states like Washington and California. In addition to the Iranian spies who made their way into the Biden administration and the terrorist sleeper cells already embedded in U.S. cities, foreign incendiaries who wish ill on Americans can literally walk right into the U.S. via our compromised Southern border.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection sources confirmed to Fox News on Monday that two of the Iranians caught sneaking across the Southern border in the last month were pinned as โraising red flags that they could pose a significant security threat.โ Their information was later located in the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB).
The capture is not the least bit surprising to border officials who, since October 2022, arrested nearly 160 illegal border crossers whose information was found on the TSDB. The Department of Homeland Security even admitted last week that โ[t]errorists and criminal actors may exploit the elevated flow and increasingly complex security environment to enter the United Statesโ via its open Southern border.
Yet, Biden has no plans to stymie the border crisis created by his commitment to undo Trump-era security policies. On the contrary, the Democrat has repeatedly reinforced that he does not care to stop the collapse of the Southern border.
When word spread that Biden, in a major reversal, sought to build part of the Trump border wall he had been โquietlyโauctioning off, the Democrat regime scrambled to assure Americans that the administration did not care to secure the nationโs borders, especially with physical barriers.
I want to address todayโs reporting relating to a border wall and be absolutely clear.
There is no new Administration policy with respect to border walls. My full statement โฌ๏ธ pic.twitter.com/ga1fEMqvN8
— Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas (@SecMayorkas) October 5, 2023
Biden is not blind to the fact that nearly 7 million illegal border crossers have marched into the country detected by border officials, though likely not detained for long. Instead of addressing the border crisis that is clearly used as a pathway by potential terrorists to infiltrate the states, however, Biden is planning a trip to Israel to discuss its border issues.
If the Biden administration can waive more than two dozen laws to begrudgingly erect part of the border wall, it could easily reinstate other border security measures that would keep illegal border crossings down and free up Border Patrol to capture the several potential terrorists who inevitably make up part of the 1.5 million gotaways who made it into the U.S. under Biden.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Tuesday that there is “no question” in his mind that a female hostage who appeared in a video released by Hamas was making statements “under duress.”
Kirby made the remark on NBCโs “Today” show after the Palestinian terrorist group shared footage Monday of Mia Schem, a 21-year-old French Israeli, who, according to Reuters, asked to be returned to her family as soon as possible. French President Emmanuel Macron has called for Schemโs immediate release.
“There is no question in my mind that that woman gave that video testimony under duress, probably forced to do it,” Kirby said. “Itโs a propaganda video much more than it is proof of life or certainly proof of concept for Hamas. Itโs despicable, deplorable that they would take these hostages and then advertise how well they are treating them when they are the ones who hurt them in the first place.”
Kirby reiterated a call for Hamas to immediately release all of its hostages, estimated to include 199 Israelis and other foreign nationals.
Keren Schem, mother of Mia Schem, and family members of people being held by Hamas militants in Gaza hold a press conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday after Hamas released a video that showed Mia Schem.ย (AP / Ohad Zwigenberg)
“We know there is a small number of Americans, but all of them need to come home and be with their families,” he said.
Kirby also said Israel is a “dynamic area โ in many ways, a combat zone” as President Biden is preparing to travel there Wednesday.
“The president is well aware of that,” Kirby told NBC. “Obviously, we will take all the appropriate security precautions to make sure he can conduct this trip safely and effectively.”
Mia Schem, pictured in background posters, was among the roughly 200 people kidnapped in Hamas’ cross-border attack on Oct. 7, 2023.ย (AP / Ohad Zwigenberg)
Hamas terrorists launched anย unprecedented invasion into Israelย on Oct. 7, slaughtering more than 1,400 Israelis, including at least 260 attendees of the Tribe of Nova Trance music festival. Schem attended the festival and was among those taken captive. Miaโs mother, Keren Schem, said she was living her “worst nightmare” after learning her daughter was taken hostage by Hamas.
“I didn’t know if she was dead or alive,” she told Fox News’ Mike Tobin. “I knew nothing until yesterday when I saw this video.”
During a press conference Tuesday, Schem called for her daughterโs safe return.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Tuesday that all hostages in Israel need to be released so that they can “come home and be with their families.”ย (Celal Gunes / Anadolu via Getty Images)
“I’m begging the world to bring my baby back home. She only went to a party, to a festival party to have some fun, and now she’s in Gaza,” she said.
Fox Newsโ Lawrence Richard contributed to this report.
Joe Bidenโs presidency is tracking Jimmy Carterโs four years in the Oval Office so faithfully it must give his campaign team hives. Recent events in Israel create even more parallels. It was a Middle East crisis that brought down Jimmy Carterโs presidency; the current conflict in the region could prove Bidenโs undoing as well.
In 1979, more than 50 U.S. citizens were taken hostage in Iran, and Carter failed to secure their release. Worse, a U.S. military mission sent to rescue the prisoners failed, infuriating Americans. Carterโs foreign policy blunders sank his reelection bid, but they were far from his only problem. His administration was considered weak and inept, and the events in Tehran reinforced those perceptions.
Like Biden, Carter was already in trouble when the hostage crisis occurred. The Georgia peanut farmer presided over sky-high inflation: so has Biden. Carter pushed enormous and controversial increases in government spending: ditto Biden. Like Biden, Carter started with high approval numbers that went pretty much straight downhill.
As he approached reelection in 1980, Carter faced a primary battle from fellow Democrat Senator Ted Kennedy; nearing next yearโs presidential election, another Kennedy — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. โ was until recently attempting to mount a primary challenge against Biden. History may not repeat but it sure does rhyme.
Today, 30 Americans have been murdered by Hamas and more than a dozen are being held captive. Voters will hold President Biden responsible for punishing the terrorists responsible for those deaths, and for bringing both American hostages and those trapped by war home safely.
So far, the Biden White House has not impressed. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan boasted eight days before Hamasโ invasion of Israel that, “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades,” displaying either incredible ignorance or unjustifiable smugness.
Elsewhere, it turns out that Robert Malley, Biden administrationโs “special envoy” to Iran, who is known to have had close contacts with Hamas, was put on leave from his State Department post several months ago. Officially, he has been accused of mishandling classified documents, but there is speculation that he has long worked on behalf not of the U.S. but of Iranian interests.
Biden and his national security team have refused to accuse Iran for complicity in Hamasโ attack on Israel, claiming repeatedly there is no evidence of Tehranโs involvement. That is untrue. There is increasing proof that the planning for the attack went on for months, discussed by senior officials of both Hamas and Hezbollah meeting with leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in Beirut.
Biden is understandably loathe to implicate Iran in Hamasโ atrocities. Confronting Tehran could escalate the hostilities in the region, and would also boost oil prices, which would inevitably hurt Bidenโs approval ratings. Also, Bidenโs White House, foolishly pursuing a nuclear pact, has enriched and emboldened the mullahs, in part by loosening enforcement of sanctions; voters will not look kindly on that decision.
Wisconsin Representative Scott Fitzgerald wrote recently in an op-ed, “Relaxing sanctions has allowed Iran to generate oil revenues exceeding $80 billion annually while strengthening its relationship with China. As I warned in April 2021, using China to dodge U.S. sanctions allows Iran to funnel money to its proxy forces in the Middle East, including the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hamas, which is armed, funded, and led by the Iranian regime.”
At the same time, there has been a spike in the number of people on the terror watch list who have been apprehended at the uncontrolled southern border, through which millions of people have entered our country illegally since Biden took office. Fox News reports that four Iranians have been caught since October 1, heightening concerns.
Our State Department has been slow to help evacuate Americans from Israel, even as other countries have arranged to airlift their citizens to safety. In addition, recent news reports show U.S. citizens responding to our governmentโs advisory and arriving at the Egyptian border, only to find it blocked and being told to go home.
The Biden White House claims to be “surging additional military assistance” to our ally. Given that Biden goofed some months ago by admitting that the conflict in Ukraine has drained our stocks of munitions, it is not clear how much we can provide.
Hamas, on the other hand, appears to be well-equipped, thanks at least in part to mountains of weapons and ammunition abandoned by U.S. forces in their hasty exit from Afghanistan, which Joe Biden and his team continue to applaud as a “success.”
Meanwhile, while the world has been transfixed by the horrors taking place in Israel and Gaza, the president has carried on with his campaigning. Bidenโs support for Israel may be unwavering, but his attention span is not. As Israel declared war, Biden and his wife hosted a barbeque for White House staffers; the next day the president spoke at a Rose Garden campaign event celebrating his efforts to cut down on “junk fees.”
The very next day, Biden traveled to Philadelphia to promote his green energy agenda. An agenda, we note, that includes curbing U.S. oil production and consequently driving prices higher, helping to fund Iran-backed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. The president may have received word that his campaigning was not well received; he abruptly canceled a trip to Colorado on Monday to “instead hold meetings with his national security team as Israelโs war with Hamas appears set to escalate,” as one news outlet helpfully explained.
Jimmy Carter, faced with the hostage crisis, had the decency to suspend campaigning and focus his government on the plight of the captive Americans. One of his aides at the time, Stuart Eizenstat, wrote that the Carterโs so-called “Rose Garden strategy” “personalized the crisis in the American media by focusing the responsibility on the Oval Office and showing the terrorists they could put the American presidency itself into dysfunction.” Maybe thatโs why Biden is choosing to keep up his campaigning, but his behavior is unseemly.
So far, voters back our support for Israel; if more American lives are lost, or the conflict spreads, they will not be so forgiving, and they will blame Joe Biden.
Liz Peek is a Fox News contributor and former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. A former columnist for the Fiscal Times, she writes for The Hill and contributes frequently to Fox News, the New York Sun and other publications. For more visit LizPeek.com. Follow her on Twitter @LizPeek.
Iran is warning of a possible “preemptive” strike against Israel soon. The warning, reported byย Aljazeera, came as Israel prepared for a major ground offensive in Gaza.
Tensions have flared along the Lebanon-Israel border between the Hezbollah group and Israeli military, The Associated Press reported. While shelling has been limited to towns along the border, there have been fears Hezbollah and other Iran-backed groups would escalate their actions to support Hamas should Israel begin a ground operation in Gaza.
“All possible options and scenarios are there for Hezbollah โฆ Naturally, resistance leaders will not allow the Zionist regime to take any action in Gaza, and when it feels reassured about Gaza, move on to other resistance areas in the region,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on state TV late on Monday, referring to his meeting with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah the previous day.
“Therefore, any preemptive measure is imaginable in the coming hours,” he added.
According to the New York Post, he further said: “The resistance front is capable of waging a long-term war with the enemy [Israel] โฆ in the coming hours, we can expect a preemptive action by the resistance front.”
The Post noted that Iran had applauded the brutal attack on Israel by Hamas, which had targeted innocent civilians.
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
Republicans rejected Rep. Jim Jordan for House speaker on a first ballot Tuesday, as an unexpectedly numerous 20 holdouts denied the hard-charging ally of Donald Trump the GOP majority needed to seize the gavel. More voting is expected as Jordan works to shore up support to replace the ousted Kevin McCarthy for the job but the House immediately went into recess as the firebrand leader of the GOP’s hard-right flank struggled to take a central seat of U.S. power.
After two weeks of angry Republican infighting since McCarthy was removed by hard-liners, the House vote quickly became a showdown for the gavel. Reluctant Republicans refused to give Jordan their votes, viewing the Ohio congressman as too extreme for the powerful position of House speaker, second in line to the presidency.
In all, 212 Democrats voted unanimously for their House leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, while 200 Republicans voted for Jordan and 20 for someone else. Jeffries has no chance of winning, and Jordan must pick up most of his GOP foes to win a majority.
The holdouts are a mix of pragmatists, ranging from seasoned legislators and committee chairs worried about governing to newer lawmakers from districts where their voters back home prefer President Joe Biden to Trump.
But with public pressure bearing down on lawmakers from Trump’s allies including Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity, it’s unclear how long the holdouts can last. Jordan swiftly flipped dozens of detractors in a matter of days, shoring up Republicans who have few options left.
โJim Jordan will be a great speaker,โ the former president said outside the courthouse in Manhattan, where he is facing business fraud charges. “I think heโs going to have the votes soon, if not today, over the next day or two.”
The political climb has been steep for Jordan, the combative Judiciary Committee chairman and a founding member of the right-flank Freedom Caucus. He is known more as a chaos agent than a skilled legislator, raising questions about how he would lead. Congress faces daunting challenges, risking a federal shutdown if it fails to fund the government and fielding President Joe Biden’s requests for aid to help Ukraine and Israel in the wars abroad.
To seize the gavel, Jordan will need almost the full majority of his colleagues behind him in a House floor vote, as Democrats are certain to back their own nominee, Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. With the House Republican majority narrowly held at 221-212, Jordan can afford to lose only a few votes to reach the 217 majority threshold, if there are no further absences.
Jordan conferred immediately afterward with McCarthy, who fared nearly as badly in January, having lost almost as many votes on the first of what would become 15 ballots for the gavel.
As the somber roll call was underway, each lawmaker announcing their choice, the holdouts quickly surfaced. One, Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a leader of the centrists, voted McCarthy, the ousted former speaker. Murmurs rippled through the chamber. Others voted for Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who was the party’s first nominee to replace McCarthy before he, too, was rejected by hardliners last week.
Making the official nominating speech was another top Trump ally, GOP conference chairwoman Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who drew from the lessons of the Old Testament before declaring Jordan will be โWe the Peopleโs speaker.โ
On the other side of the aisle, Democrat caucus chairman Rep. Pete Aguilar of California nominated Jeffries and warned that handing the speakerโs gavel to a โvocal election denierโ would be โa terrible messageโ at home and abroad. Aguilar recited all the times Jordan voted against various measures — abortion access, government aid and others, Democrats chanting โHe said no!โ
Upset that a small band of hard-liners have upended the House by ousting McCarthy, Republicans have watched their majority control of the chamber descend into public infighting. All House business has ground to a halt.
After a late-evening meeting Monday at the Capitol turned into a venting session of angry Republicans, Jordan acknowledged: โWeโve got a few more people to talk to, listen to.โ
One holdout, Republican Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, said Jordanโs role in the runup to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and his refusal to admit that Biden, a Democrat, won the 2020 election remained an issue.
โJim, at some point, if heโs going to lead this conference during the presidential election cycle and particularly in a presidential election year … is going to have to be strong and say Donald Trump didnโt win the election and we need to move forward,โ Buck said.
But Jordan can rely on Trump’s support as well as pressure on colleagues from an army of grassroots activists who recognize him from cable news and fiery performances at committee hearings. Republicans say it will be hard for rank-and-file lawmakers to oppose him in a public floor vote. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who engineered McCarthy’s ouster by a handful of hard-liners, publicly praised each lawmaker who has flipped to Jordan’s column โ and berated those who have not.
โThank you Rep. Ann Wagner!โ Gaetz posted on social media, after the Missouri Republican announced her support.
One by one, others also announced their support. Still, it could take multiple rounds during House floor voting, not unlike in January when it took McCarthy 15 ballots to win the gavel.
Democrats have decried the far-right shift, calling Jordan the leader of the chaos wing of the GOP.
Jordan has been a top Trump ally.
Now the Republican Partyโs front-runner to challenge Biden in the 2024 election, Trump backed Jordan to replace McCarthy early on and was working against the nomination of Scalise, who withdrew last week after colleagues rejected their own rules and failed to coalesce around him.use.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
From Israel and Thailand to France and America, the families of Hamas’ 199 hostages are in an aching form of limbo. Pictured: On Oct. 10, Jonathan Polin and his wife, Rachel Goldberg, recount their most recent interactions with son Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, who went missing after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. At back right is daughter Leebie Goldberg-Polin, 20. (Photo: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images)
โI canโt describe such a moment in words, where you watch your whole family get taken away from you,โ Yoni Asher tried to explain.
Summoning the courage to keep talking, Asher looked around the room of diplomats, U.N. officials, and other suffering families, and put himself back in the moment where his world changed forever.
โMy wife was visiting her mother at one of the kibbutzim, and I stayed home,โ Asher said, then stopped, as he probably had a million times in the past week, to let his decision sink in.
โI got a phone call from my wife,โ and she was โscaredโscared,โ he repeated, โwhispering, terrif[ied], saying that sheโs hearing gunshots and people are entering the house.โ
It wasnโt until later that he saw a video of his wife and two daughters after they were forced into one of Hamasโ cars or trucks.
โI recognized them,โ Yoni said quietly, referring to his two little girls, Raz and Aviv, and his wife, Doron.
As tears fell freely down his face, Asher finally got out the words that thousands of tortured families have said since Oct. 7, when Hamas struck Israel: โI woke up to the worst nightmare of my life.โ
Others, like Yakov Argamani, pace around their houses, clutching a book of psalms. Surrounded by memories, Argaman mourns that his beautiful teenage daughterโs scent is gone from the room.
โNoa was here, there, everywhere,โ he told The New York Timesโ Jeffrey Gettleman. โAll of a sudden, itโs gone. And Iโm lost,โ the broken father laments.
Hen Avigdori is among other fathers who try to comfort the one child whoโs leftโwhile slipping away to cry for his sonโs missing sister and mom.
โIโm in this endless loop of hope and despair, hope and despair,โ Avigdori said. โI need some proof of life. I need to know where my wife and daughter are.โ
From Thailand to France and America, the families of the 199 missing hostages are in an aching form of limbo. Between television interviews and underground meetings with government officials in Tel Aviv, these relatives live hour to hour, haunted by their last conversations and the knowledge of what Hamas is capable of.
To so many, captivity is a fate worse than death. As one heartbroken father told reporters, realizing his 8-year-old little girl had been killed was better than thinking of her in the terroristsโ hands.
โItโs a blessing,โ an emotional Thomas Hend told CNN at the moment he learned Emilyโs fate.
โShe was either dead or in Gaza,โ he said, after a 48-hour search. โAnd if you know anything about what they do in Gaza, that is worse than death.โ
The number held by Hamas, which Israeli officials increased to almost 200 over the weekend, is complicating things for Israeli soldiers on the ground. While military teams search the 30-mile Gaza Strip, terrorist Abu Obeida warned that his men had scattered the hostagesโbabies, grandmothers, young women, newly orphaned children, and soldiersโin โsafe places and the tunnels of resistanceโ all throughout the area.
Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari, a top Israeli military spokesman, insisted that the militar has information on the location of the captives and sought to reassure families that troops โwill not carry out an attack that would endanger our people.โ
โI am ready for an exchange, anything, if this can lead to freedom, to bring the children home,โ the Catholic priest said.
Countless parents at the makeshift headquarters of the Families of Hostages and Missing Persons Forum would almost certainly do the same.
โAll we have been told is that her phone is in Gaza,โ Meirav Gonen said helplessly.
Gonenโs daughter Romi, who was kidnapped from the music festival where Hamas massacred dozens, stayed on the line with her mom for almost 45 minutes until her phone went dead.
โI know she was shot,โ Gonen explained. โShe called me at 10:15 and I was on with her until 10:58, she was fading away and I heard shooting around her coming closer to the car and then people shouting in Arabic โฆ shouting she was alive and that they need her.โ
A photo of Romi Gonenโs face is one of many lining the wall of Tel Avivโs HaKirya government building, a horrifying reminder of the dozens of missing.
โItโs so, so lonely,โ Gonen said, choking up. โAll the thoughts and feelings that you have once you stop for a minute to listen to them.โ
Jerry Boykin, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, understands the pain of hostage crises more than most.
As commander of the Armyโs elite Delta Force, Boykin was one of the leaders on the failed mission to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980. Like so many veterans, he knows the incredible lengths America will go to bring its people home.
โI think most of what you see, other than the bombing and the shelling by the Israelis โฆ is reconnaissance to try to locate the hostages,โ he explained to guest host and former Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., on โWashington Watch.โ
โThis is a big issue for the Israelis because there are Americans being held. And I can assure that those people on the ground in [Gaza] include some Americans, our special operators that are experts at hostage rescue,โ Boykin said.
But, Boykin warned, โthe key thing to hostage rescue is good intelligence, and I think thatโs what theyโre doing [in Gaza right now]. โฆ Theyโre in there looking for the hostages.โ
โ And I pray that they will find them before the end of this campaign โฆ because ultimately,โ he added soberly, โthese people will be killed if we canโt find them in time.โ
John Kirby, spokesman for the White Houseโs National Security Council, was cagey Sunday about the involvement of U.S. special ops, saying only that the military โwonโt rule anything in or outโ about the hostage rescue effort on the ground in Gaza.
For now, Boykin insisted, the world needs to keep its eye on the ball. All of this, he argued, โis on the backs of Hamas.โ
โHamas is responsible for everything that has happened up to this point,โ Boykin said. โThere is nothing, no one killed, nothing that Hamas is not responsible for. And we have to remember that. โฆ What has happened here is a terrible, brutal, even demonic attack on the Israelis. โฆ And we stand with the Jews.โ
More than that, we pray for the Jewsโand everyone affected by this unspeakable tragedy.
For a partial list of hostages to remember in prayer, visit Pray for Israel by Name and join us in asking for Godโs continued blanket of peace and protection on the innocents who are in the grip of Hamas.
Top Stories โข Court Prohibits Killing 26-Week-Old Unborn Baby in Abortion: โWe Cannot Stop the Heartbeatโ โข Pro-Life Congressman Jim Jordan Hopes to Win Speaker Vote Tomorrow, Wants to โUnifyโ Republicans โข Celebrating Justice Clarence Thomasโ Remarkable 32 Years on the U.S. Supreme Court โข Pennsylvania March for Life Sees Thousands of Pro-Life People Stand Against Abortion
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Looking for an inspiring and motivating speaker for your pro-life event? Don’t have much to spend on a high-priced speaker costing several thousand dollars? Contact news@lifenews.com about having LifeNews Editor Steven Ertelt speak at your event.
Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2023 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and โThe Washington Post.โ He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh DโSouza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Top Stories โข Pro-Life Congressman Jim Jordan Wins Republican Vote, Will be GOP Speaker Nominee โข Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose Joe Bidenโs Proposed Mandate to Force Employers to Fund Abortions โข While the World Focuses on Israel, Kamala Harris is On Tour Promoting Abortion โข Nikki Haley: โI Think Thereโs Room for a Federal Lawโ Protecting Babies From Abortions
More Pro-Life News โข Planned Parenthood Abortion Biz in Gaza Destroyed as Israel Responds to Hamas Attack โข Planned Parenthood Permanently Closes Another Abortion Biz โข Pro-Life Advocate Nick Vujicic Will Open ProLife Bank This Spring as Establishment Alternative โข Pro-Life Attorneys Tell Supreme Court to Let Ruling Stand That Bans Dangerous Mail-Order Abortions โข Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
Looking for an inspiring and motivating speaker for your pro-life event? Don’t have much to spend on a high-priced speaker costing several thousand dollars? Contact news@lifenews.com about having LifeNews Editor Steven Ertelt speak at your event.
Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2023 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us.
Cities throughout the world experienced acts of alleged Islamist terrorism and anti-Israel demonstrations on Friday, following calls by the former chief of Hamas for the Islamic world to partake in a global โDay of Rage.โ
For context, Hamas is an Iranian-backed terrorist organization that launched a horrific attack against Israel earlier this week, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,200 innocent civilians. Days after the initial attack, Khaled Meshaal, Hamasโ ex-chief (2004-2017) who resides in Qatar, called for worldwide demonstrations in support of Palestinians living in Gaza and Muslim-majority Middle Eastern countries to wage war against Israel. He also claimed the day represents a โmoment for the applicationโ of jihad.
โ[We must] head to the squares and streets of the Arab and Islamic world on Friday,โ Meshaal said. โTo all scholars who teach jihad โฆ to all who teach and learn, this is a moment for the application [of jihad].โ
โThe entire planet will be under our law, there will be no more Jews or Christian traitors,โ heย added.
Several acts of violence and anti-Israel demonstrations have since been reported in cities across the world on Friday that appear to be in response to Meshaalโs call to action.
France
In Arras, a Chechnyan man was arrested by law enforcement after stabbing several adults at a local school. While no children were harmed, early reports indicate at least one adult was killed and two injured. According to France24, the suspect allegedly shouted โAllahu akbar,โ or โGod is great,โ in Arabic, at some point during the attack.
The suspect was also reportedly on a โstate watchlist of known people to be a possible security risk,โ according to Reuters.
China
An Israeli national who worked at the countryโs Beijing-based embassy was reportedly stabbed on Friday. While the attackerโs nationality remains unknown, Chinese authorities claimed the suspect is a 53-year-old โforeign nationalโ who has โoperated a small retail business in Beijing.โ According to embassy officials, the victim has been hospitalized and remains in stable condition.
A video circulating social media on Friday appears to show the suspect in question stabbing the victim before hobbling away.
Jordan
Jordanian police were forced to disperse pro-Palestinian demonstrators after the latter attempted โto reach a border zone with the Israeli-occupied West Bank.โ According to Reuters, witnesses claimed, โPolice fired tear gas to halt about 500 demonstrators who had reached a security checkpoint outside the capital Amman on a highway leading to a main border crossing.โ The nationโs government had previously declared anti-Israel demonstrations near the area off-limits.
An unprecedented number of people filled the streets of the capital of Jordan
If King Abdullah II is in Raghadan (royal palace), then an attempt to evacuate members of the Hashemite dynasty from Amman using helicopters or American special forces cannot be ruled out.
According to the New York Post, video evidence from Iran shows thousands of the nationโs residents โtaking to the streets โฆ burning not only Israelโs flag but the American flag as well.โ Demonstrators also reportedly chanted phrases such as โEnd of Israelโ and โDown with USA.โ
Other Middle Eastern Nations
In addition to Iran and Jordan, a bevy of other Middle Eastern nations also experienced pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel demonstrations on Friday. This list includes Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, Oman, Qatar, and Yemen, according to Bloomberg News.
Washington State
Students at the University of Washington held a demonstration in support of Hamas on Friday, in which attendees reportedly chanted for the โone solutionโ to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In praising Hamas, one attendee claimed the terrorist organization is โfighting for their people [and] fighting for their country back.โ
โWhat America is promoting is that Israel is a victim. For what? For Hamas defending their people?โ the girl said.
A Muslim woman at the @UW Palestine rally, in which protesters chanted for the โone solution,โ says Hamas are heroes defending people. Hamas is an antisemitic Islamist terror group. The rally was promoted with a flyer featuring a Hamas paraglider. pic.twitter.com/mgdU4K9dB9
Students at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) held an anti-Israel gathering, in which participants could be heard shouting โintifada, intifada,โ a term often used by Arab demonstrators invoking the memory of past Palestinian uprisings in the Jewish state.
This is @UCLA where students are screaming "intifada, intifadaโ – a call to murder Israelis and Jews.
Imagine just for a moment what itโs like to a Jewish student on this campus. pic.twitter.com/I52gh6Bqqe
This article has been updated since publication to include additional anti-Israel demonstrations and actions.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
Theย militant group Hezbollahย took responsibility Friday for targetingย Israeli militaryย posts with small-arms fire along the country’s border with Lebanon, and the Israelis responded with artillery strikes.ย The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a tweet that one of its drones is “currently striking terrorist targets belonging to Hezbollah in Lebanon.”ย The back and forth comes as Hezbollah Deputy Chief Naim Kassem said at a rally near Beirut on Friday that the group is ready to jump into theย Israel-Hamas conflict.ย
“The behind-the-scenes calls with us by great powers, Arab countries, envoys of the United Nations, directly and indirectly telling us not to interfere will have no effect,” he said, according to Reuters. “Hezbollah knows its duties perfectly well. We are prepared and ready, fully ready.”
Sheik Naim Kassem, Hezbollah’s deputy leader, speaks during a protest to show solidarity with the Palestinians near Beirut on Friday.ย (AP/Hussein Malla)
“The question being asked, which everyone is waiting for, is what Hezbollah will do and what will its contribution be?” Kassem reportedly added. “We will contribute to the confrontation within our plan. … When the time comes for any action, we will carry it out.”ย
More than 1,300 Israelis were killed and thousands more wounded when Hamas launched a surprise terror attack on the Jewish state Saturday. As many as 150 people are believed to have been taken captive by terrorists and held in Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.
Israeli soldiers take positions alongside the border wall and fence with Lebanon as seen from the Lebanese side in Marwaheen, Lebanon, on Friday.ย (AP/Hassan Ammar)
Israel has called up some 360,000 military reservists to respond to the Hamas-led terror campaign. Those forces have gathered on Israel’s border with Gaza ahead of a possible full-scale invasion to reclaim the hostages and eliminate Hamas terrorists.
Israel has warned the 1.1 million people living in the north of Gaza to evacuate the area within 24 hours as a “humanitarian step in order to minimize civilian casualties” ahead of the military’s response to Hamas’ terrorist attacks.
Israeli tanks head toward the Gaza Strip border in southern Israel on Thursday.ย (AP/Ohad Zwigenberg)
The IDF also told Fox News its infantry forces and tanks entered the Gaza Strip on Friday to conduct localized raids.
Fox Newsโ Trey Yingst and Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.
Republicans chose Rep. Jim Jordan as their new nominee for House speaker on Friday during internal voting, putting the gavel within reach of the staunch ally of GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump. Jordan, of Ohio, will now try to unite colleagues from the deeply divided House GOP majority around his bid ahead of a floor vote, which could push to next week.
Frustrated House Republicans have been fighting bitterly over whom they should elect to replace the speaker they ousted, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, and the future direction of their party. The stalemate, now in its second week, has thrown the House into chaos, grinding all other business to a halt.
โI think Jordan would do a great job,โ McCarthy said ahead of the vote. โWe got to get this back on track.โ
Attention swiftly turned to Jordan, the Judiciary Committee chairman and founder of the hard-line Freedom Caucus, as the next potential candidate after Majority Leader Steve Scalise abruptly ended his bid when it became clear holdouts would refuse to back him.
But not all Republicans want to see Jordan as speaker, second in line to the presidency. Overwhelmed and exhausted, anxious GOP lawmakers worry their House majority is being frittered away to countless rounds of infighting and some don’t want to reward Jordan’s wing, which sparked the turmoil.
โIf weโre going to be the majority party, we have to act like the majority party,โ said Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., who posed a last-ditch challenge to Jordan.
While the firebrand Jordan has a long list of detractors who started making their opposition known, Jordanโs supporters said voting against the Trump ally during a public vote on the House floor would be tougher since he is so popular and well known among more conservative GOP voters.
Heading into a morning meeting, Jordan said, โI feel real good.โ
Other potential speaker choices were also being floated. Some Republicans proposed simply giving Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., who was appointed interim speaker pro tempore, greater authority to lead the House for some time.
The House, without a speaker, is essentially unable to function during a time of turmoil in the U.S. and wars overseas. The political pressure increasingly is on Republicans to reverse course, reassert majority control and govern in Congress.
With the House narrowly split 221-212, with two vacancies, any nominee can lose just a few Republicans before they fail to reach the 217 majority needed in the face of opposition from Democrats, who will most certainly back their own leader, New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.
Absences heading into the weekend could lower the majority threshold needed, and Republicans said they were down about a dozen lawmakers as of midday Friday. No floor votes were scheduled as attendance thinned before the weekend.
In announcing his decision to withdraw from the nomination, Scalise said late Thursday the Republican majority still has to come together and โopen up the House again. But clearly not everybody is there.โ
Asked if he would throw his support behind Jordan, Scalise said, โItโs got to be people that arenโt doing it for themselves and their own personal interest.โ
But Jordan’s allies swung into high gear at a chance for the hard-right leader to seize the gavel.
โMake him the speaker. Do it tonight,โ said Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind. โHeโs the only one who can unite our party.โ
Jordan also received an important nod Friday from the Republican partyโs campaign chairman, Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., who made an attempt to unify the fighting factions.
โRemoving Speaker Kevin McCarthy was a mistake,โ Hudson wrote on social media, saying the party found itself at a crossroads also blocking Scalise. โWe must unite around one leader.โ
Earlier in the week, Jordan had nominally dropped out of the race he initially lost to Scalise, 113-99, during internal balloting.
Scalise had been laboring to peel off more than 100 votes, mostly from those who backed Jordan. But many hard-liners taking their cues from Trump have dug in for a prolonged fight to replace McCarthy after his historic ouster from the job.
The holdouts argued that as majority leader, Scalise was no better choice, that he should be focusing on his health as he battles cancer and that he was not the leader they would support.
Handfuls of Republicans announced they were sticking with Jordan, McCarthy or someone other than Scalise โ including Trump, the former president. The position as House speaker does not need to go to a member of Congress.
Trump, the early front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, repeatedly discussed Scaliseโs health during a radio interview that aired Thursday.
Scalise has been diagnosed with a form of blood cancer known as multiple myeloma and is being treated, but he has also said he was definitely up for the speaker’s job.
On Friday, another California Republican, Rep. Tom McClintock, had introduced a motion to reinstate McCarthy during the morning meeting, but it was shelved.
โI just told them, no, letโs not do that,โ McCarthy said afterward. โLetโs walk through this and have an election.โ
The situation is not fully different from the start of the year, when McCarthy faced a similar backlash from a different group of far-right holdouts who ultimately gave their votes to elect him speaker, then engineered his historic downfall.
But the math this time is even more daunting, and the problematic political dynamic is only worsening.
Exasperated Democrats, who have been waiting for the Republican majority to recover from McCarthyโs ouster, urged them to figure it out.
โThe House Democrats have continued to make clear that we are ready, willing and able to find a bipartisan path forward,โ Jeffries said, including doing away with the rule that allows a single lawmaker to force a vote against the speaker. โBut we need traditional Republicans to break from the extremists and partner with us.โ
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Yemenis wave Palestinian flags and shout slogans against Israel during a demonstration in support of Palestinians on Friday in Sanaa, Yemen. (Photo: Mohammed Hamoud/Anadolu/ Getty Images)
Hamas unleashed an unprovoked, surprise attack on Israel onย Oct. 7,ย during Shabbat and theย Simchat Torah holiday. The Gazaย Strip-based terrorist groupโs Pearl Harbor-styleย onslaught includedย 2,200ย rocketsย that blasted communitiesย as far north as Tel Aviv. Regardless, Israelโs critics and enemiesย point their fingers at the Israelis, as if they had bombed themselves.
The Biden administrationโs statements have improved, but itsย knee-jerk responseย was dreadful. โWe urge all sides to refrain from violence andย retaliatory attacks,โ the U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs declared, soon after the mayhem erupted. Washingtonโsย initial messageย to Jerusalem: Donโt do anything. Just stand there. This wrongfully even-handed X post sparked outrage and soon disappeared.
George Achi, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.โs director of journalistic standards, instructed his newsroom colleagues: โDo not refer to militants, soldiers, or anyone else as โterrorists.โ The notion of terrorism remains heavily politicized and is part of the story.โ
โWe, the undersignedย student organizations, hold the Israeli regimeย entirely responsibleย for all unfolding violence,โ read a joint statement by Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups on the situation in Palestine. โThe apartheid regime is the only one to blame.โ Members of 33 undergraduate groups signed this communique.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.,ย displayedย a Palestinian flag in front of her Capitol Hill office, beside the star-spangled banner. Other radical โSquadโ members have slammed Israel, even as Israelis hose their countrymenโsย blood from sidewalks.
Black Lives Matter of Chicago created an โI stand with Palestineโ meme, complete with a paragliding terrorist, like those who flew from Gaza into Israel, with guns blazing.
Pro-Palestine demonstrators in Times Square dressed as Hamas killers. One protester waved a swastika on his cellphone screen.
These doe-eyed dreamers and Islamofascist fifth columnists should focus on Hamasโ atrocities before they denounce Israel and defend its tormentors.
โWe saw boys and girls bound, who were shot in the head,โ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a TV address Wednesday. โMen and women burned alive. Young women who were raped and slaughtered. Soldiers who were beheaded.โ
Netanyahu declared via X: โHamas is ISIS. We will crush and eliminate it as the world crushed and eliminated ISIS.โ
โBabies with their heads cut off, thatโs what [the soldiers] said,โย i24 Newsโ Nicole Zedek reportedย from Kibbutz Kfar Aza near Sderot, just outside Gaza. โFamilies gunned down, completely gunned down in their beds.โ
CNNโs Nic Robertson said,ย โThere were so manyย murdered members of this Kibbutz. Men, women, children, hands bound, shot, executed, heads cut.โ
โThey killed babies in front of their parents, and then killed the parents,โ said Israel Defense Forces Gen. Itai Veruv. โThey killed parents, and we found babies between the dogs and the family killed before him.ย They cut headsย of the people.โ
โA pregnant woman in southern Israel was found by Hamas terrorists,โ Indiaโs TV9 Networkโs Aditya Raj Kaul explained via X. โThey dissected her body. Her stomach was cut open, and they took the fetus out with the umbilical cord. And let theย unborn child die slowlyย out of his motherโs womb. This is what inhuman savages Hamas do to people.โ
โIsraelisโyoung and oldโwereย slaughtered in their homes,โ Aviva Klompas, former head speechwriter at Israelโs U.N. Mission, wrote via X. โEntire families were butchered in cold blood. In one home, a terrorist shot the parents dead, took a childโs cellphone, and livestreamed the horrors on the childโs Facebook account.โ
โOur children suffered the most horrific experience no one could even imagineโgoing to enjoy music with friends in nature and get bombarded with hand grenades and automatic weapons, and just beingย slaughtered, one after another,โ David Abramov told CBS News. His son Laor, an aspiring DJ, vanished after Hamas swiped him in a pickup truck. โYoung, beautiful, happy people go to celebrate life and meeting monsters that come to celebrate death.โย
In a Hamas X video, its forces excavate water pipes, slice them, pack them with explosives, and convert them intoย do-it-yourself bombs, which they lobbed into Israel. โAllahu Akbar!โ (โGod is great!โ) a menโs chorus sings on the soundtrack.
And what was Hamasโ message to Gazans thirsty for running water? Go to hell.
Hamas makes the Palestine Liberation Organization look like moderates. These rats resemble 1970s-era Cambodiaโs Khmer Rouge.
All told, Hamas has killed some 1,200 Israelis. This has been the biggest orgy of Jew killing since the liberation of Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
Conversely, Israel acts in self-defense. Any collateral damage that rank-and-file Palestinians suffer will not be because the Israel Defense Forces gunned them down in their living rooms, but because their jihadist leaders launched this genocidal bloodbath.
Until last weekend, Israel had been pursuing peace like never before. In conjunction with then-President Donald Trump, Israel already had signed mutual-recognition treaties with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and Morocco. Atop these four Abraham Accords, Israel and Saudi Arabia lately had signaled that a separate peace was within reach.
โI believe that we are at the cusp of โฆ an historic peace with Saudi Arabia,โ Netanyahu told the United Nations last month. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Fox News: โEvery day we get closer.โ
This is what it looks like when doves fly.
But that enraged the ayatollahs, arguably the most evil, hateful, destructive, and apocalyptic humans alive. The Wall Street Journal reports that Iran and Hamas engineered this war on Israel to car-bomb any truce between Jerusalem and Riyadh.
Hamasโ ensuing carnage has killed at least 27 Americans, as of this writing. Fourteen other U.S. citizens are missing and could be kidnapped or dead.
These facts alone should quell the Far Leftโs lust for Hamas.
Alas, this catastrophe hurtsย America.ย Thus,ย too many on the Left are exactly where oneย typically findsย themโon the wrong side of the Stars and Stripes.
At a Palestine rally at @UNC, radical left students threaten a man who they perceive to be an Israel supporter. Campus police lead the man away, apparently for his own safety. The leftist rally was promoted with a flyer featuring a Hamas terrorist. pic.twitter.com/8r2iB9Pq3Z
We will not allow terrorists to prevent Floridians from going about their daily lives or exercising their freedom to worship.
FHP and FDLE will continue providing increased security, and I expect universities to fully enforce all antisemitism laws on campus. https://t.co/ezfPmkM9Ml
AOC is a sickening Marxist antisemite who hates America and Israel, and I am fed up with her BS, the media promoting her, and ashamed that this two-faced hater is anywhere near the floor of the House of Representatives. You think my words are tough? Well, go back and look atโฆ
It's noteworthy that not a single Arab country has offered to accept Gaza Palestinians. Not one. And they are silent about Egypt keeping closed the main passageway for the Gaza Palestinians to leave Gaza, because Egypt doesn't want Gaza Palestinians coming into their country.โฆ
Ep. 30 What's happening at the southern border isnโt just an invasion, but a crime. The politicians and NGOs responsible for it are criminals, who should be punished accordingly. pic.twitter.com/cbkTSUyogC
NEW: Harvard students are freaking out after a truck is driving around the school, displaying names of students who allegedly signed a letter blaming Israel for Hamasโ terror attacks.
Top Stories โข Israeli Airstrike Destroys Planned Parenthood Abortion Center โข Ron DeSantis: When it Comes to Protecting Babies From Abortion, โIโve Delivered Resultsโ โข Governor Glenn Youngkin Blasts Democrats for Supporting Abortions Up to Birth โข American Medical Association May Support Killing Patients in Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide
More Pro-Life News โข Pro-Life Laws are Saving Thousands of Babies From Abortions โข Ohioโs Attorney General Confirms Issue 1 Allows Abortions Up to Birth โข Knitted Octopus Toys Help Save Premature Babies โข Pro-Abortion Vandals Attack Cross Display to Memorialize Babies Killed in Abortions โข Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
Looking for an inspiring and motivating speaker for your pro-life event? Don’t have much to spend on a high-priced speaker costing several thousand dollars? Contact news@lifenews.com about having LifeNews Editor Steven Ertelt speak at your event.
Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2023 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and โThe Washington Post.โ He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh DโSouza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
The Biden administration is deporting a Christian family from Germany who legitimately fears persecution and should qualify for asylum, while allowing 99 percent of illegal immigrants to stay in the U.S., most of whom likely do not qualify for asylum.
Uwe and Hannelore Romeike reportedly fled Germany in 2008 because they were threatened with prosecution and $9,000 fines for homeschooling their five children. The couple and their family have lived in Tennessee and filed for asylum. The family has thrived in the U.S., including having two children who are American citizens and two other children who married American citizens. Unfortunately, the U.S. authorities denied their asylum claim in 2013. After the Obama administration intervened, the family had been able to stay in the U.S. under an โindefinite deferred action status.โ
But last month the Biden administration told the family they must return to Germany. Since Germany hasnโt changed its law regarding homeschooling, the family has legitimate concerns that if they go back to Germany, they will face the same prosecution that drove them away in the first place.
While the Biden administration is determined to deport this Christian family, it has done next to nothing to remove millions of illegal immigrants who came into the U.S. through our nationโs southern border, according to a new report from House Republicans.
The Biden administration and its Democrat allies have insisted for more than two years that the U.S.-Mexico border wasnโt open, there is no border crisis, and the administration has enforced immigration laws. But the data gathered by the House Judiciary Committee paints a very different picture: that the Biden administration has failed to deport, through immigration court proceedings, more than 99 percent of illegal immigrants between Jan. 20, 2021, and March 31, 2023.
After pressure from the committee to release basic statistics, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported more than 5 million illegal immigrant encounters in that same period (not including unknown numbers of illegal โgetawaysโ). Most of them sought to claim asylum but were disqualified under asylumโs legal definition. Yet fewer than 6,000 illegal immigrants were placed in removal proceedings before an immigration judge and actually removed from the United States during this time.
Meanwhile, nearly half of the 5 million illegal immigrants โhad no confirmed departure from the United States.โ DHS โreleased at least 2,148,738 illegal aliens into the United Statesโ during the same period, and only 6 percent of them โwere even screened for fear of prosecution for the purpose of asylum.โ
An Impeachable Offense?
According to Jeffrey H. Anderson, president of the American Main Street Initiative think tank, U.S. immigration law โrequires that those entering the U.S. without proper documentation be continuously detained until their claim can be adjudicated.โ The Biden administration has obviously failed to comply with U.S. immigration law, a failure that Anderson regards as President Biden having committed an impeachable offense.
Despite complaints from Democratic mayors, such as New York Cityโs Eric Adams, about their cities being overwhelmed with illegal immigrants, the Biden administration recently doubled down on its open border policy by granting work permits to close to half a million illegal immigrants from Venezuela without congressional authorization.
The Biden administrationโs reluctance to enforce existing laws and its willingness to offer amnesty have created an incentive for even more illegal border crossings. The GOP report estimates 1.2 million illegal migrant encounters between April and September this year. Last month, within 24 hours, more than 10,000 illegal migrants were โencounteredโ at the U.S.-Mexico border. Unsurprisingly, most came from Venezuela because they regard Bidenโs amnesty to Venezuelans as an open invitation to the United States.
Additionally, our nationโs southern border has become a gate for the illicit drug trade, directly contributing to Americaโs opioid epidemic. The United Nations calls the U.S.-Mexico border โthe deadliest land routeโ for human trafficking, especially the trafficking of children, many of whom have become enslaved workers in the U.S. Whatโs even more outrageous is that citizen journalists caught U.S. government officials facilitating child trafficking at taxpayersโ expense.
About-Face on Border Wall
In an about-face move, the Biden administration recently announced it would expedite the construction of a border wall, despite calling the wall construction under the Trump administration โjust one example of the prior administrationโs misplaced priorities and failure to manage migration in a safe, orderly, and humane way.โ White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tried to justify the administrationโs embarrassing policy reversal by insisting Biden hasnโt changed his opposition to a border wall. Still, his DHS โis complying by the lawโ to build a border wall because โthat appropriation came from fiscal year 2019 under the last administration, Republican leadership.โ
The Biden administrationโs claim of โcomplying with the lawโ is rich. The alarming statistics from the House GOPโs report demonstrate that the Biden administration, starting with President Biden, has surrendered one of the governmentโs most fundamental responsibilities: to enforce laws and keep America safe. Not to mention that the Biden administrationโs approach to immigration laws is so upside down and illogical that it insists on deporting a Christian family facing persecution in their home country while welcoming with open arms illegal migrants who are disqualified for asylum.
President Biden certainly believes he deserves another term. American voters, however, should remember the disastrous results of Bidenโs policies and never again elect as president someone who refuses to enforce the laws of the United States.
After the slaughter of more than a thousand Jews in Israel, among them beheaded infants and impaired elderly women burned alive, President Joe Biden delivered a righteousย speechย defending Israel and condemning the antisemitism of Hamas as โpure, unadulterated evil.โ We should expect this kind of sentiment from any leader of a nation of civilized people after the single worst act of butchery against Jews since the Holocaust. And, earnestly, the moral clarity was nice to hear after listening to the degeneracy of Hamas allies and theย fellow travelersย that infest the American left these days. ย
Democrats whoโve spent years defending the likes of Rashida Tlaib or Ben Rhodes or BLM or CAIR or whomever else are now feigning surprise that Soviet-style โanti-Zionistsโ are in their midst. And these arenโt members of some fringe groups dressing up like a bunch of Nazis in front of Disney World. Theyโre celebrated and educated and deeply embedded in left-wing intellectual circles, in major universities, in bureaucracies, in Congress, in establishment publications, and in cable news channels.
Some on the center-left have spoken out. Most leaders have not. Iโm not suggesting censoring anyone. But if youโre too much of a coward to denounce these people at this point, when will you?
So, anyway, Bidenโs speech was nice. But what are Democrats going to do? It is likely that the United States is providing Israel with intelligence assistance. One hopes weโll provide diplomatic cover rather than engage in the Obama-era machinations that treated the Jewish State as if it were barely an ally. All that is also appreciated.
When, however, will the administration rescind the $6 billion waiver it gave the Iranian mullahs, who have spent decades murdering and kidnapping American citizens, in addition to fueling war against our allies in the Middle East? There is no plausible way that Hamas could launch an attack of this scope without the logistical and monetary assistance of Iran. The Biden administration has allowed somewhere around $40 billion in waivers to flow to Iran over the past few years, not only six. Some of that was likely to keep world supplies up and prices domestically down (of course, we could drill here instead.) Sanctions exist to pressure regimes to engage in normal behavior. Will that change, or will Biden continue to employ pernicious Obama-style placation of the terror regime?
What is Biden going to do about Qatar โ where Hamas leaders are welcome to celebrate the murder of Jews and Americans while sipping spring water in upscale hotel rooms in Doha? The Department of Justice has designated Hamas as a terror organization. Qatar is ostensibly an ally. There is no reason we should not be able to extradite the architects of violence against American citizens.
What is Joe Biden doing about the hundreds of millions of U.S. tax dollars that continue to flow to Palestinian governments every year in direct aid and through the United Nations? Will we fund groups that divert fungible assets to launch terror attacks and pay stipends to the families of those who murder Jewish civilians? Should we be funding regimes that work to instill and propel (generational) hate and violence?
Only months ago, Fatah was in talks to form a unity government with Hamas, the organization that executed 260 young people at a music festival. (Though, to be fair, Hamas could probably win a majority support from the Congressional Progressive Caucus or the Harvard student body, as well.) For over a decade, there havenโt been elections in the โWest Bankโ because Hamas, or similarly fanatical parties, would prevail. The only group that can make Fatah look moderate is Hamas. Does that sound like the type of place deserving of U.S. aid? Or moral support? Or a state?
The president has said all the right things. Itโs appreciated. But his administration hasnโt done many of them. Not yet.
Hundreds of U.S. families are stranded in Israel without a safe way home after most major airlines canceled routes out of the country and U.S.-bound flights remain unavailable following Hamas’ vicious terrorist attack in the region.
Several thousand Americans traveled to Israel in late September to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot, which spans over several days and has become a popular time for Jewish families to visit the Holy Land. For many in Jerusalem, the holiday celebrations were interrupted by air raid sirens signaling incoming missiles in the region, forcing them to take refuge in designated bomb shelters in their hotels or apartments.
Orthodox Jews there had been off electronics, including their cell phones, and had not known the extent of the bloodshed in southern Israel until Sunday evening when the holiday concluded.That’s when they learned the harrowing details of Hamas’ massacre on Israeli civilians and were informed that their flights home had been canceled indefinitely.
They spent the next several hours scrambling for alternative flights to no avail. Many of them were forced to accept the dreaded reality: They were now stuck in a region bracing for war.
Israeli firefighters extinguish fire at a site struck by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip in Ashkelon, Israel, on Monday.ย (AP/Tsafrir Abayov)
“This whole ordeal has been unimaginably stressful,” Moshe K., a resident of New Jersey who was visiting Jerusalem with 10 family members, told Fox News Digital. “I’m embarrassed of how the State Department has done nothing thus far to get us home other than collecting tens of thousands of names of stranded Americans who can’t get a flight out.”
Moshe was scheduled to return home on October 9, two days after Hamas launched its brutal attack in southern Israel, murdering over 700 civilians. He said he fears his family will be stuck in Israel for several more days if the U.S. State Department doesn’t intervene.
When he’s not frantically searching for flights home, Moshe and his family, including his children, elderly parents and young grandchildren, have been spending the past three days in and out of bomb shelters in their rented Jerusalem condo as air raid sirens continue blaring across the country.
Moshe said he was told that Switzerland, Poland, Brazil and other European countries have sent charter planes to evacuate their citizens from the war-torn territory, but Americans have received no word from the consulate about an evacuation plan. U.S. families and individuals have been instructed to fill out an online form requesting help from the State Department, but most of them have not heard back.
“While I fully understand that the State Department also has to sadly deal with killed and captured Americans, they have sufficient manpower to assign people to handle that aspect as well as the evacuation plan. The fact that 80 hours later, absolutely no word has come out as to what that plan is or concrete steps being taken to evacuate thousands who are stranded, is absolutely appalling,” Moshe said.
“Not a word about their ‘evacuation plan’, that at this point looks like it could take a week or so. They should be ashamed,” the worried father said on Monday.
Many other stranded Americans expressed a similar sentiment.
A resident of Clifton, N.J., who asked to be identified only as Rivkie, traveled to Israel with her family at eight months pregnant for the holidays. Her doctor cleared her for international travel because she was scheduled to return home before the start of her ninth month, but with no available return flights or assurances from the U.S. government, Rivkie fears she will be forced to remain in Israel and deliver her baby in a hospital already overwhelmed with wounded war victims.
“This has been so hard on my family, I’m pregnant and I’m slowly running out of days to fly home,” she said. “Why isn’t the U.S. government doing more to help us? European airlines are working to bring their citizens home.”
Rivkie said she’s worried how her young toddlers are processing the chaos, anxiety and deep sadness in the air.
“I’m worried about my kids. This has been traumatic. I took them outside today, and they asked if there will be another โboom boomโ soon. They cry every time we have to run into a shelter,” she added.
โIโm worried about my kids. This has been traumatic. They cry every time we have to run into a shelter.”โ Rivkie, Fox News Digital
Many Americans trapped in Israel have been glued to their phones and computers in the hopes of a return flight opening up. If anything does become available, they are booking several flights at a time only for them to be canceled hours later. Some Americans have managed to leave the country with flights headed to Europe and then booked a connecting flight to the U.S. from there.
Chana Rowe, a resident of Queens, N.Y., told Fox News Digital that she has been staying at a hotel in Jerusalem with her family since her flight to JFK this week was canceled. They have been advised not to leave the hotel unless necessary and have spent most of their days holed up in their rooms desperately searching for connecting European flights or private charters to bring them home.
“The past few days have been a nightmare, in so many ways,” Rowe said. “We’ve had to run into the shelter multiple times. It is scary to think that it could be several days before we can leave as the airlines continue to cancel most flights.”
“We are all changed forever. I can’t fathom going back to normal life.”โ Chana Rowe, Fox News Digital
“My family and I will never forget this time. We are all traumatized to say the least. There are young children with us who cannot fully grasp what is going on but the devastation, horror and fear in the air is palpable. We are terrified to go outside but we don’t feel completely safe in the hotel either. We are not sure where it is safest,” she added.
Rowe said her family has received no support or communication from the U.S. consulate.
“The U.S. government has not provided any means of support for the Americans that are stuck here,” she told Fox.
For some Americans stranded in the region, there is a deep sense of guilt felt by those trying to leave while their relatives, many of them residents of Israel, stay behind to face the war. The conflicting feelings among the Jewish Americans there โ a longing to remain in Israel to support the Jewish State, while fearing for their own safety โ has been weighing heavily on them.
The Albrechts were supposed to travel home from Israel this week. As war has broken out since the Hamas terrorist attack, they have endured fear but also felt pride for Israeli tenacity.
“Seeing what Hamas is doing to our fellow Jews is absolutely horrific. Anyone who doesnโt view these actions as acts of pure evil and hatred is inhumane,” Rowe said. “We are all changed forever. I canโt fathom going back to normal life once we do return to New York. I can’t stop thinking about the lives that were taken, those kidnapped, the women and teenagers that were raped, held hostage, for being Jewish. The whole world should be supporting Israel and should be helping out in any way they could.”
“We’re scared, we don’t know what to expect every time we run into a bomb shelter,” she added, “and at the same time, we are filled with deep sadness and feel sick to our stomach for our brothers and sisters just a few hours away who were brutally murdered or are grieving the loss of loved ones.”
Shai Albrecht, a personal trainer and Instagram fitness influencer from Maryland, traveled to Israel for the holidays with her husband and three children, ages five, seven and nine with a scheduled return flight on Monday. Her flight with United Airlines was canceled indefinitely. Albrecht and her children have been using their unplanned time in Israel to support the IDF soldiers who’ve been deployed, buying meals and fundraising for them when they’re not rushing into a bomb shelter.
“We have now had to go into the shelters many times. We have heard about this as American Jews, but to experience it is completely different,” Albrecht said. “There is a fear and sense of insecurity all the time, even when the sirens were not going off. I never realized that I could be so nervous using the bathroom. I keep thinking, if the siren goes off now, will I be able toโฆ grab my kids and get them all in the shelter in 30 seconds? My son seems most impacted, he constantly wants to check the Red Alert App and look outside for missiles,” she told Fox News Digital.
Like Rowe and others, Albrecht said she too has been grappling with conflicting feelings of guilt, fear and trepidation.
“This may be a war-torn country, but it is also my country as a Jew,” she told Fox. “But, Iโm also scared. I simultaneously want to run home to my quiet farm in the U.S., but also stay and support my family – literally and figuratively, in Israel. I have a lot of deeply conflicting feelings of fear, guilt, and trepidation for what may come tomorrow.”
“I simultaneously want to run home to my quiet farm in the U.S., but also stay and support my family.”โ Shai Albrecht, Fox News Digital
Albrecht said she trusts that the U.S. government will assist “if it gets to the point that our lives are in danger. Depending on how tonight and tomorrow are, I fear that this may get much worse,” she told Fox.
“Again, I am deeply conflicted, I know that I have the privilege to leave in a way my Israeli cousins do not, but also know that the kids school started today and they are missing their home, their friends, and their sense of normalcy. This has given us all a newfound sense of appreciation for the tenacity and dedication of Israelis,” she added.
Until they can return home, Albrecht said she and her family will do their “best to support the Israeli people and show our children that in times of national crisis each of us, no matter where we are located, must step up to help.”
A source familiar with the situation told Fox News that the State Department is working on arranging flights to bring stranded Americans home as soon as possible. The Department is “acutely aware of the currently limited capacity on commercial flights and the high demand from U.S. citizens wanting to depart,” a department spokesperson told Fox News.
“The State Department has teams communicating 24/7 with U.S. citizens and providing them assistance through phone calls, an online form, and the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program,” their statement reads. “Our goal is to assist U.S citizens who want to leave Israel with a safe means of doing so,” they said.
At this time, the State Department encouraged U.S. citizens to “take advantage” of commercial flights that involve transiting a third country if they are unable to book a direct flight to the United States.
“In order to meet high demand for flights, we are also exploring other contract options by air, land, and sea to nearby countries,” the department said, adding that they will continue to provide updates to U.S. citizens who have registered via their online form as information becomes available.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.ย ((Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images))
The statement comes a day afterย members of Congressย urged Secretary of State Antony Blinken to do everything possible to evacuate Americans out of Israel. Included in the request to Blinken was a push to charter flights out of Israel, as airlines have canceled most flights out of Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel.
“As the number of casualties continue to rise, our constituents who remain in Israel fear for their lives,” the letter to Blinken reads. “We ask that you consider charter flights and military options for evacuation, simultaneously. At this harrowing moment in Israelโs history, it is more important than ever that every American who is looking to return home has the opportunity to do so.”
Hamas-led forcesย poured over the Israel-Gaza border on Saturday while residents were sleeping, dragging people, including women and children into the streets, taking some hostage while beheading and brutally murdering others. More than 700 Israelis, including men, women, children and the elderly, were indiscriminately killed in one day โ the largest terror attack in a single day in Israelโs history. Two days later, Israelโs military discovered many scenes of unspeakable bloodshed perpetrated by Hamas. ย
The Hamas attack shocked Israel and the global community and has sparked a war on the Palestinian terrorist organization. More than 1,200 Israelis have been killed, and 25 Americans have been confirmed dead, with others still missing.
The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem told Fox News Digital that U.S. citizens seeking to be in touch with the U.S. Embassy in Israel should visit the website cacms.state.gov/s/crisis-intake or call +1-833-890-9595 and +1-606-641-0131. Any notifications from the Embassy can be found at https://il.usembassy.gov/category/alert/.
For more Culture, Media, Education, Opinion, and channel coverage, visit foxnews.com/media.
Yael Halon is a reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to yael.halon@fox.com.
EXCLUSIVE โ Denver’s homeless problem is so bad that one resident resorted to dumping human excrement left by his office on the steps of City Hall to convey his frustration.
Mike Johnston, the Democratic mayor of Denver, may be on the other side of the aisle, but he understood where libertarian think tank owner Jon Caldara was coming from with his viral stunt.
“I’ve known Jon Caldara for a long time, so we’ve had more than our handful of discussions, but I think he and I share the same goal, which is what we want is be able to get people housed and be able to get back clean, safe public spaces that everyone can access,” Johnston told Fox News Digital. “We know one of the reasons that happens is when folks are living out in tents and encampments, they don’t have access to public bathrooms. They don’t have access to trash pick-up. And so often they have no place else to drop trash and no place else to go to the bathroom, and so that’s one of the reasons why we know it’s not the right solution. It’s inhumane, it’s not good for the city.”
While a Democrat, Johnston calls himself a nonpartisan mayor for Denver. The deep-blue city โ President Biden took nearly 80% of the vote there in 2020 โ is one of many throughout the country struggling with skyrocketing living costs and accompanying homelessness.
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston took office in July and declared a public emergency on the city’s homeless crisis.ย (Getty Images)
“One of the things I love about this job as a nonpartisan mayor and about this task is people from all ends of the spectrum care deeply about this and getting it done,” he said, calling his plan “so ambitious.” “We were able to bring together really diverse coalitions to work on this.”ย
According to the Annual Homelessness Assessment Report released late last year, Denver had the 10th-largest homeless population among American cities in 2022 at nearly 7,000, and was fourth-worst among cities outside California. Johnston said he hears constantly from city businesses that have lost foot traffic and revenues, and even had to close down, because their downtown locations were beset by the various consequences of homeless people. To illustrate, Caldara shared photos of used needles, human waste and broken glass around his think tank office.
Johnston, who took office in July, immediately declared homelessness a public emergency and released a $50 million plan to get 1,000 people into transitional or semi-permanent housing by year’s end, according to CBS Denver. He then hopes to keep homeless encampments that have marred city streets closed for good.
“We now have one of the highest commercial vacancy rates of any city in America,” Johnston said. “We’re tied with San Francisco, which also has a very significant homeless population. So we know this is one of the major drivers that changes how people feel about their downtown. It affects visitors, affects tourists, affects who wants to work downtown, affects who wants to keep their businesses downtown.”
Johnston said the city has seen a 300% increase in homelessness in just the past five years, accompanied by more deaths of residents on the streets, and called it the top issue for voters and for his administration.
“We view that as a crisis on all fronts,” he said. “That also means more encampments. It means more businesses who have people living or sleeping in front of their business, or in front of their home, or in their public parks.”
Jon Caldara dumps human excrement on the steps of Denver’s City Hall in protest of the city’s homelessness policies.ย (Tracie Smith / Independence Institute)
Johnston acknowledged drug use, particularly from the fentanyl epidemic gripping the country, and mental health issues were contributing factors to homelessness, but said primarily the issue was the high cost of living in Denver.
“We believe you stabilize people in the same way that they got destabilized,” he said. “We first got them back into housing. We provide wraparound services on mental health, addiction treatment, workforce training and these are meant to be transitional units. So what we’re doing is bringing on hotels we’ve converted into micro units. We have open half-acre, acre vacant lots where we put up tiny home villagesโฆ The goal is these are transitional spots where people will come three, six months, get their lives back together, get a job, get some savings, be able to move into their own place, so they can pay rent and get back up on their feet.‘
“If we can get all those folks that are currently unsheltered into housing and can close those encampments and keep them closed and reactivate the city, we will have done what most other cities have struggled to do, which is actually to get people into housing and to get back vibrant, joyful, safe downtowns and no longer have encampments in them,” Johnston added.
He hopes Denver can be a model for the rest of the country in that regard.
Homeless people gather belongings as crews work to clean up a homeless camp in the RiNo neighborhood near the Platte River in Denver on May 17, 2022.ย (RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images))
Reached for comment on Johnston’s approach, Caldara scoffed.
“Another โhousing firstโ plan throwing $ at the homeless,” he wrote in a text message, suggesting instead, “Enforce the camping ban. Arrest people. Clean up streets.”
Caldara shared a column he wrote about how Denver should look to Colorado Springs, the second-largest city in the state after the capital, as a model on how to deal with the issue. He derided Johnston’s approach as “adorable” and said the housing units were effectively a safe place for the homeless “to lay down their heads at the end of a responsibility-free day of criminal activity.”
Colorado Springs, Caldara said, enforces its laws against drug use, theft, assault and public defecation in a way Denver fails to do.
“People should be able to walk around and go to work without stepping over bottles, puddles of urine and vomit. And human feces,” he told Fox News Digital last month.
Asked to respond to claims Denver doesn’t enforce the law, Johnston spokeswoman Jordan Fuja said he was committed to enforcing the law for everyone.
“But we know that law enforcement doesnโt have the capacity to respond to the cityโs volume of 911 calls. Thatโs why hisย 2024 budgetย includes funding for the largest police recruit class since 2005, which will put us on the path to meet the full authorized strength of the police department,” she said in a statement.
Democratic San Francisco Mayor London Breed raised eyebrows among some progressives with a plan requiring anyone receiving welfare to submit to mandatory drug testing and treatment programs, but Johnston’s office said there would be no such requirements to live in one of the “micro-communities.”
“There will not be sobriety requirements to enter one of the micro-communities. Each community will be operated by service providers who create and maintain community rules that must be followed by those living in the community,” Fuja said.
For more Culture, Media, Education, Opinion and channel coverage, visit foxnews.com/media
David Rutz is a senior editor at Fox News. Follow him on Twitter at @davidrutz.
Bipartisan members of the Senate Armed Services Committeeย sent a letterย to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday requesting more Iron Dome batteries for Israel. The letter was Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Sen. Rick Scott, R-S.C., Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., and Sen. Michaelย Rounds, R-S.D.
The letter read: “While we appreciate the Department of Defense has announced that it will rapidly provide Israel with equipment and munitions, and that discussions are underway to resupply Israel with Iron Dome interceptors, we also understand that Israel may urgently require additional missile defense capacity to protect its citizens and territory, including new Iron Dome batteries.
“As you know, the United States Army is currently in possession of two Iron Dome batteries that have not been deployed and have no operational use inside the United States where they are currently stored.”
The committee members said that transferring these two batteries to Israel, in addition to other “defensive assets,” would provide “tangible, life-saving, and sustained support” to prevent Israel from being “overwhelmed” by rocket and missile salvos from Hamas in Gaza.
“I’ve joined a bipartisan letter with [Sens. Rosen, Scott, and Rounds] to Secretary Austin requesting that the Department of Defense transfer two Iron Dome batteries to Israel, as well as additional unused military assets,” Gillibrand said in a social media post including the letter on Wednesday.
The Washington Examiner reported Thursdayย that the anti-missile system has been heavily used since the massive Hamas attack on Oct. 7 that has launched thousands of rockets from Gaza into Israel and killed more than 1,000 Israelis and at least 22 Americans. Hamas forces have also kidnapped more than 100 Israelis and other civilians, possibly including Americans to be used as hostages, the report said.
In the letter, the Senators asked Austin to respond to the request by Friday.
Newser reported Wednesdayย that Israel currently has 10 Iron Dome batteries scattered throughout the country to take out incoming rockets and missiles. According to the report, the system uses radar to estimate an incoming missile’s speed and trajectory to fire an interceptor missile to destroy it in the sky. Each individual battery contains three or fourย launchers, each holding up to 20 interceptor missiles.
The report said that the massive amount of rockets launched at Israel could be designed to use up their current interceptor missile inventory, leaving them vulnerable for future attacks if the munitions are not replenished.
Byย John GizziThursday, 12 October 2023 11:06 AM EDT Currentย |ย Bioย |ย Archive
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., will not secure the 217 votes needed to become the chamber’s speaker, according to sources. The House conference has been delaying bringing the nomination to the floor for a full vote, as several members tell me Scalise cannot win.
“There are as many as 30 members opposing Scalise,” one source said, noting almost all are “Jordan and McCarthy supporters,” referring to Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who lost to Scalise on a secret ballot for nomination to replace ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.
Reports say Jordan is supporting Scalise, but privately he told GOP conference members he would back Scalise only if he were to attain the 217 votes. Jordan, sources say, will reenter the race as soon as Scalise withdraws.
Scaliseโs office told Newsmax Thursday he had no plans to withdraw.
House GOP Study Committee Chair Kevin Hern, R-Okla., and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., are also discussing plans to enter the speaker’s race after Scalise exits. Both are also preparing to challenge Jordan. Jordan lost the vote to Scalise among House Republicans Tuesday, 113-99.
Jordan then pushed for a motion that the House GOP’s nominee must win 217 votes before the matter is brought to the floor. That motion was rejected by the conference.
Hern appears to be the sleeper candidate. He’s solidly conservative, supports former President Donald Trump, and is liked by moderates who won’t back Jordan.
Emmer, meanwhile, is a moderate opposed by Trump, which likely would doom his bid for the leadership position.
The U.S. reportedly already has a “quiet understanding” with Qatar to hold the $6 billion in sanctioned Iranian oil money. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told House Democrats about this “quiet agreement” and the $6 billion “isn’t going anywhere anytime so on,”ย Punchbowl News first reportedย Thursday. Three sources confirmed the report toย The Washington Post.
Iran’s Nournews had said Thursday that Tehran had full access to its funds that were transferred to Qatari banks last month under a prisoner swap deal with the U.S., despite some reports that Washington and Doha have agreed to stop Iran from tapping the $6 billion.
“There has been no change in Iran’s access to its foreign funds in Qatari banks, and the existing agreement remains in effect,” said the news website, affiliated with Iran’s top security body.
But that is now shelved under pressure from American lawmakers, according to the Post.
“It is perplexing why the Biden administration refuses to crack down on Iran and issue a formal decision to freeze the $6 billion ransom payment,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., wrote in a statement provided to Newsmax. “Instead, the administration is selectively leaking parts of their backdoor deal with Qatar to the media.
“We need to ensure the Biden administration will not release another dollar to Iran โ even when the media attention on Israel dissipates. We must send the message that America does not reward terrorism or the arbitrary detention of our citizens abroad.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken will arrive in Qatar on Friday to discuss with its prime minister developments in the Israel-Hamas conflict, ways to de-escalate it and the protection of civilians, the Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson said.
“The senators in question and the U.S. government are all acutely aware that they can NOT renege on the agreement,” Iran sources told the Post in a statement.
“The money rightfully belongs to the people of Iran, earmarked for the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to facilitate the acquisition of all essential and non-sanctioned requisites for the Iranians.”
The prisoner swap has already been completely, so refusing Iran’s money now will have a deleterious effect on the Biden administration’s hopes for diplomatic reset with Iran.
“If this step is taken, that status quo falls apart โ and it will have a very detrimental effect on the internal discussions in Iran, within the regime,” Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft’s Trita Parsi told the Post. “If there is no prospect of a deal with the U.S., it will likely tilt Iran toward building a bomb โ and that would be an extremely dangerous situation.”
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
Top Stories โข Pro-Life Congressman Steve Scalise Wins Republican Vote, Will be GOP Speaker Nominee โข Abortions Drop 30% in North Carolina as Pro-Life Law is Saving Babiesโ Lives โข Joe Biden Wants to Hijack Another Federal Law to Promote Killing Babies in Abortions โข Pro-Life Senator Tommy Tuberville Slams Former CIA Director for Wishing He Was Dead
More Pro-Life News โข Ohio Governor Mike DeWine Urges Voters to Reject Issue 1, Oppose Abortions Up to Birth โข Killing Babies in Abortions Has Not Solved Black Poverty, Abortion Has Made it Worse โข Premature Baby Born at 23 Weeks Could Have Been Legally Aborted, But Heโs Heading Home โข No, Tommy Tubervilleโs Holds Arenโt Affecting Our Militaryโs Response in Israel โข Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
Looking for an inspiring and motivating speaker for your pro-life event? Don’t have much to spend on a high-priced speaker costing several thousand dollars? Contact news@lifenews.com about having LifeNews Editor Steven Ertelt speak at your event.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and โThe Washington Post.โ He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh DโSouza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller (Image Source: Department of State YouTube video screenshot)
Reporters had a meltdown on Tuesday when a State Department spokesperson declared that Israel has a right to defend itself from the recent brutal terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas.
The terrorist organization has reportedly killed more than 1,000 people, including women and children. Another 150 people are believed to have been taken hostage by the group.
Department spokesperson Matthew Miller held a press conference on Tuesday expressing condolences for the families with loved ones killed by Hamas over the weekend, including 14 American citizens.
Following his opening remarks, Miller opened the floor to field reporters’ questions but was shocked by some of the inquiries, which he claimed seemed to disregard Israel’s right to defend itself from terror attacks.
Said Arikat, a reporter for the Palestinian media outlet Al-Quds, asked Miller, “The president has said that Hamas is motivated โ and I’m paraphrasing โ motivated solely by the quest to kill Jews. Do you believe that is to be the case? Is it the assessment of this government that Hamas’ sole motivation is to go out and kill Jews? There’s no context; there’s no siege that has gone on for 16 years? There is no raid after raid by the Israelis?”
Miller responded, “Said, I am just going to say that is a bit of a surprising question after what we saw a Hamas carry out this weekend, when we saw Hamas go in and deliberately target Israeli citizens โ and not just soldiers in the [Israel Defense Forces] but women, children, kidnapped them.”
The State Department spokesperson noted that Hamas is “behaving in the most inhumane way possible.”
Said attempted to interrupt Miller several times, but the State Department spokesperson ignored the reporter and moved on to others’ inquiries.
Reporter Max Blumenthal with the Grayzone News pressed Miller on the strong language used by Israeli leaders regarding potential counterstrike plans.
Miller stated that Israel is expected to follow international law and added that the Biden administration is likely to disagree with some comments made by Israeli leadership but plans to “make those known privately.”
Blumenthal snapped back, noting that the administration has made public comments previously.
“Some of the questions I’m getting today do seem to ignore the fact that Israel just had hundreds of its citizens killed, people who were taken hostage, and pretend that Israel shouldn’t be able to conduct any kind of โ” Miller retorted.
Blumenthal repeatedly shouted over Miller, asking him to acknowledge the deaths of Palestinian children. Journalist Sam Husseini also shouted over the State Department spokesperson.
At one point, Miller was asked, “So baby killing is okay here?”
“And I will say, ultimately, the Hamas terrorists who launched these operations โ there is no one who has more disregard for Palestinian civilian life than those terrorists,” Miller continued. “Those terrorists launched this activity knowing that there would be retaliation, knowing that Israel would have to defend itself, as any country did, knowing that it would lead to the unfortunate loss of civilian lives by their โ by Palestinians, and they did anyway.”
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) admitted in a September report that foreign terrorists are exploiting the Biden-manufactured border crisis to illegally enter the United States.
Released last month by the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis, the โHomeland Threat Assessmentโ for fiscal year 2024 includes an admission by the agency that international terrorists are looking to capitalize on the Biden administrationโs open border policies and the resulting influx of illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border to enter the American homeland. Under the section titled, โBorder and Immigration Security,โ the report specifically noted how โ[t]errorists and criminal actors may exploit the elevated flow and increasingly complex security environment to enter the United States.โ
The agency further acknowledged โindividuals with potential terrorism connectionsโ are actively attempting to enter the U.S. thanks to the ongoing crisis. Months before the 2023 fiscal year ended, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had already encountered approximately 160 individuals on the Terrorist Screening Data Set (TSDS), or โwatchlistโ โ more than the 100 or so encountered in the entirety of the 2022 fiscal year. According to the report, โInclusion in the TSDS ranges from known associates of watchlisted individuals, such as family members, to individuals directly engaged in terrorist activity.โ
Despite proclaiming support for a โsecureโ border, President Joe Biden and his administration have routinely dismantled policies that helped stymie the ongoing crisis. In addition to auctioning off border wall construction materials, Biden moved to gut the Trump administrationโs โRemain in Mexicoโ policy shortly after taking office. That policy required illegal border crossers seeking asylum to stay in the Latin American country until their court hearing.
Itโs estimated that nearly 7 million illegal immigrants have been โencounteredโ at the U.S.-Mexico border since Biden took office, according to the New York Post. And that doesnโt even include the potentially millions of โgotawaysโ who evaded capture by CBP agents.
Last monthโs DHS assessment was issued weeks before Hamas โ an Iranian-backed terrorist organization operating out of Gaza โ launched a series of unprovoked and barbaric attacks against Israel, killing at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The attacks have since prompted concerns that foreign-based terrorist organizations could exploit Americaโs open border to illegally enter the U.S. and launch similar operations.
In response to possible threats, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed the stateโs public safety division to coordinate with local and federal law enforcement on โheightened public safety measures,โ with a particular focus on raising awareness of possible threats against the stateโs Jewish community by Iranian-backed terrorist groups.
In its new threat assessment, DHS specifically highlighted Iran โ the worldโs leading state-sponsor of terrorism โ and its โintent to plot attacks against current and former US government officials.โ
โIran relies on individuals with pre-existing access to the United States for surveillance and lethal plottingโusing dual nationals, members of criminal networks, and private investigators,โ the report reads, adding that Tehran has even attempted to carry out plots โthat do not require international travel for operatives.โ
The report also listed Hezbollah โ another Iranian-backed terrorist group operating out of Lebanon โ as another source of potential foreign terror threats.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
The events of the past 120 hours have made it abundantly clear that Israel can no longer coexist alongside Hamas. The violence unleashed by Hamas against unarmed civilians, including women and children and the elderly โ much of it filmed and livestreamed online โ has shocked the world. On Tuesday, we learned that at a kibbutz near the Gaza border called Kfar Aza, Hamas terrorists slaughtered entire families, including at least 40 babies and small children, some of whom they beheaded.
The Western world has not seen this kind of barbarity in nearly 80 years, and most of us recoil from it in horror and incomprehension. Make no mistake: Kfar Aza will take its place in history alongside Auschwitz and Treblinka. The evil of Hamas is that kind of evil, perhaps not in scale but in kind. In some ways, it is worse because while the Nazis took care to hide what they were doing from the world, Hamas has broadcast its atrocities, boasted and reveled in them. All Hamas members are guilty and deserve swift execution.
Delivering justice to Hamas is now Israelโs grim task, and they will go about it as best they can. But another, perhaps more difficult, task is confronting the Western world at large. In the immediate wake of the Hamas atrocities, demonstrations were staged all over the Western world โ in support of Hamas. Those who marched in the streets, who signed pro-Hamas student statements, who posted memes online praising Hamas are not, by and large, antisemitic neo-Nazis. They are left-wing zealots, BLM and LGBT activists, the woke grandchildren of radical Baby Boomer politics, brain-washed by โanticolonialismโ propaganda, which they regurgitated before a watching world.
This should not surprise you. The people who cheer the beheading of babies are of course those who also cheer the slaughter of babies in the womb. They are, like Islam itself, post-Christian, and their morality, like the morality of Hamas, is decidedly pagan. That means they do not believe in universal human rights or inherent human dignity. They do not believe in the Christian doctrine of imago Dei and the moral imperatives that flow from it. They do not believe in objective morality or truth. They reject the Christian precepts that constitute the basis for Western civilization.
These are the barbarians who reside beyond the gates of the Christian West. They believe only in power, and they will do whatever they can to gain it. Once they have it, they will exercise it as they see fit, unconstrained by questions of right and wrong, or notions of justice and morality whose premises they reject. They will not have qualms about their own hypocrisy or inconsistency. Appeals to compassion and mercy will fall on deaf ears.ย
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. Romans 1:18-32
These are the same people, after all, who insist that โwords are violenceโ and that debates and free speech and even jokes must be suppressed because of the โharmโ they cause to vulnerable and marginalized people. If you say a man cannot become a woman, they want you to be fired, to be silenced, to lose everything. If you say we must not castrate and mutilate children in the name of gender ideology, they want your own kids to be taken from you. Confronted by the wholesale slaughter of women and children, the decapitation of babies by armed men, they respond with a shrug and a meme. They do not care about violence as such, they simply want to be the ones to wield it.
Do not think these people are just confused or ignorant. They are pagans, and like the Hamas terrorists whom they champion, they cannot be reasoned with or accommodated. If it is obvious that Israel and Hamas cannot coexist, it is equally obvious that these two worlds, the Christian and the pagan, also cannot coexist. We will become all one thing or all the other.
Under such circumstances, we need to recognize this struggle for what it is: a fundamentally religious struggle between two irreconcilable religious worldviews. For many centuries the Christian West was able to see this clearly. Itโs why the Catholic Church worked tirelessly for centuries to stamp out paganism in northern Europe. Itโs why the Spanish conquistadors, confronted by human sacrifice cults in the New World, toppled them and razed their temples. They understood that there could be no peace with such a regime. It had to be destroyed utterly.
So, the problem we confront today is old, and the solution is the same. But do we even have the ability, at this late hour, to recognize the problem and do what is necessary? Probably not. We are likely too far along in the process of dechristianization.
Just look at how we responded to 9/11. Many have been calling the Hamas attack Israelโs 9/11, which is an apt comparison. But Israel should not make the mistake America and its leaders did. We did not recognize the 9/11 attacks as a religious act. In fact, we actively denied that the massacre was religiously motivated, and so we failed to respond on religious grounds. Remember the infamous words of then-President George W. Bush immediately after the massacre of 3,000 Americans. Surrounded by Islamic leaders who more or less shared the basic worldview of the al-Qaeda terrorists, he proclaimed that Islam was a โreligion of peace,โ and insisted there could be no connection between the killing and the religion the killers professed.
It was incredible to behold at the time. And what followed was equally incredible. We invaded Iraq on the premise that the Iraqis were just like us, or that we could make them like us. Absurdities followed. The State Department flew political scientists to Baghdad to devise an โIslamicโ basis for constitutionalism and the rule of law. In Afghanistan, we went well beyond offering education to Afghan girls and women and instead spent decades and untold billions catechizing them into gender theory and queer studies. For years our leaders repeated ad nauseum the fatuous notion that deep down all people want to be free. Never did it occur to them that some people would rather have justice or power or revenge.
All of these things were indications that we had finally severed ties with our Christian past and stepped firmly, perhaps without realizing it, into the pagan future. We never grappled with the root causes of 9/11, never entertained the notion that a peopleโs relationship to God shaped everything and was therefore insurmountable. All such discussion was totally absent from the public square. We bought into the lie that all religions are the same, democracy and classical liberalism are fungible and can be imposed at will on any culture, and that religious differences are mostly matters of aesthetics.
What a monstrous lie โ and a dangerous one, too, as we are learning every day now. The conflict unfolding in the Middle East is fundamentally religious in ways that are fairly obvious. What is less obvious, because we are a post-Christian people, is that the conflict unfolding in America is equally religious. Hamas and the pagans stand on one side; Christians and Jews stand on the other. Only one side is going to win.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come, to be published in March 2024. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
Weโre hearing a lot about what President Biden said in Tuesdayโs address on Hamasโs outrageous attack on Israel. Whatโs missing, though, is โฆ well, what was missing. For while he was careful to denounce this brutal, inexcusable act of terrorism, Biden ignored the key role played by his own disastrous policies, and left Americans largely clueless as to how his administration would respond to this major test of U.S. leadership.
Letโs recap what we didnโt hear:
1. Ghosting on Iran
It is common knowledge that Biden was trying to buy the Iranians off with a massive payout for hostages. Add to this gaps in sanctions big enough for the biggest oil tankers to sail through, and virtual silence on Iranโs human-rights record, support for terrorism, and destabilizing activities in the region and Latin America.
Biden had hoped that Iran would keep a low profile, at least until after the 2024 elections. Tehranโs payback to the U.S. and Biden was not only to cheerlead as Hamas terrorists decapitated babies, but to likely assist in supporting and planning the terror campaign.
The president could not even bring himself to mention Iran in his speech on Tuesday. Thatโs a clear signal the administration is clueless what to do now that itโs been hit with irrefutable evidence that its Iran policy has utterly and completely failed.
2. Ignoring Russia
Russia has declared itself all in for Hamas, a marked shift in Moscow policy. Further, there are reports that Russian mercenaries may have assisted in training and preparing Hamasโs shock troops. And there are additional reports Russians smuggled captured arms to the Hamas and then spread a false-flag that these arms were sold by Ukrainians to Hamas on the black market.
Both Russia and Iran clearly believe that a spiraling war in the Middle East will overstretch and distract the United States. Meanwhile, Biden, who has never articulated a clear strategy for Ukraine, now gives us a “no plan” plan for dealing with a dual global crisis.
All we have from the White House is that Ukraine can expect a blank check for as long as it takes. For Israel, we get finger-wagging at Israel not to over-react. The signal this sends to both Moscow and Tehran is that Washington is just making this up as it goes along.
Itโs Amateur Night writ large at a time when we need true professionals at work.
3. Gaslighting on the Border
Israel gets hammered with Pearl Harbor from Gaza with virtually no warning. Meanwhile, the U.S. has the most open border on earth. Millions of illegals have poured into the U.S. without even being observed by border agents, let alone vetted.
We know that this flood includes people from all over the world. We know it includes people on terrorist watchlists. We know this because in recent months we have culled unprecedented numbers of them at the border. The odds that theyโre the only ones are less than zero. Yet in his speech Tuesday, the president had nothing to reassure Americans that heโs prepared to safeguard Americans from the next 9/11.
4. Antisemitism Gets a Pass
A long list of yahoos, from the “Squad” in Congress to BLM to radicals at Ivy League universities, have reacted to Hamasโs atrocities by attacking Israel. The president has a deep, insidious, and pernicious problem with antisemitism in his own party. Tuesdayโs speech presented a perfect opportunity for him to call them out and declare it unacceptable. He didnโt take it.
The White House staff is probably proud that Biden could muster the energy, after hosting a BBQ, to deliver what was largely a boilerplate speech. But Americans looking for real leadership canโt help being disappointed by a president who appears to be going through the motions at a uniquely critical time.
Republicans who control the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday nominated Steve Scalise to serve as speaker following last week’s ouster of Kevin McCarthy, though it was unclear whether he had enough support to win a vote of the full chamber. Scalise, now No. 2 on the Republican leadership ladder, must still win approval from the full House before he can claim the speaker’s gavel. Republicans can afford only a handful of defections as they control the chamber by a narrow 221-212 majority and Democrats are not expected to vote for any Republican candidate.
Lawmakers said they had been told to expect a vote at 3 p.m. ET (1900 GMT), but the House did not take action at that time and CNN reported that no speaker vote would take place on Wednesday.
“We’re working hard to get unified. We need to get unified because the world is not waiting,” Scalise, 58, told reporters. “Obviously we still have work to do.”
Acting Speaker Patrick McHenry told reporters a vote “could be as early as today.” At least four Republicans said they would not support Scalise in a floor vote.
“It’s not over yet. That was the inside race. Now the outside race starts,” said Rep.ย Thomas Massie, one of the Republican lawmakers who had backed House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan in a secret ballot behind closed doors.
The tally was 113 for Scalise and 99 for Jordan, lawmakers said.
Massie said he expected to meet privately with Scalise before a floor vote.
Jordan plans to vote for Scalise on the floor and is encouraging his colleagues to do the same, according to a source who spoke on condition of anonymity. But it remained to be seen whether his backers would support Scalise when his nomination comes up for a vote in the full House. McCarthy in January had to endure 15 rounds of voting before clinching the speakership.
Before selecting Scalise, Republicans rejected a proposal that would have required their nominee to secure 217 of their 221 votes. That allowed Scalise to win the nomination quickly, but left open the question of whether he would face a repeat of the battle in January for the role of speaker, which played out over four days.
Republican Rep. Kat Cammack predicted the floor vote would be a “bloodbath … a continuation of the chaos that has plagued the House.”
Republicans say they need to quickly resolve a leadership vacuum that has prevented the House from addressing the war in Israel, approving more aid to Ukraine and passing spending bills before current government funding runs out on Nov. 17.
Scalise said his first action as speaker would be to schedule a vote on a resolution making clear that the United States stands with Israel in its war with Hamas militants in Gaza.
It took only eight Republicans to oust McCarthy last week, a fact that could make leading the caucus a challenge for any new speaker.
While McCarthy was the first speaker in U.S. history to be removed in a formal vote, the last two Republicans to hold the job wound up leaving under pressure from party hardliners.
Americans appear to have flagging confidence in Congress’ ability to overcome its partisan differences – and the Republican infighting that led to McCarthy’s ouster on Oct. 3. Some 64% of respondents to a Reuters/Ipsos poll last week said they did not believe Washington politicians could put aside partisan disagreements for the good of the nation.
George Washington Universityโs Students for Justice in Palestine chapter gathered on campus in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 10 “for a vigil in honor of our [Hamas] martyrs” who attacked Israel days earlier. Organizers encouraged students to wear masks to hide their faces. (Photo: The Daily Signal)
WASHINGTON โ George Washington University students held a โVigil for the Martyrs of Palestineโ on Tuesday evening where they mourned theย Hamas terroristsย killedย attacking Israel. The Students for Justice in Palestine chapter gathered in Kogan Plaza as dusk fell on Washington, D.C., โfor a vigil in honor of our martyrs.โ Organizersย encouragedย the students to bring posters, flowers, flags, and a mask or keffiyeh (Palestinian headdress) to hide their faces.
Video footage captured byย The Daily Signalย team shows the leader of the group chanting various pro-Palestine and anti-Israel slogans into a megaphone, including โZionism has got to go,โ โIntifada! Intifada!โ (Arabic for uprising or rebellion), and โFrom the river to the sea, Palestine will soon be free.โ
As of February 2023, student Lance Lokas was the president of George Washington Universityโs Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. Lokas was named in a federal civil rights complaint filed with the Department of Educationโs Office for Civil Rights accusing the university of perpetuating anti-Palestinian racism.
His allegations against the university were related to a pro-Palestine protest that the university said โappeared targeted to members of our community based on their Jewish faith or their affiliation with Hillelโ with signs and slogans such as โDECOLONIZE PALESTINEโ and โSETTLERS Fโ OFF. STOP THE ANNEXATION OF PALESTINE.โ
โWe were trying to disrupt the event to make clear that we donโt support war criminals and Israeli military leadership on our campus,โ Lokas told Jewish Currents earlier this year.
Students attending Tuesday eveningโs events largely covered their faces with medical face masks, apparently to obscure their identities. One young woman who attended the vigil with her hair and face covered told The Daily Signal that the masking would make it more difficult for authorities to track any attendees down.
George Washington University has not responded to requests for comment from The Daily Signal regarding the protest or a controversial statement put out by Students for Justice in Palestine.
โThis past weekend, we witnessed them break free, tearing down the prison walls and making it known to the world: WE WILL BE CAGED NO LONGER,โ said a statement from the student group aligning itself with Hamas. That statement praises the invasion as โhistory in the makingโ and โthe beginning of a new era in our struggle.โ
โGW Students for Justice in Palestine maintains unwavering support for our peopleโs resistance, in all its forms,โ the statement said. โEvery single act of resistance moves us closer to the liberation of our homeland. We will never capitulate to the colonizer or his sympathizers, and we stand firm and steadfast in support of our peopleโs right to resist. We call upon all our people and those in solidarity with us to join us in this struggle.โ
After the Palestine Vigil concluded at George Washington U, @MaryMargOlohan and I tried to ask the leaders if they would explain why their bullhorn had a โprideโ flag when you would be killed for being LGBT in Palestine.
Additionally, a toolkit released by the national Students for Justice in Palestine organization calls for the student movement to organize a national day of resistance on college campuses across the U.S. and Canada. The organization did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
โWe as Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement,โ the toolkit messaging says in bold. โThis is a moment of mobilization for all Palestinians. We must act as part of this movement. All of our efforts continue the work and resistance of Palestinians on the ground.โ
At least six chapters of the student group have already announced such events for Oct. 12, according to the Anti-Defamation League: Arizona State University, University of Arizona, Butler Universityin Indiana, University of Louisville in Kentucky, University of Binghamton in New York, and the University of Virginia.
โWe must continue to resist directly, through dismantling Zionism and wielding the political power that our organizations hold on our campuses and in our communities,โ the toolkit says. โWe are asking chapters to host demonstrations on campus/in their community in support of our resistance in Palestine and the national liberation struggleโone which they play a critical role in actualizing.โ
If a protest is not possible, the national Students for Justice in Palestine encourages other forms of engagement, such as a sit-in, โdisruption,โ or โeducational event.โ
The Anti-Defamation Leagueย expressed concernsย about such tactics: โAlthough these are all nonviolent tactics, they raise the real possibility of creating a hostile environment for Jewish students, and the confrontational spirit that permeates the toolkit raises the concern that these actions could lead to acts of harassment or vandalism targeting Jewish students and organizations.โ
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and โThe Washington Post.โ He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh DโSouza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
The barbaric attack on Israeli civilians over the weekend by Hamas terrorists has left people wondering, as we often do after mass tragedies: How did no one see this coming? As a surprisingly sophisticated, coordinated surprise attack left nearly 1,000 people dead and countless more innocents wounded or kidnapped, anyone can recognize the massive intelligence failure without calling into question who is morally culpable for the invasion. Iran-backed militants attacked civilians from multiple points of entry, hang-gliding into a music festival and dragging the bodies of murdered women through the streets, all effectively livestreamed on the internet.
It wasnโt just an intel failure on Israelโs part โ as a close ally with an intelligence presence all over the world, the United States also failed to foresee the attack. A senior U.S. military official admitted to NBC News that โWe were not tracking this.โ CIA counterterrorism veteran Marc Polymeropoulos told the outlet he was โstunnedโ that American intel agencies were caught off guard.
Intelligence operatives are fallible, yes. But instead of identifying the threat from Hamas terrorists, the Biden administration was busy sending money to their state sponsors in Iran and employing Iranian conspirators at the Pentagon.
Thereโs another task thatโs been keeping Americaโs so-called โcounterterrorismโ apparatus busy lately, though. Instead of focusing their efforts on actual terrorists โ those abroad and those doubtless infiltrating our porous southern border โ the Biden administration has continued, and escalated, the trend of turning our post-9/11 surveillance state against Americans, smearing them as โterroristsโ for their political beliefs.
Just last week, Newsweekย reportedย that the FBI is targeting Trump supporters as โdomestic terroristsโ ahead of the 2024 election. The universal line from the Biden administration is that โdomestic terrorismโ and its aliases โ all of which are used as code for political right-wingers โ are the No. 1 threat to national security. The effort to make an example out of Trump supporters who demonstrated at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is only one of numerous instances in which Democrats within and beyond intelligence agencies are working to equate โdomestic terrorismโ with their political opponents.
Two years ago, Bidenโs Education Department infamouslyย plantedย a letter from the National School Boards Association to Attorney General Merrick Garland, urging him to target concerned parents who showed up at school board meetings to protest Democratsโ Covid policies and their racialist and sexually graphic curricula in public schools. The letter smeared those parents as domestic terror threats and urged the Department of Justice to wield counterterrorism laws against them, and Garland happily acted on the suggestion.
A few months later, the politicized Department of Justiceย announcedย a new โdomestic terrorism unitโ to deal with โan elevated threat from domestic violence extremists,โ including โthose who ascribe to extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies.โย (Who knew the Founding Fathers were domestic terrorists?)
Taking things, a step further, disgraced former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabeย claimedย that targeting the โfringes of the right-wing movementโ was insufficient to โcatch this threat,โ and instead called for federal suspicion of โmainstreamโ conservatives.
In June 2021, the Biden administration released a โNational Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.โ Itย proposedย to โcounter domestic terrorism by addressing underlying racism and bigotryโ โ and they werenโt talking about the racism that led Hamas militants to slaughter Israeli civilians this past weekend and has driven violence against Israel in the region for decades. A National Terrorism Advisory Systemย bulletinย issued the same year lumped โconspiracy theories on perceived election fraudโ and โresponses to anticipated restrictions relating to the increasing COVID casesโ in the same sentence as โdomestic violent extremist ideologies.โ
Our intelligence apparatus expends resources on things like telling Big Tech companies which free-thinking Americansโ social media posts to censor, as we discovered via the โTwitter Filesโ and Missouri v. Biden. Itโs actively researching how to most efficiently surveil what you say online. The FBI has been putting its resources to work targeting โ and likely โinfiltratingโ โ traditional Catholic congregations, and terrorizing peaceful pro-lifers like Mark Houck, a pastor who was dragged away in a surprise raid at his home in front of his family.
Itโs not just domestic intel agencies being wielded against Americans; the CIA did its part to help Twitter censor speech, and even solicited signatures to help falsely smear damaging reporting about the Biden family as disinformation ahead of the 2020 election. (For some reason, none of those involved are being arrested for โconspiracy against voting rights.โ)
Across the board, weโve seen the people we elected, and countless bureaucrats we did not, weaponizing supposedly counterterror laws like the Patriot Act against Americansโ First and Fourth Amendment freedoms (at least).
Imagine if those resources were redirected away from targeting ordinary, law-abiding Americans for their political views and aimed at stopping actual terrorists who seek to harm us and our allies. Contrary to the pretense that surveilling Americans as walking national security threats is for our own protection, our world would be a lot safer.
Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.
We can no more count on Biden to defend our border than to assist Israel. That means states and local communities must take their fates into their own hands.
โSuch is the nature of Evil. Out there in the vast ignorance of the world it festers and spreads. A Shadow that grows in the dark. A sleepless malice as black as the oncoming wall of night. So, it ever was, so it always will be.โ
These words from the movie adaptation ofย The Hobbitย were quoted by my colleague Dr. David Wurmser, who is presently in Israel reporting as he can between rocket attacks and shelter-in-place orders.
Only Tolkienโs stories of the changeless sweeping malevolence of evil across the ages seem appropriate to encapsulate the tremendous paradigm shift represented by the horrific massacre perpetrated by Hamas over the weekend. The losses suffered, perhaps as many as 1,000 dead and many thousands more wounded, are of such a horrific scale in light of Israelโs small population that regardless of how the fight proceeds now, Israeli society is likely to be changed forever. The attack, in which as many as 1,000 Hamas jihadists crossed the Gaza border under the cover of a massive rocket barrage and drone attacks, seized control of towns in Southern Israel and went from door to door to rape, torture, and murder every Jew they could find, all on video, instantly evoked horrors known to most of us only from black and white newsreels in previous centuries.
As the perpetrators have openly admitted, the massacre was planned and prepared with the help of Iran, whose other terrorist proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, and Houthi terrorists in Yemen, remain at the ready to expand the fight on Tehranโs orders.
A New Age, A Timeless Evil
The likely purpose of the attack from Iranโs perspective was to undermine peace efforts between Israel and Arab states, most especially Saudi Arabia. Not coincidentally, this has also been a major effort of the Biden Administration, which has sought to undermine the historic Abraham Accords achieved under President Trump by injecting the Palestinian issue into the center of the Arab-Israel conflict, even while pretending to seek an agreement.
The Biden Administration hasย released $6 billion dollarsย to Iran, currently stored at a bank in Hamas-friendly Qatar. It has provided funds to Gazaย which they admitted wouldย result in arming Hamas, andย pillaged stockpiles of U.S. arms stored in Israel as part of a long-standing agreement, and sent them to Ukraine.
Like the conniving Wormtongue in Lord of the Rings, the Biden administration, as the Obama administration before it, has at every turn counseled Israel to maximize restraint and complacency in the face of a growing peril, all while professing friendship.
Here at home, the Democratic Socialists of America, a group that consists of numerous Democrat politicians at the local, state, and federal level, hosted the largest Pro-Hamas rally thus far, in New York City replete with open calls in support of terrorist violence. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group with close ties to Hamas, has called for a National Day of Resistance and a โUnity Intifadaโ in solidarity with the Hamas attack for Thursday, Oct. 12.
In the face of this reality, GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley saying the attack represents โan attack on America,โ or Qatar-friendly Sen. Lindsay Graham issuing threats against Iran is mere fecklessness and bravado. The truth is that as it is currently constituted, the U.S. government, especially the State Department and intelligence agencies, are unlikely to do anything but deliberately hamper Israelโs attempts to defend itself and seek ways to further bolster Iran and its proxies behind the scenes.
Americans should demand the American government keep out of meddling with Israelโs response and allow it to defend its citizens as it sees fit. Certainly, the U.S. should honor existing agreements and obligations (refilling drained stockpiles for instance) but over-the-top or performative action will likely only amount to interference.
The Invasion on Our Own Border
Meanwhile, we should tend urgently to our own border and security. Israelโs border with Gaza was one of the most heavily surveilled and monitored borders in the world. As events have shown, surveillance is not enough. U.S. border doves for years promised that a border can be protected by a mere โvirtual fenceโ of cameras and sensors. The reality is that only real physical barriers, like walls, watched over by sufficient numbers of properly armed and trained men constitute a secure border. Anything else is theater. On the other side of that border are barbaric criminal cartels and narco-insurgents every bit as murderous as Hamas and Hezbollah. In fact, Hezbollah has extensive ties with various drug cartels, which it has used to try and conduct attacks inside the United States. Hundreds of individuals already named on the terrorist watchlist have crossed into the country.
Israeli awareness of the situation in Gaza now being criticized as insufficient, is undoubtedly far superior to our own understanding of the threats on the other side of our own border.
The Biden administration continues to facilitate an invasion, consisting of as much as an entire infantry division a day, mostly of military aged males across the Southern border. They come from all over the world, including places rife with jihadist terrorists, and increasingly from hostile adversaries like China. Some, likely working with the cartels, cross the border wearing camouflage and carrying firearms.
Iranโs parliament is chanting โDeath to Israel! Death to America!
This would not be happening under Trump! Joe Biden just gave them 6 Billion Dollars.
We can no more count on the Biden Administration to defend our border than to assist Israel. That means states and local communities must take their fates into their own hands.
In the wake of the attack from Gaza, Israel immediately loosened its otherwise quite strict gun laws to increase the number of prepared citizens able to defend themselves from terrorists. The reality is that no government force can respond quickly enough against such overwhelming violence to prevent tragedy. Americans should strongly oppose any efforts to restrain our own Second Amendment and take advantage of the ability to possess and train with firearms for their own defense whenever and wherever possible.
Bolster Law Enforcement
Local communities in Israel were quickly overwhelmed by the coordinated terrorist attack, and local police were not equal to the onslaught. It has been reported that over 30 Israeli police were trapped in a police station that came under siege by Hamas gunmen. Many fought bravely and lost their lives.
In America, both urban and rural areas are struggling to recruit, train, and outfit sufficient law enforcement officers following the leftโs assault upon policing in 2020. Many local agencies are hundreds of officers below their required needs. Cities continue to attempt to replace armed law enforcement with mere social workers.
Americans everywhere should endeavor to support and bolster the morale of their local law enforcement, most especially their elected Sheriff. Encourage your community to provide the necessary funding to train, recruit, and equip the best possible local law enforcement, without relying upon fickle and restrictive federal grants. Law enforcement leaders should consider ways to augment smaller or struggling police forces with citizen auxiliaries, properly vetted and trained. States should look at ways to bolster their National Guard and State Defense Forces and prepare them for the kinds of violence we know are possible.
Things will get worse before they get better. The attack on Israel is an unmistakable sign that we have entered a dangerous and trying time. The forces of evil fester and spread, not just in the Middle East, but here at home.
First and foremost, we should, as Tolkien wrote, set ourselves to โuprooting evil in the fields that we knowโ and encourage our friends abroad to do the same.ย
Kyle Shideler is senior analyst for Homeland Security at the Center for Security Policy.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., attacked Israel’s response to an unprecedented assault by Hamas in an extensive thread on social media Monday. Omar, a longtime critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinians, seemed to equate the Israeli victimsย killed by Hamas terroristsย this weekend and Palestinians killed in the ongoing Israeli response.
“Just as we honor the humanity of the hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians and 9 Americans who were killed this weekend, we must honor the humanity of the innocent Palestinian civilians who have been killed and whose lives are upended,” she wrote.
Omar went on to highlight the hardships ofย living in Gaza,ย accusing Israel of operating an “apartheid” state in an attempt to explain violence by Hamas.
“Palestinian residents of the West Bank have scarcely better lives than Gazans โ with the routine destruction of their ancestral homes, destruction of their crops, and violent attacks by Israeli settlers,” Omar wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., attacked Israel’s response to an unprecedented assault by Hamas in an extensive thread on social media Monday.ย (Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)
“Palestinians have few recourses for justice and accountability. Attacks by the IDF and settlers against Palestinians are regularly met with impunity. Efforts to seek justice in international courts are stonewalled by the Israeli government, with U.S. support,” she added. “As the world is condemning Hamasโs attacks, we must also oppose an Israeli military response that has already taken the lives of hundreds of Palestinians, including nearly two dozen children.”
Omar’s officeย did not respond to questions from Fox News Digital asking her to elaborate on the thread.
The congresswoman did not clarify how she believed Israel should have responded to Saturday’s attack, which has since left at least 1,000 Israelis dead and 2,700 more wounded. The Minnesota Democrat’s only suggestion for a “solution to this horror” was “a negotiated peace โ with Israelis and Palestinians enjoying equal rights and security guarantees.”
If you’re not familiar with the history of Israel, and how The Palestinians (Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist arms of Palestinians), you need to do that. Basically, when Mohammad was sweeping the middle east with his war, Israel as a people were displaced. Great Britton gained control of the territory, and, on their own, decided to move the Palestinians (these were people that rose up against the leadership of Saudi Arabia) into part of what was Israel’s land, given them by God The Father, thousands of years earlier. They DO NOT belong there. It never has been their territory. They have no legal claim.
Rep. Ilhan Omar went on to say that the world should “oppose” Israel’s ongoing military response against Hamas, saying it has cost the lives of hundreds of Palestinians. She did not clarify how she believed Israel should have responded to Saturday’s attack, which has since left at least 1,000 Israelis dead and 2,700 more woundedย (AP Photo)
Later in the thread, Omar said that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had called all Palestinians “human animals” in comments earlier this week, though his full statement made clear that he was referring only to Hamas terrorists.
“We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed,” Gallant said. “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”
Smoke rises amid Israeli missile strikes on Gaza City.ย (AP)
Israeli forces have deployed tens of thousands of troops to the area around Gaza City, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested a ground invasion may be imminent.
Anders Hagstrom is a reporter with Fox News Digital covering national politics and major breaking news events. Send tips to Anders.Hagstrom@Fox.com, or on Twitter: @Hagstrom_Anders.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday said the United States “has Israel’s back” and will ensure that Israel can “defend itself” in light of the Hamas terrorist attack during the weekend. In a speech from the White House,ย Biden said American citizens were among those held by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas after its weekend attack on Israel that left hundreds dead. He said 14 U.S. citizens had been killed by the terrorists.
The White House later said the State Department had been in contact with the families of those Americans killed.
Biden also said the U.S. would surge additional equipment to Israel, including interceptor missiles for the Iron Dome system.
Biden said U.S. law enforcement agencies were taking steps to disrupt any domestic threat that may emerge after Hamas’ attack.
The FBI said earlier it was “closely monitoring unfolding events” but added it “does not have specific and credible intelligence indicating a threat to the United States stemming from the Hamas attacks in Israel.”
Earlier Tuesday, Biden said he discussed support for Israel in his call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday after meeting with U.S. national security teams “to direct next steps.”
“We connected with Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss coordination to support Israel, deter hostile actors, and protect innocent people,” Biden said inย a social media postย before making public remarks on the situation in Israel.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke by phone with Netanyahu to discuss the situation on the ground.
Biden, in his previous public remarks and statements since Hamas launched its attacks, has repeatedly emphasized his shock over the breadth and brutality of the Hamas assault โ a blitz by land, sea and air that surprised Israeli and U.S. intelligence and that has killed hundreds Israelis and left even more wounded.
Retaliatory strikes by Israel on the Gaza Strip have also left hundreds of dead and wounded Palestinians in the blockaded 141-square mile area, one the poorest patches of territory in the world. The death toll was expected to grow as Israel pummeled Gaza with airstrikes and sent tens of thousands of Palestinians fleeing into U.N. shelters.
The White House on Monday confirmed that it has already begun delivering critically needed munitions and military equipment to Israel, and the Pentagon was reviewing its inventories to see what else can be sent quickly to boost its ally in the war against Hamas.
The U.S. Ford carrier strike group has arrived in the far Eastern Mediterranean, within range to provide a host of air support or long-range strike options for Israel if requested, but also to surge U.S. military presence there to prevent the war from spilling over into a more dangerous regional conflict, a U.S. official told The Associated Press.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the arrival ahead of an announcement.
The Pentagon has said that the U.S. warplanes, destroyers and cruisers that sailed with the Ford will conduct maritime and air operations which could include intelligence collection, interdictions and long-range strikes.
Along with the Ford, the U.S. is sending the cruiser USS Normandy and destroyers USS Thomas Hudner, USS Ramage, USS Carney, and USS Roosevelt, and the U.S. is augmenting Air Force F-35, F-15, F-16, and A-10 fighter aircraft squadrons in the region.
Biden on Monday in a joint statement with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak underscored the “legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people” and their decades-long push for sovereignty. But the leaders also sought to separate the Palestinians’ aspirations from the “appalling acts of terrorism” by Hamas.
Americans have had a gloomy outlook on Bidenโs performance on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Six in 10 Americans (61%) disapproved of how Biden was handling the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, according to an August poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. About one-third (35%) of U.S. adults approved, which was slightly lower than Bidenโs overall approval rating of 42% in the same poll.
Four in 10 Americans (44%) said the U.S. gives about the right amount of support to Israel in the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Republicans were more likely than Democrats to say the U.S. should offer more support to Israel. Four in 10 Americans (42%) said the correct amount of support is given to the Palestinians. Democrats and Independents were more likely than Republicans to say the Palestinians should receive more support.
The current crisis seems certain to further test public sentiment about Biden’s Mideast foreign policy approach.
The Biden White House has pointed to its handling of the last conflict between Israel and Gaza in 2021 as playing a crucial part in limiting the length and loss of life in a war that stretched over 11 days and killed at least 250 people in Gaza and 13 in Israel.
During the 2021 conflict, Biden limited his public commentary while pressing Netanyahu in private to end the conflict. His behind-the-scenes effort played out even as some of the presidentโs fellow Democrats pressured him to speak out against the Israelis as the death toll climbed in Gaza and as tens of thousands of Palestinians were displaced by the aerial bombardment, White House officials said at the time.
But this conflict is unlikely to end so quickly. Domestic and international pressure could quickly mount on Biden to pressure Netanyahu to wind down operations to prevent the suffering of innocent Gazans.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
An Israeli Defense Force commander told journalists that soldiers founded babies beheaded in the wake of Hamas terrorists’ assault on Israel. The IDF showed journalists around Kfar Aza, a town near Gaza, on Oct. 10. Pictured: A view of a house left in ruins after an attack by Hamas militants on this kibbutz days earlier when dozens of civilians were killed near the border with Gaza. Oct. 10 in Kfar Aza, Israel. (Photo: Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
Israeli soldiers reportย finding the bodies of babies, some of them decapitated, in the ruins of a town ravaged by Hamas terrorists in their surprise attack on Saturday. Israeli Defense Force soldiers took dozens of foreign journalists Tuesday to Kfar Aza, a town about 1.5 miles southeast of the Gaza border. Journalists surveyed the devastation, with explosions and artillery fire occurring in the background.
โItโs not a war,โ Gen. Itai Veruv, head of the IDFโs Depth Command, told reporters. โItโs not a battlefield. You see the babies, the mothers, the fathers in their bedrooms, in their protection rooms, and how the terrorists kill them.โ
โItโs not a war โฆ itโs a massacre,โ Veruv added.
'It's not a war, it's not a battle. It's a massacre'
Journalists are let into Kfar Aza for the first time, four days after the community came under the shock attack by Hamas terrorists
IDF Major General Itai Veruv describes the scene of brutal violence, where whole familiesโฆ pic.twitter.com/HJzoMKj2Ta
Nicole Zedek, an i24 News reporter, said that an IDF commander told her they found the bodies of some 40 babies, some of whom had been beheaded.
i24NEWS Correspondent @Nicole_Zedek reports from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, a quarter-mile from the Gaza border, and recounts the atrocities that were committed in the small community which remains an active scene as soldiers clear booby traps and recover the bodies of dozens of victims pic.twitter.com/J4ZfWZQYHp
Earlier Tuesday, the IDF reported having regained control over the border with the Gaza Strip, roughly 72 hours after Hamas terrorists blew through sections of the barrier and launched the invasion early Saturday morning, The Times of Israel reported.
Hamas militants attacked Israel on the last day of the Jewish festival of Sukkot, as well as the Sabbath day of rest and the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. The terrorists slaughtered over 900 Israelis, including about 250 at a music festival, and kidnapped more than 100.
โThis morning, on Shabbat and a holiday, Hamas invaded Israeli territory and murdered innocent citizens, including children and the elderly,โ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter) Saturday. โHamas has started a brutal and evil war.โ
โThey didnโt go for military targetsโthey went for civilians, they went for grandmothers, children, babies,โ Israeli Defense Forcesโ international spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said in a video message Sunday. โThe numbers are unprecedented.โ
โThe style of attack is barbaric,โ Hecht added. โIn a way, this is our 9/11.โ
He explained that the Hamas fighters attacked a party near the Gaza strip and kidnapped a grandmother. โEverybody, nearly, in Israel is affected by this.โ
Hamas militants shot civilians at bus stops, on roads, and in their cars, photos show, according to Israeli experts who spoke to the Times of Israel. Videos reportedly show Israeli civilians, including women and children, getting abducted and taken to Gaza. Two videos raise concerns of sexual assault or rape.
Operational update with IDF International Spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht. https://t.co/9d9JeiUYFG
An estimated 2.8 million illegal aliens either have been released officially into the U.S. or successfully evaded the Border Patrol to enter the country since Joe Biden became president. Pictured: Illegal aliens cross the Rio Grande from Mexico in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Sept. 30. (Photo: John Moore/Getty Images)
The number ofย illegal aliensย who have entered the interior of the U.S. under the Biden administration now is greater than the population of at least 22 states as well as the District of Columbia.ย ย Data released Monday by theย House Judiciary Committeeย reveals that at least 3.8ย million illegal aliens either have been released into the nationโs interior or successfully evaded the Border Patrol toย enter the country sinceย President Joe Bidenย took office Jan. 20, 2021. ย The new data and other information reveal that theย Biden administrationย has โfailed to remove, through immigration court removal proceedings, over 99% of those illegal aliens who have been released into the countryโ since Biden became president, the committeeโs interim staff report concludes.
Judiciary Chairmanย Jim Jordanย and Rep. Tom McClintock, chairman of Judiciaryโsย immigration subcommittee,ย said they obtained nonpublic data from the Department of Homeland Security that provides previously unknown official numbers.ย Data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, part of DHS, reports that over 5 millionย illegal aliensย were encountered at Americaโs southern border between the start of the Biden administration and this past March 31. Of those 5 million illegal aliens, at least 2.46 million โhad no confirmed departure from the United States,โ the report found. ย
During the first 26 months of Bidenโs presidency, DHS released โat least 2,148,738 illegal aliens into the United States,โ according to the Judiciary Committeeโs report. The committee found that only 5,993 of those encountered at the southern border were placed in removal proceedings.
โIn other words, of the at least 2.1 million aliens released into the United States since January 20, 2021, the Biden administration has failed to remove, through immigration court removal proceedings, roughly 99.7% of those illegal aliens,โ the report says.
The report notes that an additional 1.7 million โknown โgotawaysโโ successfully evaded Border Patrol agents and entered the United States, bringing the total estimated number of illegal aliens who arrived and stayed under the Biden administration to 3.8 million. That population exceeds the number of residents of 22 different states and the District of Columbia.
These states all have a population below 3.8 million:
Connecticut: 3,626,205
Utah: 3,380,800
Iowa: 3,200,517
Nevada: 3,177,772
Arkansas: 3,045,637
Mississippi: 2,940,057
Kansas: 2,937,150
New Mexico: 2,113,344
Nebraska: 1,967,923
Idaho: 1,939,033
West Virginia: 1,775,156
Hawaii: 1,440,196
New Hampshire : 1,395,231
Maine: 1,385,340
Montana: 1,122,867
Rhode Island: 1,093,734
Delaware: 1,018,396
South Dakota: 909,824
North Dakota: 779,261
Alaska: 733,583
District of Columbia: 671,803
Vermont: 647,064
Wyoming: 581,381
The Judiciary Committeeโs report doesnโt include illegal aliens paroled into the U.S. since April 1, meaning that the total number likely exceeds 3.8 million.
Since the start of the Biden administration, over 7 millionย illegal aliensย have been encountered on Americaโs borders, both at official ports of entry and between them. An unknown number of illegal aliens successfully evaded Border Patrol to enter the interior of the country.ย ย ย CBP saidย it encountered more illegal aliens at the borders, including ports of entry, in August than in any other single month on record. Initial reporting indicates that Septemberโs official numbers, when released, will exceed those from August. CBP reported encountering 304,162ย illegal aliens,in August, surpassing the previous record high in December 2022 by nearly 2,000. ย ย
Amid the record number of border crossings, news broke Thursday that the Biden administration will resume building 17 miles of border wall in South Texas, a move that drew support from both the political Left and Right. Upon his inauguration, Biden had stopped predecessor Donald Trumpโs construction of a wall.
โFor years, they were adamant that walls do not work and are antiquated and not worth another dollar,โ Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., told The Daily Signal, referring to Biden administration officials. โFinally, to see them coming around to the fact that border walls do work is showing the difference that Republicans are making. Biden is slowly realizing the negative impact an open border has had across our country.โ
Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, told The Hill on Friday that he supports the administrationโs action resuming wall construction.
โThis is a necessary step to help Texasโ overwhelmed border communities deal with this current surge of migrants,โ Allred said, adding that โphysical barriers have a role to play in securing our border at high traffic areas, but this is only a partial solution.โ
Biden maintained Thursday that walls donโt work, also telling reporters that he sought to have Congress redirect funds appropriated for the wall under the Trump administration, but โthey wouldnโt.โ
โAnd in the meantime, thereโs nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated. I canโt stop that,โ Biden said.
The Biden administration also announced Thursday that it would begin deporting illegal border crossers from Venezuela. In August, more than 37,000 Venezuelans were encountered on Americaโs borders, according to CBP.
A Biden administration official said that resuming deportations of Venezuelans will โshow how we are committed to imposing consequences on those who cross the border unlawfully,โย NPR reported.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather in support of the Palestinian people during a rally for Gaza at the Consulate General of Israel on Sunday in New York City. (Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
A national pro-Palestine student organization is calling for a โday of resistanceโ on college campuses Thursday in support of brutal terrorist attacks on Israel, emphasizing that they are not only in solidarity with Palestine, they are โPART of this movement.โ
A toolkit released by the national Students for Justice in Palestine calls for the student movement for โPalestine liberationโ to organize a national day of resistance on college campuses across the U.S. and Canada. The organization did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
โWe as Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement,โ the toolkit messaging says in bold. โThis is a moment of mobilization for all Palestinians. We must act as part of this movement. All of our efforts continue the work and resistance of Palestinians on the ground.โ
At least six chapters have already announced such events for Oct. 12, according to the Anti-Defamation League: Arizona State University, University of Arizona, Butler Universityin Indiana, University of Louisville in Kentucky, University of Binghamton in New York and the University of Virginia.
โWe must continue to resist directly, through dismantling Zionism and wielding the political power that our organizations hold on our campuses and in our communities,โ the Students for Justice in Palestine toolkit says. โWe are asking chapters to host demonstrations on campus/in their community in support of our resistance in Palestine and the national liberation struggleโone which they play a critical role in actualizing.โ
Israeli soldiers on Monday remove the body of a civilian killed days earlier in an attack by Palestinian terroists on this kibbutz near the border with Gaza in Kfar Aza, Israel. (Photo: Amir Levy/Getty Images)
If a protest is not possible, the national Students for Justice in Palestine encourages other forms of engagement, such as a sit-in, โdisruptionโ or โeducational event.โ
The Anti-Defamation League expressed concerns about such tactics: โAlthough these are all nonviolent tactics, they raise the real possibility of creating a hostile environment for Jewish students, and the confrontational spirit that permeates the toolkit raises the concern that these actions could lead to acts of harassment or vandalism targeting Jewish students and organizations.โ
Victoria Coates, vice president of The Heritage Foundationโs Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, told The Daily Signal on Tuesday that โthe corrosive antisemitism that infects American higher education today has been on ugly display since the terrorist attacks against Israel over the weekend.โ
โInstead of denouncing the genocidal Hamas terrorists who hunted, tortured, murdered and took Jews hostage, all too many in academia have come out in favor of their depraved and savage rampage as if it were somehow legitimate because the victims were Jews,โ Coates said. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
She added: โThis bigoted response stands in stark contrast with the wave of support for Ukraine after [Russian President] Vladimir Putinโs invasion in 2022, when the same campuses that will host these anti-Israel rallies flew Ukrainian flags in solidarity with the victims of Putinโs attack.โ
The calls for demonstrations come after the terrorist group Hamas infiltrated Israel over the weekend, firing more than 4,500 rockets and slaughtering more than 1,000 people, including many women, children, and babies.
Media reports continue to describe unspeakable atrocities committed by Hamas. An Israeli Defense Forces spokesman said Tuesday that Israeli soldiers had found beheaded corpses of babies in a town near Gaza.
โItโs not a war, itโs not a battlefield. You see the babies, the mother, the father, in their bedrooms, in their protection rooms, and how the terrorists killed them,โ IDF Maj. Gen. Itai Veruv said as reported by Fox News. โItโs a massacre.โ
But the national Students for Justice in Palestine messaging states that โwhen people are occupied, resistance is justified.โ
โNormalize the resistance,โ the messaging says, urging students to describe the current events as a โstruggle for national liberation,โ rather than a war or a conflict.
The invasion shows that โIsrael is fragile,โ the messaging continues. โThe Zionist entity is fragile, and Palestinian resistance is alive.โ
George Washington University Students for Justice in Palestine weigh in on the devastation in Israel: "WE WILL BE CAGED NO LONGER."
Meanwhile, pro-Palestine groups at universities such as George Washington University in Washington, D.C., are expressing support for Palestine without acknowledging the atrocities that the terrorists have committed in Israel.
โThis past weekend we witnessed them break free, tearing down the prison walls, and making it known to the world: WE WILL BE CAGED NO LONGER,โ says a statement from GW Students for Justice in Palestine. That statement praises the invasion as โhistory in the makingโ and โthe beginning of a new era in our struggle.โ
โGW Students for Justice in Palestine maintains unwavering support for our peopleโs resistance, in all its forms,โ the statement says. โEvery single act of resistance moves us closer to the liberation of our homeland. We will never capitulate to the colonizer or his sympathizers, and we stand firm and steadfast in support of our peopleโs right to resist. We call upon all our people and those in solidarity with us to join us in this struggle.โ
Jewish Insider editor-in-chief Josh Kraushaar reacted to the student statement by calling it a โlook at the intellectual/moral climate on top college campuses.โ
Lawyer and commentator Erielle Davidson tweeted: โMy skin is crawling at the thought that American universities allow bloodthirsty freaks to carry their degrees. GW has a high Jewish population. Despicable.โ
And Israeli television anchor Lidar Grave-Lazi said in a social media post that โthe world is finally opening its eyes to see the true face of the โPro-Palestinianโ movement.โ
โIt is not about human rights,โ she said. โIt is about brutality, barbarism, hatred and the annihilation of Israel. Unfortunately, they have infiltrated college campuses across the U.S. and not enough is being done to counter their hatred. Just look to @Harvardโs deafening silence. Anyone who is civilized and has a shred of humanity should condemn such statements and call them out for what they truly are.โ
George Washington University did not immediately respond to requests for comment as to what steps it is taking to ensure the safety of its Jewish students.
Top Stories โข Kamala Harris Says Protecting Babies From Abortion is โImmoralโ โข Trump Slams Democrats for Supporting Abortions Up to Birth and Infanticide: โThey Execute the Babyโ โข Pro-Abortion Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Announces Independent Bid for President โข Ohio Should Vote No on Issue 1, Reject Abortions Up to Birth
More Pro-Life News โข Franceโs President Emmanuel Macron Wants to Make Killing Babies in Abortions a Right โข Pro-Abortion Violence Exposes Merrick Garlandโs Bias Against Pro-Life Americans โข Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody: There is No Right to Kill Babies in Abortions โข My Little Girl has Down Syndrome But Sheโs Perfect, Sadly Children Like Her at Aborted โข Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
Looking for an inspiring and motivating speaker for your pro-life event? Don’t have much to spend on a high-priced speaker costing several thousand dollars? Contact news@lifenews.com about having LifeNews Editor Steven Ertelt speak at your event.
Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2023 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and โThe Washington Post.โ He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh DโSouza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Image Source: WIBW-TV YouTube video screenshot composite
The shocking alleged rape and murder of a 5-year-old girl by a homeless man has stunned the Topeka, Kansas, community after neighbors said they had warned child protection officials about the dangerous situation at her home.
The Topeka Police Department said they were called to a disturbance at about 6 p.m. at a Dillons gas station on Monday. They said they found a 5-year-old girl with life-threatening injuries and rushed her to a hospital, where she was later pronounced dead.
She was identified as Zoey Felix.
Investigators said they were quickly able to identify a suspect in the crime and arrested 25-year-old Mickel Cherry the next morning at about 4:15 a.m. His address was listed as homeless, and he was charged with first-degree murder and rape after an investigation.
Neighbors said that Cherry had lived with Felix at her home before her mother kicked her out onto the street along with her teenage sister and father. They believe she was raped and murdered at a homeless encampment.
Police confirmed that Cherry had previously known the girl, but did not provide further details.
Kansas lawmakers are demanding answers from the Department for Children and Families, according to KSNT-TV.
โWe really need a deep dive on why is the system failing,โ said Republican state Sen. Molly Baumgardner.
Desiree Myles told WIBW-TV that residents of the neighborhood tried to look out for the girl because the home she lived in had no power and no running water. Myles said her mother often left her at the home alone, and neighbors had reported the situation to local authorities several times.
โLove the children, all the kids play with her,” said Myles. “They all looked out for everybody, looked out for Zoey. She was a Curious George with nowhere to go. Nowhere to go.โ
Cherry remained behind bars on a $2 million bond.
โIt hurts. Itโs a tragedy,โ says Myles. โYou have a death, and then you have a tragedy. Hers is a tragedy.”
Here’s a local news video about the horrific incident:
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Top Stories โข Thousands March in Ohio Against Issue 1, Which Allows Abortions Up to Birth โข Abortions Drop 43% in Kentucky as Abortion Ban Saves Thousands of Babies โข Joe Biden Sends $16 Million to Planned Parenthoods That Kill Babies in Abortions โข Catholic Archbishop: โAbortion is the Child Sacrifice of Our Timeโ
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โข Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
Looking for an inspiring and motivating speaker for your pro-life event? Don’t have much to spend on a high-priced speaker costing several thousand dollars? Contact news@lifenews.com about having LifeNews Editor Steven Ertelt speak at your event.
Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2023 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us.
NEW: Denver Colorado, which is a proud 'Sanctuary City,' is now begging Texas to not send migrants to their city by urging border towns to hand out flyers to migrants, encouraging them to stay away.
This is the most disturbing video you will see all day. Director of education for HiTops, an LGBTQ+ nonprofit focused on bringing queer theory and gender ideology into schools, says that the most critical time to get in the classroom are grades 5-8, to โcatch kids when theyโreโฆ pic.twitter.com/TUxFPrzhn7
This is a man wearing high heels and a diaper in the food court at the U of A.
A freshman girl on campus reached out and told me that this man had been walking into several girlโs dorm rooms unannounced the first two weeks of school.
Failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton believes half of the country needs to be forcibly re-educated to abandon the ideology that led them to vote for former President Donald Trump.
In aย sitdown interview with CNNย on Thursday, Clinton โ who infamouslyย saidย in 2016 that half of Trumpโs supporters belonged in a โbasket of deplorablesโ โ alleged that โMAGA extremistsโ who only โtake their marching orders from Donald Trumpโ deserve to be brainwashed.
โWhen do they break with him?โ Clinton pondered aloud. โBecause at some point, maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members. But something needs to happen.โ
CNNโs Christiane Amanpour, who conducted the interview, nodded in response.
Hillary Clinton calls for Trump Supporters to be reeducated: "At some point maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members." pic.twitter.com/ao3foysSL4
The longtime sore loser implied that sheโs used to partisan โbitter battlesโ over issues like โgun control and climate change and the economy and taxes.โ When it comes to engaging with the GOP under Trump, however, she canโt stomach it without suggesting mass indoctrination.
โThere wasnโt this little tail of extremism waving, you know, wagging the dog of the Republican Party as it is today,โ Clinton insisted.
The former secretary of state not only accused GOP politicians and voters of saying and doing things that โthey know better than to say or do,โ but suggested those who dissent from Democratsโ preferred narrative should face consequences.
โIt will require us defeating those most extreme measures and the people who promote them in order to try to get to some common ground where people can, again, work together,โ Clinton said.
Clinton claimed Trump voters โdonโt like migrants, maybe they donโt like gay people or black people or the woman who got the promotion at workโ and that they are being emotionally and psychologically manipulated by the top Republican.
โItโs a classic tale of an authoritarian, populist, who really has a grip on the emotional, psychological needs and desires of a portion of the population,โ Clinton said. โAnd the base of the Republican Party, for whatever combination of reasons โ and it is emotional and psychological โ sees in him someone who speaks for them.โ
Clinton said propelling Biden to victory in 2024 and returning power to old-guard, establishment pawns, โthe right people inside the Republican Party,โ are the only ways to quell Trump-era populism.
โIt is like a cult and somebody has to break that momentum. And thatโs why I believe Joe Biden will defeat him and hopefully then, that will be the end and the fever will break,โ Clinton said.
Removing Trump from the equation, Clinton assured Amanpour, will get Republicans โto get back to fighting about issues among themselves and electing people who are least responsible and accountable.โ
Long before Clinton complained about Trump voters to CNN, members of the current regime includingย President Joe Biden, hisย White House,ย Democrats in Congress,ย Attorney General Merrick Garland,ย FBI Director Christopher Wray, andย other officialsย named Trump voters and โdomestic extremismโ or other coded words used to disparage them as the nationโs biggest threat. Their collective campaign against what they deemed Republican wrongthink has manifested in the political prosecution of their No. 1 political opponent and his supporters.
A newย report from Newsweekย alleges that the FBI is singling out supporters of Republican frontrunner former President Donald Trump as domestic extremists. FBI data reviewed by the publication specifically suggests โnearly two-thirdsย of the FBIโs current investigations are focused on Trump supporters and others suspected of violating what the FBI calls โanti-riotโ laws.โ
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
A group of nearly four dozen House Republicans is demanding a dramatic overhaul to the chamber rules after former House Speaker Kevin McCarthyโs historic ouster.
“The injustice we all witnessed cannot go unaddressed โ lest we bear responsibility for the consequences that follow. Our Conference must address fundamental changes to the structure of our majority to ensure success for the American people,” 45 House GOP lawmakers said in a letter to colleagues on Thursday.
McCarthy, R-Calif., had the speakerโs gavel taken away on Tuesday after Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., called for a procedure known as a motion to vacate the chair on Monday night. Under terms McCarthy hashed out to secure the speakership in January, just one lawmaker can call for the motion to vacate, setting up a mandatory vote within 48 hours.
Republican Reps. Kevin McCarthy, left, and Matt Gaetz. (Win McNamee/Getty Images | Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
The lawmakers said they were “ashamed and embarrassed” by the episode, according to the letter obtained by Fox News Digital.
“Earlier this week, eight Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives joined in an alliance with 208 Democrats to adopt a motion to vacate the Speaker of the House,” they wrote.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., speaks to reporters as he arrives at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on May 25, 2023. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“That translates to less than 4 percent of our Republican Conference joining with all Democrats to override the will of the remaining 96 percent of House Republicans on one of the most consequential votes the House has taken in over a century.”
They lauded McCarthy as “one of the most accomplished speakers in modern history.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., is seen after a meeting of the House Republican Conference in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“Ashamed and embarrassed by what happened on the Floor this week, we refuse to allow the eight members who abandoned and undermined our Conference to dictate every outcome in policy and personnel for the remainder of this Congress, including the upcoming selection of the Speaker of the House,” the letter said.
Intraparty tensions have boiled over in the wake of McCarthyโs ouster. It has made the motion to vacate rule a lightning rod in the current speakership race, with some GOP hardliners insisting it remain, while a majority of the conference have called for its threshold to be hiked above just one member โ and others have floated scrapping it altogether.
“It is our responsibility to identify the right person at this moment to lead us into the future to achieve the conservative policy objectives that we and the American people all share,” the letter said.
“We cannot allow our majority to be dictated to by the alliance between the chaos caucus and the minority party that will do nothing more than guarantee the failure of our next Speaker,” it continued.
Signatories include Reps. Kelly Armstrong, R-N.D.; Jen Kiggans, R-Va.; Anthony DโEsposito, R-N.Y.; and Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., as well as Main Street Caucus leaders Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., and Stephanie Bice, R-Okla.
Elizabeth Elkind is a reporter for Fox News Digital focused on Congress as well as the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and politics. Previous digital bylines seen at Daily Mail and CBS News.
Follow on Twitter at @liz_elkind and send tips to elizabeth.elkind@fox.com
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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