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Posts tagged ‘Biden Harris Administration’

In 3 Charts, the Biden-Harris Admin’s Legacy of Debt


By: David Ditch | October 22, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/10/22/in-3-charts-the-biden-harris-admins-legacy-of-debt/

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris join hands while viewing fireworks July 4 from a White House balcony with first lady Jill Biden and second gentleman Doug Emhoff. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

President Joe Biden will leave office on Jan. 20, 2025.

Although the Biden-Harris administration has been riddled with flawed and failed policies, perhaps the most lasting damage will be from its reckless approach to the federal budget.

When Biden and Harris took office on Jan. 20, 2021, the gross national debt was $27.8 trillion. It’s now $35.8 trillion. Such enormous numbers are nearly impossible to comprehend. However, if one were to spread out the debt evenly, every U.S. household would have roughly $273,000 of red ink. Of that, just over $61,000 per household came during less than four years of the Biden-Harris administration.

Although the administration’s defenders argue that this was an inherited mess, the reality is that Biden and Harris made a bad situation much worse.

Although government spending related to COVID-19 drove up budget deficits in 2020 and 2021, the Biden-Harris administration and its allies in Congress saw the pandemic as an opportunity to blow out spending and tax subsidies for unrelated issues.

This opportunity included:

  • A $1.9 trillion stimulus package containing a multitude of handouts for left-wing political groups.
  • An infrastructure package funding a variety of boondoggles.
  • Several rounds of student loan write-offs costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, despite most of the schemes being struck down in court as illegal power grabs.
  • Democrats’ misleadingly named Inflation Reduction Act, which set up a gigantic corporate welfare system on behalf of “green” energy producers.

Through poor legislative choices and deliberate administrative decisions, Biden and Harris have increased 10-year deficits by $7 trillion relative to when they took office.

Needlessly increasing the government’s deficit spending even after the economy recovered from the damage caused by COVID-19 lockdowns was a major factor behind the wave of inflation that began in 2021. Even today, inflation rates remain elevated relative to the pre-pandemic trend as tens of millions of families struggle to deal with high prices.

Once it became clear that inflation was not a short-term problem, the Federal Reserve took the step of raising interest rates to regulate the money supply. This increased the cost of borrowing for households, businesses, and even Uncle Sam.

Although federal interest payments also increased from 2014 to 2020, primarily due to rising debt, higher interest rates caused these payments to explode under the Biden-Harris administration. In fact, interest on the national debt cost almost three times as much in fiscal year 2024 as in fiscal year 2020.

Although it’s possible that the Federal Reserve’s recent move to lower interest rates might provide some relief on this front, the federal government is still in the process of rolling over old low-interest debt at today’s relatively higher level. This makes it likely that Washington will need over $1 trillion to finance the national debt in fiscal 2025. Coupled with chronic deficits that grow the total debt every year, interest payments possibly could grow with no end in sight.

From an economic perspective, that represents $1 trillion of dead weight, which will drag down growth and reduce the amount of job-creating private investment. This could lead the U.S. down the same path as Japan, which went from an economic powerhouse in the 1980s to a near afterthought today, in part because of overloading on government debt.

Fortunately, it’s not too late for America to change course. We have hundreds of ways to cut wasteful spending and corrupt handouts across the federal government. From defunding the academic Left, to curbing pork barrel earmarks, to reforming Medicare’s payment system, a variety of fixes not only would improve budgetary health but remove harmful favoritism.

It seems unlikely that the swamp is going to willingly drain itself. That means the first step will be for American citizens to hold their leaders accountable and demand a return to fiscal sanity in the wake of the Biden-Harris administration.

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Why Hispanic Voters Say ‘Adios’ to Democratic Party


By: Alfonso Aguilar | October 21, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/10/21/why-hispanic-voters-say-adios-to-democratic-party/

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds a Hispanic roundtable Oct. 12 in North Las Vegas, Nevada. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Alfonso Aguilar@amigoaguilar

Alfonso Aguilar is director of Hispanic Engagement at American Principles Project and former chief of the U.S. Office of Citizenship in the administration of President George W. Bush. Follow him on X: @amigoaguilar

Hispanic voters are bolting from the Democrats faster than Kamala Harris can say “Latinx.” This is one of the most significant trends in this year’s presidential campaign. The growing discontent is a result of economic frustration as well as a broader cultural clash over values, as many Hispanics reject the Biden-Harris administration’s radical positions on gender ideology and parental rights. 

According to the most recent NBC/Telemundo poll, Harris leads former President Donald Trump with Hispanic voters by 14 percentage points. However, that is the smallest margin for a Democrat in over a decade. Every other presidential Democratic candidate since 2012 had an advantage of at least 36 points and, eventually, went on to win the Hispanic vote by similarly significant margins.

The NBC poll is far from an outlier. The latest Quinnipiac University survey shows that Harris’ lead among Hispanics nationally is down to single digits. In the key battleground states of Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, Harris is only slightly ahead. In the border state of Arizona, Trump is actually winning the Hispanic vote. This increased support of Hispanics for Trump and Republicans is driven by several factors. 

According to the Pew Research Center, the economy is the top issue for Hispanic voters. Often with larger families and lower median incomes, Hispanics have been disproportionately hurt by crippling inflation and the massive influx of illegal immigrants into their communities. Under Trump, Hispanic unemployment hit a record low of 4% and, contrary to common assumptions, more than half of Hispanic voters support stricter border security measures. 

Yet Hispanics are also disgusted by the Biden-Harris administration’s extreme cultural agenda. Two-thirds identify as Catholic or Protestant. And it turns out they aren’t thrilled about the latest “woke” school offerings: teachers chatting about sex with their kids in class and allowing adult men access to girls’ locker rooms. 

An American Principles Project survey of Hispanic voters in Arizona and Nevada revealed strong opposition to these progressive positions. Over two-thirds surveyed said schools should stick to teaching the fundamentals and leave “sex and racial issues” to parents. Hispanics are repulsed by the Left’s obsession with “transgender kids” and “transgender girls of color,” and reports that reveal 5,700 minors underwent sex-change surgeries in the United States in the last four years.

Trump is making inroads with Hispanic voters by slamming “transgender insanity” and running ads denouncing Harris’s support for taxpayer-funded sex-change treatments and surgeries.

The blitz against Harris on cultural issues has been so effective that even Democrat strategists had to “concede” to The New York Times that it is “taking a toll in some races.” But wait, the Democrats have an ingenious trick up their sleeve!

The Harris campaign announced the launch of a coalition called “Hombres con Harris”—literally, “Men With Harris.”

The campaign apparently hopes this new group will help stem the party’s losses among Hispanic men. Just like “White Dudes for Harris” has been so helpful for her support among Caucasian males. But in truth, it’s the Democrats’ far-left agenda, not a lack of awkwardly named affinity groups, that is repelling Hispanic voters. Hispanics have historically voted Democrat, but they do believe in common sense and that parents know what is best for their children. 

If the Republican Party wants to solidify and expand its gains with Hispanic voters, it must continue to champion commonsense policies that prioritize family values, parental rights, and economic opportunity. 

Hispanic voters have had enough of being treated like a checkbox for the Democrats. They’re making their voices heard, and this time, it might just sound like “Adios!”

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

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‘This Is What Makes Us Fearful’: Migrant Caravan Hoofs It Toward Southern Border as Election Day Nears


By: Jason Hopkins | October 21, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/10/21/this-is-what-makes-us-fearful-migrant-caravan-hoofs-it-toward-southern-border-as-election-day-nears/

Migrants of different nationalities walk toward the United States on a highway in Tapachula, Chiapas State, Mexico, on Oct. 5, 2024. (Stringer/AFP/Getty Images)

Jason Hopkins@thejasonhopkins

Jason Hopkins is a reporter covering immigration issues for the Daily Caller News Foundation.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—A migrant caravan is heading northward toward the United States a few weeks before Election Day, the results of which will almost undoubtedly spell changes for border enforcement policies, according to The Associated Press.

A roughly 2,000-person-strong migrant caravan left southern Mexico on Sunday in hopes of reaching the U.S. in the coming days, according to the AP. The latest caravan is so far the largest since newly elected Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum entered office in October. Among those in the caravan are individuals who expressed concern that a new administration in Washington, D.C., would lead to the end of a popular app that has allowed hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals to schedule appointments with Customs and Border Protection officials in hopes of entering the country.

“That is what makes us fearful,” Joel Zambrano, a Venezuelan national, said to The Associated Press. “They say this could change because they could both close the CBP One appointment and all the services that are helping migrants.”

The CBP One app was first created in October 2020, with the Biden-Harris administration dramatically expanding its use in January 2023. The popular app enables migrants to schedule appointments in order to obtain exemptions at ports of entry and permits them to submit biometric data to federal immigration authorities in order to apply for travel authorization and obtain parole. More than 800,000 noncitizens scheduled appointments through the CBP One app from January 2023 through the end of August 2024, according to CBP. The Biden-Harris administration has additionally flown in more than half a million foreign nationals into the country via an initiative known as CHNV—a program that grants two-year parole to Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan nationals.

Roughly 7.4 million migrants have illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border since the beginning of the Biden-Harris administration, according to the latest data from CBP. While the CBP One app and an election-year crackdown on illegal immigration by the Mexican government have helped keep migrants in southern Mexico, many are reportedly leaving the region due to a delay in asylum appointments and a lack of job opportunities.

“The situation in my country is very bad, the president doesn’t do anything for us. We spent a week by the border, but getting documents takes time,” Honduran Roberto Domínguez said to The Associated Press. “The documents we get are only for us to be in Tapachula and we cannot leave the city.”

Despite an attempt to brand herself as more of a border hawk since launching her presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris has consistently polled poorly with voters on border enforcement issues following her administration’s oversight of a historical border crisis. Former President Donald Trump, for his part, has pledged to hire 10,000 Border Patrol agents, give them a 10% pay bump, and wage a large-scale deportation effort.

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation

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‘Collusion’: Biden-Harris DOJ Again Follows Left-Wing Groups in Litigation to Put Noncitizens Back on Voter Rolls


By: Fred Lucas | October 17, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/10/17/collusion-biden-harris-doj-again-follows-left-wing-groups-in-litigation-to-put-noncitizens-back-on-voter-rolls/

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., pictured leaving the Senate chamber July 25, didn’t want noncitizens to vote when he was Virginia’s governor. (Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images)

In 2006, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine signed a bipartisan bill requiring the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles to provide a list of noncitizens’ names to the state’s Board of Elections for removal from the voter rolls. 

Now, less than a month before Election Day, the Biden-Harris administration’s Justice Department is suing in hopes of restoring 6,303 noncitizens to Virginia’s voter rolls who were removed in August. Subsequent Virginia governors since Kaine, both Republican and Democrat, have overseen the removal of noncitizen voters from the rolls. 

In August, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, signed an executive order to do so, in part relying on the 2006 law drafted by then-state Sen. Ken Cuccinelli. 

“It passed without much controversy, about 2-1 in the Legislature, and then Tim [Kaine] signed it when he presented himself as a centrist,” Cuccinelli, a Republican who was elected as Virginia’s attorney general in 2009, told The Daily Signal. 

“This is pure political timing,” Cuccinelli said of the Biden-Harris administration’s legal action. “These are literally people who self-identified as noncitizens.”

“If the purpose was to generate news, that’s what the DOJ has done,” he said. “They want noncitizens, both legal and illegal, to vote.”

Kaine, who signed the 2006 bill into law, went on to become a U.S. senator representing Virginia as well as Hillary Clinton’s vice-presidential running mate in 2016. The Daily Signal sought comment from Kaine’s Senate office as well as his reelection campaign. 

Kaine’s campaign referred to a July interview with WJLA-TV (Channel 7), in which a reporter asked: “Should non-U.S. citizens vote in American elections?”

Kaine replied: “No. Voting should be reserved for U.S. citizens.”

The campaign also noted that a Kaine campaign spokesperson told WJLA on Wednesday:

Sen. Kaine believes that noncitizens should not vote in state or federal elections, and that’s why he signed legislation as governor to guard against it. It is illegal for noncitizens to vote and the good news is that there is no evidence that noncitizens have voted or are voting in Virginia. 

And just as we want to block noncitizens from voting, we need to keep eligible voters from being purged from voting rolls, particularly just weeks from an election. Sen. Kaine is focused on making sure that every eligible Virginian has the opportunity to vote in this critical election.

The matter likely won’t be resolved in court by Election Day, Cuccinelli said, now the national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative. However, he said, the Justice Department’s lawsuit seems to be intended as a warning for other states not to clean up voter rolls. 

The lawsuit alleges that Virginia’s removal of noncitizens from voter rolls violates the National Voter Registration Act, better known as the “motor voter law,” because the removal comes fewer than 90 days before an election. DOJ’s action follows a federal lawsuit filed by the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights and the League of Women Voters of Virginia in which those organizations make the same arguments. 

“These liberal groups sued Virginia and then a few weeks later the Justice Department files the same lawsuit,” Katie Gorka, chair of the Fairfax County, Virginia, Republican Committee, told The Daily Signal. 

“This shows they are nervous about Virginia,” Gorka said of leading Democrats. “It used to be a solidly blue state and now has moved to the middle and is a toss-up.”

“They are going for the optics and this is going to backfire. Americans overwhelmingly believe that only Americans should vote,” she said. 

The plaintiffs in the private lawsuit in Virginia are represented by Campaign Legal Center, Protect Democracy, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the Advancement Project.

Three organizations involved in the litigation—the League of Women Voters, the Advancement Project, and Campaign Legal Center—participated in a White House conference in 2021. That meeting was about implementing President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14019, which directed federal agencies, including the Justice Department, to partner with private interest groups to boost voter registration and turnout. 

As The Daily Signal previously reported, the Justice Department last month brought a similar lawsuit against Alabama for removing noncitizens from that state’s voter registration rolls. A similar lawsuit was brought against Alabama by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a far-left organization known for labeling mainstream center-right organizations as “hate groups” similar to neo-Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC also was  represented at the White House conference on Biden’s election executive order.

The Justice Department has invoked “presidential privilege” to prevent release of its strategic plan for implementing Biden’s order of March 7, 2021. 

Still, Cuccinelli said, he thinks “for sure” the Virginia litigation is tied to the president’s order. 

“They are hiding communications all over the place,” the former Virginia attorney general said.  “There is no way to treat these as privileged. It is pure collusion and weaponization of government through these outside groups.”

The Daily Signal sought comment from both of the private litigants in the Virginia case: the League of Women Voters and the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights. Neither responded.  The Justice Department filed the lawsuit Oct. 11 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. 

“As the National Voter Registration Act mandates, officials across the country should take heed of the law’s crystal clear and unequivocal restrictions on systematic list maintenance efforts that fall within 90 days of an election,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

“By canceling voter registrations within 90 days of Election Day, Virginia places qualified voters in jeopardy of being removed from the rolls and creates the risk of confusion for the electorate,” Clarke said in the public statement. “Congress adopted the National Voter Registration Act’s quiet period restriction to prevent error-prone, eleventh-hour efforts that all too often disenfranchise qualified voters.”

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Follow The Money

A.F. Branco | on October 8, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-follow-the-money/

FEMA Dollars To Illegals
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Mayorkas reports FEMA is out of money for victims of Helene after spending it on illegal immigrants. Kamala is offering $750.00 per victim, while individual illegals are getting over 3000 a month and being housed in 5-star hotels.

FEMA, Whose Mission is to Support Citizens, Caught in a Lie: Claims ‘No Money is Being Diverted from Disaster Response’ While Funding Illegal Immigrant Resettlement

By Jim Hoft – Oct. 4, 2024 – The Gateway Pundit

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been caught in a web of deception regarding its spending priorities.
As Americans grapple with the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Helene, FEMA insists that no funds are being diverted from disaster relief to support illegal immigrant resettlement. Yet, evidence suggests otherwise.
According to the Department of Energy and Environment’s website, FEMA’s “mission is to support the citizens and first responders to promote that as a nation we work together to build, sustain, and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards.”… (READ MORE)

DONATE to A.F. Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

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 “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.

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HUMOR, Political

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Today’s Politically INCOPRRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Foreigners First

A.F. Branco | on October 3, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-foreigners-first/

Money For Ukraine Barely Any for Helene Victims
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – After giving 174 billion to Ukraine, Biden tells flood victims of Helene, We’ve given all we have. It appears that Trump and Elon Musk acted more like effective leaders than Kamala or Biden. Kamala did pretend she was talking on the phone, not plugged in, though, while Biden was hanging out at the beach – Again.

Joe Biden Tells Americans Suffering in Flood Disaster Zone… “No.” There Won’t be More Resources Coming… “We’ve Given Them All We Have” (VIDEO)

By Jim Hoft – Sept 30, 2024 – The GAteway Pundit

Another devastating disaster hit the southern United States this week and the Biden-Harris administration is nowhere to be found.
The Southeastern United States was plunged into devastation after Category 4 Hurricane Helene, the strongest hurricane to ever strike Florida’s Big Bend region, unleashed catastrophic destruction across six states.
Helene’s ferocious winds and torrential rains have claimed at least 95 lives, left millions without power, and trapped countless families in floodwaters, particularly in North Carolina, where entire communities have been cut off from vital resources… READ MORE…

DONATE to A.F. Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

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 “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.

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‘Unprecedented’: Retired Border Patrol Chief Blows Whistle on How Biden-Harris Admin Hid Border Crisis


By: Jason Hopkins | September 30, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/09/30/unprecedented-retired-border-patrol-chief-blows-whistle-on-how-biden-harris-admin-hid-border-crisis/

Rodney Scott, then chief of the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector, stands near the border wall on April 25, 2018. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post/Getty Images)

Jason Hopkins@thejasonhopkins

Jason Hopkins is a reporter covering immigration issues for the Daily Caller News Foundation.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Retired Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott blew the whistle to the Daily Caller News Foundation on what he calls the Biden-Harris administration’s going to great lengths to hide the illegal immigration crisis from the public, just days after a current sector chief made similar claims.

Aaron Heitke, a former chief patrol agent for the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector, testified before a House committee Sept. 18 that the White House ordered agents to hide information on arrests of so-called special interest aliens or SIAs, move masses of illegal migrants out of sight of the press, and give other instructions to disguise the true level of the border crisis.

Scott, who led Border Patrol from roughly the last year of the Trump-Pence administration to the first seven months of the Biden-Harris administration, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that he was given similar orders.

“There was a gag order put on us literally within minutes of the Biden administration taking office,” Scott said.

“The chief of staff for Customs and Border Protection, when she arrived, one of her first orders was to forbid us from talking to the public, or doing press releases, or doing media without the White House clearing our statements,” Scott said. “Not only were they not cleared, when they finally did give us talking points, they weren’t even accurate. They weren’t truthful.”

Scott’s tenure as Border Patrol leader overlapped with Biden’s assignment of Vice President Kamala Harris to address the root causes of illegal immigration from Central America. The retired chief confirmed that Harris never once spoke to him, even after her designation as “border czar.”

Having worked for the Border Patrol since the early 1990s, Scott experienced multiple changes in presidential administration. The longtime officer said higher-ups’ clamping down on communication to the public was nothing new, but the sheer level of control handed down by the Biden-Harris administration was nothing he had experienced before.

“No press conferences were approved, all border tours were shut down,” Scott said. “It was unprecedented. I’ve never seen a gag order that tight.”

Scott’s comments follow the testimony given by Heitke, in which the former San Diego sector chief agent said he was prohibited from talking about the rising number of special interest aliens—those who potentially pose a national security risk to the U.S.—unlawfully crossing the border.

“Prior to this administration, the San Diego sector averaged 10–15 SIAs per year,” Heitke told the House Homeland Security Committee. “Once word was out that the border was far easier to cross, San Diego went to over 100 SIAs in 2022, way over 100 SIAs in 2023, and more than that this year.”

“These are only the ones we caught. At the time, I was told I could not release any information on this increase in SIAs or mention any of the arrests,” Heitke testified. “The administration was trying to convince the public that there was no threat at the border.”

Heitke also went into detail about steps he said the Biden-Harris administration took to hide masses of migrants from reporters, accusing the White House of portraying “fiction” to the public.

“Each time we asked for help in dealing with a new issue, it fell on deaf ears,” Heitke said. “At times in San Diego, we had 2,000 or more aliens sitting in between the fences asking to turn themselves in. I was told to move them out of sight of the media.”

This is not the first time agents have accused the Biden-Harris administration of intentionally trying to cover up the extent of the border crisis from the media. Ahead of Harris’ first trip to the border in El Paso, Texas, in 2021, administration officials gave explicit instructions to clear the area of migrants to put on a “show” for the vice president, according to Border Patrol sources who spoke to the New York Post.

Although an executive order issued by President Joe Biden in June led to a steady decline in illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months, the Biden-Harris administration had overseen a major wave of illegal immigration into the country after issuing a slate of executive orders that largely dismantled the Trump-Pence administration’s border agenda.

Border Patrol agents reported encountering more than 7 million migrants illegally crossing into the U.S. since the beginning of the Biden-Harris administration, according to the latest data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The massive wave of illegal migration has strained the resources of major sanctuary cities such as New York City and Chicago, but also smaller towns in the heartland such as Springfield, Ohio.

Scott commended his former colleague for speaking out, noting that doing so puts his ability to make an income at risk. Many retired agents don’t speak out because companies and other private contractors that work with the federal government want to avoid the publicity that can come with working with or hiring whistleblowers, according to the retired Border Patrol chief.

“I think it’s very problematic that the administration is trying to hide so much relevant information from the public,” Scott said. “I’m very, very grateful that Chief Heitke stepped up and decided to share that information with the public because that really hurts his ability to get contract jobs in the future.”

Heitke is “not only taking a risk, he’s knowingly cutting his family’s income by standing up for what’s right,” he said.

The Department of Homeland Security and the White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation

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Lebowitz Calls for Biden-Harris to “Dissolve the Supreme Court”


By: Jonathan Turley | September 30, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/09/29/lebowitz-calls-for-biden-harris-to-dissolve-the-supreme-court/

Author and cultural critic Fran Lebowitz added voice to the unhinged calls on the left for trashing the Supreme Court. As I discussed recently in the Wall Street Journal (and in my book), there is a growing counter-constitutional movement in the United States led by law professors, pundits, and celebrities. Lebowitz amplified those calls in a radical demand to simply get rid of the Court.

Lebowitz called for President Joe Biden to “dissolve the Supreme Court” despite the fact that it would violate the Constitution and remove one of the most critical protections against executive and legislative abuse. Lebowitz insisted that the Supreme Court is a “disgrace” because, in a reference to Donald Trump, it is “completely his.” To the wild applause of the New York audience, she added: “It’s so disgraceful, this court, that it shouldn’t even be allowed to be called the Supreme Court. It’s an insult to Motown. Basically, it’s a harem. It’s Trump’s harem.” Her views aligned with others on the left who have attacked the Constitution, the Court, and even rights like free speech as now threats to our democracy.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer previously declared in front of the Supreme Court, “I want to tell you, [Neil] Gorsuch, I want to tell you, [Brett] Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) announced that she wants the impeachment of all six of the conservative justices. She was immediately joined by other Democratic members. Previously, Ocasio-Cortez admitted that she does not understand why we even have a Supreme Court. She asked “How much does the current structure benefit us? And I don’t think it does.”

Other members, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have called for packing the Court with additional members to immediately secure a liberal majority to rule as she desires.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., RI), has assured voters that Vice President Kamala Harris will support the packing of the Court with a liberal majority.

Despite supporting censorship to combat “disinformation,” many on the left now eagerly spread disinformation about the Court and its rulings. Lebowitz repeated false claims about the Court’s ruling on presidential immunity, stating that the decision makes the president a “king” who “can do whatever you want.”

In reality, the Court followed the same approach that it has taken in prior conflicts between the branches. As it has in the past, the Court adopted a three-tiered approach to presidential powers based on the source of a presidential action. Chief Justice John Roberts cited Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer, in which the court ruled against President Harry Truman’s takeover of steel mills.

In his famous concurrence to Youngstown, Justice Robert Jackson broke down the balance of executive and legislative authority between three types of actions. In the first, a president acts with express or implied authority from Congress. In the second, he acts where Congress is silent (“the zone of twilight” area). In the third, the president acts in defiance of Congress.

In this decision, the court adopted a similar sliding scale. It held that presidents enjoy absolute immunity for actions that fall within their “exclusive sphere of constitutional authority” while they enjoy presumptive immunity for other official acts. They do not enjoy immunity for unofficial or private actions.

None of these matters. Facts do not matter. Many on the left are calling for the trashing of the Constitution based on wildly inaccurate claims.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley law school, is author of “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States,” published last month. In a 2021 Los Angeles Times op-ed, he described conservative justices as “partisan hacks.”

In the New York Times, book critic Jennifer Szalai scoffs at what she calls “Constitution worship.” She writes: “Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us; a growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it.” She frets that by limiting the power of the majority, the Constitution “can end up fostering the widespread cynicism that helps authoritarianism grow.”

In a 2022 New York Times op-ed, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for liberals to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”

Lebowitz previously said that Trump should be killed with the help of the Saudi government.

Lebowitz is demonstrably wrong about the voting record of the justices. In reality, the Court continues to rule largely by unanimous, or nearly unanimous decisions. After April, unanimity stood at 46 percent of cases. Of the 22 6-3 decisions, only half broke along ideological lines. That is the same as the 11 such cases last term.

The average for unanimous decisions has been roughly 43 percent. The rate is back up to 48 percent for the last term. When you add the nearly unanimous opinions, it is the vast majority of cases. Moreover, Sotomayor agreed with Roberts in 71% of cases Kavanaugh and Barrett agreed with Sotomayor roughly 70% of the time.

In critical decisions, conservative justices like Gorsuch and Barrett have joined their liberal colleagues and the Court has repeatedly voted against positions supported by Donald Trump.

Again, none of these matters. Lebowitz and others are falsely telling the public that the Court is difunctionally and ideologically divided. Of course, even if you accept the false premise, the problem is not with the liberal justices always voting as a block but the conservatives doing so. The liberals are not robotic, they are simply right.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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