Back in December, Texas Governor Greg Abbott warned about an “invasion” of Chinese nationals at the border.
Gov. Greg Abbott is highlighting recent numbers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection that show a record-breaking number of Chinese nationals encountered at the southwest border.
According to the latest numbers released, border patrol agents encountered 4,261 Chinese nationals in October—a massive increase from the 430 encounters in October 2022.
The increase in illegal aliens attempting to cross the southwest border has caused Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to take several measures to secure Texas’ southern border.
Abbott spoke to Fox News, explaining how the crisis at the southern border has become an “existential threat” to the United States.
It is extraordinarily dangerous because, first of all, as you point out, we have people from China coming here. We also have people on the known terrorist watch list who are coming across the border. And so there’s extraordinary dangers, calls to our country by Biden’s open border policies. And obviously, Biden is doing nothing about it. And that’s why Texas has to step up and apprehend as many of these people as possible to make sure that they’re not posing a threat to our country.
Abbott’s not the only one. On Joe Rogan’s podcast, Bret Weinstein talked about traveling to Panama to see illegal alien migration problem firsthand, and came away with some disturbing information.
“There is a migration of Chinese immigrants that looks different, feels different, and is being housed in a totally separate way in Darien for reasons that are not in any way obvious.”
“Now I don’t know exactly what to make of that. I have hypotheses there are no more than that. But the Chinese migration is not forthcoming about why it is migrating. It is composed mostly of young military-aged men. There are some women present, but it’s not 50/50 by far.”
“The international community has arranged separate encampments. The Chinese are in many cases traveling a separate way across the Darien Gap. They’re skipping some of the worst parts of it traveling by boat.”
“When asked where they’re from, where they’re going, why they’re going, they are uninterested in talking. There’s a hostility to it that I found shocking.”
“[If they] didn’t like the way things were in China, they feared their government, they thought that there was economic opportunity, they would be curious about Americans. These are soon to be their countrymen. They would tend to be interested in talking. And even if they, for some reason, because they had lived under a totalitarian regime, felt that they couldn’t talk, they wouldn’t be broadcasting hostility, they would be ambivalent or something.”
“That is not the impression that they leave when interacting with them, so I found that utterly alarming.”
“I wonder if the [larger migration] is a cloak for this other migration from China, which is nothing if not mysterious. Why are they letting it happen? Why do you think the government is allowing the border to be so porous, and why are they resisting when Texas tries to do something about it?”
“Before I went to to Panama, I thought there was a migration of people. Now I think there are two. One of them’s clearly a migration, and the other one could well be an invasion.”
“The belief amongst many who have been on the story of the migration for years now is that this is a ploy to create voters, Democratic voters, and I don’t think that’s impossible. I think that’s probably playing a role.”
He also brings up the possibility some of have floated to trade military service for citizenship as a way to lessen the army’s resistance to illegal orders. “If you wanted a force that was capable of acting on behalf of tyranny against Americans, then a force that doesn’t have a deep history with the rights of being an American, that doesn’t have a long-standing allegiance to people within the country, that force would be potentially more compliant.”
Pre-Flu Manchu, all this would have seemed like paranoid conspiracy theories. But after the lockdowns, the Antifa riots, and the continued government insistence that the warm yellow substance they were distributing on our pants was rain, I have to admit the idea is a lot more plausible than I would have previously considered. And until the social justice warriors ran amok at Evergreen College, Weinstein considered himself a Democrat.
Someone is importing Chinese national illegal aliens into the United States, for some reason. The only question is who and why.
On Wednesday, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson shut down the $95 billion foreign aid package recently passed by the Senate.
Johnson remained steadfast in his, and most of his party’s, belief that no bill that doesn’t include funding to solve the crisis at the southern border should be considered by the House.
“The Republican-led House will not be jammed or forced into passing a foreign aid bill that was opposed by most Republican senators and does nothing to secure our own border,” he said. “It’s time for Washington to start showing some love for Americans.”
“On Valentine’s Day, it’s a good day to point this out,” he continued. “We need to listen to the American people and their needs and take action, and that’s why House leadership will continue to govern with Americans’ interests at heart.”
Democrats had been trying to gin up support for a discharge petition, which would have allowed them to bypass Johnson and force a vote, however progressives, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, said they would not sign on, citing the bill’s funding for Israel.
The foreign aid package, which dedicates funding to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, passed with a 70-29 vote as 22 Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues to side in favor of the bill.
Johnson made it clear even before the votes had been tallied that he had no intention of letting the bill enter his chamber.
While I’m not opposed to Ukraine aid in general, clearly the border is a far more pressing concern, but the Biden Administrations seems to want to throw open the borders at all costs. They need to pay the price for that decision, including no foreign aid being passed. Indeed, there’s a strong case to be made that with the towering Biden deficits and giant mountain of national debt, no foreign aid should be authorized until the budget is balanced. We also seem to get a very poor return for our foreign aid dollar. The Marshall Plan was over three-quarters of a century ago, and the Cold War ended over three decades ago.
Moreover, Speaker Johnson’s position (controlling borders is far more important than shipping billions in foreign aid abroad) is one that’s extraordinarily popular with American voters from all walks of life. Make the globalist foreign policy establishment suffer for the Biden Administration’s illegal refusal to enforce border control laws, no matter how hard the lefty MSM rages.
Foreign aid is a luxury. Protecting the border is an enumerated responsibility of the federal government.
The Senate’s bad border deal goes down badly, Big Brother is (still) watching you, Netanyahu tells everyone calling for a Gaza ceasefire to stick it in their murder tunnels, more Democrats arrested for (or convicted of) fraud, and a tiny bit of Disney news. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Republicans took one look at the abomination of a “bipartisan” border deal and declared it dead on arrival.
In a key vote on Wednesday, Senate Republicans moved to block the long-anticipated bipartisan border deal, which ties border-security provisions to aid for both Israel and Ukraine.
The bill was blocked in a 49 to 50 procedural vote, with only four Republicans joining Democrats in backing the legislation. The bill needed 60 votes to advance.
This setback comes after months of negotiations between Senate Republicans and Democrats on a measure President Joe Biden strongly requested. While the GOP wants more resources allocated toward the southern border, House Republicans and former president Donald Trump have made it clear they don’t want the legislation tied to foreign aid.
Hours after the bill’s details were revealed Sunday night, House GOP leaders rejected the package and declared it “DEAD on arrival in the House.”
Trump, who has made the border crisis a central issue of his 2024 presidential campaign, also weighed in on the border deal earlier this week. “Don’t be STUPID!!! We need a separate Border and Immigration Bill. It should not be tied to foreign aid in any way, shape, or form!” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Before the Senate voted on the matter, Biden blamed Trump for Republicans’ fierce opposition to the bill.
“Now, all indications are this bill won’t even move forward to the Senate floor,” Biden said Tuesday. “Why? A simple reason: Donald Trump.”
Hey Biden, I’m already going to vote for Trump. You don’t need to keep giving me new reasons.
The $118 billion Senate proposal includes about $60 billion in Ukraine funding, $14 billion in Israel aid, and $20 billion in border-security improvements, among various other items listed in the legislative package.
Senators James Lankford of Oklahoma, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and Mitt Romney of Utah were the only Republicans to vote in favor of the bill on Wednesday.
Lankford should be ashamed to be in such company.
Texas isn’t taking the Biden Administrations abrogation of the rule of law lying down. “Texas Attorney General’s Legal Challenge to Biden Administration’s ‘Asylum Rule’ Will Proceed. A federal judge ruled Texas raised a plausible claim that the federal government is violating the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.”
The Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG) announced a procedural victory in one of its many ongoing lawsuits against the federal government this week, after a federal district judge ruled against a motion by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to dismiss a legal challenge to its “asylum rule,” saying Texas had a plausible constitutional challenge.
According to the OAG, the federal government violated the Appointments Clause in the U.S. Constitution when the DHS granted power to review asylum cases to immigration officers — a power uniquely held under federal statute by immigration judges.
“This case offers a rare opportunity to litigate the application of the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, which states that Congress may only vest the power to appoint “inferior Officers… in the President alone, the Courts of Law, or the Heads of Departments,” the OAG wrote in a press statement regarding the case.
The office explained that by using asylum officers to perform jobs Congress assigned to judges when said officers were not appointed in the same manner, DHS violated the Constitution.
The OAG also argues that asylum officers are granting more noncitizens asylum than otherwise would be entitled to it. This is causing surges at the border and population increases that are in turn increasing the state’s costs relating to the increases, the state says.
“It is tremendously important for Texas and for our Constitutional order that this case is allowed to move forward,” Attorney General Ken Paxton said regarding the case. “The Biden Administration must not be permitted to ignore Congress and violate the Constitution. We take every opportunity to hold Biden accountable for his unlawful overreach.”
Rank-and-file Border Patrol agents have slammed the Senate’s $118B Senate funding bill that would guarantee 1.5 million illegal migrants entry to the United States, while sending the majority of funds to Ukraine ($60B+) and Israel ($14.1B).
Snip.
“Now that I’ve seen more of it, they can respectfully go fuck themselves. The more I’m seeing the more it just puts what they’ve been doing in writing. You want to shut this down, it’s real easy. Team up [the Department of Defense] with DHS and let us enforce like we were supposed to,” one agent told the Caller, adding “I feel like we are the only nation in the world that is this dumb about the border. Maybe it’s because we haven’t.”
Oh, and “Aliens from noncontiguous countries shall not be included in the sum of aliens encountered.” Did America’s enemies write this thing?
Cruz went on to say he knew [the Biden border bill] “had zero chance of passage” and that the entire purpose of the bill was to give “political camouflage to Democrats running in November.”
“Joe Biden can secure the border any day he wants,” Cruz said. “He doesn’t want to.”
The Secure the Border Act, which passed in the lower chamber as as House Resolution (H.R.) 2, was introduced to the Senate by Cruz in September of 2023, a fact he highlighted Wednesday, saying to “give me Ukraine aid and H.R. 2 and I’ll vote for that.”
H.R. 2 would have continued construction of the border wall, reinstated the “remain in Mexico” policy, and added border patrol agents and technology for both the southern and northern borders.
“Democrats do not want to secure the border; they want this invasion,” Cruz continued. “The Americans who are dying as a result, they’re [Democrats] willing to look the other way.”
A few weeks ago, Ohio congressman and Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan’s office released a letter to Noah Bishoff, the former director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, an arm of the Treasury Department. Jordan’s team was asking Bishoff for answers about why FinCEN had “distributed slides, prepared by a financial institution,” detailing how other private companies might use MCC transaction codes to “detect customers whose transactions may reflect ‘potential active shooters.’”
The slide suggested the “financial company” was sorting for terms like “Trump” and “MAGA,” and watching for purchases of small arms and sporting goods, or purchases in places like pawn shops or Cabela’s, to identify financial threats.
Jordan’s letter to Bishoff went on:
According to this analysis, FinCEN warned financial institutions of “extremism” indicators that include “transportation charges, such as bus tickets, rental cars, or plane tickets, for travel to areas with no apparent purpose,” or “the purchase of books (including religious texts) and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views.”
During the Twitter Files, we searched for snapshots of the company’s denylist algorithms, i.e. whatever rules the platform was using to deamplify or remove users. We knew they had them, because they were alluded to often in documents (a report on the denylist is_Russian, which included Jill Stein and Julian Assange, was one example).
However, we never found anything like the snapshot Jordan’s team just published:
The highlighted portion shows how algorithmic analysis works in financial surveillance.
First compile a list of naughty behaviors, in the form of MCC codes for guns, sporting goods, and pawn shops.
Then, create rules: $2,500 worth of transactions in the forbidden codes, or a number showing that more than 50% of the customer’s transactions are the wrong kind, might trigger a response.
The Committee wasn’t able to specify what the responses were in this instance, but from previous experience covering anti-money-laundering (AML) techniques at banks like HSBC, a good guess would be generation of something like Suspcious Activity Reports, which can lead to a customer being debanked.
If Facebook, Twitter, and Google have already shown a tendency toward wide-scale monitoring of speech and the use of subtle levers to apply pressure on attitudes, financial companies can use records of transactions to penetrate individual behaviors far more deeply. Especially if enhanced by AI, a financial history can give almost any institution an immediate, unpleasantly accurate outline of anyone’s life, habits, and secrets. Worse, they can couple that picture with a powerful disciplinary lever, in the form of the threat of closed accounts or reduced access to payment services or credit. Jordan’s slide is a picture of the birth of the political credit score.
Tiabbi says worse revelations are to come…
“Netanyahu Rejects Hamas Cease-Fire Demands, Vows to Fight until ‘Absolute Victory.'”
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Hamas cease-fire demands on Wednesday, vowing to fight on until “absolute victory.”
Netanyahu made the comments shortly after meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who arrived in the region Tuesday night after meeting with leaders of Qatar and Egypt in the most serious diplomatic push of the war to secure a cease-fire agreement. Through these diplomatic channels, Hamas presented Israel with a proposal for a three-stage cease-fire that would last for 135 days and culminate in the end of the war.
“Surrendering to Hamas’s delusional demands that we heard now not only won’t lead to freeing the captives, it will just invite another massacre.”
Indeed.
The Special Counsel’s report on Biden’s mishandling paints a picture of Biden’s mental decline we all know is true but which the media refuses to report.
President Biden couldn’t even remember when he was vice president or when his son Beau had died, leading special counsel Robert Hur to conclude that he could not bring charges for mishandling of classified documents, because a jury would see the president “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
In a report, Robert Hur concluded that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” But he declined to issue any charges, in part because Biden’s poor recollection would make him hard to convict.
If you want to see Fani Willis taken down only the way Ace of Spades can, then I direct your attention to “CashApp Cougar Fani Willis: Okay, Fine, So I Used Taxpayer Money to Hire a Human Meat-Mallet to Pound My Snizz Into Thin Tender Strips Like Veal Scallopini.” (Hat tip: Reader Tig if Brue.)
Members of the Austin American-Statesman took one look at the vast wave of layoffs hitting newsrooms across the country and decided “Now is the perfect time to go on strike!” (Note: Elon Musk should buy the name, fire everyone, and build a national quality newspaper from scratch.)
Dell demands all workers (no matter how far away) return to the office. Those who don’t will be “placed on a ‘career limiting’ fully remote contract. In my experience, working for Dell is itself career limiting…
Budget drag race community comes together to help fan with terminal brain tumor who’s also the happiest guy they know. “Don’t feel bad for me. Everyone’s terminal.”
Tons of Fani Willis’ crooked shenanigans come to light, Ukraine bags another warship, all those things they said the vaccine wouldn’t do it’s doing, and an anger management therapist who was very poor at his job. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Business partners of District Attorney Fani Willis’ alleged lover Nathan Wade, whom she appointed to work on the case against former President Donald Trump, made donations to her campaign before receiving lucrative contracts from her office.
Terrence Bradley, Wade’s former partner, and Christopher Campbell, his current partner, have collectively contributed more than $5,000 to Willis’ campaign, contribution disclosure reports show. Moreover, both men have each raked in tens of thousands of dollars from contracts with the district attorney’s office, according to county records.
Campbell is a partner at Wade & Campbell Firm, where he works with Wade. Bradley formerly worked with Wade at Wade, Bradley & Campbell Firm, and also represented Wade in his divorce case until Sept. 2022.
The donations add another wrinkle to Willis’ already-scrutinized relationship with Wade.
Willis was accused in a motion earlier this month by Trump co-defendant Michael Roman of benefiting from the “lucrative” contract she awarded Wade when he took her on vacations using money earned from the position. Wade filed to divorce his wife on Nov. 2, 2021, the day after his contract with the district attorney’s office began, and has earned nearly $700,000 from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office since his appointment.
More Willis shenanigans: “DA Fani Willis fired a whistleblower who informed her about the intentional misuse of federal funds and there’s audio of their conversation.”
BREAKING: @FreeBeacon has obtained audio of a whistleblower privately warning Fani Willis in 2021 that her top aide was trying to misuse federal funds.
Willis did not dispute the allegations.
56 days later, Willis fired the whistleblower and perp walked her out of the office. pic.twitter.com/YEkKIB2L5f
Resident Biden appears to be in serious trouble with black voters ahead of the 2024 election, and black lawmakers and organizers are starting to panic.
“What I’m hearing in my district is how ‘Bidenomics’ hasn’t really hit them in the pocket,” New York representative Jamaal Bowman told National Review earlier this week on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. “I need him in the barbershops. I need him on the basketball courts. I need him talking to the hip-hop community. I need him talking to the sports and athletics community to really get at what is troubling black men.”
Polling suggests Bowman is right to be concerned. Just 50 percent of black adults said they approve of Biden in a national AP-NORC poll last month — a 36-point drop from July 2021. An October Siena College/New York Times poll found that 22 percent of black voters surveyed in six competitive presidential battlegrounds say they will vote for Trump over Biden in 2024, a stunning polling shift from a reliably Democratic coalition that helped Biden win the White House in 2020. That same survey found Trump’s numbers were even higher among black men.
In the 40 years he’s spent in political activism, National Black Farmers Association president John Boyd Jr. says the Biden administration has done worse than any other administration in his lifetime in opening its doors to black voters. That lack of outreach, Boyd warns, may come back to bite him in November.
Wait, black people like jobs and safe neighborhoods and dislike inflation and illegal aliens sucking up welfare benefits? Who knew?
The U.N.’s agency for Palestinians said that it fired several employees after receiving information from Israel showing that they had taken part in the October 7 terrorist attacks. The State Department indicated that twelve U.N. employees allegedly took part in the attacks and announced that it had temporarily paused funding for the agency while it reviews the situation.
The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) delivers aid to Palestinians across Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. The U.S. is UNRWA’s largest donor, providing $343 million of its budget in 2022.
In a statement Friday morning, UNRWA commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini disclosed that Israel had presented his agency with evidence of its employees’ involvement in Hamas’s massacre of Israelis.
“To protect the Agency’s ability to deliver humanitarian assistance, I have taken the decision to immediately terminate the contracts of these staff members and launch an investigation in order to establish the truth without delay. Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution,” he said.
Sure they will. The question is why the United States ever funded UNRWA, since the funds seem to go straight into rockets and murder tunnels to kill Israeli civilians with?
The Trump administration cut off all funding to UNRWA in 2018, saying that the U.S. shoulders a disproportionate share of its budget. Blinken resumed funding to UNRWA three years later, pledging that the U.S. would seek reforms to the organization.
You know all those crazy “fringe” “conspiracy theories” about the Flu Manchu vaccine? Yeah, about that.
We found the number of myocarditis reports in VAERS after COVID-19 vaccination in 2021 was 223 times higher than the average of all vaccines combined for the past 30 years. This represented a 2500% increase in the absolute number of reports in the first year of the campaign when comparing historical values prior to 2021.
“Starbucks Employee Opposed to Unionization Sues to Declare National Labor Relations Board Unconstitutional.” “The National Labor Relations Board should not be a union boss-friendly kangaroo court run by powerful bureaucrats who exercise unaccountable power in violation of the Constitution.” This is another post-Chevron lawsuit that has the potential to completely dismantle the administrative state.
Proposition 2 allowed counties to create transportation reinvestment zones (TRZs), a power they did not previously have. According to the Texas Department of Transportation, a TRZ is a kind of tax increment financing district where a “zone is created, a base year is established, and the incremental increase in property tax revenue collected inside the zone is used to finance a project in the zone.”
The proposition did not include language about the use of increased ad valorem taxes to pay bonds or notes issued by the county in the TRZ district. A similar measure in 2011 that included such language was voted down.
“Anger management therapist loses his temper and murders a homeless man.” To be fair, the transient did try to fark with his dogs…
Woman with Master’s degree finds out that her trade school husband has quadrupling her salary with no debt.
EAGLE PASS, Texas (TND) — A convoy seeks to line the southern border with more than 700,000 vehicles and hold several rallies next week to demand action from the Biden administration.
The Take Our Border Back Southern Border Convoy will span from Virginia Beach, Va. to San Diego, Calif. and hold protests urging officials to enforce the Constitution’s amendments and halt human and drug trafficking across the border from Jan.29-Feb. 3.
Fellow citizens and compatriots … I call on you in the name of liberty, of patriotism and everything dear to the American character to come to our aid with all dispatch,” Pete Chambers, one of the coalition’s commanders, wrote. “If this call is neglected, we are determined to sustain ourselves as long as possible and act like soldiers who never forget what is due to our own honor and that of our country.”
The convoy aims to “send a message” to local, state and federal officials and law enforcement that they need to close the border and deport all illegal immigrants in its plan to “shine a spotlight” on open borders. Chambers claims Americans are “besieged on all sides” by evil “dark forces.”
“We have sustained continual bombardments of tyranny and have maintained our honor, prestige and esprit de corps,” Chambers asserted. “The enemy has demanded the surrender of Lady Liberty and her children. Tyrannical actors have tortured and oppressed without cause, without mercy and without reprieve.”
This is a bad idea and a silly story. Before we get to the ideological reasons, let’s explicate a much more basic one: Math.
Since there are three routes, let’s divide that 700,000 into three, which gives us 233,333 each going to Eagle Pass, Texas, Yuma, Arizona and one from California to Yuma (all details from their website).
They say that not just 18-wheelers, but cars, campers, etc. are welcome. So let’s use the average car length of 14.7 feet (rather than an average 18-wheeler length of 70 feet) just to be on the conservative side. There are 5,280 feet to a mile. That yields 359 cars per mile.
That’s 649 miles of cars per convoy.
But wait! It gets worse! According to their route, they are taking 290 through Dripping Springs, Texas on their way to Eagle Pass. 290 is a four-lane state highway (two lanes each way). Dripping (as the locals call it) is a small town of just under 5,000 people that used to be way the hell out in the country and is now in the Austin exurbs.
In April of last year, I went through Dripping on the way to and from a dog rescue event. They were having their Founder’s Day Festival, which they say draws “thousands,” and traffic on 290 slowed to a crawl.
I think there are seven stoplights in Dripping proper, and much more between it and Austin, between Austin and Manor, Manor and Elgin, etc.
There’s no way 649 miles of cars and trucks are passing Dripping in one day. It’s probably pushing it to expect one week.
By contrast, the Canadian trucker protests (for reasons very immediately concerning the truckers themselves) may have had 2,000 trucks join. Even that many would tie up Dripping for several hours.
This is evidently the guy behind it, who I’ve never heard of before:
The Infowars watermark doesn’t give me much confidence.
This is all before we ask why would truckers even go to the border in the first place. To make a wall that illegal aliens could just duck under between your tires? To be seen on TV? Neither are good reasons to massively inconvenience ordinary Texans who are already suffering the worst under Biden’s failure to secure the border.
I’m not sure if this is a false flag or some puffed up idea of a local gadfly. The 700,000 is an impossibility, and I would expect the actual turnout to be a tiny handful. (They might expect the same, which is why the Dripping rallying point is an HEB parking lot.)
If you wanted to do something equally stupid and counterproductive, but at least have the satisfaction of irritating the actual targets of your ire, a rolling roadblock of the Beltway and all the arteries into and out of D.C. for days on in, blowing your horns like they did in Canada, that would at least piss off the people responsible…
The biggest story right now is that Abbott isn’t backing down from securing the border, and a whole bunch of states are backing him in his high-profile fight with the federal government.
As the standoff continues between the Biden administration and the state of Texas over the crisis at the southern border, Gov. Greg Abbott says Texas will continue to push back against the invasion.
At the center of the current controversy is a recent U.S. Supreme Court order that allows federal agents to remove concertina wire and other barriers placed along the Rio Grande by the Texas National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Ground Zero of that battle is Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, where state forces have taken over a park along the border and have thus far prevented federal officials from entering.
Abbott says the state is taking action because of a failure from the Biden administration.
“The federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the States. The Executive Branch of the United States has a constitutional duty to enforce federal laws protecting States, including immigration laws on the books right now. President Biden has refused to enforce those laws and has even violated them,” said Abbott. “The result is that he has smashed records for illegal immigration. Despite having been put on notice in a series of letters—one of which I delivered to him by hand—President Biden has ignored Texas’s demand that he perform his constitutional duties.”
He went on to say the U.S. Constitution allows for states to push back against invasions:
James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the other visionaries who wrote the U.S. Constitution foresaw that States should not be left to the mercy of a lawless president who does nothing to stop external threats like cartels smuggling millions of illegal immigrants across the border. That is why the Framers included both Article IV, § 4, which promises that the federal government “shall protect each [State] against invasion,” and Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which acknowledges “the States’ sovereign interest in protecting their borders.”
To that end, Abbott cited an executive order issued by him in November 2022 to “invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself.”
“President Biden and his Administration have left Americans and our country completely vulnerable to unprecedented illegal immigration pouring across the Southern border. Instead of upholding the rule of law and securing the border, the Biden Administration has attacked and sued Texas for stepping up to protect American citizens from historic levels of illegal immigrants, deadly drugs like fentanyl, and terrorists entering our country.
“We stand in solidarity with our fellow Governor, Greg Abbott, and the State of Texas in utilizing every tool and strategy, including razor wire fences, to secure the border. We do it in part because the Biden Administration is refusing to enforce immigration laws already on the books and is illegally allowing mass parole across America of migrants who entered our country illegally.
“The authors of the U.S. Constitution made clear that in times like this, states have a right of self-defense, under Article 4, Section 4 and Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution. Because the Biden Administration has abdicated its constitutional compact duties to the states, Texas has every legal justification to protect the sovereignty of our states and our nation.”
Signatories include: Governor Kay Ivey (AL), Governor Mike Dunleavy (AK), Governor Sarah Sanders (AR), Governor Ron DeSantis (FL), Governor Brian Kemp (GA), Governor Brad Little (ID), Governor Eric Holcomb (IN), Governor Kim Reynolds (IA), Governor Jeff Landry (LA), Governor Tate Reeves (MS), Governor Mike Parson (MO), Governor Greg Gianforte (MT), Governor Jim Pillen (NE), Governor Joe Lombardo (NV), Governor Chris Sununu (NH), Governor Doug Burgum (ND), Governor Mike DeWine (OH), Governor Kevin Stitt (OK), Governor Henry McMaster (SC), Governor Kristi Noem (SD), Governor Bill Lee (TN), Governor Spencer Cox (UT), Governor Glenn Youngkin (VA), Governor Jim Justice (WV), and Governor Mark Gordon (WY).
Moreover, documents prove that Biden’s assault on America’s border security was intentional.
As President Joe Biden’s immigration crisis overwhelms the United States and wreaks havoc on the state’s resources, confidential documents suggest the president’s open border policies were intentional.
The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) filed a lawsuit against Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), claiming the agency halted the 287(g) program, which assists in the deportation of illegal migrant child rapists, attempted murderers, assailants, carjackers, and other known criminals.
In August 2023, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) revealed that the government ended the program in January 2021— right after Biden entered office. However, the compromised agency gave no reason why the government did that.
The 287(g) program allows local law enforcement agencies to work closely with ICE to capture illegal aliens who have committed crimes. They were then able to turn the migrants over to federal officials for arrest and deportation.
Expenditures on one of the most controversial federal programs aiding the millions of illegal immigrants and refugees from Afghanistan, Cuba, and Haiti have skyrocketed more than $2 billion in two years, according to a new report by a non-profit government spending watchdog.
Spending on the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) jumped from $8.9 billion in 2022 to more than $10.9 billion last year, auditors at OpenTheBooks.org (OTB), the Hinsdale, Illinois-based watchdog, found.
Most of the ORR spending explosion came in grants under ORR’s Refugee and Entrant Assistance program that provides a lengthy list of services to such individuals, including emergency housing assistance, work authorizations, public assistance benefits, medical screening, school enrollment, employment, and mental health referrals, and legal assistance.
Such spending was $33.4 million in 2021, the first year of President Joe Biden’s administration. But it hit $404.5 million the next year and then increased to $616.6 million last year, according to federal data obtained by OTB under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Much of the funding went to seven social service organizations, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops ($66.5 million), the International Rescue Committee ($66.4 million), Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services ($66.2 million), Church World Service ($64.9 million), U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants ($64.6 million), HIAS (originally the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)($56.4 million), and the Ethiopian Community Development Council ($51.6 million).
Trump says he’ll reverse all this:
NEW: Donald Trump says illegals shouldn't get too comfortable because they will be going home, pledges to work with Abbott and Texas to stop the invasion pic.twitter.com/i9dPyBglaA
1. More Democrats voted for Haley than Republicans.
Much like the morning after a drunken hookup with that salad-phobic dude from the IT department, the sun rose to reveal Darling Nikki’s reality. It turns out that a whopping 70% of Haley’s votes were grudge votes from Democrats according to exit polls.
I’m surprised Haley didn’t dump a bucket of Gatorade over herself Tuesday night as she celebrated another shattering loss. More importantly, either Haley doesn’t know a bunch of patchouli ghoulies voted for her, or she doesn’t care.
According to my calculator, 70% of her 136,461 votes is 95,522. Do the subtraction and Haley received a paltry 40,938 Republican votes compared to Trump’s 172,202. In other words, Trump got well over four times as many Republican votes, and Haley got hammered like Thor for the second time.
And yet Haley still got more votes than Biden…
Things that make you go Hmmm: “U.S., Chinese Researchers Wanted to Engineer Virus Similar to Covid One Year before Pandemic Outbreak, Internal Docs Show.”
In an editorial fit for The Onion or the Babylon Bee, Los Angeles Times’ letters editor Paul Thornton wrote a column this week entitled “If you want to leave, fine. But don’t insult California on the way out.”
The column acknowledges an exodus from the state, but sees the problem as former Californians sharing their experiences about what drove them from the Golden State.
It is like Captain William Bligh asking the mutinous crew of the Bounty for a reference as they head for the lifeboats.
Thornton wrote that “more than 800,000 Californians moved away in 2022, and many thousands more left last year. Often, the departees, cash in hand from the sale of their $1-million bungalows, feel the need to express disdain for their home state, and even some anger too.”
He then begs them to keep mum about their reasons for leaving the state, which commonly range from rising crime to high taxes to runaway spending.
And speaking of the LA Times, 115 staffers were just laid off. Sucks to be you. I would suggest learning some Python, but with so many startups shutting down, it probably wouldn’t help. Instead, maybe they should learn to weld. (Hat tip: Legal Insurrection.)
“Senate Candidate Says Fraudulent Donation to Speaker Phelan Made in His Name…Jace Yarbrough, an attorney and Air Force veteran, was shown on a recent campaign finance report as having sent a $75 donation to Phelan on December 24, just days after he filed to run for the open Senate District 30 seat. Yarbrough, however, has categorically denied making any donation to Phelan…He also emphasized his role as counsel to State Sen. Angela Paxton (R–McKinney) during the impeachment trial of her husband Attorney General Ken Paxton that was championed by Phelan.”
Islam is on the verge of completely taking over Europe, in all ways—at least according to one who should know, Hans-Georg Maaßen, Germany’s top domestic intelligence chief from 2012 to 2018. In a recent interview, he stressed several points that spell the imminent downfall of Europe to Islam.
His warnings are buttressed by disturbing demographic changes. According to conservative estimates from Pew Research, over the next 25 years—meaning most of the current generation’s lifetime—Europe’s Muslim population will triple to a staggering 76 million. In fact, the actual current and future numbers of Muslims appear to be higher, though there are no official tallies. For example, in an earlier, 2011 study, Pew Research found that “The number of Muslims in Europe has grown from 29.6 million in 1990 to 44.1 million in 2010. Europe’s Muslim population is projected to exceed 58 million by 2030.” Clearly 58 million in five years’ time is more significant than 76 million in 25 years’ time.
Not only is mass migration responsible for Islam’s exponential growth in Europe, but once there, the average Muslim woman has significantly more children than the average European woman. “Muhammad” is taking West Europe by storm as the number one name for newborn baby boys.
During his interview, Hans-Georg Maaßen said that these large numbers are intentional, and the work of Europe’s ruling elite. For this intelligence chief, the “great replacement” theory is no myth. The more ideologically mixed a population is forced into becoming, the less able it is to identify itself, much less protect any beliefs:
[O]ur politicians want a different population. The political left follows the course of the anti-German ideology. The more heterogeneous a population, the less able it is to articulate itself and have a democratic say. The more politics accept immigrants from other countries as they see fit and grants them citizenship, the more politics select the people of the state and influence the election results. These migrants then vote differently than the locals.
Journalist who criticized tennis players Novak Djokovic for not getting the jab dies of suddenly.
B-21 Raider officially enters production. Though the B-21 has contained costs better than some Air Force programs, I believe the days of expensive manned bombers has passed.
Director Norman Jewison dead at 97. He directed more popular and critically acclaimed films, but for me he’ll always be the director of the vastly underrated Rollerball. (Previously.) (Hat tip: Dwight.)
America’s largest skyscraper will be built in…Oklahoma City? Yeah, can’t see the economic case there.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s strategy of bussing illegal aliens to sanctuary cities is having its desired effect, namely sharing the pain of the Biden Administration’s refusal to enforce border controls with the blue cities that encourage such behavior.
By declaring themselves a “sanctuary city,” New York brought this catastrophe on themselves. Here’s New York’s Democratic governor Kathy Hochul rhapsodizing about all those “benefits” illegal aliens would bring New York City:
As you know, the Statue of Liberty is inscribed. It says “Give me your tired, you’re poor, your huddled young [sic] masses yearning to be [sic] free/The wretched refuse to [sic] a teeming shore.” That statement encapsulizes our values. We want people to come here, despite where they came from from, where despite the circumstances that drove them to this country, into this state, we see, say, you are welcome here. We are welcome with open arms, and we’ll work to keep you safe. We’ll not only house you, but we’ll protect you. And the richness of the culture and the diversity and the food and the restaurants that we know are going to be coming, uh, because of these efforts are, are are beyond measure. It’s just, it’s an extraordinary part of our story and it’s woven into the story of New York and it makes us more vibrant.
That “vibrant” includes higher crime rates, soaring budgets and kicking Americans out of their schools and dwellings to make room for the illegal aliens Democrats are desperate to flood the country with. And since when did anyone, illegal alien or otherwise, have a right to free housing at the taxpayer’s expense?
So too says New York City Democratic mayor Eric Adams: “New York City is the welcoming mat for the entire globe.”
Nate the Lawyer: “So the city of New York wanted migrants? Texas and Arizona sent them migrants.”
Abbott: “It was just Texas and Arizona that bore the brunt of all of the chaos, and all the problems that come with it. Now the rest of America is understanding exactly what is going on.”
Nate the Lawyer: “So we’re all on the same page. New York: ‘We love migrants, we want migrants, we need migrants.’ Texas and Arizona: ‘We have millions of migrants, we’ll send them to you, then, since you want the migrants.’ And now all hell is broken loose in New York and they don’t want the migrants anymore.”
Adams has declared a state of emergency, saying the city is burning through $1 billion this fiscal year on illegal aliens, leaving no funding for other issues.”
Adams: “If these Trends continue we will be over 100,000 in the year.” Aw, you didn’t seem worried about millions flooding into Texas, but 100,000 arrive in the city you welcomed them into and it’s the end times.
Adams: “This issue will destroy New York City. Destroy New York City.” Then shouldn’t you repeal the sanctuary city law?
Now Hochul is saying don’t come to New York City.
Nate the Lawyer: “New York City has decided to pass laws and regulations to close its own border to stop migrant buses from coming into the city and even going as far as to sue the bus companies to stop them from bringing migrants into the city.”
“Why is it good enough for New York to close their, border but not good enough for the country to close their border? It’s almost like they’re saying ‘We’re okay with the migrants coming into the country and being someone else’s problem but they can’t come to New York.” That’s exactly what they’re saying: “Illegal alien costs for thee, but not for me.”
Some weather discussion snipped.
They pushed illegal aliens into a school for shelter and sent the kids home. “That has a lot of parents fighting mad.”
Without schools as babysitters, parents have to stay home.
“Migrants are literally killing each other to stay in the shelters.”
“The immigration system is is destroyed it’s messed up, and I am extremely happy that the liberals in the Northeast are experiencing the fruits of their labor…They begged for migrants, they wanted migrants, and it was all great to have an open border policy when you didn’t have to pay for it. Now they have to pay for it.”
“I think that more and more and more migrants should go to New York, and then hopefully the Democrats will realize that, hey, just allowing millions of people to come across the border isn’t really a great idea, because we can’t take care of it.”
“And I also want to hammer home the point that it was all great when it was someone else’s problem, but it’s horror show, it’s a state of emergency, it’s immoral when it’s their problem.”
It looks like there was a running gunbattle between the Mexican National Guard and the Sinaloa drug cartel in Sonoyta, Sonora, just south of Lukeville, Arizona on the U.S. border, on December 29. There’s a dearth of news stories on the event, so here are two video compilations (with a little overlap) of the fighting.
This was likely the battle that occurred in Sonoyta, Sonora between the Mexican Army/National Guard against gunmen (unknown exactly what group) as was reported yesterday. https://t.co/hAd0XQnhWgpic.twitter.com/zOwwUMUfws
I haven’t seen any news reports of this in American media, possibly because they think their primary goal is to avoid reporting anything on the border that the Biden Administration’s “pro illegal alien invasion” policies make them look bad with voters.
Indeed, there was a gun battle at a different crossing point earlier this month.
A federal law-enforcement source shared with FOX Business Network an internal officer safety alert dated December 13th that warns CBP agents to be vigilant after the Mexican military seized 10 improvised explosive devices (IEDs) at the border.
The IEDs were found by Mexican authorities after Tucson border patrol observed gunshots at the U.S.-Mexico border and a Tucson supervisory border patrol agent arrested an armed person on the U.S. side who had a loaded AK-47 rifle, two loaded AK magazines, loose rounds and a handgun.
Add “border danger” to “budget deficits” in the category of Things That Could Blow Up At Any Moment Our Chattering Classes Refuse To Talk About.
Congratulations, you’ve made it to the end of 2023! Iranian proxies get pounded, NGO’s help destroy the border, Democrats keep trying to remove Trump from the ballot, and thieves get a taste of their own medicine. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Not only is the Obama/Biden administration undermining American sovereignty and the rule of law by allowing a massive influx of illegal aliens, but a wide variety of NGOs, some “none political,” are also involved.
A network of NGOs, or non-governmental organizations, seems to be playing a powerful role in coordinating the large-scale invasion of illegals at the US southern border.
The new website Muckraker revealed a treasure trove of “mass migration blueprints,” handed out by NGOs across South and Central America to illegals with details about their route to the US.
“The collapse of the US southern border is the result of a carefully planned and deliberately executed industrial mass migration program,” Muckraker said.
MAP #1 – Distributed by Doctors Without Borders (Médicos Sin Fronteras in Spanish).
They seem to be taking that “Without Borders” part way too literally.
What’s becoming increasingly evident is that a network of NGOs funded partly by the US taxpayer but by other countries and corporations are covertly facilitating the invasion of illegals at the US southern border, as well as distributing them across the US into progressive metro areas.
According to an August report by progressive left-leaning media watchdog organization Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, President Biden’s Department of Homeland Security allocated $363 million to NGOs to assist illegal aliens once in the US.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott released a press release one year ago detailing how “NGOs may be engaged in unlawfully orchestrating other border crossings through activities on both sides of the border, including in sectors other than El Paso.”
Once across the border, NGOs are also helping migrants with transportation across the US, such as providing seats on commercial airlines.
Also “Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona Inc.”
And speaking of Flu Manchu, here’s another fraud case. “A Georgia attorney and former City of Atlanta police officer has been convicted of fraudulently obtaining over $7 million in loans under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, 62-year-old Shelitha Robertson from Atlanta conspired to submit PPP loan applications on behalf of four businesses she owned.”
The Real Story: “Philadelphia trans activist charged with rape of not one, but two minors.” The Newsweek Story: “Trans Activist Kendall Stephens’ Arrest Sparks MAGA Uproar.” Evidently the left feels that only MAGA Republicans should be upset at the rape of minors…
According to the Department of Emergency Management, San Francisco’s 911 call dispatchers answered just 72 percent of calls within 15 seconds in October, the latest month available. That’s the lowest share of any month in the last six years, and well short of the department’s goal to answer 95 percent of calls in 15 seconds or fewer.
Staffing is not up to the levels required, which is causing people to burn out, due to mandatory overtime. The bureaucratic hiring practice moves at a glacial pace, and so they can’t hire people to cover retirement and people just quitting due to burn out. They did raise pay some, but there is no indication if that is enough. I guess only time will tell.
The second problem that San Francisco has, in relation to 911 calls, is getting officers to the scene of a “Priority A” incident.
The slowdown in responses has contributed to broader delays San Franciscans face when trying to get help during emergency situations. The city’s typical response time to “Priority A” incidents — defined as the most urgent and serious events, like assaults-in-progress — is slower than it’s been at any point in the last eight years, increasing from about 6.5 minutes in January 2016 to nearly nine minutes this November.
Now this is the media, so there is no mention of any “defund the police” initiatives in San Francisco over the past few years.
“Since President Trump’s win in 2016, black support for him has more than tripled, now exceeding 20 percent in some surveys.” Including Mark Fisher, co-founder of a Black Lives Matter group in Rhode Island
“Two large Pizza Hut operators in California are laying off all their delivery drivers ahead of a new state law that raises the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20 an hour, Business Insider reports.” Good work, Democrats!
Grocery store manager Gatzke told Bild that the thieves who steal huge bags full of items are usually migrants, with around a third of them being Tunisian.
During one incident at the Edeka supermarket in Regensburg, a man stole €140 euros worth of goods, while the manager has also tried to stop thieves stealing groceries worth €300 euros.
“In the bag were spirits: vodka and liqueurs again. They are Muslims — did they want to resell the alcohol?” asked Gatzke.
“What do you need 10 sea bream and so many shrimp for? Nobody steals that because they’re hungry,” he added.
Gatzke noted that the culprits even steal shopping bags worth up to €2.50 euros.
However, he was denounced as a “racist” for complaining about the mass looting and subsequently criticized by Ferat Koçak, a member of the Berlin House of Representatives for The Left party.
Siding with the criminals, Koçak suggested that the migrants were “entitled” to steal because the government wasn’t giving them enough free money in welfare payments.
Some interesting artillery usage data, via reader Kirk”
Russian tremendous artillery advantage at beginning of war (65k shells/day) down to about 1/10 of that, while Ukraine advantage in platforms & counter battery has grown significantly. Then,… pic.twitter.com/Ak6o0hJmpv
Nothing says “Republican” quite like having Democrats do fundraising for you. “Dade Phelan Fundraiser Hosted by Liberals. Former House Speaker Joe Straus and former Democrat nominee for lieutenant governor Leticia Van de Putte are among those raising cash for Phelan.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a $700 million settlement with Google over anticompetitive practices.
According to the settlement, Google must pay $630 million in restitution—minus costs and fees—to consumers who made purchases on the Google Play Store between August 2016 and September 2023 and were harmed by Google’s anticompetitive practices.
Paxton secured the settlement alongside attorneys general from all 49 other states as well as the District of Columbia, and the territories of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
would like to share the happiest Christmas memory of my childhood with you, an experience that shaped the young adult and the man I would become as much as any book or teacher ever would. I was accidentally given an inestimable gift – one which unwittingly dared me to grow intellectually and culturally so that I could be properly worthy of it, and which has since comforted me through endless long subsequent years of disappointment, heartache, personal growth, and triumph. And there’s no better time to write about it than during a season of joy. So if you will graciously permit me, on this Christmas Eve 2023 I’d like to take you back to the “not-too-distant future.”
On Christmas Eve 1991, my father suggested we should watch a cassette of an obscure TV show his friend at work had taped off a then-obscure cable channel called Comedy Central a few days before. “A guy and some robots make fun of bad movies” was how he described the premise. Since my dad and I had been talking back to films from the safety of our family-room couch for years already while watching B-movie schlock like USA Up All Night, it was at least something to do. (11-year-olds do not otherwise have a long list of entertainment options.)
Although my dad couldn’t possibly have intended it, what happened next altered the course of my life, and profoundly for the better: I was exposed to Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K for short) for the first time. And “exposed” is the right word; the experience was as instantly catalyzing a moment for me as a rapid chemical reaction. It was the Christmas episode from a few days earlier, and the show was mocking something called Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
“I’ll never forget how comforted MST3K made me feel from that exact moment onward, comforted that there were people out there who had my sense of humor – only they were vastly more funny than me.”
God bless us, each and every one…
“North Carolina has a law that allows people to do practically whatever they want to the official state marsupial.” Which would be the possum. And it only applies five days a year. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen has claimed “an ideological victory” as Emmanuel Macron’s government reached a compromise with hardline conservatives on a beleaguered immigration bill.
The French president’s centrist coalition moved towards introducing a much tougher immigration bill than initially planned on Tuesday, with the government agreeing to harden the access to state benefits for recently-arrived immigrants. The proposals echo some of the far right’s long-time obsessions, including the ideas of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Rally party, who campaigned in favor of a “national preference,” which meant excluding foreigners from state benefits and council housing.
Funny how “France for the French” is a “far right obsession.”
What welfare state benefits should illegal aliens receive upon moving to a country? How about nothing? Does nothing work for you? They should receive food and water only for the short period of time it takes to deport them back to their country of origin.
Even legal immigrants should be ineligible for welfare benefits upon first arriving. Let them work a specified number of years before providing access to the welfare state.
While the proposals put forward by Macron’s Renaissance party do not go that far, the National Rally has been jubilant over the government’s decision to take what they claim is a step in their direction.
“Under pressure from National Rally voters, this bill will harden the conditions surrounding immigration,” Le Pen told reporters at the National Assembly. “We can salute ideological progress, an ideological victory of the National Rally, because it will now be etched in legislation that there is a national priority,” she said, adding that her MPs would vote for the compromise legislation.
After a shock defeat of Macron’s flagship immigration bill last week, when it was dismissed by the National Assembly without a debate, the government has tasked a joint committee of senators and MPs with finding a compromise. But the government needs the support of the conservative Les Républicains party, which has become very hardline on immigration, to get their draft legislation through parliament.
“Very hardline” is a codeword for “actually agrees with French voters.”
On Tuesday, the joint committee reached a compromise on a draft that is much more hardline than the one initially tabled by the government. It includes a compulsory five year wait for non-European immigrants who don’t have a job before claiming housing and child benefits.
Good.
All across Europe, Euroskeptic parties fighting against allowing illegal unassimilated Muslim immigration are ascendant over traditional leftwing Euroestablishment parties. The EU elites insistence on pushing Muslim immigration on resisting populations have pushed Le Pen, long regarded as “unacceptable,” to the center of political consensus in France, at least on this issue, which is increasingly one of utmost importance to voters.
It elite decree that valid issues are off the table for reputable politicians to discuss, then voters will turn to “disreputable” politicians to make their voices heard.
