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Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here. Might future humans resurrect the dead? Well, Russian researchers Alexey Turchin and Maxim Chernyakov, who belong to the transhumanism movement, wrote a paper explaining the “roadmap to immortality” that involves superintelligent AI systems powered by Dyson spheres as the primary technology might someday make resurrection possible. Turchin and Chernyakov wrote, “there no evidence of an afterlife. But there’s also no proof that medical death is the end of subjective experience, or that death is irreversible, or immortality impossible.” The paper, which Popular Mechanics first reported, is titled “Classification of Approaches to Technological Resurrection,” which offers a roadmap to immortality. ALex Jones breaks down how the U.N. setting medical tyranny policy gets around the checks and balances of a representative government enforcing on its people. “Death seems to be a permanent event, but there is no actual proof of its irreversibility,” the authors write. And “while no method is currently possible, many…may become feasible with future technological development.” Turchin and Chernyakov examine both conventional and future technologies of making humanity immortal, from cryogenics to uploading brains onto the cloud then transplanted into clone bodies. They said “strong AI” will be the most critical technology to download the brain’s contents, but that technology could years away. “The development of AI is going rather fast, but we are still far away from being able to ‘download’ a human into a computer,” Turchin told Russia Beyond. “If we want to do it with a good probability of success, then count on [the year] 2600, to be sure.” The authors said the power supply behind the AI would be so powerful that it would need a “Dyson spheres,” a megastructure of solar panels that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output. The paper describes life as a “continued stream of subjective experiences” and death as an end of that stream. Immortality, to the researchers, is a “life stream without end,” and resurrection is the “continuation of that same stream of experiences after an arbitrarily long gap.” Digital immortality is inevitable…

Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here. Keep up to date with our latest: Badass Uncle Sam explains how some discussions with leftists on the street inevitably derail due to their rage or lack of common sense. The Big Tech purge is here! Follow Infowars and Alex Jones on other growing platforms now to stay informed as the information blackout accelerates.

In multiple articles I have published recently I outlined why an attempt at a new national covid lockdown in the US is inevitable. In my article ‘The Real Reasons Why Millions Of Americans Will Defy Covid Mandates And Vaccines’, I examined new polling numbers which show that a vast portion of the US population is refusing to comply with medical controls. The bottom line is this: Covid is a non-threat to 99.7% of the public, and the citizenry is getting wise to this fact. However, there are certain people that NEED the pandemic lockdowns to continue regardless of what the public wants. The Biden Administration and its globalist handlers have BIG plans for the next few years, and all of it relies on pandemic fears and totalitarian restrictions. The “Great Reset”, as Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum calls it, is never going to happen unless global populations are locked down and placed under control. Unconstitutional pieces of legislation that undermine or destroy the 2nd Amendment, like HR 127, will be impossible to enact if Americans are organized and unified to resist. Carbon taxation and “shared economy” policies will never be allowed to touch ground. Conservative Americans and many moderates will stamp out such measures like cockroaches within their own states. Law enforcement agencies in most areas would have no interest in being used as cannon fodder to enforce them. The only option the globalists have at this stage is to barrel forward with the pandemic narrative despite the fact that Covid has turned out to be a hollow issue with a death rate of 0.26% outside of nursing home patients. At least half the country is ready to revolt over the mandates, and almost half the country is refusing to take the vaccines or accept medical passports. That is millions of people that are laughing in the face of the Reset agenda. So, the question for the thwarted globalists is this: How do they turn their conservative enemies into unwitting allies? What is a 4th Generation warfare solution to their problem? How do they get a larger number of conservatives to support their own enslavement through the lockdown mandates? Well, one method would be to cause a convincing distraction that compels conservatives to embrace the notion of the lockdowns as an acceptable sacrifice in exchange for dealing with a potentially more dangerous problem. The crisis of mass illegal immigration is turning into a growing national debate right now. I suspect we haven’t even begun to see the consequences yet, and I also suspect that there is a plot hidden within these events. But let’s look at the surface arguments first… Obviously, most conservatives are going to view a huge influx of illegals into the US as a means for Democrats to secure elections for decades to come. I’m sure most people reading this article are aware of the “Cloward Piven Strategy”, and I won’t delve into it too much here except to say that I get it, and I realize it’s a problem; it’s just not the biggest problem that conservatives should be worried about right now. Yes, this exact program of social dilution was used in Europe only a few years ago, and to be clear, this is not a problem of “race”, it is a problem of culture and ideology. Muslim culture and Sharia law, for example, are for the most part incompatible with Western society. Forcefully mixing the two is a recipe for disaster as we have seen already in the EU. When Muslims immigrate LEGALLY and individually assimilate into Western culture instead of trying to import their own culture by attrition, things work. Otherwise things do not work. This is reality. By extension, mass illegal migration without assimilation of people from Central and South America into the US will also lead to disaster. These migrants are coming from predominantly socialist countries that have failed systems (that’s why these people are leaving and coming to the US). But, illegals tend to bring their socialist politics with them. They have no experience living within a culture that treats freedom as inherent and inalienable and are often motivated by access to government programs and handouts. This is why we have borders in the first place – to protect our society from intrusion and co-option by another society or group of people with incompatible values. Despite what leftists and some false libertarians might claim, without borders, freedom dies. Conservatives easily understand this simple concept, but leftists just don’t get it. They live in a Marxist fantasy land where Utopia is right around the corner and open borders are a magical tool for peace and prosperity. They also hate conservatives and that pesky Bill of Rights that we defend so much. They think inviting an army of potential socialists into the country will help to marginalize us and make us disappear. They’ll even brag about it openly on occasion. So, it’s not surprising that whenever a giant caravan of illegals starts marching towards the southern border, conservatives rally in opposition. We might even put more energy into this issue than we do for gun rights. Here is the problem… The migrant crisis is suddenly receiving heavy attention from the mainstream media after being ignored for months. Why is that? It feels as if there was a complete blackout on this issue, and now, the floodgates have opened and the media coverage is growing. With the amount of protection Biden has been lavished with by the MSM so far, their sudden critical position on his border policies has me suspicious. Since when do leftist corporate journalists care about the border? Well, reports of a possible “surge in covid” due to mass illegal migrations into America might explain everything. Think of it this way – The establishment and Biden need some kind of rationale for a new covid lockdown. I continue to predict that Biden will try to institute a Federal lockdown mandate similar to the Level 4 lockdowns used in parts of Europe, Australia and New Zealand. They know that there is too much conservative opposition and that they will not be able to get red states to comply. But, what if conservatives were made to think that the border would be more heavily guarded and illegal immigrants rounded up if they supported a new lockdown policy? What if conservatives were tricked into supporting covid lockdowns as a means to control illegal immigration? The solution should be obvious: Biden should be enforcing border protocols and laws WITHOUT needing covid lockdowns. But, he’s not going to do that. What he’s going to do is keep the border as porous as possible, do little to stem the tide of immigrant caravans until the situation devolves into chaos, and then announce that a “new wave” of covid infections has been brought to the US by the caravans. Again, covid is a non-threat to 99.7% of the population outside of nursing homes, but what about a “covid mutation”? Brazil has been conveniently reporting such a mutation that is supposedly “more dangerous” than the original covid virus. As this variant spreads, whether or not it presents any actual danger, Biden will then announce a national lockdown including a hard lockdown on the southern border. The question is, will some conservatives be more inclined to back off of their opposition to the mandates if it means illegal immigration will be stopped? This is essentially a protection racket. In other words, Biden will refuse to protect the border until we comply with the pandemic restrictions, just as he and the establishment will continue to push for restricted freedoms until ALL Americans submit to vaccinations and medical passports. However, there is another way… Counties on the southern border can take over the job of securing the region and refuse to allow illegal migrants to pass. If the border patrol is understaffed or is being hobbled by the federal government, then the locals can take control and do the job that Biden refuses to do. Furthermore, if the problem persists and the federal government seeks to interfere in local efforts to secure the border, then it may be time to create new borders. It may be time to do that anyway. Conservatives and moderates have almost nothing in common with the political left anymore; conservatives want freedom of speech, the right to self defense, the right to honest and accurate information, self reliance, economic freedom, secure borders and small government. Leftists support mass censorship, disarmament, business shutdowns, lockdown mandates, open borders, the big government nanny state, centralization and tyranny. Perhaps it is time we separate and build the societies we want, and well away from each other. Iet’s see which system thrives and which one collapses. Let’s see which system people want to join and which system people want to escape. My point is, at no time should conservatives feel compelled to accept covid lockdowns or other totalitarian measures just to get border protections from the federal government in return. And, I probably don’t need to say this, but don’t buy into the covid mutation narrative. The pandemic is a failed part of the Reset agenda, nothing more. The elites are trying to pick up the pieces and turn garbage into gold. As long as conservatives and liberty minded people refuse to comply, their plans will crumble. And, if the border needs to be secured and the federal government refuses to do their job, then we should take control and make the border safe ourselves. Alex Jones breaks down how humanoid entities are being created to circumvent human rights violations in experimental research.

Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here. Keep up to date with our latest: The notion that Americans will always be free is part of the catechism that is force-fed to public school students. For hundreds of years, philosophers, politicians, and reformers have touted a law of history that assures the ultimate triumph of freedom. “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come,” Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” But few political follies are more hazardous than presuming that one’s liberties are forever safe. None of the arguments on why liberty is inevitable can explain why it has not yet arrived. Most of the human race existed with little or no freedom for 95+ percent of recorded history. If liberty is God’s gift to humanity, then why were most people who ever lived on Earth denied this divine bequest? Many efforts at limiting state power have failed almost immediately. In the thirteenth century, oppressed English nobles revolted and sought to bind their kings in perpetuity. King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215, petulantly accepting a limit to his prerogative to pillage everything in his domain. While the Magna Carta is celebrated nowadays as the dawn of a new age, it failed to even bind the king who signed the document. The ink on his signature was barely dry before King John brought in foreign forces and proceeded to slaughter the barons who forced his signature. King John died just after his vengeance commenced, providing a respite for Englishmen. In the final realm, the Magna Carta was simply a political pledge that was honored only insofar as private courage and weaponry compelled sovereigns to limit their abuses. History is a chronology of nations pillaged by reckless regimes. English kings recited coronation oaths that limited their power. Such oaths were as binding as a congressional candidate’s campaign promises. Rampaging kings sometimes converted smouldering discontent into a raging fire of resistance. Historian Thomas Macaulay summarized England’s path to its Glorious Revolution of 1688: “Oppression speedily did what philosophy and eloquence … failed to do.” King James II was ousted in 1688 and Parliament speedily enacted laws to curb all subsequent monarchs. The United States was the first government to be created with strict limitations on its power, enshrined in the Constitution. As James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” The Founders included numerous checks and balances in the Constitution to restrain political ambition. But they were never so naïve as to presume that a parchment barrier would keep American liberty safe in perpetuity. Within the first decade of the nation’s existence, Congress and President John Adams enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, which destroyed freedom of the press and speech. Thomas Jefferson responded by writing a resolution in 1799 that warned, “Free government is founded in jealousy, not confidence…. In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” Senator John Taylor, in his 1821 book Tyranny Unmasked, scoffed at presuming “our good theoretical system of government is a sufficient security against actual tyranny.” Those “chains of the Constitution” have often been illusory or merely a placebo phantasm for government victims. Politicians perennially invoke the Constitution to prove that citizens have no reason to fear the government. When the House of Representatives considered the PATRIOT Act in October 2001, Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) assured fellow members of Congress that “the bill does not do anything to take away the freedoms of innocent citizens. Of course we all recognize that the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prevents the government from conducting unreasonable searches and seizures, and that is why this legislation does not change the United States Constitution or the rights guaranteed to citizens of this country.” Sensenbrenner talked as if that the mere existence of the Bill of Rights shackled Congress. This is akin to claiming that because automobiles have brakes, drivers can never exceed the speed limit. The PATRIOT Act unleashed a constitutional crime wave, as the Bush administration suspended habeas corpus and conducted waves of secret arrests, unleashed the FBI to conduct hundreds of thousands of warrantless searches, and entitled the National Security Agency to vacuum up Americans’ emails and other personal data. American presidents take an oath of office solemnly swearing to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” But this has long been an empty ritual, akin to Roman emperors making public sacrifices to pagan gods they knew did not exist. Fealty to the Constitution has evaporated in part because philosophical trends have long favored absolute power. Intellectual servility has been perennially profitable and there has never been a shortage of writers exalting supreme rulers. Writing in 1651, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes labeled the state as Leviathan, “our mortal God.” Leviathan signifies a government whose power is unbounded, with a right to dictate almost anything and everything to the people under its sway. While Hobbes was reviled in the first century after his book was published, his ideas later became fashionable as academics rushed to echo his derision of “tyrannophobia.” Hobbes declared that it is forever prohibited for subjects in “any way to speak evil of their sovereign” regardless of how badly they are abused. Hobbes offered “suicide pact sovereignty”: to recognize a government’s existence is to automatically concede the government’s right to destroy everything in its domain. Hobbes profoundly influenced subsequent political philosophers, including German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel, who trumpeted the doctrine that history is the actualization of freedom. But Hegel was not using “freedom” in the sense that the Founding Fathers did. Instead, Hegel declared, “The State in-and-for-itself is the ethical whole, the actualization of freedom.” Hegel also proclaimed that “[t]he State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth” and derided the notion of freedom as individual choice as “uneducated superficiality.” Hegel’s slavish version of freedom was difficult to distinguish from Hobbes’ s totalitarian vision of sovereignty. Hegel had a profound influence on communism (via Marx), fascism, and on the most popular philosopher in Washington in recent decades. Francis Fukuyama, a State Department functionary, hailed Hegel as the supreme “philosopher of freedom.” In 1989, Fukuyama proclaimed the “unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism” and boasted that “we in the liberal West occupy the final summit of the historical edifice.” He announced “the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” Fukuyama’s “law of history” supposedly proved that government was no longer a threat to freedom. By making political power appear innocuous, Fukuyama became an instant hero inside the Beltway. Fukuyama’s “end of history” revelation was zealously embraced by the political-media establishment. Fukuyama provided a law of history that supposedly negated all the warnings from history about political power. Fukuyama’s doctrine “liberated” presidents in the name of freedom. In his 2002 National Security Strategy, President George W. Bush echoed Fukuyama’s view: “The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom—and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise.” At a 2002 Republican fundraiser dinner, Bush declared: “We will do whatever it takes to make the homeland secure and to make freedom reign across the world.” In his 2005 inaugural address, Bush whooped, “We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom.” Bush used “freedom bosh” to sanctify his wars, torture regime, and militaristic threats against any foreign regime that disobeyed Washington. Why would history stop after either liberty or democracy is achieved? The experience of many countries has been “one person, one vote, one time.” Faith in democracy as a perpetual guarantor of freedom is tricky to reconcile with the collapse of more than thirty democracies around the globe in recent years. Few of the democracies that have survived have fastidiously respected citizens’ rights. Some libertarians are confident that, despite post–9/11 debacles, liberty will inevitably triumph in the end. But why would freedom be safer in the future than now? Because of a law of history that was never enacted by God, a convocation of cardinals, or even the Arkansas state legislature? Presuming that America or any other nation is destined to be free lulls people against potential oppressors. Author Robert Anton Wilson observed, “Every national border in Europe marks the place where two gangs of bandits got too exhausted to kill each other any more and signed a treaty.” Similarly, the current extent of government power marks the boundary of political onslaughts into the private domain of liberty. There will be no perpetual truce along this border, because political marauders will continually create new pretexts to invade citizens’ lives. The private domain relies primarily on voluntary agreements, independence, and peaceful coexistence. The political domain relies on command and control, subjugation, and threats and penalties. One of the greatest perils to the private domain is the notion that Leviathan is more legitimate than liberty. Downplaying government coercion is the key to this propaganda coup. For most of the American media, compelling submission to political commands is a nonissue, equivalent of the sun rising in the east each morning. At the time when political power began soaring, in the 1930s, American political thinking systematically disregarded the danger from government. In the 1940s, as Professor David Ciepley observed, “the State was dropped from American social science, as part of the reaction to the rise of totalitarianism. All traces of state autonomy, now understood as ‘state coercion,’ were expunged from the image of American democracy.” Ciepley explained that “the emergence of Hitler and Stalin as the ultimate social engineers led American political scientists to … fall silent about all such activities in the American governmental system. If totalitarianism means elite social engineering, then American democracy must mean popular control.” Democracy became the purported champion of freedom, because people were taught that democracies were inherently nonoppressive. But as Senator John Taylor warned two centuries ago, “Self-government is flattered to destroy self-government.” For many people, liberty is an abstraction until government agents ravage their lives. A lucid recognition of the coercive nature of Leviathan is vital for the defense of freedom. Leviathan’s abuses and atrocities must be weaponized to awaken as many people as possible to the perils they face. “Legitimacy” spawns a political fog that obscures people’s recognition of their own victimhood. Lenin reputedly said that the capitalists would sell communists the rope with which the capitalists were hanged. Similarly, Leviathan perennially provides ample gunpowder for detonating its legitimacy. Leviathan without legitimacy is simply a regime that must rely on brute force to compel submission to its decrees. At some point, the brute force becomes too great for regime lackeys to cover up. Once legitimacy is lost, governments can collapse like overheated soufflés. For instance, East Bloc regimes imploded much faster than almost anyone expected. Prior to 1989, Soviet leaders believed that cosmetic reforms would keep people subdued despite a failing economic system. CIA analysts predicted that 100+ million people in East Europe would remain docile and downtrodden for decades longer. But proliferating protests in several nations spurred the Hungarian government to permit a breach in the Iron Curtain along the Austrian border in May 1989. That breach quickly spurred a flood of humanity rushing to escape communism, taking with them the tattered remnants of regimes’ legitimacy. Six months later, the Berlin Wall was breached and governments fell like dominos. On Christmas Day, Romanian soldiers celebrated by lining their dictator and his wife up in front of a stone wall and executing them. Most contemporary governments have more popular support than Soviet Bloc regimes received in the 1980s. But sustained abuses can be an acid drip that eventually topples any government regardless of its purported mandate. More Americans believe in witches, ghosts, and astrology nowadays than trust the federal government. In the Covid-19 era, America is degenerating into a cage keeper democracy, where voters merely select the politicians who place them under house arrest. Expecting liberty to permanently triumph would require rulers to miraculously become selfless if not self-sacrificing. But, as Hayek warned in his essay “Why the Worst Get on Top,” power is a magnet for the dregs of humanity. Faith in the state will continue reviving as long as some people feel entitled to domineer other people. Political action pays a higher premium on deceit than almost any other human activity and thus will remain perilous to everything decent. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” as our forefathers recognized in the nineteenth century. To presume that liberty is inevitable is to absolve oneself from fighting oppression. As soon as people drop the reins on government, politicians will leash the people. Rather than hoping for an “end of history” triumph, people must battle forever to defend their rights. As long as individuals continue to defy oppressors, the seeds of resistance will produce bountiful harvests of freedom in better times.

Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here. Keep up to date with our latest: Niall Ferguson holds a PhD in philosophy from Oxford, taught history at Harvard and NYU, and wrote perhaps the definitive biography of Henry Kissinger. So, naturally, Bloomberg hired him to write on economics. His most recent column for Bloomberg is a strained mix of the Scot’s views on inflation, tempered slightly by a welcome skepticism toward Jerome Powell’s dismissal of the threat. Ferguson is still gun-shy from an exchange with Paul Krugman back in 2010 over inflation, but he’s at least willing to challenge Powell’s unwarranted reassurances. Yet as Ferguson wends his way through an examination of yields curves and velocity, and the “breakeven” inflation rate, readers get the strong impression he’s offering nothing more than a crapshoot designed to show off his historical knowledge. Nowhere is economic theory offered, considered, or even excused for its absence. The whole mess of an article is a shining example of Rothbard’s law, whereby people specialize in the very things in which they are least qualified or knowledgeable. Now, Ferguson is admittedly a brilliant and charming person, the kind of intellectual Georgetown likes. And he is not required to stay in his lane, as they say, either as an historian or otherwise. But his elevation to economic soothsayer, particularly in the incoherent nonfield of macroeconomics, does neither him nor readers any good. In short, almost all economics journalism lacks any foundation in economic theory. It is mostly “business” writing and business reporting, focused almost entirely on economic data—simply the aggregated and narrowly focused recent results of corporate performance, along with untrustworthy measures of inflation, unemployment, and GDP. The financial press gives us the what, when we need the how and why. The wholly observable “what” is presumed to provide both explanatory and predictive value. To be fair, as mentioned, Ferguson does weave some history of previous inflationary periods into his article. He also injects a bit of boilerplate theory in his opening quote from Milton Friedman on inflation as a monetary phenomenon. But does Mr. Ferguson think an analysis of inflation begins in 1970 with Milton Friedman? He would be well advised to consider the wisdom of Henry Hazlitt, a journalist who truly knew economics and spent more than twenty years documenting postwar inflation as an express policy in his famous Business Tides column at Newsweek. Does Ferguson have any conception of the Cantillon effect, or of Austrian business cycle theory—even if only to attempt a refutation? Does he have any feel for the enormous distortions caused by rapid expansion of money and credit, the misallocation of resources? For the gross income and wealth inequality that central bank machinations leave behind, like blood at a crime scene? Though he is an historian by trade, one immediately realizes that for Ferguson this story is all about data. The “numbers” will tell us whether Chairman Powell’s latest gambits will work. What Ferguson cannot or will not answer are the fundamental questions: Why is some inflation good, but not too much? Why is 2 percent beneficial, but 10 percent clearly harmful? And why is deflation per se bad, without explanation? Why does “everyone know” it’s bad, without the same analysis given to inflation? In fact, deflation remains almost comically misunderstood among economists. Deflation is a salutary force in any society, one which makes once luxurious goods and services widely available to average people. Like recessions, deflation is the needed corrective to the central bank and fiscal interventions which caused higher prices in the first place. Rather than a bogeyman, deflation is the natural and expected process when an economy becomes more productive. The legendary James Grant even describes deflation as the process by which societies get richer. But Ferguson, like most financial journalists, is stuck in the world of “everyone knows.” Like all positivists, he holds a set of assumptions which can be proven away by the next downturn. As such he has the process of economic analysis completely backwards, meaning he starts from data and then attempts to reverse engineer an explanation. He cannot for a moment consider ideas or thinkers on the margin, but only the views of mainstream voices like Larry Summers and Lael Brainard. He can’t get out of his own way, because he lacks any baseline of economic theory to analyze the pronouncements and the statistics. Economic journalism needs a reset. There are good economists writing about finance and economics, but Niall Ferguson is not one of them. Ferguson, however, is merely a symptom of the greater problem—namely the gross lack of knowledge of economic theory among people who write professionally about markets. Bloomberg would do well to jettison Ferguson and offer its biweekly column to James Grant, or perhaps the outstanding John Tamny of RealClearMarkets. Gene Epstein, retired from Barron’s, would be an excellent contrarian voice. Austrians like Robert Murphy or Per Bylund also come to mind, as both excel at writing for lay audiences and both would provide sorely needed intellectual diversity in a sea of (faintly) Keynesian orthodoxy. Economic commentary without theoretical understanding brings to mind Rothbard’s metaphor of a behaviorist trying to explain the hustle and bustle of Grand Central Station without knowing about the trains and destinations. As it turns out, dismissing theory to understand “how the world really works” only leads us to understand it less.

Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here. Keep up to date with our latest: Reflecting on the current crisis unfolding on the US-Mexico border, Democrat Joe Biden’s ‘open borders agenda’ has been slammed by former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Tom Homan. The current US President “sold out” America to progressives in order to be elected, claimed Homan in an interview on Fox News’ “Life, Liberty & Levin” that aired on Sunday. When the host, Mark Levin, suggested that the strategy of the Biden administration in dealing with the overwhelming surge of migrants at the US-Mexico border was to “overwhelm the system, break the system, then blame the system and take control,” the ex-government official who is currently a Fox News contributor voiced agreement. “You’re correct. The Biden administration is still trying to blame President Trump for what’s going on the border right now. They’re ignoring the fact that — I don’t care if you love President Trump or hate him — you cannot deny the fact that he gave us the most secure border in my career, which is almost thirty-five years,” Homan responded. The acting immigration enforcer under then-president Donald Trump, who testified to Congress in 2017 that undocumented immigrants “should be afraid” and “you can’t be part of this country and not respect its laws”, added: “I started in 1984 as a Border Patrol agent. I spent my entire career on border enforcement, immigration enforcement, and President Trump got it right. He had unprecedented success on that border.” Homan praised Donald Trump for having “understood that 90 percent of the Central Americans that come to our border to claim asylum never get relief from US courts. They simply don’t qualify. That data’s easily available on the Department of Justice website; anybody can look at it”. As for President Joe Biden, who campaigned on an agenda seeking to undo much of his predecessor’s tough migration policies, Homan expressed doubt that President Biden or [DHS Secretary] Alejandro Mayorkas had looked at the data. “… because if they did, then they’re facilitating immigration fraud on the border,” said Homan. ‘ICE Decapitated’ Tom Homan recalled the efforts that had been made during ex-president Barack Obama’s second term, when Joe Biden was vice president and Mayorkas was deputy homeland security secretary. “… We built detention facilities, thousands of them. We held people long enough to see a judge. We let ICE remove them and we took away the enticements,” said the former official. Now, according to him, “Joe Biden has sold out this country to the progressive left to win an election… He’s a different person … Alejandro Mayorkas is a different person.” Deploring the current changes to the immigration policies, Homan pointed out that migrants detained at the border were being released “as soon as they can, within three days. ICE has been decapitated. They lost 90% of their authority. They’re not executing judges’ orders, and we keep throwing out more enticements.” Summing up the border situation, which the current White House administration still persists in referring to as a “challenge” and not a “crisis”, Homan said: “This isn’t incompetence. This is by design. This is an open borders agenda that we all knew was coming.” ‘National Disaster’ Former President Donald Trump weighed in on the enormous influx of illegal immigrants, including unaccompanied children, crossing the US border with Mexico, in a statement shared by his ex-press secretary Sean Spicer on Sunday. Statement from President Trump on the situation on the border as well his thoughts on @DHSgov Secretary Mayorkas #BorderCrisis #Border pic.twitter.com/8LQ3V4NHhY — Sean Spicer (@seanspicer) March 21, 2021 As he urged the Biden administration to immediately resume construction of the wall on the US-Mexico border, which had been brought to a halt by the Democratic president’s new team in the White House, he said: “We proudly handed the Biden Administration the most secure border in history. All they had to do was keep this smooth-running system on autopilot.” He decried the fact that “in the span of a just few weeks, the Biden Administration has turned a national triumph into a national disaster”. After he assumed the Oval Office in January, President Joe Biden acted on his campaign promises and signed a number of decrees, including softening the country’s migration legislation. One of the first orders was the cancellation of the state of emergency imposed by Trump in connection with the situation on the US-Mexican border, which had made it possible to finance the construction of the wall, bypassing Congress’ approval. Dire Border Situation This comes as Fox News confirmed on Sunday that in an unprecedented move, Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector (RGV) had started processing and releasing illegal border crossers who claim asylum without issuing a Notice to Appear (NTA). As they reportedly forgo the hours-long process of paperwork required to issue an NTA amid the surge of migrants at the border, the migrants are allowed to depart custody without a court date for a hearing scheduled, the outlet reported. The controversial move comes as the ongoing crisis on the border has “become so dire that BP [Border Patrol] has no choice but to release people nearly immediately after apprehension,” a senior source with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) told Fox News on Saturday. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) chief Alejandro Mayorkas acknowledged last week that border crossings were on track to be the highest registered in 20 years, with the CBP announcing that over 100,000 migrants were apprehended at the border in February. Data from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shows 9,457 unaccompanied migrant children were apprehended at the southern border in February – a substantial surge from the 5,858 unaccompanied migrant children apprehended in January. Migrants from across the world are accepting the Biden administration’s invitation to flood the southern border.

Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here. The Biden administration has announced that it will nationalize an estimated $1 billion in student debt without action by Congress or President Joe Biden by using a little-understood program called Borrower Defense to Repayment. This price tag applies only to the claims already adjudicated, many of which were found to be entitled to partial relief. Those borrowers who previously received partial relief will now have the rest of their loans canceled, and they may receive refunds for any student loan payments they have already made. Borrower Defense to Repayment, commonly called Borrower Defense, was created at the tail end of the Obama administration ostensibly to protect borrowers from schools that misrepresented themselves to potential students, perhaps about their future earnings, odds of passing a licensing exam, where their credits may transfer, or their post-graduation job prospects. The program allowed borrowers who were lied to by their schools to file a Borrower Defense claim that may entitle them to student debt relief. The Obama administration moved to create a rule that would leave the door wide open for borrowers to have their loans nationalized, even if they were not misled and did not suffer harm. The Trump administration raised the bar for loan relief substantially by requiring borrowers to demonstrate that they had suffered actual financial harm. The Trump administration’s final rule included: “Requir[ing] a borrower applying for a borrower defense to repayment loan discharge to supply documentation that affirms the financial harm to the borrower is not the result of the borrower’s workplace performance, disqualification for a job for reasons unrelated to the education received, or a personal decision to work less than full-time or not at all.” Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos created a methodology that allowed for partial relief, with harm suffered being measured based on how much a claimant earns compared to graduates from similar programs. If a borrower earns as much or more as the median graduate of similar programs, under the DeVos methodology, that borrower would not be entitled to relief. This methodology was estimated by the Department of Education to save taxpayers $1.1 billion over a 10-year span, while still providing full relief to students who received an education that was unsatisfactory. If a borrower earns just under the median income of their cohort, they may be entitled to have 25 percent of the loan amount canceled. Depending on how little a borrower earns, they could be entitled to 50 percent or 75 percent loan relief; if they earn less than two standard deviations from the median income in their cohort, he may be entitled to 100 percent loan relief. Biden Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on Thursday replaced that methodology with an all-or-nothing system that grants 100 percent relief to any borrower with a valid borrower defense claim. In other words, borrowers whose earnings place them in the 49th percentile of earners in their cohort would have their loans paid for by taxpayers. As the new methodology is used to process new Borrower Defense to Repayment claims, the cost to taxpayers is likely to climb exponentially higher. The Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication. Migrants from across the world are accepting the Biden administration’s invitation to flood the southern border.

Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here. Keep up to date with our latest: The trend of Bitcoin ATMs has already started in some delis and gas stations in places like Montana, the Carolinas and New York City. Companies like CoinFlip and Coin Cloud have installed “thousands” of the ATMs across the country, according to Reuters. Coin Cloud has 1,470 machines around the United States and is aiming for 10,000 by the end of 2021. Quad Coin founder Mark Shoiket said: “I just assumed there was demand and people wanted bitcoin everywhere.” He just recently flew to Montana to find 7 new places to install bitcoin ATMs, including a local vape shop. There’s currently 28,185 bitcoin ATMs in the United States. About 10,000 of those have popped up over the last 5 months, the report notes. Some people use the ATMs because they sometimes feel more comfortable interacting with a physical machine, while others do it for anonymity purposes. Fees can range from 6% up to 20% of a total transaction. There’s now Bitcoin ATMs in every state except Alaska. 51 year old Pittsburgh resident Rebecca White said: “When we do our grocery shopping and we have $60 left, I will stop at the bitcoin ATM.” Pamela Clegg, director of financial investigations and education at cryptocurrency compliance firm CipherTrace, said: “The growth of the ATM market – it is not even a gentle increase, it is almost a 45% increase. The growth is quite astonishing.” But regulators have been watching the pop-up of the machines closely. The New Jersey State Commission of Investigation, for example, recently published a report called “Scams, Suspicious Transactions and Questionable Practices at Cryptocurrency Kiosks.” Coin Cloud CEO Chris McAlary said: “We expected the worst as Covid hit, but stimulus payments came out and that helped quite a bit. Some people took stimulus and bought digital currency with it.” CoinFlip CEO Daniel Polotsky said: “There are people who don’t have bank accounts or don’t like to use them.” Bitcoin Depot, from Atlanta, has also grown its number of ATMs from 500 to more than 1,800 in the past year. Customers are mostly “25-40 years old”. General Bytes, a Bitcoin ATM manufacturer, said that demand “soared” and the company ran out of stock last year. They sold 3,000 machines last year. 90% of those machines went to North America, the report says. Migrants from across the world are accepting the Biden administration’s invitation to flood the southern border.

Keep up to date with our latest: Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here.

Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here. Keep up to date with our latest: President Trump issued a statement Sunday slamming the Biden administration and particularly the Department of Homeland Security for allowing the situation at the border to spiral out of control while simultaneously instituting a cover up by denying press access. As we reported last week, the immigration crisis on the border is worsening every day, and reporters have demanded to know why they have not been given any access to facilities housing migrants, and why border officials have effectively been placed under a gag order, as reported by NBC News. Trump declared Sunday “We proudly handed the Biden Administration the most secure border in history. All they had to do was keep this smooth-running system on autopilot.” Trump releases statement on latest developments in border crisis: pic.twitter.com/G2qHsxTgZI — Byron York (@ByronYork) March 21, 2021 “Instead, in the span of a just few weeks, the Biden Administration has turned a national triumph into a national disaster. They are in way over their heads and taking on water fast,” Trump’s statement continues. The world heard the call of President Biden that the borders would be open for them, and they heeded the call, all coming through Mexico. The 45th President also addressed the “pathetic, clueless performance of [DHS] Secretary Mayorkas on the Sunday Shows”. “His self-satisfied presentation—in the middle of the massive crisis he helped engineer—is yet more proof he is incapable of leading DHS,” Trump urged. “Even someone of Mayorkas’ limited abilities should understand that if you provide Catch-and-Release to the world’s illegal aliens then the whole world will come,” Trump further emphasised. Mayorkas appeared on practically every news channel Sunday attempting to gloss over the massive humanitarian crisis that has emerged in under one month at the border, and to deny there is any ‘gag order’. The DHS head was repeatedly called out by news anchors who usually only throw softball questions without challenging the responses: ABC Raddatz fact checks DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas: the Biden administration was warned of crisis, migrants cite Biden’s policy changeshttps://t.co/BOYiOJskjz pic.twitter.com/jR4IiI4JTS — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 21, 2021 NBC News' Chuck Todd fact checks DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas after he claims that border is secure amid the crisishttps://t.co/SxVKHPfu6F pic.twitter.com/5Q804gi1Qg — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 21, 2021 Fox News’ Chris Wallace calls out DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for Biden’s media blackout on the border crisishttps://t.co/ddP6LzmV8l pic.twitter.com/QgGYlzYCJt — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 21, 2021 CNN’s Bash confronts DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on border-state Democrats saying Biden has fueled the crisishttps://t.co/Rzbmp9mtnz pic.twitter.com/EqXCaNlXdt — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 21, 2021 CNN’s Pamela Brown reports “as the situation at the US-Mexico border gets worse, the media is being kept from it”https://t.co/aQNE02RH7X pic.twitter.com/FVUm2IfyE2 — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 21, 2021 In his statement, Trump also addressed the silencing of the border agents and the press, noting “Mayorkas Gag Order on our Nation’s heroic border agents and ICE officers should be the subject of an immediate congressional investigation. But it’s clear they are engaged in a huge cover-up to hide just how bad things truly are.” Trump further proclaimed that “The only way to end the Biden Border Crisis is for them to admit their total failure and adopt the profoundly effective, proven Trump policies.” He concluded “They must immediately complete the wall, which can be done in a matter of weeks—they should never have stopped it. They are causing death and human tragedy. In addition to the obvious, drugs are pouring into our country at record levels from the Southern Border, not to mention human and sex trafficking.” “This Administration’s reckless policies are enabling and encouraging crimes against humanity. Our Country is being destroyed!” Trump urged.

Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here. Senator Rand Paul appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show Friday night and recounted a run-in he had with a particularly vociferous ‘Karen’ who reported him to the management for using the running machine without a face mask. “I was on the treadmill the other day and some Karen goes and tells the people ‘He’s on a treadmill; he’s running without a mask’ Paul told the Fox News host. “Is this the world we’re going to live in, where everybody’s reporting everyone and the Gestapo’s going to come [and] arrest you?” the Senator questioned. Arguing that the burden of proof regarding masks should be on the government, Paul continued, “One thing about freedom is, freedom doesn’t have to be practical or have a study to say why you should have to have freedom. They need to have a study and a scientific proof to show us why we shouldn’t have freedom. I shouldn’t have to prove that I want to be free and I want to be left alone and I want to breathe the air.” Watch: Elsewhere in the interview, Paul commented on his exchange with Anthony Fauci earlier last week when he accused Fauci of engaging in ‘theater’ by wearing two masks. “There was Dr. Fauci’s opinion, his conjecture that someday there might be a [COVID-19] variant that escapes the control of the vaccine and becomes a pandemic and hospitalizes and kills people — but there’s no evidence that it has happened. He thinks it might happen, so you need to wear the mask until he’s sure that things that might happen are not going to happen,” Paul said. He added, “There are no news reports and no scientific studies saying that after vaccination that there is some sort of widespread contagion that people vaccinated are spreading the disease.” The Senator further noted “What Fauci won’t tell you is that he’s telling you a noble lie. He’s lying to you because he doesn’t think we’re smart enough to make decisions. His fear is, if the vaccinated quit wearing the mask, the unvaccinated will say, ‘What the hell, I’m not wearing a mask either.’”

Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here. Keep up to date with our latest: President Joe Biden told reporters Sunday he would visit the Southern border “at some point,” appearing unwilling to commit to the idea soon. “At some point, I will, yes,” Biden replied when a reporter asked if he would visit the border. EXCLUSIVE: @GStephanopoulos presses Pres. Biden on the border crisis. "Do you have to say quite clearly, 'Don't come'? Biden: "Yes, I can say quite clearly: Don't come over…Don’t leave your town or city or community." https://t.co/zFJaRXjCI8 pic.twitter.com/osZKR64ypq — ABC News (@ABC) March 17, 2021 Biden spoke to reporters as he returned from his weekend trip to Camp David. When asked if he would visit some of the detention facilities for migrants personally, Biden replied, “I know what’s going on in those facilities.” One reporter asked Biden why his message urging migrants not to come from the United States was not working. Biden said he and his administration were working to handle the dramatic surge at the border. Read more Owen Shroyer breaks down how even the mainstream media is distancing itself from Joe Biden as his de facto open-border policy has quickly resulted in a historic border crisis, with border patrol begging for help as tens of thousands of migrant children surge across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here. When your actual passport – the one and only, for most people – a super serious piece of document issued by an actual government, based on hard facts like your nationality, place of birth, or long-term place of residence, is no longer enough to allow you to cross borders – what’s happening? Usually, it’s because there’s a war. Any “boost” will help for sure – that sounds silly, but some people, and it’s no joke, will rely on a US supermarket chain to “boost their credentials” in this area. Apparently, in the US, the serious business of administering the rushed-to-market Covid vaccines is also being done in Walmart and Sam’s Club stores. But that’s not all folks – now these retail establishments will be allowed to issue Covid “passports” of their own, verifying that the person with their app on their smartphone is eligible to board a plane out of Dodge – or if they must stay, enter school premises. From the look of it, it’s bad news: Walmart is joining the likes of Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle, and the Mayo Clinic to become “a verified verifier” of Covid-free people. Jack Hadfield joins with Tom Pappert to discuss his new project and the insight he’s learned following this covered up illegal immigration nightmare in Europe. It seems like a whole industry is growing around these “Covid passports” now. What they’re counting on is that millions will want that summer vacation, and will sign on to whatever’s on offer, whether it ends up working or not. And there’s reason to worry. Four months into the first Covid vaccines being administered, countries and regions are getting freshly locked down with an increase in the daily numbers of coronavirus cases. Read more

A Fredericksburg, Virginia restaurant owner who scrapped a state mask mandate has defeated the Northam Administration in court, successfully defending both his business and the freedom of choice after refusing to back down amidst health department efforts to shutter his business. Judge Ricardo Rigual denied the state’s request to force the immediate and permanent closure of the Gourmeltz restaurant, writing that the state “has failed to clearly demonstrate the factors necessary to grant a temporary injunction,” nor has it demonstrated that Gourmeltz poses any actual threat to the general public. While the case may yet be brought to trial, the restaurant’s doors will stay open in the meantime, dealing a strong blow to the efforts of the Northam Administration’s shutdown agents. As previously reported by National File, Gourmeltz owner Matt Strickland refused to back down from big government as he vowed to fight for his business against the state, raising over $9,000 for his legal defense and hiring former GOP Congressman Bob Barr of Georgia as his attorney. It took Matt Strickland, a Marine Corps veteran of the War on Terror, five years to build his business up from a food truck to a popular brick and mortar eatery. Now, after scrapping Governor Northam’s mask mandate and giving his employees and customers alike the freedom of choice, he is at risk of losing his hard work as he prepares to fight for his livelihood in court against his own government. Recent events concerning the current version of the President of the United States make the chaos at the border actually seem secondary. Now, that Biden’s homage to Gerald Ford and Hillary Clinton is begging for deeper analysis. Regardless that there was a blanketed media blackout by the leftist media. There’s cautious and then there is the Gold Medal performance of the Air Force One Olympic Event that 78 year old brain surgery survivor Biden, the leader of the dwindling free world,pulled off. “I’m not afraid of the state, I’m not afraid of the federal government,” Strickland says. “I spent most of my adult life fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have no problem coming home and fighting here in Virginia.” Though his permit was revoked by the health department a month ago, Strickland has refused to close his doors. When blackface donning Attorney General Mark Herring decided to make an example of him, he hired former GOP Congressman Bob Barr of Georgia to represent him in court and raised over $9,000 for his defense. “We are pleased with the judge’s ruling and happy for our client,” one of Strickland’s attorneys, Martha Norton told local reporters. “We look forward to having the merits of the case resolved in a full trial.” “This is a HUGE win!,” read a post from the Gourmeltz Facebook account, thanking but also reminding supporters of looming court fights in the near future and once again vowing to never back down, and to continue to fight for the spirit of America. “We will continue to stand for Old Glory and what she represents to all of us. As these so-called ‘leaders’ continue to try and chip away at our rights & freedoms, we will continue to stand for them. We’ll stand for them knowing all of you are standing with us!”

Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here. Training on “extremism” is needed to re-educate troops who see the “Capitol riot” and last year’s Black Lives Matter “protests” as similar, according to the Pentagon. From Military.com, “Some Troops See Capitol Riot, BLM Protests as Similar Threats, Top Enlisted Leader Says”: Some troops have drawn equivalencies between the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and last year’s protests for racial justice during recent stand-downs to address extremism, worrying the military’s top enlisted leader. In a Thursday briefing with reporters at the Pentagon, Ramón “CZ” Colón-López, the senior enlisted adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that some troops have asked, when the Jan. 6 riot is brought up, “How come you’re not looking at the situation that was going on in Seattle prior to that?” […] Colón-López said the confusion some younger troops have expressed shows why the training sessions on extremism are needed. […] Those conducting the sessions wanted “to make sure that military members understand the difference between Seattle and [the Jan. 6 riot in] Washington, D.C.,” Colón-López said. “But some of our younger members are confused about this, so that’s what we need to go ahead and talk to them about and educate them on, to make sure that they know exactly what they can and cannot do.” Here’s the difference: – The Capitol “riot” was a mostly peaceful protest where 5 Trump supporters died, including 14-year Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt who was shot in the chest by a Capitol police officer while unarmed. – The BLM riots were the most damaging riots in U.S. history, costing some $2 billion in insurance payouts alone. The police, FBI and military kneeled before the “protesters” in humiliating acts of submission. The media covered-up attacks on their own reporters so they could describe the riots as “peaceful protests.” At least 25 people were killed during the riotsand an unprecedented deadly crime wave followed. Military.com continues: Colón-López also noted the military was called to respond after the Capitol attacks, but was not called up to support law enforcement during the Seattle protests. And he drew a distinction between those who lawfully exercised their First Amendment rights to protest during last summer’s protests in support of racial justice and the Black Lives Matter movement, and those who “latched on” to the protests to loot, destroy property and commit other crimes. But sometimes, he said, younger troops see messages on TV that blur the lines between the two, and “we needed to educate them” on the difference. “No, that’s not what that meant,” Colón-López said. “There were people advocating [against] social injustice, racial injustice and everything else, and it is the right of citizens.” When asked about networks or television personalities popular among service members who have drawn those equivalencies, Colón-López said, “Those are very, very tough conversations to have with people, because sometimes they’re emotional about the subject.” […] Colón-López stressed the refrain commonly heard from top military leaders that the vast majority of troops do not share extremist views. And the military isn’t interested in monitoring troops’ online activities at home, he said. A service member who Googles QAnon, for example, may just want to become educated on the online conspiracy theory movement, he explained. That wouldn’t mean someone necessarily believes in that ideology. But, he noted, the military needs to be watchful of how service members carry themselves while on duty, and what troops’ friends say they are doing. Colón-López said it’s too soon to tell whether extremist organizations are becoming more or less likely to recruit from among the military’s ranks. But, he said, the force is being made aware that such groups are actively recruiting service members, “and we need to make sure that they stand clear from them.” “It’s not good for the department, and it’s not good for the image of the military,” he said. We’re supposed to be grateful that the Pentagram is (allegedly) not spying on our troops’ “online activities” while they’re at home. Cardi B and pepsi kegs are the only answer to calm to the savage beast that is a South Beach drunken street oarty gone wild. How do ideological purges help the image of the military? How does going to war with Tucker Carlson help the image of the military? How does demanding the troops deny what’s right before their eyes help the image of the military?

Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here. Keep up to date with our latest: The spate of attacks on Asians in recent months is the fault of memes shared on Telegram and 4chan even though there’s no evidence proving that’s the case, so says the New York Times. From the New York Times (Archive): How Anti-Asian Activity Online Set the Stage for Real-World Violence On platforms such as Telegram and 4chan, racist memes and posts about Asian-Americans have created fear and dehumanization. By Davey Alba In January, a new group popped up on the messaging app Telegram, named after an Asian slur. Hundreds of people quickly joined. Many members soon began posting caricatures of Asians with exaggerated facial features, memes of Asian people eating dog meat and images of American soldiers inflicting violence during the Vietnam War. This week, after a gunman killed eight people — including six women of Asian descent — at massage parlors in and near Atlanta, the Telegram channel linked to a poll that asked, “Appalled by the recent attacks on Asians?” The top answer, with 84 percent of the vote, was that the violence was “justified retaliation for Covid.” The Telegram group was a sign of how anti-Asian sentiment has flared up in corners of the internet, amplifying racist and xenophobic tropes just as attacks against Asian-Americans have surged. On messaging apps like Telegram and on internet forums like 4chan, anti-Asian groups and discussion threads have been increasingly active since November, especially on far-right message boards such as The Donald, researchers said. The activity follows a rise in anti-Asian misinformation last spring after the coronavirus, which first emerged in China, began spreading around the world. On Facebook and Twitter, people blamed the pandemic on China, with users posting hashtags such as #gobacktochina and #makethecommiechinesepay. Those hashtags spiked when former President Donald J. Trump last year called Covid-19 the “Chinese virus” and “Kung Flu.” A search of Twitter for the hashtag #makethecommiechinesepay shows not one single result before this article came out. A large portion of the results for #GoBackToChina link to a 2019 movie named “Go Back to China” about a “spoiled rich girl” blowing through her trust fund and having to go back to China to work for her family’s toy business. Note, the Telegram channel Alba cites, according to her own claims, had just “hundreds” of followers. Gina Bontempo joins the show to discuss the current media darling topic: the narrative of the world being anti-Asian and how it apparently correlates to white people. The desperation here is remarkable. They’re looking for any excuse they can find to try and get Telegram and 4chan shut down. While some of the online activity tailed off ahead of the November election, its re-emergence has helped lay the groundwork for real-world actions, researchers said. The fatal shootings in Atlanta this week, which have led to an outcry over treatment of Asian-Americans even as the suspect said he was trying to cure a “sexual addiction,” were preceded by a swell of racially motivated attacks against Asian-Americans in places like New York and the San Francisco Bay Area, according to the advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate. They refuse to say who carried out those attacks. “Surges in anti-Asian rhetoric online means increased risk of real-world events targeting that group of people,” said Alex Goldenberg, an analyst at the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University, which tracks misinformation and extremism online. The Network Contagion Research Institute, headed by Joel Finkelstein, says on its website it’s affiliated with the Anti-Defamation League, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and the Charles Koch Foundation — all of whom are lobbying for internet censorship. The ADL is the leading pro-censorship lobby in America. Despite painting all Asians as victims of evil White oppressors, the Times made sure to put Asians in their place — lest they convince themselves they’re at the top of the victim hierarchy: Anti-Asian speech online has typically not been as overt as anti-Semitic or anti-Black groups, memes and posts, researchers said. On Facebook and Twitter, posts expressing anti-Asian sentiments have often been woven into conspiracy theory groups such as QAnon and in white nationalist and pro-Trump enclaves. Mr. Goldenberg said forms of hatred against Black people and Jews have deep roots in extremism in the United States and that the anti-Asian memes and tropes have been more “opportunistically weaponized.” But that does not make the anti-Asian hate speech online less insidious. Sorry Asians, according to Mr. Goldenberg you’re pretty much at the bottom of the victim hierarchy! After the shootings in Atlanta, a doctored screenshot of what looked like a Facebook post from the suspect circulated on Facebook and Twitter this week. The post featured a miasma of conspiracies about China engaging in a Covid-19 cover-up and wild theories about how it was planning to “secure global domination for the 21st century.” Facebook and Twitter eventually ruled that the screenshot was fake and blocked it. But by then, the post had been shared and liked hundreds of times on Twitter and more than 4,000 times on Facebook. This is the screenshot: Facebook confirms this screenshot is a fake, and it is removing it from the platform for violating its policies. https://t.co/WA4UjgrNo6 pic.twitter.com/vKOcxQ34Qv — Davey Alba (@daveyalba) March 17, 2021 The Times failed to mention it was shared all over the place by leftists who wanted to try and link the shooting to their political enemies.

Have an important tip? Let us know. Email us here. Dr. Anthony Fauci is coming off a year of unprecedented media fawning, awards and political praise, but his latest honor – a children’s book that bestows him the title “America’s doctor” – may push his star even higher. Simon & Schuster plans to publish a picture book biography of Fauci, titled ‘Dr. Fauci: How a Boy From Brooklyn Became America’s Doctor,’ with the release scheduled for June 29. Mainstream media promotion of the book has already kicked off. “Here’s a little bit of a reveal,” CNN host Brian Stelter said on his show on Sunday. “Simon & Schuster is actually publishing a children’s book about Dr. Fauci… That tells you something about media when Fauci gets his own children’s book.” Exciting morning here – @CNN's @brianstelter just revealed the cover for DR: FAUCI: HOW A BOY FROM BROOKLYN BECAME AMERICA'S DOCTOR on @ReliableSources! (Coming 6/29 from @simonschuster & available for pre-order today – https://t.co/f8OxdyPeTf) pic.twitter.com/0rasv2s7Np — katemessner (@KateMessner) March 21, 2021 Indeed, mainstream media helped make Fauci a national hero by heaping praise on him and interviewing him frequently on Covid-19 to help paint Donald Trump as the villain of the pandemic, even though the former president largely followed his advice. It's cover reveal day for DR. FAUCI: HOW A BOY FROM BROOKLYN BECAME AMERICA'S DOCTOR! I'm so excited to share Alexandra Bye's amazing cover art for our picture book biography – out 6/29 from @SimonKIDS. Available for pre-order now: https://t.co/f8OxdyPeTf pic.twitter.com/xyF195JNHO — katemessner (@KateMessner) March 21, 2021 Fauci’s 80th birthday last December was such a political occasion that it was named Dr. Anthony Fauci day in Washington, DC, and he was serenaded on social media by Joe and Jill Biden. Happy Birthday Dr. Fauci 💕 pic.twitter.com/fhdVvtHvvy — Dr. Jill Biden (@DrBiden) December 24, 2020 Given the cancel mob’s partially successful campaign to cancel Dr. Seuss in recent weeks, perhaps children’s literature needed a new ‘medical hero’. But technically, this won’t even be the first children’s book about Fauci. He’s also the star of ‘Doctor Fauci Is Never Grouchy!’ That tribute to Fauci was self-published by its author, so the new biography marks the doctor’s breakthrough with one of America’s big-name publishers. Ironically, Simon & Schuster is the same publisher that canceled Senator Josh Hawley’s book after the Missouri Republican voted to block certification of President Biden’s election victory. Hawley called the decision an “Orwellian” assault on free speech. Simon & Schuster previously published anti-Trump bestsellers by Mary Trump and former National Security Adviser John Bolton. The pandemic and the media’s use of Fauci as a political tool made the doctor one of the most hyped government employees in recent memory. Other Fauci merchandising has included prayer candles, bobblehead dolls, Christmas ornaments and, of course, masks. There are mugs and T-shirts, a WWFD (what would Fauci do?) bumper sticker and “In Fauci We Trust” socks. He was chosen last July to throw out the first pitch on Opening Day for the Washington Nationals baseball team. While Trump was blamed for killing 400,000 Americans, Fauci was given several awards and named by Time magazine as one of the most influential people of 2020. He has his own Twitter fan club. Fauci was awarded the $1 million Israeli prize for “speaking truth to power.” He also got a lifetime achievement award for fighting the AIDS crisis. Fauci has already made strides to raise his profile among children. He went on CNN’s Sesame Street Special in December to assure children that they shouldn’t worry because he had flown to the North Pole to give Santa Claus a Covid-19 vaccine. Just a few weeks earlier, he told children that Santa wouldn’t need inoculation because of his “innate immunity” – one of his many flipflops on pandemic advice. Migrants from across the world are accepting the Biden administration’s invitation to flood the southern border.

James O’Keefe of Project Veritas released photographs Monday from inside a border facility in Texas where migrant children are being held — and taunted the White House as he did so, for denying the media access to such facilities for weeks. As Breitbart News has reported, President Joe Biden and his administration have denied the media access to border facilities even during tours by senior administration officials, even restricting officials from sharing information with reporters. In 2014, Breitbart News broke the story of children being held in Border Patrol facilities, which was the first report on the crisis of unaccompanied minors arriving at the southern border. On Monday morning, Axios released the first photographs from the present wave, noting that the photographs came from Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX). That apparently prompted O’Keefe to release his own photographs and video footage, which he did on social media and at the Project Veritas website. BREAKING: Project Veritas Obtains Horrifying NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN Images From Within Donna, TX Immigrant Detention Center; THOUSANDS of Illegal Immigrants PACKED Into Tight Spaces And Wrapped In Space Blankets On Floor; Insider: '50+ COVID Positive'#BidenBorderCrisis pic.twitter.com/mXQM6YbttJ — James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) March 22, 2021 As he did so, O’Keefe called out White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki, who has repeatedly deflected questions from the media about when journalists would be allowed to visit the border facilities to see the conditions for themselves. Last Thursday, Psaki continued to claim that “the White House and we all in the administration support finding a way to grant access to the media,” but declined to do so, even as she continued to defend Biden’s commitment to transparency. Why did Project Veritas have to do your job @PressSec? Did the public not have a right to know? #BidenBorderCrisis pic.twitter.com/mXQM6YbttJ — James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) March 22, 2021 These photos were taken within the last few days. There are eight pods with eight cells each in the facility. At any given moment there are an average of 3,000 people in custody here. The illegal immigrants are separated by age or physical size depending on room. pic.twitter.com/kFmZgTG2Iv — James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) March 22, 2021 As recently as Sunday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was claiming that the reason the media had not yet been allowed to tour the migrant facilities was because of concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. Both the Trump administration and the Obama administration had allowed the media access to the migrant facilities. The media and the Democratic Party opposition cited the facilities in condemning Trump’s “zero tolerance” border policy. Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book is How Not to Be a Sh!thole Country: Lessons from South Africa. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

National Guard troops should be redeployed from protecting politicians against non-existent threats in Washington, D.C., to the U.S.-Mexico border, said Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC) on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Sunday with host Joel Pollak. Murphy introduced legislation — the Guard Our Border Act — last Tuesday to reassign 95 percent of national guardsmen currently deployed in the national capital to the southern border. Democrats and the broader left regularly claim the existence of a “domestic terrorist” threat against them driven by conservative politics and “white supremacy.” They have framed the deployment of national guard troops to Washington, D.C., as a “security” response to the so-called “insurrection” on January 6. Murphy said, “Nancy Pelosi and her crew have built a fortress around Washington, D.C., for no reason whatsoever. The Capitol Police have said there are no credible threats, but unfortunately now we still have ten feet of razor wire. … We have 2,200 national guard that are standing out in the cold and the rain guarding us against something that doesn’t exist.” He continued, “But at the same time, several thousand miles away, we have a crisis at our southern border because Biden said, basically, open up the doors, come on in, we’re going to bring you in — and then now, as of last week — we’re going to offer you amnesty. The Border Patrol is being overrun, facilities are over capacity, and it’s a crisis at our border.” LISTEN: He remarked, “Why don’t we do something that’s actually smart? Why don’t we take the National Guard that are stationed around Washington, D.C., guarding nothing, and take them down to our southern border where they’re actually attending to a crisis, and I don’t care what Biden says [or] doesn’t say, or what his administration accidentally says, it is a crisis of humanitarian proportions. This is why we use our National Guard, so let’s relocate the ones that are in Washington, D.C., take down the razor wire, and move them down to our southern border.” “The National Guard was founded with the idea of responding to national emergencies, national crises, and that’s what they’ve done, historically, when there are floods, hurricanes, et cetera,” Murphy added. Murphy remarked, “We spent, by all accounts, over half a billion dollars so far in Washington, D.C., guarding something that doesn’t need to be guarded. … We’re spending that money to keep up Pelosi’s perpetual wall and instead of down at the border, where we should be actually putting in policies that make sense.” Transnational criminal cartels are beneficiaries of President Joe Biden’s policies towards border security and immigration, Murphy noted. “The real winners at our southern border the drug cartels,” he said. “They’re pushing so much more drugs across our borders, now because our border [and] customs folks are overblown. They can’t handle this. [Drug cartels] are pushing cash, they’re pushing human trafficking to an extent we haven’t seen before, and reports are that up to a third of the women coming across in the border have been abused.” “These are people — and their children, especially, the unaccompanied minors — they’re going to be sold into what is essentially slavery in return for safe passage here in the United States,” he added. Pollak asked if the Biden administration’s tacit acceptance of illegal immigration is part of a broader strategy to change American demographics for partisan political advantage. “I don’t think [that is] conjecture,” Murphy replied. “I think it’s reality. I think they’re definitely planning on that.” Murphy contrasted the Biden administration’s contradictory public health policies applied against Americans with those of migrants seeking entry to the U.S. across the southern border. “If you fly into this country, you have to have a negative COVID [coronavirus] test, but to run over our borders, we don’t even care,” Murphy stated. “What a contradiction in terms, and so the people here [in North Carolina’s 3rd District] are outraged, as everybody in America should be.” Murphy concluded, “We’re providing free health care, we’re providing housing, we’re doing all these things for people [illegally entering the country], and now we’re putting folks to come into the border illegally up in hotels. Taxpayer dollars — millions — will be spent for that, so appropriately, they are outraged.”

Queen Elizabeth II is reportedly considering the appointment of a “diversity chief” following claims of racism within Britain’s Royal Family from the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle. The Queen is said to be looking at a range of woke proposals to increase the representation of so-called marginalised groups, such as ethnic minorities, the transgendered, and the disabled. The move would potentially empower the diversity chief to oversee operations at Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace, and Clarence House — the official residences of the Queen, the Duke of Cambridge (Prince William), and the Prince of Wales (Prince Charles). The revelation comes in the wake of Meghan and Prince Harry being interviewed by Oprah Winfrey, with Meghan and her husband alleging that a member of the family raised “concerns” over the potential skin colour of their then-unborn son, Archie. A royal source told The Times: “This is an issue which has been taken very seriously across the royal households. We have the policies, the procedures and programmes in place but we haven’t seen the progress we would like and accept more needs to be done… we can always improve. “Therefore we are not afraid to look at new ways of approaching it. The work to do this has been underway for some time now and comes with the full support of the family,” the source added. As to the idea of appointing a diversity chief, the source said: “It is something that has to be considered but it is too early for any firm plans to be announced. We are listening and learning, to get this right.” During her tell-all interview, Meghan also strongly suggested that her son was denied the title of prince out of prejudice. As Breitbart London reported, however, it is royal conventions laid down over a hundred years ago to stem the proliferation of minor royals which mean he is not due the title automatically — although he could be styled as Lord Archie, Earl of Dumbarton, if his parents so chose. Several of the Queen’s other great-grandchildren and even grandchildren have titles below the rank of prince or no titles at all. Thomas Markle Defends British from Allegations of Racism Before Calling Prince Harry ‘Snotty’ https://t.co/ojBlYX3w98 — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 9, 2021 Following the widely publicised interview, Buckingham Palace made an uncharacteristic public statement on the matter, saying that while the allegations of racism were “concerning”, “some recollections may vary”. Separately, Harry’s older brother Prince William said that “We are very much not a racist family.” American TV personality and friend to both the Sussexes and Oprah Winfrey, Gayle King, suggested last week that the woke couple are unhappy over the fact that the media coverage of the interview focussed so strongly on racism. “I think it’s frustrating for them to see that it’s a racial conversation about the Royal family when all they wanted all along was for the royals to intervene and tell the press to stop with the unfair, inaccurate, false stories that definitely have a racial slant. And until you can acknowledge that, I think it’s going to be hard to move forward,” King told CBS. “I think what is still upsetting to them, is that the Palace keeps saying they want to work it out privately, but yet, the false stories are coming out that are disparaging against Meghan still,” she added. King also revealed that Prince Harry had “unproductive” conversations with his brother Prince William, as well as his father, Prince Charles. She claimed that, so far, no-one within the Royal Family has spoken with Markle. Are We Supposed to Care? Woke Millionaires Meghan and Harry Lambasted as Out of Touch https://t.co/ORC8KffYAE — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 8, 2021 Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

Simon & Schuster is publishing a new children’s book that will celebrate the life of Dr. Anthony Fauci by chronicling his Brooklyn upbringing and tracing his medical career to become “America’s doctor.” Dr. Fauci: How a Boy from Brooklyn Became America’s Doctor is set to hit bookshelves June 29. Author Kate Messner unveiled the cover art for the book on Sunday. It's cover reveal day for DR. FAUCI: HOW A BOY FROM BROOKLYN BECAME AMERICA'S DOCTOR! I'm so excited to share Alexandra Bye's amazing cover art for our picture book biography – out 6/29 from @SimonKIDS. Available for pre-order now: https://t.co/f8OxdyPeTf pic.twitter.com/xyF195JNHO — katemessner (@KateMessner) March 21, 2021 The publisher’s official description says the author conducted interviews with Dr. Fauci for the new book: This engaging narrative, which draws from interviews the author did with Dr. Fauci himself, follows Anthony from his Brooklyn beginnings through medical school and his challenging role working with seven US presidents to tackle some of the biggest public health challenges of the past fifty years, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Extensive backmatter rounds out Dr. Fauci’s story with a timeline, recommended reading, a full spread of facts about vaccines and how they work, and Dr. Fauci’s own tips for future scientists. Dr. Fauci, 80, has become a media darling since he began appearing at then-President Donald Trump’s daily coronavirus press briefings last year. He has appeared on the covers of Time and In Style magazines, made the rounds on the late night shows, and is the subject of the upcoming Nat Geo documentary Fauci, which praises him as a “hero.” At the same time, Dr. Fauci, who is the country’s highest paid federal employee, has come under fire for making contradictory statements about masks and pushing devastating economic lockdowns that have done little to stop the spread of the virus. Early in the pandemic, he discouraged people from wearing masks, saying they weren’t effective in stopping the virus. He later changed his position, saying “masks work.” More recently, Dr. Fauci spoke in favor of double masking, saying two masks are more effective than one. But the doctor subsequently backtracked, saying that “there’s no data that indicates that that is going to make a difference.” Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at [email protected]

Bristol was plunged into anarchy on Sunday night, as far-left rioters set fires, vandalised buildings and attacked police officers, as a protest against Home Secretary Priti Patel’s policing bill turned violent. A so-called #KillTheBill protest on Sunday in Bristol saw at least two police officers hospitalised as the leftist protest turned into a riot, with one officer suffering from a broken arm and another from broken ribs. Local news outlet Bristol Live reported that around 5,000 protesters initially gathered in College Green at around 2 p.m., but by 6 p.m. several thousand radical agitators began to surround the Bridwell Police Station. Riot police squared off with the leftist mob, which began hurling makeshift missiles at officers. The leftists burnt police vans, smashed the windows of the station, and scrawled graffiti on the building including the phrase “Fuck the Police”. The chairman of the Avon and Somerset Police Federation, Andy Roebuck said: “This is the worst violence in Bristol for many, many years. “It’s really unprecedented violence. Between four and six or possibly more officers are seriously injured and some have broken bones,” he said, although it is now known that at least 20 officers were injured and 12 police vans destroyed. “No-one had any indication it would erupt this way,” Roebuck added. Far-left rioters take over the police station in Bristol, England. pic.twitter.com/p1zzZJ4lIO — Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) March 21, 2021 The left-wing Labour Party Mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees said that while he understood “the frustrations” about the proposed Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill which was the pretext for Sunday’s riots, “smashing buildings in our city centre, vandalising vehicles, attacking our police will do nothing to lessen the likelihood of the bill going through”. Home Secretary Priti Patel, who is leading the charge to introduce stricter limits on protesters in the United Kingdom, claimed that “thuggery and disorder by a minority will never be tolerated” — although it was in fact tolerated in Bristol last year during a BLM protest which saw a historic statue ripped down while police did nothing. In response to the chaotic scenes, Brexit champion Nigel Farage wrote: “In Bristol tonight we see what the soft-headed approach to the anti-police BLM leads to. Wake up everyone, this is not about racial justice. These people want all-out anarchy and street violence.” “The BLM protests were anti-police, it is a key goal of the organisation. The worrying events in Bristol tonight are an extension of that. We have given into and encouraged the extreme left, and this is the result,” Farage added. In Bristol tonight we see what the soft-headed approach to the anti-police BLM leads to. Wake up everyone, this is not about racial justice. These people want all-out anarchy and street violence. pic.twitter.com/pBXFL5Iy1Z — Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) March 21, 2021 As in the US, rioters in #Bristol, England set dumpsters on fire and used them to block the roads to prevent law enforcement from responding. pic.twitter.com/5YTfIt46Hl — Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) March 22, 2021 The actions taken by the rioters was seemingly excused, however, by the far-left grassroots political organisation Momentum, whose Bristol chapter wrote: “The attack on the police station this evening likely wouldn’t have happened if the police hadn’t acted aggressively, including bringing in dogs.” “Let’s not forget that the police protect a culture of violence against women and other marginalised groups — which has been one trigger behind the outrage the last few weeks,” the Labour-linked group alleged. The South West English port city has as of late become a hotbed for left-wing activism, with Black Lives Matter radicals tearing down the statue of British philanthropist Sir Edward Colston and dumping it in the local harbour in June, as mentioned previously. Superintendent Andy Bennet, who was in charge of the police response during the Colston riot, later received a medal in the New Year Honours. Bennet had excused the inaction of officers by expressing concerns that if the police were to uphold the law it would further inflame the Black Lives Matter radicals. “[T]he right thing to do was just to allow it to happen, because what we did not want is tension,” he wheedled. London mayoral candidate David Kurten remarked: “The criminal violence of the Antifa mob in Bristol yesterday is deplorable, but they should have been dealt with last year when Bristol Police stood back and let far-left Marxists and anarchists run riot.” Bristol Should Be Proud over Destruction of Colston Statue, Says Police Chief https://t.co/FPiXfVmZG9 — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 11, 2020 Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

San Francisco Mayor London Breed and other leading officials are demanding that San Francisco Unified School District Vice President Alison Collins resign over tweets in 2016 in which she accused Asian Americans of being insufficiently critical of President-elect Donald Trump. In a tweet thread barely seen until now (with, at most, several dozen retweets in the chain), Collins complained that Asian American students and teachers would not engage in “critical race” conversations, and were insufficiently concerned about the black community. She also claimed that Asian Americans used “white supremacist thinking to assimilate” and were silent about anti-black racism. “Where are the vocal Asians speaking up against Trump?” she asked, presuming Trump to be anti-black. “Don’t Asian Americans know they are on his list as well?” She added: “Do they think they won’t be deported? profiled? beaten? Being a house n****r is still being a n****r. You’re still considered ‘the help.'” The San Francisco Chronicle reported Sunday: In an unprecedented move, San Francisco’s top elected officials, including the mayor, state legislators and nearly all supervisors, called Saturday for a school board member to resign over racist tweets she posted in 2016 directed at Asian Americans. “We are outraged and sickened by the racist, anti-Asian statements tweeted by school board Vice President Alison Collins that recently came to light,” 22 current and former elected officials said in a statement Saturday. “No matter the time, no matter the place, and no matter how long ago the tweets were written, there is no place for an elected leader in San Francisco who is creating and or/created hate statements and speeches.”

Most GOP senators are dodging the Democrats’ efforts to seduce them into joining very unpopular amnesty bills by citing President Joe Biden’s border meltdown, according to Politico. “Many of us support giving a path to citizenship,” to younger illegal migrants, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), told Politico. “But now the border is such a disaster that I don’t see how you can do just a bill to deal with [that],” she said March 18. Politico accepts the border rationale for the GOP evasiveness — and ignores the huge unpopularity of wage-cutting amnesty bills even if the border is under control. In 2014, GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) made that mistake and lost his seat in a surprise primary defeat. The March 19 Politico report cited other GOP senators’ claim that Biden’s border problem precludes amnesty deals: “There’s no scenario I would support even what we called the SUCCEED Act, which was a path to citizenship for the [Dreamers], without it being paired with border security,” [Sen. Thom] Tillis said, referring to the conservative alternative to the DREAM Act that he had endorsed. … “I’m in the bipartisan group, but we haven’t touched it,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). “There’s a problem that needs to be fixed, but I don’t think we’re anywhere near stepping up to it right now.” … “The concern is, as soon as you bring something up to even start discussing it [an amnesty], you’re going to get a surge,” [Sen. James] Lankford said. “So if you’re not ready to really do it, you shouldn’t play with that. I don’t hear us ready to do it.” Establishment GOP senators have an incentive to hide behind Biden’s mismanagement at the border — it allows them to dodge incompatible and competing demands by voters and business donors, either to block or approve amnesties and migration expansion bills. By talking about the border, the reporters and GOP senators can also jointly ignore the central question — whether migration and amnesty are good for working Americans’ pocketbooks. Democrat senators need ten GOP senators to overcome the 60-vote threshold for scheduling votes in the Senate. So far, only two GOP senators have attached their names to bills that would amnesty illegal aliens and import even more workers for the jobs needed by Americans. The zig-zag strategy is also useful because the GOP senators know that immigrant voters cost them their Senate majority in the January 2021 Senate races in Georgia. Any further amnesties will likely push the GOP — and their careers — into long-term political irrelevance and also push the smaller Red states into political oblivion. The main GOP supporter for amnesty, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), says deals are off the table until Biden recovers control of the border. “We find ourselves in a situation where there is no way forward until you control the border,” Graham told a pro-amnesty March 17 press conference on Capitol Hill. He continued: The Biden administration has created chaos where there was order [under former President Donald Trump]. And the only way we’ll ever be able to sit down with our Democratic colleagues is for us to regain control of the border, and I want to say without any hesitation, Biden has lost control of the U.S. Mexican border. Until he regains control by implementing policies that work, it’s going to be very hard to do the [DACA young illegal aliens] “dreamers” or anybody else. Why? Because … legalizing anybody under these circumstances will lead to even more illegal immigration. To Democrats, he said: So if you’re serious about solving the immigration problem, you will be serious about changing our laws on asylum, you will finish building the wall where it makes sense. You will restore the Remain in Mexico policy, you will go back into the treaties with the [Northern] Triangle countries because that will lead to the calmness at the border we need to find a solution here in Washington. The evasive, zig-zag strategy adopted by many GOP senators shows the intense pressure they are under from voters and business donors. The donors gain greatly each time the government OKs another huge inflow of migrants who serve as cheap workers, taxpayer-aided consumers, and high-occupancy renters. But while business groups offer valuable donations — the populist groups can expand or shrink the politicians’ vital vote totals. The populist groups include Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, NumbersUSA, and the Federation for American Immigration Reform. They have to compete with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the tech companies advocacy groups, such as FWD.us. A few GOP senators are standing up for amnesty talks: Sen Rick Scott (R-FL) has drafted an amnesty for at least one million illegal aliens, which his staffers are quietly trying to sell an amnesty bill to staffers who work for other GOP senators. But his office is suggesting that Biden’s policy makes a deal less likely. “Senator Scott does not support amnesty,” a staffer told Breitbart. “Look at what Biden’s open borders and amnesty plan is doing to our Southern border. Senator Scott has long said reforms to the immigration system become much more simple once the border is secure, and that’s his focus.” Scott is in charge of fundraising for the Senate GOP’s 2022 campaigns, so he is under intense pressure to import for business donors a new round of cheap labor, taxpayer-aided consumers, and high-occupancy renters. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) has announced he will propose an amnesty for a million illegal farmworkers and combine it with a plan to import very cheap H-23A visa workers to fill up all the jobs — and more — that will be opened up when the amnesty’s migrants move to non-agriculture jobs in towns and cities. “House passage of the Farm Workforce Modernization Act is an important step toward bringing certainty to our country’s agriculture industry and the hard-working producers and farmworkers,” said a statement from Crapo and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO). “We will work together to introduce companion legislation in the U.S. Senate that appropriately addresses the needs of both the industry and the farmworkers that uphold it.” But that bipartisan swap — cheap workers for the industry in exchange for amnestied farmworkers for Democrats — leaves many ordinary Idahoans and their rural communities in the dust. The H-2A workers would be so cheap that they will be used for additional jobs now held by Americans, and they will also take most of their meager payroll — and their possible tax payments — back home with them every year. Retiring Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) is also talking up hopes for a deal, Politico reported: He opposed the sweeping bill in 2013 but wants to put something together before he leaves the chamber and is the GOP’s rare optimist when it comes to seeing the potential for a deal: “I do. But no one else does.” Portman is one of five retiring GOP senators, along with Roy Blunt (R-MO), Pat Toomey (R-PA), Richard Burr (R-NC) and Richard Shelby (R-AL). The pro-amnesty groups will target them for votes, in part, because they do not have to fear the voters’ response. In July 2019, Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) complained about the voters’ objecting to his pro-amnesty, business-first perspective, saying, “The problem is, Republicans, fear that no matter what you do, someone is going to start screaming amnesty … And if you don’t know, in a Republican primary that [can be] devastating. I know that. I’ve been accused of that.” On March 18, Simpson denied that his vote for the 2021 farmworker amnesty is a vote for amnesty, saying: This bill is not about what’s happening at the southern border … this bill is not amnesty. It does not grant anybody amnesty. It allows individuals to get right with the law and to become a legal workforce in the United States. It’s about providing a stable, legal workforce for the people who put food on our tables. For years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to legal migration, labor migration, and to the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. The multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, intra-Democratic, and solidarity-themed opposition to labor migration coexists with generally favorable personal feelings toward legal immigrants and toward immigration in theory — despite the media magnification of many skewed polls and articles that still push the 1950s corporate “Nation of Immigrants” claim. The deep public opposition is built on the widespread recognition that migration moves wealth from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, and from agriculture-heavy and central states to the coastal states.

Monday, former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe reacted to Department of Justice prosecutor Michael Sherwin telling CBS “60 Minutes” he believes “facts do support” charges of sedition against some of the January 6 Capitol rioters. McCabe said he is “kind of shocked” some from the group that breached the Capitol building have not been charged with sedition already, given there is “abundant evidence.” “[S]edition is a federal crime that basically says anyone who seizes by force the property of the United States government or who impedes or blocks the execution of a U.S. law can be guilty of sedition,” McCabe outlined. “Now, in this case, the U.S. law would, of course, but the Constitution itself, which specifies the process upon which we certify the election of our United States president. So, quite frankly, John, to think that we don’t have abundant evidence of sedition here is amazing to me, and I’m kind of shocked that they haven’t charged some of these folks with sedition yet.” He added, “The fact we haven’t seen those charges yet is really remarkable, and it may be an indication that there’s more kind of legal debate about that within the Justice Department that we’re not aware of.” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent

Zarah Sultana, the leftist Labour party Member of Parliament for Coventry South, claimed that “racism is a feature of capitalism” on the United Nations’ so-called “Anti-Racism Day”. Sultana, an acolyte of former Labour leader and fervent socialist Jeremy Corbyn, wrote on social media late Saturday night that the only way to fight racism is through the adoption of “internationalist socialism”. The 27-year-old MP went on to share an article she penned in Tribune Magazine in January, in which she wrote: “Racism in society isn’t a glitch, it’s a feature. It’s functional to the key driver of our economic system: the accumulation of capital. This, rather than meeting human need, is fundamental to capitalism. And it is why racism is embedded in its social relations.” “This racism isn’t incidental. It’s central to capitalism — both its history and in the present day,” she claimed. “The wealth that enriched the British Empire and established it as a global superpower meant the murder, destruction, and brutalisation of people across the world. Millions died and civilisations were destroyed. The perpetrators of these crimes had to believe that what they were doing was justified,” she suggested. Sultana concluded by quoting directly from the author of the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx, writing: “There is an old socialist slogan, ‘workers of the world, unite!’ It’s not a relic from history, it’s an injunction for today. It calls us to an internationalist approach to socialism, one which can truly tackle racism at its core. It’s a vision worth fighting for.” Racism is a feature of capitalism. It is used to divide our communities here at home and to justify imperialism abroad. On UN Anti Racism Day, let’s recommit to building a #WorldAgainstRacism through anti-racism that is internationalist socialism. 🌹https://t.co/ipwxf83tez — Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) March 20, 2021 Conservative MP Paul Bristow responded to her attacks on Western capitalism, writing: “Free markets break down discrimination, and is eliminating poverty for millions in countries that turned away from Soviet models of socialist central planning. You might also want to check what the racist & anti-Semitic writings of Marx and [Friedrich] Engels inspired some people to do.” Under the rule of socialist and communist governments in the twentieth century, an estimated 94 million people lost thier lives, making communism the leading ideological cause of death in the last century. London mayoral candidate David Kurten also critisised Sultana’s claims, saying: “What utter nonsense. A free-market economy with few and fair regulations generates greater prosperity for all.” The Labour MP has not shied away from her admiration of leftist regimes, as earlier this year she nominated the communist Cuba’s medical slavery system for a Nobel Peace Prize for work done during the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. “The internationalism by the Cuban people and the medical brigade is an incredible example of humanity and solidarity across borders,” she suggested. The Cuban medical system has long been hailed by Western leftists, yet under the Castro regime doctors face near slave-like conditions, being shipped to foreign countries in which they live in poor conditions and as much as 90 per cent of their wages are stolen by the communist government in Havana. Useful Idiot: Labour MP Nominates Communist Cuba’s Slave Doctor Regime for Nobel Prize https://t.co/HiTVxatuhf — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 7, 2021 Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Sunday slammed the legislative process used by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to ram through the Democrats’ legislation. Gingrich told John Catsimatidis, host of New York WABC 770 AM radio’s “The Cats Roundtable,” that members of the House are acting like “robots” in voting in-step with Pelosi. He said the “machine-like” process is “a total collapse of the legislative process.” “I think that it really tells you how the system is evolving that they’re ramming through all of this legislation,” Gingrich said of the House. “They have a five-vote margin, and basically, they’re saying to their members, ‘You don’t have to read anything. You don’t have to know what’s in it. We don’t have to have any hearings. You can’t offer any amendments. All you need to know is show up and vote yes.’ And It is the most machine-like House I can remember going back to Joe Cannon in around 1905. And these folks don’t represent anybody except Nancy Pelosi. And so, they walk in. They’re told, ‘We’re bringing up this next bill and vote yes.’ And they go, ‘Absolutely.’ And it’s a total collapse of the legislative process.” “[T]he Democrats are expected to automatically vote yes no matter what. I mean, it’s working, but it has nothing to do with a free society or a representative government,” he continued. “It’s just pure machine politics. And that to me has been probably the biggest surprise of what’s happened so far this year.” Gingrich later added, “[Y]ou’re getting an automatic, robotic, you know, sort of like Pelosi’s robots are walking out there, and they’re voting yes automatically. If the Republicans offer an amendment — even if it’s a smart amendment — they vote no automatically. The same thing is happening in the Senate.” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent

BERLIN (AP) – German authorities are expected to extend lockdown measures again on Monday and possibly tighten some restrictions as they face a steady rise in new coronavirus infections. Chancellor Angela Merkel and the country’s 16 state governors, who in highly decentralized Germany are responsible for imposing and lifting restrictions, are holding a videoconference nearly three weeks after they agreed a several-step plan paving the way to relax some rules. Since then, infections have increased steadily as the more contagious variant first detected in Britain has become dominant. Most lockdown restrictions are currently set to run through March 28. The chancellery is proposing an extension to April 18th. Politician from Merkel's Party Resigns over Profiting from Mask Contracts https://t.co/63Woc16k6d — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 7, 2021 Rather than new moves toward a more normal life, one focus now is pressing regional officials to use consistently an “emergency brake” mechanism under which relaxations granted in recent weeks — such as the partial reopening of nonessential shops — are supposed to be reimposed if new weekly infections in an area exceed 100 per 100,000 residents on three consecutive days. “Unfortunately, we will have to make use of this emergency brake,” Merkel said Friday. The weekly infection rate per 100,000 people stood at 107 nationwide on Monday, up from the mid-60s three weeks ago. Merkel Party Suffers Worst Regional Defeats Since Second World War https://t.co/e0lZC0E6Ab — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 15, 2021

Sunday on Fox News Channel’s “The Next Revolution,” Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) discussed his recent visit to see firsthand the crisis at United States’ border with Mexico. Gimenez described the situation at the border as “modern-day slavery.” He added the border crisis is seeing the molestation of young females, indentured servitude until families can come up with the funds for being transported across the border, and the murdering of immigrants who cannot come up with the funds. “Look, what I saw at that Customs and Border Protection facility hundreds and hundreds of children, boys and girls — and I’m talking boys and girls — I’m not talking 17, 16 — I’m really talking boys and girls — I’m talking five, six, seven — they come across the border by themselves,” Gimenez recalled. “They have little pieces of paper telling them call so-and-so and an address. But here is the thing — a lot of these girls, young girls, are being molested. Maybe up to 30% are being molested. It costs their parents $4,00o to $6,000 to get them across. A Chinese immigrant trying to get across $35,000. We estimate that the cartels — the multinational cartels — are making close to half a billion dollars per month. They use these migrants to divert Customs and Border Protection agents to a certain section, and then they go ahead and rush the other sections that are unprotected, and they bring us drugs and all other kinds of mayhem that they bring in.” “[T]his is great for the multinational cartels. It’s horrible for the migrants who … some are being murdered on the other side of the border if they can’t come up with the money,” he continued. “They are being extorted. And they are also being used —- if they get across — ‘Hey, you owe us $6,000. You are now an indentured servant here in the United States until you pay us back.’ Basically, it’s modern-day slavery. That is what is going on in the border, and it’s outrageous.” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent

President Joe Biden’s easy-migration strategy has converted a “national triumph into a national disaster,” former President Donald Trump said in a March 21 statement: We proudly handed the Biden Administration the most secure border in history. All they had to do was keep this smooth-running system on autopilot. Instead, in the span of a just few weeks, the Biden Administration has turned a national triumph into a national disaster. They are in way over their heads and taking on water fast. The pathetic, clueless performance of Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas on the Sunday Shows today was a national disgrace. His self-satisfied presentation—in the middle of the massive crisis he helped engineer—is yet more proof he is incapable of leading DHS. Even someone of Mayorkas’ limited abilities should understand that if you provide Catch-and-Release to the world’s illegal aliens then the whole world will come. Furthermore, the Mayorkas Gag Order on our Nation’s heroic border agents and ICE officers should be the subject of an immediate congressional investigation. But it’s clear they are engaged in a huge cover-up to hide just how bad things truly are. The only way to end the Biden Border Crisis is for them to admit their total failure and adopt the profoundly effective, proven Trump policies. They must immediately complete the wall, which can be done in a matter of weeks—they should never have stopped it. They are causing death and human tragedy. In addition to the obvious, drugs are pouring into our country at record levels from the Southern Border, not to mention human and sex trafficking. This Administration’s reckless policies are enabling and encouraging crimes against humanity. Our Country is being destroyed! From 2017 onwards, Trump gradually built up a layer of legal, physical, and diplomatic barriers to migration, including the border wall, multiple treaties with CentreAmerican countries, deals with Mexico, and numerous legal changes that allow his border deputies to quickly deploy migrants before they could get jobs they needed to repay their smuggling debts. Trump’s policies were so effective that the cross-border inflow dropped to record low levels — both the migrants who sought asylum and the migrants who tried to sneak across the border. That shut-off of migrant labor forced U.S. companies to gradually offer higher pay to working Americans, including to both blue-collar and white-collar workers. The success of Trump’s lower-migration, higher-wage policies enraged progressives. Now, with Biden’s approval, the progressives have restarted the pre-Trump economic policy of extracting migrants from Mexico and Central Ameican for use in the United States’ economy. The migrants act as low-wage workers to reduce average pay for Americans. They also serve as consumers to boost retail sales and welfare payments. They also add to the number of renters to fill high-cost, high-occupancy housing in coastal cities. The progressives’ extraction migration policy boosts Wall Street, but it strip-mines young people from the small, vulnerable Central American countries, helps local despots suppress political reform, and fuels cartel-dominated crime throughout the region. The resulting economic and political damage pressures the next generation of young men and women to undertake the expensive and dangerous trek into Americans’ jobs, where progressives are ready to welcome the victims of their own migration policies and to declare their own moral virtue. “We are a nation of laws, and we treat vulnerable children humanely,” Mayorkas told Fox News on May 21. “The best thing for both of us is to keep our people here and to provide for our people right here in our country, and that’s what people here want,” El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said March 16.

President Joe Biden’s easy-migration strategy has converted a “national triumph into a national disaster,” former President Donald Trump said in a March 21 statement: We proudly handed the Biden Administration the most secure border in history. All they had to do was keep this smooth-running system on autopilot. Instead, in the span of a just few weeks, the Biden Administration has turned a national triumph into a national disaster. They are in way over their heads and taking on water fast. The pathetic, clueless performance of Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas on the Sunday Shows today was a national disgrace. His self-satisfied presentation—in the middle of the massive crisis he helped engineer—is yet more proof he is incapable of leading DHS. Even someone of Mayorkas’ limited abilities should understand that if you provide Catch-and-Release to the world’s illegal aliens then the whole world will come. Furthermore, the Mayorkas Gag Order on our Nation’s heroic border agents and ICE officers should be the subject of an immediate congressional investigation. But it’s clear they are engaged in a huge cover-up to hide just how bad things truly are. The only way to end the Biden Border Crisis is for them to admit their total failure and adopt the profoundly effective, proven Trump policies. They must immediately complete the wall, which can be done in a matter of weeks—they should never have stopped it. They are causing death and human tragedy. In addition to the obvious, drugs are pouring into our country at record levels from the Southern Border, not to mention human and sex trafficking. This Administration’s reckless policies are enabling and encouraging crimes against humanity. Our Country is being destroyed! From 2017 onwards, Trump gradually built up a layer of legal, physical, and diplomatic barriers to migration, including the border wall, multiple treaties with CentreAmerican countries, deals with Mexico, and numerous legal changes that allow his border deputies to quickly deploy migrants before they could get jobs they needed to repay their smuggling debts. Trump’s policies were so effective that the cross-border inflow dropped to record low levels — both the migrants who sought asylum and the migrants who tried to sneak across the border. That shut-off of migrant labor forced U.S. companies to gradually offer higher pay to working Americans, including to both blue-collar and white-collar workers. The success of Trump’s lower-migration, higher-wage policies enraged progressives. Now, with Biden’s approval, the progressives have restarted the pre-Trump economic policy of extracting migrants from Mexico and Central Ameican for use in the United States’ economy. The migrants act as low-wage workers to reduce average pay for Americans. They also serve as consumers to boost retail sales and welfare payments. They also add to the number of renters to fill high-cost, high-occupancy housing in coastal cities. The progressives’ extraction migration policy boosts Wall Street, but it strip-mines young people from the small, vulnerable Central American countries, helps local despots suppress political reform, and fuels cartel-dominated crime throughout the region. The resulting economic and political damage pressures the next generation of young men and women to undertake the expensive and dangerous trek into Americans’ jobs, where progressives are ready to welcome the victims of their own migration policies and to declare their own moral virtue. “We are a nation of laws, and we treat vulnerable children humanely,” Mayorkas told Fox News on May 21. “The best thing for both of us is to keep our people here and to provide for our people right here in our country, and that’s what people here want,” El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said March 16.

During this week’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) acknowledged the Biden border plan, which has led to what some are describing as a crisis, much to be desired. She said, however, there was a plan in place the Biden administration had shared with members of Congress. “[N]ow Jonathan, we have a situation that is a humanitarian concern,” she said. “We do have issues with any number of children. The numbers are coming up, but I will say that the Biden administration has met with members of Congress. They have a plan. The plan does not look like it’s working at this time, but you have to get it implemented.” Jackson Lee walked through what the plan was, which she said included measures for preventing the spread of COVID-19. “[W]e need to put in more resources so that our asylum protocols can go quickly and those that do not meet the standards — they have to be returned safely and securely,” Lee continued. “But what the administration is saying that they’re not going to cage children. They’re not going to turn children back to their deaths. They’re not going to have young girls, 13 years old, subject to rape and pilage. And so it does look a little unseemly. But these are human beings. And so, they’re not coming to endanger our lives. They’re coming basically to save their lives.” Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

During this week’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) acknowledged the Biden border plan, which has led to what some are describing as a crisis, much to be desired. She said, however, there was a plan in place the Biden administration had shared with members of Congress. “[N]ow Jonathan, we have a situation that is a humanitarian concern,” she said. “We do have issues with any number of children. The numbers are coming up, but I will say that the Biden administration has met with members of Congress. They have a plan. The plan does not look like it’s working at this time, but you have to get it implemented.” Jackson Lee walked through what the plan was, which she said included measures for preventing the spread of COVID-19. “[W]e need to put in more resources so that our asylum protocols can go quickly and those that do not meet the standards — they have to be returned safely and securely,” Lee continued. “But what the administration is saying that they’re not going to cage children. They’re not going to turn children back to their deaths. They’re not going to have young girls, 13 years old, subject to rape and pilage. And so it does look a little unseemly. But these are human beings. And so, they’re not coming to endanger our lives. They’re coming basically to save their lives.” Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

President Joe Biden told reporters Sunday he would visit the Southern border “at some point,” appearing unwilling to commit to the idea soon. “At some point, I will, yes,” Biden replied when a reporter asked if he would visit the border. Biden spoke to reporters as he returned from his weekend trip to Camp David. When asked if he would visit some of the detention facilities for migrants personally, Biden replied, “I know what’s going on in those facilities.” One reporter asked Biden why his message urging migrants not to come from the United States was not working. Biden said he and his administration were working to handle the dramatic surge at the border. “We are in the process of doing it now including making sure we re-establish what existed before, which is they can stay in place and make their case from their home countries,” he said. The Department of Health and Human Services is housing nearly 10,500 unaccompanied minors in emergency facilities and about 5,000 in custody at a Customs and Border Protection facility, according to a Saturday CBS News report. In an interview Wednesday, Biden advised migrants not to come to the U.S. border, but his administration has struggled with mixed messaging on the issue. EXCLUSIVE: @GStephanopoulos presses Pres. Biden on the border crisis. "Do you have to say quite clearly, 'Don't come'? Biden: "Yes, I can say quite clearly: Don't come over…Don’t leave your town or city or community." https://t.co/zFJaRXjCI8 pic.twitter.com/osZKR64ypq — ABC News (@ABC) March 17, 2021 “Yes, I can say quite clearly: Don’t come over,” he said. “We’re in the process of getting set up.” Biden has refused to admit the crisis on the border is an actual crisis, as more migrants flood to the border. “We’ll be able to handle it,” he replied to reporters at the White House on March 2. “God willing.”

National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) Chairman Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Breitbart News he “does not support amnesty” after crafting and circulating an amnesty plan that could provide about 1.5 million illegal aliens a fast-track to American citizenship. As Breitbart News confirmed, Scott’s office had been passing the amnesty legislation around to Senate Republicans in an attempt to garner support. In an exclusive statement to Breitbart News, a spokesperson for Scott said the Florida senator “does not support amnesty.” “Senator Scott does not support amnesty,” the spokesperson said. “Look at what Biden’s open borders and amnesty plan is doing to our Southern border. Senator Scott has long said reforms to the immigration system become much more simple once the border is secure, and that’s his focus.” Amnesty, by definition, provides immigration relief to individuals who would otherwise have been eligible for removal from the United States. If not for an amnesty, for example, an illegal alien who crossed U.S. borders or overstayed their visa would have no route to becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen outside of fraud. The amnesty provisions of Scott’s draft summary and draft legislation, obtained by Breitbart News, are explicit in giving broad authority to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary the ability to cancel deportation for eligible illegal aliens. The draft summary, for example, mentions providing “conditional permanent resident” status to eligible illegal aliens who can renew the status for two five-year periods before applying for green cards and eventually, after securing a green card, applying to be a naturalized U.S. citizen. The beginning of the draft summary states: Likewise, the text of the draft legislation describes in depth how an illegal alien would be eligible for “cancellation of removal and conditional permanent resident status.” The text also explains how the DHS Secretary would have broad authority over who receives the amnesty: Another portion of Scott’s draft legislation details when the amnesty, or “conditional permanent resident” status, for an illegal alien would begin: At least a few senates Republican offices are questioning whether Scott is cut out to continue leading the NRSC, the committee tasked with helping the GOP win back the Senate in 2022. Aides to three Senate Republicans have expressed concern with Scott’s looming amnesty plan, suggesting he may hurt Republicans’ chances to retake the Senate majority. An analysis by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) found that the plan, as written in its draft, would benefit about 1.5 million illegal aliens and potentially more considering the authority given to the DHS Secretary. Coupled with the amnesty provisions of the legislation is increased federal funding for DHS to hire additional Border Patrol agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, federal immigration judges, funding for a “border wall system,” and a ban on the catch and release of border crossers into the U.S. interior. Specifically, the enforcement funding provisions include $20 billion for DHS to procure, construct, and maintain a border wall system,” according to the draft summary, and hundreds of millions more for hiring more federal immigration officials across the agency. Scott’s office did not answer when specifically asked if these provisions in the draft summary and draft legislation will be in the legislative text as introduced by the Senator when he rolls out the bill. If they are, it will mean the quote the senator’s office provided to Breitbart News is inaccurate as these provisions are, by definition, amnesty. John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.

National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) Chairman Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Breitbart News he “does not support amnesty” after crafting and circulating an amnesty plan that could provide about 1.5 million illegal aliens a fast-track to American citizenship. As Breitbart News confirmed, Scott’s office had been passing the amnesty legislation around to Senate Republicans in an attempt to garner support. In an exclusive statement to Breitbart News, a spokesperson for Scott said the Florida senator “does not support amnesty.” “Senator Scott does not support amnesty,” the spokesperson said. “Look at what Biden’s open borders and amnesty plan is doing to our Southern border. Senator Scott has long said reforms to the immigration system become much more simple once the border is secure, and that’s his focus.” Amnesty, by definition, provides immigration relief to individuals who would otherwise have been eligible for removal from the United States. If not for an amnesty, for example, an illegal alien who crossed U.S. borders or overstayed their visa would have no route to becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen outside of fraud. The amnesty provisions of Scott’s draft summary and draft legislation, obtained by Breitbart News, are explicit in giving broad authority to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary the ability to cancel deportation for eligible illegal aliens. The draft summary, for example, mentions providing “conditional permanent resident” status to eligible illegal aliens who can renew the status for two five-year periods before applying for green cards and eventually, after securing a green card, applying to be a naturalized U.S. citizen. The beginning of the draft summary states: Likewise, the text of the draft legislation describes in depth how an illegal alien would be eligible for “cancellation of removal and conditional permanent resident status.” The text also explains how the DHS Secretary would have broad authority over who receives the amnesty: Another portion of Scott’s draft legislation details when the amnesty, or “conditional permanent resident” status, for an illegal alien would begin: At least a few senates Republican offices are questioning whether Scott is cut out to continue leading the NRSC, the committee tasked with helping the GOP win back the Senate in 2022. Aides to three Senate Republicans have expressed concern with Scott’s looming amnesty plan, suggesting he may hurt Republicans’ chances to retake the Senate majority. An analysis by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) found that the plan, as written in its draft, would benefit about 1.5 million illegal aliens and potentially more considering the authority given to the DHS Secretary. Coupled with the amnesty provisions of the legislation is increased federal funding for DHS to hire additional Border Patrol agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, federal immigration judges, funding for a “border wall system,” and a ban on the catch and release of border crossers into the U.S. interior. Specifically, the enforcement funding provisions include $20 billion for DHS to procure, construct, and maintain a border wall system,” according to the draft summary, and hundreds of millions more for hiring more federal immigration officials across the agency. Scott’s office did not answer when specifically asked if these provisions in the draft summary and draft legislation will be in the legislative text as introduced by the Senator when he rolls out the bill. If they are, it will mean the quote the senator’s office provided to Breitbart News is inaccurate as these provisions are, by definition, amnesty. John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.

NBC host Chuck Todd during Sunday’s “Meet the Press” on NBC called the surge of unaccompanied minors crossing the U.S.-Mexico border is a political crisis “with no easy way out.” Todd said, “It’s fair to call the deteriorating situation at the U.S.-Mexico border a crisis — even if the Biden administration refuses to use that word. But it’s more than that: It’s a political crisis for the new president, with no easy way out. He added, “Republicans are quick to blame Mr. Biden for the growing number of migrants crossing the border, saying it’s his rhetoric and policy shifts that caused the surge in migrants. The Democratic administration says it was left with an unworkable immigration system left by President Trump. Conservatives want a big wall. Progressives want nothing less than humane treatment from migrants fleeing violence wherever it is, and a path to citizenship for those already here.” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

NBC host Chuck Todd during Sunday’s “Meet the Press” on NBC called the surge of unaccompanied minors crossing the U.S.-Mexico border is a political crisis “with no easy way out.” Todd said, “It’s fair to call the deteriorating situation at the U.S.-Mexico border a crisis — even if the Biden administration refuses to use that word. But it’s more than that: It’s a political crisis for the new president, with no easy way out. He added, “Republicans are quick to blame Mr. Biden for the growing number of migrants crossing the border, saying it’s his rhetoric and policy shifts that caused the surge in migrants. The Democratic administration says it was left with an unworkable immigration system left by President Trump. Conservatives want a big wall. Progressives want nothing less than humane treatment from migrants fleeing violence wherever it is, and a path to citizenship for those already here.” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

During an appearance on this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas declared the U.S.-Mexico border “secure” and “closed.” “The border is secure,” he said. “The border is closed. We’ve been unequivocal in that and we are operationalizing our processes, executing our plans, we are a nation of laws, and we treat vulnerable children humanely. We can do it, and we are doing it.’ Following Mayorkas giving those remarks, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) disputed the claim. Cotton, also speaking to “Fox News Sunday,” told host Chris Wallace the border was “wide open,” and he blamed the Biden administration’s immigration policy in the early stages of Joe Biden’s presidency for the crisis. Partial transcript as follows: WALLACE: You just watched my interview with Secretary Mayorkas. Your reaction, sir? COTTON: Chris, it’s rich that Secretary Mayorkas won’t let press travel with him to the border, but he will come on your Sunday morning show and peddle the same kind of nonsense that has created the Biden border crisis in the first place. I mean, he’s basically saying the United States will not secure our border and that is a big welcome sign to migrants from across the world. WALLACE: So you say that you have three simple solutions. What are they? COTTON: Yeah, Chris, the Biden administration keeps saying that Trump somehow dismantled the immigration system. That’s false. It was the Biden administration that dismantled three highly effective policies. First, the public health exclusionary order. They lifted that order as it relates to minors. Well, guess what we have now with the border? Lots more minors. That’s not a surprise. Second, the “remain in Mexico” policy. The Trump administration worked with the government of Mexico to allow migrants who showed up on our border to make an asylum claim but remain in Mexico while we adjudicated rather than just releasing them into the country. And third, the so-called safe third country agreement with countries like Guatemala that says if you pass through a country that’s not your own seeking asylum, you have to make that asylum claim when the first country to pass through. That’s the international norm, that’s what we should do. Joe Biden could reimpose all three of those things this week if you wanted to. WALLACE: One of the things I was struck by at the end of the interview, Secretary Mayorkas said, quote: The border is secure, the border is closed. Is it? COTTON: No, Chris, of course not. The border is wide open. There are reports now Custom and Border Patrol may be directed to simply start processing people into the country without even giving them a notice to appear in court. And, of course, all of these bogus asylum claims are taking up so much manpower and resources of the border, that means that we also have other threats, like increases in fentanyl and other kinds of drug trafficking or persons on the terrorist watch list crossing to our border. The border right now is wide open because the Biden administration dismantled the very effective policies of the Trump administration and the agreements we had with Mexico and other Latin American countries. Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

A couple in Florida who spent many years serving as missionaries and ministers recently died 15 minutes apart of the coronavirus. Bill and Esther Ilnisky were married nearly 67 years when they passed away at a Palm Beach County hospice, the Associated Press (AP) reported Sunday. The couple’s only child, Sarah Milewski, whose father was 88 and her mother 92, told NBC Miami the circumstances may have been a hidden blessing although it was a devastating loss. “It is so precious, so wonderful, such a heartwarming feeling to know they went together,” Milewski commented, adding, “I miss them.” The NBC report continued: Bill Ilnisky grew up in Detroit, deciding at 16 to devote his life to God, Milewski said. He headed to Central Bible College, an Assemblies of God school in Springfield, Missouri. He preached at nearby churches and needed a piano player. Friends suggested Esther Shabaz, a fellow student from Gary, Indiana. They fell in love. … After graduation and their wedding, Bill Ilnisky opened churches in the Midwest. In the late-1950s, the Ilniskys took congregants to Jamaica for a mission, fell in love with the island, and stayed on to run a church in Montego Bay for a decade. At that time, the couple adopted Milewski, then a two-year-old, from a foster home in Miami. “In 1969, the family moved from Jamaica to Lebanon, where Bill Ilnisky ministered to college students and taught. His wife started an outreach center and had a Christian rock band,” the outlet said. When civil war erupted in 1975 and bombs exploded outside their Beirut apartment building, they eventually left in 1976 as United States Marines evacuated Americans and got on the last plane out of the area. Upon their return to America, Bill became a pastor in West Palm Beach and his wife started a program teaching kids how to pray. “Bill Ilnisky retired three years ago and while physically healthy for a late octogenarian, had some dementia. His wife still ran her prayer network and did Zoom calls,” the NBC report said. The couple took precautions when the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020 and Milewski said her mom stayed at home but Bill occasionally left the house. “He couldn’t take it,” she recalled. “He needed to be around people.” Milewski and her husband visited her parents on her mother’s birthday and a few days later, her mother became ill. It was not long before the couple was diagnosed with the virus and was hospitalized. When their illness got worse, it was decided on February 27 the couple would be placed in hospice care and Jacqueline Lopez-Devine, chief clinical officer at Trustbridge hospice, said there was no question about putting them in a room together. Milewski bid her parents goodbye through a window, and her father lay on the right side of the bed while her mom faced him. He nodded as Milewski spoke to him and her mother tried to talk but could not. “It was horrible,” Milewski recalled. Esther passed away at 10:15 a.m. on March 1, and her husband died 15 minutes later.

A six-year-old girl died at an apartment complex in Texas after being shot multiple times Friday over an argument about spilled water. The child’s mother identified the girl as Laurionne Walker, KTRK reported. “I’m at a loss for words right now,” Earline House, Laurionne’s grandmother, told KPRC. “My granddaughter was still a baby. She got shot twice in the chest this morning.” Police in Pasadena, which is a city southeast of Houston, said officers responded to reports of an apartment complex shooting around 11:30 a.m. Friday. A man who was related to Laurionne shot the girl multiple times, police said. Laurionne was rushed to a hospital, where she later succumbed to her injuries and was declared dead, NBC News reported. Pasadena Police charged Raymeon Means, 35, on Saturday with one count of capital murder in connection with Laurionne’s death. Means is being held in custody without bond. Laurionne’s mother said her daughter was being cared for by a relative on Friday so she could attend the vigil for Laurionne’s three cousins, all three of them children, and their mother. The three cousins and their mother died in a car crash Sunday night in Spring, Texas, after being hit by a suspected drunk driver. The crash was unrelated to the shooting.

When Jane Cunningham’s home was in dire need of repairs and medical debt grew after her son was diagnosed with cancer, neighbors stepped in to help. “Her home of 25 years in Sudbury, Massachusetts was a sanctuary as she became a single mother raising three children, including a son diagnosed with cancer,” CBS News reported Saturday. However, the home was falling apart. The roof had collapsed, animals took up residence, and the family stopped living in parts of the house to protect their health. “There was mold everywhere. Other things were just crumbling. It was kind of like our life fell apart a few years ago. It just became too much,” Cunningham recalled. She knew their family was not safe there but could not afford the needed repairs. However, just when Cunningham thought she was out of options, a friend started a GoFundMe page to help remedy the situation, according to WBZ-TV. “She has been struggling with ongoing health issues in the family, and this would really take some of the stress away for all of them,” the page read. “Not only have they been dealing with water in the house, but also critters getting into the house too. Please donate what you can. Thank you so much!” it continued. When construction executive Dave Fenton heard about the effort, he picked up the phone and made some calls. “It was in my town, and without a doubt, it was something we needed to do,” Fenton said. It did not take long before multiple people got involved by donating materials and labor to do the repairs. Community members raised around $50,000 in donations to repair the house and pay off medical bills. “When you’re carrying a lot of problems alone, it can feel very alone with them and very overwhelmed. What they did, it’s like taking a boulder off my back,” Cunningham noted. Fenton said the crews plan to return in the near future to work on landscaping and the home’s exterior.

Police in Pittsburgh say a 12-year-old boy was stabbed inside a McDonald’s Saturday in the city’s downtown area. “Police said they arrested 51-year-old Charles Edward Turner in connection with the stabbing. He’s facing several charges, including criminal attempted homicide,” KDKA reported. The victim was taken to a hospital in critical condition and a criminal complaint said a doctor later upgraded his condition to stable. “It also said a black and yellow box cutter was recovered from the scene and a piece of razor blade that broke off the box cutter was recovered where the stabbing happened,” the report continued. Officers said the boy was stabbed in the neck while inside the McDonald’s restaurant on Liberty Avene and Stanwix Street a few minutes after 2:00 p.m. “He was with his family, he was standing in line, they had just zipped in for one quick thing,” said Cara Cruz, the Deputy Public Information Officer for the Pittsburgh Public Safety Department. According to Cruz, Turner was in line behind the boy and his family. A criminal complaint said a witness claimed Turner tackled the child from behind and while others tried to get him off the boy, they noticed his neck was cut. “Documents also state that Turner resisted arrest by punching and kicking officers. Court documents said one officer had cuts on his face and two other victims had minor injuries,” the KDKA article read. Cruz said restaurant workers also stepped in to help during the incident. “Two McDonald’s employees did try to intervene and help the child then police and EMS arrived on the scene,” she noted, adding that police do not believe the boy and Turner knew one another, neither do they know if the incident was random. The public safety department shared a photo Saturday of the suspect and detailed the charges against him. Turner is currently being held at Allegheny County Jail: UPDATE: Police have arrested Charles Edward Turner, 51, in connection with this stabbing incident. He is charged with: – Criminal Attempt Homicide – 4 counts of Aggravated Assault – 2 counts of Simple Assault – Resisting Arrest Turner is being held at Allegheny County Jail. https://t.co/3cNAlS0ndx pic.twitter.com/SUHli1q5Ku — Pgh Public Safety (@PghPublicSafety) March 21, 2021 “We’re here all the time, people are here all the time, it’s scary, very scary and a child…that’s terrifying,” Maggie Kishbaugh, a Duquesne University student, said of the incident.

Multinational corporate executives, who often serve as the biggest donors for the nation’s political class, are the driving forces behind an amnesty plan passed by House Democrats and nine House Republicans. Last week, the House passed H.R. 6, known as the “Dream and Promise Act of 2021,” to provide potentially 4.4 million illegal aliens with amnesty and put them on a track for American citizenship. All 218 House Democrats voted to support the amnesty and nine House Republicans joined them, including: Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL) Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) The amnesty’s biggest backers are a series of multinational corporations and their executives who often provide campaign cash to lawmakers. In a March letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the corporations’ executives urged the Senate to pass the expansive amnesty. “This important legislation has our strong support and we ask that you and your colleagues consider and pass it in the immediate weeks ahead,” the executives wrote. The full letter can be read here: Schumer McConnell Letter by John Binder Those who signed off on the letter include tech conglomerates like Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Google, IBM, Uber, and PayPal. Also lobbying for the amnesty is the United States Chamber of Commerce, Visa, Marriott International, Verizon, Johnson & Johnson, Chobani, Starbucks, General Motors, Target, and Hilton. A flooded U.S. labor market has been well documented for its wage-crushing side effects, so much so that economist George Borjas has called mass immigration the “largest anti-poverty program” at the expense of America’s working and lower-middle class. The biggest winners are corporations and investors who can not only keep the cost of labor low, but also have a steady stream of consumers to buy their products and services. Other research finds current legal immigration to the U.S. results in more than $530 billion worth of lost wages for Americans. Recent peer-reviewed research by economist Christoph Albert acknowledges that “as immigrants accept lower wages, they are preferably chosen by firms and therefore have higher job finding rates than natives, consistent with evidence found in US data.” Albert’s research also finds immigration “raises competition” for native-born Americans in the labor market. Similarly, research from June 2020 on U.S. wages and the labor market shows that a continuous flow of mass immigration exerts “stronger labor market competition” on newly arrived immigrants than even native-born Americans, thus contributing to the wage gap. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), likewise, has repeatedly noted mass immigration cuts Americans’ wages. In 2013, CBO analysis stated that the “Gang of Eight” amnesty plan would “slightly” push down wages for the American workers. A 2020 CBO analysis stated “immigration has exerted downward pressure on the wages of relatively low-skilled workers who are already in the country, regardless of their birthplace.” Every year, about 1.2 million legal immigrants receive green cards to permanently resettle in the U.S. In addition, 1.4 million foreign nationals get temporary visas to fill U.S. jobs that would otherwise go to Americans. John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.

Multinational corporate executives, who often serve as the biggest donors for the nation’s political class, are the driving forces behind an amnesty plan passed by House Democrats and nine House Republicans. Last week, the House passed H.R. 6, known as the “Dream and Promise Act of 2021,” to provide potentially 4.4 million illegal aliens with amnesty and put them on a track for American citizenship. All 218 House Democrats voted to support the amnesty and nine House Republicans joined them, including: Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL) Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) The amnesty’s biggest backers are a series of multinational corporations and their executives who often provide campaign cash to lawmakers. In a March letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the corporations’ executives urged the Senate to pass the expansive amnesty. “This important legislation has our strong support and we ask that you and your colleagues consider and pass it in the immediate weeks ahead,” the executives wrote. The full letter can be read here: Schumer McConnell Letter by John Binder Those who signed off on the letter include tech conglomerates like Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Google, IBM, Uber, and PayPal. Also lobbying for the amnesty is the United States Chamber of Commerce, Visa, Marriott International, Verizon, Johnson & Johnson, Chobani, Starbucks, General Motors, Target, and Hilton. A flooded U.S. labor market has been well documented for its wage-crushing side effects, so much so that economist George Borjas has called mass immigration the “largest anti-poverty program” at the expense of America’s working and lower-middle class. The biggest winners are corporations and investors who can not only keep the cost of labor low, but also have a steady stream of consumers to buy their products and services. Other research finds current legal immigration to the U.S. results in more than $530 billion worth of lost wages for Americans. Recent peer-reviewed research by economist Christoph Albert acknowledges that “as immigrants accept lower wages, they are preferably chosen by firms and therefore have higher job finding rates than natives, consistent with evidence found in US data.” Albert’s research also finds immigration “raises competition” for native-born Americans in the labor market. Similarly, research from June 2020 on U.S. wages and the labor market shows that a continuous flow of mass immigration exerts “stronger labor market competition” on newly arrived immigrants than even native-born Americans, thus contributing to the wage gap. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), likewise, has repeatedly noted mass immigration cuts Americans’ wages. In 2013, CBO analysis stated that the “Gang of Eight” amnesty plan would “slightly” push down wages for the American workers. A 2020 CBO analysis stated “immigration has exerted downward pressure on the wages of relatively low-skilled workers who are already in the country, regardless of their birthplace.” Every year, about 1.2 million legal immigrants receive green cards to permanently resettle in the U.S. In addition, 1.4 million foreign nationals get temporary visas to fill U.S. jobs that would otherwise go to Americans. John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.

Mexican authorities disrupted a large-scale human smuggling attempt at a border state international airport. The discovery led to the arrest of 95 migrants found to be illegally in Mexico. The group was made up mostly of family units and unaccompanied minors. The arrests took place this week at the Monterrey International Airport, according to information provided to Breitbart Texas by Mexico’s National Immigration Institute. Monterrey is located 100 miles from the Texas border and is considered a main logistical hub for legal and illegal commerce — including human smuggling. The migrants arrived at the airport via two separate airplanes from the southern Mexico cities of Villa Hermosa, Tabasco, and Cancun, Quintana Roo. Authorities did not reveal if the migrants were headed to a particular place in Mexico or to the Texas border as part of the ongoing immigration crisis as family units, unaccompanied minors, and asylum seekers continue to arrive in numbers not seen in many years. The group consisted of 70 migrants from Honduras, 14 from Guatemala, six from El Salvador, and five from Cuba. According to Mexican immigration officials, the group included 8 unaccompanied minors and 27 families made up of two to five individuals each for a total of 70 migrants. Officials turned the unaccompanied minors over to a Mexican entity tasked with caring for children called DIF. The family units remained with immigration authorities. The remainder of the adults who were not part of any families were sent to an immigration station for deportation. Mexican authorities did not reveal information about the human smuggling organization behind the operation or if they made any arrests of human smugglers in connection with the case. Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at [email protected]. Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at [email protected]. Gerald “Tony” Aranda is a contributing writer for Breitbart Texas.

Mexican authorities disrupted a large-scale human smuggling attempt at a border state international airport. The discovery led to the arrest of 95 migrants found to be illegally in Mexico. The group was made up mostly of family units and unaccompanied minors. The arrests took place this week at the Monterrey International Airport, according to information provided to Breitbart Texas by Mexico’s National Immigration Institute. Monterrey is located 100 miles from the Texas border and is considered a main logistical hub for legal and illegal commerce — including human smuggling. The migrants arrived at the airport via two separate airplanes from the southern Mexico cities of Villa Hermosa, Tabasco, and Cancun, Quintana Roo. Authorities did not reveal if the migrants were headed to a particular place in Mexico or to the Texas border as part of the ongoing immigration crisis as family units, unaccompanied minors, and asylum seekers continue to arrive in numbers not seen in many years. The group consisted of 70 migrants from Honduras, 14 from Guatemala, six from El Salvador, and five from Cuba. According to Mexican immigration officials, the group included 8 unaccompanied minors and 27 families made up of two to five individuals each for a total of 70 migrants. Officials turned the unaccompanied minors over to a Mexican entity tasked with caring for children called DIF. The family units remained with immigration authorities. The remainder of the adults who were not part of any families were sent to an immigration station for deportation. Mexican authorities did not reveal information about the human smuggling organization behind the operation or if they made any arrests of human smugglers in connection with the case. Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at [email protected]. Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at [email protected]. Gerald “Tony” Aranda is a contributing writer for Breitbart Texas.

The pause on construction of the border wall costs taxpayers about six million dollars per day while construction sites sit idle, Breitbart Texas learned from a senior Department of Homeland Security official. On Sunday, March 21, the 60-day pause in construction of the border wall is scheduled to end. According to the source, the expenditures are required for materials orders placed before the pause and expenses for the cost of equipment sitting idle. When the issuance of a stop work order causes a contractor to idle equipment, they are entitled to be compensated for rental expenses or costs of ownership. Shortly after taking office, President Biden signed an executive order temporarily halting any further progress on the border wall so individual contracts could be evaluated. With the exception of “make-safe” activities at the worksites, construction projects immediately came to a standstill, Breitbart Texas reported. The end of the 60-day pause does not, however, signal an automatic restart of construction. Early in the pause, a spokesperson for the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) informed Breitbart Texas that contractors would be informed of a final decision sometime after the 60-day pause concludes. The time was to be used for evaluating each contract to reach a decision to terminate-for-cause or continue. The Biden administration has not indicated which direction they will take regarding the end of the pause. Little information concerning the immigration crisis on the border has come from the leadership team within DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Senior officials within DHS reported being instructed not to speak to national media on the issues facing DHS at the border. Information from other agencies within the new administration is equally elusive. USACE did not respond to a request for information concerning the end of the pause and the border wall contracts currently being evaluated. As the deadline looms for a decision to be reached, equipment still sits idle. In Eagle Pass, Texas, a 51.9-million-dollar fence contract hangs in the balance. The equipment gathers dust and the contractor still awaits a decision. Other problems appearing along the border may be taking precedent over the status of the border wall contracts. In recent days, the Secretary of DHS, Alejandro Mayorkas has said “We are on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years,”. In addition to the surge of migrants that are being apprehended along the border, a significant amount of illegal migrant traffic is also avoiding arrest. The administration was also not prepared for the onslaught of unaccompanied children crossing the border as policy changes were being made. In addition to the daily expenses related to the pause of border wall construction, additional costs to taxpayers are likely on the horizon if the administration does decide to close out the contracts permanently. Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.

The pause on construction of the border wall costs taxpayers about six million dollars per day while construction sites sit idle, Breitbart Texas learned from a senior Department of Homeland Security official. On Sunday, March 21, the 60-day pause in construction of the border wall is scheduled to end. According to the source, the expenditures are required for materials orders placed before the pause and expenses for the cost of equipment sitting idle. When the issuance of a stop work order causes a contractor to idle equipment, they are entitled to be compensated for rental expenses or costs of ownership. Shortly after taking office, President Biden signed an executive order temporarily halting any further progress on the border wall so individual contracts could be evaluated. With the exception of “make-safe” activities at the worksites, construction projects immediately came to a standstill, Breitbart Texas reported. The end of the 60-day pause does not, however, signal an automatic restart of construction. Early in the pause, a spokesperson for the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) informed Breitbart Texas that contractors would be informed of a final decision sometime after the 60-day pause concludes. The time was to be used for evaluating each contract to reach a decision to terminate-for-cause or continue. The Biden administration has not indicated which direction they will take regarding the end of the pause. Little information concerning the immigration crisis on the border has come from the leadership team within DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Senior officials within DHS reported being instructed not to speak to national media on the issues facing DHS at the border. Information from other agencies within the new administration is equally elusive. USACE did not respond to a request for information concerning the end of the pause and the border wall contracts currently being evaluated. As the deadline looms for a decision to be reached, equipment still sits idle. In Eagle Pass, Texas, a 51.9-million-dollar fence contract hangs in the balance. The equipment gathers dust and the contractor still awaits a decision. Other problems appearing along the border may be taking precedent over the status of the border wall contracts. In recent days, the Secretary of DHS, Alejandro Mayorkas has said “We are on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years,”. In addition to the surge of migrants that are being apprehended along the border, a significant amount of illegal migrant traffic is also avoiding arrest. The administration was also not prepared for the onslaught of unaccompanied children crossing the border as policy changes were being made. In addition to the daily expenses related to the pause of border wall construction, additional costs to taxpayers are likely on the horizon if the administration does decide to close out the contracts permanently. Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.

Actress Sandra Oh made a surprise appearance at a “Stop Asian Hate” protest in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, where she led a chant proclaiming, “I am proud to be Asian.” “Pittsburgh, I am so happy and proud to be here with you, and thank you to all the organizers for organizing this just to give us an opportunity to be together, and to stand together, and to feel each other,” Oh can be heard saying in a video published by CBS Pittsburgh. “For many of us in our community, this is the first time we are even able to voice our fear and our anger, and I really am so grateful to everyone willing to listen,” Oh continued. “I know many of us in our community are very scared, and I understand that.” “And one way to get through our fear is to reach out to our communities,” she added. “I will challenge everyone here, if you see something will you help me? If you see one of our sisters and brothers in need, will you help us?” From there, the actress led a chant, proclaiming, “I am proud to be Asian. I belong here.” “Many of us don’t get our chance to be able to say that, so I just wanted to give us an opportunity to be able to shout that,” Oh concluded. Before Saturday’s rally, Oh posted an statement to Instagram, responding to a fatal shooting spree at two Atlanta-area massage parlors that left eight people dead and another wounded. “I send loving kindness and support to the families of the eight souls murdered in Georgia on March 16. And to all the victims of racist violence,” Oh wrote. “I am devastated and profoundly angry,” the actress added. “I know many of you are scared, but let us not be afraid.” You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler @alana, and on Instagram.

Netflix plans to celebrate the one-year anniversary of its documentary series Tiger King with a TikTok drag queen musical adaption, titled The Tiger Queens: The Tiger King Musical LIVE. “Tiger King was unleashed on the world one year ago today,” tweeted Netflix on Saturday. “Looking back, it feels like Tiger King was the perfect series to match the mood of March 2020 — it was like nothing we’d ever seen before, nothing quite made sense, and we didn’t exactly know how it would end.” Looking back, it feels like Tiger King was the perfect series to match the mood of March 2020 — it was like nothing we’d ever seen before, nothing quite made sense, and we didn’t exactly know how it would end https://t.co/fOi2hiGUpn — Netflix (@netflix) March 20, 2021 “Because just when you thought life — or Tiger King — couldn’t get any wilder, it did,” Netflix continued in a follow-up tweet. “But somehow, if even for a moment, it felt like we were a little more prepared to endure the madness.” “Because even though so many of us were literally alone, we had one fun thing to share together,” the streaming giant added. “And it gave us an excuse to laugh, gasp, and stare in shock at something that wasn’t the news for a second.” And it gave us an excuse to laugh, gasp, and stare in shock at something that wasn’t the news for a second https://t.co/qpU95dYi8C — Netflix (@netflix) March 20, 2021 “It also foreshadowed a bit of what the rest of 2020 would bring… And gave us something to look forward to,” Netflix wrote. “And to celebrate Tiger King’s one year anniversary, we’re hosting Tiger Queens: The Tiger King Musical LIVE on TikTok next week!!” the streaming giant announced. And to celebrate Tiger King's one year anniversary, we’re hosting Tiger Queens: The Tiger King Musical LIVE on TikTok next week!! pic.twitter.com/6cSt5VDans — Netflix (@netflix) March 20, 2021 Casting for the musical was revealed in a promotional poster tweeted by Netflix, which revealed that Tiger Queens is slated to star Kim Chi as Carole Baskin, Heidi N Closet as “The Tiger,” and Willam as Joe Exotic. All three are alums of RuPaul’s Drag Race. The drag queen musical will debut next week, on March 28. You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler @alana, and on Instagram.

Netflix plans to celebrate the one-year anniversary of its documentary series Tiger King with a TikTok drag queen musical adaption, titled The Tiger Queens: The Tiger King Musical LIVE. “Tiger King was unleashed on the world one year ago today,” tweeted Netflix on Saturday. “Looking back, it feels like Tiger King was the perfect series to match the mood of March 2020 — it was like nothing we’d ever seen before, nothing quite made sense, and we didn’t exactly know how it would end.” Looking back, it feels like Tiger King was the perfect series to match the mood of March 2020 — it was like nothing we’d ever seen before, nothing quite made sense, and we didn’t exactly know how it would end https://t.co/fOi2hiGUpn — Netflix (@netflix) March 20, 2021 “Because just when you thought life — or Tiger King — couldn’t get any wilder, it did,” Netflix continued in a follow-up tweet. “But somehow, if even for a moment, it felt like we were a little more prepared to endure the madness.” “Because even though so many of us were literally alone, we had one fun thing to share together,” the streaming giant added. “And it gave us an excuse to laugh, gasp, and stare in shock at something that wasn’t the news for a second.” And it gave us an excuse to laugh, gasp, and stare in shock at something that wasn’t the news for a second https://t.co/qpU95dYi8C — Netflix (@netflix) March 20, 2021 “It also foreshadowed a bit of what the rest of 2020 would bring… And gave us something to look forward to,” Netflix wrote. “And to celebrate Tiger King’s one year anniversary, we’re hosting Tiger Queens: The Tiger King Musical LIVE on TikTok next week!!” the streaming giant announced. And to celebrate Tiger King's one year anniversary, we’re hosting Tiger Queens: The Tiger King Musical LIVE on TikTok next week!! pic.twitter.com/6cSt5VDans — Netflix (@netflix) March 20, 2021 Casting for the musical was revealed in a promotional poster tweeted by Netflix, which revealed that Tiger Queens is slated to star Kim Chi as Carole Baskin, Heidi N Closet as “The Tiger,” and Willam as Joe Exotic. All three are alums of RuPaul’s Drag Race. The drag queen musical will debut next week, on March 28. You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler @alana, and on Instagram.

With the debut of WandaVison and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Disney is getting back in the swing of its Marvel Superhero stories, but at least for the latter show’s Falcon and Bucky, the story is bringing in moments of woke politics. According to Malcolm Spellman, head writer for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (FAWS) debuting on Disney+, the show dove into its political themes quite pointedly even from the first episode. In an interview with Variety, he breaks down how the series touches on contemporary politics, from Black Lives Matter to the coronavirus pandemic. An early scene, for instance, shows the Falcon, aka Sam Wilson (played by Anthony Mackie) visiting a bank, and a banker asks about his income with suspicion and ultimately turns him down for a loan. “That was a really, really fun moment, where what was supposed to be a scene that mostly dealt with the issues of, you know, a black family from a certain background dealing with a bank loan, and the fact that him being a celebrity does not transcend him being black,” Spellman says. The writer told Variety that their drive to make the writer’s room “all-black” was a key to success. It was “pointed” that the episode ends with Falcon finding out that the government lied to him about becoming Captain America’s replacement because he isn’t white. I think this is going to be an extremely relevant show in a lot of ways, and that is not by accident. The magic of embracing diversity in the writers room and having an almost all-Black staff allows you to tap into pop culture. I mean, Black folk are the masters of it, and when we get a shot, to do what we do, it is universal for everyone because our struggle and our point of view is a concentrated version of the greater human struggle. So it is yeah, those moments you’re talking about are pointed, and we dig deeper and deeper and deeper as the series progresses. The betrayal of the government was a particularly important point for the writers. “That was the primary reason I showed up, which was for Sam, the idea of a black man confronting the stars and stripes is whether it’s even appropriate to carry that shield,” Spellman said. After telling Variety how “exciting” it was for the writers to show actors Don Cheadle and Anthony Mackie portraying black superheroes talking like normal people. “Just the concept of two black superheroes being on screen together said a million things,” he gushed. If you’d seen how much dialogue we wrote, because I was so excited to get them together. They were just riffing. Like, it was a moment for them. I was psyched about it. A lot of that got distilled. But I think this bigger issue that’s going on, they don’t have to say that much. Everybody knows these are two Black men, and they’re dealing with the stars and stripes. They don’t even have to say that much for you to get how much it’s weighing on them, and how much these dudes probably cooked up and talked behind the scenes in the MCU. Spellman concluded by noting that after their production was shut down due to the coronavirus, they went back into the story to “rework and retrofit” the story to include more coronavirus-inspired themes. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston.

Lana Del Rey’s latest album, Chemtrails Over the Country Club, is perhaps the first post-pandemic reflection of life in organized, often coercive, isolationism and the longing for escape. As is frequently the case with Lana, there are subtle hints and notes to her work’s aesthetics and lyrics — a sort of glimpse into her thoughts. What does she really believe? Who is she actually dating, and thus, singing about? Is she really living this glamorously destructive life? Is she woke? Over the last year, following her Grammy-nominated Norman Fucking Rockwell!, the lockdowners and neolibs have tried desperately to sink Lana’s career with claims of racism, being anti-women, not having enough nonwhite friends, and even for briefly dating a cop! Each time, she’s given a subliminal middle finger. For Chemtrails, Lana seems to take on a specific kind of hater: The lockdowners. There are more than a handful of instances where we see Lana challenging the lockdown lifestyle that has eliminated the wonder of upper-middle-class eccentricities, forced small businesses to close, weaponized the establishment media against the citizenry, and become a virtue signal of those least impacted by the last year. This isn’t far-fetched. Entertainment Weekly noted Lana’s “yearning for freedom.” Waitressing Dreams In the music video for the album’s first track, titled “White Dress,” a rollerblade girl cruises down an open highway, drifting off back and forth through each lane. Flashes of open land and the sunrise are sporadic throughout and later, Lana is seen serving diner food to her friends at a little food stand with a giant open sign. At one point, a pirate flag is seen waving in the wind, imagery that’s become synonymous with rebellion. In another scene, the rollerblader does an interpretive dance in front of a closed, abandoned gas station off the highway. The video is paired with the track’s lyrics that are primarily tied to Lana’s time as a 19-year-old waitress when she was a nobody. Interestingly enough, Lana fantasizes about her past waitress work, the job hardest hit by lockdown states: Sun stare, don’t care with my head in my hands Thinking of a simpler time … When I was a waitress wearing a white dress Look how I do this, look how I got this In the track’s first chorus, Lana remarks fondly about attending a large gathering in Orlando, Florida — arguably the most open state in the nation — with an old crush: Down at the Men in Music Business Conference Down in Orlando, I was only nineteen Down at the Men in Music Business Conference I only mention it ’cause it was such a scene The nostalgia always runs deep with Lana. But the difference this time is that she’s nostalgic for a time she did, in fact, experience rather than eras that predate her. And those times she’s thinking about aren’t all that significant, except when you’re being asked to lock yourself up for more than a year. Chemtrails Conspiracies and Useless Masks The title track of the album is trippy hippy dippy and quintessential Lana. Filled with emotions, talk of God (at the most inappropriate time — while chillin’ at the local country club), a suggestion of chemtrail conspiracies, old America iconography, and making household chores sound desirable. At the track’s opening, Lana notes that she’s “on the run” and later “I’m not unhinged or unhappy, I’m just wild” while piling on her jewelry to go grocery shopping and the swimming pool. The music video brings all the acid-tripping to life where Lana is literally “drag racing my little red sports car,” as she states, dressed up in pearls — almost cartoonishly overdone — as a woman of suburbia would heading to the country club. About a minute into the video, Lana decides to bring back the Swarovski crystal mesh face mask that the lockdowners came after her over back in November 2020. Two months after that attempt at canceling her, she released the video and sported the mask. Getting Out of Lockdown Whereas in Norman Fucking Rockwell! Lana sings of her newfound carefree attitude in California, harking back to Joni Mitchells’ Ladies of the Canyon, she takes a right turn for the small towns and open regions of the midwest in Chemtrails. In “Tulsa Jesus Freak,” she drags on about road-tripping to the Great Plains and the West South Central states. For Lana, it’s the freedom and the simplicity: We should go back to Arkansas Trade this body for that can of Gin Like a little piece of heaven No more candle in the wind Most significantly, Lana is no longer singing “we should go back to New York” as she did in 2014’s Ultraviolence. That lyrical repetition and theme of time and place in Lana’s work are when she sometimes reveals the most. Lana does it again in “Dance Til We Die” where she almost explicitly refuses to stop living her life despite the lockdowners. Like with the last track mentioned, Lana goes off on a bridge, torching the closed cities she’s leaving for the wide open spaces: I went down to Woodside I left Berkley, out of city, out of mind Killin’ it, talkin’ shit Joan said she was gonna quit Tearin’ it up at the Afro-Caribbean two-step I left San Francisco, I’ve been coverin’ Joni And I’m dancin’ with Joan It’s kinda hard to find love When you’re used to rolling like a rolling stone “Wild at Heart,” maybe the album’s greatest track, and “Dark But Just a Game” Lana belts about her lack of wanting fame, or more, wanting a return to normalcy: I left Calabasas, escaped all the ashes, ran into the dark And it made me wild, wild, wild at heart The cameras have flashes, they cause the car crashes But I’m not a star … We keep changing all the time The best ones lost their minds So I’m not gonna change I’ll stay the same No rose left on the vines Don’t even want what’s mine Much less the fame It’s dark, but just a game Getting out of the city that brought America the Kardashians and running free is all she wants in the midst of travel restrictions. Can you even be free as a famous person? You can try, but they’ll try to cancel you. And when they’re not canceling you, they’re asking you to stay indoors for just a little longer. Wild West as a Way of Life Lana’s albums are described as “eras” where her looks change and her mood board visions are emulated in her DIY music videos. Undoubtedly, Chemtrails takes on a Wild West aesthetic. is it any wonder? The antithesis of lockdowns is the period in American history when the lawless ruled and the ruled were lawless. In most of the promotional shoots for Chemtrails, Lana seemingly breaks California’s state orders urging people not to gather in large groups with folks from three or more households. The album’s cover, for instance, captures Lana excitingly smiling amidst her girlfriends in pilgrim-style ensembles. It’s like Lana and her friends are the new settlers on a lockdown’d land. Rulebreakers and pirates amongst controlled bots spouting Center for Disease Control orders. In other photos, Lana is on a quasi-trailer park ranch with her friends and siblings. One particular photo is set to a sepia filter as if it were taken at one of those tourist attractions in Tennessee where you get your picture taken as a saloon gangster. Even in the album’s alternate cover, when Lana is photographed alone, she stands amidst an open field in a white dress, a reference to “White Dress” which sets the mood for the rest of Chemtrails. “While the whole world is crazy, we’re getting high in the parking lot,” Lana sings. Maybe this was the answer all along to the last year? John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.

Lana Del Rey’s latest album, Chemtrails Over the Country Club, is perhaps the first post-pandemic reflection of life in organized, often coercive, isolationism and the longing for escape. As is frequently the case with Lana, there are subtle hints and notes to her work’s aesthetics and lyrics — a sort of glimpse into her thoughts. What does she really believe? Who is she actually dating, and thus, singing about? Is she really living this glamorously destructive life? Is she woke? Over the last year, following her Grammy-nominated Norman Fucking Rockwell!, the lockdowners and neolibs have tried desperately to sink Lana’s career with claims of racism, being anti-women, not having enough nonwhite friends, and even for briefly dating a cop! Each time, she’s given a subliminal middle finger. For Chemtrails, Lana seems to take on a specific kind of hater: The lockdowners. There are more than a handful of instances where we see Lana challenging the lockdown lifestyle that has eliminated the wonder of upper-middle-class eccentricities, forced small businesses to close, weaponized the establishment media against the citizenry, and become a virtue signal of those least impacted by the last year. This isn’t far-fetched. Entertainment Weekly noted Lana’s “yearning for freedom.” Waitressing Dreams In the music video for the album’s first track, titled “White Dress,” a rollerblade girl cruises down an open highway, drifting off back and forth through each lane. Flashes of open land and the sunrise are sporadic throughout and later, Lana is seen serving diner food to her friends at a little food stand with a giant open sign. At one point, a pirate flag is seen waving in the wind, imagery that’s become synonymous with rebellion. In another scene, the rollerblader does an interpretive dance in front of a closed, abandoned gas station off the highway. The video is paired with the track’s lyrics that are primarily tied to Lana’s time as a 19-year-old waitress when she was a nobody. Interestingly enough, Lana fantasizes about her past waitress work, the job hardest hit by lockdown states: Sun stare, don’t care with my head in my hands Thinking of a simpler time … When I was a waitress wearing a white dress Look how I do this, look how I got this In the track’s first chorus, Lana remarks fondly about attending a large gathering in Orlando, Florida — arguably the most open state in the nation — with an old crush: Down at the Men in Music Business Conference Down in Orlando, I was only nineteen Down at the Men in Music Business Conference I only mention it ’cause it was such a scene The nostalgia always runs deep with Lana. But the difference this time is that she’s nostalgic for a time she did, in fact, experience rather than eras that predate her. And those times she’s thinking about aren’t all that significant, except when you’re being asked to lock yourself up for more than a year. Chemtrails Conspiracies and Useless Masks The title track of the album is trippy hippy dippy and quintessential Lana. Filled with emotions, talk of God (at the most inappropriate time — while chillin’ at the local country club), a suggestion of chemtrail conspiracies, old America iconography, and making household chores sound desirable. At the track’s opening, Lana notes that she’s “on the run” and later “I’m not unhinged or unhappy, I’m just wild” while piling on her jewelry to go grocery shopping and the swimming pool. The music video brings all the acid-tripping to life where Lana is literally “drag racing my little red sports car,” as she states, dressed up in pearls — almost cartoonishly overdone — as a woman of suburbia would heading to the country club. About a minute into the video, Lana decides to bring back the Swarovski crystal mesh face mask that the lockdowners came after her over back in November 2020. Two months after that attempt at canceling her, she released the video and sported the mask. Getting Out of Lockdown Whereas in Norman Fucking Rockwell! Lana sings of her newfound carefree attitude in California, harking back to Joni Mitchells’ Ladies of the Canyon, she takes a right turn for the small towns and open regions of the midwest in Chemtrails. In “Tulsa Jesus Freak,” she drags on about road-tripping to the Great Plains and the West South Central states. For Lana, it’s the freedom and the simplicity: We should go back to Arkansas Trade this body for that can of Gin Like a little piece of heaven No more candle in the wind Most significantly, Lana is no longer singing “we should go back to New York” as she did in 2014’s Ultraviolence. That lyrical repetition and theme of time and place in Lana’s work are when she sometimes reveals the most. Lana does it again in “Dance Til We Die” where she almost explicitly refuses to stop living her life despite the lockdowners. Like with the last track mentioned, Lana goes off on a bridge, torching the closed cities she’s leaving for the wide open spaces: I went down to Woodside I left Berkley, out of city, out of mind Killin’ it, talkin’ shit Joan said she was gonna quit Tearin’ it up at the Afro-Caribbean two-step I left San Francisco, I’ve been coverin’ Joni And I’m dancin’ with Joan It’s kinda hard to find love When you’re used to rolling like a rolling stone “Wild at Heart,” maybe the album’s greatest track, and “Dark But Just a Game” Lana belts about her lack of wanting fame, or more, wanting a return to normalcy: I left Calabasas, escaped all the ashes, ran into the dark And it made me wild, wild, wild at heart The cameras have flashes, they cause the car crashes But I’m not a star … We keep changing all the time The best ones lost their minds So I’m not gonna change I’ll stay the same No rose left on the vines Don’t even want what’s mine Much less the fame It’s dark, but just a game Getting out of the city that brought America the Kardashians and running free is all she wants in the midst of travel restrictions. Can you even be free as a famous person? You can try, but they’ll try to cancel you. And when they’re not canceling you, they’re asking you to stay indoors for just a little longer. Wild West as a Way of Life Lana’s albums are described as “eras” where her looks change and her mood board visions are emulated in her DIY music videos. Undoubtedly, Chemtrails takes on a Wild West aesthetic. is it any wonder? The antithesis of lockdowns is the period in American history when the lawless ruled and the ruled were lawless. In most of the promotional shoots for Chemtrails, Lana seemingly breaks California’s state orders urging people not to gather in large groups with folks from three or more households. The album’s cover, for instance, captures Lana excitingly smiling amidst her girlfriends in pilgrim-style ensembles. It’s like Lana and her friends are the new settlers on a lockdown’d land. Rulebreakers and pirates amongst controlled bots spouting Center for Disease Control orders. In other photos, Lana is on a quasi-trailer park ranch with her friends and siblings. One particular photo is set to a sepia filter as if it were taken at one of those tourist attractions in Tennessee where you get your picture taken as a saloon gangster. Even in the album’s alternate cover, when Lana is photographed alone, she stands amidst an open field in a white dress, a reference to “White Dress” which sets the mood for the rest of Chemtrails. “While the whole world is crazy, we’re getting high in the parking lot,” Lana sings. Maybe this was the answer all along to the last year? John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.

Roku has acquired the long-running home improvement series This Old House, including the TV studio behind the show and all episodes of This Old House and Ask This Old House. The acquisition comes as the streaming entertainment company seeks to beef up its free, ad-supported Roku Channel as competition heats up from Tubi, Amazon’s IMDb TV, and other free streaming options. In January, Roku acquired the distribution rights to the defunct Quibi’s library of 75 shows and documentaries, giving Roku customers exclusive access to Quibi content. Roku said the executive team behind This Old House will join the company, including This Old House Ventures CEO Dan Suratt. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Past seasons of This Old House and Ask This Old House are currently available for free on The Roku Channel. Episodes from the current seasons will stream on-demand after they air on local PBS stations. “As the top-rated home improvement program in America, This Old House has the broad appeal that is perfectly suited to support The Roku Channel’s ad-supported growth strategy,” Rob Holmes, vice president of programming at Roku, said in a press release Friday. Free streaming services have seen viewer numbers climb during the pandemic. Fox’s Tubi said viewership of its free, ad-supported offerings exceeded 2.5 billion hours in 2020, up 58 percent from the previous year, while Pluto TV, which is owned by ViacomCBS, reported that it is now attracting approximately 20 million users every month, up nearly 70 percent for 2020. Subscription services have also experienced a boon from the pandemic, with global streaming subscriptions passing one billion for the first time, according to a report last week from the Motion Picture Association. The free streaming market is heating up as services that once relied exclusively on TV re-runs and old movies seek to differentiate themselves with original content. Amazon’s IMDb TV has launched original TV series, including the spy drama Alex Rider and an upcoming show with Judge Judy. Bloomberg recently reported that Tubi is planning on producing original movies, with an eye to also make TV series. Roku said its acquisition of This Old House exemplifies its effort to stream shows with a wide audience appeal, which will in turn attract more advertisers. “The more relevant the content becomes for a larger audience, the more appealing it is to advertising partners,” Roku’s Holmes said. Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at [email protected]

Roku has acquired the long-running home improvement series This Old House, including the TV studio behind the show and all episodes of This Old House and Ask This Old House. The acquisition comes as the streaming entertainment company seeks to beef up its free, ad-supported Roku Channel as competition heats up from Tubi, Amazon’s IMDb TV, and other free streaming options. In January, Roku acquired the distribution rights to the defunct Quibi’s library of 75 shows and documentaries, giving Roku customers exclusive access to Quibi content. Roku said the executive team behind This Old House will join the company, including This Old House Ventures CEO Dan Suratt. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Past seasons of This Old House and Ask This Old House are currently available for free on The Roku Channel. Episodes from the current seasons will stream on-demand after they air on local PBS stations. “As the top-rated home improvement program in America, This Old House has the broad appeal that is perfectly suited to support The Roku Channel’s ad-supported growth strategy,” Rob Holmes, vice president of programming at Roku, said in a press release Friday. Free streaming services have seen viewer numbers climb during the pandemic. Fox’s Tubi said viewership of its free, ad-supported offerings exceeded 2.5 billion hours in 2020, up 58 percent from the previous year, while Pluto TV, which is owned by ViacomCBS, reported that it is now attracting approximately 20 million users every month, up nearly 70 percent for 2020. Subscription services have also experienced a boon from the pandemic, with global streaming subscriptions passing one billion for the first time, according to a report last week from the Motion Picture Association. The free streaming market is heating up as services that once relied exclusively on TV re-runs and old movies seek to differentiate themselves with original content. Amazon’s IMDb TV has launched original TV series, including the spy drama Alex Rider and an upcoming show with Judge Judy. Bloomberg recently reported that Tubi is planning on producing original movies, with an eye to also make TV series. Roku said its acquisition of This Old House exemplifies its effort to stream shows with a wide audience appeal, which will in turn attract more advertisers. “The more relevant the content becomes for a larger audience, the more appealing it is to advertising partners,” Roku’s Holmes said. Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at [email protected]

Pop star Lizzo has announced a plus-size model reality show with Amazon, in which contestants will compete for the chance to accompany the Grammy-winning star onstage as a member of her next dance crew. “Here’s your chance to twerk it out on world stages and stomp it out on the runway for the adventure of a lifetime. Come as you are and be sure to bring good energy,” reads the casting call for Lizzo’s new unscripted reality series in development with Amazon. Lizzo adds that she is seeking dancers “who have for far too long been underrepresented and under-appreciated.” “Where are all the big girls? That’s what I want to know,” Lizzo said in an Instagram video announcing the show. “So me and Amazon are going to find out,” the pop star continued. “I’m developing an unscripted show with Amazon to find my next crew of big girl dancers and models. So bring yourself, and that ass.” Watch Below: “I BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE! Are you a full figured dancer or model? Have you felt underrepresented and under appreciated? THEN I’M LOOKIN FOR YOU! It’s time to find my dream team of beautifully talented big grrrls and @amazonstudios is helping ya grrrl on this journey!” Lizzo wrote in the video’s caption. The description for the series — which is currently untitled — reads: “a new unscripted series following global superstar Lizzo as she continues to search for dynamic, full-figured women to join her world and perform with her on stage. Only the most talented dancers and models will have what it takes to twerk it out on tour and stomp it out on the runway.” The show was first announced last year in August, after the deal was welcomed by Jen Salke, head of Amazon Studios. “Lizzo is one of the most exciting, creative, joyful artists in the industry, and it is such a pleasure to announce this new deal with her,” Salke said at the time. “She has such a unique perspective and we’re so excited to hear her ideas for new content that our Prime Video customers are sure to love.” Last year, Lizzo claimed that the “body positivity” movement isn’t big enough, and that it has yet to “normalize” women sizes 18 and over, saying, “girls with back fat, girls with bellies that hang, girls with thighs that aren’t separated” are not being featured often enough. You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler @alana, and on Instagram.

Pop star Lizzo has announced a plus-size model reality show with Amazon, in which contestants will compete for the chance to accompany the Grammy-winning star onstage as a member of her next dance crew. “Here’s your chance to twerk it out on world stages and stomp it out on the runway for the adventure of a lifetime. Come as you are and be sure to bring good energy,” reads the casting call for Lizzo’s new unscripted reality series in development with Amazon. Lizzo adds that she is seeking dancers “who have for far too long been underrepresented and under-appreciated.” “Where are all the big girls? That’s what I want to know,” Lizzo said in an Instagram video announcing the show. “So me and Amazon are going to find out,” the pop star continued. “I’m developing an unscripted show with Amazon to find my next crew of big girl dancers and models. So bring yourself, and that ass.” Watch Below: “I BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE! Are you a full figured dancer or model? Have you felt underrepresented and under appreciated? THEN I’M LOOKIN FOR YOU! It’s time to find my dream team of beautifully talented big grrrls and @amazonstudios is helping ya grrrl on this journey!” Lizzo wrote in the video’s caption. The description for the series — which is currently untitled — reads: “a new unscripted series following global superstar Lizzo as she continues to search for dynamic, full-figured women to join her world and perform with her on stage. Only the most talented dancers and models will have what it takes to twerk it out on tour and stomp it out on the runway.” The show was first announced last year in August, after the deal was welcomed by Jen Salke, head of Amazon Studios. “Lizzo is one of the most exciting, creative, joyful artists in the industry, and it is such a pleasure to announce this new deal with her,” Salke said at the time. “She has such a unique perspective and we’re so excited to hear her ideas for new content that our Prime Video customers are sure to love.” Last year, Lizzo claimed that the “body positivity” movement isn’t big enough, and that it has yet to “normalize” women sizes 18 and over, saying, “girls with back fat, girls with bellies that hang, girls with thighs that aren’t separated” are not being featured often enough. You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler @alana, and on Instagram.

Actress Sharon Stone is claiming in her new memoir that a movie producer once pressured her into having sex with her co-star, saying that she ultimately refused the suggestion, which contributed to her reputation for being “difficult.” Stone did not name the male producer or the movie in an excerpt published Friday in Vanity Fair. The actress said the producer wanted her to “fuck my costar” so that they could have “onscreen chemistry.” I had a producer bring me to his office, where he had malted milk balls in a little milk-carton-type container under his arm with the spout open. He walked back and forth in his office with the balls falling out of the spout and rolling all over the wood floor as he explained to me why I should fuck my costar so that we could have onscreen chemistry. Why, in his day, he made love to Ava Gardner onscreen and it was so sensational! Now just the creepy thought of him in the same room with Ava Gardner gave me pause. Then I realized that she also had to put up with him and pretend that he was in any way interesting. I watched the chocolate balls rolling around, thinking, You guys insisted on this actor when he couldn’t get one whole scene out in the test.… Now you think if I fuck him, he will become a fine actor? Nobody’s that good in bed. I felt they could have just hired a costar with talent, someone who could deliver a scene and remember his lines. I also felt they could fuck him themselves and leave me out of it. It was my job to act and I said so. This was not a popular response. I was considered difficult. In the past, Stone has expressed some skepticism of the #MeToo movement, saying that the accused deserve due process under the law. “I don’t feel like these trials without due process are entirely appropriate,” she said on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast in 2018. “I feel that it’s appropriate that people have to take responsibility for the actions, but I do feel that some due process is in order. There’s a range of activities. And you can’t charge somebody with a felony over a misdemeanor.” In her new book, Stone repeated her claim that she was outraged at Basic Instinct director Paul Verhoeven after she saw the movie’s infamous leg-crossing scene. “I went to the projection booth, slapped Paul across the face, left, went to my car, and called my lawyer,” she recalled. But she eventually calmed down. “So I thought and thought and I chose to allow this scene in the film. Why? Because it was correct for the film and for the character; and because, after all, I did it.” Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at [email protected]

Actress Sharon Stone is claiming in her new memoir that a movie producer once pressured her into having sex with her co-star, saying that she ultimately refused the suggestion, which contributed to her reputation for being “difficult.” Stone did not name the male producer or the movie in an excerpt published Friday in Vanity Fair. The actress said the producer wanted her to “fuck my costar” so that they could have “onscreen chemistry.” I had a producer bring me to his office, where he had malted milk balls in a little milk-carton-type container under his arm with the spout open. He walked back and forth in his office with the balls falling out of the spout and rolling all over the wood floor as he explained to me why I should fuck my costar so that we could have onscreen chemistry. Why, in his day, he made love to Ava Gardner onscreen and it was so sensational! Now just the creepy thought of him in the same room with Ava Gardner gave me pause. Then I realized that she also had to put up with him and pretend that he was in any way interesting. I watched the chocolate balls rolling around, thinking, You guys insisted on this actor when he couldn’t get one whole scene out in the test.… Now you think if I fuck him, he will become a fine actor? Nobody’s that good in bed. I felt they could have just hired a costar with talent, someone who could deliver a scene and remember his lines. I also felt they could fuck him themselves and leave me out of it. It was my job to act and I said so. This was not a popular response. I was considered difficult. In the past, Stone has expressed some skepticism of the #MeToo movement, saying that the accused deserve due process under the law. “I don’t feel like these trials without due process are entirely appropriate,” she said on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast in 2018. “I feel that it’s appropriate that people have to take responsibility for the actions, but I do feel that some due process is in order. There’s a range of activities. And you can’t charge somebody with a felony over a misdemeanor.” In her new book, Stone repeated her claim that she was outraged at Basic Instinct director Paul Verhoeven after she saw the movie’s infamous leg-crossing scene. “I went to the projection booth, slapped Paul across the face, left, went to my car, and called my lawyer,” she recalled. But she eventually calmed down. “So I thought and thought and I chose to allow this scene in the film. Why? Because it was correct for the film and for the character; and because, after all, I did it.” Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at [email protected]

Former MTV news correspondent SuChin Pak has accused the network of being a hotbed of racism, saying that a “white male executive” once used a racial slur about her in the workplace. “Years ago, when I was a news correspondent at MTV, I overheard a colleague of mine, while watching me do the news that evening, tell a room full of people that I looked like a ‘me sucky sucky love you long time’ whore,” Pak wrote. “I was young, afraid as usual to cause a fuss or be seen as difficult or too ‘sensitive’ being the only female in the news room, so I didn’t say anything in the moment,” she added. The next day, however, Pak said, “it hit me that he said it in a room full of people, mostly women, who somehow now think subconsciously or consciously that this kind of [misogynistic] violent, racist language could be overlooked and dismissed and that worse, that someone like me would just swallow it and shrink into the small space that I had been allowed to occupy.” Therefore, Pak said that she “fought to have this person removed,” and stopped coming into work. “The executives tried to mediate to reconcile but I refused. It dragged on for months,” she said. “I did not do this because I had an agenda or even courage, I just had this sinking feeling in my gut that I had to do this.” “It’s the kind of sinking feeling though that doesn’t give you strength, or bravery, it was the kind that kept me in bed for a month, crying, scared and uncertain about everything,” Pak added. The media personality says that she now realizes “there was a fire, an anger, a burning rage that kept me on the course,” adding that she had a lawyer “who believed that I could not walk back into a place that harbored this kind of hate.” Pak went on to say that “one last attempt was made at ‘reconciliation’ as if that was even appropriate,” when the “white male executive” wrote her a letter as a “final gesture,” which Pak says came off to her as an attempt to “bring me into submission” and remind her “that someone’s livelihood was on the line, that I was somehow responsible for that.” Pak says she never opened the letter. “Asians have been the butt of jokes, but these jokes are not to be dealt with lightly,” Pak continued. “These jokes are just the timid veneer that hide violence, hate, [misogyny], racism and white supremacy.” “Our grandparents, our elders, our brothers and sisters are being spit on, punched, shot, attacked and murdered while these ‘jokes’ are being spit in our faces. Be angry. Be fucking enraged. And then do something to repair this damage,” she added. In recent years, MTV has teamed up with social justice groups to launch a “diversity, equity, and inclusion” orientation initiative seeking to construct new “baseline cultural norms” across Viacom CBS’ brands. MTV has also been accused of being sexist. Last year, pop star Miley Cyrus expressed that she was a victim of sexism at the MTV Video Music Awards after the show’s directors were reportedly reluctant to meeting her demands regarding the lighting on stage. You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler @alana, and on Instagram.

Former MTV news correspondent SuChin Pak has accused the network of being a hotbed of racism, saying that a “white male executive” once used a racial slur about her in the workplace. “Years ago, when I was a news correspondent at MTV, I overheard a colleague of mine, while watching me do the news that evening, tell a room full of people that I looked like a ‘me sucky sucky love you long time’ whore,” Pak wrote. “I was young, afraid as usual to cause a fuss or be seen as difficult or too ‘sensitive’ being the only female in the news room, so I didn’t say anything in the moment,” she added. The next day, however, Pak said, “it hit me that he said it in a room full of people, mostly women, who somehow now think subconsciously or consciously that this kind of [misogynistic] violent, racist language could be overlooked and dismissed and that worse, that someone like me would just swallow it and shrink into the small space that I had been allowed to occupy.” Therefore, Pak said that she “fought to have this person removed,” and stopped coming into work. “The executives tried to mediate to reconcile but I refused. It dragged on for months,” she said. “I did not do this because I had an agenda or even courage, I just had this sinking feeling in my gut that I had to do this.” “It’s the kind of sinking feeling though that doesn’t give you strength, or bravery, it was the kind that kept me in bed for a month, crying, scared and uncertain about everything,” Pak added. The media personality says that she now realizes “there was a fire, an anger, a burning rage that kept me on the course,” adding that she had a lawyer “who believed that I could not walk back into a place that harbored this kind of hate.” Pak went on to say that “one last attempt was made at ‘reconciliation’ as if that was even appropriate,” when the “white male executive” wrote her a letter as a “final gesture,” which Pak says came off to her as an attempt to “bring me into submission” and remind her “that someone’s livelihood was on the line, that I was somehow responsible for that.” Pak says she never opened the letter. “Asians have been the butt of jokes, but these jokes are not to be dealt with lightly,” Pak continued. “These jokes are just the timid veneer that hide violence, hate, [misogyny], racism and white supremacy.” “Our grandparents, our elders, our brothers and sisters are being spit on, punched, shot, attacked and murdered while these ‘jokes’ are being spit in our faces. Be angry. Be fucking enraged. And then do something to repair this damage,” she added. In recent years, MTV has teamed up with social justice groups to launch a “diversity, equity, and inclusion” orientation initiative seeking to construct new “baseline cultural norms” across Viacom CBS’ brands. MTV has also been accused of being sexist. Last year, pop star Miley Cyrus expressed that she was a victim of sexism at the MTV Video Music Awards after the show’s directors were reportedly reluctant to meeting her demands regarding the lighting on stage. You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler @alana, and on Instagram.

Jeff Bezos’ pro-migration Washington Post is warning President Joe Biden his failure to control fast-growing migration through the U.S. southern border threatens the Democrats’ political power in Washington, DC. The warning was buried in the last paragraph of a March 19 editorial by the newspaper’s editorial board: Mr. Biden, intentionally or not, has encouraged the flow, in the name of a more humane policy. Americans would be wise to welcome a new approach while insisting on orderly management at the border, along with focused enforcement and messaging, to prevent a surge from becoming a real crisis. The editorial was mostly supportive of Biden, but it was headlined: “The influx of migrants isn’t a crisis. But it could become one without careful management.” The editorial is worried that Biden’s policy is threatening Democratic power: The main risks are political — for Democrats, forced to defend the administration’s border policies as they seek to retain control of Congress next year — and humanitarian, for unaccompanied minors who have been packed into ill-equipped border stations. Officials are deploying the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the border and opened additional facilities in Texas to handle an overflow that must not be allowed to get out of hand. But the newspaper downplays Biden’s role in starting the migration and instead blames coyotes and cartels for supposedly fooling migrants into thinking that Biden will accept migrants’ entry into the United States. In reality, the Biden administration demolished President Donald Trump’s multi-layer diplomatic and legal barriers to the inflow of migrants eager for jobs in the United States. Since January, the administration has tried to keep the media focused on a small number of children amid the growing inflow of job-ready “Unaccompanied Alien Child” teenagers, the rising rush of “get-aways” adult male illegals, and the expanding flow of the illegals’ wives and children who are being allowed to enter via the nation’s expanding asylum doorway. Administration officials are eager to portray this government-backed migration as driven by “push” factors in the migrants’ home countries, such as floods, crime, corruption. They are eager to downplay the “pull” factors in U.S. policy — such as the expanded asylum welcome — that help extract the next wave of migrants and send them on the dangerous trek to U.S. jobs, apartments, and K-12 schools. But a March 20 news article in the Washington Post shows that poor migrants are rationally accepting Biden’s offer of easy migration into Americans’ jobs, apartments, schools, and society: In the meantime, one clear message has resonated with migrants. The week after Rice’s border visit, [Rep. Henry] Cuellar [D-TX] visited a detention facility for migrant children in Carrizo Springs, Tex. Cuellar said he asked 16- and 17-year-olds whether they had heard Biden when he said not to come to the United States. The teenagers looked at each other and said no, he recalled. Okay, Cuellar pressed, what about the messages from friends, neighbors and family saying now is the time to come — were they hearing those? “They all raised their hands and said yes,” Cuellar recalled. “They said, ‘We see this on TV. We see images of people coming across. . . . We see people coming across, so we’re going to do the same thing.’” “This,” the migrants told him, “is our opportunity to do this.” For years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to legal migration, labor migration, and to the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. The multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, intra-Democratic, and solidarity-themed opposition to labor migration coexists with generally favorable personal feelings toward legal immigrants and toward immigration in theory — despite the media magnification of many skewed polls and articles that still push the 1950s corporate “Nation of Immigrants” claim. The deep public opposition is built on the widespread recognition that migration moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, and from the central states to the coastal states.

Jeff Bezos’ pro-migration Washington Post is warning President Joe Biden his failure to control fast-growing migration through the U.S. southern border threatens the Democrats’ political power in Washington, DC. The warning was buried in the last paragraph of a March 19 editorial by the newspaper’s editorial board: Mr. Biden, intentionally or not, has encouraged the flow, in the name of a more humane policy. Americans would be wise to welcome a new approach while insisting on orderly management at the border, along with focused enforcement and messaging, to prevent a surge from becoming a real crisis. The editorial was mostly supportive of Biden, but it was headlined: “The influx of migrants isn’t a crisis. But it could become one without careful management.” The editorial is worried that Biden’s policy is threatening Democratic power: The main risks are political — for Democrats, forced to defend the administration’s border policies as they seek to retain control of Congress next year — and humanitarian, for unaccompanied minors who have been packed into ill-equipped border stations. Officials are deploying the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the border and opened additional facilities in Texas to handle an overflow that must not be allowed to get out of hand. But the newspaper downplays Biden’s role in starting the migration and instead blames coyotes and cartels for supposedly fooling migrants into thinking that Biden will accept migrants’ entry into the United States. In reality, the Biden administration demolished President Donald Trump’s multi-layer diplomatic and legal barriers to the inflow of migrants eager for jobs in the United States. Since January, the administration has tried to keep the media focused on a small number of children amid the growing inflow of job-ready “Unaccompanied Alien Child” teenagers, the rising rush of “get-aways” adult male illegals, and the expanding flow of the illegals’ wives and children who are being allowed to enter via the nation’s expanding asylum doorway. Administration officials are eager to portray this government-backed migration as driven by “push” factors in the migrants’ home countries, such as floods, crime, corruption. They are eager to downplay the “pull” factors in U.S. policy — such as the expanded asylum welcome — that help extract the next wave of migrants and send them on the dangerous trek to U.S. jobs, apartments, and K-12 schools. But a March 20 news article in the Washington Post shows that poor migrants are rationally accepting Biden’s offer of easy migration into Americans’ jobs, apartments, schools, and society: In the meantime, one clear message has resonated with migrants. The week after Rice’s border visit, [Rep. Henry] Cuellar [D-TX] visited a detention facility for migrant children in Carrizo Springs, Tex. Cuellar said he asked 16- and 17-year-olds whether they had heard Biden when he said not to come to the United States. The teenagers looked at each other and said no, he recalled. Okay, Cuellar pressed, what about the messages from friends, neighbors and family saying now is the time to come — were they hearing those? “They all raised their hands and said yes,” Cuellar recalled. “They said, ‘We see this on TV. We see images of people coming across. . . . We see people coming across, so we’re going to do the same thing.’” “This,” the migrants told him, “is our opportunity to do this.” For years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to legal migration, labor migration, and to the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. The multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, intra-Democratic, and solidarity-themed opposition to labor migration coexists with generally favorable personal feelings toward legal immigrants and toward immigration in theory — despite the media magnification of many skewed polls and articles that still push the 1950s corporate “Nation of Immigrants” claim. The deep public opposition is built on the widespread recognition that migration moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, and from the central states to the coastal states.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he is “close” to securing the Republican votes needed to overcome a Senate filibuster to advance the so-called DREAM Act, which would create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. Anchor Dana Bash asked, “I know you’ve been working on the issues for decades. Even the DREAM Act, which has pretty bipartisan support, could you get that done right given the fact that Republicans are saying I’m not doing anything until what is going on at the border is fixed right now?” Durbin said, “Listen, I introduced the DREAM Act 20 years ago. Most people know what it’s about. A vast majority of Americans of all political faiths support it.” He added, “I brought to the floor five times, and I’ve been stopped by the filibuster five times from passing it. I had a majority. I didn’t have 60 votes. Do I have 60 now? I think I’m close. I’m going to sit down with members of the Republican side and ask them if they would consider supporting it. I think I’ll have some support. Whether it’s enough remains to be seen.” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

The official SUV, produced by General Motors (GM), of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) annual “March Madness” tournament is made in China. Last week, Buick — a division of GM — announced its 2021 Buick Envision is the official SUV of March Madness. Get fired up and get ready to #EnvisionGreatness. The All-New Buick Envision. Official SUV of March Madness. pic.twitter.com/cU9Ecwr7u3 — Buick (@Buick) March 17, 2021 The Buick Envision is built in China and imported to the U.S. market to sell. GM Authority reported in May 2020: The 2021 Buick Envision debuted just yesterday, dropping in with an all-new second generation for the nameplate. Now, GM Authority has confirmed that the next-gen model will continue to be built in China. [Emphasis added] According to our sources, the 2021 Buick Envision will be produced at the SAIC-GM Jinqiao South plant in China. From there, the new Envision will be shipped to each of the four markets where the Buick brand is available, including the U.S., Canada, and Mexico (comprising the North American market), as well as in China. [Emphasis added] … For reference, the first-generation Buick Envision was also produced in China, but at a different facility, namely the SAIC-GM Dongyue North plant. Like the 2021 Envision, the first-gen model was also sold in China and throughout North America. [Emphasis added] In November 2018, Breitbart News Economics Editor John Carney urged GM to start manufacturing its Buick Envisions in the U.S. rather than China. “The Envision is the first car built in China for the U.S. market. Last year, Americans purchased 42,000 Envisions, which are made by a joint venture between General Motors and SAIC Motor, a state-owned Chinese automaker,” Carney wrote: China, however, is now the largest market for General Motors. Last year the company sold 4,040,789 vehicles there. And China has high tariffs on automobiles and other requirements that make exporting cars into China all-but impossible. General Motors policy of “we build where we sell” is a requirement in China. But it would be a far simpler matter to bring just the U.S. portion of Envision manufacturing back to the U.S. The basic architecture of the Envision is the same as the soon-to-be late Chevy Volt, which was built at the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant that the company announced would close by the end of next year. “It likely would not take an enormous amount of retooling to keep the plant open and making Envisions,” he concluded. John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.

Ohio State forward E.J. Liddell shared offensive comments, including racial slurs and threats of violence, posted to his Instagram account after the Buckeye’s 75-72 loss to Oral Roberts on Friday in the first major upset of the NCAA Tournament. Charles Barkley responded immediately, calling the people responsible for the posts “losers” and “cowards,” and Ohio State sports officials announced they have called the police to report the “vile” and “dangerous” threats to their players. Messages included one that read, “I hope somebody shoot you in ya face,” and that he wants to “kill” Liddell. Another said, “You are such a f—ing disgrace. Don’t ever show your face at Ohio State … I hope you die, I really do.” Liddell posted screenshots of the messages to his Twitter page Friday. “Honestly, what did I do to deserve this? I’m human,” he said: Honestly, what did I do to deserve this? I’m human. pic.twitter.com/djXzhSH0q8 — E.J. Liddell (@EasyE2432) March 20, 2021 Barkley said during the March Madness broadcast, “You guys give me a hard time because I refuse to do any type of social media, this is the reason why.” “No. 1, he had a great game,” Barkley continued, “But for you to give this kid death threats and hurl racial slurs at him because you’re safe in your own home like a coward, behind a computer and nobody know who you are, you need to take a hard look at yourself in the mirror.” “I am never gonna dignify these losers and interact with them ever; I don’t care how much money somebody offers me, I’ll never do social media because of this,” Barkley added: Charles Barkley on EJ Liddell harassment from fans on Instagram “I’m never gonna dignify these losers and interact with them ever, I don’t care how much money some offers me, I’ll never do social media because of this” pic.twitter.com/fCpgC0O12f — gifdsports (@gifdsports) March 20, 2021 Ohio State coach Chris Holtmann defended Liddell on Saturday, posting to his Twitter account, “Recent social media comments to E.J. Liddell, while not from or representative of Ohio State fans, are vile, dangerous and reflect the worst of humanity.” “E.J. is an outstanding young man who had a tremendous sophomore season and he was instrumental in our team’s success. We will take all the necessary actions to address this immediately,” Holtmann concluded: Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith defended Liddell on Saturday, saying, “The threatening social media attack E.J. Liddell faced after the game yesterday is appalling and will not be tolerated. … If you cross the line and threaten our players, you will be hearing from the authorities. That I promise you”: I will support our student-athletes in and out of competition! I have nothing but love and respect for E.J. He epitomizes all that we hope for in our student-athletes. pic.twitter.com/BxejMWvo1x — Gene Smith (@OSU_AD) March 20, 2021 Ohio State associate athletic director for communications Dan Wallenberg told reporters he contacted police on Saturday morning about the threats.

A new poll shows that there is a deepening racial divide over politics in sports, especially about taking a knee during the national anthem. The Axios-Ipsos poll of 2,035 adults taken in March finds a deep racial divide in mixing politics with sports. A slight majority (54 to 44) feel it is inappropriate for athletes to take a knee during the national anthem. However, as Axios notes, that slight majority only exists because the preponderance of white respondents had serious objections to the practice. According to the poll, 67 percent of whites find it is inappropriate to kneel during the national anthem. However, only 14 percent of blacks are against the practice. Also, 38 percent of Hispanics disagree with kneeling as did 42 percent of Asian respondents. The divide is starker when broken down by party. Fully 89 percent of Republicans oppose kneeling during the national anthem while only 25 percent of Democrats are against it. For independents, 51 percent oppose kneeling. The results were similar for the question of whether athletes should use their sport to speak out on political issues. The poll found a near-even split on the question with 60 percent of white respondents saying athletes should not use their sport to advocate for political causes. However, 84 percent of blacks, 63 percent of Hispanics, and 68 percent of Asians said it was OK for athletes to speak out. There was, however, an agreement that athletes should not be fired for speaking out, regardless, and that they have a First Amendment right to speak. Though, as to using Native American names, symbols, or mascots for sports teams, the poll found that most overall had no problem with the practice. The poll found that 64 percent said that changing team names to get rid of Native American imagery had gone too far in America today. But there was a racial divide here, too, with blacks skewing to the far left on the topic. 61 percent of blacks said that teams should not be allowed to use Native American names or mascots. A strong majority of whites disagreed with the black respondents and slight majorities of Hispanics and Asians joined whites in their positive view of using Native American names and mascots. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston.

A new poll shows that there is a deepening racial divide over politics in sports, especially about taking a knee during the national anthem. The Axios-Ipsos poll of 2,035 adults taken in March finds a deep racial divide in mixing politics with sports. A slight majority (54 to 44) feel it is inappropriate for athletes to take a knee during the national anthem. However, as Axios notes, that slight majority only exists because the preponderance of white respondents had serious objections to the practice. According to the poll, 67 percent of whites find it is inappropriate to kneel during the national anthem. However, only 14 percent of blacks are against the practice. Also, 38 percent of Hispanics disagree with kneeling as did 42 percent of Asian respondents. The divide is starker when broken down by party. Fully 89 percent of Republicans oppose kneeling during the national anthem while only 25 percent of Democrats are against it. For independents, 51 percent oppose kneeling. The results were similar for the question of whether athletes should use their sport to speak out on political issues. The poll found a near-even split on the question with 60 percent of white respondents saying athletes should not use their sport to advocate for political causes. However, 84 percent of blacks, 63 percent of Hispanics, and 68 percent of Asians said it was OK for athletes to speak out. There was, however, an agreement that athletes should not be fired for speaking out, regardless, and that they have a First Amendment right to speak. Though, as to using Native American names, symbols, or mascots for sports teams, the poll found that most overall had no problem with the practice. The poll found that 64 percent said that changing team names to get rid of Native American imagery had gone too far in America today. But there was a racial divide here, too, with blacks skewing to the far left on the topic. 61 percent of blacks said that teams should not be allowed to use Native American names or mascots. A strong majority of whites disagreed with the black respondents and slight majorities of Hispanics and Asians joined whites in their positive view of using Native American names and mascots. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston.

Corporate media is lauding Leyna Bloom, the first black and Asian transgender to model in Sports Illustrated’s annual Swimsuit Issue. “Leyna is legendary in the world of activism, strikingly gorgeous, and has an undeniable sense of self that shines through the minute she walks on set” MJ Day, editor at Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, wrote in an Instagram caption. “Her story represents one grounded in resilience and we couldn’t be more thrilled to help her tell it,” Day continued. “Her presence as the first trans woman of color to be in our issue is a result of her lifetime dedication to forging her own path that has led to acceptance, love and change.” “She represents every person’s right to love themselves and be who they want to be,” Day added. “We are honored to have her in this year’s issue and understand the effect it will have on so many others. She joins our team, not because of what she represents but because of her beauty, commitment and desire to leave the world a better place.” “This is what it looks like to be in full bloom,” Bloom wrote in an Instagram caption. “Thank you [Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue] for allowing me to showcase my heavenly form.” “In this moment, I am a representation of all the communities I grew from, and all the communities I’m planting seeds in,” Bloom added. Bloom is not the only transgender model to be featured in the magazine. Last year, Valentina Sampaio became the first transgender model to appear in Sports Illustrated‘s annual Swimsuit Issue as part of the magazine’s attempts to increase the diversity of its showcased swimwear models. In recent years, the magazine had also added plus-size models and a Muslim model wearing a hijab and a modesty swimsuit. This week in Nevada, Kataluna Enriquez — another biological male who identifies as a woman — was crowned Miss Silver State USA, besting the biological females in the competition, and putting him in the position to compete for the state’s Miss Nevada USA title. You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler @alana, and on Instagram.

Corporate media is lauding Leyna Bloom, the first black and Asian transgender to model in Sports Illustrated’s annual Swimsuit Issue. “Leyna is legendary in the world of activism, strikingly gorgeous, and has an undeniable sense of self that shines through the minute she walks on set” MJ Day, editor at Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, wrote in an Instagram caption. “Her story represents one grounded in resilience and we couldn’t be more thrilled to help her tell it,” Day continued. “Her presence as the first trans woman of color to be in our issue is a result of her lifetime dedication to forging her own path that has led to acceptance, love and change.” “She represents every person’s right to love themselves and be who they want to be,” Day added. “We are honored to have her in this year’s issue and understand the effect it will have on so many others. She joins our team, not because of what she represents but because of her beauty, commitment and desire to leave the world a better place.” “This is what it looks like to be in full bloom,” Bloom wrote in an Instagram caption. “Thank you [Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue] for allowing me to showcase my heavenly form.” “In this moment, I am a representation of all the communities I grew from, and all the communities I’m planting seeds in,” Bloom added. Bloom is not the only transgender model to be featured in the magazine. Last year, Valentina Sampaio became the first transgender model to appear in Sports Illustrated‘s annual Swimsuit Issue as part of the magazine’s attempts to increase the diversity of its showcased swimwear models. In recent years, the magazine had also added plus-size models and a Muslim model wearing a hijab and a modesty swimsuit. This week in Nevada, Kataluna Enriquez — another biological male who identifies as a woman — was crowned Miss Silver State USA, besting the biological females in the competition, and putting him in the position to compete for the state’s Miss Nevada USA title. You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler @alana, and on Instagram.

Who Canceled Dr. Seuss? And Why? It’s now been nearly three weeks since Dr. Seuss erupted into the news. Yes, the eruption is a bit strange, as the famed children’s book author died three decades ago. And yet the story is important because in it we see two things: First, the zealotry of left-wing cancel culture, which made the choice to pick this fight, and second, the power of center-right backlash in response. Yes, when confronted with the abnormal, it’s necessary for normal people to fight back. Moreover, as the Seuss Saga plays itself out, we are seeing that while the left can win the first battle, the right can win the war. A recap of how we got there: Back on March 1, a Virginia school district banned Dr. Seuss, and next day, March 2, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which manages the estate of the late author, announced that it was halting publication of six of his five-dozen or so children’s books. And on that same day, President Joe Biden omitted Dr. Seuss from Read Across America Day; ironically, that very same read-to-kids day had been launched in 1998 specifically to celebrate Dr. Seuss. Then the Chicago Public Library announced that it would be pulling six Dr. Seuss books, and other libraries followed suit. Ironically, the man behind Dr. Seuss, Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904-1991), was a lifelong political liberal, even if he wasn’t politically correct, let alone woke. But then, how could he be? In today’s world, even the living have trouble keeping up with wokeness, which requires its devotees to abide by an ever-shifting checklist of approved and disapproved phrases and concepts; for instance, the number of genders keeps expanding; by one measure, we’re now up to 64. Summing up the impact of all this extremism in testimony before Congress earlier this month, Glenn C. Loury, a prominent Black academic, called wokeism “a formula for tyranny and more racism.” So if these are the stakes—tyranny and, indeed, more racism—then it only makes sense that people of good will should wish to fight wokeism. And yet it turns out that when Republicans do fight the woken, they are mocked. For instance, The New Yorker, that citadel of smug liberalism, made fun of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for bringing up the issue of Dr. Seuss, while allegedly neglecting to talk about the Covid relief bill that was passed last week. In fact, McCarthy put his vote where his mouth was; he voted against that bill, and was not shy about why: “It showers money on special interests, but spends less than nine percent on actually defeating the virus.” In the meantime, McCarthy felt perfectly capable of expressing himself on both fiscal and cultural issues. Yet even so, on March 11, the queen of the woken, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), tweeted: This week in Congress: Dems: Passed $1.9T COVID package to deliver stimulus checks (w/ dependents!), cut child poverty in half, extend $300 UI, prevent cuts in state + local services, largest-ever investment in Native communities, etc GOP: Took a week to read The Cat in the Hat — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 12, 2021 So we can see: The left is trying to laugh away the Dr. Seuss issue. And that immediately inspires the question: Why is the left, which picked the fight in the first place, now so eager to bury it? Could it be that the left senses that attacking Dr. Seuss was overreach? In response, the right should use this as a teachable moment for the nation: Behold the woke left and its works. Indeed, the Dr. Seuss issue persists, because it’s interesting, and also because it’s revealing; that is, the cancel-culture aspect of wokeism reveals much about how the hard left sees the world. And that worldview is scary, even to many Democrats. For instance, it scares Sarah Silverman, the comedian who loudly supported Bernie Sanders in both 2016 and 2020. Obviously, Silverman is on the left, and yet in the past few years, she has become vexed by censorious hyper-leftism; recently, on Instagram, she raged against “absolutist-ness,” calling it “such a turnoff to me.” She added, “It’s so f ___ing elitist. You know, for something called ‘progressive,’ it allows for zero progress.” It’s in this harsh light that we might consider other recent eruptions of wokism (which goes by other names, too, including political correctness, critical race theory, identity politics, intersectionality, and successor ideology), and such eruptions include the fights over the toy Mr. Potato Head, the cartoon character Pepe LePew, and the wrongly accused blue-collar workers at Smith College. Oh, and let’s not forget the posh and oh-so-woke Grace Church School in Manhattan, where the use of the words “boys,” “girls,” and “parents,” is now discouraged; indeed, the list of offending words is now so long that the school has published a 12-page list of linguistic dos and don’ts. We might also observe that in each of these cases, the left started the fight. That is, it was the woken who found something they didn’t like and sought to crush it. Indeed, it becomes a cruel ritual of purging and scourging, all part of “the religion of identity politics,” in the mordant phrasing of gay conservative Douglas Murray, author of the new book, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity. Yet because this process of metaphorical book-burning and witch-hunting is so unseemly to the public, the woken often shrink when exposed in their wokery. Why, precisely? Because widespread exposure makes them look like crazy people, and this revelation can be costly. Indeed, such was the case, for instance, with journalism professor Melissa Click, who was fired from the University of Missouri for seemingly demanding violence (although all was not lost for Click, as she was soon hired at another university–Gonzaga alumni, please take note). When the left is caught overdoing its wokeness, it attempts, AOC-style, to stymie the criticism by mocking the critics. At such moments, the new party line then becomes, “Those silly right-wingers, look what they’re worried about now. Don’t they have anything better to worry about?” And the answer is that rightists do have better things to worry about, and yet sometimes, it’s necessary to drop everything and come to the defense of history and tradition—especially when it’s such revered figures as Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt who need defending. In the meantime, the rest of us might ask: Don’t woke leftists have anything better to do than attack U.S. history, and by extension, the U.S. itself? And since the answer is that they obviously don’t have anything better to do, patriots must rally in opposition to the next round of statue-toppling and history-erasing. Culture and History First, Then Politics As the late Andrew Breitbart always said, “Politics is downstream from culture.” That is, today’s cultural fight is tomorrow’s political fight. We can add, too, that the past is upstream of the present; that is, past events have flowed down to us today. And that’s one reason why even children’s author Dr. Seuss is important–because all history, including cultural history, teaches us something potentially useful. Sometimes we might look upon an historical event and say, “Yes, we should be inspired by that,” while at other times, we can look and say, “Let’s never make that mistake again.” Either way, and at all times, history is important; as the Roman statesman Cicero observed: To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history? And yet if we have such knowledge, we can be adults, participating in the shaping of our culture and the making of our politics. More recently, the 19th century English philosopher and journalist William Godwin explained: Make men wise, and by that very operation you make them free. Civil liberty follows as a consequence of this; no usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion. Such should be our goal: To be wise enough to form our own opinions, thereby doubling our resolve to defend our God-given, as well as constitutional, rights. And so that’s why we can take our stand—not so much to defend Dr. Seuss and everything he ever wrote or drew, but rather, to defend our right to read Dr. Seuss and to decide for ourselves. No woke overseers needed. In fact, in the case of Dr. Seuss, Americans have been actively defending their right to read. In the days after Dr. Seuss’ cancellation, his books soared to the top of Amazon’s best-seller list; indeed, as the Associated Press reported on March 11, Dr. Seuss sold 1.2 million books in the first week after the partial cancellation, more than quadruple the total from the week before. Okay, so what about the specific banned Dr. Seuss books? They’ve been selling, too. As of March 20 on Amazon, one of the forbidden works, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was selling for $200, and some prices have been much higher. The sudden high price is perhaps the result of Amazon’s algorithm reacting to the sudden surge in demand, although one can’t rule out a little opportunistic price-gouging. In any case, such high prices for Dr. Seuss send a clear signal to the crookedly entrepreneurial, and so counterfeiters will soon spring into action. Already, in fact, it’s easy to find dubious PDF versions on the web. We should note, of course, that such sites come with a strong warning of Buyer Beware. And yet at the same time, it seems readily apparent that human curiosity—combined with human greed and the willingness to flout copyright laws—will make sure that the entire Dr. Seuss canon will always be available. We can observe, incidentally, that much the same thing happened after the HBO Max streaming service pulled the 1939 classic Gone With The Wind; DVD sales soared. And the same sales spike held true for lesser films threatened with cancellation, such as Disney’s Swiss Family Robinson. Indeed, even sales of humble Mr. Potato Head jumped 70,000 percent in the wake of the news that Mr. P. would soon be emasculated. We can add that this snapping up of endangered cultural items speaks to more than just a desire for historic preservation. It also speaks to the desire not to be pushed around, including the simple desire to push back against noxious authority. Some times, to be sure, this pushing back can seem knee-jerk, even mindless. For instance, there’s that well-known scene from the 1953 Marlon Brando movie, The Wild One, in which a woman asks the Brando character, “What are you rebelling against?” And he answers with a shrug, “Whaddya got?” That sort of automatic defiance of authority grew stronger, of course, in the following decade. In fact, in 1967, the Beatles captured that contrary spirit in their simple and yet melodic song, “Hello, Goodbye”; sample lyrics: “You say yes, I say no/ You say stop and I say go,” and “I say high, you say low/ You say why and I say I don’t know.” Most recently, the French Charlie Hebdo magazine produced a cover cartoon on Meghan Markle and Queen Elizabeth that’s guaranteed to offend many, even as it makes others laugh. And yes, that’s the same Charlie Hebdo that suffered an Islamic terrorist attack in 2015, leaving a dozen dead. After such an awful massacre, the mere fact that the magazine is still publishing is a testament to the resilience of human resolve. (Good taste, of course, is a whole ‘nother issue.) To be sure, not everyone appreciates the orneriness, even perversity, of the human spirit, and yet it’s woven into our nature—and it’s a deep source of our love of liberty, as expressed, for example, in such resonant phrases as Live Free or Die, Don’t Tread on Me, and Molon Labe. As the playwright Bertolt Brecht argued, “In the contradiction is the hope.” Indeed, if we look at the thumb on our hand, we see the profound value of contraposition–because in the thumb opposite our other four fingers, we see a highly sophisticated tool for grasping things and for solving problems. The Thin Red Line Some might say that the woken are winning. After all, those half-dozen Dr. Seuss books are still banned, and libraries are still pulling their copies. Yet that’s the battle, not the war. That point was made on March 2 by ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, who warned his fellow liberals that such ridiculous PC could bring back You Know Who: This is how Trump gets reelected, by the way. Cancel Dr. Seuss, cancel Abe Lincoln, melt down Mr. Potato Head’s private parts and throw them at the Muppets. That is his path to victory the next time around. And it’s not just liberal comedians issuing such warnings to their flocks. On March 10, New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall headlined his piece, “Democrats Are Anxious About 2022—and 2024.” Edsall, who is one of those old-line leftists more focused on class than culture, quoted a procession of academics and politicos concerned that the emergent cultural leftism of the elite would turn off the non-woke masses—who are, of course, a majority of the voters. For instance, Ryan Enos, a professor of government at Harvard, told Edsall that “college-educated whites” are increasingly a liability to the Democrats “because they repel other voters from the coalition.” Enos added, “The views emanating from these [left-wing] cities and institutions are out of step with a large portion of the electorate.” Speaking of electorates and elections, one is reminded of the 1884 presidential election, when Grover Cleveland won the White House. As one supporter said of Cleveland at the time, “We love him for the enemies he has made.” So now today: The woke left has gone to battle against Dr. Seuss, as well as against so many other familiar figures and creations. Meanwhile, Republicans have come to the defense of them, in the name of our heritage—and of common sense. So what now of the Democrats? It would seem that, fearful of AOC-type challenges from within their party—as just happened in Nevada, where far-left insurgents swept away the old political machine—most elected Democrats wish to only whisper their defense of tradition, if they defend it at all. So that leaves Republicans to make a full-throated defense of our culture and heritage; we might think of the GOP as the Thin Red Line. And if that defense makes the GOP the enemy of the woken, so be it. And if so, then what was once said about Grover Cleveland might now be said about anti-woke Republicans: We love them for the enemies they have made.

A senior-level law enforcement source with U.S.Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the Rio Grande Valley revealed the implementation of a plan to release migrant families soon after apprehension. The plan radically changes how illegal migrants have been processed in the past and orders Border Patrol agents to quickly release migrant families without notifying the immigration courts or issuing a Notice to Appear. “This is insane, it is another pull factor that will overwhelm us,” a CBP official with knowledge of the plan told Breitbart Texas anonymously because he is not authorized to speak publically on the matter. “We are creating another entirely different class of aliens we will have to deal with years from now. We will never find most of these aliens once they are released.” Breitbart Texas confirmed the report with a second official operating under the umbrella of CBP. The implementation of the plan follows a short discussion of the matter reported on by Breitbart News late Saturday night. The migrant families will be released without a Notice to Appear, a formal charging document that begins the removal process according to sources. The plan was implemented early Sunday morning and is now in effect. The source states the plan allows for “prosecutorial discretion” by the Border Patrol for all migrants who enter with children to include whole family units. A one-sheet arrest report is completed, along with criminal record checks and a photograph of the migrant. The new process relies on migrants to tell officials what city they will be traveling to. The migrant is subsequently asked to report to the nearest immigration court office when they arrive so that they can place themselves into formal removal proceedings. The source believes this to be an impossible feat for the immigration courts to achieve. He further added, “If we can’t process them with our staffing of thousands and are being overwhelmed, the minimal staffing of court clerks around the country will never catch up — even if the migrant shows up.” Without a Notice to Appear, the migrants are free to travel about the country and are not officially placed into the immigration court system. The court cannot order the removal of a migrant in absentia for failing to appear for a future court date, the source explained. the existence of a removal in absentia order from the court allows immigration officials to remove the alien without appeal if they are later encountered. Under this new process, the migrants will not have a removal in absentia order for failure to appear officials issued no order to appear under the unprecedented plan put in place by the Biden administration on Sunday morning. This is yet another pull factor that will entice more migrants to make the journey north. The source reports the new procedure is only being implemented in the Rio Grande Valley Sector of the Border Patrol in South Texas. This is troubling to the source. “If they are not doing this in the Laredo or Del Rio Sectors, guess what, their traffic will come here to benefit from the immediate release, this plan will likely backfire,” the source explained. The CBP official said this plan is a result of capacity issues at Border Patrol stations but feels this will only exacerbate the issues they are dealing with. “We may be reducing the time it takes to release a family unit but if we encourage more to come once they find out it is quicker here, we’ll be in the same boat again,” the official concluded. Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.

Former President Donald Trump’s senior advisor Jason Miller said Sunday on Fox News Channels “MediaBuzz” that Trump will be launching a social media platform in the next few months. Host Howard Kurtz asked, “Donald Trump obviously has been booted off Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, which were a great megaphone for him. Does he plan to get back on social media perhaps with some new outfit?” Miller said, “I do think we’re going to see President Trump returning to social media and probably about two or three months here with his own platform. This is something that I think will be the hottest ticket in social media. It’s going to completely redefine the game. Everyone will be waiting and watching to see what exactly President Trump does. But it will be his own platform.” Kurtz asked, “Just to follow up, will this be a platform that the former president will create himself, working with another company? Obviously, he’ll be starting from scratch. He won’t start out with 88 million Twitter followers.” Miller said, “I can’t go much further than what I was able to just share. I can say it will be big once he starts. There have been a lot of high-powered meetings he has been having at Mar-a-Lago with teams of folks that have been coming in. I got to tell you it’s not just one company that’s approached the president. There have been numerous companies. I think the president knows what direction he wants to head here. This new platform is going to be big, and everyone wants him. He’s going to bring millions and millions, tens of millions of people to this new platform.” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

Zarah Sultana, the leftist Labour party Member of Parliament for Coventry South, claimed that “racism is a feature of capitalism” on the United Nations’ so-called “Anti-Racism Day”. Sultana, an acolyte of former Labour leader and fervent socialist Jeremy Corbyn, wrote on social media late Saturday night that the only way to fight racism is through the adoption of “internationalist socialism”. The 27-year-old MP went on to share an article she penned in Tribune Magazine in January, in which she wrote: “Racism in society isn’t a glitch, it’s a feature. It’s functional to the key driver of our economic system: the accumulation of capital. This, rather than meeting human need, is fundamental to capitalism. And it is why racism is embedded in its social relations.” “This racism isn’t incidental. It’s central to capitalism — both its history and in the present day,” she claimed. “The wealth that enriched the British Empire and established it as a global superpower meant the murder, destruction, and brutalisation of people across the world. Millions died and civilisations were destroyed. The perpetrators of these crimes had to believe that what they were doing was justified,” she suggested. Sultana concluded by quoting directly from the author of the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx, writing: “There is an old socialist slogan, ‘workers of the world, unite!’ It’s not a relic from history, it’s an injunction for today. It calls us to an internationalist approach to socialism, one which can truly tackle racism at its core. It’s a vision worth fighting for.” Racism is a feature of capitalism. It is used to divide our communities here at home and to justify imperialism abroad. On UN Anti Racism Day, let’s recommit to building a #WorldAgainstRacism through anti-racism that is internationalist socialism. 🌹https://t.co/ipwxf83tez — Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) March 20, 2021 Conservative MP Paul Bristow responded to her attacks on Western capitalism, writing: “Free markets break down discrimination, and is eliminating poverty for millions in countries that turned away from Soviet models of socialist central planning. You might also want to check what the racist & anti-Semitic writings of Marx and [Friedrich] Engels inspired some people to do.” Under the rule of socialist and communist governments in the twentieth century, an estimated 94 million people lost thier lives, making communism the leading ideological cause of death in the last century. London mayoral candidate David Kurten also critisised Sultana’s claims, saying: “What utter nonsense. A free-market economy with few and fair regulations generates greater prosperity for all.” The Labour MP has not shied away from her admiration of leftist regimes, as earlier this year she nominated the communist Cuba’s medical slavery system for a Nobel Peace Prize for work done during the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. “The internationalism by the Cuban people and the medical brigade is an incredible example of humanity and solidarity across borders,” she suggested. The Cuban medical system has long been hailed by Western leftists, yet under the Castro regime doctors face near slave-like conditions, being shipped to foreign countries in which they live in poor conditions and as much as 90 per cent of their wages are stolen by the communist government in Havana. Useful Idiot: Labour MP Nominates Communist Cuba’s Slave Doctor Regime for Nobel Prize https://t.co/HiTVxatuhf — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 7, 2021 Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

Nigerian government authorities have recently closed at least 618 schools across six northern states to protect students amid a recent string of abductions by bandits tied to the Islamic terror group Boko Haram, Nigerian newspaper This Day reported Monday. Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Niger, Yobe, and Kano states have all shuttered their schools in recent days. “In Sokoto, the state government has closed all boarding schools along border towns,” according to This Day. News of the mass school closures followed one day after Nigerian security forces in Kaduna state “foiled attempts by bandits to abduct 307 pupils” from the Government Secondary Science School in Ikara on March 13, the newspaper revealed. “Between the late hours of Saturday night and the early hours of today (Sunday), suspected bandits stormed the Government Science Secondary School [in] Ikara … in an attempt to kidnap students,” Samuel Aruwan, the Kaduna State Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs, told reporters on March 14. “Fortunately, the students utilized the security warning system in place and were thus able to alert security forces in the area,” he said. “The security forces comprising the troops of the Nigerian Army, the police, and some security volunteers, moved swiftly to the school and engaged the bandits, forcing them to flee,” he added. “[T]he Kaduna State government can confirm to you that all 307 students have been verified safe and present. The attempted kidnap was foiled completely and no student was taken from the school,” Aruwan claimed. Aruwan confirmed to reporters two days earlier, on March 12, that unidentified gunmen kidnapped 39 students in a raid on a college in northwestern Nigeria’s Kaduna state overnight on March 11. “The abductors stormed the Federal College of Forestry Mechanization in Mando, Kaduna state, around 9:30 p.m. Thursday, shooting indiscriminately before taking students,” Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported. The Kaduna state commissioner for internal security said 39 students were still missing as of March 12 despite the Nigerian Army’s successful rescue of 180 pupils following a standoff with the militants. “Further checks in the wake of the attack by armed bandits … indicate that 39 students are currently unaccounted for,” including 23 young women and 16 young men, Aruwan said in a statement. Nearly 300 girls were kidnapped from Jangebe’s Government Secondary School in northwestern Nigeria’s Zamfara state on February 26 before being allegedly released on March 2 under murky circumstances. An official government ceremony to return the girls to their families saw officials refuse to hand over the girls for several hours and ended with Nigerian soldiers firing upon disgruntled parents demanding their daughters’ release. Boko Haram is known to contract local criminal gangs across northern Nigeria to help stage abductions for ransom. Security experts suspect that local bandits believed to be associated with the jihadi group likely carried out the Zamfara abduction at Boko Haram’s request. Nigerian government officials denied paying a ransom to secure the Zamfara girls’ release. Boko Haram is a Nigerian terror group based in northern Borno state that has carried out an Islamist insurgency across northern Nigeria and its neighboring countries — Chad, Cameroon, and Niger — since the early 2000s. Security experts have linked the jihadi group to the surge in school kidnappings across Nigeria’s north over the past several weeks.

Nigerian government authorities have recently closed at least 618 schools across six northern states to protect students amid a recent string of abductions by bandits tied to the Islamic terror group Boko Haram, Nigerian newspaper This Day reported Monday. Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Niger, Yobe, and Kano states have all shuttered their schools in recent days. “In Sokoto, the state government has closed all boarding schools along border towns,” according to This Day. News of the mass school closures followed one day after Nigerian security forces in Kaduna state “foiled attempts by bandits to abduct 307 pupils” from the Government Secondary Science School in Ikara on March 13, the newspaper revealed. “Between the late hours of Saturday night and the early hours of today (Sunday), suspected bandits stormed the Government Science Secondary School [in] Ikara … in an attempt to kidnap students,” Samuel Aruwan, the Kaduna State Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs, told reporters on March 14. “Fortunately, the students utilized the security warning system in place and were thus able to alert security forces in the area,” he said. “The security forces comprising the troops of the Nigerian Army, the police, and some security volunteers, moved swiftly to the school and engaged the bandits, forcing them to flee,” he added. “[T]he Kaduna State government can confirm to you that all 307 students have been verified safe and present. The attempted kidnap was foiled completely and no student was taken from the school,” Aruwan claimed. Aruwan confirmed to reporters two days earlier, on March 12, that unidentified gunmen kidnapped 39 students in a raid on a college in northwestern Nigeria’s Kaduna state overnight on March 11. “The abductors stormed the Federal College of Forestry Mechanization in Mando, Kaduna state, around 9:30 p.m. Thursday, shooting indiscriminately before taking students,” Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported. The Kaduna state commissioner for internal security said 39 students were still missing as of March 12 despite the Nigerian Army’s successful rescue of 180 pupils following a standoff with the militants. “Further checks in the wake of the attack by armed bandits … indicate that 39 students are currently unaccounted for,” including 23 young women and 16 young men, Aruwan said in a statement. Nearly 300 girls were kidnapped from Jangebe’s Government Secondary School in northwestern Nigeria’s Zamfara state on February 26 before being allegedly released on March 2 under murky circumstances. An official government ceremony to return the girls to their families saw officials refuse to hand over the girls for several hours and ended with Nigerian soldiers firing upon disgruntled parents demanding their daughters’ release. Boko Haram is known to contract local criminal gangs across northern Nigeria to help stage abductions for ransom. Security experts suspect that local bandits believed to be associated with the jihadi group likely carried out the Zamfara abduction at Boko Haram’s request. Nigerian government officials denied paying a ransom to secure the Zamfara girls’ release. Boko Haram is a Nigerian terror group based in northern Borno state that has carried out an Islamist insurgency across northern Nigeria and its neighboring countries — Chad, Cameroon, and Niger — since the early 2000s. Security experts have linked the jihadi group to the surge in school kidnappings across Nigeria’s north over the past several weeks.

Tanzanian President John Magufuli has died at the age of 61 from a heart illness, Tanzanian Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan said on Wednesday. “Dear Tanzanians, it is sad to announce that today 17 March 2021 around 6:00 p.m. we lost our brave leader, President John Magufuli, who died from heart disease at Mzena hospital in Dar es Salaam where he was getting treatment,” Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan said during a state television broadcast on March 17. Tanzania will now enter a two-week national mourning period for Magufuli, the vice president added. BREAKING: Tanzanian President John Pombe Magufuli is dead. Vice president Samia Suluhu says Magufuli succumbed to heart disease in Dar Es Salaam #RIPMagufuli pic.twitter.com/h9fl8ZpHYQ — The African Voice (@teddyeugene) March 17, 2021 Magufuli was admitted to the Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on March 6, Hassan said during her speech on Wednesday. The revelation puts to rest weeks of rumors surrounding Magufuli’s nearly three-week disappearance from the public eye since he was last seen on February 27 in Dar es Salaam during a ceremony at the Tanzanian State House. The Tanzanian government’s initial refusal to comment on the president’s whereabouts fueled speculation that he had fallen ill, with some alleging that he had contracted the Chinese coronavirus. Vice President Hassan seemed to make cryptic references to Magufuli’s illness on Monday during a speech marking the launch of a government project in Tanga, a town in Tanzania’s northeast. “It’s quite normal for a person’s body to be indisposed and contract the flu or develop a fever,” Hassan said on March 15, without clarifying to whom she referred. The vice president similarly acknowledged “rumors flying around” Tanzania during her speech, without specifying which rumors she referred to or what they claimed. “As Tanzanians, we must work together, be united and build our nation. Most of the rumors you hear don’t originate in Tanzania … they come from outside the country. I ask you to ignore them. If it’s about prayers, pray, but all in all, we should remain united and take Tanzania forward. We’re safe,” Hassan said. Tanzanian Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa claimed Magufuli was “safe” and working on March 12 while urging Tanzanians to “ignore fake news” concerning the president’s health status. “The prime minister asked Tanzanians to be calm because President John Magufuli is safe and he is going about his work,” the Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation quoted Majaliwa as saying. Tanzanian security forces arrested at least four people for allegedly spreading “false information” about Magufuli’s health on social media in recent days, demonstrating the government’s desire to clamp down on speculation surrounding the head of state. Magufuli’s death on Wednesday comes just five months after he won a second five-year term as Tanzania’s president in October in a disputed election. Magufuli was first elected president of Tanzania in 2015 after the country’s left-wing ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi, chose him to succeed former Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete. The former parliamentarian was nicknamed “The Bulldozer” for his aggressive leadership style, which saw him push through policies he championed despite opposition from government factions. Magufli’s policies surrounding the Chinese coronavirus pandemic – which included blanket refusals to force Tanzanians into lockdown or to wear sanitary masks, and an endorsement of alternative remedies for coronavirus, such as prayer and steam inhalation – contributed to fervid speculation over the past few weeks that the president had contracted coronavirus during his disappearance from the public eye.

Unidentified gunmen abducted a Catholic priest in Nigeria’s Delta State this week, the Premium Times reported Thursday. The priest, Father Harrison Prhinyovaw, was driving near the town of Abraka Monday evening around 8:00 pm when the assailants held him up at gunpoint and abducted him, leaving his vehicle at the scene. Prhinyovaw is the pastor of St. John’s Catholic Church, in the Ukwuani Local Government Area of Delta State, and was reportedly in transit from Warri back to his parish when he was kidnapped. “The Catholic priest was meandering a bad spot in Oria-Abraka, Ethiope East Local Government Area of the state when he was returning to base from Warri in his Highlander Jeep,” said one local eye-witness to the abduction. “The kidnappers shot sporadically in the air to scare away passers-by at the scene of the operation,” the witness said. “They abandoned the cleric’s car at the scene of the incident.” Another auricular witness, a member of a local vigilante group, told journalists he and his colleagues had heard the gunshots fired by the kidnappers but did not see them or go after them. “It looked like they came to fight a war. We have so far picked about 15 shells which are bullets from their AK-47 gun,” the witness told Oasis magazine. Fellow Nigerian priest Father Ugochukwu Ugwoke also announced the kidnapping on Twitter, asking for prayers. He identified the missing pastor as Father Harrison Egwuenu, a priest of the Catholic diocese of Warri. Delta State police spokesman Edafe Bright, the Deputy Superintendent of Police, confirmed authorities’ awareness of the incident, adding that a team of police officers had been assigned to the case. Follow @tdwilliamsrome

British-based charity Save the Children said Tuesday children as young as 11 years old have been beheaded by the savage ISIS-affiliated Islamist insurgency in Mozambique. The terrorists are reportedly murdering children before the eyes of their helpless mothers. Sky News quoted horror stories related to Save the Children by civilians in Mozambique, including a mother who hid in terror with three of her children while the insurgents murdered her 12-year-old eldest son, and a woman who watched the death of her 11-year-old boy. The Mozambique insurgency calls itself Ahlu-Sunnah Wa-Jama, a name it borrowed from Somalia’s Al-Shabaab terrorist organization; some of the killers, and many terrified local citizens, simply refer to the militants as “al-Shabaab.” The insurgency grew out of a popular movement against corrupt government and foreign exploitation of Mozambique’s oil and gas resources, but its loyalties lie with the Islamic State. The U.S. State Department formally designated the militants and their leader Abu Yasir Hassan, a Tanzanian national, as a terrorist organization last week. The designation identified them as “ISIS-Mozambique” and noted they pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in the spring of 2018. The State Department held them responsible for the deaths of over 1,300 civilians and the displacement of some 670,000 Mozambicans. A dozen U.S. Army Green Berets arrived in Mozambique this week on a two-month mission to train local troops. The New York Times (NYT) on Monday described it as “the entry of the United States military into a counterinsurgency effort that has been aided so far mainly by South African mercenaries, who have faced accusations of human rights abuses.” The NYT quoted a State Department insider who said the Green Beret training program “could lead to more ambitious American help for Mozambique’s military including combat casualty care, planning and logistics.” “I don’t think anyone saw this coming. For this to crop up so quickly is concerning,” said U.S. Special Operations Africa deputy commander Col. Richard Smith. The ferocity of the Mozambican insurgents may have intensified this year, but their appearance on the scene should not have come as a sudden surprise to anyone. After years of increasingly bloody activity, they launched their first major offensive in 2017, attacking the port city of Mocimboa da Praia, which they finally managed to conquer in 2020. The Islamic State began claiming responsibility for Mozambican atrocities in the summer of 2019. The long-held strategic objective of the insurgency is taking control of the gas-rich province of Cabo Delgado, or at least making it so dangerous that foreign energy companies can no longer operate there. Beheadings have been a staple of their tactics for years; they reportedly beheaded 50 people in a mass atrocity in November 2020 and then hacked the bodies into pieces. The BBC on Sunday described northern Mozambican villages as “cut off from the outside world by roving gangs of machete-wielding Islamist fighters” with a habit of hanging their butchered victims from trees, their severed heads balanced atop the bloody corpses. The jihadis generally behead male villagers while taking the women and girls as slaves, much like Boko Haram in Nigeria. When one man escaped a village massacre and then tried to phone his brother to see if he was all right, a jihadi answered and said, “We killed your brother. We are afraid of nothing. We are al-Shabaab and we kill as we please.” “We came here by foot with nothing. We were afraid. We saw al-Shabaab killing others with knives. There are many women I know who were abducted. There are many children in the camp here whose mothers were taken,” another refugee told the BBC. The intensity of the ISIS-Mozambique campaign should come as no surprise to informed observers. The New York Times noted that 160 gunmen from the Wagner Group, the notoriously brutal Russian mercenary organization, flew into Cabo Delgado to protect its energy operations in 2019 and then flew right back out again after the insurgents killed seven of them. South African mercenaries proved to have more staying power, but also more indiscriminate firepower, as international human rights groups accuse them of killing civilians while having little significant effect on the insurgency. The U.S. State Department this week dismissed the use of mercenaries as “a feature of the landscape in Cabo Delgado that complicates rather than helps efforts to address the terror threat there.” Another complicating factor is the Mozambican government, which is almost as corrupt as the jihadis accuse it of being, and has a distressing habit of interfering with humanitarian aid shipments to the starving refugees of Cabo Delgado. Local residents told the BBC the police expect bribes before allowing them to eat. Factions within Mozambique’s political class accuse each other of supporting the insurgents. Money for food and medicine sent by well-meaning foreign donors wound up supporting the corrupt government instead, with little visible effect on Mozambique’s grinding poverty, which helps the Islamists recruit fighters and market itself as a popular revolutionary movement.

Tanzanian Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan seemed to imply that Tanzanian President John Magufuli was sick on Monday amid unproven rumors that he may have contracted the Chinese coronavirus since he disappeared from the public eye last month. “It’s quite normal for a person’s body to be indisposed and contract the flu or develop a fever,” Hassan said on March 15, without clarifying to whom she was referring. The vice president made the remarks at the launch of a government project in Tanzania’s northeastern town of Tanga. Hassan likewise acknowledged “rumors flying around” Tanzania during her speech, without specifying which rumors or what they claimed; the vice president warned Tanzania’s citizens against trusting such “outside” information. “As Tanzanians, we must work together, be united and build our nation. Most of the rumors you hear don’t originate in Tanzania … they come from outside the country. I ask you to ignore them. If it’s about prayers, pray, but all in all, we should remain united and take Tanzania forward. We’re safe,” she said. President Magufuli was last seen in public on February 27 in Dar es Salaam during a government ceremony held at the Tanzanian State House. He has remained out of the public eye for over two weeks since then. The extended absence is unusual for Magufuli, as he regularly speaks at church congregations and political rallies. The Tanzanian government’s refusal to confirm Magufuli’s whereabouts over the past 17 days has fueled speculation that he may have fallen ill. Tanzania’s opposition party alleged without evidence on March 11 that Magufuli had been airlifted first to Nairobi, Kenya, and then to India to receive medical treatment after contracting the Chinese coronavirus. Tanzanian Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa broke the government’s silence on Magufli’s status on March 12, claiming he was “safe” and working. “The prime minister asked Tanzanians to be calm because President John Magufuli is safe and he is going about his work,” the Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation quoted Majaliwa as saying while urging Tanzanians to “ignore fake news.” Police in Tanzania have arrested four people in recent days for allegedly spreading “false information” about Magufuli’s health via social media. “[T]he Kilimanjaro Regional Police Force is said to be holding two people on suspicion of spreading false information on social media concerning senior government officials’ health, contrary to the law,” Tanzanian newspaper the Citizen reported on Monday. “This brings the number of suspects arrested in connection with spreading online fabricated information related to the health of President John Magufuli to four after two such cases were reported on Sunday [March 14] and Saturday [March 13].”

Tanzanian President John Magufuli is allegedly in India receiving medical treatment for the Chinese coronavirus, Tanzanian opposition leader Tundu Lissu told Reuters on Thursday. Magufuli was “flown to Kenya’s Nairobi Hospital at the start of this week and then on to an unknown destination in India,” Lissu told Reuters on March 11. “He’s comatose since yesterday morning,” the politician claimed, without providing further details. Lissu did not provide Reuters with evidence for his claims, instead citing unidentified medical and security officials in Kenya as his information sources. Magufuli was last seen in public on February 27 during a ceremony at the Tanzanian State House in Dar es Salaam. His nearly two week-absence from the public eye since then sparked speculation he may be ill. “We’re informed when [former Tanzanian President Jakaya] Kikwete had prostate surgery. We’re told when [former Tanzanian President Benjamin] Mkapa went for hip replacement … What’s it with Magufuli that we don’t deserve to know?” Lissu, who lost Tanzania’s last presidential election in 2020 to Magufuli, wrote in a Twitter statement on March 9: The President’s well-being is a matter of grave public concern. We’re informed when Kikwete had prostate surgery. We’re told when Mkapa went for hip replacement. We’re not kept in the dark when Mwalimu fought leukemia. What’s it with Magufuli that we don’t deserve to know? — Tundu Antiphas Lissu (@TunduALissu) March 9, 2021 Reuters said Thursday it reached out to the governments of Kenya and India to inquire about Magufuli’s whereabouts but had not received any information. Magufuli’s director of communications, Gerson Msigwa, and Tanzanian government spokesman Hassan Abbas have likewise failed to respond to Reuters’ requests for information on Magufuli. Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper reported on Wednesday “an African leader,” whom it did not name, was being treated for the Chinese coronavirus at Nairobi Hospital and was allegedly on a ventilator. The newspaper cited unidentified political and diplomatic sources in Kenya for the information. Nairobi Hospital representatives told Reuters on Thursday they had “no information to disclose” when asked about the matter. Tanzania’s constitution stipulates the country’s vice president, currently Samia Suluhu Hassan, assumes presidential duties should the president prove unable to discharge his or her duties. Magufuli made international headlines over the past year for repeatedly insisting his countrymen would not be locked down or forced to wear masks during the ongoing Chinese coronavirus pandemic. He also claimed in May that coronavirus testing kits imported to Tanzania from China had returned positive test results for a goat and a pawpaw, a papaya-like fruit. Magufuli encouraged Tanzanians to pray away the coronavirus instead of wearing sanitary masks in March 2020. He endorsed natural remedies to cure symptoms of coronavirus on January 27 in lieu of getting vaccines, which he warned could be dangerous to people’s health. “Vaccines are not good. If they were, then the white man would have brought vaccines for HIV/AIDS,” the president said during the opening of a new farm in northwestern Tanzania’s Gaita region. “We Tanzanians haven’t locked ourselves in and we don’t expect to lock ourselves down. I don’t expect to announce any lockdown because our God is living and He will continue to protect Tanzanians,” he said. “We will also continue to take health precautions including the use of steam inhalation,” Magufuli added. “You inhale while you pray to God, you pray while farming maize, potatoes, so that you can eat well and corona fails to enter your body [sic]. They will scare you a lot, my fellow Tanzanians, but you should stand firm,” he said.

A string of huge explosions ripped through a military base in the Equatorial Guinea city of Bata on Monday, killing up to 20 people and causing over 600 injuries. According to President Teodoro Obiang, the explosions were caused by “negligent handling of dynamite.” “The impact of the explosion caused damage in almost all the houses and buildings in Bata,” Obiang said. Photos from across the city showed rooftops ripped off houses and buildings severely damaged by the shock waves. At least 17 people are dead and hundreds of others are hospitalized following an explosion at a military camp in Equatorial Guinea, according to the country's health ministry. https://t.co/5oTHJR9im3 pic.twitter.com/GrPdNSWO0d — ABC News (@ABC) March 7, 2021 The Defense Ministry issued a statement that claimed the explosions were caused by ammunition exploding due to a fire in a weapons depot. Obiang said the fire was due to “stubble-burning by farmers in their fields,” while “the negligence of a unit charged with the care and protection of stores of dynamite and explosives” contributed to the blast. Casualty reports between government agencies were also inconsistent, as the president mentioned 15 fatalities, the health ministry said 17, and local media reported at least 20. A doctor told state television network TVGE that clinics and hospitals were overwhelmed by the wounded, many of them children, so coronavirus treatment centers were being pressed into service for the treatment of minor injuries. A radio station in Bata reported Monday that residents within four kilometers of the explosion were being evacuated because toxic substances might have been released into the atmosphere. The health ministry called for blood donors and volunteers to dig through the rubble, while Foreign Minister Simeon Oyono Esono Angue appealed to other nations for emergency aid. “This is going to have quite a devastating effect on many levels. Equatorial Guinea is one of the richest countries in Africa, with the least distribution of its oil wealth. There have been many coup attempts since independence and so this is going to rock the boat,” former U.S. diplomat William Lawrence told Al Jazeera News on Monday. Al Jazeera implied the aftermath of the explosion could have political ramifications for 78-year-old Obiang, who has ruled Equatorial Guinea since 1979 and seems to be grooming his son Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, currently vice president in charge of defense and security, to succeed him. The BBC noted the president has been “repeatedly accused of human rights abuses” and “massive corruption” during his long tenure, which helps to explain why 76 percent of the population lives in abject poverty despite Equatorial Guinea’s rich resources of oil and gas. Equatorial Guinea is a former Spanish colony located south of Cameroon. It has a total population of 1.3 million, of which 175,000 live in Bata. The Spanish embassy issued a recommendation Monday that “Spanish nationals stay in their homes” during the crisis.

South African Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier slammed preferential “Black Economic Empowerment” as “racial discrimination” Sunday, saying such favoritism smacks of apartheid. Cardinal Napier, the archbishop of Durban, wrote on Twitter that Affirmative Action, Black Economic Empowerment and even Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment are all forms of racial discrimination “on a par with apartheid policies” that also favored another group by race. The cardinal put his assertion in the form of a “Lenten Resolution”: to give up on trying to figure out how preferential treatment for blacks based on skin color can be anything other than discrimination. A Lenten Resolution: To stop trying to work out how Affirmative Action, Black Economic Empowerment or even Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment are not Racial Discrimination on a par with apartheid policies which also favoured a certain group by RACE! — Cardinal Napier (@CardinalNapier) March 7, 2021 Cardinal Napier has also been a vocal critic of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which he said is “committed to dismantling the very values, structure and institutions” central to a healthy society. The mission statement of Black Lives Matter “indicates the movement is being hijacked by the interests and parties committed to dismantling the very values, structure and institutions which have over the centuries undergird the best civilisations and cultures!” the cardinal tweeted last July. In his critique, Napier joined a growing group of Christian and conservative black leaders who have denounced BLM for its rejection of the nuclear family and its advocacy of a radical LGBT agenda, including the abolition of “heteronormativity” and the embrace of “queer culture.” In his appraisal of BLM’s problems, the cardinal also said that if BLM truly cared about black lives, it would denounce the abortion industry and its disproportionate attack on the black population. “Another crucial test of the authenticity of the Black Lives Matter movement will be its stance vis a vis Planned Parenthood and the Abortion Industry!” the cardinal stated in a separate tweet. In the United States, the abortion industry disproportionately targets the black population, with black children aborted at more than three times the rate of white children. According to the most recent abortion data (2018) provided by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), black women have the highest abortion rate in the U.S. and white women have the lowest. Among white women in the U.S., there are 110 abortions for every 1000 live births, whereas among blacks, there are 335 abortions for every 1000 births. Blacks are therefore aborted at over three times the rate of whites and more than half of all black deaths in the U.S. are the result of abortion. Apartheid, which the cardinal compared to affirmative action, was a system of institutionalized racial segregation in South Africa that guaranteed absolute dominion of the country by the nation’s minority white population. Apartheid was finally overcome in the early 1990s thanks to the courage and persistence of members of the anti-apartheid movement. Follow @tdwilliamsrome

At least 20 people died and 30 others were wounded in a suicide car bombing outside of a restaurant near the port in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, late Friday night, emergency officials and police said. A car full of explosives was set off at the gates of Luul Yemeni restaurant near Mogadishu’s port around 8:00 p.m. local time, Capt. Aden Osman, a senior police officer, told CNN. Heavy gunfire followed the explosion. The blast caused mass destruction of several buildings and business centers in the surrounding area, Osman added. “So far, we have carried 20 dead people and 30 injured from the blast scene,” Dr. Abdulkadir Aden, founder of AAMIN Ambulance services, told Reuters. Somalia’s state-controlled media outlet Radio Mogadishu reported that police had cordoned off the area of destruction. “Plumes of white smoke covered the city after the enormous explosion followed by gunfire,” said witness Liban Yusuf, adding that a building near the site of the attack collapsed, and a search-and-rescue operation was ongoing to uncover people from the rubble. The terror group al-Shabaab took responsibility for the attack through a statement posted on its network of sites. This is not the first time the restaurant had been attacked. It was first attacked in August 2020. That same month, Al-Shabab attacked a beach resort, killing at least 15 people. The latest attack comes as Mogadishu has tight security measures in place as the country is reeling from a political crisis having to do with a delayed election. Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo had a mandate, which expired on February 8, and there has not been an election held since.

Nigerian soldiers reportedly shot at least three people on Wednesday at a Nigerian Army handover ceremony to return 277 schoolgirls recently freed by their Jihadi kidnappers to their parents in Zamfara state. Parents at the ceremony reportedly grew frustrated at how long the event was taking and began throwing stones at Nigerian government officials organizing the handover. Nigerian security forces responded to the stoning by opening fire into the crowd of parents, injuring at least three people. It remains unclear if there were any deaths related to the incident. “Angered by officials’ insistence on a formal handover before parents could leave with their children, mobs began throwing stones at officials outside the school in the remote village of Jangebe when the girls were returned,” Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on March 3. “One person was shot in the stomach when security personnel opened fire and was carried away by others in the crowd,” Jangebe resident Bello Gidan-Ruwa told AFP by phone after leaving the ceremony. Nigerian government officials organizing the event reportedly insisted that the girls first be handed over to a local village chief before they could be reunited with their parents. “It is infuriating for (officials) to say they had to finish their speeches before handing over our children to us. This is outrageous,” one mother told AFP, explaining that parents were eager to walk their daughters home to nearby villages before nightfall. “They know the roads are insecure but they didn’t care. If we leave late and are kidnapped with our daughters again, the girls’ rescue will make no sense,” she added. Many fed-up parents defied the ceremony’s lengthy protocol and began to personally retrieve their children from the building. “Shooting by the security forces began when the crowd began pelting a convoy carrying regional parliament speaker Nasiru Mu’azu Magarya with stones as it tried to leave the village,” according to AFP. Despite the chaos, all 277 girls kidnapped from their government-run school in Zamfara last week were released to their parents on March 3, according to Nigerian officials. The girls were abducted from Jangebe’s Government Secondary School in northwestern Nigeria’s Zamfara state on February 26 by local militants believed to be associated with the terror group Boko Haram, which has carried out an Islamist insurgency in northern Nigeria since the early 2000s and recently ramped up school kidnappings across the region. The Zamfara girls were released on March 2 under unclear circumstances. While no group has yet claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, Boko Haram is known to contract criminal gangs in northern Nigeria to help stage kidnappings for ransom. Nigerian government authorities have denied paying a ransom to secure the Zamfara girls’ release this week.

An increasing number of states in northern Nigeria are closing their schools to protect their students from a rise in “abductions and banditry in the last two months,” the Nigerian newspaper This Day reported on Tuesday. Northern Nigerian states including Kano, Katsina, Yobe, Zamfara, Niger, Jigawa, and Sokoto have closed a significant number of their public schools in recent weeks. Kano Governor Abdullahi Ganduje recently ordered ten schools located on the remote outskirts of the state, where security is limited, to close down. He later extended the order to five healthcare worker training centers in Kano. Zamfara Governor Bello Matawalle ordered the closure of all schools in the state on February 26. Zamfara and Katsina states have been most affected by the recent wave of abductions across northern Nigeria. The Islamist terror group Boko Haram has plagued the region with violent attacks since it formed in Kano in the early 2000s with the goal of establishing an Islamic caliphate in West Africa. Boko Haram believes Western education corrupts Muslim values and frequently targets schools and centers of learning for kidnappings. The group’s name loosely translates as “Western education is forbidden.” Boko Haram’s most infamous school abduction took place in Nigeria’s Borno state in 2014. The group kidnapped 270 schoolgirls from a government-run boarding school in April of that year. Roughly 100 of the girls abducted in Chibok remain missing today, and in recent months Boko Haram has ramped up similar kidnappings. The terror group claimed responsibility for the December 11 abduction of over 300 schoolboys from a government-run school in Katsina state; all 344 schoolboys were allegedly released under unclear circumstances one week later on December 17. Security and local sources told Agence France-Press (AFP) that “the raid was carried out by a well-known criminal in the region, Awwalun Daudawa, in collaboration with Idi Minorti and Dankarami, two other crime chiefs with strong local followings, acting on behalf of Boko Haram.” Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, allegedly ordered Daudawa to kidnap the schoolboys in Katsina. “After the children were taken, they went across the border into Zamfara state and split them among different gangs ‘for safe keeping.’ And some of the gangs have been in touch with the authorities for the release of the boys,” Nigerian security forces told AFP. Unidentified gunmen stormed the Government Girls Science Secondary School in Zamfara state on February 26, kidnapping 279 schoolgirls. Zamfara Gov. Matawalle announced on March 2 that all of the kidnapped girls had been released. Nigerian state government officials speaking on condition of anonymity told Reuters this week that Nigerian authorities “have made payoffs in the past in exchange for child hostages, creating an incentive for abductions.” “Several of those officials declined to comment on Tuesday [March 2] on whether they believed a ransom had been paid in the latest incident,” Reuters reported of the February 26 kidnapping in Zamfara.

Time has run out for Christian pastor Bulus Yakuru, who is due to be executed by the Boko Haram Islamic terror group on Wednesday, after having been abducted in northeast Nigeria on December 24, 2020. On Wednesday, February 24, Boko Haram released a video threatening to kill the pastor in one week if their demands to the Nigerian government were not met. In the video, Pastor Yakuru is seen pleading with Nigerian President Buhari, Borno state Governor Babagana Zulum, and the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) to intervene to secure his release. A black-masked Boko Haram terrorist wearing camouflage gear stands behind the pastor brandishing a knife, as the pastor, clad in an orange jumpsuit, insists that his captors issued him an ultimatum, threatening to kill him a week from that date. “I’m calling on President Muhammadu Buhari and the Governor of Borno to help me because I have been given a one-week ultimatum today, February 24,″ the pastor said. “If you want me alive, I beg you in your capacity as president, the governor and our local government chairman to save me from this suffering,” he said. “If you want me alive, I beg you in your capacity as President, the governor and our local government chairman to save me from this suffering,” he added. “I’m calling on the EYN Church of the Brethren President to intervene and secure my release. Please pray for me. Please release me from this pain,” As Breitbart News reported, on Christmas Eve 2020, a band of armed Boko Haram militants stormed the mostly Christian village of Pemi, near Chibok, in Borno State, on trucks and motorcycles, opening fire on villagers and killing eleven. The jihadists set buildings ablaze, including a church, and stole food and medical supplies. Nigerian Bishop Moses Chikwe and his driver, who were abducted by gunmen on December 27, were released by their kidnappers late Friday, church officials report. https://t.co/0kb4qcEYVP — Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) January 4, 2021 On that occasion, the raiders also kidnapped Pastor Yakuru of the Church of the Brethren (EYN) and have held him captive during the ensuing months. For its part, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has also urged President Buhari to order the Nigerian military to rescue Pastor Yakuru from his Boko Haram captors before he is executed. CAN President, Rev. Samson Ayokunle, said that his organization has no details of the kidnappers’ demands, but said the president must ensure the captive is not murdered. “Why should the government leave the citizens of this country at the mercy of insurgents, bandits and kidnappers? What then is the essence of having a government in place?” Ayokunle asked. According to reports this week, Pastor Yakuru’s wife has fallen sick and their three children have stopped their schooling in the face of the emotional and financial trauma associated with the kidnapping and death threat. Last Sunday, the Chibok community began contributing money for ransom and sought to meet Boko Haram factional leader, Abubakar Shekau, in an effort to secure the life of the pastor. “This is why we are calling on the Boko Haram to come and collect this money and spare the life of Bulus. His family needs him and needs a lot of attention,” said an elder in the Chibok community. "Christians slaughtered in Nigeria — a Commonwealth country!" https://t.co/5Ijf6vpoVq — Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) March 18, 2019 On Tuesday, March 2, the Borno State House of Representatives urged the federal government to intervene to rescue Pastor Yakuru. In a motion at the plenary assembly, the lawmaker representing Chibok Federal Constituency in the House, Hon. Ahmadu, noted that “on the 24th day of December 2020 the Boko Haram attacked Pemi Village of Chibok Local Government Area of Borno State.” The “village was burnt to ashes, eight people killed, two persons abducted and various food and other items were destroyed and carted away from this village during the attack,” Ahmadu said. “One of the persons abducted was Pastor Bulus Yakuru,” he added, noting that Boko Haram had released a video clip on Feb. 28 showing the pastor appealing for help and giving one week to facilitate his release. Follow @tdwilliamsrome

Vice President Kembo Mohadi of Zimbabwe resigned Monday after a month of media exposes that purportedly caught him soliciting sex from married women, including an intelligence officer who was one of his subordinates. One of the audiotapes Zimbabwean online media published included Mohadi proposing a sexual liaison inside his vice presidential office. An online news outlet called ZimLive ignited the scandal last month by posting three recorded telephone conversations of Mohadi, 71, propositioning married women. Mohadi “categorically” denied the authenticity of the recordings at first. “I am innocent and a victim of political machinations being peddled through hacking and voice cloning,” he said in late February. One of the phone calls that brought Mohadi down involved him pressuring a female intelligence officer named Abigail Mumpande for sex. Mumpande was reportedly distraught over harassment from the vice president, prompting her husband to hand the recording over to the media and demand reassignment for his wife. “Despite growing impatient because of days of weird character assassinations, I wish to categorically state that the allegations being levelled against me are not only false but also well-choreographed to demean, condescend, and spoil my image as a national leader and patriot,” he charged. “I remain a committed leader, father, cadre and servant of this great nation. So, nothing is going to change because all this is concocted to tarnish my image. If anything is going to happen it is going to be His Excellency who will determine my future,” Mohadi vowed, referring to socialist President Emmerson Mnangagwa. On Monday, Mohadi announced he was resigning “not as a matter of cowardice but as a sign of demonstrating great respect to the office of the President.” “I have been going through a soul-searching pilgrimage and realized that I need the space to deal with my problem outside the governance chair,” he said. Mohadi continued to insist the evidence of his improper behavior was fabricated and pledged to take legal action against those who have allegedly defamed him. Voice of America News (VOA) described Mohadi’s resignation over sexual misconduct allegations as “a rare move by a public official in the southern African country,” even more so because Mohadi was fairly close to both the current and previous strongman rulers of the country. Like President Mnangagwa, Mohadi had a resume of both military and intelligence work and held ministerial rank under longtime dictator Robert Mugabe. He has been one of Zimbabwe’s two vice presidents since Mugabe’s ouster in 2017. The other is Constantino Chiwenga, 61, the former military commander who engineered the coup against Mugabe a decade after helping Mugabe stay in power after he lost an election. Mohandi himself is currently single. His marriage to ex-wife Tambudzani Bhudagi, a Zimbabwean senator, dissolved over allegations of Mohandi’s infidelity. In March 2019, an argument between Mohandi and his ex-wife over the disposition of communal property escalated until he used an axe to smash through the door she slammed on him, prodded her with a steel bar, and threatened to shoot her, all in full view of about two dozen police officers. According to the police, the elderly vice president was too exhausted to assault Bhudagi with his metal bar, so he took a seat for a while until he felt better, then ordered all of the witnesses into every available vehicle and drove away, leaving Bhudagi to walk to the local police station to file a report. “The police said I must go and report, but they were witnesses to what happened. They saw him commit this crime,” Bhudagi declared in frustration. Mohadi proceeded to sort-of marry his much younger mistress, Juliet Mutavhatsindi, although she was never formally introduced to the public as the vice president’s wife. Mutavhatsindi left Mohadi abruptly in November 2020. “She left the VP in a huff. I am not sure what triggered the breakup but it has been a while now since they parted ways. The challenge with these younger women is that they still want to enjoy life. They are free spirited,” a source close to Mohadi sighed to the Zim Morning Post in November. “The challenge is if you get a trophy woman, she is bound to create some sort of drama,” another of the Zim Morning Post’s sources observed. “It has happened elsewhere, look at how Monica Lewinsky destroyed Bill Clinton’s decorated political career.”

Scores of armed militants from the Islamic State terror group in West Africa (ISWAP) invaded the town of Dikwa in northeast Nigeria late Monday and attacked a military camp and a U.N. base. “We have 25 staff sheltering in the bunker which is under siege by the militants,” said a humanitarian source under condition of anonymity. “The humanitarian base was set on fire by the fighters but so far no staff has been affected.” Borno State authorities have sent military reinforcements — including two fighter planes and a helicopter gunship — to Dikwa from the city of Marte, some 30 miles away, Italy’s ANSA news service reported. The Islamic State group in West Africa split from Boko Haram in 2016 to partner with the Islamic State and has since become the biggest jihadist threat in Nigeria. Dikwa, with a population of more than 130,000 people, is located 55 miles from the Borno state capital of Maiduguri. Its camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) houses 75,000 who had fled from other parts of the region. Three years ago to the day, on March 1, 2018, ISWAP terrorists attacked a UN humanitarian hub in the northeastern city of Rann, killing three aid workers and kidnapping a female worker. Vatican News reported that the failure by federal authorities and individual states to guarantee security is increasing the number of independent self-defense forces promoted by local communities. The population of northern Nigeria has been victim of massacres and kidnappings for the purpose of extortion, enduring a decade-long conflict in which jihadist, military, and independent armed groups operate, it said. The Nigerian bishops wrote in a recent statement that the breakdown of security is weakening national unity and Nigeria is on the “brink of collapse.” “Our country Nigeria has gone through many crises, and so far, has managed to survive them, by God’s grace,” the bishops wrote in their February 23 communiqué. “But the ongoing crisis in the country should be of grave concern to everyone who still believes in ‘one united nation under God.’” “We are really on the brink of a looming collapse, from which we must do all we can to pull back before the worst overcomes the nation,” they wrote. “This is not merely crying wolf without cause!” Follow @tdwilliamsrome

Hundreds of schoolgirls kidnapped from their boarding school late last week in northwest Nigeria have finally been freed according to reports Tuesday. The captors have released all 279 girls that had been abducted, most of whom were unharmed, although at least a dozen were sent to the hospital for treatment of injuries. Earlier reports had placed the number of kidnapped schoolgirls the Government Girls Science Secondary (GGSS) School in the town of Jangebe at 317, but Zamfara state spokesman Sulaiman Tanau Anka clarified that some of the missing girls had escaped into the bush at the time of the assault. On Friday around 1:00 am, some 100 armed gunmen stormed into the school and kidnapped the girls, aged between 12 and 17. This was the second school kidnapping to take place in Nigeria this year, just a week after bandits raided a school in Niger State and kidnapped over 40 people. “They carried the sick ones that cannot move. We were walking in the stones and thorns,” said 15-year-old Farida Lawali, describing how kidnappers had taken her and the other girls to a forest. “They started hitting us with guns so that we could move,” she added. “While they were beating them with guns, some of them were crying and moving at the same time.” Bello Matawalle, the governor of Zamfara State, said Tuesday the girls had been released at dawn and are safe. “I am happy to announce that the girls have been released. They have just arrived at the government building and are in good health,” Matawalle said. “Alhamdulillah! It gladdens my heart to announce the release of the abducted students of GGSS Jangebe from captivity,” Matawalle wrote on Twitter. “This follows the scaling of several hurdles laid against our efforts. I enjoin all well-meaning Nigerians to rejoice with us as our daughters are now safe.” Rumors had been circulating of ongoing negotiations between the authorities and the kidnappers. One source said that authorities were aware of where the girls were being held, but ruled out the idea of a military extraction so as not to endanger them unnecessarily. More than 600 students have been kidnapped from schools in northwest Nigeria since December, a phenomenon authorities blame on “bandits,” a term encompassing kidnappers and other criminals who are motivated by money. The rise in abductions has been attributed to a notoriously weak security infrastructure along with the common government practice of paying ransoms, which has made kidnapping a profitable source of income. News of the girls’ liberation brings “overwhelming joy,” said Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari. “I am pleased that their ordeal has come to a happy end without any incident.” Last Friday, Buhari released a statement urging state governments “to review their policy of rewarding bandits with money and vehicles,” warning that the policy might “boomerang disastrously.” Follow @tdwilliamsrome

Nigerian police have allegedly killed at least 20 people since last spring as part of the country’s enforcement of government-mandated coronavirus lockdowns, Nigeria’s Premium Times reported on Monday. “By Thursday, April 9, 2020, ten days after Nigeria entered a partial lockdown due to the COVID-19 [coronavirus] pandemic, Nigerian security officials had extrajudicially killed 13 people while enforcing the curfew – the virus had only claimed six lives by then,” Nigeria’s Premium Times reported on March 1. “By May 4 [2020], when the government eased the lockdown, about 20 persons had been killed in similar circumstances,” according to the newspaper. Northwestern Nigeria’s Kaduna State issued an ordinance on March 31, 2020, barring trade at local markets as part of an effort to curb transmission of the Chinese coronavirus. Residents in Kaduna State’s capital, Kaduna, defied the ordinance a few days later to hold an illegal marketplace. The unauthorized action prompted local authorities to crack down on traders, resulting in several deaths. Residents of Kaduna’s Sabon Trikania community set up a makeshift grocery market at a local junction on the morning of April 4, 2020. Members of a state security group, the Kaduna South Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF), arrived at the market a few hours after it opened “to disperse the buyers and sellers. They were resisted by the youth in the community,” according to the Premium Times. The CJTF left the market in the face of the resistance but returned about one hour later accompanied by police officers from the local Kakuri Police Station. “The assault started, shortly after midday, with the police shooting tear gas into the makeshift market but resistance from traders and residents did not work this time. The defiance was met with maximum force by the police officers who not only shot to disperse but hunted some residents down to their houses,” the newspaper alleged. At least 11 people were wounded in the ensuing violence, according to the report. One injured person “died instantly, three survived for a few hours but died eventually. Six were critically injured with gunshot wounds, among them a 9-year-old boy.” Kaduna police issued a statement shortly after the incident confirming that at least five people died during the crackdown on the illegal marketplace. A Kaduna State police spokesman, Mohammed Jalige, told Nigeria’s Channels TV news site that “the traders, rather than return to their various homes after they were initially dispersed by the police, moved to Trikania to continue their business,” causing the police to respond with force. Clashes sparked between traders and the CJTF after a local vigilante group joined in efforts to disperse the traders, who had “converged at a temporary market located at Trikania following the closure of [a] Monday market in [neighboring] Kakuri by police personnel,” according to Jalige. The spokesman added that Kaduna police had arrested seven people in connection with the incident.

Nigerian officials have denied widespread reports this weekend the 317 schoolgirls abducted in the northwest of the country had been set free by their captors and were returning home. Yusuf Idris, spokesman for Zamfara State governor Bello Matawalle, has refuted local newspaper reports that the girls had been released, stating that the schoolgirls kidnapped from the Government Girls Secondary School in Jangebe are still in the custody of their captors. News reports emanating from Nigeria Sunday declared that the girls were safe and had been taken to the palace of the Emir of Anka to await transport to Gusau, the state capital. Vatican News reported that a Nigerian government official had confirmed reports of the girls’ release on national television following information furnished by Naija News, while other news services — including the BBC — denied the reports. The Zamfara governor met over the weekend with traditional rulers in the state in an effort to move towards ensuring the safe return of the students. “The state government is committed for safe return of the students sooner or later, we should please exercise patience,” said his spokesman. “I want to call the attention of the good people of Zamfara State, they should disregard any fake news regarding the release of the abducted students of GGSS Jangebe by one national daily. It’s not true,” said Abutu Yaro, the state commissioner of police. On Sunday, Pope Francis condemned the “vile abduction” of the schoolgirls, promising prayers and closeness to them and their families. “I join my voice with that of the Bishops of Nigeria to condemn the vile abduction of 317 girls, taken away from their school, to Jangebe, in the northwest of the country,” the pope said after his weekly Angelus prayer in Saint Peter’s Square. “I pray for these girls, that they may return home soon,” the pontiff said. “I am close to their families and to the girls themselves.” The pope concluded by entrusting the safekeeping of the kidnapped girls to the Virgin Mary, inviting the pilgrims present in the square to join him in praying a Hail Mary for their safe return. Follow @tdwilliamsrome

A woman appeared to use her thong as a mask while standing in line recently at a Pick n Pay supermarket in South Africa. In the viral video, a security guard wearing a mask asked the woman to put one on, but she allegedly told the guard she did not have a mask, the South African reported Wednesday. “After security asks her again saying she will be escorted out if she does not wear a mask, the woman is seen reaching under her dress, pulling down her thong and putting it on as a mask,” the outlet said: “What’s… what’s going on?” a person nearby asked as the woman removed her underwear and placed it on her face. She then appeared to give the security guard a thumbs up. “It is a mask,” a woman wearing a white shirt tells the other woman, adding, “And quite frankly, I think the bacteria on your knickers is less than on the mask.” Twitter user Yusuf Abramjee shared additional video footage of the shopper in the white blouse appearing to tell the staff member she knew her legal rights: Employees at a supermarket told not to wear masks. pic.twitter.com/PvUwm31Jep — Yusuf Abramjee (@Abramjee) February 18, 2021 The woman then took a piece of paper out of her bag and held it up, saying, “You are not obliged to wear a mask. Please check the paper.” “This is against our constitutional rights, and to make you people wear masks all day long, it’s criminal. It’s criminal,” she said before walking out of the frame. Officials in South Africa have reportedly deemed not wearing a mask a criminal offense. “In December 2020, President Cyril Ramaphosa stressed that not wearing a mask in public is inconsiderate and will not be tolerated,” the South African article read. Meanwhile, Ramaphosa said in August his left-wing African National Congress (ANC) party was “deeply implicated” in corruption as evidence emerged of widespread “looting” of the country’s $26 billion rescue package, according to Breitbart News. “The allegations of corruption in the procurement of goods and services for our country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has caused outrage among South Africans and among us in the executive,” he stated. “It is disgraceful that at this time of national crisis, there are companies and individuals who seek to criminally benefit from our efforts to protect people’s health and save lives,” Ramaphosa concluded.

A militia of some one hundred armed men stormed into a girls boarding school in northwest Nigeria on Thursday night and abducted over 300 of the schoolgirls. It was the second such kidnapping in less than a week. The attack took place at the Jangebe secondary school in Zamfara state, a region where mass kidnappings are on the rise. Riding motorcycles and off-road vehicles, the men entered the school grounds around midnight. “The armed men came into the school with vehicles, then they forced some of the girls to walk with them,” said Sulaiman Tunau Anka, a local government spokesperson. One of the teachers said that 600 teenage girls had been in the dormitories during the attack, and that only “about 50” have since been accounted for, adding that the missing girls may have been kidnapped or escaped. “The Zamfara State Police Command in collaboration with the military have commenced a joint search and rescue operation with a view to rescuing the 317 students kidnapped by the armed bandits in Government Girls Science Secondary School Jangebe,” police said in a statement. Thursday’s kidnapping is the latest in a string of abductions of adolescents in central and northwestern Nigeria perpetrated by criminal groups, known locally as “bandits,” who terrorize the population, steal livestock, and loot villages. Radical Islamists raided a town in northeast Nigeria near Lake Chad this week, killing three soldiers and taking hundreds of villagers as hostages. https://t.co/H79pZjcYf2 — Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) August 23, 2020 This latest mass kidnapping took place just nine days after another similar attack on February 16 in a secondary school in Kagara, Niger state, where at least 27 students, a teacher and six members of his family were kidnapped by armed men. In a further sign of a widespread breakdown in security across Nigeria, at least 16 people died on February 23 in a mortar and rocket-propelled grenade attack in the suburbs of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state in the northeast of the country. The assault was claimed in a video by a branch of the Boko Haram Islamic terror group led by Abubakar Shekau. Last December, a group of bandits, acting on behalf of Boko Haram, kidnapped 344 students in a boarding school in the town of Kankara, in the neighboring state of Katsina. The bandits released the teenagers after a week of captivity following negotiations with authorities. On February 9, the leader of the kidnappers, Awwalun Daudawa, turned himself in to the authorities in exchange for an amnesty agreement. The recent abductions are symptomatic of a generalized fragmentation of the country, as ethnic groups demand not only greater autonomy, but also the definitive renunciation of a nation in which they have lost all trust and sense of belonging. “Demands for ethnic secession should not be ignored or taken lightly,” said Archbishop Augustine Obiora Akubeze of Benin City, President of the Nigerian Bishops’ Conference (CBCN) in a recent statement cosigned by the general secretary of the CBCN. “Nigeria is on the verge of collapse,” the statement said. Follow @tdwilliamsrome

At least ten people were killed and 60 injured Tuesday after Boko Haram terrorists launched rocket-propelled grenades at Maiduguri, the capital city of Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State, Nigeria’s Premium Times reported. “We have been informed that about 10 persons were killed and 60 were injured,” Borno State Governor Babagana Zulumon confirmed to the press on February 24. “This is a new form of attack, totally different from the usual suicide bombing. It is worrisome and there is an urgent need to strategize to forestall further occurrence,” Zulumon said, referring to Boko Haram’s use of rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) on Tuesday to target densely-populated neighborhoods in the regional capital. RPG-based attacks have traditionally been rare in Maiduguri. Militants last used RPGs in an assault on the city in July 2020, when three rockets killed four Maiduguri residents and wounded three others. Zulumon and other Borno State government officials on Wednesday suggested the use of RPGs to attack Maiduguri from beyond its exterior defenses may be a “new trend.” Nine of the ten people killed Tuesday “were young boys hit by a bomb while playing football at Gwange ward,” a neighborhood in Maiduguri. Zulumon told reporters Wednesday that he was saddened after learning of the children’s deaths and “sympathized with those affected.” Eyewitness Sama’ila Ibrahim told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that Boko Haram militants descended upon Maiduguri on Tuesday evening via the neighboring village of Boboshe. The village is a known enclave of the jihadi group, which was founded in Maiduguri in 2002 and has based its regional Islamic insurgency in Borno State for over a decade. After reaching Maiduguri, Boko Haram members then crossed a ditch fortification surrounding most of the capital “and started shooting sporadically which sent people scrambling for safety,” Ibrahim told AFP. Explosions were heard in Maiduguri starting around 5:45 p.m. local time Tuesday “and continued intermittently for about an hour,” the Premium Times reported. “Airborne explosives began to rain down near the University of Maiduguri in the city’s east around 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday,” Reuters reported, citing an eyewitness, a local resident, and security officials. “Blasts soon rocked other parts of eastern and northeastern Maiduguri,” the news agency added. “An explosion killed four people near my house,” a local resident named Ali Ciroma said. A policeman and two security officials in Maiduguri later confirmed the four deaths. Three government security officials told Reuters that the death toll from Tuesday’s attack could be higher than ten, with one official claiming that as many as 17 people were killed. Last December, Boko Haram murdered 70 farmers in a village in northeast Nigeria in retaliation for an arrest of a Boko Haram militant. Earlier this month, a Chibok schoolgirl escaped Boko Haram after seven years in captivity.

Pope Francis sent a telegram to the Italian president Tuesday expressing his sorrow over the assassination Monday of the country’s ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “It was with sorrow that I learned of the tragic attack in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in which the young Italian ambassador Luca Attanasio, the 30-year-old carabiniere Vittorio Iacovacci, and their Congolese driver Mustapha Milambo lost their lives,” the pope said in the telegram to Italian President Sergio Mattarella. Italian media have suggested the ambush that took the lives of the 43-year-old ambassador and part of his entourage resulted from a failed kidnapping attempt targeting the two-car convoy because they were “white.” The incident reportedly took place while representatives from the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) were traveling north from Goma to Rutshuru, in eastern Congo, where the Italian diplomat was supposed to visit a WFP food distribution program. “I express my heartfelt condolences to their families, to the diplomatic corps and to the carabinieri branch for the death of these servants of peace and law,” the pontiff continued in his missive. “We recall the exemplary witness of the Ambassador, a person of noteworthy human and Christian qualities, always generous in weaving fraternal and cordial relations, for the restoration of serene and united relations within that African country; as well as that of the carabiniere officer, experienced and generous in his service and about to form a new family.” Reports described the assault as the work of six or seven armed men who captured the ambassador and his contingent and begin marching them away, when they were suddenly interrupted by soldiers and government rangers. A firefight followed, killing a number of people. According to a statement from the Congolese presidency, the kidnappers shot the ambassador and the officer of the military police (carabinieri) at point-blank range. “As I pray for the eternal rest of these noble sons of the Italian nation, I urge you to trust in God’s providence, in whose hands nothing is lost of the good accomplished, all the more so when it is confirmed by suffering and sacrifice,” the pope concluded in his telegram. “To you, Mr. President, to the relatives and colleagues of the victims and to all those who weep in this mourning, I send my heartfelt blessing.” The Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported Tuesday that Congolese President Felix Antoine Tshisekedi had visited the widow of the Italian ambassador accompanied by his wife to express their condolences in person. The murdered ambassador leaves behind a wife and three young daughters. Follow @tdwilliamsrome

Italy’s ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was shot and killed on Monday after armed assailants ambushed his U.N. convoy as he traveled in eastern DRC, the Italian foreign ministry confirmed in a statement. Luca Attanasio, 43, suffered “gunshot wounds to the abdomen” and was taken to a hospital in Goma in critical condition, where he later succumbed to his injuries, a diplomat in Kinshasa told Radio France Internationale (RFI). An Italian police officer who accompanied Attanasio in the convoy, Vittorio Iacovacci, and an unidentified Congolese driver also died from wounds sustained in the attack. The assailants kidnapped four other members of the convoy, one of whom was later found, DRC’s interior ministry said on Tuesday. The ambush occurred as the convoy traveled from DRC’s eastern regional capital, Goma, to the town of Rutshuru to visit a World Food Program (WFP) school project there. Rutshuru is located in Nyiaragongo Territory, considered one of the most dangerous regions of DRC. “The attack … occurred on a road that had previously been cleared for travel without security escorts,” the WFP, a U.N. agency, said in a statement on Monday. The DRC interior ministry said that state security services and provincial authorities had not received advance warning of the convoy’s trip and thus were unable to provide security for the U.N. official. DRC’s interior ministry blamed the incident on “members of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR),” a Hutu rebel group from neighboring Rwanda that has carried out attacks in the DRC’s Nyiaragongo Territory for over 25 years. DRC President Félix Tshisekedi described the ambush as a “terrorist attack” and also claimed the Rwandan Hutu rebel group was behind the killings and kidnappings. Hutu rebels denied the DRC government’s allegations on Tuesday, accusing the armies of the DRC and neighboring Rwanda of responsibility for the attack. The rebel group claimed in a statement that the Italian ambassador’s convoy was ambushed near DRC’s border with Rwanda, “not far from a position of the FARDC (DR Congo armed forces) and Rwandan soldiers.” “The responsibility for this despicable killing is to be found in the ranks of these two armies and their sponsors who have forged an unnatural alliance to perpetuate the pillaging of eastern DRC,” the statement further read. Various armed militias plague DRC’s mineral-rich eastern provinces, regularly targeting civilians and government security forces in their efforts to exert regional control. At least 122 armed groups were active in DRC’s four eastern provinces last year, according to Kivu Security Tracker, a U.S. security monitor. The militias killed more than 2,000 civilians in attacks in 2020, according to U.N. figures released last week.

President Joe Biden’s easy-migration strategy has converted a “national triumph into a national disaster,” former President Donald Trump said in a March 21 statement: We proudly handed the Biden Administration the most secure border in history. All they had to do was keep this smooth-running system on autopilot. Instead, in the span of a just few weeks, the Biden Administration has turned a national triumph into a national disaster. They are in way over their heads and taking on water fast. The pathetic, clueless performance of Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas on the Sunday Shows today was a national disgrace. His self-satisfied presentation—in the middle of the massive crisis he helped engineer—is yet more proof he is incapable of leading DHS. Even someone of Mayorkas’ limited abilities should understand that if you provide Catch-and-Release to the world’s illegal aliens then the whole world will come. Furthermore, the Mayorkas Gag Order on our Nation’s heroic border agents and ICE officers should be the subject of an immediate congressional investigation. But it’s clear they are engaged in a huge cover-up to hide just how bad things truly are. The only way to end the Biden Border Crisis is for them to admit their total failure and adopt the profoundly effective, proven Trump policies. They must immediately complete the wall, which can be done in a matter of weeks—they should never have stopped it. They are causing death and human tragedy. In addition to the obvious, drugs are pouring into our country at record levels from the Southern Border, not to mention human and sex trafficking. This Administration’s reckless policies are enabling and encouraging crimes against humanity. Our Country is being destroyed! From 2017 onwards, Trump gradually built up a layer of legal, physical, and diplomatic barriers to migration, including the border wall, multiple treaties with CentreAmerican countries, deals with Mexico, and numerous legal changes that allow his border deputies to quickly deploy migrants before they could get jobs they needed to repay their smuggling debts. Trump’s policies were so effective that the cross-border inflow dropped to record low levels — both the migrants who sought asylum and the migrants who tried to sneak across the border. That shut-off of migrant labor forced U.S. companies to gradually offer higher pay to working Americans, including to both blue-collar and white-collar workers. The success of Trump’s lower-migration, higher-wage policies enraged progressives. Now, with Biden’s approval, the progressives have restarted the pre-Trump economic policy of extracting migrants from Mexico and Central Ameican for use in the United States’ economy. The migrants act as low-wage workers to reduce average pay for Americans. They also serve as consumers to boost retail sales and welfare payments. They also add to the number of renters to fill high-cost, high-occupancy housing in coastal cities. The progressives’ extraction migration policy boosts Wall Street, but it strip-mines young people from the small, vulnerable Central American countries, helps local despots suppress political reform, and fuels cartel-dominated crime throughout the region. The resulting economic and political damage pressures the next generation of young men and women to undertake the expensive and dangerous trek into Americans’ jobs, where progressives are ready to welcome the victims of their own migration policies and to declare their own moral virtue. “We are a nation of laws, and we treat vulnerable children humanely,” Mayorkas told Fox News on May 21. “The best thing for both of us is to keep our people here and to provide for our people right here in our country, and that’s what people here want,” El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said March 16.