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HOMELAND SECURITY

Secret Service Director Claims She Couldn’t Stop Assassination Because of Sloped Roof “That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point.” by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/secret-service-director-claims-she-couldnt-stop-assassination-because-of-sloped-roof/

There’s one school of thought that says the federal government is run by evil monsters. Another that it’s run by bureaucrats who have no clue about what their organization actually does. Or how anything works.

And Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle strikes me as having absolutely no clue.

Embattled Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle says she has no plans to resign, even after the stunning revelation that the agency decided not to guard the roof from which Thomas Crooks opened fire on former President Donald Trump because it was too slanted.

“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point. And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof,” she told ABC News in a startling admission.

“And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside,” she told the outlet.

Social media is full of memes of sloped roofs.

Secret Service personnel obviously do deploy, and in that particular setting, did deploy on sloped roofs. This is a dumb excuse by a dumb person told to a dumb media which is eager to accept any excuse that it’s given. But the only question is whether Cheatle knows she’s lying or her ample experience at PepsiCo and sucking up to Jill Biden left her with little time to figure out how anything in the field actually works.

In first five years, 79,000 of DACA recipients admitted to U.S. had arrest records New report found some DACA recipients “may have obtained lawful immigration status, failed to request renewal.”By Bethany Blankley

https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/first-five-years-79000-daca-recipients-admitted-us-had-arrest-records

Within five years of a new program created to prevent deportation of minors brought into the country illegally by their parents, nearly 80,000 were released into the U.S. with arrest records.
 

The majority were between the ages of 19 and 22 when they were arrested, according to the latest available data published by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced he was expanding deportation protections and job opportunities for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program created by executive order by former President Barack Obama in 2012.

According to USCIS, DACA applies to those who were brought into the country before reaching age 16 and were under age 31 as of June 15, 2012, among other criteria.

Tuesday was the 12-year anniversary of DACA, which a federal judge has twice ruled is illegal. Several states, led by Texas, are still fighting to end DACA in a case that is expected to eventually be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, The Center Square reported.

While the majority of DACA supporters argue recipients should be granted citizenship, claiming they contribute to the U.S. economy and are constructive members of society, others argue those with criminal records, at a minimum, should be deported.

According to a USCIS report, in the first five years of DACA being implemented, from June 2012 to October 2019, nearly 80,000 illegal foreign nationals with prior arrest records, including for violent crimes, were granted DACA status.

Eight Suspected Terrorists Highlight Biden’s Recklessness on Vetting Illegal Aliens Andrew McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/eight-suspected-terrorists-highlight-bidens-recklessness-on-vetting-illegal-aliens/

Biden has returned us to September 10. That’s not apt to end well.

Haley’s report on the government’s apprehension of eight Tajiks who are suspected jihadists tied to the Islamic State (ISIS, evidently the Afghan franchise our intel agencies label “ISIS-K,” for “Islamic State – Kohrasan Province”) is important reading. It also illustrates the September 10-level threat environment we’ve returned to, courtesy of President Biden’s heedlessness.

The Biden administration wants our praise for its purported diligence in locking up potential terrorists. We’re not supposed to notice it was the Biden administration that knowingly let these potential terrorists in — and if you think that just eight of them have bored into our country, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you (as soon as we can clear out the Hamas and Hezbollah flags).

In a jaw-dropping X post, Fox News’s Bill Melugin explains that the government let the Tajiks in because its crack — or better, crackpot — vetting process “flagged nothing.” A U.S. official elaborated, “Sometimes there’s just no information on individuals, it’s quite common where there’s just nothing. You don’t have anything, there’s no criminal convictions, there’s no threat information.”

Understand, untold tens of thousands of illegal aliens are crossing our borders from countries hostile to the United States. It’s not just that the regimes in these countries do not have reliable databases and would not share them with our government if they did. In many of these countries — very much including those with sharia-supremacist cultures that are innately hostile to Western mores — actions that would violate our laws are perfectly legal. That is, the background facts that would make such people threats would never show up in any database from which our government would plead to be given information.

Bear in mind, we are talking here about illegal aliens, not Americans. Illegal aliens do not have an array of constitutional rights to be asserted against our government. The American people created the central government by the Constitution in large part to protect us from threats outside our borders. The Constitution, then, is not supposed to be a weapon to be used by those outside threats against our government, thus leaving us defenseless — that’s a total perversion. Aliens who have no right to be in this country, and whose first act is to violate our laws, do not have a presumption of innocence. It is common sense that they should be presumed hostile.

ICE Arrests Eight Foreign Nationals with Suspected Ties to ISIS By Haley Strack

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/ice-arrests-eight-foreign-nationals-with-suspected-ties-to-isis/

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested eight foreign nationals with ties to the terrorist group ISIS-K, an Afghan branch of the Islamic State, over the past week.

“Over the last few days, ICE agents arrested several non-citizens pursuant to immigration authorities,” the Department of Homeland Security and FBI told the New York Post, which first reported the story, in a statement. “The actions were carried out in close coordination with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces. The individuals arrested are detained in ICE custody pending removal proceedings . . . The FBI and DHS will continue working around the clock with our partners to identify, investigate, and disrupt potential threats to national security. ”

ICE arrested the ISIS-K-linked Tajikistani nationals in Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia this week.

FBI director Christopher Wray warned of potential threats from ISIS-K in April, specifically saying that, “increasingly concerning is the potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, akin to the ISIS-K attack we saw at the Russia concert hall a couple weeks ago.” ISIS-K carried out an attack at Moscow’s Crocus City Hall in March, which killed 145 people.

Wray has also cautioned that ISIS-affiliated groups have exploited the U.S.’s weak southern border to smuggle terrorists into the country. During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March, Wray said “there is a particular network that, where some of the overseas facilitators of the smuggling network have ISIS ties that we’re very concerned about and that we’ve been spending enormous amount of effort with our partners investigating.”

One U.S. official reportedly confirmed that the eight individuals were not flagged during their screening at the southern Mexico border, but that security officials tracked and later tied the individuals to ISIS-K.

Moscow Massacre: Could it Happen Here? A troubling reflection on our open southern border – and on those who wish us harm. by Cal Thomas

https://www.frontpagemag.com/moscow-massacre-could-it-happen-here/

A mass shooting at a concert hall in Moscow killed more than 130 people. With many others seriously or gravely wounded the number of dead is likely to rise.

The Islamic state released a statement claiming “credit” for the incident. Eleven suspects have been arrested. Early reports suggested the U.S. Embassy in Moscow had advance warning of the attack. The Daily Mail reported White House Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby said: “Right now we don’t know to what extent this warning [from the US Embassy in early March] and this attack are related. But we had some concerns about the possibility of a terrorist attack in and around Moscow earlier this month.”

The question that must be asked, as it has been suggested for some time, due to our open southern border, is this: Could it happen here? The answer must be an unequivocal yes. In fact, it has already happened here on Sept. 11, 2001.

Does anyone seriously think America’s enemies would not be encouraged by that previous attack and the Moscow atrocity to conduct a repeat operation in America? With such easy access to the country and with so many fanatical beliefs floating around the world, what would deter them?

The Cato Institute has noted that since 2017,”US Border Patrol has apprehended 342 border crossers who were on the Terrorist Screening Dataset, also known as the terror watchlist. Those numbers have shot up in recent years to 169 in FY2023 and 49 to date this fiscal year. Last month, The Daily Caller reported that Border Patrol apprehended an al Shabaab terrorist and released him into the United States in March 2023 after a mismatch on the watchlist. Later, the government discovered that he was on the watchlist, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested him within 48 hours. The Daily Caller’s headline was “ICE Confirms It Finally Nabbed Terrorist Allowed To Roam Free For Almost A Year.”

The Coming Terrorist Attack on U.S. Soil, Part III Peter Kirsanow

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-coming-terrorist-attack-on-u-s-soil-part-iii/

The disaster at the southern border continues to grow. Border Patrol recorded an astonishing 250,000 encounters with illegal immigrants in December. This figure includes thousands of single, military-age men from China, Russia, and Iran.

The number of individuals on the terror watch list crossing the border has increased 2,500 percent during the Biden administration. In fiscal year 2023 more than 35,000 individuals with criminal records were arrested at the southern border, a tenfold increase since the beginning of Biden’s term (the actual figures are likely far larger since the reported numbers don’t include “gotaways,” conventionally estimated to constitute 50 percent of the total number of individuals entering the country illegally).

NORAD recently reported detecting more than a thousand unmanned-aerial-vehicle incursions along the border per month.

These alarming figures seem to have little impact on DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who regularly appears bored or distracted at congressional hearings concerning the border. His nonchalance is shared by many open-borders advocates, some of whom casually note that none of the individuals on the terror watch list who’ve crossed the border have committed a terrorist act on U.S. soil. Yet. This is what passes for reasoned analysis from open-borders elites.

Perhaps they calculate (or hope) that a terrorist attack won’t occur in their city; terrorists, after all, traditionally prefer high-profile targets. But not always. The terror might be magnified if the attack occurred in a place where people feel relatively safe — a minor-league baseball game in Wichita, a parade in Dubuque, a fair in Salem.

Or perhaps the elites calculate that terrorists entering the country today won’t execute their plans until the next administration. Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) would exclusively blame a Trump administration for anything that occurs on or after 12:01 p.m. on January 20, 2025, even if the attack were planned and executed solely by individuals who crossed the border during the Biden administration.

Pro-Palestinian Group Calls for ‘Intifada’ in NYC, Tells Supporters to ‘Find a Target’ and ‘Flood’ City By Zach Kessel

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pro-palestinian-group-calls-for-intifada-in-nyc-tells-supporters-to-find-a-target-and-flood-city/

The pro-Palestinian activist group Within Our Lifetime (WOL) plans to hold a “Palestine is Everywhere” event in New York City from March 27 to 30, the organization announced, advertised in a flyer calling for “autonomous action” and “global intifada.”

The flyer, which WOL shared on its X page, directs the group’s supporters to “get a group together,” “find a target,” and “take action to defend Palestine.” WOL is urging its followers to “flood all of New York City” by taking “autonomous actions,” which include “de-occupations, assemblies and gatherings, public testimonies, roving shutdowns, sit-ins and slow downs, painting walls, wheatpastings, & other happenings.”

Iran has a shot at sinking a US Navy aircraft carrier Maya Carlin

https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/iran-has-a-shot-at-sinking-a-us-navy-aircraft-carrier/

Could Iran Sink a U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier? Yes, There Is a Chance: On Tuesday, a cruise missile launched by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels came within one mile of an American warship. Typically, the Navy’s destroyers shoot down missile barrages launched by the rogue group at a range of eight miles or more.

For the first time since the uptick in attacks in the Red Sea commenced this Fall, however, a cruise missile came close enough for the USS Gravely to use its Close-In Weapon System (CIWS).

The Islamic Republic of Iran is increasingly threatening American interests in the Persian Gulf and throughout the Middle East. Its regional proxy groups have ramped up rocket, drone and missile barrages targeting U.S. assets following the Israel-Hamas war.

Do Iran or their affiliate groups have the capability to sink a U.S. aircraft carrier?

How Iran Could Sink a U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier 

In the final days of 2023, Iranian-state media outlets reported that its naval forces had developed a new cruise missile capable of reaching targets more than 600 miles away.

According to Tehran, the Talaeiyeh is a long-range “smart” missile that can switch targets and adjust course during flight.

The Nasir has short-range capabilities and can be launched from warships. News of these new missiles coincided with the attack on the Norwegian-owned tanker Strinda in mid-December.

The U.S. Central Command released that an Anti-Ship Cruise Missile launched from a Houthi-controlled region in Yemen struck the vessel. Since Hamas’ October 7 massacre, the Iranian-backed group has fired dozens of barrages of missile and drone attacks targeting vessels in the Red Sea.

At Least 160 Attacks Carried Out Against U.S. Forces in the Middle East Since Mid-October By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/30/at-least-160-attacks-carried-out-against-u-s-forces-in-the-middle-east-since-mid-october/

The attack against American troops in Jordan on Sunday, which took the lives of three soldiers, was the latest in a series of at least 160 terrorist attacks against American forces in the Middle East since October.

As reported by Fox News, U.S. officials revealed the true total number of attacks following the news of Sunday’s attack, which sparked widespread outrage and has led to calls for retaliation against Iran, which backed the proxy group responsible for the attack. It marked the deadliest attack on American forces since 2021.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, finally back from his controversial unannounced absence due to prostate cancer, issued a statement expressing his “outrage and sorrow for the deaths of three brave U.S. troops in Jordan and for the other troops who were wounded,” adding that “we will take all necessary actions to defend the U.S. and our troops.”

The base that was struck in Jordan is referred to as Tower 22, and houses roughly 350 troops who are stationed there primarily for the purpose of wiping out any remnants of the terrorist group ISIS. Most of the personnel on the base were asleep when the drone attacked.

“We are mourning with Americans across the country today who are mourning the deaths of three souls, three service members who lost their lives,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday. “As we all know, yesterday was a very dark day.”

The attack, and particularly Iran’s culpability, represents the latest escalation in tensions in the region, which began on October 7th when the Islamic terrorist group Hamas struck the state of Israel, killing over 1,400 civilians and launching a war between the two that is still ongoing. Elsewhere in the region, the Houthis in Yemen have begun attacking ships in the Red Sea and disrupting global maritime trade.

What We Don’t Know About the Danger of DEI in the Airline Industry is Scarier than What We Know By William Sullivan

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/01/what_we_dont_know_about_the_danger_of_dei_in_the_airline_industry_is_scarier_than_what_we_know.html

United Airlines became the subject of derision and mockery recently as a viral video emerged of United’s CEO Scott Kirby proclaiming his company’s potentially disastrous and deadly mission to have half of their future hires be “women or people of color” as part of its corporate quest for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), an ideological cancer that has been eating away at America’s academic, economic, and societal strength for years.

The reasons for the acute public outrage aren’t mysterious.  Millions of Americans fly commercially, and the idea of plummeting 30,000 feet over several minutes in anticipation of you and your family’s death is a frightening enough prospect for most people that the very idea of prioritizing race or gender in selecting pilots and mechanics seems nothing short of insane. 

And in the past weeks, we’ve learned that the door plug of an Alaska Airlines fuselage blew off of the aircraft at 16,000 feet, depressurizing the cabin and creating a scenario so harrowing and nightmarish that one passenger felt compelled to send a presumedly final text: “Mom our plane depressed. We’re in masks. I love you.”

The Boeing 737 Max was the plane involved, which some may remember was grounded after two deadly crashes overseas in 2018 and 2019, which claimed 346 lives in total and were both deemed the result of faulty equipment on the airplane. 

As many Americans are only now discovering as a sidenote to other outrageous DEI news, such as the FAA being decidedly hellbent on taking DEI to its most ludicrous extent by “actively recruiting” people who suffer from “severe intellectual abilities,” Boeing has also long been suicidally devoted to woke DEI initiatives.  They now claim, for example, that they want their employees to “look like America,” but are looking to have 92.5% of interview slates be “diverse,” i.e., non-white males.  This, of course, means that they are quite illegally prioritizing non-white male applicants for employment, and I am very much looking forward to the forthcoming lawsuits on these grounds. (See: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.)