RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/01/the-border-crisis-is-bidens-fault-the-new-york-times-admits/

The situation has become so acute that Biden is discovering the ‘options’ he once claimed to lack.

Joe Biden’s latest argument for why the crisis at the southern border isn’t his fault is predicated on the assumption of widespread civic illiteracy.

The yet-unknown terms of a bipartisan deal designed to mitigate the border crisis and relieve the pressure it has put on the nation’s immigration system would, Biden insists, give him “a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed.” The president assured voters that, “if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.”

The specifics in the bill are not yet public, but they do not need to be for observers possessed of a passing familiarity with the executive branch’s authority to know the president isn’t being honest. Biden has taken to insisting that the White House is all out of “options” when it comes to enforcing border security, only for the administration to suddenly discover unexplored avenues of executive power now that chaos at the border has become an acute political liability for him and his party. The president and his administration are not suddenly admitting to the scale of the disaster along the Rio Grande because they want to take ownership of it. They’re doing so to condition Americans into believing the GOP bears more responsibility for that crisis than the president does.

Today, the New York Times got in on that act, but half-heartedly and in an entirely unconvincing fashion. A three-bylined item in the Times casts Biden as a passive observer of the crisis over which he has presided — one that tragically “shattered his immigration hopes.” Moreover, it drafts the GOP into the role of antagonist against Biden’s leading man. Republicans “refused to provide resources, blocked efforts to update laws and openly defied federal officials charged with maintaining security and order along the 2,000-mile border,” the Times insists. Biden’s foremost shortcoming was that he “failed to overcome those obstacles.”

With that throat-clearing out of the way, however, the outlet goes on to explore the ways in which Biden exacerbated one of the growing number of crises consuming his presidency.

https://amac.us/newsline/national-security/team-bidens-lose-lose-approach-to-the-border/

Give the Biden administration credit: If there is one skill they have demonstrated time and again, it is an aptitude for identifying the strategic low ground in political confrontations, and then positioning themselves so that they consistently fight their battles from that ground. That has once again proven to be the case in their recent confrontation with Texas over the ongoing historic border disaster.

Democrats, and their allies in the media, will be quick to assert that the Biden administration has the law and Constitution on its side, having secured a narrow 5-4 Supreme Court Decision allowing the federal government to remove border barriers constructed by Texas. This is technically true, but the political value of the Court’s ruling is dubious.

While Joe Biden would like to be Abraham Lincoln or even Andrew Jackson in a new sectional crisis, his moral and political position is weaker, largely as a result of his own actions.

Leaving aside how both Lincoln and Jackson have been cancelled on the left, it’s worth noting that Joe Biden and the Democrats have gone out of their way for years to suggest that the Supreme Court as an institution is not and should not be the final say on constitutional questions. They have also argued that Supreme Court decisions are purely political.

It will be difficult now for Democrats to generate a crusade in defense of a Court they themselves have disparaged, especially when the deciding vote in the Biden administration’s favor in this case was cast by Amy Comey Barrett, who Democrats insist was illegitimately appointed. Exclude her and the balance is 4-4, with Texas’ position sustained.

In short, the Biden administration’s efforts to justify itself on the basis of defending the rights of the Supreme Court place it at odds with the rest of its messaging, messaging it is likely to resume later this year if the Court overturns Chevron deference or issues any number of other rulings liberals are sure to be outraged about.

Similarly, it is far from clear that Democrats want to go to war, figuratively, on the principle of federal supremacy and power. Prior to 2016, many Democrats allowed themselves to believe that they would always control the levers of federal power, and it is clear that for at least some Democrats the Trump presidency did not disabuse them of the notion.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/01/joe-biden-announces-border-is-broken-after-he/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=joe-biden-announces-border-is-broken-after-he

Joe Biden’s handlers released a statement on Friday night on his plan to fix the open border that he broke when he came into office.

Note: Joe Biden’s very first act as president was to end the construction of the Trump border wall and the Keystone Pipeline. Joe Biden later sold these border wall parts for scrap to some lucky soul for pennies on the dollar.

During President Trump’s time in office you could track the progress of his border wall. Trump was able to build hundreds of miles of border wall despite pushback from then Speaker Paul Ryan, Majority leader Mitch McConnell, and every Democrat in office. Trump also had to regularly fend off the liberal legacy media who attacked his plan to secure the US southern border.

Joe Biden sold the border wall segments worth $300 million for $2 million.

Over ten million illegals have now walked across the open border into the United States since Joe Biden took office.

Joe Biden allowed more illegals to walk across the US border than the population of New Jersey.

In December a record 302,034 walked across the border into the United States. More migrants crossed into the US in one month than the total population of several prominent US cities like Buffalo, St. Louis, and Greensboro, North Carolina – IN ONE MONTH!

Joe Biden released this outrageous statement on the border crisis he created last night. He is asking for the authority to fix the border that he already has.

https://justthenews.com/government/security/fbi-luminaries-starkly-warn-congress-us-being-invaded-border-alarming-and

With a constitutional crisis brewing in Texas and voters nationwide alarmed by the toll of illegal immigration, some of the FBI’s most famous retired executives are issuing a stark warning to Congress that President Joe Biden’s border policies have unleashed an “invasion” of military-aged male foreigners who pose “one of the most pernicious ever” threats to American security.

Ten former FBI executives – some who oversaw the bureau’s intelligence, counterterrorism, criminal and training operations – expressed their alarm in a letter dated Jan. 17 to House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Leader Chuck Schumer and the chairmen of the House and Senate committees that preside over the U.S. intelligence and Homeland Security apparatus.

Their language affirms that of both current FBI Director Christopher Wray, who testified the nation’s security lights are “blinking red,” and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who alleges Biden’s loosening of border security has allowed an “invasion” of America by foreigners with troubling origins and attributes.

“In its modern history the U.S. has never suffered an invasion of the homeland and, yet, one is unfolding now,” the FBI luminaries wrote. “Military aged men from across the globe, many from countries or regions not friendly to the United States, are landing in waves on our soil by the thousands – not by splashing ashore from a ship or parachuting from a plane but rather by foot across a border that has been accurately advertised around the world as largely unprotected with ready access granted.

“It would be difficult to overstate the danger represented by the presence inside our borders of what is comparatively a multi-division army of young single adult males from hostile nations and regions whose background, intent, or allegiance is completely unknown,” they added.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/it-is-not-texas-thats-defying-the-law-its-biden/

There is a great deal of moronic commentary accusing the State of Texas of defying the Supreme Court. In point of fact, the Supreme Court did not order Texas to do anything. It vacated an order by the Fifth Circuit that, during the pendency of an ongoing lawsuit between the feds and the state, barred federal authorities from cutting concertina wire that Texas has installed in parts of its 1,254-mile border with Mexico. That is, the Supreme Court (with no opinion, and over the objection of four justices, who also did not write) held that, for now, the lower courts may not prevent the federal authorities from dismantling barriers.

That Supreme Court action did not to direct Texas to do anything. The Court did not presume to tell Texas that it could not take action to protect its territory and exclude intruders — to have done so would have been constitutionally dubious for the reasons Justice Antonin Scalia explained nearly a dozen years ago in his Arizona v. United States opinion — which Governor Gregg Abbott has explicitly relied on, and which should be read, reread, and memorized. (Note: Abbott described the 2012 Scalia opinion as a “dissent”; it actually concurred in part and dissented in part with the Court’s multilayered decision.)

There is no doubt that the federal and state governments both have immigration- and border-enforcement authority. How they work out disputes, particularly under circumstances in which no attempt has been made by Congress in statutory law to prevent the lawful defensive measures Texas has taken, is a political question. This is vertical rather than horizontal separation of powers — collision between federal and state authority rather than presidential and congressional authority — but the dynamic is similar: The law’s preference is for the political officials who answer to the people whose lives are deeply affected to work it out.

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/4429305-joe-bidens-immigration-avalanche-is-about-to-bury-him/

What on earth is Joe Biden thinking?  

As the country erupts over the horrorshow at the southern border, the White House is doing battle — not with the armed gangs infiltrating our country or the tens of thousands of people illegally streaming across our border, but with the governor of Texas, who is trying to protect his citizens from the unruly horde.   

Gov. Greg Abbott has directed the construction of razor wire barriers to prevent people entering between legal ports of entry; the White House has gotten permission from the Supreme Court to take them down. 

In addition, Republicans in Congress have demanded that the Biden administration secure the border in exchange for greenlighting aid to Ukraine and Israel.  

This is easy, folks. Give the GOP the rules changes they want and 1) Biden’s border catastrophe gets better, generating fewer appalling headlines, and 2) the U.S. meets its promises and Biden can keep chirping that “America is back.”  

Our clueless president disagrees. This issue could literally defeat Joe Biden, and he is fighting everything and anything that could make the situation better. 

The No.1 issue for Republican voters in Iowa and in New Hampshire was immigration, beating out even the economy. Not surprisingly, Donald Trump was the heavy favorite in both states. Securing the border was the former president’s signature campaign promise in 2016; having delivered on that pledge, he will, for sure, hit the topic hard again in 2024.   

https://www.thefp.com/p/black-democrats-sue-chicago?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

“How dare you?”

That was the first reaction Cata Truss, a 57-year-old mother on the West Side of Chicago, had when she found out who was behind the push to turn her neighborhood park into a shelter for migrants: Democrats she helped elect. 

“All these people, I have supported every one of them,” she says about Mayor Brandon Johnson and his progressive allies. “I was like, ‘Are you freaking kidding me?’ ”

There was no way she was going to let Amundsen Park—what she calls “the crown jewel of the community”—go to the newly arrived migrants from the Mexican border. Especially not when there were black Chicagoans who needed the space, which she says kept her five sons “out of trouble” and busy playing football when they were young. 

“There’s a humanitarian crisis in the black community,” said Truss. “But every time we have a need in our community, we’re told that there are no funds. There’s no money for us.”

Truss and other black residents told me that Chicago, which calls itself a “welcoming city,” has been very welcoming—just not to them. Since August 2022, Chicago has greeted nearly 35,000 new arrivals with resources like laundry services, mental health screenings, and $15,000 in rental support per person—all funds that Truss says could’ve gone a long way in Amundsen Park in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, where nearly 28 percent of residents live below the poverty line.

So last October, a day before the field house was set to become a migrant shelter, Truss raced to the local courthouse, along with three of her neighbors—plus the head of the local NAACP chapter for moral support. For the next two and a half hours, she drafted a lawsuit in a notebook, then ripped out the pages and handed them to a clerk. Her argument, handwritten in pen, was that the field house was “designated for recreational use within the community,” not housing noncitizens. One of her co-plaintiffs, Gerald K. Harris, runs the football program at the field house that trained her five sons.

“I was like, ‘bring it on,’ ” she says. “Let’s fight.” 

The U.S. border patrol made 2.5 million migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2023, an all-time high.

There seems to be no end in sight, or meaningful plan from the Biden administration to stop or slow the number of people coming over the border. Meanwhile, federal funds flowing to migrants are growing at an exponential rate.

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com looked at just one federal office to get an idea of how much spending is going towards accommodating, transporting, and providing migrants with various other services.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), a part of Health and Human Services, is a major vehicle for migrant-related spending. Congress appropriated $20 billion in just two years on “refugee and entrant assistance.”

Background

Last year, we published an oversight report on the unaccompanied children program run by the agency: up to 85,000 minors were lost after “sponsorship” with a “vetted” guardian. The New York Times found credible allegations of child labor law violations and congressional whistleblowers detailed large-scale child trafficking.

Now, our investigation into the agency reveals new oversight: 1. billion-dollar spending spikes in the adult refugee programs; and 2. potential conflicts-of-interest between agency leadership and its largest grant recipients. In fact, for decades, agency director Robin Dunn Marcos was employed in executive positions by two non-profit organizations that are among the agency’s largest grantees.

Here is a five minute interview describing the big issues in our reporting:

https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/22/human-smuggling-operations-by-cartels-turning-border-communities-into-war-zones/

As the mass migration crisis continues to rage out of control, the increased human smuggling efforts by Mexican drug cartels is having disastrous consequences for border communities on both sides of the wall.

As Fox News reports, cartels are fighting over the money being left behind by illegal aliens in addition to the fees being paid to guide them across the border. The skirmishes have impacted towns in Mexico from Sonoyta to Ciudad Juarez, and their American counterparts lie Lukeville, Arizona, and El Paso, Texas. The cartels are clashing not only with each other, but with Mexican authorities as well.

One recent example was a gunfight in Sonoyta, Sonora, where members of the Sinaloa Cartel fought with members of the Mexican army, leading to an SUV being torched in the streets. By the end of the fight, which lasted for several hours, only five cartel members were arrested.

“This last one (shooting) was probably the most publicized because the videos made it to mainstream news, but it is not the first one,” said eyewitness Joel Perez. “This is all because of the amount of migrants arriving to this town.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/01/johnny_angel_youre_an_angel_to_me.html

EXCERPT

Who knew that common sense about border madness would resurface in the Democrat party with the words of Senator John Fetterman?  Well, it has and many conservatives are happy to see it.  Let’s check out the senator’s words, via Daily Mail:

As for immigration, Fetterman argued he can be both pro-immigration, while also favor policies to restrict the flow of immigrants across the southern border to a manageable level.

‘It’s a reasonable conversation – until somebody can say there’s an explanation on what we can do when 270,000 people are being encountered on the border, not including the ones, of course, that we don’t know about,’ he said.

‘To put that in reference, that is essentially the size of Pittsburgh, the second-largest city in Pennsylvania,’ the Democrat added.

In a December interview with Politico, the lawmaker said: ‘I hope Democrats can understand that it isn’t xenophobic to be concerned about the border. It’s a reasonable conversation, and Democrats should engage.’