DOJ Continues to Stonewall House Judiciary in Cover-Up on Biden Docs Scandal

Molly Bruns
-
0
DOJ Continues to Stonewall House Judiciary in Cover-Up on Biden Docs Scandal

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) The Department of Justice announced to Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Mike Johnson, R-La., that they will not be giving the congressmen a full look at their investigation into the classified documents found in President Joe Biden’s home and personal office.

The departmental letter sent to the representatives is a response to a request from Jordan and Johnson to see the documents relating to the hiring of Special Counsel Robert Hur, and communiques between the DOJ and FBI concerning the classified documents.

In response, the DOJ claimed it is a matter of “longstanding policy” to keep this kind of information under lock and key as the investigation is ongoing, according to Brietbart.

“Your letter also requests non-public information that is central to the ongoing Special Counsel investigation,” the letter read. “The Department’s longstanding policy is to maintain the confidentiality of such information… This policy protects the American people’s interest in evenhanded, dispassionate, and effective administration of justice.”

The letter, written by Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legislative Affairs Carlos Uriarte, alleged the importance of the integrity of the justice system and the DOJ’s sudden concern over statutory requirements, court orders and confidentiality.

Uriarte does not reference any specific records linked to the special counsel investigation, DOJ, FBI or White House requested by Jordan and Johnson.

This raised a few eyebrows after the execution of the raid on Mar-a-Lago, the home of former President Donald Trump, which involved an ongoing legal battle, extensive press and the release of internal photos.

“Our Members are rightly concerned about the Justice Department’s double standard here. After all, some of the Biden documents were found at a think tank that has received funds from communist China,” Jordan spokesman Russell Dye said. “It’s concerning, to say the least, that the Department is more interested in playing politics than cooperating.”

The White House also refused to give any answers concerning the state of the investigation or what is in documents.

There are also concerns that Hur acts as a “fixer” for Democrats in legal binds, as he has several deep state ties.

Illegals Living Rent Free in NYC Refuse to Leave Hell’s Kitchen Hotel

Jacob Bruns
-
0
Illegals Living Rent Free in NYC Refuse to Leave Hell’s Kitchen Hotel

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) A group of illegal immigrants has taken up refuge and refused to leave a hotel in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan.

The illegal immigrants have been housed at the Watson Hotel, but the single men were to be transferred to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, which is set to house over 1000 immigrants in the coming weeks, Fox News reported. However, many refused to go altogether, with the aid and encouragement of a number of Left-wing activists.

When the bus arrived, only a small number of illegal immigrants complied. Over a dozen cops were stationed at the Watson for crowd control as the activist crowd surged.

“They feel that it’s not livable,” said Valerie, an activist who did not tell reporters her last name. “The hotel won’t let them in so they’re planning to sleep here.”

“This weekend, we began the process of moving single adults males form the Watson Hotel to Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, as we transition the hotel to meet the large number of asylum seeking families with children,” Democrat Mayor Eric Adams’s office wrote, reassuring the general public that the illegal immigrants would receive only the best of treatment.

“The facilities at Brooklyn Cruise Terminal will provide the same services as every other humanitarian relief center in the city, and the scheduled relocations to Brooklyn Cruise Terminal this weekend took place was planned. We remain in serious need of support from both our state and federal governments.”

Per the report, the city has had to house over 42,000 new immigrants since last spring alone as the city has been hit hard by a wave of Biden-sponsored illegal immigration.

Things are so bad that Adams even visited the border earlier this month, calling the situation a “crisis.”

“Our cities are being undermined,” he said. “We don’t deserve this. Migrants don’t deserve this and the people who live in the cities don’t deserve this …There is no more room in New York.”

USDA Spending $25M to Entice Food Stamp Recipients to Eat More Fruits, Vegetables

Editor 1
-
0
USDA Spending $25M to Entice Food Stamp Recipients to Eat More Fruits, Vegetables

(Tom Gantert, The Center Square) The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service will invest $25 million into three states to encourage people on food assistance to buy more fruits and vegetables.

The incentive pilot program would encourage people receiving what used to be called food stamps the ability to buy “healthy foods by providing a coupon, discount, gift card, bonus food items or extra funds when they buy specific foods, such as fruits and vegetables,” according to its website.

“A key barrier to healthy eating is lack of access or enough money to buy nutritious food,” said the USDA site. “Research shows that incentive programs are an effective way to promote healthy eating and improve nutrition security for more Americans.”

However, some critics called the program paternalistic and stated it favors select food industries over others and encourages more government lobbying.

The pilot program comes at a time when spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has increased 98% from 2019 to 2022 to a record $119.5 billion. Some of that increase is attributable to supplemental pandemic payments that are now being phased out.

The USDA has increased the amount of SNAP benefits it provides with the goal of proving recipients more money to buy healthier foods.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities stated the 2018 Farm Bill raised the maximum SNAP benefits by 21% effective October 2021 because the cost of a healthy diet had increased over the years.

It said SNAP benefits had been effectively frozen for decades because benefits only increased by the rate of inflation.

Meanwhile, “dietary guidelines, consumption patterns, and constraints on working families had effectively raised the cost for families to secure an adequate diet,” it noted.

“As a result, SNAP benefits fell well short of what households need to ensure a healthy diet, with many running out of benefits before month’s end, which increased their risk of food insecurity (meaning that their access to adequate food is limited by a lack of money or other resources),” said the center.

Veronique de Rugy, the George Gibbs chair in political economy and senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, said there was a better way to get SNAP recipients to eat healthier.

“I think this is just another version of the paternalism that exists in a lot of the welfare programs where you don’t trust people to make the right decision and the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. think they know better,” de Rugy said about the $25 million pilot program.

De Rugy called the 98% increase in SNAP spending over the past three years “reckless” and said it would be better to increase the availability of food by reducing regulation.

She said that urban farming had a lot of potential but there were a lot of regulations that were obstacles to people growing their own food.

“We should actually unleash the ability to increase the supply of food rather than constrain it and subsidize it,” de Rugy said.

The Institute for Justice reported in August 2021 that Florida and Illinois were the only two states to have passed “right to garden” laws, which “provide express protection for the right to grow one’s own food.”

Antony Davies, an associate professor of economics at Duquesne University, said a nanny-state government encouraging better eating habits wasn’t the real problem.

“The nanny state is the lesser of the problems,” Davies said.

Rather, it was the unintended consequences of such government interference, which might instead make the situation worse—and more costly.

“Well-meaning people who think they know better what others should be eating flex their regulatory muscles,” he said, noting the starting point in a cascade of bureaucratic entanglements.

“Businesses then co-opt that regulatory muscle for their own benefit,” he continued. “The result is that the nanny-staters feel good about helping people while they’re inadvertently helping businesses at the people’s expense.”

Such a cycle was, in fact, the most reliable consequence of meddling in free markets.

“Any time the government intervenes in markets, it opens a door for businesses to co-opt the power of government to benefit themselves,” Davis said. “Providing more taxpayer money to fund the purchase of fruits and vegetables creates an incentive for nut growers, dairy farmers and meat packers to lobby the USDA to have their foods included as well.”

Davies said that has already happened.

“The controversy surrounding the USDA’s food pyramid arose from agricultural and dairy interests influencing the USDA’s dietary recommendations so as to benefit their industries,” he said.

Texas Gov. Abbott Names New Border Czar, Gives Update on $1B Wall Construction

Editor 1
-
0
Texas Gov. Abbott Names New Border Czar, Gives Update on $1B Wall Construction

(Bethany Blankley, The Center Square) A new “border czar” has been named to oversee border security in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott announced on Monday.

He said he created a “special advisor on border matters” and appointed newly retired U.S. Border Patrol agent supervisor Mike Banks as Texas’ first-ever border czar to do what he maintains the federal government has refused to do.

Banks was “the perfect choice” for the job, he said during a press conference in front of a portion of the border wall being constructed in San Benito, Texas, in Cameron County.

Banks, who has decades of experience serving in three states and Washington, D.C., having served under four presidents, “has seen firsthand the struggles of ranchers and communities caused by open borders,” Abbott said. “He understands the dangerous impacts that Mexican cartels have on our country.”

The two were joined at the press conference by Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw and Texas Military Department Major General Thomas Suelzer.

“Building a border wall and adding hundreds of miles of other barriers is only one way that Texas is responding to President Biden’s refusal to enforce the immigration laws of the United States of America,” Abbott said.

“We have turned back more than 32,000 illegal immigrants trying to cross into our country,” he added, referring to Texas’s law enforcement efforts through Operation Lone Star.

That includes having arrested more than 24,000 criminals and seizing “enough fentanyl to kill every man, woman and child in the entire United States of America,” he said. “And we have targeted the cartels that have profited off of the illegal immigration policies of President Biden.”

President Joe Biden designated Vice President Kamala Harris as the “border czar” in 2021, claiming she’d be involved with border security efforts.

However, Harris continues to receive criticism for providing no oversight, visiting the border once, and claiming multiple times the border was closed as record numbers of illegal foreign nationals were apprehended or evaded capture, according to federal data.

Abbott, one of the most prominent and vocal critics of Biden’s open-border policies, has often promised to take matters into his own hands, although his efforts thus far have failed to stem the tide of illegals entering the country.

“Illegal immigration in Texas is a full-time job,” Abbott said.

Banks, who was a Border Patrol agent for 23 years, said he was “humbled” by the opportunity to help protect the southern border, something he’d dedicated his life to and was very passionate about. He hoped to strengthen relationships with law enforcement partners and the community to continue Texas’ border security efforts, he said.

Abbott said it will cost the state $25 million per mile to build a border wall, varying based on the location. Part of the cost is associated with the materials, but the other part is acquiring the rights to build on the land—meaning paying private landowners for part of their property.

“One thing that has slowed our process” in building the border wall, he said, “was getting those rights.” After acquiring land rights, the state is accelerating building more of the wall, he said.

The Texas Facilities Commission began research and the procurement process for wall construction in 2021. On Dec. 18, 2021, Abbott debuted the construction of Texas’s first border wall on state land in Rio Grande City.

On June 20, 2022, the first 1.7-mile section of the wall’s construction in Starr County was completed, according to TFC.

TFC Executive Director Mike Novak testified before the state Senate Finance Committee last July saying that in less than a year’s time, TFC had completed the first segment of the program’s permanent infrastructure.

TFC, a state agency with less than 400 employees, took on a job previously performed by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, with a staff of roughly 37,000, he said, “to solicit, contract, engineer, and construct a permanent wall along the Texas- Mexico border.”

Texas DPS has identified roughly 40 miles “of the highest priority to secure the border.” At $25 million a mile, the state is expected to spend $1 billion on border wall construction.

In July 2022, TFC began the second phase of its border wall project, approving the purchase of $43 million worth of bollard panels to build 12.8 miles of wall. It also continued to approved building designs over the following moths.

By December of last year, installation of another segment began in Cameron County—the site where Abbott made the announcement on Monday.

Northern Border Springs a Leak as Immigrants Come to U.S. via Canada

Molly Bruns
-
0
Northern Border Springs a Leak as Immigrants Come to U.S. via Canada

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Record numbers of illegal aliens are trekking through chilly eastern Canada, making their way into the United States via the northern border.

Border Patrol officials in Vermont, New York and New Hampshire—all part of the Swanton Sector of the northern border—said the rates in the first three months of the fiscal year of 2023 have seen 743% increase in illegal crossings, the Post Millennial reported.

“Combined apprehensions and encounters in Fiscal Year 2023 have already surpassed that of Fiscal Year 2022,” Customs and Border Protection stated in a press release. “Recent trends represent a sustained increase in illegal border crossings as we head into the harshest winter months.”

Massive amounts of snow and freezing temperatures are normal in the northernmost regions in the earliest months of the year. Those unprepared for the climate may find themselves struggling with hypothermia.

Vermont Border Patrol officers in particular receive numerous 911 calls from cold, desperate migrants attempting to cross the border.

“Environmental challenges, coupled with the sharp increase in illicit cross-border traffic, generate great concern for the potential loss of human life,”said the CBP statement, lamenting the fact that “Swanton Sector Border Patrol continues to encounter family groups with children (aged as young as a few months old) crossing uncertain terrain in single-digit (Fahrenheit) temperatures.”

In November, Border Patrol agents encountered six people near Troy, Vt., after a 911 call. Four were children under age 5. While they were able to take them to safety, Swanton BP Sector said in an announcement, “This is NOT a safe or acceptable way to enter the United States.”

Concern for the migrants—s well as the officers putting their lives on the line to save the foreign nationals—caused Swanton Sector Chief Patrol Agent Robert N. Garcia to release a statement on the matter.

“Swanton Sector’s greatest concern in carrying out our mission of border security is the preservation of life—the lives of community residents we are sworn to protect, the lives of our Border Patrol Agents carrying out the mission day-in and day-out in the field, and the lives of the individuals, families, and children we are charged with apprehending as they attempt to circumvent legal processes for entry,” he explained.

“Unfortunately, the transnational criminal organizations that stand to profit from the increased flow of human traffic care only about profits and have no concern for the welfare of those whose plight they seek to exploit for financial gain,” he added.

Border officials across America’s northernmost states confirmed that crossing rates are rising and cited concern for people’s safety.

SELLERS: Is Trans Movement the Prelude to a Peculiar Vaccine Side Effect?

Ben Sellers
-
0
SELLERS: Is Trans Movement the Prelude to a Peculiar Vaccine Side Effect?

(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) To my knowledge, there have been two transgender people near and dear to me in my life. (Others who seemed prime candidates for it exited my orbit before transgenderism became a mainstream phenomenon.)

The first of these, “Natalie,” was among a regular cast of characters who frequented Charlottesville, Va.’s now infamous Downtown Mall. Natalie made little effort to present as female, and the novelty of it seemed enticingly subversive to a teen and early-20something who was a devoted student of ’60s counterculture movements like the Merry Pranksters and their “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests.”

She went on to work with me at an alt-weekly publication—she, a copy editor, and I, the editorial intern—and would bum me hand-rolled cigarettes, which became a sort of bonding experience. I never knew her male birth name.

The second transgender person in my life was “K,” a student on a teenage newspaper staff I oversaw. For a 15-year-old, pre-transition, K was remarkably hirsute and unabashedly girl crazy.

The only hint that would later help me to understand the transition that occurred in or around college age was that this young charge of mine was also deeply politically engaged—and was attuned, in particular, to far-left politics, even celebrating socialism (on a T-shirt, no less) well before that phenomenon had entered into the mainstream.

Having known the before and after, K’s transition created in me a sort of cognitive dissonance. I concluded that it was not so much that K identified as female but that K desperately wanted to identify with an oppressed, marginalized class and saw the only window for a hetero-white-male to do so by becoming a lesbian.

Suffice it to say, becoming oppressed and marginalized has gotten a lot more trendy in the decade since these trailblazers led the way.

The most obvious explanation is that the radical ideas that once occupied a fringe space on left-wing blogs and chatrooms have since metastacized via social media, mainstream media and even children’s programming.

But understanding “why” in many cases remains just as elusive as ever.

Clearly, for the medical industry it is about money, and for political demagogues it is about power.

But a conspiracy theorist like myself wonders if the powerful forces behind this movement haven’t crafted a more sinister plan, already being gamed out and scaffolded, for the long term.

Apart from being hasty medical decisions made under the duress of social pressure, both the COVID vaccines and transgender surgery have another common element: their potential for permanent sterility, the ultimate goal of plutocratic depopulationists like the World Economic Forum.

Whether it be genes or genitals, neither one will work quite as intended once altered through the miracles of modern science.

Thus, it would make sense that the next major global pandemic—let’s call it Event 202—might usher in the convergence of these.

Perhaps, the COVID-23 vaccine will help to truncate or augment the very chromosomes that have long defined our clinical conceptualization of “gender.”

This mass experiment could be as groundbreaking in efforts to cure genetic conditions like Down syndrome as the Human Genome Project was in the 1990s and early 2000s.

That said, there may be a few side-effects with the new treatment, just as there were with its COVID-19 prototype.

In fact, if billionaire vaccine-underwriter Bill Gates is any indication, gynecomastia may soon be the new myocarditis.

If, indeed, gender-bending is a vaccine side effect, it also stands to reason that the same folks engineering these medical breakthroughs, after struggling to gain widespread public acceptance of the deadly heart conditions many young people are experiencing, might have thought ahead for the next go-round by normalizing busty bosoms on men.

Of course, some happy warriors may be ready to do whatever China’s TikTok tells them to.

But I do wonder if my two original and independent-thinking trans friends won’t start losing interest once everybody else is doing it too. And, if so, I hope it isn’t too late to go back.

Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/realbensellers.

Memphis PD Finds White Scapegoat to Fit Narrative in Tyre Nichols Death

Editor 1
-
0
Memphis PD Finds White Scapegoat to Fit Narrative in Tyre Nichols Death

(Headline USA) In a sickening display of race-baiting, Memphis officials announced they had punished a white police officer who was not at the scene of Tyre Nichols’s brutal and shocking death in order to push a false narrative.

The case, which has drawn comparisons to George Floyd and Rodney King, initially involved five black officers who were reportedly undertrained. All have been fired and are now charged with an array of crimes—including second-degree murder—in the killing, which reached the public via body-cam footage.

Two more Memphis police officers have since been disciplined and three emergency responders fired in connection with the death of Nichols, officials said Monday, widening the circle of punishment to those who failed to help the 29-year-old father and avid skateboarder, who was himself black.

Officer Preston Hemphill, who is white, was relieved of duty shortly after Nichols’s Jan. 7 arrest, the police department announced.

On body camera footage from the initial stop, Hemphill is heard saying that he stunned Nichols and declaring, “I hope they stomp his ass.”

Later in the day Memphis police said another officer had also been relieved, but without naming the person or specifying what role they played in the incident.

Hemphill’s limited involvement in the killing didn’t stop race-baiting attorney Benjamin Crump and others from trying to push a spurious narrative of racial injustice in the case.

In a series of muddled messages, Crump first accused the black cops of racism and then denounced the fact that Memphis police had not immediately disclused Hemphill’s involvement, claiming it was part of a racial cover-up.

“We don’t see videos of [white people] having this kind of brutality levied against them,” Crump falsely claimed.

The white culpability is not only convenient for turning the national outrage into a left-wing political advantage, but absolutely essential to pushing the Marxist narrative of “systemic racism” advanced by Critical Race Theory and other black-supremacist philosophies that seek to undermine America’s core system of democratic values.

Joining Crump in the disgraceful display were lawmakers including Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., who blamed “white supremacy” for the killing.

Fired ESPN commentator Jemele Hill also echoed the claims in a post via Twitter.

“The entire system of policing is based on white supremacist violence,” she said. “We see people under the boot of oppression carry its water all the time.”

Also Monday, Memphis Fire Department officials announced the dismissal of emergency medical technicians Robert Long and JaMicheal Sandridge and Lt. Michelle Whitaker. The EMTs had previously been suspended. Long is white, while Sandridge and Whitaker are black.

Fire Chief Gina Sweat said in a statement that the department received a call from police to respond to a report of a person who had been pepper-sprayed. The workers arrived at 8:41 p.m. as Nichols was handcuffed on the ground and slumped against a squad car, the statement said.

Long and Sandridge, based on the nature of the call and information they were told by police, “failed to conduct an adequate patient assessment of Mr. Nichols,” the statement said. Whitaker and the driver remained in the engine.

An ambulance was called, and it arrived at 8:55 p.m., the statement said. An emergency unit cared for Nichols and left for a hospital with him at 9:08 p.m.—27 minutes after Long, Sandridge and Whitaker arrived, officials said.

An investigation determined that all three violated “multiple” policies and protocols, the statement said, adding that “their actions or inactions on the scene that night do not meet the expectations of the Memphis Fire Department.”

Nichols’ death was the latest example in a long string of violent-crime incidents in the Tennessee city, which is 65% black, according to recent census estimates.

In the span of a single week in September, the city faced the horrific abduction, rape and murder of white mother Eliza Fletcher at the hands of a recently paroled black serial rapist, followed by an hourslong shooting spree involving a 19-year-old black man.

“Memphis is tired right now,” said one news reporter who broke down in tears while covering the latter story.

It remains to be seen what reforms stemming from the Nichols episode may due to further hobble legitimate law enforcement efforts in the city, known as the cradle of blues and soul music.

Memphis Police Department officers used a stun gun, a baton and their fists as they pummeled Nichols during the nighttime arrest.

Video showed Nichols running away from officers toward his house after he was pulled over on suspicion of reckless driving. Nichols was heard calling for his mother and seen struggling with his injuries as he sat helpless on the pavement, video footage released Friday showed.

The five officers chatted and milled about for several minutes as Nichols remained on the ground, but there were other authorities on the scene. Two Shelby County sheriff’s deputies have been relieved of duty without pay while their conduct is investigated.

In the Nichols case, the police department has been responsible for internal disciplinary measures, such as firings, while the Shelby County district attorney has handled the criminal charges.

Hemphill was the third officer at a traffic stop that preceded the violent arrest but was not at the scene where Nichols was beaten, his lawyer Lee Gerald said. Hemphill turned on his body camera, in line with department policy, he added.

Crump, who is representing the Nichols family, claimed that Memphis Police Director Cerelyn “CJ” Davis, who is black, had engaged in a cover-up to protect the white officer.

“We have asked from the beginning that the Memphis Police Department be transparent with the family and the community—this news seems to indicate that they haven’t risen to the occasion,” attorneys Ben Crump and Anthony Romanucci said in a statement. “It certainly begs the question why the white officer involved in this brutal attack was shielded and protected from the public eye, and to date, from sufficient discipline and accountability.”

Memphis police spokeswoman Karen Rudolph said information on disciplinary action taken against Hemphill was not immediately released because Hemphill was not fired. The department generally gives out information about an officer’s punishment only after a department investigation into misconduct ends, Rudolph said.

Davis told The Associated Press in an interview Friday that a “lack of supervision in this incident was a major problem.”

“When officers are working, you should have at least one supervisor for every group or squad of people,” Davis said. “Not just somebody who’s at the office doing the paperwork, somebody who’s actually embedded in that unit.”

Calls for more officers to be fired or charged have been loud and persistent from the Nichols family, their lawyers and community activists who have peacefully protested in Memphis since the video was released.

On Saturday, Nichols’s stepfather, Rodney Wells, told the Associated Press that the family was going to “continue to seek justice and get some more officers arrested.”

“Questions were raised before the video was released, I raised those questions,” Wells said. “I just felt there was more than five officers out there. Now, five were charged with murder because they were the main participants, but there were five or six other officers out there that didn’t do anything to render any aid. So they are just as culpable as the officers who threw the blows.”

Memphis City Council member Martavius Jones said Monday that police policies on rendering aid and de-escalation appeared to have been violated.

“When everybody saw the video, we see that you have multiple officers just standing around, when Mr. Nichols is in distress, that just paints a totally different picture,” Jones said

Jones said he believes more officers should be disciplined.

“At this point, what’s going to be helpful for this community is to see how swiftly the police chief deals with those other officers now that everybody has seen the tape and knows that is wasn’t only five officers who were at the scene the entire time,” Jones said.

The five fired officers and Hemphill were part of the so-called Scorpion unit, which targeted violent criminals in high-crime areas. Davis, the police chief, said Saturday that the unit has been disbanded.

Nichols’s funeral service is scheduled for Wednesday at a Memphis church.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

House GOP Battles Biden’s Magic 8-Ball Ploy to Delay Ending COVID Monarchy

Mark Pellin
-
0
House GOP Battles Biden’s Magic 8-Ball Ploy to Delay Ending COVID Monarchy

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) In an effort to extend the COVID control scheme for as long as possible, President Joe Biden on Thursday delayed until May calling an official end to the pandemic that the public and myriad medical officials have moved past.

Specifically, Biden peered into the regime’s monarchal Magic 8-Ball and decreed the COVID pandemic to officially end on May 11, allegedly providing the nation’s healthcare system further time to avoid devolving into “chaos and uncertainty,” according to the Office of Management and Budget’s “Statement of Administration Policy.”

Biden’s pronouncement would also scheme to impact the Trump-era Title 42 immigration policy, which the administration has repeatedly attempted to lift and allows immigration officials to expedite the expulsion of illegal immigrants because of health concerns. The policy’s termination was put on hold by the Supreme Court until it hears arguments from GOP-majority states.

The seemingly arbitrary extension of the regime’s emergency state comes as House Republicans are launching dual resolutions to immediately end the COVID reign of mandates and restrictions.

“The COVID-19 [Public Health Emergency] has been extended 12 times over 3 years,” wrote Rep. Brett Guthrie, Ky., who proposed the Pandemic is Over Act. “It’s time to move our country beyond operating under an emergency due to COVID-19.”

Guthrie said Biden’s pronouncement won’t sidetrack the introduction of his resolution to immediately end the “COIVD-19 emergency declarations.”

“The American people have been living under a COVID-19 public health emergency for three years and should not allow President Biden four more months of emergency powers,” Guthrie said. “It’s time to get our country back to normal, restore checks and balances between Congress and the Executive Branch, and rescind President Biden’s emergency powers.”

Rep. Paul Gosar R-Ariz., amplified those sentiments with his introduction of a resolution to “terminate” the “COVID-19 National Emergency.”

“By any measure, the pandemic in the United States has ended.  Even Joe Biden agrees, stating on 60 Minutes last September, that the ‘pandemic is over.’” Gosar said. “So why does Joe Biden continue to demand the COVID-19 national emergency be extended? The answer is simple, to force Americans to live under extreme measures that deprive us of our freedoms.”

In that light, Gosar said, “There is no ongoing COVID-19 emergency to justify the continuation of the national emergency declaration. Cases are down and most Americans have returned to a pre-pandemic normalcy.”

Viewers Sour on CNN, Don Lemon w/ Record Low Ratings

Mark Pellin
-
0
Viewers Sour on CNN, Don Lemon w/ Record Low Ratings

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) The numbers keep getting worse for beleaguered CNN host Don Lemon, recently demoted from a primetime evening slot to the network’s morning wasteland, where his latest show has hit near rock bottom.

Lemon’s woes mirror that of the network as a whole, which has seen viewership and revenue plunge across the board, triggering layoffs and the shuffling or jettisoning of shows on all fronts.

Given Lemon’s latest ratings slump, industry insiders have said it wouldn’t surprise if he was next to hit the chopping block. Lemon’s show CNN This Morning, which he co-hosts with Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins, recently had the lowest-rated week since its launch, reported The Wrap.

The show averaged only 331,000 viewers, while Fox & Friends had nearly 1 million and Morning Joe drew 760,000 

Unfortunately for CNN, Lemon’s abysmal ratings weren’t a lone outlier. For the first time since 2014, CNN failed to attract at least 450,000 primetime viewers.

According to the latest numbers: For the week of Jan. 16 through Jan. 22, the network averaged 444,000 viewers in primetime, 93,000 in the critically important 25-54 age demographic and 417,000 viewers for total day viewers with 80,000 in the demo.

By comparison, Fox News logged 1.4 million viewers and 176,000 in the demo and MSNBC had 943,000 viewers and 91,000 in the demo, according to The Wrap. The trend of disappointment continued for CNN in primetime, where compared to the networks nearly decade-long low viewership, Fox News logged 2 million viewers, 256,000 in the demo, and MSNBC had 943,000 viewers and 91,000 in the demo.

Lemon and Harlow are reportedly both equally frustrated with the show’s appallingly low viewership, but like CNN boss Chris Licht don’t have any solutions.

“The show can’t decide strategically what exactly it is, so it’s trying to be everything which can create whiplash for a viewer when segments seem off-brand in tonality,” one insider told The Wrap. “The audience for morning news on network TV is different than the cable news audience and since we’re not gaining new viewers we definitely need to retain our legacy ones”’

Fla. Pushes More Freedom for Gun-owners, as Police Chief Warns Home-Invaders of ‘Repercussions’

Mark Pellin
-
0
Fla. Pushes More Freedom for Gun-owners, as Police Chief Warns Home-Invaders of ‘Repercussions’

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Following in the wake of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis unveiling new tough-on-crime legislation, a Florida police chief issued a warning to criminals who make the mistake of plying their trade in the state.

“One should expect that if you are brazen enough to enter into someone’s residence and it is not yours, with intent to commit an unlawful act, there may be repercussions,” Haines City Police Chief Gregory Goreck said in a Friday press conference, after a homeowner defended himself against a pair of alleged thieves and thugs.

“We live in Florida, and more so, we live in Polk County, and most people are armed,” Goreck said. “It’s probably the logical conclusion, if you break into somebody’s house, you might end up getting shot by the homeowner

A criminal recidivist with a lengthy rap sheet learned that sobering reality for himself, when he was shot by a homeowner during an attempted burglary with an accomplice.

The homeowner, who had a concealed weapon permit, arrived home with his girlfriend Friday night to discover two intruders burglarizing his residence, according to Goreck. The homeowner fired his gun, hitting one of the suspects as they fled the scene.

Florida Republican lawmakers on Monday introduced legislation that would provide more freedoms for law-abiding citizens by eliminating concealed weapons permits with a Constitutional Carry bill. The measure has support from DeSantis, along with a majority of Republicans who control the state legislature.

“What we’re about here today is a universal right that applies to each and every man or woman regardless of race, gender, creed or background,” Speaker Paul Renner said at a news conference.

Law enforcement agencies also endorsed the legislation.

“Criminals don’t get a permit. Not one of them. They don’t care about obeying the law,” said Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey. “Our law-abiding citizens have that immediate right, guarantee and freedom to protect themselves.”

That was the case for the homeowner defending himself in Polk County, authorities said. Police were able to use a canine unit to track the injured suspect and render medical aide before he was transported to a hospital.

“Even though this was a felon who had been illegally inside someone’s house, the officers immediately changed focus,” switching from search-and-find to saving life, Goreck said. One officer started to render first aid, “trying to apply direct pressure to at least one or two of his wounds. Seeing that due to the number of wounds, he was unable to do it himself, he summoned for additional officers” to help.

The suspect was taken to hospital, where he was listed in critical but non-life threatening condition, and charged with four counts burglary theft, four counts grand theft and narcotics charges. The alleged accomplice remained at-large.

Goreck said the case is still being investigated, including the shooting, but “based on the totality of the evidence, it appears to be a case of stand-your-ground.”

1...2,2112,2122,213...3,893Page 2,212 of 3,893