The migrant surge is boosting the smuggling of children for forced labor and sexual exploitation, converting the border into a “huge market” for “child sex trafficking,” Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL) said this week.
“Human trafficking, my friends, is slavery,” Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) pointed out as he briefed reporters Wednesday alongside Salazar and other Republicans.
He went on to note “30 percent of the women and girls coming through this [migration] process are going to be raped.”
“We can’t standby and let that happen. We have boys and girls as young as six or seven years old being pushed into sex trafficking,” he added.
Some parents put their child on the migration pathway to the U.S. southern border process with “false hope” who never hear from their child again because that child will die, Owens also said.
“President Biden should be ashamed of himself. Ashamed. This was preventable,” Owens pointed out, adding, “There are people suffering, going through misery because they were given false hope.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday said she rejected a move by some Democrats led by Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) to expel Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) from Congress.
About 70 House Democrats joined Gomez in signing the resolution. However, to expel a member of Congress, the bid requires a two-thirds supermajority, meaning that a significant number of Republicans would need to join.
“I’m not going to get into that,” Pelosi told reporters Friday about the bid to expel Greene, suggesting that she did not support his resolution. “Members are very unhappy about what’s happened here. And they can express themselves the way they do. What Mr. Gomez did is his own view. And that is not a leadership position.”
Expulsion is a rare scenario in Congress. The last time a member was expelled was in 2002 when the House voted to force out then-Ohio Democratic Rep. James Traficant after he was convicted of several corruption charges and faced sentencing in prison.
In February, House Democrats and 11 Republicans voted to remove Greene from the House Budget Committee and Education and Labor Committee due to social media posts she made when she was a private citizen.
“These were words of the past, and these things do not represent me,” Greene said at the time about the social media posts. “They do not represent my district, and they do not represent my values.”
Greene, in a statement to The Epoch Times, described Gomez’s resolution as a move to silence conservative viewpoints, while pointing to a House Democratic-led investigation into Rep. Marianne Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa) and whether she won her Congressional seat. Miller-Meeks defeated Democrat Rita Hart by six votes.
Greene’s office also told The Epoch Times that her personal Twitter account was locked on Friday as Gomez introduced his resolution.
“No reason given from Twitter after multiple attempts to contact them,” a spokesman for her office said on Friday morning.
“This move eliminated any possibility for Congresswoman Greene to defend her reputation, her seat, and most importantly the votes of 230,000 Georgians in the 14th District on the Twitter platform. This is yet another attempt by the Silicon Valley Cartel to silence voices that speak out against their far-left woke orthodoxy,” her campaign statement read.
Twitter has drawn widespread criticism after it moved to suspend former President Donald Trump’s account and many other prominent conservatives and groups.
US Circuit Judge Laurence H. Silberman warns the current state of media is ‘a threat to a viable democracy’
A federal judge called for a landmark Supreme Court decision on freedom of the press and libel laws to be overturned in a fiery dissent decrying “bias against the Republican Party,” blasting the near “one-party control” of legacy news media, slamming Silicon Valley’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story, and warning that the current state of American media is “a threat to a viable democracy.”
U.S. Circuit Judge Laurence H. Silberman, a Reagan appointee, launched a broad attack on the Supreme Court’s unwillingness to revisit precedent and the news media in a dissent in Tah v. Global Witness — a defamation case. After arguing against the court majority’s ruling on the merits of the case, Silberman was “prompted to urge the overruling of New York Times v. Sullivan” — a landmark ruling that established what a plaintiff must show to prove a claim of defamation or libel made against a publisher.
Silberman described that ruling, which has made it extraordinarily difficult for an individual to successfully sue the press for false reporting, as a “policy-driven decision masquerading as constitutional law” that “badly constitutionalized an area of law refined over centuries of common law adjudication.”
Acknowledging that the Supreme Court is unlikely to reverse its opinion, he nevertheless said “new considerations have arisen over the last 50 years that make the New York Times decision a threat to American Democracy. It must go.”
New York Times v. Sullivan is a Civil Rights-era decision that established additional First Amendment protections for the press against lawsuits for defamation or libel.
US conservative commentator Candace Owens believes President Joe Biden is not mentally capable of publicly debating his Russian counterpart and offered Vladimir Putin an invitation to be a guest on her show instead.
The bold and harshly-worded take on Biden and Putin, which Owens asked her Twitter followers to share, came after the two world leaders exchanged ‘pleasantries’ through the media this week.
I am asking ALL of my followers to RETWEET this:
For obvious mental health reasons, @JoeBiden has declined a public discussion with @KremlinRussia_E.
I would like to publicly invite Vladimir Putin sit down with me for a wide-ranging interview on @thecandaceshow.
Things kicked off when Biden called Putin a “killer” in an interview and promised that the Russian would “pay a price” for allegedly interfering in the 2020 US presidential election. Putin responded by wishing Biden good health (unironically, Putin stressed) and challenging the US president to a public debate on issues dividing the two nations.
Unsurprisingly, the White House rejected the call, which Candace claimed was done “for obvious mental health reasons,” referring to what many conservatives perceive as a decline in Biden’s energy and wits.
“I would like to publicly invite Vladimir Putin to sit down with me for a wide-ranging interview,” Owens wrote.
The online reaction to her tweet was as divided as one could expect in the confrontational political world of present-day America. Outraged commenters told her to go see a therapist or wondered if the post came from a parody account.
Joe Biden tripped multiple times while making his way up the steps of Air Force One on Friday.
The 78-year-old stumbled two times before finally falling to his knees while clutching the staircase rail with his right hand.
Biden took a moment to examine and pat his leg after getting back on his feet.
Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk pointed out on Twitter how the ordeal might make the U.S. appear weak to China, as Biden and Kamala Harris set off to meet with the Asian community in Atlanta, Georgia following Tuesday’s mass shooting.
If China wasn’t laughing at us before, they are now.
One conservative contributor tweeted a screenshot of a June 2020 New York Times (NYT) article headline calling into question Tump’s “health” after the 45th POTUS was seen walking “gingerly” down a ramp at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
It’s been less than three months into the Biden administration and an immigration crisis appears to be in full swing. Hundreds of migrants, most of them children, are seeking asylum everyday.
This has put a strain on the U.S. immigration system. The race for a solution has led lawmakers to huddle and produce two very different approaches. Republicans have insisted the number one priority is border security.
“We’re getting ready to introduce legislation to make sure we’re using USCIS to check voter rolls here in this country, but we’re trying to make sure that we clamp down on the border,” stated Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas).
The Texas representative along with some of his GOP colleagues are working on new legislation they said will close immigration loopholes. Another bill they plan to reintroduce would designate cartels as terrorist organizations.
In January, President Trump said: “If our border security measures are reversed, it will trigger a tidal wave of illegal immigration—a wave like you’ve never seen before.”
There’s also a bipartisan bill that seeks to build more roads along the border to make it easier for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials to secure the area.
“If you’re going to solve the crisis, you need infrastructure,” Roy stated. “You need a wall, you need the bill that I just introduced with Henry Cuellar, a Democrat my friend.”
However, most Democrats in Congress are pushing amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants and have approved two such bills in the House. One focuses on so-called Dreamers while the other focuses on migrant farm workers.
“This personal to me,” said Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.). “Many of these immigrants, be it Dreamers or farm workers, come to this country to live the American dream…come to ensure that their kids have a better way of life.”
House Democrats argued their legislation will help immigrant communities, but Republicans warned it would only encourage more illegal immigration at a time when federal resources are spread thin and Americans are reeling from the economic impacts of a pandemic.
The Supreme Court will meet privately on Friday to consider if it should take up a Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
As various states continue to adopt abortion prohibitions, many of the new laws are headed to the high court. As a result, the justices could opt to wait to take any action on abortion, CNN reported.
Mississippi officials had appealed a ruling by an appellate court that had invalidated the 15-week ban. The ruling found that the Supreme Court precedent prevents prohibitions when the fetus would be unable to live outside the womb.
The case stems from a Mississippi abortion clinic suing the state in 2018, shortly after then-Gov. Phil Bryant signed the 15-week ban. U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves ruled it was unconstitutional. A three-judge panel of the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Reeves had ruled correctly.
But in late 2019, Mississippi asked the entire appeals court to reconsider the case, and the full panel later denied the request.
If the Supreme Court justices do agree to take up the 15-week abortion ban it, would likely spark intense national debate. And even if they deny the Mississippi petition, individual justices could issue statements regarding the denial and elaborate on their arguments for future rollbacks on abortions, CNN noted.
Mississippi’s Attorney General Lynn Fitch is urging justices to hear the case. Fitch has asked the court to clarify its standard and to disallow clinic lawsuits on behalf of women.
A diverse group of journalists — from a Christian reporter to a writer for a pornographic magazine — have expressed concerns over the Biden administration’s press policies that they say limit access to independent and foreign journalists and show favoritism to mainstream outlets.
In an interview with The Christian Post, Matthew Anthony Harper, a White House investigative journalist who writes for the conservative Idaho-based InterMountain Christian News and has covered presidential administrations dating back to the Obama administration, said his access to the White House has been substantially reduced compared to the previous administration.
Harper told CP he had access to the White House grounds seven days a week during the Trump administration, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. But now, he only has access to the complex one day a week.
Harper characterized the Biden administration’s new policy of allowing only 80 reporters into the complex at a time — purportedly due to the pandemic — in addition to a new policy requiring certain journalists to pay for their own coronavirus testing as a “gross injustice putting a wall up for press access directly affecting our freedom of the press.”
In January, Harper, along with several other journalists, signed a letter sent to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki concerning the administration’s press policies in light of the pandemic.
He maintained that “he brought up this issue with the letter” in a meeting with Psaki last week.
“She stated that she was aware of the letter and had read it and that she had responded to Brian Karem,” he recounted, referring to Playboy’s White House correspondent who wrote the letter.
Karem shared the contents of Psaki’s emailed response with CP.
“Thanks again for your letter,” she wrote. “I hope you know … our objective is to ensure we have as many people in the White House as possible.”
Karem characterized Psaki’s response as “generic.”
The Christian Post reached out to the White House for comment on this story. A response was not received by press time.
Harper, who reports on religious freedom violations and anti-Semitism, seconded Karem’s displeasure with the new policy enacted in February that requires journalists to pay for COVID-19 testing.
“Our nonprofit news organization and many other news outlets don’t have funds to be paying this,” Harper asserted.
In a Feb. 26 email obtained by CP, White House Correspondents’ Association Executive Director Steven Thomma said: “The White House has informed us that it has determined that budgetary constraints limit the government’s ability to provide the daily COVID-19 testing that the White House requires for journalists on campus.”
The costs of the tests are reported to be about $170 each.
The memorandum also stated that “Only 80 members of the press … can be physically on campus at any time, and a lottery program has been instituted to ensure fair access for news organizations that are not in the daily pool.”
The policy of limiting the number of reporters on White House grounds dates back to the beginning of the administration when Karem addressed the letter to Psaki expressing concern about restricting press access to the White House.
The letter concluded by suggesting that the Biden administration “limit the access in the fashion the Trump administration did” and occasionally move briefings to a venue “where larger numbers of reporters can attend and social distancing can be more easily maintained.”
While the new policy will enable “members of the press who are part of any pools (in-town pool, travel pool, VP pool, supplemental pool, etc.)” and “press who have assigned seats in the briefing room” to continue to have their COVID-19 testing paid for by the White House, “press who choose to enter the daily lottery and report to campus will continue to need a daily COVID-19 test, but they will need to pay for their own testing.”
In addition to Karem and Harper, journalists Hugo Lovell, Jake Turx, Christian Datoc [of the Daily Caller], Andrew Feinberg, Tejinder Singh, Ksenija Pavlovic and Bricio Segovia are also signatories, according to a copy of the letter shared with CP.
Karem, who won the National Press Club’s Freedom of the Press Award in 2015, told CP that he emailed Psaki on Feb. 26 to argue that “it’s dangerous and wrong to charge reporters for testing.”
Karem elaborated on his concerns in a March 4 article, arguing that “independent reporters are being penalized by the Biden administration’s new White House entry policies that favor wealthy corporate outlets.”
According to Karem, “These restrictions punish independent reporters, foreign bureaus and freelancers, myself included. It is favoritism for the rich.”
Karem’s Jan. 22 letter, obtained by CP, contends that the 80-person limit “solves a problem that doesn’t exist.” He called the limit “arbitrary.”
“Crews rotate in and out,” he asserted. “Some people come to the White House simply to shoot a standup or to type up a story, or meet a source and then leave. The actual number who stay all day is nowhere near 80 these days.”
Segovia, a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, voiced his displeasure with the policies on Twitter.
“In the briefing room, there is only one shared seat assigned to foreign press,” he wrote. “Not all foreign journalists have access to this seat. Basically, the Biden Administration is preventing foreign journalists from taking part in the White House press briefings.”
Karem expressed particular concern about the White House’s decision to use the White House Correspondents’ Association as a “gatekeeper” for “determining which journalists can access the White House on a daily basis.”
“The WHCA is made up of White House correspondents — journalists who cover the White House and the government generally,” he said. “Journalists should never act as government agents — deciding who actually has access to the White House complex and when.”
Karem, who established a reputation as a staunch critic of the Trump administration, praised the previous administration’s policy with regard to coronavirus testing and press access, where “the protective pool got tested” and “the rest of us came and went — wearing masks and limiting our time on campus as needed.”
Joe Biden referred to Kamala Harris as “President Harris” on Thursday while discussing vaccinations, in his latest verbal slip-up.
“This is really important,” Biden said of US immunization efforts. “Because we believe in speed and efficiency must be matched with fairness and equity.”
Then the 78-year-old referred to his second-in-command as commander in chief.
“Now when President Harris and I took a virtual tour of a vaccination center in Arizona not long ago, one of the nurses on that, on that tour injecting people, giving vaccinations, said that each shot was like administering a dose of hope.”
You will remember in December of last year Biden had referred to Harris as the “president-elect”:
“I hope the president will clearly and unambiguously urge all Americans to take the vaccine once it’s available,” Biden said, adding “I took it to instill public confidence in the vaccine. President-elect Harris took hers today for the same reason.”
Dear @donlemon, while discussing healing racial wounds on @TheView, you inadvertently contributed to the erasure of Jewish identity. You told people to "present the true identity of Jesus, as a black or brown person.. more like a Muslim or someone who is dark." Jesus was a Jew. pic.twitter.com/ovDZLtRSHE
