Author: adler

By Bethany Blankley (The Center Square)
Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol agents continue to be assaulted by foreign nationals illegally entering the U.S.
Despite this and other challenges, agents are apprehending tens of thousands of illegal foreign nationals a week, and seizing hundreds of pounds of fentanyl, meth and cocaine, over $1 million in currency, weapons and stolen vehicles.
They are also apprehending known sex offenders, those with open warrants and convicted murderers.
RELATED: Biden to Open Up Medicaid, Obamacare to About 700,000 Illegal Immigrants
U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz, who’s testified under oath more than once that there’s a crisis at the southern border and Border Patrol agents have no operational control over it, has increasingly been reporting on RGV Sector agent success stories.
The sector covers more than 320 river miles, 250 coastal miles and 19 Texas counties.
Ortiz reported Friday that despite four agents being assaulted over the past week, RGV agents overall apprehended 34,124 illegal foreign nationals and reported at least 10,866 known gotaways. Gotaways are those who evade capture by law enforcement and made their way into the U.S and their whereabouts are currently unknown.
Agents also seized $80,500 worth of cash, 580 pounds of marijuana, 202 pounds of fentanyl, 15 pounds of meth, two pounds of heroin, two pounds of cocaine, and 10 firearms. They also arrested 14 sex offenders, nine known gang members and four individuals with open arrest warrants.
This total includes the data he reported a day earlier.
On April 13, within a 24-hour period, he said RGV agents apprehended 5,400 illegal foreign nationals and seized 59 pounds of marijuana, 14 pounds of fentanyl, 13 pounds of meth, and two pounds of cocaine. They also seized $55,000 worth of cash and two firearms. They also apprehended three sex offenders, one gang member and one individual with an open warrant wanted for homicide.
RELATED: Illegal Immigration is Surging… Across the Northern Border, Now
Just days before, on April 10, Ortiz announced that over a 72-hour time period, that despite two Border Patrol agents being assaulted, agents apprehended 12,200 illegal foreign nationals and seized three firearms and two stolen vehicles.
They also arrested five sex offenders, five gang members and one murderer.
On April 11, he reported that in the past week, 11 agents were assaulted by illegal foreign nationals. RGV agents in one week apprehended 34,600 illegal foreign nationals, and reported at least 10,100 known gotaways. They also apprehended 11 known sex offenders, seven with open warrants for their arrest, and four gang members.
Agents also seized $1.24 million worth of currency, 146 pounds of meth, 106 pounds of fentanyl, 39 pounds of ecstasy, 12 pounds of cocaine, and 29 firearms.
During the first weekend of the month, over a 48-hour period, Ortiz reported on April 3 that agents had apprehended over 10,070 illegal foreign nationals. They also seized 52 pounds of fentanyl, 38 pounds of ecstasy, 11 pounds of meth, and 11 pounds of cocaine. They seized $48,000 worth of cash, 20 firearms and five stolen vehicles.
They apprehended five sex offenders, four people with warrants, and one gang member.
Data released by Ortiz continues to contradict testimony given to Congress by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
RELATED: Operation Lone Star Officers Seize 3.1 Million Doses of Fentanyl in Single Stop
When asked last month by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, “How many murderers have you released into America?” Mayorkas replied, “I’m not aware of any murderer.”
Cruz also asked him how many rapists and child molesters had been released into the country because of his catch and release policy. He also asked Mayorkas how many gotaways were murderers and rapists. Mayorkas said he didn’t know, either didn’t answer his question, or sat in silence.
Mayorkas also couldn’t answer how many known or suspected terrorists CBP agents had apprehended. At the time of his testimony, nearly 300 known or suspected terrorists had been apprehended in fiscal 2023, The Center Square reported.
Syndicated with permission from The Center Square.
The post Rio Grande Border Patrol Agents Assaulted While Apprehending Illegal Aliens appeared first on The Political Insider.

By Dr. Derek Ellerman
If you were hoping for a relatively drama-free 2024 Republican primary, there’s still a small chance you may get it.
It’s unlikely, but definitely still possible. After all, Florida governor Ron DeSantis has yet to officially announce a 2024 campaign (even though his allies are already running ads) and the contest is clearly already down to just two likely winners.
Sorry Nikki Haley and Asa Hutchinson. (Please, please run Liz Cheney!)
Trump is already dominating DeSantis in the polls, and his campaign picked up some key endorsements that should further deflate the latter’s current pseudo-campaign.

America First Senator JD Vance Endorses President Trump for GOP Primary. “The simple fact is Donald Trump’s policies were incredibly good for this country.”
Winners endorse winners.
Make America Sane Again
Trump 2024 – You know you want him in your corner. pic.twitter.com/UyaFBJbMpl
— Tex_2A  (@Tex2_A) February 1, 2023

RELATED: Team DeSantis Releases First Ad Attacking Trump: He’s Stealing Pages from the Biden-Pelosi Playbook!
Trump Picks Up Key Endorsements
Trump had already picked up a crucial endorsement in the state both men call home.
Rep. Byron Donalds, only on his second term but already popular with the MAGA section of the Republican Party, announced his support for President Trump.
That event, according to some reports, has Team DeSantis scrambling to beg other Florida Republicans not to announce their preference during the primary.
But just as important for Trump is new institutional support, from corners not normally associated with America First or the MAGA wing of the party.
Last week, Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn – popular with some conservatives though certainly not MAGA – announced, “He did it once, and he will do it again. President Trump will Make America Great Again, and I look forward to having him back in the White House.”
Yesterday, Trump also received the backing of Tennessee’s other senator, Bill Hagerty:

It is my honor to give my whole-hearted endorsement to Donald J. Trump to be the next President of the United States. I was honored to previously serve in his Administration.
— Bill Hagerty (@BillHagertyTN) April 16, 2023

RELATED: GOP Donors, Including Thomas Pafferty, Reportedly Abandon DeSantis for Being Too Pro-Life
Endorsements – So Far
The Hill rounded up the list of support so far. Keep in mind, it’s still quite “early” in the 2024 season, if there even is such a thing as “early” anymore.
Here’s where each candidate stands:
Donald Trump
Senators:

Tommy Tuberville (AL)
Cindy Hyde-Smith (MS)
Eric Schmitt (MO)
Ted Budd (NC)
 JD Vance (OH)
Marwayne Mullin (OK)
Lindsey Graham (SC)
Marsha Blackburn (TN)
Bill Haggerty (TN)

House:

Barry Moore (AL)
Dale Strong (AL)
Andy Biggs (AZ)
Eli Crane (AZ)
Paul Gosar (AZ)
Lauren Boebert (CO)
Byron Donalds (FL)
Cory Mills (FL)
Matt Gaetz (FL)
Anna Paulina Luna (FL)
Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA)
Mike Bost (IL)
Mary Miller (IL)
Jim Banks (IN)
Clay Higgins (LA)
Jeff Van Drew (NJ)
Elise Stefanik (NY)
Richard Hudson (NC)
Mike Carey (OH)
Jim Jordan (OH)
Max Miller (OH)
Russell Fry (SC)
William Timmons (SC)
Joe Wilson (SC)
Diana Harshbarger (TN)
John Rose (TN)
Chuck Fleischmann (TN)
Ronny Jackson (TX)
Troy Nehls (TX)
Brian Babin (TX)
Michael Burgess (TX)
John Carter (TX)
Pat Fallon (TX)
Tony Gonzales (TX)
Wesley Hunt (TX)
Pete Sessions (TX)
Beth Van Duyne (TX)
Randy Weber (TX)
Roger Williams (TX)
Alex Mooney (WV)
Harriet Hageman (WY)

Ron DeSantis

Thomas Massie (KY)
Chip Roy (TX)

Again, we’re very early in the cycle, and things could change. But right now, Trump has a 30+ point lead in most polls, and a huge lead in endorsements. That kind of momentum will be tough for Team DeSantis to overcome.

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The post Trump Snags Big Endorsements from Republican Senators as 2024 Primary Heats Up appeared first on The Political Insider.

After Florida’s Heartbeat Heartbeat Protection Act was signed into law this week, businessman and Republican fundraiser Thomas Peterffy said he and a “bunch” of his friends are delaying their support for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for president.
According to the Hungarian-born billionaire, DeSantis has lost some “momentum,” making him “reluctant” to support the as-yet-undisclosed candidate for the 2024 primary nomination.
“I hesitate even more to support him. The Republican governor’s support for socially conservative policies on abortion and education, which the Financial Times called “extreme,” raised concerns for Petterfy. “We are waiting to see who among the primary candidates is most likely to be able to win the general before we put all of our firepower behind them,” he said.

GOP mega donor Ken Griffin is giving Harvard $300,000,000. Imagine what useful work for the country could have been done with that amount! But nope, he funded the communists.
Griffin is a DeSantis backer who says it’s time to move on from Trump. pic.twitter.com/R2Y3M8n3fv
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) April 11, 2023

RELATED: DeSantis Team Allegedly Contacting Remaining FL State Politicians to Not Endorse Donald Trump
Isn’t That What He’s Supposed To Be?
The story quotes Petterfy as stating, “Me and a group of pals are holding our powder dry because of his attitude on abortion and book bans.”
The remarks sparked a flurry of media coverage and Twitter responses, including one from Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, who tweeted with ominous seriousness that the “major” contributor has “finally” gone “on record” with news that had previously been merely a “whisper.” She revealed that the donors were becoming concerned.
The inference, which is a perfect match with press opinion, is that a politician’s electoral chances are doomed if they don’t embrace Democratic or progressive views on social matters. Trump cannot win the next election, according to Peterffy.
Although Peterffy had not yet decided whom to support, he stated in 2015 that Sen. Ted Cruz was “probably the smartest person running” in the Republican primary and that “even though personally I do not believe that abortion is something that should be prohibited and I do not believe we should not care about the environment, nevertheless I think Ted has the qualities – he definitely has a shot.” In the end, Peterffy backed Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.
According to the Financial Times, Haberman, and frequent NBC guest Peterffy, “the Republicans have a very big problem” if DeSantis keeps up education policies that lead to some content being labeled as age-inappropriate in schools and keeps signing laws passed by the duly elected Florida legislature.
RELATED: DeSantis-Backed Bill Allowing Death Penalty for Child Rapists Advances
RELATED: New York Police Officers Relocate To Florida
RELATED: Florida Sues Biden Admin for Refusing to Honor FOIA Requests About Crack Pipe Purchases
Reprinted with permission. View this story and more on WayneDupree.com.
The post GOP Donors, Including Thomas Pafferty, Reportedly Abandon DeSantis for Being Too Pro-Life appeared first on The Political Insider.

Twitter chief Elon Musk made the startling claim that the United States government had “full access” to social media users’ accounts, even including their private direct messages (DMs).
If true, this marks a new level of government spying on their own citizens and should be a wake-up call to Americans who value some level of privacy and freedom in a country that boasts of having both, in addition to having a Fourth Amendment.
Musk made the bombshell accusations in a new interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson – set to air early this week.
A preview clip shared by Carlson shows that the revelation that the federal government had access to DMs was shocking to Musk.
“The degree to which government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind,” he said.
“Would that include people’s DMs?” Carlson asked referring to private messages, to which Musk replied, “Yes.”

pic.twitter.com/BilzqLGZsC
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 16, 2023

RELATED: IRS Reportedly Went to Twitter Files Journalist Matt Taibbi’s Home on Same Day He Was Testifying on Weaponization of Government
The Government Had Access to Private DMs
Perhaps a naive take, but there are likely many Americans out there who believed they could send private messages (DMs) to people without the Big Brother federal government looking over their shoulders.
If Musk, who has provided insight into the government’s access to Twitter under previous ownership through his ‘Twitter Files’ releases, is right, then this marks an extreme level of obtrusive interference in the private lives of the American people, as well as a direct violation of their Fourth Amendment constitutional rights.
Would it be a stretch to think they aren’t also looking into your private text messages? What photos have you sent to friends and family in your DMs or messages? Is the federal government looking at those as well?

At this point, it’s probably safe to assume the government or government contractor has access to everything around you that might possibly be connected to the internet, including your “smart” kitchen appliances.
If you have devices, you have no privacy.https://t.co/r0jWjijffZ pic.twitter.com/fGFikjDUk9
— mumzie (@spine1692) April 16, 2023

Remarkably, Musk’s assertion that the feds are looking at your DMs and have been for years comes as the Biden administration is currently pushing to expand how it “monitors” social media sites and chatrooms.
The latest push comes following a leak of classified Pentagon documents that have exposed the White House narrative regarding the war in Ukraine as disinformation.
How much more closely than viewing DMs can they possibly get in expanding their monitoring of social media and chatrooms?

Every crisis is used to expand the government at your expense. https://t.co/u9o3hELl81
— ThePoliticalInsider (@TPInsidr) April 14, 2023

RELATED: Elon Musk Exposes Little Known State Department Agency as ‘Worst Offender in US Government Censorship’
Actual Threats to Our Democracy
Elon Musk this past February exposed a little-known State Department agency – the Global Engagement Center (GEC) – as a leading source of federal censorship efforts in the United States and “a threat to our democracy.”
Prior to announcing his ‘Twitter Files’ document dumps, a series of eye-opening revelations about collusion between the federal government and Twitter’s prior regime, Musk declared the transparency in revealing what was going on behind the scenes was a “battle for the future of civilization.”

This is a battle for the future of civilization. If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 29, 2022

Certain releases through Musk and various journalists who had access to the company’s internal files have shown how the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) paid Twitter and colluded with the platform to suppress “Russian disinformation” – the Hunter Biden laptop scandal – while others showed how the Big Tech company controlled the narrative on COVID.
Former President Donald Trump has praised Musk for doing the country “a big service” by exposing the federal government’s censorship and privacy violations and called the visionary billionaire a free speech “hero.”

President Trump considers Elon Musk a hero: “Elon Musk did a big service when he released all of this stuff… I’d say he’s a hero. I think that it’s a big part of his legacy. I think it’s more important than other things he’s done.” pic.twitter.com/okQKfrooBg
— Ethan Harsell (@ethan_harsell) December 21, 2022

Musk’s interview with Carlson is set to air in segments on Monday and Tuesday.
If the allegations that the government was spying on your DMs are just the teaser, what other bombshells will be revealed when he speaks to the Fox News host?

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By Alfredo Ortiz for RealClearPolicy
This week marks the two-year anniversary of declining real wages for ordinary American workers due to ongoing high inflation. The latest consumer price index, released this week, shows prices grew 20% faster than wages over the last 12 months.
This sad anniversary is the result of President Biden and Congressional Democrats’ reckless spending that has diluted the value of the currency already in existence.
RELATED: Federal Government Borrowing Astronomical $6 Billion Per Day
The two-year decline in living standards for ordinary Americans proves once and for all that Democrats are America’s anti-worker party. Their easy fiscal and monetary policy, known as Modern Monetary Theory, has been wholly discredited by this prolonged erosion of the dollar’s value and workers’ quality of life.
Yet still, they demand more massive deficit spending that would put upward pressure on prices. For instance, Biden’s recently announced budget would raise the deficit from $1.4 billion in 2022 to $1.6 trillion in 2023 and $1.8 trillion in 2024. The total deficit would increase by $17 trillion over ten years – more than the entire national debt held by the public before Covid-19.
Democrats refuse to negotiate any spending cuts in return for raising the debt ceiling, accepting the dangerous status quo of around $1 trillion wasted in debt interest payments each year.
While the mainstream media is promoting this month’s slowdown in CPI, they ignore how inflation under Biden’s presidency is approximately 15%. Those on fixed incomes are one-sixth poorer today than when Biden took office. And core inflation actually increased compared to last month, demonstrating the inflation battle is far from won.
The worst may be yet to come. Under Biden’s nose, nations across the globe are rapidly replacing the dollar as their trading currency. One reason the U.S. has been able to print trillions of dollars without even faster inflation is that other countries inherently value the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. If they no longer need it to conduct their trade, demand for dollars will plummet along with its long-inflated value and American living standards. This could turn today’s high inflation hyper.
This threat is growing along with the economies of the BRICS nations, whose combined GDPs recently overtook the G7 nations’ for the first time.
RELATED: Biden Takes Fire as Gas Prices Head Back Skyward
Inflation also remains high enough to continue posing a severe threat to banks whose balance sheets are full of low-interest mortgage and Treasury debt. Who wants a 3% mortgage bond in an inflationary environment around twice as high? This dynamic threatens another Silicon Valley Bank-style run.
According to economist Peter Schiff, banks are rapidly selling their mortgage bonds. Sound familiar?
Small businesses face the one-two punch of elevated inflation and banks that have stopped lending to preserve liquidity. Small enterprises generally operate on thin profit margins that high inflation erodes. Small businesses can’t simply raise their prices in response because their consumers are price sensitive. There’s only so much consumers are willing to pay for drycleaning and pizzas.
“Small businesses are struggling… [to] get the funds to grow, to hire, to buy the equipment that they need,” says Kryson Bratton, owner of Piper Whitney Construction in Houston, who can’t get credit to purchase a new tractor. According to the Federal Reserve, U.S. bank lending fell by the most on record at the end of March.
RELATED: Pennsylvania’s Biggest Coal Plant Will Shutter By July
The only way out of this unstable economic environment is to end the fiscal madness and empower small businesses through pro-growth policies like those in Job Creators Network’s American Small Business Prosperity Plan.
This may not be as exciting as the culture wars, but it has a much bigger impact on the lives of ordinary Americans – as demonstrated by Democrats’ destruction of Americans’ growing living standards birthright.
Alfredo Ortiz is president and CEO of Job Creators Network and author of The Real Race Revolutionaries: How Minority Entrepreneurship Can Overcome America’s Racial and Economic Divides.
Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.
The post It’s the Two-Year Anniversary of Declining Real Wages for American Workers appeared first on The Political Insider.