Dems Introduce Legislation to Undermine Trump’s Border Wall Plans

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Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday introduced legislation that would prevent the Pentagon from providing additional funding for President Donald Trump’s long-awaited wall along the southern border.

The bill would provide $690.2 billion in discretionary spending for the Department of Defense “for operations and maintenance, readiness activities, research and development, equipment modernization, and health and quality-of-life programs for our troops and military families.”

The bill provides the DOD with an $15.8 billion more than the department had in fiscal year 2019 enacted level, although it was $8 billion below the department’s request. . .

“This bill rejects the Trump administration’s budgetary gimmicks and sleights of hand and instead provides the Defense Department with appropriate resources to address an evolving threat landscape and ensure the security of our nation and our allies,” House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-NY) said in a statement.

“The bill ensures that our service members are trained and equipped to do their jobs safely and effectively and that they are prepared for future military needs. We have the most capable and advanced military in the world, and this bill honors their mission by adequately funding programs to care for service members and their families, and by protecting defense funding from being stolen for the President’s wasteful wall.” (Read more from “Dems Introduce Legislation to Undermine Trump’s Border Wall Plans” HERE)

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Costco Store Managers’ ‘Surprising’ Salaries Revealed

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Watch out, Walmart — Costco is trying to give its rival retail giant a run for its money (literally) when it comes to paying some of its top store managers.

Roughly a week after Walmart shared in a new report Opens a New Window. that its U.S. store managers are taking home an average of $175,000 a year, Reader’s Digest Opens a New Window. resurfaced just how much Costco is shelling out in comparison. And the publication says its findings are pretty “surprising.”

According to Glassdoor, general managers at the chain get an average base pay of over $106,000. Overall, their salaries range from nearly $50,000 to $180,000. Meanwhile, warehouse managers make between $52,000 to $146,000 each year, while assistant managers typically take in around $85,000.

But, as Reader’s Digest points out, these totals don’t even include the various benefits the employees enjoy throughout the year including bonuses, stocks and commission which can tack on an additional $8,000 or so annually.

“Salary and benefits are great for the industry … great culture,” a full-time Costco employee, who has been working at the company in Virginia for more than a decade, commented on Glassdoor’s review. “[The company’s] adaptive to growth and innovation as shoppers turn online for groceries.” (Read more from “Costco Store Managers’ ‘Surprising’ Salaries Revealed” HERE)

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Study Finds This City Has the Highest Taxpayer Burden in the United States

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America’s 10 largest cities, largely Democrat strongholds, are drowning in municipal debt, according to a new report from government watchdog Truth in Accounting.

The report sought out “to determine what … overlapping financial entities mean for taxpayers’ bottom line.” Truth in Accounting said its purpose was to “calculate the various bills (and surpluses, when available) at the city government level and divide them out to determine a per-Taxpayer Burden.”

The two cities with the highest burden: Chicago and New York City; Chicago’s combined taxpayer burden: $119,110; New York City’s combined taxpayer burden: $85,600. . .

The Chicago City Council approved $2.4 billion in tax subsidies for two major developments in early April. Protesters gathered at City Hall chanting against the deals. Critics said the projects are in prosperous parts of Chicago and developers should pay for infrastructure improvements, not taxpayers. . .

Forbes reported that the city’s taxpayer burden is attached to unfunded retirement obligations amassed over of a number of years: $39 billion in retirement benefits have been promised; $28 billion in pension and $842.9 million in retiree health care benefits haven’t been funded. (Read more from “Study Finds This City Has the Highest Taxpayer Burden in the United States” HERE)

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With Farmers Hit Hard by Chinese Tariffs, the Trump Admin Devises $15 Billion Agriculture Aid Plan

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As America’s trade fight with China escalates, the Trump administration is planning to provide even more assistance to farmers whose bottom lines have been affected by the increases in foreign tariffs.

Last year the federal government ended up paying farmers $12 billion to cover the loss of foreign sales to tariff increases, and this year it’s looking like the number is going to be $15 billion.

“We’re gonna take the highest year, the biggest purchase that China has ever made with our farmers, which is about $15 billion,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday, “and do something reciprocal to our farmers so our farmers can do well, they’ll be planting, they’ll be able to sell for less and make the same kind of money until such a time as it’s all straightened out.”

The move comes after Trump faced considerable pushback from Senate Republicans whose state agricultural economies were hit by slumping foreign sales, the Washington Post reports.

In a Monday press release, Senate Agriculture Appropriations Committee Chairman John Hoeven, R-S.D., praised the President’s idea and noted that the assistance would take the form of “Market Facilitation Program” payments and other agricultural assistance.

“We appreciate the Administration’s recognition of the challenges in farm country and their commitment to provide agriculture assistance. As chairman of the Agriculture Appropriations Committee, I’ve been making the case to the Administration, both at USDA and the White House, that our producers need another round of MFP as well as other ag assistance,” the statement says. “At the same time, supporting our agriculture industry will send a clear message to China that the U.S. is going to do what it takes to get better trade deals.”

While agricultural commodities across the board have been hit hard by the standoff between Washington and Beijing, one of the hardest-hit crops is soybeans, which fell to record low prices on Monday amid a massive supply glut and stalled Asian purchases.

And that supply glut is hitting the president right in his geographic base of support, as several of the states with the highest soybean acreages are states that voted for him in 2016, as shown by the map below.

“We’ve been understanding during this negotiation process, but we cannot withstand another year in which our most important foreign market continues to slip away and soybean prices are 20 to 25 percent, or even more, below pre-tariff levels,” said John Heisdorffer, American Soybean Association Chairman and Iowa soy farmer, on Monday. “Our patience is waning, our finances are suffering, and the stress from months of living with the consequences of these tariffs is mounting.”

Early on Tuesday morning, the president tweeted that “Our great Patriot Farmers will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of what is happening now,” and that the funding for the new subsidies would be paid for by the “massive Tariffs” currently leveled against China and others. “The Farmers have been ‘forgotten’ for many years. Their time is now!”

(For more from the author of “With Farmers Hit Hard by Chinese Tariffs, the Trump Admin Devises $15 Billion Agriculture Aid Plan” please click HERE)

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Romney Casts Lone GOP Vote Against Trump Judicial Pick – Here’s Why

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On Tuesday, the Senate voted to confirm Michael J. Truncale of Texas as the United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Texas by a vote of 49-46.

The vote was mostly along party lines in the upper chamber, with Sens. Cassidy, R-La., Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Hirono, D-Hawaii, Kennedy, R-La., Rounds, R-S.D., not voting; there was, however, one party defection, as Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, voted with Democrats against the nominee.

For Romney, it wasn’t a matter of jurisprudence or legal qualifications, but remarks made about former Democratic President Obama Truncale made in 2011, calling him an “un-American imposter.”

In a written response to questions from Senate Judiciary Committee Member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Truncale said that the comments were some of many made while in previous “capacities as a candidate for the United States Congress or as a political commentator” and that such opinions would be inappropriate for a judge to express.

Back in 2011, Truncale threw his hat into the political ring and ran for Congress in a crowded field to replace the outgoing congressman and then-Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul.

“I will note that it is possible, however,” Truncale later added in his response to Feinstein, “that I was merely expressing frustration by what I perceived as a lack of overt patriotism on behalf of President Obama.”

However, that explanation just didn’t cut it for Romney, who told Politico after the vote that he voted against Truncale in defense of Obama, citing his own 2012 presidential run against the Chicago Democrat.

“He made particularly disparaging comments about President Obama. And as the Republican nominee for president, I just couldn’t subscribe to that in a federal judge,” Romney told the outlet. “This was not a matter of qualifications or politics; this was something specifically to that issue as a former nominee of our party.” (For more from the author of “Romney Casts Lone GOP Vote Against Trump Judicial Pick – Here’s Why” HERE)

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Soros-Backed Jewish Group Plays Defense for Tlaib, Omar

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When freshmen Democratic representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib find themselves in yet another controversy involving anti-Semitism and/or support for Islamic extremism and/or support for the annihilation of Israel, what has become their favorite Jewish group springs to action to defend them against any of the aforementioned accusations, or any other issues, whatever they may be.

Over the weeked, Rep. Tlaib, D-Mich., who has already gotten into a heap of controversy over previous anti-Semitic remarks, set off a media firestorm when she falsely claimed that her Palestinian ancestors helped create a “safe haven” for Jews fleeing Nazi persecution.

“There’s always kind of a calming feeling when I think of the tragedy of the Holocaust, that it was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence, in many ways, has been wiped out … in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-Holocaust,” Tlaib said on a Yahoo! podcast. “And I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that in many ways.”

Tlaib misled listeners about the role of her ancestors before and during World War II. In fact, her ancestors sided with the Nazis during World War II and welcomed the Holocaust. Additionally, as Liel Leibovitz explains in Tablet, her ancestors were openly hostile to the idea of Jews living alongside them.

“There were 433 more Holocaust survivors killed by Palestinians and Jordanians violently opposing the creation of a safe haven for Jews in what had historically and spiritually been their homeland,” Leibovitz wrote at Tablet in response to Tlaib’s comments. “To attempt and rewrite their well-documented experiences is to victimize them yet again, an unforgivable and deeply anti-Semitic act.”

In response, both Tlaib and her colleague Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., invoked Bend the Arc: Jewish Action on social media as supposed evidence that Tlaib did not do anything anti-Semitic or improper. Tlaib and Omar retweeted the following tweets from the group, following Rep. Tlaib’s controversial remarks:

Since the pair’s congressional inauguration, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action has been the go-to Jewish organization for the two representatives and their defenders, such as the anti-Semitic Women’s March leader Linda Sarsour.

At first glance, Bend the Arc seems to be a run-of-the-mill liberal Jewish coalition that claims to work on behalf of “progressive American Jews to change policy and build a more just and equal nation.” The group’s website is rife with countless mentions of its Jewishness, with the word “Jew” or “Jewish” written 12 times on its front page. It describes itself as the “Jewish Resistance” to the Trump administration.

But these days, the outfit appears to have dedicated its entire purpose to playing defense for Reps. Omar and Tlaib. A review of the organization’s social media pages shows Bend the Arc has wholly devoted itself to the two extremist congresswoman. The outfit’s entire Twitter feed is dedicated to defending Omar and Tlaib and attempting to pivot the conversation toward attacking President Trump.

Since Monday, Bend the Arc has retweeted or tweeted posts supporting Rep. Tlaib 15 times and Rep. Omar five times.

Here’s a small sample of the themes the group forwards in posts defending the controversial representatives.

Both Rep. Omar and Rep. Tlaib have tokenized this one Jewish group to defend themselves against allegations that they are anti-Semitic. The two have retweeted or tweeted out information about the Jewish group four times since the beginning of May.

Bend the Arc: Jewish Action was created by Alexander Soros (who is currently the group’s chairman of the board), the son of infamous billionaire investor George Soros, an anti-Israel extremist who has largely renounced his Jewish identity. The current government of Israel has described Soros as a man “who continuously undermines Israel’s democratically elected governments.” Soros funds have been used to finance the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement that seeks Israel’s total destruction.

When Bend the Arc: Jewish Action was founded in 2015, the Soros-led initiative endorsed former Louis Farrakhan acolyte Keith Ellison as part of its first round of endorsements. Alex Soros then posted a note on Instagram declaring Ellison as “aligned with the values of the majority of Jewish voters as any politician I know.”

“It will focus on issues such as income inequality, marriage equality, social justice and immigration reform,” Politico reported, describing the aims of the newly founded, self-described Jewish movement, adding that it would not discuss foreign policy, a clear indication that it will not take a position on the lone Jewish nation-state of Israel. (For more from the author of “Soros-Backed Jewish Group Plays Defense for Tlaib, Omar” please click HERE)

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This Is the next Illegal Immigration Shoe to Drop – Along with Its Criminal Elements

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What’s next after Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador empty their populations into this country? There is no end in sight. The next country to line up at our border is Cuba, and it’s bringing an entirely new dimension of criminality with it.

On Monday, the Associated Press published a comprehensive report on the growing trend of Cubans accepting the invitation from our government to come to our border along with the Central Americans. The article discusses the particular route the Cubans have taken through Juarez. As the AP observes, “10,910 Cubans came through official crossings between October and April, versus 7,079 in the previous 12 months.” Almost half of them came in at the El Paso field office, while the other half came in at points of entry near Laredo.

What is going on in the Juarez-El Paso area? According to the Agencia EFE, the largest Spanish-language news wire agency, the phenomenon began with just 100 Cuban migrants arriving in Juarez last October. Once they saw they were allowed into the United States within 24 hours, “word began to spread about the quick and easy access to the United States via Ciudad Juarez-El Paso among the migrants’ relatives and friends.” Then, Cubans began to fly to Panama and make their way to Juarez, and now their numbers are overwhelming even the Central Americans in his key border city.

While most of the media reports on the Cuban migration focus on the veracity of asylum claims or even the cultural clashes with local Mexicans, there is another disturbing element to this that has bearings on our national security. The Cuban migration has brought with it an entirely new dimension of organized crime right at our border and likely coming through it. Juarez is infested with Mexican criminal cartels and gangs, and now, according to a top federal official, the caravans are bringing in criminal organizations from other countries.

“With the pressure placed on the system, now you have all these OTM (other than Mexicans) caravans flooding into Juarez,” warned Kyle Williamson, special agent in charge of the DEA in El Paso. “You’ve got Cubans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans flooding into Juarez. The Cubans are pretty much occupying all of the motels in town and, together with the Hondurans, are working the street-level drug trafficking.”

“Sinaloa is still the dominant cartel in the region, but Cartel Jalisco New Generacion (CJNG) is coming on strong and pushing a lot of meth.” Williamson noted that while there is still a rigid structure of the individual cartels at the senior level, “the waters have gotten very muddy” at the mid-level and the gangs contracting with them, who often move loads for multiple cartel bosses. Plus, the three major cartels in the area – Sinaloa, CJNG, and La Linea – are sharing the plazas in Juarez. Williamson observed how traditionally the three gangs operating in the area served particular cartels, but that is all changing. “Now you throw in the mix something we’ve never seen before in this area with a lot of other criminal elements coming in from these other countries, and they are getting involved in the gangs. The cartels are giving the Cubans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans the permission to run prostitution rings and street-level drug trafficking in Juarez.”

Therefore, the migration is now bringing entirely new dimensions of criminal activity and drug trafficking at the same time it is taking out Border Patrol resources to combat a more robust cartel and gang threat than ever before. Our enemies now know they can weaponize migration to kill two birds with one stone: They can flood us with migrants and criminal elements who take advantage of desperate migrants, plus the flow in itself ties down our agents so the cartels can strategically bring in their criminal organizers. And as I reported yesterday, with the secondary Border Patrol checkpoints all taken down in New Mexico, these criminal elements have a free lane into our country.

What’s particularly disturbing about the Cuban criminal elements, more than those from Central America, is that there are likely hostile anti-American intentions at the governmental level. Whereas the Guatemalan government under Jimmy Morales is friendly with the Trump administration, the Castro government remains an arch-enemy of the United States.

Colonel Dan Steiner, a retired Air Force veteran who coordinated Texas military operations at our border and also has significant experience in Latin America and the Middle East, believes it’s a no-brainer that Castro is sending much more than drug runners. “The Cubans have a relationship with the Venezuelans, Tehran, Moscow, and the Bolivarian revolution. Their instinct is to counter U.S. actions against them. Insertion of individuals or groups to conduct counter-operations is almost a given. Once we accept this premise, we can fully anticipate these groups will have motives beyond the drug business. Why would they not take advantage of something we seem not to have a handle on? Does anyone in D.C. really care about the potential ramifications of this?”

Steiner believes this is yet another reason why the cartels should be designated as terrorists and should be the focus of more robust military operations. “Again and again, this is why I argue there is a true nexus between the cartels the drug industry and the U.S. definition of a terrorist organization.”

Criminal elements or national security threats from Cuba or other countries of interest now know they can come up the highways without being stopped by the checkpoints where some of them would stand out to agents. We already know that people from nearly 50 countries have been caught at our border this year, according to Raul Ortiz, the deputy chief patrol agent of the Rio Grande Valley sector. “These are from the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, you name it,” said Ortiz in an interview with the Epoch Times in March.

The fact that our military is not being placed at the border in places like New Mexico to counter the criminal elements and national security threats rather than simply changing tires on trucks and serving as drivers and cooks for the illegal immigrants remains a mystery.

So long as we refuse to close our border to processing of any immigration requests, there simply is no end to the number of people throughout the world who will eventually come. So long as we open our doors and our welfare system, they will come, especially if we’ve already let in so many from those countries that they are motivated by family unification along with economic considerations. A quick glance at the U.N.’s data on GDP per capita by country shows that there are 88 nations where the per capita GDP is lower than that of Guatemala, which stands at $4,471 as of 2017. That is likely well over one billion people living in similar or worse conditions than the ones coming to our border today.

What is most tragic is that as these economic migrants pour through Mexico to our border, they serve as a physical and political conduit for all the criminal elements of these countries from which America is supposed to be an asylum. (For more from the author of “This Is the next Illegal Immigration Shoe to Drop – Along with Its Criminal Elements” please click HERE)

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Here’s the Truth About Georgia’s Heartbeat Bill

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The media have been working overtime to frame Georgia’s new pro-life legislation, known commonly as the “heartbeat bill,” as harmful to women, instead of what it actually is: protection for unborn children with beating hearts.

The law, signed by Governor Brian Kemp (R-GA) last week, bans abortion after a heartbeat is detected, which happens around six weeks gestation. It does not punish mothers. . .

French provides more in-depth coverage of the legalese surrounding the law’s implications. “The heartbeat bill did not repeal a number of Georgia criminal statutes that explicitly apply to abortions and unborn children, and it does not overrule controlling legal authority holding that these statutes bar prosecution of a woman for terminating her own pregnancy,” the conservative columnist explained. He also went through explicit statutes:

First, there is a specific code section that applies to unlawful abortions. Georgia Code Section 16-12-140 states:

(a) A person commits the offense of criminal abortion when, in violation of Code Section 16-12-141 , he or she administers any medicine, drugs, or other substance whatever to any woman or when he or she uses any instrument or other means whatever upon any woman with intent to produce a miscarriage or abortion.

(Read more from “Here’s the Truth About Georgia’s Heartbeat Bill” HERE)

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Poll: Should Males Who Identify as Females Be Allowed to Compete in Women’s Sports?

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The issue of biological males who identify as females participating in women’s sports has come under increased scrutiny in recent months as more biological males have been allowed to compete against women in various sports across the country — often with high levels of success.

In February, two high school biological males who identify as females made headlines when they took first and second by significant margins in Connecticut’s indoor 55-meter dash state championship, thus bumping two biological females out of the chance to compete at higher levels. Last Friday, RAW Powerlifting Federation stripped multiple women’s championship titles from a biological male who lifted as a female, citing organization rules that are “based on physiological classification rather than identification.”

So how do Americans feel about the issue? Rasmussen recently conducted a poll of 1,004 registered voters and found that by a ratio of more than two-to-one voters disagree with allowing biological males to compete against biological females.

Rasmussen found that while less than a quarter (23%) of respondents believe “a person born as a male but identifying as a female should be allowed to compete in women’s competitive sports events,” over half (56%) felt that they should not. About a fifth (21%) of voters are not sure.

The pollster found that more males are opposed than females, though in both genders far more disagree with allowing biological males who identify as females to compete against women than agree. Two-thirds of men (66%) say they should not, while just 19% say they should; 47% of women disagree, while 26% agree with letting men compete as women. (Read more from “Poll: Should Males Who Identify as Females Be Allowed to Compete in Women’s Sports?” HERE)

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Texas Woman Forced OFF Life Support Despite Family’s Wishes

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By Click 2 Houston. A family’s fight to overcome legal and financial hurdles to keep their matriarch alive took a painful turn Monday after a 10-day window expired, allowing doctors to remove her from a ventilator.

Carolyn Jones was being treated at Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital. Jones suffered a stroke two years ago and has been treated at Memorial Hermann Southwest since last fall. Earlier this month, Jones’ family was notified of a decision to take her off of ventilation, eventually, following parameters outlined in a section of Texas’ Advance Directives Act.

At issue is a so-called 10-day rule, which Jones’ family said unfairly gives doctors the right to decide whether the 61-year-old gets to live. . .

Donald Jones, along with the couple’s daughter, Kina, spoke with KPRC2 outside Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital on Monday. The family confirmed doctors took Carolyn off ventilation after 2 p.m. Monday, after the 10-day window to move to a new facility expired.

“It’s not right, not for someone that is loving and is caring and has done nothing but serve 61 years of help, to just discard her like an animal,” Kina Jones said. (Read more from “Texas Woman Forced off Life Support Despite Family’s Wishes” HERE)

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‘Please Don’t Do This’: Texas Woman Taken off Life-Support Against Family’s Wishes

By Faithwire. A Texas woman has been removed from life support against her family’s wishes. Stroke victim Carolyn Jones had her ventilator withdrawn May 13 despite repeated pleas from her distraught family members.

In a case that resembles that of British child Alfie Evans, Jones was forced to struggle on without ventilation when medics stripped her of life-saving treatment. While she is still alive at this time, doctors have told the family that if she continues to survive, they will switch off her dialysis machine.

“On Friday, May 3rd the family was notified by the hospital that the Ethics Committee had made the decision to take Carolyn Jones off of the ventilation by the power granted to them by the Texas’ Advance Directives Act (Futile Care Law),” Mark Dickson of Right to Life of East Texas explained to Faithwire.

Despite the family begging, “Please don’t do this,” hospital staff continued to flick the switches. (Read more from “‘Please Don’t Do This’: Texas Woman Taken off Life-Support Against Family’s Wishes” HERE)

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