12 Dead in Horrifying Shooting on Virginia Beach; Dems Immediately Push Gun Control

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By Breitbart. Twelve people were killed and six wounded when a gunman opened fire in a Virginia Beach municipal center on Friday.

CNN reports that earlier reports that the suspect was taken into custody have been updated to show that the suspect is dead. The deceased suspect was a “longtime public utilities employee.”

(Read more from “12 Dead in Horrifying Shooting on Virginia Beach” EHRE)

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Democrat Reps. Push Gun Control Before Virginia Beach Details Known

By Breitbart. Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA-2) and Rep. Norma Torres (D-CA-35) called for more gun control Friday before the details of the Virginia Beach shooting were even known.

Luria was tweeting for gun control before Virginia Beach police chief Jim Cervera had officially listed the number of dead or wounded. In fact, at the time she tweeted, it was widely reported that a suspect was in custody, but Cervera clarified that the suspect had been killed. . .

Since we do not know how the gunman acquired his weapon — whether by purchasing it legally it, stealing it, borrowing it, etc. — what actions does Luria suggest Congress ought to take?

. . .

Rep. Norma Torres (D-CA-35) waited until Chief Cervera had announced that 11 were dead and six were wounded, then tweeted for more gun control although so much critical information is still unknown.

(Read more from “Democrat Reps. Push Gun Control Before Virginia Beach Details Known” HERE)

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Rolling Thunder Exec Director: We’ll Ride on Washington If Pelosi Tries to Impeach Trump

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The executive director of Rolling Thunder, the annual military event that features hundreds of thousands of motorcyclists traveling to Washington to call for full accountability for prisoners of war and missing in action service members, said that the entire membership would arrive in the nation’s capital if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom he called an “arrogant little b****,” decides to try to impeach President Trump.

Artie Muller, 74, who served as a U.S. Army sergeant in the Vietnam War and is listed on the group’s website as a co-founder, spoke at the National Mall on Monday and posited that Pelosi should be ousted from Congress for the series of investigations she is involved with. He stated, “I would like to see Nancy Pelosi and her hypocrites work on the POW issue instead of bulls***ting [and] aggravating the President of the United States, who’s doing a fantastic job.” He added, “When the hell are they going to wake up? It’s not their children, their mothers, their fathers that are left behind in the POW camps.”

The Washington Examiner noted, “The numbers involved in a pro-Trump rally could be large. More than 1 million bikers are believed to have traveled to D.C. for this year’s Rolling Thunder rally. And infrequent, unrelated biker activism has drawn large numbers, including a 2013 ride that brought thousands of bikers to counterprotest a 9/11 event originally billed as the Million Muslim March.” . . .

Rolling Thunder’s first ride was to the Vietnam War Memorial in 1987. It was inspired after Ray Manzo, a former United States Marine Corps Corporal, discovered that American servicemen had allegedly been abandoned in Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War was over. Manzo drafted a letter to motorcycling publications; Sgt. Major John Holland, 1st Sgt. Walt Sides, and Sgt. Ted Sampley joined him to found the group. Sampley’s colleague, Bob Schmitt, was looking at the Memorial Bridge, imagining the motorcycles going across it, and stated, “It will be like the sound of rolling thunder coming across the bridge.” Thus the name of the group was born. (Read more from “Rolling Thunder Exec Director: We’ll Ride on Washington If Pelosi Tries to Impeach Trump” HERE)

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Trump’s New Mexico Tariffs Draw Potential Legal Action

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President Trump is threatening to impose new tariffs on Mexico if the country does not take action to reduce or eliminate the number of migrants crossing into the U.S.

Now, U.S. business groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, are considering legal action to prevent the Trump administration from imposing a 5 percent tariff on all products imported from Mexico.

“Our number one goal is to make sure these tariffs don’t go in place on June 10,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President Neil Bradley told FOX Business’ Connell McShane on Friday.

The Chamber of Commerce is looking at all legal options available to businesses and consumers to challenge the tariffs in U.S. courts. Bradley said they are still in the preliminary stage, but have urged the White House to reconsider imposing tariffs on Mexico.

“Our view is that this will have a tremendously negative impact on the economy and on American families and frankly there are other ways to deal with what is a real problem that the president and the administration are right to be concerned about along our Southern border,” he said. (Read more from “Trump’s New Mexico Tariffs Draw Potential Legal Action” HERE)

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This Is the Average Millennial’s Net Worth

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By Fox Business. Millennials have a much lower net worth than previous generations, according to a new study.

The average net worth of Americans between the ages of 18 to 35 is less than $8,000 — about 34 percent lower than in 1996, a Deloitte study published Wednesday found.

Despite clichés that millennials are “ruining everything from movies to marriage,” the study found millennials are actually under more economic pressure because of numerous increased costs over the last decade. . .

The Post reported that people in their 20s and 30s a decade ago spent about 12 percent of their incomes on education, health care and rent, but millennials today are spending about 17 percent of their incomes on those expenses, while spending on dining out or alcohol has stayed about the same, at about 11 percent. (Read more from “This Is the Average Millennial’s Net Worth” HERE)

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The Consumer Is Changing, but Perhaps Not How You Think

By Deloitte Insights. Amid this confusing and fast-changing narrative about the changing consumer, we paused to ask ourselves some hard-hitting questions to cut through the noise and arrive at the truth. Has the consumer fundamentally changed? If yes, in what ways have they changed? Is there a seismic difference in the changes that we are witnessing? More importantly, is the hysteria in the marketplace obscuring a much deeper and more fundamental change in consumer behavior? . . .

There is a seismic shift that has taken place in the United States over the past 50 years. The population has become increasingly heterogeneous: Millennials, now representing 30 percent of the population, are the most diverse generational cohort in US history, with roughly 44 percent consisting of ethnic and racial minorities. In comparison, only 25 percent of baby boomers belong to ethnic and racial minorities. . .

We looked at other shifts as well—for instance, cultural influences—to understand ways in which the consumer has changed. Over the past 20 years, the percentage of the population with college degrees or higher has increased significantly, though not uniformly—white and black Americans with a college education have increased by 12 percent and Hispanics by 7 percent. . .

As a result, we’re moving toward a more educated and knowledgeable consumer base with different spending patterns. As a result, we’re moving toward a more educated and knowledgeable consumer base with different spending patterns. However, the cost of education eats into discretionary funds, influencing how consumers spend their money on categories such as apparel, food away from home, and furniture. . .

Marriage, another life cycle milestone, continues to evolve. Between 1997 and 2017, marital rates among whites, Hispanics, and blacks fell from 59 percent, 54 percent, and 39 percent to 55 percent, 50 percent, and 35 percent respectively. The only exception to this downward trend were Asians, whose marriage rate increased from 58 percent in 1997 to 61 percent in 2017; the trend has been relatively steady since then. (Read more from “The Consumer Is Changing, but Perhaps Not How You Think” HERE)

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U.S. On pace for ANOTHER Record Month in Illegal Immigration

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After the new record numbers of family units coming to the border almost every month this fiscal year, some might have thought the crisis would have maxed out in April and the numbers would begin decreasing. But preliminary data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehensions so far in May show that numbers continue to skyrocket.

According to preliminary weekly data used internally by CBP and given to CR by a Border Patrol agent who must remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak to the press, 71,834 illegal aliens were apprehended between points of entry in the state of Texas from May 1 to May 28. That works out to a daily pace of 2,565.5 per day or a flow of 936,408 annually – just in the state of Texas alone. One has to go back to fiscal year 2006 to find this level of annual apprehensions in all four border states combined.

This ensures that May will now crush April’s unfathomable numbers. The same internal, preliminary CBP data for April shows that 60,476 illegals were apprehended in Texas during an equivalent 28-day period from April 3 through April 30. That means that illegal immigration into Texas likely increased roughly 18.8 percent in May over April.

Overall, in April, almost 99,000 illegal immigrants were caught between points of entry at the entire southwestern border, in addition to roughly 10,000 inadmissible immigrants at points of entry. Given that approximately 60 percent of the aliens have been coming in through Texas and Texas’ numbers increased almost 19 percent in May, it’s likely that when the final numbers are tallied for the entire border, May will easily set another overall record. Axios is reporting that 75,000 families have arrived, absolutely blowing out the record 58,000 in April.

On Wednesday, a record 1,036 illegal immigrants came in one large group at El Paso, which is the most of any single group coming in at once. Clearly, the situation is getting worse, not better.

While the overwhelming majority of the illegal aliens hailed from the three northern triangle countries in Central America, there were also a number of people from other Latin American countries and even other parts of the world. There were 1,045 from Brazil, 1,787 from Cuba, 1,118 from Ecuador, and 1,301 from Nicaragua. This suggests that a number of people in other countries relatively close to the smuggling routes are catching on to the de facto open border for those coming in with a child.

There were also illegal aliens caught from countries of possible terror concern, including 67 from Bangladesh and 40 from Uzbekistan. Special interest aliens (SIAs) usually pay smugglers much more to get smuggled in while agents are tied down with Central American family units, so it’s very likely that the apprehension rate for those from countries of particular concern is lower.

Yesterday, Politico reported that the president would be announcing a shutoff of asylum for those who could have claimed asylum in Mexico or other countries. When reading the Immigration and Nationality Act and the UN treaty on refugees, it’s striking how they are all written in singular language referencing individuals claiming asylum. Nothing in our laws would ever define a mass cartel smuggling operation accounting for a significant percentage of a country’s population as asylum. It’s an invasion. Whether the president is prepared to treat it as such is yet to be determined, but the clock is ticking on his legacy. In 2015, when Trump referred to the border situation as making America a “dumping ground,” we were apprehending 38,000 illegal aliens per month. Now, we are seeing twice that number just in Texas alone. (For more from the author of “U.S. On pace for ANOTHER Record Month in Illegal Immigration” please click HERE)

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People Die in Immigration Detention of Tragic but Natural Causes — and Border Personnel Try to Save Them

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The legacy media ensures that Americans are aware of the name of every illegal alien who dies in ICE or Border Patrol custody after making the most perilous journey through the hands of brutal smugglers and cartels. It is evidently now the job of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and ICE not only to give up immigration enforcement designed to protect Americans but to perform miraculous revivals of the dead like the biblical prophets. In reality, a fair look at CBP/ICE mortality rates demonstrates a remarkable track record for that agency.

The media lament that six children have died in CBP custody this year. What they don’t offer is any context or sense of proportion. People die in government custody all the time, out of hundreds of thousands of people in custody. The Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) tracks the mortality rate of incarcerated individuals across the nation. Per the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the average mortality rate in state prisons from 2001 to 2014 (the most recent year available) was 256 deaths per 100,000 persons. The mortality rate in federal prisons during the same period was 225 deaths per 100,000.

Now consider the fact that 531,711 people have come into CBP custody this year at the border just for the first seven months of the fiscal year. Many of them are children coming under the worst circumstances. According to testimony from acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan, most of the migrants are coming “from countries where poverty and disease are rampant,” and large numbers of them “may have never seen a doctor, received immunizations, or lived in sanitary conditions.” Then, the trip itself is so perilous with illness and dehydration that CBP and then ICE are receiving them under exponentially worse conditions than state or federal prisons receive their inmates.

Six children died this fiscal year in CBP custody. A total of nine people (all adults) died in ICE custody last fiscal year, out of 396,000 people detained. That is approximately 2.25 deaths per 100,000 persons. So far this year, five people have died in ICE custody (separate from CBP custody).

Now, obviously, there are several unique factors about immigration detention that caution against declaring that detainees are 100 times more likely to die in federal prison than in ICE or CBP custody. For one, most inmates are in prison a lot longer than illegal immigrants are in ICE or CBP detention facilities.

Also, the population in prison tends to be older than the illegal immigrant population. The older the population, the more likely people will reach their end. After all, 59 percent of those who died in state prisons in 2014, according to BJS, were 55 or older. But if you break down the mortality rate by age for state prisoners, it was 34 per 100,000 for those aged 18-24 and 54 per 100,000 for those aged 25-34. That is still well above the mortality rate in immigration facilities. And again, criminal prisoners are coming, on average, from much healthier backgrounds and not under the unique circumstances of dehydration and malnutrition or being locked in trailers by smugglers and cartels, as is the case with the illegal immigrants.

None of this fits on a bumper sticker. Every death is a tragedy, but it’s ridiculous to report on it without any context or comparison to other large incarcerated populations.

Why don’t we know the names of the 2,028 homicide victims killed by foreign nationals apprehended by ICE just in fiscal year 2018? Every year, ICE apprehends a population of criminal aliens responsible for roughly 2,000 avoidable murders. Roughly 80 percent of them have been convicted, with the remainder being apprehended and deported after arrest on murder charges. Where are the detailed lists of children killed by MS-13 members let into the country?

Additionally, we will never know the number of murders and deaths prevented by ICE because they’ve deported millions of criminal aliens, including the most violent transnational gangsters. According to BJS, more than three-fourths of felony defendants had a prior arrest history, with 69 percent having multiple prior arrests. Most criminals tend to be career criminals. It’s the 20 percent committing 80 percent of the crime. Those are the folks deported by ICE.

While all illegal alien crime is avoidable and not enough criminal aliens are deported, we have still deported from the interior and at the border 1.8 million criminal aliens from 2007 to 2018. That is a decade worth of criminal aliens who are not only off the streets but out of the country. On average, despite the appalling number of criminal aliens we don’t deport, we generally deport a larger share of the worst offenders. There is a direct relationship between the severity of the offense and the likelihood of deportation. Can you imagine the number of people saved by ICE’s ability to completely remove certain criminal elements from the country and thereby end their future criminal careers?

Immigration enforcement saves lives, but like every other issue, it requires one to look at the full picture. (For more from the author of “People Die in Immigration Detention of Tragic but Natural Causes — and Border Personnel Try to Save Them” please click HERE)

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Liberals Are Furious at Nancy Pelosi After Her Response to Mueller’s Statement — Here’s Why

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered a statement excoriating President Donald Trump after the public statement by special counsel Robert Mueller, and she was lambasted on social media over it — by liberals.

Pelosi released a statement after the briefing, but did not even mention the word “impeachment” in the text.

“[Mueller] stated that the decision not to indict stemmed directly from the Department of Justice’s policy that a sitting President cannot be indicted,” said Pelosi in the statement. “Despite Department of Justice policy to the contrary, no one is above the law – not even the President.” . . .

Democrats and other opponents of the president fumed at Pelosi for not rushing headlong into impeaching the president.

“Something is VERY wrong w/ Pelosi’s answers today,” responded former Florida Democratic candidate Pam Keith. “Does she have no idea who she serves, who her base is, what her legacy will be, what the job demands?”

(Read more from “Liberals Are Furious at Nancy Pelosi After Her Response to Mueller’s Statement — Here’s Why” HERE)

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Roy Moore Fires Back at President Trump over Recent Tweets

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Controversial Republican Judge Roy Moore had a stern response to President Trump on Wednesday, indicating that the people of Alabama wouldn’t withhold their votes because of Trump’s refusal to support him in 2020.

“The president doesn’t control who votes for the United States Senate in Alabama,” he said, according to Politico.

Trump, who backed Moore as he faced sexual misconduct allegations during his Senate bid in 2017, said on Wednesday that he had “NOTHING” against Moore but didn’t think he could win a 2020 bid. . .

Moore pushed back on the president’s comments, arguing, “People in Alabama are smarter than that. They elect the senator from Alabama, not from Washington, D.C.”

In another interview, Moore suggested that the president was backing away from his candidacy because “people in Washington” pressured him.

(Read more from “Roy Moore Fires Back at President Trump over Recent Tweets” HERE)

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The Second Amendment Sanctuary Movement Comes to a New State

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Local officials in Paris, Maine, voted to declare their town a “Second Amendment sanctuary,” joining a pro-gun movement that is sweeping liberty-loving jurisdictions across the United States.

Paris’ board of selectmen approved a sanctuary resolution Tuesday night, according to the Lewiston Sun Journal.

“A lot of us believe it’s a right that we have and a right we’d like to keep,” Board Chairman Rusty Brackett said of the pro-gun-rights decision, which he added was mostly symbolic at this point, a local CBS affiliate reports.

“I don’t even want to say, ‘If push comes to shove,’ but ideally, if push comes to shove, do we have the right to say, ‘No, not in Paris?’” Brackett also said. “We’re a constitutional town.”

Local governments and law enforcement officials throughout the country have responded to state-level gun control laws by declaring Second Amendment “sanctuaries” that pledge to protect citizens’ gun rights by not enforcing measures that they say run afoul of the Constitution.

The movement has seen a lot of traction in western states including New Mexico, Nevada, and Washington, but the Paris selectmen’s decision brings it to America’s easternmost state.

Maine legislators have been considering gun laws that would include a so-called “red flag” confiscation bill, which would allow judges to take someone’s guns away if that person were deemed to be a threat to themselves or others. A similar bill was passed by Maine lawmakers last year, but was vetoed by Republican Governor Paul LePage.

While gun control groups see the confiscation effort as a means of preventing potential tragedies, gun advocates warn that such measures are ripe for abuse. Gun Owners of Maine President Todd Tollhurst warned that last year’s bill would have allowed spurned romantic partners to have someone’s guns confiscated by court order.

“So basically anyone can attack your gun rights,” Tolhurst said in a Bangor Daily News report. “All they have to do is tell a little lie that cannot be discovered.”

Paris, Maine, isn’t the only New England locality that has considered the sanctuary option for its citizens’ gun rights; a Rhode Island state senator is encouraging municipalities in his home state to declare themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries as well. (For more from the author of “The Second Amendment Sanctuary Movement Comes to a New State” please click HERE)

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Man Who Set Himself On Fire Near White House Dies; Identity Revealed

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In a horrifying moment caught on video, a man set himself on fire near the White House on Wednesday, walking around fully engulfed in flames for several seconds before Secret Service and police arrived to extinguish the flames and attempt to save his life. The man died from the wounds Wednesday evening, authorities say. More details about the man, who has since been identified, have emerged.

The man, who U.S. Park Police identified early Thursday as Arnav Gupta, 33, of Bethesda, Maryland, died of his wounds Wednesday evening, Washington D.C.’s WTOP reported Thursday. Gupta had been reported missing earlier Wednesday, family members citing concerns about his “physical and emotional welfare.”

On Wednesday, the Montgomery County Police Department issued the following press release announcing “Concern for Missing Bethesda Area Man”:

Detectives from the Montgomery County Department of Police – 2nd District Investigative Section are asking for the public’s assistance in locating a missing Bethesda area man. . .

Gupta is described as an Indian male who is 5’ 9” tall and weighs 200 pounds. He has black hair, brown eyes, a mustache, and wears glasses.

(Read more from “Man Who Set Himself on Fire near White House Dies; Identity Revealed” HERE)

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