Guess How Much of Trump’s Wall Will Be Funded With House Bill

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President Trump’s famous border wall may be less big and beautiful than he imagined, with a House panel on Tuesday advancing a bill that would allocate funding for just 28 miles of new wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Homeland Security bill, which passed the House Appropriations Committee, has $1.57 billion in border infrastructure funds, including $498 million for 28 miles of new levee wall in the Rio Grande Valley, amounting to $17.8 million per mile.

The bill includes another $784 million for 32 miles of new “border fencing” in the area, while $251 million was set aside for 14 miles of “secondary fencing” in San Diego, Calif.

The funding builds on $15 million in funding appropriated for 2017 to replace 40 miles of primary fencing, $102 million for 14 miles in San Diego and $175 million for 24 miles in El Paso, Texas.

The 2018 spending bill also includes funds for mobile video surveillance systems, ground sensors, towers and funds for combatting cross-border tunnels. (Read more from “Guess How Much of Trump’s Wall Will Be Funded With House Bill” HERE)

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Hundreds of ICE Agents Deploy to Sanctuary Cities

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The head of the U.S. government’s lead immigration enforcement agency said Tuesday that he will send a wave of agents to arrest criminal aliens residing in sanctuary cities, focusing attention on interior operations as illegal crossings at the southern border continue falling.

Thomas Homan, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told the Washington Examiner that the Trump administration has empowered law enforcement to strictly enforce immigration laws, a welcome change from previous administrations he has worked under during his 30-year career as an immigration cop.

“Now they have meaning to their jobs,” Homan said, referring to U.S. Border Patrol and ICE agents. “What this president has done is taken the handcuffs off of law enforcement officers who are charged with enforcing immigration laws.”

Homan noted that, since President Donald Trump took office, illegal border crossings have fallen to their lowest level in a decade. Despite a slight uptick in border arrests — a proxy for illegal immigration — illegal crossings of the U.S.-Mexico border in June were 53 percent lower than in the same month last year, a result Homan attributed to Trump’s orders on immigration enforcement. (Read more from “Hundreds of ICE Agents Deploy to Sanctuary Cities” HERE)

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What’s the Truth About the Massive Iceberg That Caused a Panic This Week?

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Several media outlets reported Wednesday that an enormous iceberg the size of Delaware had broken off an ice shelf in Antarctica. Politicians, journalists and others quickly associated the news with climate change . . .

Leading experts have found no direct evidence to link the event to climate change, although some within the field disagree. While many experts describe the iceberg formation as a natural occurrence, many do believe climate change caused the partial collapse of Antarctic ice shelves in recent history . . .

Scientists have monitored a rift at the Larsen ice shelf in Antarctica for years. When researchers confirmed Wednesday that a massive iceberg had formed, some in the media and elsewhere reflexively attributed the event to climate change.

But several climate scientists have pushed back against the notion that climate change caused the iceberg to form. “We’ve been surprised by the level of interest in what may simply be a rare but natural occurrence,” Adrian Luckman, glaciology professor at Swansea University, wrote in an article.

Icebergs may form as part of a regular process known as calving, which occurs on stable ice shelves every few decades. (Read more from “What’s the Truth About the Massive Iceberg That Caused a Panic This Week?” HERE)

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Doubt Surfaces About ‘Suicide’ Claim of Clinton Investigator

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A Wall Street analyst who spoke to Peter Smith the day before he reportedly committed suicide told the Daily Caller News Foundation there were no indications the Chicago businessman and anti-Clinton political investigator was about to take his life.

“He may have been a fantastic actor but I certainly didn’t leave that phone call saying, ‘oh shit, the guy’s at the end of his rope,’” Charles Ortel, a Wall Street investment banker and market analyst, told The Daily Caller News Foundation’s (TheDCNF) Investigative Group.

“This does not seem like a settled story. It made perfect sense to me he might have died of natural causes, but little chance he would have killed himself,” Ortel said.

Ortel and Smith shared a common interest in the Clintons. Ortel has dug deeply into the financial operations of the Clinton Foundation. He first came to public attention in 2007 by exposing questionable accounting practices at General Electric. Ortel has similarly expressed doubts about the circumstances of Seth Rich’s murder — which police have concluded was a robbery gone wrong — commending those “who are trying to discover why so many people close to the last election have died along the way.”

The difference here is that Ortel knew Smith personally. (Read more from “Doubt Surfaces About ‘Suicide’ Claim of Clinton Investigator” HERE)

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Stunner: Killer Cop Mohamed Noor a ‘Diversity’ Hire

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Questions continue to mount about the strange shooting death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond at the hands of a Minnesota cop.

The city has not released any information, but the officer who pulled the trigger has been identified as Mohamed Noor, a Somali-American who entered the country as a refugee and was the first Somali to be employed by the department’s 5th precinct . . .

WND has learned he was one of five Somalis on the entire force and that the city makes a special effort to recruit Somalis as part of its affirmative-action plan.

The city’s affirmative-action program requires it to give preferential treatment to minorities, not only those hired by the city but by all contractors awarded contracts of more than $100,000.

The city’s leaders bemoaned the fact that they could not come up with more blacks to staff 100 new positions that came open at the end of 2014. The Star-Tribune, in an Aug. 19, 2014, article headlined “Minneapolis police struggle to hire diverse force,” interviewed several activists who took the city to task for allowing the number of black officers to dwindle. (Read more from “Stunner: Killer Cop Mohamed Noor a ‘Diversity’ Hire” HERE)

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American Autos Built in Mexico Have Surprise in Trunk

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If you recently bought a new car manufactured in a Mexican auto plant, you might want to perform a routine examination of your vehicle, like checking the spare tire – especially if it’s a Ford Fusion.

While law-enforcement authorities in Ohio and at the Drug Enforcement Agency announced this week the discovery of more than $1 million of marijuana hidden within bogus spare tires of new cars transported by rail, a WND investigation suggests the incident may be just the tip of the iceberg.

More than 400 pounds of marijuana was found packed inside of new Ford cars that were made in Mexico and shipped to Northeast Ohio.

The discovery was made when a service employee for a Ford dealership in Portage County, Ohio, noticed a suspicious package in the trunk of a brand new Ford Fusion during a routine inspection. The car had just been taken off the transport carrier. The package was pressed marijuana, placed in the vehicle to look like a spare tire.

Authorities found the car had been shipped by train from Mexico to the rail yard in Ohio. At the rail yard they found five more loads of marijuana in five other new Ford Fusions. Later, they found nine more packages in new Fusions already shipped to other Ohio locations and one in Pennsylvania. (Read more from “American Autos Built in Mexico Have Surprise in Trunk” HERE)

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Mattis Directly Intervened to Save Transgender Surgeries for Military Personnel

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On July 13, as the House debated an amendment to the 2018 Pentagon budget bill that would have barred the military from funding servicemembers’ gender reassignment surgeries, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis privately intervened, calling the amendment’s Republican sponsor and asking her to withdraw it from consideration, CNN reports . . .

Of the 200 amendments to the $696 billion National Defense Authorization Act that were being debated in the House, the transgender amendment — offered by conservative Rep. Vicky Hartzler of Missouri — was one of the more contentious, CNN notes.

Hartzler had offered and withdrawn a more expansive amendment in June, one that would have reversed an Obama-era policy allowing transgender service members to serve openly. Hartzler told CNN she withdrew the original amendment to defer action until Mattis had established his stance on transgender troops. But this month, after Mattis gave the military another six months to study the issue, Hartzler filed the new amendment.

“I can confirm that Secretary Mattis spoke with Rep. Hartzler yesterday,” Department of Defense spokesperson Johnny Michael told Task & Purpose in a statement. “However, the Secretary regularly engages with members of Congress to discuss issues of importance to the department and I cannot speak to the specific contents of their conversation.” (Read more from “Mattis Directly Intervened to Save Transgender Surgeries for Military Personnel” HERE)

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Homosexual Seattle Mayor Says He Won’t Resign Following Sexual Abuse Allegations

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Seattle Mayor Ed Murray said he will not resign from office following calls from city leadership to do so.

Murray made the announcement Monday, stating “We do not need the sort of abrupt and destabilizing transition that a resignation would create.”

Calls for the city’s first openly gay mayor’s resignation came after four men, one of them his foster son, claimed Murray sexually abused them as teenagers in the 1980s.

Four city councilmembers issued a statement of their own, following Murray’s announcement Monday afternoon.

(Read more from “Homosexual Seattle Mayor Says He Won’t Resign Following Sexual Abuse Allegations” HERE)

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Child Sex Trafficking in the US Is Exploding, Govt Admits They Aren’t Stopping It

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A recent report on the number of sexually exploited children in Florida gives insight into a horrific world that is often ignored by the media, and that rarely holds millionaires, politicians and even local officials accountable for their involvement.

A report from the Florida legislature’s Office of Program Policy Analysis & Government Accountability concluded that the state’s Department of Children and Family (DCF) and its lead agencies “have not resolved issues related to serving commercially sexually exploited children.”

The report found that in 2016, 356 verified commercially sexually exploited child victims were identified, as opposed to 264 identified in 2015. It noted that many of the victims who were identified earlier were, “both children in child welfare dependency and those living in the community with family—have since been re-victimized, involved with the criminal justice system, or only attended school intermittently.”

During 2016, DCF’s Florida Abuse Hotline received 2,013 reports alleging the CSE of children, which is a 57% increase over the 2015 reports. Child protective investigators investigated 1,386 (or 69%) of those reports. Counties with the highest number of CSE reports include Miami-Dade (248), Broward (232), Orange (150), and Hillsborough (144). DCF hotline staff did not refer cases for investigation if the allegation did not rise to the level of reasonable (74%), there were no means to locate the victim (11%), or the alleged perpetrator was not the child’s caregiver (8%). Of the reports that were referred for investigation, most came from DJJ, the Department of Corrections, or criminal justice personnel (20%) and law enforcement (15%).

In 2016, the National Human Trafficking Hotline received reports of 7,572 human trafficking cases, which was a substantial increase from 5,544 cases in 2015 and 5,042 cases in 2014. Florida ranked third on the list with 550 cases, behind Texas with 670 cases and California with 1,323 cases.

Out of the 7,572 human trafficking cases reported in the United States in 2016, the majority or 5,551 were “sex trafficking” cases, and 2,387 of the reported victims were minors.

The report on child sex trafficking in Florida suggested that the increase in victims was due to the process DCF and the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) use to “select children to screen as well as the screening tool itself may limit accurate identification of CSE child victims.”

The report also noted that 62 percent of the children who were labeled as commercially sexually exported remained “in the community and are referred to voluntary, local services.” As a result, “no data is readily available on whether the children use these services.”

The Free Thought Project has provided extensive coverage of the sex trafficking epidemic in the U.S., especially in relation to minors who become victims after they are kidnapped from their homes and placed in foster care.

In April, two pastors who were foster care advocates were arrested for running a child sex ring in Ohio. The pastors, who had influence on their county’s Child Service’s Board of Trustees, were charged with “recruiting, enticing and transporting people the men knew were under 18 to engage in sex acts for pay.” The trafficking was ongoing for at least three years, and initially began with a 14-year-old girl.

In June, a lawsuit was filed in the case of a 5-year-old girl who was given to the leader of a child sex ring in Arizona. She was taken from her mother who was battling an addiction with substance abuse, and she was put in the custody of a pedophile who sexually abused her, tortured her, and ultimately left her fighting for her life.

The recent report from Florida is another reminder that child sex trafficking is a horrific element of the human trafficking epidemic that has been ongoing and increasing in the United States. While government involvement has always been an element, it has yet to put a stop to the increasing number of children who are subjected to life-altering abuse on a daily basis. (For more from the author of “Child Sex Trafficking in the US Is Exploding, Govt Admits They Aren’t Stopping It” please click HERE)

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Cop Named Mohamed Shoots, Kills Unarmed Woman Who Called 911

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The Minneapolis cop who shot and killed a 40-year-old woman after she called 9-1-1 to report a possible crime near her home was identified Monday as the precinct’s first Somali-American officer — Mohamed Noor.

Noor has only been a police officer for two years and has already been sued for alleged unprofessional behavior. The May 2017 lawsuit also involved a female and accusations of brutality . . .

Justine Ruszczyk Damond, a native of Sydney, Australia, was a veterinarian and a yoga instructor who recently got engaged to longtime boyfriend Don Damond. She and her fiancé lived in the 5000 block of Washburn.

Her fiance was out of town on business Saturday when she heard a commotion in the alley, then picked up the phone to call 9-1-1 to report a possible sexual assault in progress. She ended up being shot dead by one of the two responding officers . . .

KSTP, citing a source with direct knowledge of the shooting, reported that Noor was sitting in the passenger seat of the squad car at the time of the shooting and “shot across his partner” at Damond, who approached the officers’ car in her pajamas and began talking to the officer in the driver’s seat. (Read more from “Cop Named Mohamed Shoots, Kills Unarmed Woman Who Called 911” HERE)

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