The pro-mass immigration Koch brothers’ network of billionaire donor class organizations is “encouraged” by President Trump’s latest immigration offer, calling it a “significant step toward” amnesty for illegal aliens.

Over the weekend, Trump offered Republicans and Democrats a plan to give amnesty in the form of three-year work permits to a little more than 700,000 illegal aliens who are enrolled in the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

The deal gives the roughly 325,000 foreign nationals living in the U.S. on Temporary Protected Status (TPS) amnesty to remain in the country as well. In return, about a fifth of border wall funding — $5.7 billion — would be secured to build a barrier at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Koch brothers’ network of libertarian organizations — Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Partners, and the LIBRE Initiative — released a statement supporting Trump’s offer to extend Obama’s executive amnesty:

We are encouraged by the president’s focused proposal, which offers to address the status of the Dreamers and enhance border security. This is an important first step toward a real deal. A deal that can unite congress is within reach,  if lawmakers, along with the president, work together toward a long-term solution – rather than a temporary fix that leaves Dreamers unsure what the future holds. [Emphasis added]

Trump’s offer is nearly the identical immigration deal that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbied the administration to push.

In a letter to Congress and Trump weeks ago, Chamber of Commerce executives asked the White House to craft and promote a deal that extended Obama’s executive amnesty and gave TPS beneficiaries amnesty.

“The Chamber supports a deal that combines increasing border security with protection and legal status for Dreamers and long-term beneficiaries of the TPS program,” a Chamber of Commerce executive wrote.

For the past year, some of the biggest donors to the Republican Party — including the multinational corporation AT&T and Steve Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group — have demanded amnesty for DACA illegal aliens.

While the donor class supports Trump’s offer — which was crafted by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), White House adviser Jared Kushner, and Vice President Mike Pence — his base of supporters is less enthusiastic.

Click here to read full article.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement couldn’t bid out a contract to provide meals for detainees because so few vendors are willing to work with the agency.

That’s according to a six-month, $22,000-contract extension ICE recently awarded to a food-service provider in California, which will continue to deliver “freshly prepared meals that consist of two sandwiches (bologna, turkey or ham) on white or wheat bread,” to an ICE processing facility in Bakersfield.

In a justification for why it did not put the contract out for competitive bids, an ICE contracting officer wrote: “Vendors in the Bakersfield area were contacted to determine whether they would deliver to ICE facilities however, the responses were not favorable as many companies did not want to provide delivery to ICE locations.”

According to the ICE documents regarding the sandwich deliveries, the sentiment extends beyond Bakersfield. “Market Research has shown that there is competition but locating a vendor in the state of CA who will deliver to an ICE facility is limited,” it says.

California’s sandwich-makers are not alone. Under Donald Trump, ICE has been ordered to carry out an immigration policy many Americans find reprehensible. Businesses across the US have chosen not to associate their brands with ICE. Some companies with ICE contracts have faced backlash from consumers and activists, while others have been pressured internally to reject any business opportunities presented by ICE.

Microsoft

Last June, more than 300 Microsoft employees sent a letter to CEO Satya Nadella, protesting the company’s $19.4-million contract with ICE for data processing and artificial intelligence capabilities. “We are providing the technical undergirding in support of an agency that is actively enforcing this inhumane policy,” the letter said. “We request that Microsoft cancel its contracts with ICE, and with other clients who directly enable ICE. As the people who build the technologies that Microsoft profits from, we refuse to be complicit.”

Nadella said Microsoft’s ICE contract only covered administrative duties.

McKinsey

At least six US airlines have pledged not to allow the federal government to use their flights to transport children who had been separated from parents detained by ICE. More than 700 workers at Deloitte Consulting, which has several large contracts with ICE for records and program management, signed a petition last year calling for the firm to end that work, citing “moral objections.” The protest followed a decision by McKinsey & Company, a Deloitte competitor, to terminate a $20-million consulting contract.

Amazon

Amazon employees have (so far unsuccessfully) demanded the company stop doing business with ICE, and Salesforce employees successfully petitioned CEO Marc Benioff to cut ties with US Customs and Border Protection, ICE’s sister agency, for which it supplied personnel-management software. In May, activists in the Bay Area protested outside the offices of Vigilant Solutions, which makes license-plate readers ICE uses to track down undocumented immigrants.

The Bakersfield ICE sandwich contract began Jan. 16 and will run through the mid-July. In addition to bologna, turkey, and ham, the agreement provides for kosher and vegetarian options upon request. All meals include “chips, fruit, condiments, a flavored drink and water.”

Read the full article here.

In 2015, the year President Trump launched his White House bid with a promise to build a wall on the Mexico border, illegal migration to the United States plunged 31 percent, falling near its lowest level in 50 years.

Security experts saw a success, but Trump looked at the border and saw something ominous: “rapists,” “criminals” and other predators lurking on the other side. 

In 2017, Trump’s first year in office, he continued to insist on the urgent need for a border wall, even as illegal crossings dropped further.

With parts of the federal government shut down over what has morphed into the defining symbol of Trump’s presidency, administration officials are clamoring louder than ever. Only this time, they face a bona fide emergency on the border, and they’re struggling to make the case there’s truly a problem.

Record numbers of migrant families are streaming into the United States, overwhelming border agents and leaving holding cells dangerously overcrowded with children, many of whom are falling sick. Two Guatemalan children taken into U.S. custody died in December.

In a letter to lawmakers Friday, the White House and the Department of Homeland Security made a fresh appeal to amend immigration laws they denounce as “legal loopholes” and blame for creating a “border security and humanitarian crisis.” But the chance of reaching consensus for such technical fixes to U.S. immigration statutes is growing more remote, buried by the pitched battle over a structure new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) calls “immoral.”

With both sides entrenched, there has been little bipartisan urgency to examine the relatively narrow set of legal and administrative changes that could potentially make a difference in slowing illegal migration or improving conditions for families who arrive at the border.

“There are places that need better fences or better walls; no one denies that,” said Anthony Earl Wayne, a U.S. diplomat who served as ambassador to Mexico from 2011 to 2015. “But I don’t know how you get to that, while explaining to the public that we need to increase border security while meeting the human needs that are there.”

Instead, the policy debate has been overshadowed by an engineering project imbued with partisan emotion, with Trump fighting for billions of dollars in taxpayer funding and threatening to invoke emergency powers to build a wall without congressional approval. After failing to reach a deal with Democratic leaders, Trump seesawed Friday between characterizing the current border crisis as a “dangerous horrible disaster” and warning that the shutdown could stretch for “months or years.” 

Click here to read full article.

In the midst of President Donald Trump’s border wall standoff  with Congress, a percipient tweet by Senator Lindsey Graham is worth noting:

“When it comes to radical Islam, a border wall is our last line of defense—not our first,” Graham (R-South Carolina) wrote.

Although dismissed by anti-wall activists, the threat from countries south of the United States is particularly relevant from the terror group Hezbollah, which is actively building cells and increasing its presence in South and Central America.

Hezbollah has infiltrated a number of these countries, where it works with drug cartels to fund its worldwide terror operations.

“There is an exchange of tactics and procedures with narco terrorists,” said former U.S. special forces’ officer Joseph Callahan at a Congressional field hearing in Florida earlier this year, adding that Hezbollah works closely with the Los Zetas and Sinaloa cartels.

More recently, authorities in Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay arrested Hezbollah agents caught with caches of weapons and explosives and involved in money laundering and drug trafficking.

Last October, then-attorney general Jeff Sessions created a task force to specifically zero in on Hezbollah after declaring the designated terror organization one of the top five transnational threats to the U.S.

Hezbollah was named as the world’s richest terror organization by Forbes. The transnational group is an Iranian proxy and has an estimated annual income of $1.1 billion.

In June of 2017, two Hezbollah terrorists were arrested in the U.S. for planning domestic attacks. One had scouted potential targets in New York City, including JFK International Airport.

Referring to Trump’s decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria, Graham continued the tweet, saying, “Our first line of defense is a forward-deployed presence working with partners to disrupt enemy operations directed at our allies and homeland.”

Although Graham is opposed to the pullout, after a meeting with Trump, he said, “I feel pretty good about where we’re headed” in Syria, suggesting that the pullout would not be so quick.

Click here to read full article.

Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw tweeted a five-point plan for border security — including a wall — just minutes before President Donald Trump spoke on the issue Tuesday night.

Crenshaw’s “multi-faceted” solution called for physical barriers as a “necessary part of that solution” but also recognized that “some places require different methods.”

“Tonight, the President will be speaking on border security,” Crenshaw wrote. “Some things to keep in mind.” (RELATED: Ann Coulter To Those Who Say Trump Lacks Authority To Build Wall – ‘Pull Out Your Pocket Constitution)

The Texas congressman then expressed his five points:

1) The problems on the border need to be addressed. 400,000 illegal aliens being apprehended per year while crossing an open border is completely unsustainable.

2) The problem must be solved in a multi-faceted way. Physical barriers are a necessary part of that solution. Just ask the migrant caravan when they arrived in Tijuana, where the wall prevented them from overrunning our border agents. Walls mitigate movement. Period.

3) Walls are necessary, but of course we recognize that they aren’t the only solution. Some places require different methods, as the President’s plan recognizes. Drones, sensors, more patrols, etc. It all works together, and physical barriers are a part of that.

4) A wall in one location frees up manpower resources in another. This is important when understanding why we are okay with building in some areas and waiting on others.

5) Dismissing a wall or fence as an “ineffective” or “4th century” solution is an attempt to undermine the plan without providing any logical reasoning. Don’t succumb to lazy arguments. Let’s think this through, and reopen the government with adequate funding for border security.

Click here to read full article.

 

 

A man among a group of migrants detained in a desolate part of New Mexico near the Mexican border has a flesh-eating bacteria.

The man was taken to a hospital recently after telling a federal agent that he had a growing rash on his leg, Border Patrol spokesman Carlos Antunez said Friday.

The rare condition, called necrotizing fasciitis, spreads quickly and can be fatal, but is unlikely to spread to others.

The bacteria usually gets into the body through a minor cut or scrape and can cause a serious infection that can destroy muscle, skin and other tissue

 

https://www.foxnews.com/us/migrant-detained-at-us-mexico-border-had-flesh-eating-bacteria

Many have been upset recently by New York’s new permissive abortion law that allows abortion “within 24 weeks from the commencement of pregnancy, or there is an absence of fetal viability, or at any time when necessary to protect a patient's life or health.”

However, New York’s law is not as extreme as the policies in the following seven states that have no, or little, restrictions on abortion and allow abortion up until birth, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion research and policy group.

The states with the most lenient abortion laws are Oregon, Vermont, Colorado, New Hampshire and the District of Columbia, where there are no major prohibitions on abortion.

As evident from Guttmacher’s overview, in these states there are no laws requiring that abortions must be performed by a licensed physician or that they must be performed at a hospital. There are no 20-week, 24-week, or even official viability prohibitions on abortion. 

Oregon and Vermont fund “all or most medically necessary abortions.” 

In D.C., Colorado, and New Hampshire, the abortion funding is limited to cases of “life endangerment, rape and incest,” although there have been many efforts to change that in D.C. which were resisted by pro-life Republicans in Congress.

In Alaska, New Jersey, and New Mexico, abortions are allowed up until birth and the states fund “all or most medically necessary abortions,” however, the procedures must be performed by a licensed physician. New Jersey has the additional requirement that abortions must be performed in a hospital past 14 weeks. 

Meanwhile in New Jersey, lawmakers recently introduced a bill to prevent the slaughter of pregnant cows.

In addition to the lenient abortion laws in these seven states and D.C., Guttmacher shows that 19 states make a broad exception that allows late-term abortions for the health of the mother meaning both "physical and mental health." That list now includes 20 states given New York’s updated law.

One thing to note is that while late-term abortion up to birth is legal in seven states and D.C., it is incredibly rare and there are only a handful of doctors willing to perform these abortions which certainly limits access.

The states’ varying laws on abortion is unsurprising given that the Supreme Court provided a very broad viability rule in their 1973 Roe v. Wade decision which they reaffirmed in their 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision.

In Casey, the Court wrote that the government “may not prohibit any woman from making the ultimate decision to terminate her pregnancy before viability,” and reaffirmed from Roe that "subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother."

The Roe v. Wade decision defined viable as “potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid,” adding that “viability is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks.”

However, the broadness of the Court’s definition of the term “viability” leaves much room for interpretation resulting in the very different state laws on abortion.

The Court has even acknowledged that reality, writing in their 1979 Colautti v. Franklin decision that “different physicians equate viability with different probabilities of survival, and some physicians refuse to equate viability with any numerical probability at all.”

Many have pointed out that with improvements in technology premature babies have survived birth as early as 21 weeks. Recent studies have supported revisiting when fetal viability begins, given the earlier survival rates.

Click here to read full article.

On abortion, Cuomo casts aside his supposed Catholic convictions with greater ease than he takes them up.

For as long as man has had religion, religion has had hypocrites. The Catholic Church is no exception — it is, like all churches and all religions, full of sinners. In fact, that is its boast: No sin is too great, no Pharisee too far gone to be saved.

The first pope was a man who fled from the Passion and death of his Lord, betraying Jesus three times rather than suffer beside him. One of the Church’s first great saints was a man who spent much of his life zealously persecuting and killing the earliest Christians.

Both men repented. Both were martyred for their faith.

Andrew Cuomo, their brother in baptism, has yet to find his road to Damascus.

The governor of New York is proud to be a Catholic, but, like his father before him, only when it suits his political purposes. Last summer, when Pope Francis announced that the death penalty is never permissible, Cuomo rushed with all undue haste to claim the mantle of his familial creed.

“The death penalty is morally indefensible and has no place in the 21st century,” he opined on Twitter. “Today, in solidarity with @pontifex and in honor of my father, I will be advancing legislation to remove the death penalty from State law once and for all.”

But Cuomo casts aside his supposed Catholic convictions with greater ease than he takes them up. This week, on the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, the governor signed into law the ghastly Reproductive Health Act (RHA). The legislation permits abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy — when abortion is never medically necessary and when children born prematurely are routinely able to survive outside the womb with careful tending — and it creates lenient exceptions essentially sanctioning elective abortion up to the moment of birth.

Cuomo’s dedication to “reproductive rights” allowed for the extinguishment of more than 82,000 unborn lives in his state in 2016 alone. About 2,000 of those unborn children were killed after 20 weeks of pregnancy, the threshold where advanced neonatal intensive care is just beginning to enable survival. Nearly 6,000 of those unborn children were killed in dilation and evacuation abortions, in which the fetus is, if it’s lucky, lethally injected before being cut apart and removed piece by piece from his or her mother.

This fallen son looks less like Saul and more like Judas — selling the innocent to save his political soul.

Not only did Cuomo personally lobby for the RHA for years, but he insists that the bill’s ample pro-abortion provisions still aren’t enough. He has promised to campaign for having the right to abortion, including late in pregnancy, written into the state constitution. And lest you consider him a dedicated federalist, recall that he swore to sue the federal government should Roe ever be overturned.

But Cuomo’s passion for abortion rights is still more sinister than that. On the evening that he signed the RHA, the governor announced that the spire of Freedom Tower, the building erected in lower Manhattan where the Twin Towers once stood, would be lit up in pink to celebrate the occasion, a jubilee for the unlimited right to choose death for the defenseless.

Just beside Freedom Tower, two pools mark the spot of the 9/11 terrorist attack. Around each of them are inscribed the names of every person murdered that day, and beside the names of eleven of those women the carved stone says, “and her unborn child.” Beneath Cuomo’s shrine to abortion on demand, the real story is written: These are human lives.

If Cuomo is a bad apple, he surely didn’t fall far from the family tree. In a speech at the University of Notre Dame in 1984, Andrew’s father Mario — also governor of New York and a self-professed Catholic — pioneered the adage of the post-Roe Catholic Democrat: Though I personally oppose abortion, I cannot use my political position to force that morality on others.

This clever yet incoherent formulation allowed a generation of Catholic politicians to abandon the Church’s moral teaching on the total impermissibility of abortion, along with its corresponding basis in science and ethics. With Mario Cuomo’s blessing, politicians such as Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, John Kerry, and New York’s current governor were freed to profess their Catholic baptism from one side of their mouth while from the other sanctifying a woman’s right to dispense with her unborn child.

It is only under such a twisted view of morality that the younger Cuomo could justify his wholesale defense of convicted murderers and rapists while lighting up his city’s monument to cheer for the deaths of the unwanted unborn — and it is only out of rank moral hypocrisy that he could justify it under his Catholic creed.

Click here to read full article.

Can you imagine the response of Planned Parenthood or New York’s reliably pro-abortion-to the-max Gov. Andrew Cuomo to this proposal made yesterday by Wall Street Journal columnist Jason L. Riley?

Let’s Talk About the Black Abortion Rate

How about no, absolutely no, positively no, and “you must be a racist for asking it”?

There are many, many secrets PPFA and its allies desperately want kept hidden. After the grim fact that they believe in and promote abortion for any reason throughout the entirenine months of pregnancies, probably no truth is more threatening to them than the incredibly disproportionate number of black babies who are aborted.

As Riley, who is black, tells us, “In New York City, thousands more black babies are aborted each year than born alive.” Only the likes of a Gov. Cuomo or Planned Parenthood/NARAL could calmly brush aside what many black leaders over the years have denounced.

Riley reminds readers of historical truths only a tiny fraction would know:

When the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973, polling showed that blacks were less likely than whites to support abortion. Sixties-era civil rights activists like Fannie Lou Hamer and Whitney Young had denounced the procedure as a form of genocide. Jesse Jackson called abortion “murder” and once told a black newspaper in Chicago that “we used to look for death from the man in the blue coat and now it comes in a white coat.”

In the intervening decades, those views shifted. Mr. Jackson abandoned the pro-life ship to run for president in 1984, and leaders of black civil-rights organizations today are joined at the hip with abortion-rights proponents such as Planned Parenthood.

The magnitude of the death toll is nothing short of staggering.

According to a city Health Department report released in May, between 2012 and 2016 black mothers terminated 136,426 pregnancies and gave birth to 118,127 babies. By contrast, births far surpassed abortions among whites, Asians and Hispanics.

What about nationally? Riley writes

Nationally, black women terminate pregnancies at far higher rates than other women as well. In 2014, 36% of all abortions were performed on black women, who are just 13% of the female population. The little discussed flip side of “reproductive freedom” is that abortion deaths far exceed those via cancer, violent crime, heart disease, AIDS and accidents.

Think about that. 13% of the female population, 36% of all abortions!

Our single issue focus means we will not explore what Riley sees as the hypocrisy of those who value black lives out of the womb but are silent about the slaughter of black lives in the womb.

What we can say is that every abortion is a failure and a tragedy multiplied on a scale in the black community so vast that it almost defies description.

Click here to read full article.

January 23, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Pro-life leaders and commentators are responding with disgust, sorrow, and resolve to the New York legislature’s votes Tuesday evening to enshrine a “fundamental right” to abortion in state law and strip protections from preborn babies until birth.

The state Senate voted 38-24 and the state Assembly 92-47 yesterday in favor of the so-called “Reproductive Health Act,” a bill that has repeatedly cleared the Assembly in years past but been blocked by the formerly-Republican Senate. Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who signed the bill, called it a “historic victory for New Yorkers and our progressive values” and ordered the One World Trade Center spire to be lit in pink to mark the occasion.

The bill declares that “Every individual who becomes pregnant has the fundamental right to choose to carry the pregnancy to term, to give birth to a child, or to have an abortion,” erases the state’s recognition of preborn babies older than 24 weeks as potential homicide victims, removes abortion from the penal code entirely, and allows licensed health practitioners other than full doctors to commit abortions.

The Times-Union suggests the bill would allow “late-stage” abortions only if the mother’s “health” is endangered or if the baby is deemed non-viable, but the New York State Right to Life Committee warns that the bill would go much further in practice.

Declaring abortion a “fundamental right” opens the door to invalidating “any limits on abortion” and “mandat[ing] that everyone take part in the culture of death,” the group warns. The bill would also prevent pregnant women whose babies are killed in violent attacks from seeing justice, and have the effect of “authorizing infanticide” by repealing the requirement that a second physician be on hand in the event that an attempted abortion past twenty weeks yields a live infant.

Many pro-life observers registered their disapproval Tuesday and continued to do so Wednesday.

“We commend those who voted to defend the unborn and their mothers, and speak out in debate. RHA is an extreme bill sold to the public saying it merely 'updates' New York's law, which is far from true,” New York State Right to Life responded in a statement. “NYSRTL will continue to work to expose the misinformation put forth about RHA, protect children and their mothers, protect the rights of pro-life persons to engage in life-saving activities and express their views, and to build a culture of Life in New York.”

“Convicted criminals aren’t subjected to the death penalty in New York state, but now children up until the ninth month of pregnancy can be given lethal injections and poisoned to death,” said Live Action founder and president Lila Rose. “This is no different than infanticide.”

“One thing that this law reveals to the nation is the extent and the extremism of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which allows laws such as this one to exist. It was Roe that legalized abortion through all nine months of pregnancy in this country,” continued Rose. “If Roe is not soon overturned, any state could follow New York’s monstrous example.” 

“Already the nation's abortion capital, New York’s pro-abortion Dems just passed the most radical abortion bill in the nation,” the pro-life Radiance Foundation said, noting the state’s abortion laws were already permissive and the change will mean “zero regulations from facility inspections to parental consent/notifications to requirement of actual doctor to commit the abortion to any limits on taxpayer funding of it.”

“Governor Cuomo ordered One World Trade Center--a memorial to the thousands killed by senseless violence and hate--to be lit up in pink to celebrate the unrestricted violence of abortion that treats the unborn with more antipathy than criminals,” Radiance noted. “God help us.”

Click here to read full article.

To the sound of supporters chanting “free abortion on demand, we can do it, yes we can,” the New York legislature just passed the terribly named “Reproductive Health Act.” It’s the most radically pro-abortion state-level initiative in recent memory.

The new law has nothing to do with health, and everything to do with death. It removes abortion from the criminal code and makes it legal all the way up to birth, allowing all doctors and midwives to kill unborn babies, no questions asked.

Jubilation followed. And then, Governor Andrew Cuomo lit up One World Trade Center in pink to celebrate.

Seventy-five percent of Americans want restrictions on late-term abortions, but extremists no longer are about “safe, legal, and rare.” The unfettered taking of unborn lives is celebrated.

Take note. The pro-choice movement just revealed its true face. It’s not about choice. It’s about glorifying, even idolizing, death as the path to a good life, with cult-like glee. Lord have mercy.

Click here to see full article.

 

NEW YORK, New York, January 23, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) directed that the One World Trade Center's spire be lit pink overnight on Tuesday to celebrate his signing of a law allowing abortions until birth and letting non-doctors commit abortions.

The law, the Reproductive Health Act, also erases the state’s recognition of preborn babies older than 24 weeks as potential homicide victims.

Cuomo called the bill an “historic victory for New Yorkers and our progressive values.” It was passed on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that brought abortion on demand to every state.

 

In 1970, New York was the first state to legalize abortion. Cuomo said that he was directing that the 408-foot spire on the One World Trade Center, as well as the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, the Kosciuszko Bridge, and the Alfred E. Smith Building in Albany be lit in pink to “celebrate this achievement and shine a bright light forward for the rest of the nation to follow.”

Statements from abortion supporters suggest they fear how the current Supreme Court might rule on abortion.

“In the face of a federal government intent on rolling back Roe v. Wade and women's reproductive rights, I promised that we would enact this critical legislation within the first 30 days of the new session – and we got it done,” said Cuomo.

Pro-life advocates lamented Cuomo’s celebration. Lila Rose of Live Action wrote on Facebook, “New York leadership cheers today for the legalization of killing a baby old enough to born - poisoning a 6-month-old to death in the womb and delivering her in pieces. This is the legacy of Roe v. Wade. It's time to end this barbarism.”

The Radiance Foundation declared, “Already the nation's abortion capital, New York’s pro-abortion Dems just passed the most radical abortion bill in the nation, earlier today, allowing abortion through the entire pregnancy (to save the life or ‘health’ of the mother).”

Gov. Cuomo, the Radiance Foundation said, celebrated the “unrestricted violence of abortion that treats the unborn with more antipathy than criminals. God help us.”

Obianuju Ekeocha noted on Twitter that the New York state legislature erupted in applause when Democrat-controlled body passed the bill.

The new law also means that women whose unborn babies are killed against their will – in cases of domestic violence, for example – won’t be able to charge their aggressors.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/new-york-celebrates-legalizing-abortion-until-birth-by-lighting-one-world-t

The comprehensive health care plan unveiled by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio this week drew applause from the Democrat's supporters but also skepticism from those in the city who question the value and cost of the effort.

De Blasio said NYC Care will provide primary and specialty care from pediatric to geriatric to 600,000 uninsured New Yorkers. De Blasio estimated the annual cost at $100 million.

"This is the city paying for direct comprehensive care (not just ERs) for people who can’t afford it, or can’t get comprehensive Medicaid - including 300,000 undocumented New Yorkers," Eric Phillips, spokesman for de Blasio, boasted on Twitter.

State Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican representing parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island, criticized the proposal as an example of de Blasio using city coffers "like his personal ATM."

"How about instead of giving free health care to 300,000 citizens of other countries, you lower property taxes for our senior citizens who are being forced to sell the homes they’ve lived in for decades because they can’t afford to pay your 44 percent increase in property taxes?" she said.

Seth Barron, associate editor of City Journal and project director of the NYC Initiative at the Manhattan Institute think tank, noted that the city's uninsured, including undocumented residents, can receive treatment on demand at city hospitals. The city pays more than $8 billion to treat 1.1 million people through its New York City Health + Hospitals program, he wrote.

Barron said the mayor is simply trying to shift patients away from the emergency room and into clinics. He said that dividing $100 million by 600,000 people comes to about $170 per person, the equivalent of one doctor visit.

"Clearly, the money that the mayor is assigning to this new initiative is intended for outreach, to convince people to go to the city’s already-burdened public clinics instead of waiting until they get sick enough to need an emergency room," Barron wrote. "That’s fine, as far as it goes, but as a transformative, revolutionary program, it resembles telling people to call the Housing Authority if they need an apartment and then pretending that the housing crisis has been solved."

The plan expands upon the city's MetroPlus public option plan, as well as the state's exchange through the federal Affordable Care Act. NYC Care patients will be issued cards allowing them access to medical services, de Blasio said. 

The mayor's plan has plenty of support. Mitchell Katz, president and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals, said the plan will help his agency "give all New Yorkers the quality care they deserve.” State Sen. James Sanders Jr., who represents parts of Queens, said he looks forward "to seeing the Care NYC program grow and prosper as it helps to create a healthier New York.”

The drumbeat for improved access to health care is not limited to New York.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday asked Congress and the White House to empower states to develop "a single-payer health system to achieve universal coverage, contain costs and promote quality and affordability."

Click here to read full article.

Putting the illegal immigrants crossing the border aside for a moment, do you ever hear of the open border advocates talk about human trafficking?

Do you ever hear any of them speaking about the 16 million (64%) that were exploited for labor, the 4.8 million (19%) who were sexually exploited, or the 4.1 million (17%) were exploited in state-imposed forced labor?

As of 2014, the estimated figures of all Central American women and girls crossing into the US . . . 80% are raped.

Many illegal immigrants are forced into sexual slavery by “coyotes”, those who illegally smuggle people across the U.S.-Mexico border, who kidnap them . . . paying with their lives if they ever try to escape.

These open border advocates never talk about parents who send their 12 year old daughters alone, having them take contraceptive measures before they make the trip because they already know they will be raped during that trek to the border. You never hear them speak about the murders, muggings, extortions, gang rapes of women and kidnappings (some 20,000 a year) that are committed by the expanding Central American Mara Salvatrucha gangs or by Mexican drug traffickers.

Human rights experts estimate that 10,000 undocumented immigrants are kidnapped every year during their passage through Mexico, where girls, young women, and boys have been sold into prostitution.

The Mexican-based Rendon-Reyes Trafficking Organization recently pleaded guilty in federal district court in Brooklyn, New York, to racketeering and other federal charges from forcing young women and girls from Mexico and Latin America into prostitution . . . over the last 10 years.

All this happens with the existing wall we have, and the only way to deter these migrants from falling prey to those looking to make a buck from their predicament, is to strengthen our border, not weaken it.

Perhaps those bleeding hearts are unaware that corpses of migrants have been found with their organs harvested, or they would rather choose to ignore it and complain about those separated at the border that get better care at the detention centers, than the dangers of the journey itself.

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Ranchers and farmers near the U.S.-Mexico border have been finding prayer rugs on their properties in recent months, according to one rancher who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation by cartels who move the individuals.

The mats are pieces of carpet that those of the Muslim faith kneel on as they worship.

"There’s a lot of people coming in not just from Mexico," the rancher said. "People, the general public, just don’t get the terrorist threats of that. That’s what’s really scary. You don’t know what’s coming across. We’ve found prayer rugs out here. It’s unreal. It’s not just Mexican nationals that are coming across."

Her comments were part of a larger conversation about how many in the region believe migrants are coming to the U.S. illegally from all over the world, not just Central America.

Border Patrol and its parent agency, Customs and Border Protection, did not respond to multiple interview requests. But CBP's Arizona region issued a statement on Twitter Wednesday that said agents had arrested people from across the world over the past five days. 

The rancher, who lives with her family in a remote, southwestern part of the state, said the discoveries raise questions about how many people who illegally entered the U.S. in Hidalgo County, N.M., traveled thousands of miles from overseas to sneak across the southern border.

She is one of just a few hundred residents of Animas, N.M., a tiny town that sits between the international border and the Border Patrol's Lordsburg Station, which is 95 miles north of the boundary. 

The few hundred residents there have no local police department. They rely on the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Department and U.S. Border Patrol to help when they need it, but otherwise count on tips and support from one another because of the 40 miles that separate the community from the county headquarters in Lordsburg.

The rancher and six other residents of Animas told Washington Examiner this week that migrants from places other than Mexico and Central America are arriving.

"I've talked to several agents that I trust. There’s not a lot that I do trust, but the ones I do trust, I talk to them," she said during a tour of her property. "What Border Patrol classifies as OTMs [other than Mexicans] has really increased in the last couple years, but drastically within the last six months. Chinese, Germans, Russians, a lot of Middle Easterners, those Czechoslovakians they caught over on our neighbor’s just last summer."

Billy Darnell, a cattle rancher in Animas, said his neighbor had 18 women and children from the Philippines show up on his property last year. Border Patrol was called to the scene and took the group in. 

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A wide-reaching new poll conducted by Harvard University reveals that majorities of U.S. voters — including Democrats — appear to agree with many of President Trump’s most basic beliefs about immigration.

The findings reveal, for example, that eight out of 10 of all U.S. voters — 79 percent — say the U.S. needs secure borders; 93 percent of Republicans, 80 percent of independents and 68 percent of Democrats agree with that.

Another 79 percent of voters overall say immigration priorities should be granted on a person’s “ability to contribute to America”; 87 percent of Republicans, 79 percent of independents and 72 percent of Democrats agree.

Meanwhile, 68 percent overall oppose a lottery-based immigration system which is meant to ensure “greater diversity: in the U.S.; 78 percent of Republicans, 65 percent of independents and 62 percent of Democrats agree.

In addition, 61 percent overall say U.S. border security is inadequate; 84 percent of Republicans, 64 percent of independents and 40 percent of Democrats agree.

Click here to read full article.

 

By WESLEY J. SMITH

• January 21, 2019 10:20 AM 

An exposé on Dutch euthanasia published in The Guardian discloses that around twenty-five percent of Dutch deaths are induced/caused by doctors.

These are not all lethal-injection euthanasia deaths. As I have written here before, many more people are killed in the Netherlands by “terminal sedation”–a slow motion euthanasia wherein patients not in the active stage of dying are put into artificial comas and denied all sustenance until they dehydrate to death–than die by lethal jabs. (Terminal sedation should never be confused with the proper practice of “palliative sedation,” which eases a dying patient’s symptoms while not intentionally causing death.)

Back in 2012, I estimated that combined euthanasia, assisted suicide, and terminal sedation killings totaled about fourteen percent of all Dutch deaths. In the years since, these induced-death practices have apparently grown significantly, a phenomenon that did not escape the attention of The Guardian. From “Death on Demand: Has Euthanasia Gone Too Far?” (my emphasis):

As people got used to the new law, the number of Dutch people being euthanised began to rise sharply, from under 2,000 in 2007 to almost 6,600 in 2017. (Around the same number are estimated to have had their euthanasia request turned down for not conforming with the legal requirements.)

Also in 2017, some 1,900 Dutch people killed themselves, while the number of people who died under palliative sedation – in theory, succumbing to their illness while cocooned from physical discomfort, but in practice often dying of dehydration while unconscious [that is, terminal sedation] – hit an astonishing 32,000. Altogether, well over a quarter of all deaths in 2017 in the Netherlands were induced.

Since euthanasia was first decriminalized in the Netherlands, the country’s doctors have traveled a very dark road. Induced deaths have expanded from the terminally ill who ask for it, to the chronically ill who ask for it, to people with disabilities and the elderly who ask for it, to people with dementia, psychiatric patients with mental illness (83 in 2017), and the infanticides of babies born with serious or terminal illnesses or disabilities, who don’t have the capacity to ask for it.

Dutch law permits organ harvesting to be conjoined with euthanasia. There have been joint geriatric killings of couples fearing widowhood. In 2015, Dutch statistics revealed that 431 patients were killed by doctors who never asked for euthanasia–known in the lexicon as “termination without request or consent”–with next to nothing done about it even though such unasked-for lethal acts are technically murder under the law.

Does this mean the Dutch are horrible, ghoulish people? Absolutely not. But they are logical. Once the population widely accepted the premise that killing is an acceptable answer to suffering, the country took that belief precisely where it leads.

Such horrors will happen here too if we allow ourselves to be similarly seduced by euthanasia consciousness. Those with eyes to see, let them see.

 

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/doctors-induce-twenty-five-percent-of-dutch-deaths/?fbclid=IwAR0idT-wGMsAwXOdaW4cs8f8Ucu_ZQ2aicFTbXEXm4P9NlKYmkFnO-2tNL0

RICHMOND — The Senate of Virginia passed a resolution on Tuesday for Virginia to ratify the federal Equal Rights Amendment.

Seven Republicans joined all 19 of the chamber’s Democrats in supporting the resolution sponsored by Sen. Glen Sturtevant, R-Richmond.

The resolution now goes to the House of Delegates. Should it pass there, it would be sent to the national archivist.

Supporters of the resolution say Virginia being the 38th state to ratify the ERA means it would be added to the U.S. Constitution.

Opponents say that the deadline for ratification expired in 1982, and argue that should the amendment become law it would have unintended consequences detrimental to women.

The proposed federal amendment says: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” It provides that Congress shall have the power to enforce its provisions “by appropriate legislation.”

Among Republicans who joined in support of the ERA were Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment of James City County, and Sens. Frank Wagner and Bill DeSteph, both of Virginia Beach.

Republicans control the Senate, 21-19, and 140 seats in the legislature are up for election in November.

Several Republican senators had expressed support for the ERA before Tuesday’s vote, and it passed out of a committee on the opening day of this year’s General Assembly session. Its real test will be in the House, where Del. Mark Cole, R-Spotsylvania, chairman of the Privileges and Elections Committee, has said he’s not sure how he’ll handle the issue.

Six Democrats spoke in favor of the ERA on the Senate floor after Sturtevant explained his reasons for sponsoring the resolution. Two Republicans — Sen. Richard Black of Loudoun County and Amanda Chase of Chesterfield County — spoke against it.

Sen. Rosalyn Dance, D-Petersburg, called Sturtevant the “lawyer in chief” for the way he studied and explained his resolution.

Sturtevant said smart people can disagree over whether there’s still a chance for the amendment to become law. But even if Tuesday’s vote was simply symbolic, he argued, lawmakers should still support the ERA.

He noted that several states have ratified the ERA in recent years and said that to his knowledge, neither Congress nor a court has told them they were wrong.

Black, a conservative not seeking re-election this year, said efforts to pass the ERA came to a halt 40 years ago when people realized the “unintended consequences.”

Laws restricting abortions would be swept away under it, he said.

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By Valerie Richardson - The Washington Times - Thursday, January 10, 2019

Forty years ago, Phyllis Schlafly led the successful drive to derail the Equal Rights Amendment, but this time, the most formidable opposition is coming from the pro-life movement.

With the revived ERA under consideration in the Virginia General Assembly, pro-life advocates have sought to put the brakes on the amendment’s advance, arguing that the measure represents a stealth campaign to enshrine abortion rights in the U.S. Constitution.

“The ERA is not about women. It is really a smokescreen for abortion,” Patrina Mosley, director of life, culture and women’s advocacy for the Family Research Council, said at a Thursday press conference in Richmond.

A coalition of conservative and pro-life groups urged Virginia legislators to reject ratification. They called it a “Trojan horse” aimed at providing a constitutional foothold for abortion while pro-choice activists fear for the future of the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling as the Supreme Court tilts to the right.

“They’re afraid that Roe is going to be overturned, that more states are going to pass legislation to protect the pre-born and support women to choose life,” said Tina Whittington, executive vice president of Students for Life of America. “The only reason to pick the ERA off the dusty floor of history is because of a fierce desire to protect abortion at all costs.”

Their lobbying effort failed to stop the amendment from clearing its first legislative hurdle Wednesday as the Virginia Senate Privileges and Elections Committee voted 8-6 to move the resolution to the floor.

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By Bob Marshall

VIRGINIA’S Democrat state legislators, and some Republicans, believe in the resurrection of the dead 1972 Equal Rights Amendment [ERA]. It provided that “Equality of rights under law shall not be denied or abridged … on account of sex.”

Congress initially gave the states a seven-year deadline, until March 22, 1979, to approve it. However, after a year of quick ratifications by 30 states, legislators learned that the ERA was not just about equal pay or “putting women into the Constitution.”

Rather, it was about expanding abortion and its funding, drafting women into the military—including front line ground combat, ending tax exemptions for churches with male-only clergy or single-sex schools, making young women pay much higher auto insurance rates, and eliminating private spaces for women in dorms, prisons, hospital rooms and more.

All congressional amendments offered to negate these effects failed. Courts have ruled that state ERA’s and “equal protection” laws mandate tax funding of abortions.

In 1978, the ERA needed three more states to reach the 38 required for ratification. Congress agreed with ERA leaders and extended the deadline before the 1979 deadline expired. Even pro-ERA publications opposed its extension, as seen by these editorial comments inserted into the congressional hearing record:

Washington Post: “… extending the deadline is, in our view, a bad idea. It smacks of … expedient rules-changing.” [6-14-78]

Chicago Sun Times: “… we don’t want an extension of that 1979 deadline. If the cause is equality, the supporters should not ask for special—that is, unequal consideration.” [5-21-78]

The New Republic: “We support the ERA, but we doubt this is the way to achieve it. …An extension could be the … time limit that ends up killing the ERA; if it fails to be ratified …the amendment will be dead.” [7-29-78]

Here’s also an exchange between two Democrats from the 1978 House Judiciary Committee:

Rep. Harold Volkmer, D–Missouri: “… In the event we did not extend by March 22, 1979, do you have an opinion as to whether Congress could open it up again for ratification?”

Rep. Barbara Jordan, D–Texas: “ … Congressman Volkmer, the time will have expired for that resolution, and I do not feel that would be a viable issue for consideration by the Congress because the resolution would, for all intents and purposes, be dead.”

Volkmer, a supporter of the 1972 ERA, later voted against the three-year and three-month extension because it was done on a majority vote instead of a two-thirds vote in the House.

Lawrence Tribe, attorney for the National Organization for Women (NOW), told a Senate committee in August 1978 that if the ERA ratification time limit expired before “Congress took action to extend that limit or before the 38th state took action purportedly ratifying the ERA, it would be arguable that the amendment should be regarded as incapable of such belated resurrection.”

President Jimmy Carter’s Justice Department supported the extension, but also noted in an Oct. 31, 1977, memo from DOJ to the White House that if the ratification deadline expired before Congress extended it, the ERA must start over. “In Dillon … the Court stated: ‘Of the power of Congress … to fix a definite period for the ratification we entertain no doubt’ …,” the memo stated.

“Certainly, if a time limit has expired before an intervening Congress has taken action to extend that limit, a strong argument could be made that the only constitutional means of reviving a proposed amendment would be to propose the amendment anew by two-thirds vote of each House … ,” it continued.

“The debate in the Senate also indicated…that failure of ratification by three-fourths of the States within the fixed time period would most probably require the resubmission of the amendment by a future Congress,” the DOJ memo stated.

In October 1978, Congress extended the ERA deadline 39 months. In Idaho vs. Freeman (1981) a federal district court ruled against the extension: “Congress may … set a reasonable time limit for the states to act … When this time is set … it cannot be changed by Congress ….”

On February 2, 1994, our own Virginia Attorney General at the time, Jim Gilmore, wrote to me: “Because the Equal Rights Amendment was not ratified within either the original or the extended time limit established by Congress for its ratification, it is no longer before the states for ratification, and any action by the General Assembly to ratify it now would be a nullity.”

In July 1982, U.S. Solicitor General Lawrence Wallace noted: “The Amendment has failed of adoption … the Administrator … will not certify to Congress that the Amendment has been adopted.”

Five states rescinded their ERA ratifications before the 1979 deadline, and 24 of the 35 ratifying states approved the ERA with language expressly including the seven-year time limit.

Last year, an ERA “ratification” measure was before Del. Mark Cole, who chairs the Privileges and Elections Committee. He declined to consider the dead ERA. Militant feminists objected loudly.

But Chairman Cole should do likewise in 2019. That is the only proper—and constitutional—action he can take.

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