Key House Chairman Intervenes in Bannon Case, Tells Supreme Court Democrat January 6 Contempt Was ‘Invalid’

The House subcommittee chairman investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot’s intelligence and security failures made an extraordinary intervention Wednesday at the Supreme Court, telling the justices he believes an earlier Democrat-led investigation into the tragedy was “factually and procedurally invalid” and therefore could not lawfully hold ex-Trump adviser Stephen Bannon in contempt.

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Illegal Crossings at Northern Border Spikes over 1,000 Percent Under Biden

People crossing the U.S. Northern border

The Biden administration has overseen an enormous increase of illegal migrant crossings along the U.S.-Canada border over the past four years.

There have so far been 12,859 illegal migrant crossings along the northern border in fiscal year 2024, with several months still left to go, according to the latest data provided by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Despite only eight months of data available, the number of illegal border crossings this fiscal year have already surpassed all other years of President Joe Biden’s tenure, and represent a marked increase from his first year in office.

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Illegal Immigration a Top 2024 Election Issue with Immigrant Crime Map, Poll Shows Problem

Illegal Immigrants Arrested

Illegal immigration is one of the most important problems for Americans, and a new “Illegal Alien Crime” map as well as a poll about language surrounding the issue highlights the significance of the border crisis in the minds of voters ahead of the 2024 election.

Polling from Gallup shows that U.S. adults have consistently ranked immigration as a top issue every month since at least November 2023. The polls come as the Biden administration has overseen record numbers of illegal immigrant encounters.

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Obama-Appointed Judges Strike Down Parts of Biden’s Student Loan Repayment Plan

President Biden with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona

Obama-appointed federal judges blocked parts of the Biden administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan on Monday in response to Republican states’ lawsuits.

Judge John A. Ross of Missouri and Judge Daniel Crabtree of Kansas blocked parts of the administration’s SAVE plan, which was an income-driven repayment program intended to lower monthly costs for borrowers. The court rulings prohibit the Department of Education from further lowering payments or eliminating more debt through the program, Politico reported.

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Trump Expands Push in Blue States as Virginia Appears Competitive

Donald Trump in Philadelphia

Former President Donald Trump appears poised to invest heavily in Virginia in the 2024 election as new polling data suggests the Old Dominion could be competitive for Republicans for the first time in 20 years.

The state has not backed a Republican for president since George W. Bush in 2004 and trended increasingly Democratic over the years until GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s upset win in 2021 reignited Republican hopes in the commonwealth. The GOP struggled, however, in the 2023 legislative elections, with many analysts pinning the blame on the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, which forced Republicans to play defense on the issue of abortion during that cycle. The party lost control of the House of Delegates and failed to seize control of the state Senate in those elections.

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Commentary: The Presidential Debate Should Expose a Fragile Biden

Joe Biden

While sometimes it is unavoidable, lawyers do everything they can not to become witnesses in their own cases. Such a contingency may require new counsel, adding to client expense. It also leads to some real ethical minefields. While as a witness they are obliged to tell the truth, they are also bound as lawyers by their duties of confidentiality and zealous advocacy for their clients, creating conflicts between these competing obligations.

Journalists, too, used to have certain ethical restrictions, some formal and some that arose as part of the culture. One of those restrictions is similar to that facing lawyers: journalists are not supposed to “become the story.” Journalists should be neutral conduits through which the facts are presented.

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Michigan Museum Funding Could Raise Property Taxes

Tom Kuhn

A new Michigan policy could cost Oakland and Macomb county households thousands in higher property taxes.

The Michigan House recently approved House Bill 4177, seeking to subsidize two nonprofit museums run through the Wright and Detroit Historical Societies. Because they likely could not stay open through admission fees and donations alone, Oakland and Macomb County residents would pay up to $200,000 in property taxes over the next 10 years.

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Pentagon Doesn’t Know If It Funds Dangerous Biological Research in China, New Audit Reveals

Medical research lab

Despite years of warnings that China operates an illicit biological weapons program, the U.S. military remains unable to determine whether it sends American tax dollars to Beijing for research that could make pathogens more dangerous or deadly, the Pentagon’s chief watchdog declared in a stunning new warning to policymakers.

“The DoD did not track funding at the level of detail necessary to determine whether the DoD provided funding to Chinese research laboratories or other foreign countries for research related to enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential,” the Pentagon inspector general concluded in a report released this month.

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Feds Surveilling Thousands of Americans’ Mail Each Year

USPS Mailbox

The United States Postal Service (USPS) gave law enforcement thousands of names, addresses and other details from the letters and packages of Americans without court approval, The Washington Post reported Monday.

The USPS said it generally only granted information requests from law enforcement agencies when it aided in tracking down a crime suspect; however, records obtained by the Post showed that 97 percent of the 60,000 requests from law enforcement were approved over an eight-year period. Between 2015 and 2023, over 312,000 letters and packages were recorded without receiving judicial approval.

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Commentary: Democrats Have Been Complaining About Election Fraud for Years

Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Maxine Waters (composite image)

How do the Democrats complain? Let us count the ways.

In January 2017, seven House Democrats (Jim McGovern, Jamie Raskin, Pramila Jayapal, Raul Grijalva, Sheila Jackson Lee, Barbara Lee, and Maxine Waters) formally objected to the certification of state elections.

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Oklahoma Supreme Court Rules Against First Publicly-Funded Religious Charter School

Gentner Drummond

The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the approval of what would have been the nation’s first publicly-funded religious school was unconstitutional, according to court records.

Oklahoma’s Virtual Charter School Board voted to approve an application for a virtual religious charter school in June 2023, prompting state Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond to file a lawsuit in October to block the funding, calling it “an irreparable violation of our individual religious liberty” and “an unthinkable waste of our tax dollars.” The Oklahoma Supreme Court ultimately sided with Drummond on Tuesday, finding that “under Oklahoma law, a charter school is a public school” and that “as such, a charter school must be nonsectarian,” per court filings.

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Criminal Referral Accuses DOJ’s Kristen Clarke of ‘Perjury,’ ‘False Statements’

assistant attorney general for civil rights Kristen Clarke

The Justice Department’s Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for civil rights, will be hit with three ethics complaints and a criminal referral Monday, The Daily Signal has learned.

Article III Project is filing both the ethics complaints and criminal referral, which calls upon Attorney General Merrick Garland to open a criminal probe into Clarke on the grounds that she “knowingly and willfully” made “materially false statements” and that she committed “perjury.”

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Analysis: Americans Say 2024 Race is About the Issues Not Candidates Puts Biden at a Sharp Disadvantage

Joe Biden

The mainstream media is running with the headline that the latest Fox News poll shows Former President Trump two points behind President Joe Biden – a difference well within the margin of error – but the poll also reveals an edge for Trump on a majority of electoral issues. In addition, a majority of voters say the race in November will be about the issues, not about the candidates, a finding that could significantly favor Trump.

The poll does show Trump has lost a modest amount of ground since his conviction earlier this month, however, he remains up significantly with key groups of swing voters compared to 2020. The data continues to show Biden in a deep deficit with minorities and young voters but clawing his way back up with older voters and whites.

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Commentary: The Logic in All the Madness

Joe Biden

by Victor Davis Hanson   Most Americans believe it is unhinged to deliberately destroy the border and allow 10 million illegal aliens to enter the country without background audits, means of support, any claims to legal residency, and definable skills. And worse still, why would federal authorities be ordered to…

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Nearly a Third of ‘Pro-Palestine’ Campus Protesters Had a Job Offer Rescinded, Survey Finds

Pro-Palestine protesters

A recent survey found that 3 in 10 college students or recent graduates had job offers rescinded as a result of their “pro-Palestine” activism.

Intelligent surveyed 672 students or recent college graduates who have engaged in anti-Israel activism and found that 29% of them had a job offer rescinded in the past six months and 55% believe there was bias against them in the hiring process because of their activism.

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Commentary: With His Amnesty Order, President Biden Is Making Illegal Immigration, Legal

550,000.

That is the estimated number of illegal aliens who will receive amnesty under President Biden’s latest executive action, which will make many of the migrants eligible for green cards, work permits, and a pathway to U.S. citizenship.

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GOP Rep. Luna to Force Vote Requiring Detention of Attorney General Garland

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna

Florida GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna on Monday informed lawmakers that she would bring a resolution to require the House sergeant at arms to detain Attorney General Merrick Garland and bring him before the lower chamber.

The House this month held Garland in contempt of Congress in a 216-207 vote over his refusal to turn over the audio tapes of special counsel Robert Hur’s interview with President Joe Biden. The Department of Justice has indicated it will not prosecute Garland.

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Children Need ‘Liberation’ from Parents, Scholar Argues

Lorna Finlayson

A philosophy scholar interested in Marxism argues for the “liberation” of children from their parents in a new book, set to come out in 2026.

The book, “Child Liberation: The oppression of children and the case for change,” is by Lorna Finlayson (pictured above), a lecturer of philosophy at the University of Essex in England.

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Corn Growers Join Lawsuit Against EPA for Emissions Mandates

Corn Farmer

Several U.S. oil and corn industry lobby groups are suing the Biden Administration over its plans to slash planet-warming tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks. The coalition argues the regulations will cause economic harm.

The EPA finalized new rules for models of semi-trucks, buses and other heavy-duty vehicles released from 2027 to 2032 in a bid to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

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Another Report Says CBP, ICE Not Detaining, Removing Inadmissibles Flying into Country

CBP officer

The Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has issued another report identifying ongoing problems with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processes.

A regional CBP and ICE detention and removal processes were ineffective at one major international airport, the OIG audit found. The report redacts the name and location of the airport and CBP and ICE regional offices.

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Pentagon Sued for Records About Deletion of ‘Duty, Honor, Country’ from Mission Statement

West Point

Rather than the words “Duty, Honor, Country,” the new mission statement includes the words “To build, educate, train, and inspire.”

The U.S. Defense Department is facing a lawsuit to turn over emails and documents about how the agency came to delete the phrase “Duty, Honor, Country” from the mission statement of the United States Military Academy at West Point.

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Commentary: Missouri Set to Sue New York for Election Interference as Trump’s July 11 Sentencing Date Looms

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey

After almost a month following former President Donald Trump’s conviction by a New York City jury on May 30, Missouri Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced on June 20 that his state is suing New York for its “direct attack on our democratic process through unconstitutional lawfare against President Trump”.

That’s good — better late than never — as Bailey stands as the first Republican Attorney General to actually announce such a lawsuit, with not much time before Trump’s scheduled sentencing on July 11, which could imprison to presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

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Commentary: The Extraordinary Joys of Ordinary Family Life

Family Unit

Our world of hookup culture, abortion on demand, and fading traditional family structure is pushing a rising number of young people away from wanting to have children. Even married couples are choosing to remain childless, citing everything from financial freedom to environmental concerns.

This drastic decision is often made from a place of fear and blindness, out of worry about what young couples will have to give up if they have a family. But that’s just one side of the coin. These people are also depriving themselves of the extraordinary joys that having children brings to ordinary life. So let’s start shifting the narrative. We can voice the delights of parenthood and share why it’s so meaningful, showing the world how valuable and incredible children are. They change us and challenge us in so many ways. What miracles do little ones bring to our daily lives? Here are just a few:

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Wyoming Sues Biden Administration over Fossil Fuel Ban

Rep. Harriet Hageman

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has been chipping away at the oil, gas and coal industries ever since President Joe Biden took office. Wyoming is an energy state that produces half the nation’s coal, as well as part of its oil and gas output. Since the federal government owns nearly half the state’s land, virtually all oil, gas and coal operations in the Cowboy State are heavily impacted by every rule the BLM throws at fossil fuels.

Although the Biden administration is waging war on fossil fuels, Wyoming is fighting back. The state, along with Utah, filed a lawsuit against the agency last Tuesday over its restoration lease program, and Rep. Harriett Hageman, R-Wyo., is rolling out legislation to fight back against the BLM’s proposed ban on federal coal leases.

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Post Office Firearms Ban Faces Constitutional Challenge

United States Postal Office

A federal ban on carrying guns in post offices is now in question as a legal filing is now challenging whether the ban violates the Constitution.

Two men, Gavin Pate and George Mandry, have filed suit against the Department of Justice over the ban on carrying and storing weapons at federal post office locations.

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Home Prices Under Biden Reaches New Milestone

Home for Sale

Home prices hit a record high in May despite falling demand and sales activity, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

The national median home price in the United States is now $419,300, a 5.8% increase from a year earlier and a new record high, according to the The Wall Street Journal. The record high comes as homeowners remain unwilling to list due to high mortgage rates.

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Trump’s Former DOJ Official Jeffrey Clark Files Post-Hearing Brief Poking Holes in the D.C. Bar’s Disciplinary Panel Findings

Donald Trump’s former DOJ official, Jeffrey Clark, is fighting a recommendation from the D.C. Bar’s disciplinary panel to discipline him over his concerns about illegalities in the 2020 election. Last month, he filed a Post-Hearing Brief challenging a nonbinding preliminary finding of culpability for drafting a letter that was never sent to Georgia officials advising them of their options in dealing with the irregularities.

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In First Five Years, 79,000 of DACA Recipients Admitted to U.S. Had Arrest Records

DACA Rally

Within five years of a new program created to prevent deportation of minors brought into the country illegally by their parents, nearly 80,000 were released into the U.S. with arrest records. The majority were between the ages of 19 and 22 when they were arrested, according to the latest available data published by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced he was expanding deportation protections and job opportunities for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program created by executive order by former president Barack Obama in 2012.

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Nearly Half of Americans Struggling Because of Higher Prices in Poll

Grocery Shopping

Nearly half of Americans report that the recent spike in inflation is making it harder to make ends meet, according to a new poll.

Monmouth University released a poll Wednesday showing 46% of Americans are “currently struggling to remain where they are financially.”

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Commentary: America Doesn’t Need Federal Homeschooling Standards

Home Schooling

Some of you may remember that four years ago this week I debated Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Bartholet who called for a “presumptive ban” on homeschooling. The online event was hosted by the Cato Institute and drew thousands of participants, including many homeschooling families who were incensed by Bartholet’s proposal.

Now, Scientific American is joining the crowd of busybodies eager to constrain a family’s right to raise and educate their children how they choose. “The federal government must develop basic standards for safety and quality of education in home­school­ing across the country,” read a recent editorial in the magazine.

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Becket Fund Lawyer Argues for Religious Liberty of Catholic School

St. Joseph Catholic School

A Catholic school’s ability to operate in accord with its faith is in jeopardy.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit heard oral arguments June 11 in St. Joseph Parish v. Nessel. The case involves St. Joseph Catholic School in Saint Johns, Michigan, which is asking the court to protect its ability to hire staff who share the same faith.

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Biden DOJ Hits Five Pro-Life Activists — Three Already Facing Prison for Blocking Abortion Clinic — with New Lawsuit

Cal Zastrow

President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) hit five pro-life activists with a new lawsuit Thursday for allegedly blocking access to an abortion clinic.

Three activists named in the lawsuit — Calvin Zastrow, Eva Zastrow and Chester Gallagher — were previously convicted this year on Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act charges in Tennessee. The lawsuit alleges they, along with defendants Kenneth Scott and Katelyn Sims, “trespassed onto a reproductive health center’s property, blocked the entrances and temporarily stopped operations at the center,” according to the DOJ.

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Commentary: The Middle Class Is Collateral Damage in Biden’s War on Wealth

The Biden administration’s hackneyed talking point of “the rich paying their fair share” sounds appealing at first. Who could be against fairness?

But there is nothing fair about a political agenda that punishes the middle class and lowers everyone’s standard of living — rich and poor alike.

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Commentary: More Catholics Believe in the Eucharist than Previously Thought

Catholic Eucharist

A new study by Catholic market research company Vinea Research found that belief in the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist is greater than a 2019 Pew Research study previously estimated.

Pew Research had found that 69 percent of U.S. Catholics personally believe that “the bread and wine used in Communion ‘are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.’” By contrast, only 31 percent of Catholics said that they believe that “the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus.”

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Five Illegal Immigrants Charged with Kidnapping 14-Year-Old Girl in American Heartland

Illegal Immigrants

All five men charged with kidnapping a teenage girl are living in the United States illegally, according to local law enforcement officials.

Five men were arrested early Monday morning in northeast Missouri after a 14-year-old Indiana girl was reported missing from her home, according to Fox 4, a Missouri-based outlet. The men — all of them Honduran or Mexican nationals and living in the U.S. illegally — were taken into custody and charged with kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a child.

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CBP: More than 241,000 Illegal Entries in May, 2.2 Million in Fiscal Year

Illegal Immigrants

More than 241,000 people were apprehended after illegally entering the U.S. in May, according to newly released data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

May’s numbers push the total number of apprehensions and encounters of illegal border crossers to more than 2.2 million in the first eight months of fiscal 2024.

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Biden DHS Board Painted Trump Supporters, Military and Religious People as Potential Terror Risk, Docs Show

People Praying

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) advisory board characterized supporters of President Donald Trump, as well as those who are in the military and religious people, as posing potential domestic terrorism risks, according to internal documents obtained by America First Legal (AFL).

The board, called the “Homeland Intelligence Experts Group,” was created in September 2023 to provide DHS with “expert” analysis on subjects such as terrorism and fentanyl trafficking. The panel included former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and former CIA Operations Officer Paul Kolbe, all of whom signed an October 2020 letter casting doubt on the legitimacy of the Hunter Biden laptop and suggesting its release was a Russian disinformation ploy.

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Instagram Pushes Sexualized Content on 13-Year-Olds Within Minutes of Logging In, Studies Show

Teenager on Phone

Instagram recommends sexualized content to young teenagers within minutes of their first log in, according to studies from The Wall Street Journal and Northeastern computer-science professor Laura Edelson.

The studies, which consisted of scrolling through Instagram Reels using new test accounts with listed ages of 13, found that adult sex-content creators appeared in the test accounts’ feeds in as little as three minutes, according to The Wall Street Journal. Additionally, if a test account chose to skip other forms of content and watch sexually suggestive content to completion, its feed would be dominated by sexualized content in under 20 minutes.

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Over 500,000 Illegal Migrants Crossed Southern Border While Biden Claimed He Had No Power to Stop Them

Illegal Immigrants

Hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals descended on the U.S.-Mexico border between the time President Joe Biden declared there was nothing more he could do to stop illegal immigration and when he issued his executive order.

Border Patrol agents made nearly 525,000 illegal immigrant encounters across the southern border in February, March, April and May, according to the latest data by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Those were the four months between Biden claiming to the media on Jan. 30 that he’s done “all I can do” unilaterally to stop the immigration crisis and the executive order he issued on June 4 that seeks to cap southern border crossings.

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‘Incompetence’: Pentagon Doesn’t Know How Much Money It Sent to Chinese Entities for Risky Virus Research

Science Lab

The Department of Defense (DOD) does not know how much money it directly or indirectly sent to Chinese entities to conduct research on viruses with pandemic potential, according to a new report by the DOD’s Office of Inspector General (OIG).

The OIG’s report found that DOD has supplied Chinese entities — whether directly or indirectly via subgrants — with taxpayer cash to research pathogens and the enhancement thereof, but the exact figure is unknown because of “limitations” in the DOD’s internal tracking system. Government funding for such research in China has come under scrutiny since the coronavirus pandemic, which multiple government entities believe started when an engineered virus leaked from a Chinese laboratory that was hosting U.S. government-backed gain-of-function research.

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Commentary: If Character Matters, Biden Flunks the Test

Joe Biden

When a candidate runs on character, you know his record can’t be good.

Hence President Biden’s reported $50 million spend on an ad titled “Character Matters,” which features unflattering photos of Donald Trump while focusing on the Republican nominee’s legal troubles. Hey, we paid good taxpayer money engineering those court cases and we’re not going to waste it.

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Retired Border Chief Says Michigan and Other States Face Impacts of Border Crisis

Chris Clem

The immigration wave at the southern border is a crisis of national security, and Michigan is not exempt from its effects, a recently retired Border Patrol chief says.

Former Chief Chris Clem, who is visiting Michigan as part of Americans for Prosperity’s “Secure Borders, Secure America” tour, served more than 27 years and under five presidents as a U.S. border patrol agent. He was promoted to Yuma Sector chief in December 2020, right before President Joe Biden took office. 

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Commentary: Geopolitics and Demand Growth Underpin Need for Commonsense Energy Policies

Oil rig

The U.S. energy sector finds itself in a precarious position. Increasing geopolitical volatility and strong energy demand forecasts could spell trouble domestically in the future. The U.S. needs to stop hamstringing American energy companies and invest in the nation’s infrastructure, such as pipelines, processing, and production.

If we have learned anything in the last two and a half years, it’s that the U.S.’ energy industry is not free from geopolitical chaos globally. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Houthi’s attacks in Yemen backed by Iran and turmoil in the Middle East have very real repercussions for the average American. We may not be as intensely intertwined with those realities as our European allies, but energy is a global market with implications for domestic prices, supply, and demand. While different events can affect prices at home, there are steps the administration can take to protect our energy sector.

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