WASHINGTON — If you think of Joe Biden as a nice old man who was kicked to the curb, consider his administration’s jaw-dropping efforts to sabotage Donald Trump. The president-elect plans to actually enforce federal immigration law starting Jan. 20, when Trump takes the oath of office. As the New York Post reported Thursday, Team Biden “is quietly rushing to implement new policies that will loosen restrictions on migrants who entered the U.S. illegally — a parting attempt to thwart President-elect Donald Trump’s immigration crackdowns and mass deportations,” according to sources. It’s no wonder that Trump campaigned on the pledge to order “mass deportations” — and it’s no wonder that he won in November. For some time now, New York has been ground zero — with horror stories to show for it. On Wednesday, a New York prosecutor was robbed by a Venezuelan migrant with a Big Apple rap sheet and suspected ties to Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. He also was charged with masturbating in front of her. “He arrived here in New York in June and has managed to get arrested seven times since June, and at one point was smiling, and is smiling now, and I observed him laughing during the proceeding,” Judge Janet McDonnell noted during the hearing, according to the Post. Be it noted, New York is a sanctuary city. So it should be no surprise that more than 210,000 migrants have landed in the Big Apple since 2022. The city has been unable to house all the newcomers, so many are sleeping on the streets. In August, the New York Times reported, the city housed people in more than 100 hotels, with 16,000 hotel rooms serving as shelters. Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has the right idea. He declared Tren de Aragua a “terrorist organization.” So which state looks better to transnational gangs? The crisis was inevitable. On his first day as president, Biden ordered a 100-day pause on deportations and gave the green light to illegal crossings when he halted Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program — with little thought of the impact on American citizens, native and foreign-born. U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded 10.5 million encounters at the border during Biden’s tenure. “It is clear that the Biden administration has used unlawful mass-parole programs to shift hundreds of thousands of inadmissible aliens to ports of entry for release into the interior, often with little or no vetting. The end result is the same — a continuing, historic border crisis,” the House Committee on Homeland Security warned in May. It’s no wonder that Trump campaigned on the pledge to order “mass deportations” — and it’s no wonder that he won in November. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston is one of many blue-city mayors who have pledged to resist Trump’s planned deportations. He warned that if federal officials implement Trump’s plan, the Mile High City could see a “Tiananmen Square moment” — Denver police could be “stationed at the county line.” Johnston also maintained his sanctuary city would not be “bullied” into changing its values. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey told MSNBC, “Every tool in the tool box is going to be used to protect our citizens, to protect our residents and protect our states, and certainly hold the line on democracy and rule of law.” Problem: Illegal immigrants are not citizens, governor — and Trump’s goal is to enforce the rule of law. If Healey and Johnston don’t want federal officials to deport illegal migrants — Trump-designated “border czar” Tom Homan plans to start with a focus on illegal migrants with criminal records — they should organize to change the law. I should use this moment to note that many migrants who cross over illegally are looking for a better life. America is better because of its tradition of welcoming newcomers. There are laws in place to vet and approve would-be Americans, and it doesn’t make sense to reward newcomers who don’t respect those laws — especially when the numbers and lack of vetting have downgraded the quality of life in heavily impacted areas. Former NBC News anchor Brian Williams showed he understands what is at stake when he said on Late Night With Seth Meyers that Biden’s “biggest unforced error” was the border. “To tell people it’s not a problem, it’s insulting,” Williams added. And: “For the working class to see incoming migrants getting welcome bags, debit cards, and motel rooms is probably insulting as well.” Williams had a term for this phenomenon: “suicidal empathy.” READ MORE from Debra J. Saunders: Trump Picks His Cabinet, Breaks China The Transition That Turned Into a Loss Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post Sabotaging Trump: Abolishing Migrant Restrictions appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Trump’s appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the HHS has sparked fierce debate about everything from fluoride to vaccinations to raw milk. However, these feuds miss the mark when discussing the key contributors to a long and healthy life — common sense. In the current cultural moment, where politics serves as a proxy for entertainment, people seem to forget that policy is not a solution to this country’s biggest problems, including our health woes. While RFK Jr. may help clean up the corruption at the three letter agencies, return scientific research to the gold standard, and finally get the food pyramid right, no amount of law or congressional hearings will replace the foundational pillars of good health — frequent exercise, healthy eating habits, adequate sleep and sunshine, and healthy relationships with friends and family. We should not look to politicians as our saviors. While I am as excited as anyone about the next four years living unburdened by what has been, elevating Trump and his new cast of outlaws to “Avenger” status is misplaced hope. No one is coming to save us. Hopefully, a new administration will create an environment in which we are freer to make positive healthy choices. But the choices are still ours to make. Grass fed steak over hot dogs. Roasted sweet potatoes over potato chips. Stairs over elevator. Even a nice piece of high cacao dark chocolate over a Milky Way. It’s simple everyday decisions like this, stacked day after day, that lead us to a path of health and vitality. Choosing to be healthy is a matter of setting priorities. Declining the alcohol when everyone else is imbibing. Learning how to cook at home. Purchasing healthy items on a budget. Success in health is obtained just like success in any other area of life whether it be financial or professional — through time, preparation, and sacrifice. And like any other challenge, those sacrifices offer great rewards when made consistently. Rewards like not being addicted to pharmaceutical interventions or being able to run outside with your kids or dog. Don’t ever underestimate waking up with a clear mind and fresh spirit, excited about the day ahead of you. Of course we want government looking out for our best interests, free from excessive corporate greed and private interests. Trump has positioned RFK Jr. to get to the bottom of some of the country’s biggest health concerns and conflicts of interest. Do GMO’s and pesticides pose any real health risks? How many vaccines do kids really need and is MRNA technology safe or effective? What are the long-term effects of Ozempic? Are psychedelics the silver bullet to cure mental health that many claim they are? These are all crucial issues that require full transparency and research free from perverse incentives. Still, most Americans do not need to be splitting hairs about a keto diet or intermittent fasting. Personally, such topics fascinate me. But not everyone needs a Ph.D. in health to lead a vital, fulfilling life. It seems information overload has plagued the simplest of decisions and confused healthy habits that should be instilled at a young age to prepare vibrant and virtuous citizens. Children’s education should include nutrition courses and plenty of outdoor play time. Restoring Home Economics classes (can we still call them that?) that teach gardening, cooking, and simple chores should be a priority for the new Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, assuming the Department of Education will still exist a couple of years from now. SNAP and WIC dollars should limit the ability to purchase addictive and unhealthy items such as soda and candy. It certainly is an exciting moment to be alive at a time when transformation of how things are done in Washington D.C. is viable. But remember, politics will always be politics and the real opportunity for change is and always will be within our own homes and communities. Alec Zeck encapsulated this perfectly in a post on X recently: “My wife and I choose what’s best for our family. Period. Government has no say in our home. I don’t care who runs the CDC, FDA, or other corrupt 3 letter agencies. I’m in charge of my own health decisions.” This is the time to embrace health sovereignty — while we still have the choice to do so. READ MORE from Jennifer Galardi: The Mainstream Media Ignores You Food Fight: Competing Visions for America’s Health The post Good Health Depends on Us, Not the Government appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

At President-elect Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign rallies, attendees would hold “Trump Will Fix It” signs. Here’s hoping the antitrust policy that President Joe Biden excessively politicized is one of those “its.” It’s hard to overstate the importance of appointing a better attorney general and FTC chair this time around. Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, previously said he believes that Biden’s appointee as chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan, has done a good job with antitrust policy. I disagree. For nearly 40 years, most antitrust scholars sensibly agreed that the government should base its treatment of potential corporate monopolization, mergers, and related issues on these actions’ effect on “consumer welfare.” This standard ensures that antitrust is used only to prevent businesses from undermining economic competition, preserving a market that drives prices down and product quality up on behalf of us consumers. Antitrust should not protect businesses from competition. Upon taking control of the FTC, Khan discarded this standard and, along with it, decades of bipartisan agreement. Biden’s Department of Justice and FTC quickly morphed antitrust into a tool for helping the White House achieve political aims that have nothing to do with keeping markets competitive. Consider, for example, how the FTC pursued Elon Musk. A newly released report by the House Judiciary Committee delved into how Khan issued a consent decree against X (then Twitter) for no reason other than that Musk — whose existing business interests were in other industries — was the company’s CEO. Khan “called for an immediate vote” just days after reporters announced the sale, which an FTC insider confirmed was what triggered the attention. The Biden FTC also had no problem targeting companies that challenged its corporate donor base. For example, Khan released an interim report against pharmacy benefit managers, companies that health plans hire to ensure they are receiving drugs at competitive costs. The major drug manufacturers have spent significant sums lobbying the government to challenge PBMs, even though the government’s own research shows these companies save patients (and taxpayers) significant sums. With the consumer welfare standard diminished, the facts didn’t stop Khan from protecting drug companies, which have showered her boss with campaign contributions, from market discipline. The shenanigans led Melissa Holyoak, a Republican FTC commissioner, to publicly dissent. She protested that “the Report was plagued by process irregularities and concerns over substance — or lack thereof — of the original order.” So much so that “the politicized nature of the process appears to have led to the departure of at least one senior leader at the Commission.” If that’s a “good job” in Vance’s view, we should be alarmed. The Biden DOJ hasn’t acted any more responsibly. For example, it sued RealPage, an AI-based software company that helps landlords come to terms with market pricing for their units, for facilitating alleged price-gouging even though it had no evidence. The Wall Street Journal editorial board stated that “it doesn’t require a Ph.D. in economics to understand that ballooning rents are caused by demand exceeding supply” and that “what’s really going on (with this suit) is an attempt to distract voters from frustration over the Biden Administration’s inflationary policies.” More recently, Biden’s DOJ targeted Visa’s debit card business over market share concerns despite the clear consumer benefits created by the company. These include secure, accessible services that millions of Americans rely on. Businesses and consumers have plenty of payment choices, but millions choose Visa for this reason. Rather than respecting those choices, Biden’s DOJ is pursuing its anti-corporate agenda with little regard for consumers’ welfare. The solution to the DOJ and FTC’s descent into political partisanship is straightforward: comprehensive reform. Come January, the Trump administration and Republican-controlled Congress must demand a recommitment to the consumer welfare standard. They must institute checks that prevent the DOJ and FTC from waging ideological warfare. Measures to ensure transparency and inter-commission collaboration, such as requiring the FTC to disclose the rationale and goals of its investigations, could also prove helpful. It’s hard to overstate the importance of appointing a better attorney general and FTC chair this time around. Coupled with new oversight measures, it could go far toward restoring fairness, protecting actual competition, and preventing rogue bureaucrats from imposing their will for personal or ideological gain. Most importantly, it would help restore the country’s trust in its governmental institutions. Whether that will come to pass remains to be seen. American businesses and consumers deserve a government that respects the rule of law. By simply refocusing the FTC and antitrust division of the DOJ on their foundational purposes, we can begin a new era of fair and impartial regulation that serves the public good. That’s something we all should be able to get behind. READ MORE from Veronique de Rugy: Bipartisan Bummer: ‘Industrial Policy’ The GOP’s Gigantic Opportunity Veronique de Rugy is the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. To find out more about Veronique de Rugy and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post Will Trump Fix Insidious FTC, DOJ Abuses? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Until recently, the biggest challenge facing education reformers was persuading local politicians in states with powerful teacher unions to legalize what has come to be known as “school choice” — the public subsidy of multiple K-12th grade learning options. For while Americans have always had the legal right to educate their children outside the local public school, the cost of doing so at a private or parochial facility has effectively limited that freedom to more affluent families. [T]he number of collaborative programs, especially at churches, is clearly skyrocketing. And while parents have always had the theoretical ability to homeschool, this too has always been easier allowed than done. Undertaking to instruct one’s own child has not only meant giving up the economic benefits of a full-time job but facing the challenge of being a novice teacher with little outside support. Difficult enough for one spouse in a two-parent household, but impossible for most single parents. Yet today, a rapidly spreading religious movement involving multiple denominations is making it possible for more and more families to provide their children with a non-public school option, even if their state legislatures are unwilling to subsidize it. By taking advantage of their large spaces, which go mostly unused during the work week, and enlisting the support of volunteer congregants, a growing number of churches around the country are making it possible for parents to collaboratively homeschool their children without ever having to sacrifice their day jobs. And for fees as low as a few hundred dollars a year. The origins of this trend go back to Covid, when conventional public and private schools were closed and many parents felt compelled to form small neighborhood groups — what the media soon dubbed “learning pods” or “microschools” — to educate their children. With senior centers, YMCAs, town halls, and other venues which might normally have been able to host these improvised schools also closed, a large number of them ended up operating out of local parishes. But as the pandemic subsided and conventional schools gradually reopened, the big surprise was how many families decided that they wanted to stick with what was effectively a new teaching model, church-sited homeschooling. Parents especially liked the freedom to personalize their child’s curriculum within the context of an environment that stressed traditional values. And at the same time, many of the clergy who had initially seen these improvised schools as a temporary measure began to regard them as a worthy ongoing mission. “If you were to ask me ten years ago if I would be interested in starting a homeschool type program,” says Fr. Matthew Conley, pastor of the Saint Mary of the Nativity Church on Boston’s south shore, “I’d have quickly said ‘no thanks … not interested.’” But when he saw how well one of his parishioners, Malin Agostino, had homeschooled her own four children, he thought “perhaps this is something we should be offering around here” and asked her to think about starting one. (READ MORE from Lewis M. Andrews: Leftist Colleges Tend to Produce Leftist Scientific Studies) With just five months to get ready and no advertising beyond word-of-mouth, Agostino and her church team got the Stella Maris Catholic Academy ready to open this September with seventeen K-11th grade students from the surrounding Scituate community. Charging just $1,500 a year for children whose parents help to run the three-day-a-week group homeschool and $3,000 for those being dropped off, their program is on track to double in size by next fall and seems likely to soon reach the maximum number of 75 students the church can comfortably accommodate. Some clergy have become interested enough in homeschooling that they directly manage their own church programs. At the nondenominational Harvest Family Church in Conroe, Texas, for example, Associate Pastor Linda Roberts oversees a two-day-a-week ministry which provides 81 homeschooled children with classes on 24 subjects, ranging from pre-K basics to high school chemistry. We try to “make homeschooling a more viable option for local parents,” Roberts says, by creating a place “where kids can build friendships, the adults can share information, and help is available for difficult subjects.” Families can choose from an à la carte menu of inexpensively supervised courses, averaging just $130 per semester, and teachers themselves have the option to be paid with tuition credits for their own children. There are even church homeschools which have become adjuncts of more traditional parish-sponsored academies. In the Silicon Valley town of Los Altos, for example, the Saint Paul’s Anglican Church runs both the long-established Canterbury Christian School and a newer program for local homeschooled children. The latter may not provide its students with the same amenities as the former, says headmaster Rev. Steve Macias, but it at least gives their families a public-school alternative without one parent having to quit work “in a part of the country … where even ordinary homes cost $3-to-$4 million.” PBS News estimates that overall homeschool enrollment in the U.S. has risen a remarkable 30 percent since 2019, just before American parents first became aware of Covid. Once more, according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, the trend is clearly accelerating with the number of homeschooled students going from 3.6 million to 4 million, or up 11 percent, over the last year alone. Exactly how much of this increase is due to churches across the country combining homeschool curricula, their unused space, and congregant volunteers to create affordable venues for alternative K-12th grade instruction is hard to say. This is because only eight states – Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Tennessee, and Washington – explicitly grant local parishes or parochial schools the right to oversee homeschoolers. And while there are legal ways for houses of worship in the other 42 states to also do it, they must navigate the kind of regulatory minefield which instinctively causes many to keep a low profile. In some states, for example, churches must be careful to call their educational program something like a “learning center” or “child support ministry,” not a “school.” Church Homeschooling Programs Surge But as changes in the demand for homeschool curricula make clear, the number of collaborative programs, especially at churches, is clearly skyrocketing. My Father’s World used to sell educational materials just to individual families, says the company’s group schooling specialist Leah Brooks, but over the least two years “my side of the business (has) grown a ton.” Equally telling is the number of organizations around the country dedicated to helping area churches organize their own homeschool collaboratives. In Kansas, for example, homeschool mom of six Delana Wallace runs the Heartland Education Reformation Organization (HERO), a nonprofit which advocates for 15 parish-sited homeschool programs and connects local clergy with educators interested in helping to start others. And in Massachusetts, the Family Institute website hosts an online guide to “Church-Based Learning Center Resources,” which has already been used to create 20 Protestant and Catholic programs in the Bay State. “We are in a new age of church homeschooling,” says the guide’s author, Pastor Adam Rondeau of the Bethany Assembly of God Church in Agawam. Working on a national level, Chula Vista Christian University president Lisa Dunne runs the Academic Rescue Mission, which provides online guidance and counseling to congregations wanting to start their own homeschool collaboratives. To date, she has helped start 34 programs in California, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Texas, and other states. (READ MORE: K-12 School Choice Will Improve Higher Education) More recently, former Republican candidate for Minnesota governor Kendall Qualls and his wife Sheila have begun working through their TakeCharge Foundation to establish what they call Washington Academies. Using a homeschool curriculum developed by Hillsdale College, each is designed to start as a K-2nd grade church-sited school that can accommodate the next highest grade every successive year until all grades are taught. One such school just opened in Mississippi, and four more are in development — one in Michigan, one in Tennessee, and two in Minnesota. Ever since June of 2022, when Arizona became the first state to pass universal school choice, prompting eleven other red-leaning states to follow, the frustrating challenge for school reformers in bluer states has been getting their own elected representatives to adopt a similar policy. But as churches around the country are showing, the absence of such legislation does not have to deny any state’s families an affordable alternative to their local public school. The post Churches Bring School Choice to Every State appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

from DollarVigilante: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

from Strategic Culture: This week marks a fateful threshold for the world. In a grave announcement, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the three-year proxy war in Ukraine has now reached a global dimension. The responsibility for this abysmal moment lies fully with the United States’ elitist rulers and their British accomplices. They are inciting […]

He's not owned by Israel so won't be working with Trump https://t.co/dF44vyvWki — Jake Shields (@jakeshieldsajj) November 23, 2024

So convenient! READ MORE...

“Any nation or organization that aids or abets this outrage should expect to meet firm resistance from the United States, and I look forward to working with President Trump, his team, and my colleagues in Congress to come up with a powerful response,” Graham said. Daily Mail (h/t Nita) The International Criminal Court issued an […]

A shocking, but not at all unexpected if you know anything about Islam, video featuring a Muslim alleged ‘refugee’ in Sweden has ignited fresh demands for the country to put an end to all Islamic immigration. RAIR Foundation (h/t Nita)  In the footage, the woman unleashes a tirade against Sweden, wishing extreme suffering on citizens […]