Free Republic

There is no denying that the promises of illegal immigration crackdowns and a secure border wall were behind a large portion of President Trump’s votes. He got regular folk excited by the idea of being able to properly protect the nation’s borders, but up until now, despite some good progress, he has not yet managed to get the wall built nor effectively deal with Sanctuary Cities. However, a look at recent events shows that the ducks are being lined up nicely. On Tuesday, US District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, ruled against blocking parts of a border wall being built in California....

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled against an environmental challenge to President Trump’s border wall, delivering a win to the Trump administration in a decision that allows construction plans to move forward. In a 101-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel wrote that both Congress and the executive branch “share responsibilities in protecting the country from terrorists and contraband illegally entering The case involved the Trump administration’s ability to ignore environmental laws in the construction of the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The project had been challenged by several environmental groups and the state of California. The ruling will...

Immigrants detained for removal proceedings may be held indefinitely and are not entitled to a bail hearing, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. The ruling means that immigrant detainees, who are sometimes held for months and years on end, have no recourse to challenge their confinement. Justice Samuel Alito delivered the opinion for the court, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch joined most of Alito’s opinion, though they also wrote to say they do not believe the court had jurisdiction to hear the case.

Still no word on the turrets and sharks with lasers idea, but we’re holding steady… SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Tuesday sided with President Donald Trump’s administration and rejected an attempt by the state of California and environmental groups to stop the government from building a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico. The lawsuit filed in a San Diego federal court alleged that Trump’s proposed wall violates federal environmental standards, as well as constitutional provisions regarding the separation of powers and states’ rights. The plaintiffs asked U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel to stop the administration from...

Federal officials confirmed Tuesday that they launched a big immigration enforcement action this week in Northern California, after remaining silent for three days.

Accused MS-13 members laugh in court near victim’s family Five accused members of the bloodthirsty MS-13 street gang palled around like they were having a grand old time in court Tuesday as the family of a 16-year-old girl they’re accused of slaughtering looked on grimly from the gallery. Enrique Portillo, Alexi Saenz, and Jairo Saenz laughed and grinned amongst themselves, their shackles clanking, as prosecutors said they’d yet to hear if the Justice Department will allow them to seek the death penalty for the murder of best friends Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas in Brentwood in 2016.

President Trump’s threat to pull ICE and the Border Patrol out of California hasn’t been enacted (yet) so immigration enforcement activities are still taking place. Following the big sweep in the Los Angeles area, individual investigations are still being handled and CBS San Francisco brings us another of the heartbreaking tales of a family being separated by the evil forces of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This is a particularly curious bit of coverage given how these stories normally go, and we’ll get to why that is in a moment. It starts out as so many of these tales do, with...

A federal court ruled that the Trump administration has the power to waive environmental laws in order to speed up construction of the border wall. The ruling Tuesday has paved the way for President Donald Trump to construct his border wall, which the state of California and environmental groups have been trying to prevent, according to The Washington Times. U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel, who Trump has previously called biased by Trump due to his Mexican heritage, made the ruling that will allow the administration to waive environmental laws and build sections of the wall. The judge said...

President Trump is expected to finally go to California. The president, who has rarely crossed the Mississippi River during his first 13 months in office, is scheduled to visit California in mid-March to see prototypes for a potential border wall and learn more about the construction, according to administration officials involved in the planning. (please see full article at the link)

Last summer, 53-year-old Jeff Murphy was hiking in Yellowstone National Park when he disappeared. Park investigators found his body on June 9, where Murphy had fallen 500 feet from Turkey Pen Peak, after accidentally stepping into a chute. But he wasn't on just any hike. He was looking for a treasure box of gold and jewels worth up to $2 million, buried somewhere in the Rocky Mountains by an eccentric millionaire named Forrest Fenn. Fenn, an art dealer and millionaire in his 80s, lives in Santa Fe, N.M. In his self-published memoir, Fenn included a poem that supposedly leads to...

Failed Libertarian Presidential Candidate Gary Johnson is scheduled to speak at CPAC this year. That's interesting, to say the least. What does everyone think of the rest of the line-up? Besides POTUS and the VP, it looks like a mixed bag of conservative regulars, RINOs, and Never Trumpers with a few more slightly edgier choices. Does anyone here attend CPAC any more? Would be interested in your thoughts and experiences.

Federal immigration agents are escalating efforts to crack down on businesses hiring undocumented workers. New data released Friday morning shows Immigration and Customs Enforcement visited 122 businesses over the past five days, mostly in Southern California. Mike Poindexter is CEO of his family business the Poindexter Nut Company near Fresno, California. He says most Americans don't want these labor-intensive jobs. "We hire people all the time. They show up, they work two days and they leave," Poindexter said. His company is now being audited by ICE. "We've had somewhere between 5 to 10 percent of our workforce quit voluntarily just...

President Trump on Wednesday called on lawmakers to oppose a series of bipartisan efforts to address immigration and resolve the fate of the so-called “Dreamers,” demanding fealty to his hard-line approach even as more moderate senators converged on a narrower approach. Senators in both parties are racing against a self-imposed, end-of-the-week deadline to write legislation that could win broad support by increasing border security while at the same time offering a path to citizenship for immigrants brought to the United States as children. Members of a bipartisan group calling itself the Common Sense Coalition said they have reached a deal...

State legislators, the state’s entire congressional delegation and local protesters on Thursday stepped up criticism of the publication of a syndicated political cartoon, which many called racist, on the editorial page of Wednesday’s Albuquerque Journal. Roughly 50 people protested Thursday evening outside the Journal offices, and the cartoon prompted a 30-minute critique from the state Senate floor and a swirl of social media criticism. Hundreds of angry readers also called, many demanding an apology. Journal editor Karen Moses issued an apology Thursday morning and later said in an interview that there will be more scrutiny of editorial cartoons in the...

After months of secret negotiations, a shadowy Russian bilked American spies out of $100,000 last year, promising to deliver stolen National Security Agency cyberweapons in a deal that he insisted would also include compromising material on President Trump, according to American and European intelligence officials. The cash, delivered in a suitcase to a Berlin hotel room in September, was intended as the first installment of a $1 million payout, according to American officials, the Russian and communications reviewed by The New York Times. The theft of the secret hacking tools had been devastating to the N.S.A., and the agency was...

PHOENIX — Hopis and Navajos who work at a coal mine near the Arizona-Utah border said Tuesday their family lives and earning power will suffer greatly if the power plant fed by the mine is shuttered as planned. The Navajo Generating Station in Page is set to close at the end of 2019 unless a new owner can be found. That’s considered a long-shot, but the company that owns the supply mine says it has identified investors interested in one of the largest coal plants in the West. More than 200 workers, their family members and supporters in blue T-shirts,...

A local official in Hidalgo, Texas, cajoled company executives to hire a firm owned by his family in exchange for a cut of lucrative construction contracts, an investigation from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found. Claims against that official and his family were made last year in a lawsuit by the county. The kickback scheme started during a discussion at a steakhouse near the US-Mexico border in Texas. The kickback scheme was allegedly hashed out over weeknight drinks at a steakhouse in a border county in south Texas. Amid surf and turf and expensive scotch, a Hidalgo County official said...

Article II of the Constitution gives states broad authority to decide how their electoral votes are selected and divided among the candidates. In 48 states, the candidate who gets the most votes wins all of the state’s electoral votes. But the Constitution doesn’t require that rule. Maine and Nebraska have implemented district- by-district voting. One electoral vote goes to the winner in each congressional district, and the remaining two electoral votes are awarded to the winner of the statewide popular vote. Assume, however, that a state enacts a law giving all its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins...

Just in case any of our elected representatives didn’t notice, we’re going to run out of money (again) in a few days. As you may recall, the largest sticking point in the recent edition of Shutdown Theater was the lack of an agreement on a DACA bill. As Ed mentioned earlier, there is a new proposal to get Congress moving on settling the matter and it’s coming in the form of a bipartisan, gang-style arrangement between Senators John McCain and Chris Coons. The details remain a bit sketchy, but the Washington Post has what little we know about it so...

On Tuesday evening, in his first State of the Union address, President Trump defended the “American way” and offered a four-point plan on immigration. Trump’s proposal “offers a path to citizenship for 1.8 million illegal immigrants who were brought here by their parents at a young age,” known as DREAMers; includes implementing his signature campaign promise to build a wall on America’s southern border, ending the visa lottery, and ending chain migration. Trump unequivocally extended a hand of bipartisanship. But Democrats were furious over the president’s words, saying he has only made a bipartisan deal harder to reach. Given the...