Free Republic

Working on Christmas Eve and through the government shutdown over border wall funding, President Donald Trump tweeted he had authorized the construction of a 115-mile stretch of border wall in Texas. "I am in the Oval Office & just gave out a 115 mile long contract for another large section of the Wall in Texas," President Trump tweeted Monday night. "We are already building and renovating many miles of Wall, some complete. "Democrats must end Shutdown and finish funding. Billions of Dollars, & lives, will be saved!" Working in the Oval Office after canceling his trip to Mar-a-Lago in Florida...

FULL TITLE: LINDSEY GRAHAM BERATES DEMOCRATS FOR ACTING ‘LIKE CHILDREN’ ON BORDER WALL FUNDING, SAYS TRUMP SHOULD ‘BREAK ‘EM NOW’ South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham on Friday berated Democrats who refuse to compromise with President Trump on border wall funding. Fox News host Shannon Bream introduced Graham as having “three words for Republicans on the border wall, ‘let’s dig in,'” then asked the South Carolina senator where things are headed next. WATCH:

Since it’s never too early to start the 2020 election cycle, CNN got out ahead of the pack this week and put a poll in the field in Iowa, the first caucus state for the presidential election. They were looking to see who the hot prospects for the nomination are. The results aren’t all that much different from some national polls we’ve already looked it, but there were a few juicy bits of goodness in there. At the top of the pack (as usual) were Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. The only real shocker was to see Beto O’Rourke moving...

The Department of Homeland Security claimed in a statement Friday that the 7-year-old migrant girl who died in their custody was not ill upon an initial screening and was offered food and water. The father and daughter, identified by a Guatemalan official as Nery Caal and Jakelin Caal, crossed the U.S. border into New Mexico in a remote location 90 miles from the nearest Border Patrol station The father denied that Jackeline was ill and signed a form indicating that there were no visible signs of trauma and that the child appeared to be in good health, according to a...

Why should the U.S. build a better wall on the southern border? House Majority Whip Steve Scalise offered a clear and candid rationale during a Fox News appearance this week, telling host Mark Levin that 10 known terrorists are captured each day trying to breach the border. U.S. Customs and Border Protections also informed Congress that 3,029 people were apprehended in one day this month — deeming the occurrence a crisis. Meanwhile, 21 percent of all potential migrants — an astonishing 158 million people — would like to come live in America if they could, according to a Gallup analysis,...

Ohio Congressman Warren Davidson thinks crowdfunding may provide a solution to the controversial proposal of building a wall on the Mexican border. And, perhaps more notably, he suggested using a cryptocurrency to do so. During an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep, the U.S. lawmaker explained that he has already proposed letting the American public pay for the wall, which is opposed by Democrats but mades up a key aspect of President Donald Trump’s list of 2016 campaign promises. In particular, Davidson told Inskeep, he has suggested a private funding program wherein “the American people, or whomever should choose to donate,”...

For the first time since the 2018-midterm elections, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with President Trump at the White House Tuesday. Their meeting was originally supposed to be closed press, but that all changed when the White House press pool was invited into the Oval Office to broadcast their remarks. President Trump started the meeting by thanking Pelosi and Schumer for showing up and made his case for additional border security. "I am proud to shut down the government over border security," Trump said. "I will take the mantle." "They're pouring into our...

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the presumed incoming chairman for the House Armed Services Committee, voiced his extreme displeasure after the Department of Defense extended the deployment of active-duty service members on the U.S.-Mexico border. They will stay at the border until January 31.The Department of Homeland Security requested the extension due to the “ongoing threat” of large, and sometimes violent, migrant caravans.“I continue to strongly question the deployment of U.S. military service members at our southern border. Furthermore, the decision to extend this deployment to the end of January 2019 is not a responsible use of Department of Defense resources...

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz with three other senators introduced a bill Wednesday that is aimed at fully funding a wall along the US-Mexico border... The WALL Act would fully fund the border wall by closing existing loopholes that provide illegal immigrants with federal benefits and tax credits, without affecting the benefits and tax credits used by Americans.

This is terrific news for American workers and consumers… Unless, of course, Democrats ever regain control of government. Science Daily reported: Today, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced the Wolfcamp Shale and overlying Bone Spring Formation in the Delaware Basin portion of Texas and New Mexico’s Permian Basin province contain an estimated mean of 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, according to an assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). This estimate is for continuous (unconventional) oil, and consists of undiscovered, technically recoverable resources. “Christmas...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rebuffed a challenge by three conservation groups to the authority of President Donald Trump’s administration to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, a victory for Trump who has made the wall a centerpiece of his hardline immigration policies. The justices’ declined to hear the groups’ appeal of a ruling by a federal judge in California rejecting their claims that the administration had pursued border wall projects without complying with applicable environmental laws. The groups are the Center for Biological Diversity, the Animal Legal Defense Fund and Defenders of Wildlife. Their...

The founder of Southwest Key made millions from housing migrant children. His nonprofit has stockpiled taxpayer dollars and possibly engaged in self-dealing with top executives. Juan Sanchez grew up along the Mexican border in a two-bedroom house so crowded with children that he didn’t have a bed. But he fought his way to another life. He earned three degrees, including a doctorate in education from Harvard, before starting a nonprofit in his Texas hometown. Mr. Sanchez has built an empire on the back of a crisis. His organization, Southwest Key Programs, now houses more migrant children than any other in...

he house at 1212 1/2 West Front Street in Plainfield, N.J., is a conventional midcentury home with slate-gray siding, white trim and Victorian lines. When I stood in front of it on a breezy day in October, I could hear the cries of children from the playground of an elementary school around the corner. American flags fluttered from porches and windows. The neighborhood is a leafy, middle-class Anytown. The house is set back off the street, near two convenience stores and a gift shop. On the door of Superior Supermarket was pasted a sign issued by the Plainfield police: ''Safe...

FULL TITLE: Border Patrol Official: Caravan Migrants Pushed Women and Children to Front of Clash While Assaulting Officers Forty-two caravan migrants broke into the United and were arrested on Sunday, while organizers pushed women and children to the front of the melee, a top border patrol agent told CNN. “Forty-two [caravan migrants] crossed the border and were arrested … there were numerous people that actually made it across the border,” said Rodney Scott, Chief Patrol Agent for the San Diego Sector of the border. The caravan’s organizers also pushed women and children to the front of the clash, Scott said...

It took several days after House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) publicly announced introduction of a new bill to fund the border barrier and implement important immigration measures before the text of the proposed legislation became available. The bill McCarthy announced was the "Build the Wall, Enforce the Law Act of 2018", H.R. 7059,(1) which was described in the media as a "new get-tough immigration bill that would build the rest of President Trump's border wall, punish sanctuary cities and stiffen penalties on repeat illegal immigrants."(2) The legislative language of the bill may not completely live up to its media...

It should tell us something about her home country that a mother is willing to travel 2,000 miles with her 4-month old son to come here. Should tell us something about our country that we only respond to this desperate need once she is at our border. So far, in this administration, that response has included taking kids from their parents, locking them up in cages, and now tear gassing them at the border. People are leaving violent countries where they fear for their lives. Without money, they are subsisting on hope for their kids, for themselves, that they can...

The Trump administration is attempting to negotiate a deal with Mexico over the thousands of Central American caravan migrants camped out in Tijuana and Mexicali, and last night, announced there was one , with asylum applicants having to wait out adjudication of their claims in Mexico, not the U.S. The idea was to disincentivize junk asylum claims from applicants whose real aim is to work in the U.S. for a couple years and remit the earnings until courts get around to dismissing the claims and deports them. Well, until Mexico said there wasn't a deal. Which is about par for...

The narratives of the midterm elections were set when suburban voters turned against President Trump, women racked up record numbers of electoral wins and Republicans dominated rural states and counties. But dive deeper into the results and some more surprising storylines emerge, from familial ties to long shot candidates, expanding suburbs and new battlegrounds. Here are the overlooked stories that didn’t get enough coverage after the polls closed. Did Puerto Ricans elect Rick Scott? When Hurricane Maria left Puerto Rico devastated in 2017, almost 400,000 of the island’s residents moved to the mainland. Many of them landed in Florida, where...

Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector stopped several criminal aliens and three gang members from making their way successfully into the U.S. interior. Those arrested included two child rapists, two killers, a member of the 18th Street gang and two MS-13 gang members. On the day before Thanksgiving, McAllen Station agents arrested a man who illegally crossed the border from Mexico near the town of Hidalgo, Texas. During processing at the station, agents discovered the man is a Honduran national and a confirmed member of the 18th Street gang. Later that same day, other agents working near...

<p>MEXICO CITY — The Trump administration has won the support of Mexico’s incoming government for a plan to remake U.S. border policy by requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims move through U.S. courts, according to Mexican officials and senior members of president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s transition team.</p>