Free Republic

The country’s immigration enforcement officers launched a website Tuesday demanding that President Trump do more to clean up their agency, saying he has left the Obama team in place and it’s stymying his goal of enforcing laws on the books. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervisors in Philadelphia banned officers from wearing bulletproof vests during an operation in the dangerous “badlands” section in the city’s north for fear of offending the immigrant community. Meanwhile, officers in one Utah city are required to give city officials seven days’ heads-up before arresting anyone — and by the time they go to make...

A Russian national was shot by a Border Patrol agent Thursday night in the Arizona desert near Lukeville, on the Mexican border southwest of Tucson. The individual, whose identity was not released by authorities, was taken to a Phoenix-area hospital... Lukeville is an unincorporated hamlet with a border crossing, and lies within the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in a rugged stretch of desert about 110 miles southwest of Tucson. The area has seen a large number of migrants crossing the border to turn themselves in to federal border agents and request asylum over the past year... The Trump administration...

Appearing Saturday on CNN, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) predicted the 2020 Democrat presidential primary is heading toward a brokered convention and suggested delegates could nominate former first lady Michelle Obama to face off against President Donald Trump in 2020.

With few exceptions, states are losing the battle with aging bridges in need of repair or replacement. Even states with low percentages of bridges rated poor are finding it difficult to keep up with bridge and road systems that in many cases are 50 years old or older. Utah, which ranks fourth for the lowest percentage of poor bridges, programs a bridge for repair or replacement in the year after it drops to a poor rating, completing the project within four or five years. The Utah Department of Transportation notes, though, that the number of bridges falling from good to...

WASHINGTON — Senator Elizabeth Warren vowed on Friday to pass major health care legislation in her first 100 days as president, unveiling a new, detailed plan to significantly expand public health insurance coverage as a first step, and promising to pass a “Medicare for all” system by the end of her third year in office that would cover all Americans. The initial bill she would seek to pass if elected would be a step short of the broader Medicare for all plan she has championed. But it would substantially expand the reach and generosity of public health insurance, creating a...

Sen. Bernard Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday are introducing legislation that calls for a guaranteed right to housing and would put up to $180 billion over 10 years toward retrofitting and cutting carbon emissions in federal public housing. The legislation would amend federal law to say it’s the policy of the U.S. to use federal funds and the credit of the country “to guarantee the right to housing for every individual” - an expansive view of government reach reflected in their “Green New Deal” to combat climate change. The bill provides money for solar panels and renewable energy...

Conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices on Tuesday appeared sympathetic to President Donald Trump’s effort to rescind a program that protects from deportation hundreds of thousands of immigrants who entered the United States illegally as children – dubbed “Dreamers” – part of his tough immigration policies. Several of the five conservative justices appeared skeptical that courts can even review the Republican president’s 2017 plan to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which had been implemented in 2012 by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama. Even if the court finds that it can be reviewed, conservative justices indicated they think...

No excerpt from Bloomberg allowed, story here. She wants a 59% top income tax rate and to tax unrealized capital gains yearly, including real estate and business holdings.

A New Mexico town recently joined a growing movement of local governments that are passing measures to support unborn babies’ right to life. On Tuesday, the Kirtland Town Council voted to take a stand for life when it passed “A Resolution In Support of the Unborn,” the Albuquerque Journal reports. Mayor Mark Duncan proposed the measure partly in response to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who supports abortion on demand, according to the report. Earlier this year, Grisham joined abortion activists in lobbying for a radical pro-abortion bill that would have allowed abortions for basically any reason up to birth in...

TRUMP WALL - Track The Status Of Trump's Border Wall Project List Overview: 1 Map Name Date of Contract Announcement Start Date Completion Date Percent Completed State/City/Region Total Miles Total Built: Type of Wall Cost (millions) Per Mile Cost Funding Source (per CBP press release) Contractor URL 2 September 30, 2019 January 2020 Starr, Hidalgo and Cameron County, Texas 65 0.0 The border wall system will include an 18-30 foot tall steel bollard wall, all-weather roads, lighting, enforcement cameras, and other related technology to create a complete enforcement zone. $386 M $6 M FY19 appropriations Southern Border Constructors and Gibraltar-Caddell Joint...

WASHINGTON — A bare majority of the U.S. Supreme Court appeared likely Tuesday to let the Trump administration follow through on its plan to shut down DACA, the federal program that has allowed nearly 800,000 young people, known as dreamers, to avoid deportation and remain in the U.S. With hundreds of DACA supporters rallying outside — so many that police shut down the street in front of the Supreme Court — the justices heard nearly an hour and a half of oral arguments. Based on their questions, it appeared that the court's five conservatives were inclined to rule that the...

Mexico has made an unspecified number of arrests over last week’s massacre of three women and six children of dual U.S-Mexican nationality in the north of the country, Security Minister Alfonso Durazo said on Monday. “There have been arrests, but it’s not up to us to give information,” Durazo told reporters in Mexico City. The women and children from families of U.S. Mormon origin who settled in Mexico decades ago were killed last Monday on a remote dirt road in the state of Sonora by suspected drug cartel gunmen, sparking outrage and condemnation in the United States. Durazo said that...

Taxpayer watchdog group: Emails show sales tax revenue going toward projects that are ‘not what most voters have in mind’..[ full title] ... A Colorado Springs tax watchdog group obtained communications between city employees that show discussion of using sales tax revenue for traffic reduction and bike lane infrastructure while other city officials have denied that’s where funds would be directed. City voters approved a road improvement ballot measure called 2C in 2015, which is up for renewal in the Nov. 5 election. 2C is a 0.62 percent sales tax increase that is supposed to be dedicated to road maintenance...

Officials say an El Paso Sector Border Patrol agent exchanged gunfire with a subject on Monday morning in Sunland Park, New Mexico. The agent returned fire, striking and killing the alleged shooter.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and his merry band of Green Little Dealers offer a national alarm bell for the national Green New Deal proposal. ... Advocates for free markets, affordable energy for everyday people, and expanding our miraculous energy independence must closely watch what’s happening among the states. Case in point: Colorado’s Green Little Deal ... directly attack key industries such as coal, oil and gas, and automobiles while giving considerable power to government to regulate and transition workers, all disregarding economic realities. ... Polis has established Offices of “Just Transition” and “Future at Work.” ... The big difference between...

Bishops from the U.S. and Mexico held a highly political Mass at the border separating their two countries on Saturday morning, insisting in a statement that “there is no ‘us’ and ‘them.’”....... Last month, Bishop Seitz wrote a searing “pastoral letter” denouncing President Trump’s border wall as a “monument to hate” and a symbol of exclusion and racism. “Borders, in the spirit of the Eucharist, exist not to separate and divide, but to identify and complement one another.” “The wall deepens racially charged perceptions of how we understand the border as well as Mexicans and migrants. It extends racist talk...

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., faced criticism Wednesday after voting "present" on a House resolution to formally recognize the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as a genocide. The measure, H.Res.296, passed the chamber by an overwhelming 405-to-11 margin, representing a forceful rebuke to Turkey following the NATO ally's recent incursion against the Kurds along the Turkish-Syrian border. Two other House members also voted "present" with Omar: fellow Democrat Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, and one Republican, Paul Gosar of Arizona. But it was Omar's vote that drew the dismay of Armenian advocacy groups and political organizations. Omar's "votes and...

Democrat legislators have drafted a bill to import at least 50,000 “climate refugees” per year despite the damaging impact on Americans’ wages and rents. “America will continue to stand tall as a safe haven for immigrants,” declared Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY), who was born in Puerto Rico and chairs the House Committee on Small Business. She said: Despite this Administration’s efforts to strip the world’s most vulnerable populations of refuge … this legislation will not only reaffirm our nation’s longstanding role as a home to those fleeing conflict and disasters, but it will also update it to reflect changes to...

Hydraulic fracturing could be responsible for an increase in earthquakes in the Permian Basin in West Texas, as oil and gas operations increase during a boom in the region. A study published Tuesday by the University of Texas at Austin suggested the practice, known as fracking, could be linked to earthquakes in the region just across the state border to southeast New Mexico where oil and gas operations also increased dramatically in recent years. Research targeted the Delaware Basin, on the western side of the Permian in Texas and New Mexico which now produces more than 5 million barrels of...

For a second time in three months, President Donald Trump is headed to Pennsylvania to promote his support for the natural gas industry, making clear that he sees his pro-industry policies as a boost to his chances of winning the battleground state. As some of his leading Democratic opponents are calling for a fracking ban, Trump has been eager to cut a contrast, touting his support for a sector he says brings economic benefits to rural pockets and jobs to construction union workers. But pipeline politics might not be so clear-cut. In the suburbs that might be key to his...