January 23, 2025

Thursday: Below the Fold

Trump sends 1,500 troops to the border, House passes Laken Riley Act, Dems block law protecting abortion survivors, and more.

  • Trump sends 1,500 troops to the border: “The ICEman Cometh,” blares the New York Post headline, and who can argue otherwise? Appearances matter, and Donald Trump is wasting no time in demonstrating that he means business on border security. Yesterday, the Pentagon announced that it had begun deploying 1,500 active-duty troops to the southern border, thereby lending teeth to Trump’s executive orders meant to crack down on illegal immigration. Indeed, on Trump’s first full day in office, federal officers arrested more than 300 illegal immigrant criminals. As the AP reports, “Acting Defense Secretary Robert Salesses said the troops will fly helicopters to assist Border Patrol agents and help in the construction of barriers. The Pentagon also will provide military aircraft for Department of Homeland Security deportation flights for more than 5,000 detained migrants.” As for deportation, the administration’s approach is one of “worst first” — that is, they’re focused on the rapists, the murderers, the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gang members, and the like. As the inimitable Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity last night, “There are people coming in with tattoos all over their face. … Typically, you know, he’s not gonna be the head of the local bank.”

  • First images of ICE mass deportation efforts show arrests of MS-13 gang members, murder suspects (Fox News)

  • House passes Laken Riley Act: After the Senate passed the Laken Riley Act on Monday, the House took up the amended bill on Wednesday and passed it by a vote of 263-156, with 46 Democrats joining Republicans. The bill grants power to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to arrest illegal aliens accused of theft-related crimes. It also allows state attorneys general to sue the federal government for failure to uphold the nation’s immigration laws. More than the specifics of the bill is the fact that Laken Riley’s murder at the hands of an illegal alien epitomized the evil of Joe Biden’s open border malfeasance. Far from doing his number one job — protecting the American people from foreign enemies — Biden acted against the best interests of Americans. Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia, would be alive today if not for Biden’s open border policies. Donald Trump is now aggressively working to fix this problem, and this bill, which he will likely sign today, is just another step to right this deadly wrong.

  • Trump agency says employees are free to say “illegal” and “alien” again (Washington Times)

  • Dems block law protecting abortion survivors: By a 52-47 vote along strict party lines, Senate Democrats blocked a vote on the Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act. Ironically, they did it on Sanctity of Life Day. The bill was designed to protect the lives of babies born alive after a failed abortion attempt. Senator Katie Britt (R-AL) blasted the Democrats for voting to block the bill, stating, “This isn’t complicated: babies who survive a failed abortion deserve medical care.” The bill sought to “prohibit a health care practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion.” Democrats spun their resistance to the legislation as an effort to protect abortion providers from being criminalized. Evidently, Democrats not only struggle with recognizing the difference between male and female, but they also have trouble distinguishing between life and death. Meanwhile, Senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and Joni Ernst (R-IA) introduced legislation to eliminate taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood, which received $699.3 million in federal funds last year alone. As Ernst argued, “The nation’s largest abortion provider should not be receiving a dime in federal funding.”

  • House GOP introduces the Regulation Decimation Act: For years, the Democrats have owned the high ground on cleverly misleading legislative branding. Take, for example, the Affordable Care Act, the DREAM Act, the American Rescue Plan, the Equality Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. Who but the most coldhearted among us could be against such noble legislation? We called attention to this deceitful practice a few years ago. Well, today, Ohio Congressman David Taylor will introduce the deliciously named Regulation Decimation Act, a bill requiring federal agencies to repeal 10 regulations before issuing a single new one. (Recall that during Donald Trump’s first term, he enacted a policy to cut two regulations for each new one created.) As an added cost-control measure, the legislative text stipulates that the cost of the new rule must be “less than or equal to the cost of the rules repealed.” As Taylor put it, “This is a critical step toward cutting through rules implemented by Washington bureaucrats and returning the federal government to one of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

  • A record number of consumers are making minimum credit cards payments as delinquencies also rise (NBC News)

  • Trump aims to block gain-of-function research: Donald Trump is expected to issue an executive order that will ban the use of gain-of-function research, at least temporarily, for U.S. scientists who receive any federal funding. The practice, which seeks to make viruses more potent and contagious in order to research them, came to the forefront of public awareness due to the COVID pandemic. While former National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci repeatedly denied that the U.S. had funded the practice in the labs in Wuhan, China, the evidence suggests otherwise. Trump’s nominee to head the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, supports pausing gain-of-function research. Meanwhile, other scientists worry that ending it will negatively impact U.S. scientific development, allowing other countries to outpace us. The stubborn lack of a consensus regarding the origin of COVID — whether it was due to a lab leak or originated in nature — has made the case for either ending or continuing gain-of-function research a political issue rather than a scientific one.

  • Humor: A picture of the note Biden left for Trump (Babylon Bee)

  • Trump picks Sean Curran to lead Secret Service: You know his face if not his name because his visage adorns one of the most iconic images of the American century: The July 13 image of a bloody-faced Donald Trump thrusting his fist into the air with an American flag piercing the blue sky behind him. Yesterday, Trump formally nominated Sean Curran, who heads his personal Secret Service security detail, to lead the much-maligned U.S. Secret Service. As Fox News reports, “Curran, one of several quick-thinking agents who rushed on stage to protect Trump during a July 13 assassination attempt, was already expected to be named to the position.” Trump called it “an honor” to appoint Curran. “Sean is a Great Patriot,” he said, “who has protected my family over the past few years, and that is why I trust him to lead the Brave Men and Women of the United States Secret Service.”

  • Wray urged Biden not to commute sentence of Leonard Peltier (The Hill)

  • Trump to release JFK, MLK assassination files: In keeping with his penchant for disruption, Donald Trump said again yesterday that he’ll soon release long-classified documents related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. “I’m going to release them immediately,” he said in a Fox News interview last night. “We’re going to see the information. We are looking at it right now.” Trump made the promise on the eve of his inauguration, Sunday night at Capitol One Arena in Washington, where he vowed to “reverse the over-classification of government documents.” During his first term, as The Washington Times reports, “Trump did release some documents related to Kennedy’s 1963 assassination, but ultimately bowed to pressure from the intelligence community who urged Mr. Trump to keep the information under wraps citing national security concerns.” At the time, Mike Pompeo, Trump’s former CIA director and secretary of state, prevailed on the president to keep some files classified. Trump hasn’t specified when he’ll release the files, but “immediately” sounds like sooner rather than later.

  • Teen shooter kills student, then himself at Antioch High School in Nashville (CBS News)

  • Trump re-designates the Houthis as a terrorist organization (Daily Wire)

  • CNN planning massive layoffs: The staff size at CNN will soon be getting smaller, as Warner Bros. Discovery, the Leftmedia outlet’s parent company, is reportedly laying off hundreds of employees. CEO Mark Thompson noted earlier this month that CNN would be investing “more than $70 million” in its digital endeavors. This follows from last October when CNN instituted a paywall on its website. These layoffs also come a week after CNN lost a defamation lawsuit raised by Zachary Young over its false reporting of him in 2021. CNN was ordered to shell out $5 million in damages. Furthermore, between 2021 and 2023, it saw a revenue drop of over $400 million. Following Donald Trump’s election, the outfit ended the year with its smallest audience in its history. Clearly, it’s now aggressively dumping staff as it seeks to keep afloat.

  • Humor: Heroic woman proves once and for all why only men should be pastors (Babylon Bee)

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