Biden Administration Hangs Welcome Sign at Southern Border
It’s expected to nix a policy responsible for turning away more than a million illegal migrants.
Today’s edition of “if you thought X was bad, just wait until President Biden makes it worse” will feature America’s southern border — again. The Biden administration is expected to nix a policy responsible for turning away more than a million illegal migrants since Biden took office. Invoked in March 2020, Title 42 is an emergency pandemic measure, “not really an immigration policy,” explained Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.). Under Title 42, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have turned away more than 1.7 million migrants since the pandemic began.
The Biden administration, upon taking over, “surprisingly enough, kept half of” Title 42 in place for single adults, although waiving it for family units, Lankford explained on “Washington Watch.” So, in 2021, while 900,000 people were released into the country, 1.1 million people were turned away. The problem is, many individuals are still waiting to cross our southern border, and more join them every day. Lankford estimates that “at least 2 million illegal immigrants” would enter the country if Title 42 were repealed.
To “turn Title 42 off,” the Biden administration will have to “say the pandemic is over,” said Lankford. Most Americans of common intelligence would agree — but not the Biden administration. They have extended the national emergency allowing them to maintain their unscientific mask mandates for airlines and their punitive vaccine mandates for servicemembers. “As of April first,” warned Lankford, “if you haven’t gotten a vaccination, and you’re in the military… they’re going to fire you because the pandemic is so important.” They will “declare the pandemic over at the border, but at full, raging force if you’re in the military. It’s completely nonsensical.”
Of course, President Biden’s management of the southern border is a disaster by any measure, but ending Title 42 will only make a bad situation worse. “We’ve seen more people illegally cross the border in the 14 months of the Biden administration than we saw all four years under the Trump administration.” On his first day in office, President Biden halted construction of the border wall, abandoning materials where they lay. He cancelled the highly successful “Remain in Mexico” policy, which kept asylum-seekers in Mexico while their claims were processed. And he assigned the crisis to Vice President Kamala Harris, who avoided the border for as long as possible.
Now, when border patrol agents apprehend persons illegally crossing the border, “they release them into the country, even though they’re crossing illegally,” said Lankford. They “give them a piece of paper [which] says, show up in a court six years from now… I wish I was making that date up.”
“Border patrol will tell you the border is secure,” said Lankford. “It’s just secure on the south side.” He described the way the cartels toy with Border Patrol, “sending family units across the border in one area” as bait and tracking Border Patrol with a drone. Then, when Border Patrol responds, “the cartels will then run… criminal aliens… or individuals carrying drugs… a couple of miles down the desert to run through another area.”
Cartels use family units to shuffle Border Patrol agents around like pawns, trafficking humans, drugs, and other illegal commodities across the border at will. That’s the real story of what’s happening at the southern border, but the Biden administration seems to treat it merely as a public relations problem, or, at most, a humanitarian one. “I don’t find Americans that dislike legal immigration,” said Lankford. “They just don’t like illegal immigration, and they want to have their border secured and drug [imports] to end.”
Originally published here.
Mickey’s Mantle of Radicalism
Apparently, Disney isn’t planning to make nice with parents anytime soon. Thanks to bombshell video, leaked Tuesday, Americans are starting to understand just what kind of Fantasyland the company is. Corporate President Karey Burke painted a horrifying picture of the company’s future projects, insisting on an employee Zoom call that she wants a “minimum of 50 percent of its characters to be LGBTQIA” and other minorities. “I’m here as the mother of two queer children,” Burke said, “one transgender child and one pansexual child.” And “going forward,” she insisted, those are the stories Disney should be telling.
The video, which had almost two million views in less than 24 hours, was the latest crack in what’s quickly becoming an irreparable split with America. Disney CEO Bob Chapek, who’s tried to overcorrect for his silence on the Florida parental rights bill, has managed — in four short weeks — to turn the company from a moderately woke entertainment giant into public enemy number one. Now, as more trickles out about what’s really going on behind the scenes, most parents are saying they want no part of the empire Walt built.
As pathetic as Chapek’s public groveling has been to witness, it’s the internal activism that’s truly concerning. Apart from Burke, Disney’s television animation executive producer, Latoya Raveneau, spent portions of that same meeting bragging about her indoctrination tactics. “Our leadership over there has been so welcoming to my not-so-secret gay agenda,” she gushed. “Wherever I could I was adding queerness. No one would stop me and no one was trying to stop me.”
When they aren’t busy turning princes into princesses (or banning the words “boys and girls” at theme parks), Disney is vowing to take on Florida’s Parental Rights in Education policy. In its latest “huh?” moment, the company issued a formal statement pledging to fight a law that — ironically — Disney never opposed until it passed. “Our goal as a company is for the law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts, and we remain committed to supporting the national and state organizations working to achieve that.”
Good luck, Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) fired back. Our state, he insisted, is not run by “California corporate executives.” “We will continue to recognize that in the state of Florida, parents have a fundamental role in the education, health care and well-being of their children. We will not move from that. I don’t care what corporate media outlets say. I don’t care what Hollywood says. I don’t care what big corporations say. Here I stand. I’m not backing down.”
Later Tuesday, after insisting that Disney’s threats had “crossed a line,” DeSantis pointed to the company’s hypocrisy. “They actually do Disney cruise to the nation of Dominica, which criminalizes homosexuality. So they’re fine doing that and lining their pockets.” Same with the Chinese Communist Party, where they do tens of billions of dollars in business. “Maybe,” he joked, instead of banning K-3rd grade lessons about sex and gender, Florida should have done a bill outlawing “talk on the Uyghur abuse in China. Disney would have supported that legislation, because they don’t want to say a word about that.”
In the meantime, let’s hope Chapek’s job was worth the price Disney is paying. Christopher Rufo, the conservative journalist who posted the company’s Zoom call, said he’s been inundated with comments from mom groups and other consumers who are cutting the cord with Disney over its ideological hostage-taking. Florida Rep. Joe Harding (R) is just one of the leaders who can’t believe the company is willing to alienate so many people to placate an angry few. “What it tells you,” he warned on “Washington Watch,” “is that right now, their intent is not even necessarily political wins. I mean, there’s been polling that’s shown that the majority of Democratic primary voters actually agree with this bill. So the way the Left has doubled down is even more alarming, because I believe they are willing to die on this hill. They are [very] dug in on indoctrinating our children.”
The goal is to cut parents out completely, so the Left can lead children down this dangerous path. But unfortunately for them, there’s no appetite for the outrageous brand of extremism they’re pushing. Part of that is thanks to DeSantis, who’s simply refused to back down in the face of the mob. “Our governor, he’s a lion,” Harding agreed. “On these conservative issues, we’ve never had a governor in any state that’s this bold and this fearless.” And because of that, we see an outpouring of parents across the country demanding more bills like this one.
Disney made its bed. They picked a side. Now, Chapek and every other CEO choosing politics over parents will have to live with it. In the meantime, Harding insisted, Americans can’t let up. “[The Left has made] Disney, which is in every home in America… part of their arm of influence. If we do not make this the last stand — [if we] do not make this a turning point, I believe it could be too late to recover from it.”
Originally published here.
A Finnish Line for Freedom
It’s an incredible victory in a trial that should have never taken place. After months of wondering about her fate — and the fate of religious freedom in general — Finnish member of Parliament, Dr. Päivi Räsänen, was finally cleared of all charges, three years after her Bible tweet ignited an international firestorm. After months of anxiety and global scrutiny, both Räsänen and Rev. Juhana Pohjola, who was also accused of “hate crimes” for his orthodox views of sexuality, can breathe a sigh of relief.
“It is not for the district court to interpret biblical concepts,” the judges ruled, unanimously — ordering prosecutors to pay more than 60,000 euros in legal costs. For Räsänen, who became the latest face of the religious freedom debate, the vindication was a long time coming. “I am so grateful the court recognized the threat to free speech and ruled in our favor. I feel a weight has been lifted off my shoulders after being acquitted. Although I am grateful for having had this chance to stand up for freedom of speech, I hope that this ruling will help prevent others from having to go through the same ordeal,” she said.
Rev. Pohjola, who sometimes got lost in the story of the high-profile government official facing jail for quoting the Bible, agreed that it was a big win. “I hope this gives new encouragement for Christians to teach and confess their faith also in the public arena,” he told Fox News. “However, in the court decision it was said that our pamphlet includes offensive speech against homosexuals but not defaming in the criminal sense. That makes me worried, because although people can be offended by different things, the biblical teaching is never offensive in the sense of degrading human value. But it’s truthful, healing and liberating. I do not accept the idea that our writing included hate speech — no matter what the surrounding society might say.”
FRC, which had worked to raise awareness about Räsänen and the international impact of her case, was just as grateful for the court’s decision. More than 14,000 of you signed prayer petitions that our own Andrew Brunson, special advisor for Religious Freedom, was able to hand-deliver to the MP during her trial — providing great comfort as she endured what no member of a free society should.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who’s made Räsänen’s plight a rallying cry — co-authoring an op-ed with me and pushing the story in the U.S. media, celebrated with people around the world for the justice the court delivered. “But,” he insisted, “the fact that there was even a prosecution is unacceptable and a reminder that we must remain vigilant in defense of our faith, our values, and the very unalienable rights that form the foundation of Western Civilization. God bless M.P. Räsänen, Bishop Pohjola, the lawyers at Alliance Defending Freedom International, and other organizations such as Family Research Council who took up their cause. Onward.”
As our good friend Sam Brownback, former U.S. ambassador at large for International Religious Freedom, reminded everyone, freedom of speech includes religious speech. Anything less will not be tolerated — not in Finland, not here.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
