Trump's Courage Shows as House GOP Takes on Rosenstein, Sessions on Immigration, McCain Disappoints Again, and Union Non-member Dues as Free Speech Is Just Plain Ridiculous

IT HEATS UP IN CONGRESS -- AND THEN, "JUST PLAIN RIDICULOUS." We cannot help but feel that the younger Republican conservatives in Congress are feeling empowered by President Trump's direct approach to politics. • • • ROSENSTEIN AND WRAY TESTIFY. FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were on Capitol Hill Thursday publicly testifying to House Republicans over the FBI and DOJ’s mishandling of Hillary’s email investigation and Spygate. • Representative Trey Gowdy took on Justice Department investigators for prolonging their investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election in what was a confrontational House Judiciary Committee hearing, led by chairman Bob Goodlatte, Thursday. Gowdy, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, told FBI Director Wray and DAG Rosenstein to immediately present any evidence of wrongdoing by members of the Trump campaign and conclude their probe : “We’ve seen the bias, we need to see the evidence. If you have evidence of wrongdoing by any member of the Trump campaign, present it to the damn grand jury. If you have evidence that this President acted inappropriately, present it to the American people....Whatever you got, finish it the hell up....There’s an old saying that justice delayed is justice denied. I think right now all of us are being denied. Right now this country is being torn apart.” • We have wondered at the public comments of Gowdy over the past few months, seeming to side with the DOJ and FBI, no matter their bias or inappropriate behavior. This was the old Gowdy, feisty and acting every bit the federal prosecutor. Thursday's hearing was the culmination of a long public battle pitting congressional Republicans exposing wrongdoing in the FBI’s conduct of the Russia investigation against the Justice Department that has steadfastly defended its propriety in oveseeing the investigation and the FBI's impartiality. Gowdy came back on Thursday, and he was joined by fellow House Republicans in demanding that the Justice Department be more forthcoming, not only in telling Congress and America what if anything it has against President Trump, but also in responding to document requests by Congress • Rosenstein, ever the impersonal bureaucrat who refused to answer some questions, tried to put out the fire by insisting that investigators are struggling to comply with the high volume of document requests and denied that they were intentionally withholding any evidence of bias. Rosenstein told Gowdy : “As with most things in Washington, the real work is not done on television and it is not all done by me. Trump administration officials are meeting and talking to your staffs every day to accommodate requests and produce relevant information to this committee, other committees, and several Senate committees.” It was a smug reply given with a laugh, and showed Rosenstein's lack of respect for Congress's oversight function. • Representative Jim Jordan was not buying Rosenstein's explanation or his demeanor. Jordan slammed Rosenstein and reminded him the House was voting to pass a resolution giving him “seven days to get his act together.” Jordan, an Ohio Republican, in an extraordinary and bittert exchange moments before the House voted on a measure aimed squarely at Rosenstein, attacked him for "withholding information from Congress.” A stone-faced Rosenstein flatly denied those accusations, as Jordan repeatedly interrupted his responses, saying : "I think in a few minutes the House of Representatives is going to go on record saying you have not complied with requests from a separate and equal branch of government, that you haven’t complied with subpoenas, and you've got seven days to get your act together. And I don’t know why you won’t give us what we’ve asked for.” Rosenstein replied : “Sir, I certainly hope that your colleagues are not under that impression. It is not accurate, sir — " Jordan interrupted : "It is accurate. We have caught you hiding information — " Rosenstein answered : "Your use of this to attack me personally is deeply wrong." • • • DEMOCRATS DEFENDED ROSENSTEIN AND THE RUSSIA PROBE. Rosenstein was defended by Democrat Committee member Ted Lieu of California. Lieu attacked his Republican colleagues for holding a "stupid" emergency hearing centered on the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server : “Let me start by saying it is ridiculous and stupid we are having an emergency hearing into an investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016. But since Republicans control the agenda, let’s at least try to have this stupid hearing be based on the facts and the central fact from this [inspector general] investigation is that no personal views of any FBI or DOJ employee affected the integrity of the investigation." Rosenstein seemed to agree with Lieu, saying that he is unaware of any conflicts of interest that would disqualify special counsel Robert Mueller for leading the federal investigation into Russian interference. • Judiciary Committee Democrats also demanded that the GOP majority release the transcript of FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok’s 11-hour testimony that took place Wednesday behind closed-doors, accusing their Republican colleagues of taking Strzok's words out of context. It happened when Lieu interrupted Representative John Ratcliffe, a Texas Republican, in his questioning after Ratcliffe noted what Strzok had said during his Wednesday testimony as it related to Mueller’s Russia probe : “Point of order, Mr. Chairman. If you want to talk about his testimony like this, release the transcript.” Chairman Goodlatte said “That is not a valid point of order.” Ratcliffe then continued his line of questioning, only to be interrupted again by other Democrats on the panel. “I assume it is a valid point of order to object to quoting or characterizing his statements in a confidential setting,” said ranking Democrat Judiciary Committee member Jerrold Nadler of New York : "We were under the impression, Mr. Chairman, that these transcripts were not to be quoted." Lieu agreed, asking Goodlatte to “release the transcript. The American people deserve to hear Peter Strzok’s testimony under oath. Do not hide his testimony.” Goodlatte again answered : “The transcript will be released to the American people in the appropriate time, but the gentleman can use it for the purpose of his questioning to the witness in this hearing.” • Just hours earlier, President Trump tweeted that Mueller should “list his conflicts of interest.” Another California Democrat, Representative Eric Swalwell, asked Rosenstein : “Does Bob Mueller have any conflicts of interest?” Rosenstein replied : “If there were any conflicts of interest that were brought to our attention, I would discuss it with Mr. Mueller and then there could be review within the department if there were a credible allegation of a conflict of interest. I am not aware of any disqualifying conflict of interest.” The continuing allegations about Mueller’s conflict of interest center on his longstanding friendship with James Comey, with whom he worked at the FBI, a friendship that many say represents a conflict that should disqualify him from the probe. President Trump's tweet on Thursday included this : "And what about the 13 Angry Democrats, will they list their conflicts with Crooked H? How many people will be sent to jail and...persecuted on old and/or totally unrelated charges (there was no collusion and there was no obstruction of the no collusion)...And what is going on in the FBI & DOJ with Crooked Hillary, the DNC and all of the lies? A disgraceful situation!” • • • OTHER REPUBLICANS GRILLED WRAY AND ROSENSTEIN. Gowdy and Jordan were not alone in grilling Wray and Rosenstein. Representative Darrell Issa, a California Repuiblican who is retiring, asked Wray whether or not he would investigate former FBI Director James Comey to determine whether he leaked a Justice Department inspector general report to a news outlet in advance of its release -- Bloomberg and other outlets reported on excerpts of the report before it was formally released -- and Issa also accused Comey of likely violating a nondisclosure agreement he signed to receive an advanced copy of the report, suggesting the former FBI director leaked its contents. Issa said : “He violated the nondisclosure agreement in that he contacted a news source more than four hours beforehand, because it was published four hours before it was released, probably 24 to 48 hours in advance, will you agree to look into whether or not he violated that [agreement]?” But, FBI Director Wray declined to comment on whether he would open such a probe. Issa replied : “So you’re not going to say whether he’s above the law for what he did?” Wray answered : “I do not think there’s anyone on this planet who is above the law.” • Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who is one of the Justice Department's fiercest critics, repeatedly asked Rosenstein questions centering on whether federal officials began collecting intelligence on the Trump campaign and Russia before launching its investigation in July 2016, noting that this date is given in the Democrat members' minority memo as the beginning of the FBI counterintelligence investigation. Gaetz asked : “Did any investigative activity regarding the Trump campaign and Russia occur before July 31, 2016?” Rosenstein replied : “Congressman, as you know, we are dealing with the Intelligence Committee on that issue and Chairman [Devin] Nunes met with Director Wray and me. I received the same briefing that he received so I do not know any additional information beyond what he knows about that and I’m not able to produce any information beyond what the FBI has told me.” Gaetz also asked whether Rosenstein knew of any payments to collect intelligence on the Trump campaign before the FBI launched its probe. Rosenstein said : “No, but keep in mind I wasn’t there. I only know the information we’ve obtained from the FBI records.” Rosenstein responded similarly when Gaetz asked if he knew about government efforts to contact Roger Stone, a close associate to the President, and Trump campaign aide Michael Caputo before July 31, 2016. Rosenstein answered : “I don’t have any personal knowledge, congressman, but I know we are eeking to respond to Chairman Nunes’s request;” adding that they will let Nunes know if they find any credible evidence of such. • On the touchy subject of whether Rosenstein should recuse himself from overseeing the Russia probe, GOP Representative Ron DeSantis of Florida suggested that Rosenstein should do so, pointing to the fact the deputy attorney general himself wrote the memo to President Trump recommending former FBI Director James Comey be fired. DeSantis said : “They talk about the Mueller investigation. It’s really the Rosenstein investigation. You appointed Mueller. You’re supervising Mueller, and it’s supposedly about collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia and obstruction of justice. But you wrote the memo saying that Comey should be fired and you signed the FISA extension for Carter Page. So, my question is to you, it seems like you should be recused from this more so than Jeff Sessions just because you were involved in making decisions affecting both prongs of this investigatiion. Why haven’t you done that?” Rosenstein responded he would recuse himself if “it were appropriate” : “Congressman, I can assure you that if it were appropriate for me to recuse, I would be more than happy to do so. But, it’s my responsibility to do it.” DeSantis then emphasized that Mueller is said to be investigating potential obstruction of justice by the President in the Comey firing. While press reports have indicated that special counsel Mueller is looking into possible obstruction of justice, officials have not spoken publicly about the lines of inquiry in the probe. Rosenstein said : “I am not commenting on what is under investigation by the Mueller probe and to the best of my knowledge, neither is Mr. Mueller.” Rosenstein said. • Republicans have fiercely criticized the FBI and DOJ in recent months, accusing them of slow-walking document production to House committees conducting parallel investigations into FBI and Justice Department decisionmaking during the 2016 presidential race. FBI Director Wray said : “In just the past week, for example, we’ve had approximately 100 employees working day and night dedicated to this project through the weekend to collect, review, process and produce thousands of additional pages.” Rosenstein used his opening remarks to defend the Justice Department’s document production to Congress, saying that the FBI has been making “unprecedented disclosures” to congressional committees under the Trump administration. Rosenstein stressed that he had heard concerns from lawmakers about the speed and scope of document production by the FBI related to the inspector general’s investigation, leading him to task a US attorney from Chicago with overseeing the process, which he said “seems to be working very well.” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said document production by the Department of Justice has “improved considerably” -- citing the work of US Attorney John Lausch, Chicago's top federal prosecutor, tapped by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in April to oversee the matter. But, Goodlatte said that he “recently learned” that the Justice Department determined “emails between prosecutors working the Clinton case” did not fall under a subpoena he issued requesting all documents provided to the inspector general -- something he called “unacceptable. We are not receiving and have not received potentially enlightening communications between prosecutors themselves, between prosecutors and DOJ management including former Attorney General Lynch, or even communications between DOJ officials and those with the Obama White House,” Goodlatte said. • • • WHAT NEXT? House Judiciary Committee Chairman Goodlatte concluded the hearing by thanking Rosenstein and Wray for their testimony but noted the committee's still outstanding questions related to its oversight investigation of the FBI’s activities leading up to the 2016 election. While Goodlatte “commended” both Wray and Rosenstein for working to improve the FBI’s document production to Congress, he nevertheless reiterated the committee’s need for documents underlying the Justice Department inspector general report, saying : “We will communicate with you further beyond right here to work on that.” Goodlatte also emphasized that Republican lawmakers have “no intention” of interfering with the substance of Mueller’s investigation. And, as predicted by Jim Jordan, Thursday's hearing concluded with the passage of a non-binding resolution demanding that the Justice Department comply with House committee subpoenas for documents related to the FBI surveillance of Trump campaign officials, including classified Trump-Russia documents, or face impeachment or contempt. • That is a session that reflects the newfound courage of the Republican majority in the House to do its federal agency oversight job aggressively and skillfully. Just one more Trump blessing for America. • • • SESSIONS SPEAKS OUT ABOUT IMMIGRATION. We lament the mainstream media’s manufactured crisis surrounding illegal alien children being separated from their parents. It is all part of the effort of ProgDems and their prppagansist media to manipulate events with Fake news, hoping to destroy President Trump. Attorney General Jeff Sessions realizes this only too well and he fought back in a speech before the National Association of School Resource Officers conference. Sessions defended the administration’s handling of illegal aliens crossing the border with children and attacked the idea that the administration’s policy was immoral and unjustified by listing the dangers and costs of not enforcing federal immigration laws. Sessions declared the real scandal was the Central American parents who “recklessly” placed their children in the hands of smugglers to illegally enter the United States. AND, he revealed what these unaccompanied illegal aliens cost tax payers per year, telling his audience : "You may not know, our government spends enormous sums of money every year to protect and care for unaccompanied alien children who were recklessly sent to the United States by their family members. A billion dollars a year." AG Sessions also explained the real threat an invasion of illegal aliens pose, stating that MS-13 gang members can use the flood of illegal alien children to infiltrate America : "Some are brought to help replenish the gang and they are terrorizing immigrant schools from Los Angeles to Louisville to Long Island to Boston. Jeff Sessions blamed the Obama administration for not prosecuting adults crossing the border with children for this explosion, stating that from 2013 to 2017, the number of illegal aliens caught entering the country with children exploded from 13,000 to 74,000. The Attorney General stated : "If we fail to porsecute these adults for illegal entry -- as many of our ciritics want us to do -- that would be a disservice to the people of this country. It would also be an insult to those who come here legally, waiting their turn lawfully." • Jeff Sessions is simply saying what Americans know -- the influx of illegal immigrants works against the rule of law, it encourages criminality, and it undercuts the lawful US immigration process. • • • NO END TO JOHN McCAIN'S PERFIDY. American Thinker's Monica Showalter revealed last Friday that : "Senator John McCain, not too long after seeking conservative and Republican votes in his failed 2008 bid for the presidency, went right after those same conservative voters without telling them, by egging on the IRS to ruin them. It's the sort of political back-stabbing that defies belief, taking an active role in destroying the Tea Party, which was an authentic grassroots movement of local groups calling for smaller government....Judicial Watch has found McCain's central role right there in the documents : 'Judicial Watch today released newly obtained internal IRS documents, including material revealing that Senator John McCain's former staff director and chief counsel on the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee, Henry Kerner, urged top IRS officials, including then-director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner, to 'audit so many that it becomes financially ruinous.'....The explosive exchange was contained in notes taken by IRS employees at an April 30, 2013, meeting between Kerner, Lerner, and other high-ranking IRS officials. Just ten days following the meeting, former IRS director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner admitted that the IRS had a policy of improperly and deliberately delaying applications for tax-exempt status from conservative non-profit groups. Lerner and other IRS officials met with select top staffers from the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in a 'marathon' meeting to discuss concerns raised by both Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) that the IRS was not reining in political advocacy groups in response to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. Senator McCain had been the chief sponsor of the McCain-Feingold Act and called the Citizens United decision, which overturned portions of the Act, one of the 'worst decisions I have ever seen.' In the full notes of an April 30 meeting, McCain's high-ranking staffer Kerner recommends harassing non-profit groups until they are unable to continue operating. Kerner tells Lerner, Steve Miller, then chief of staff to IRS commissioner, Nikole Flax, and other IRS officials, 'Maybe the solution is to audit so many that it is financially ruinous.' In response, Lerner responded that 'it is her job to oversee it all.' " • Showalter said that before she learned this, she had had the impression that some conservatives' negative view of McCain was overblown, and he was far more good than bad. But, she said : "I was wrong. The Obama administration's scheme to repress the Tea Party is a big reason why the Obama administration went downhill in the minds of many voters. Not only was Lerner not punished for clearly illegal targeting of political dissidents, surely one of the blackest marks on the Obama record, but she was also allowed to get away with it, from taking the Fifth in Congress to the whitewashed official report finding no wrongdoing to illegally deleting and 'losing' emails (some that were found were profoundly hostile to conservatives) to being allowed to retire comfortably at her Beltway suburbs mansion with a six-figure pension. That was the price she paid for persecuting dissidents, in exactly the same way crummy, sleazy, slimy third-world dictatorships do. She got away with it. But only because she had help -- in, of all people, John McCain, that famous champion of dissidents in hellholes across the Third World. What a hypocrite." • Showalter noted that when he was confronted with these rumors in 2104, McCain lied that none of it was true : "Here is his 2014 denial : 'A recent press release by Judicial Watch sparked a series of online reports falsely claiming that my office was somehow involved in the IRS's targeting of conservative groups -- reports that are demonstrably untrue and totally contradicted by my all of my actions over the past several years on this issue. These reports ignore the fact that I released a 37-page dissenting report last September refuting the Democrats' Majority Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) report claiming the IRS showed no bias against conservative groups. Media coverage at the time noted that I was in total disagreement with Senate Democrats on the issue of whether the IRS targeted conservative groups (see The Associated Press article below headlined 'Competing views on IRS treatment of tea party').' " Showalter asks, "What's he going to do now, claim he never met his top aide, Henry Kerner? In the records, McCain's man Kerner said he wanted them ruined." • It is hard to see a fellow Republican fall so far. John McCain is engaged in his last fight now, but his efforts, including this tea party vendetta, to sabotage Donald Trump have stained his record forever. • • • AND -- IT'S SUMMER SATURDAY - SO LET'S DO "JUST PLAIN RIDICULOUS." • Overwhelming the ridiculosity list this week is the howling coming from Democrats, their mainstream media and union leaders that somehow the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling that public sector unions may not collect mandatory fees from non-members has put the First Amendment, the Constitution and the future of the Republic itself in jeopardy. Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion that states that state government workers -- whether they join the union or not -- cannot be forced to pay so-called "fair share" fees to support collective bargaining and other union activities. The conservative majority said a union's contract negotiations over pay and benefits were inextricably linked with its broader political activities, and concluded workers had a limited constitutional right not to underwrite such "speech." Justice Alito wrote : "This procedure violates the First Amendment and cannot continue. Neither an agency fee nor any other payment to the union may be deducted from a nonmember’s wages, nor may any other attempt be made to collect such a payment, unless the employee affirmatively consents to pay.” The majority overturned the Supreme Court's four-decade old precedent dealing with so-called "agency" fees, allowing states to require public employees to pay money supporting collective bargaining and other union activities. The key plaintiff was Mark Janus, an Illinois state employee, who pays about $550 annually to the powerful public-sector union known as AFSCME. While not a member of the union, he is required under state law to hand over a weekly portion of his paycheck -- which he says is a violation of his constitutional rights. Janus told Fox News: "I work for Health and Family Services, and I'm forced to pay money to a union that then supports political causes that I don't agree with." Justice Elena Kagan wrote the dissent for the Court’s four liberals, saying : “Almost all economic and regulatory policy affects or touches speech. So the majority’s road runs long. And at every stop are black-robed rulers overriding citizens’ choices. The First Amendment was meant for better things. It was meant not to undermine but to protect democratic governance -- including over the role of public-sector unions.” THAT, with all due respect, Justice Kagan, is ridiculosity run wild. Protecting "democratic governance" begins with protecting free speech. Forcing employees to pay up for political or other causes that they do not support just because a union happens to represent some of their fellow employees is a flaming violation of freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. Denying that constitutional verity is -- well, it is JUST PLAIN RIDICULOUS. • Have a great weekend --watch those football World Cup matches to see who gets through the knockout stage and on to the quarter-finals. See you on Monday.

Trump Has Made Progressives Reveal their True Agenda -- Open Borders, Amnesty, Mob Harassment

THE MIDTERMS ARE TAKING SHAPE. And the Democrats ought to be scared stiff. • • • BERNIE'S CANDIDATE TAKES ON ELITE DEMOCRAT CROWLEY AND WALLOPS HIM. TheHill reported it at 1 AM Tuesday night : "Veteran Rep. Joe Crowley’s (D-N.Y.) stunning defeat on Tuesday night rocked the political world, as Progressive candidates stormed to victory in primaries held across the country. Crowley, the chairman of the House Democratic caucus who was seen as a potential future speaker, lost in a massive upset to Progressive challenger Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old organizer for Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign." • Other Progressive candidates won primary challenges in top House and gubernatorial races -- from Sanders-endorsed former NAACP President Ben Jealous, who won the Democratic primary in Maryland’s governor race to activist Dana Balter, who won her House primary in upstate New York. Those victories deliver a huge message -- Democrat voters are ready to buck the political establishment and vote for Progressives who want to move the Democrat Party even farther to the left. • Clearly, the big news of Tuesday night was the victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. TheHill called it the Democrat "Cantor moment" : "Crowley’s loss is as stunning as then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R) primary defeat in 2014 -- maybe more so, because while Cantor spent his fateful primary hobnobbing in Washington, Crowley had taken his challenge more seriously, actively campaigning for his own seat in a borough where he still runs the Democratic machine. But the result was the same : A member of Congress once poised for the speakership is now out of a job." • The New York Democrat leadership's scheduling of primary elections for federal contests separately from those for statewide office was supposed to mean a low-turnout affair that party bosses could control. It turned into a perfect opportunity for Sanders backers to score their biggest goal of the year -- so far. As TheHill pointed out : "Crowley, 56, faced his first primary challenge in 14 years. He was seen as a potential successor to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. And he had longtime roots in his deep-blue New York City district that include parts of Queens and the Bronx. He’s also chairman of the Queens County Democratic Party. That didn't matter. Ocasio-Cortez beat Crowley 57.5% to 42.5%, in a victory showing that voters were ready for change in one of the most diverse districts in the country. Hispanics make up half of the 14th District’s population. Ocasio-Cortez ran on the need for new representation, criticizing Crowley for living outside the district and for taking corporate donations. The 28-year-old challenger gained some last-minute traction, especially after her viral campaign video where she said this race is about 'people versus money.' She garnered a number of Progressive endorsements from Our Revolution [a Progressive political action organization spun out of Senator Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign to continue its work], MoveOn.org [a George Soros organization] and Justice Democrats." • Crowley was an old-style machine boss, and like Nancy Pelosi, an insider’s insider. New York Daily News couldn't resist saying : "The King of Queens has been dethroned....as the head of the Queens County machine, he is essentially the definition of a candidate with all of the institutional support. He had raised $3.35 million in the race -- compared with just over $300,000 raised by Ocasio-Cortez." Among New Yorkers absorbing the shock on the morning after was Democrat incumbent Governor Andrew Cuomo : "On hand at her victory party was Cynthia Nixon -- who is hoping to pull off a similar upset against Governor Cuomo in the Democrat gubernatorial primary in September. 'She ran an amazing campaign. She really spoke to her community,' Nixon said. 'If you give them the chance, they will embrace a female leader who really speaks to them. If you give them a chance, they will buck the status quo. They will elect a female leader who will really speak to them.' " The New York Post agreed on the magnitude of the shock : "Crowley’s defeat is a political earthquake in New York City politics where political machines dominate low-turnout elections and incumbents often go unchallenged....Ocasio-Cortez was endorsed by the New York City Democratic Socialists of America and recently told Vogue she was a member of the group because : 'When we talk about the word socialism, I think what it really means is just democratic participation in our economic dignity, and our economic, social, and racial dignity.' ” • Never mind that Ocasio-Cortez' campaign posters were in both English and Spanish and that she speaks Spanish -- she apparently doesn't have a clue about what socialism means in either language. Take Venezuela, for example, and its "socialist paradise" where people are starving and fleeing hundreds of miles through tropical forests on foot to escape. • • • PROGRESSIVE VICTORIES ELSEWHERE. Sanders didn't win only in New York. Progressives and Sanders allies were victorious in several other high-profile races in Tuesday’s multi-state primaries. • In Maryland’s Democratic primary for governor, Ben Jealous, a first-time candidate, defeated Prince George's County Executive Rushern Baker for the right to take on Gov. Larry Hogan (R) in November. Jealous touted his endorsements from national figures in the Progressive movement like Sanders and Senator Kamala Harris. Baker's support came from local Democrat elite leaders like Senator Chris Van Hollen, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, and former Governor Martin O'Malley. Jealous backs many of Sanders’s core issues including “Medicare for All” legislation, free college, and a $15 minimum wage. But, Jealous will face a tough general election race against the very popular Hogan, who has strong job approval ratings. • In New York’s 24th District, Dana Balter cruised to victory in a race where local and national Democrats clashed over their preferred candidates to take on GOP Representative John Katko in a top swing seat. Balter, a professor at Syracuse University and progressive activist, consoldiated support from four local Democratic county committees. Balter was also backed by Our Revolution. But, just weeks from the filing deadline, national Democrats made a last-minute recruitment that angered local activists. They encouraged former US Navy Officer and prosecutor Juanita Perez Williams to jump into the race. National Democrats have waded in a number of high-profile primaries where they worked to get a candidate through that they believe would be a stronger general election candidate. So, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) added Perez Williams to its candidate program where those on the list benefit from financial and organizational support. While Balter and Perez Williams didn’t differ on many issues, local Democratic leaders accused the DCCC of meddling in its primary. It showed on election day -- Balter beat Juanita Perez Williams 62% to 38%. • LGBT candidates have made enormous strides. On Tuesday, Rep. Jared Polis (D) won the Democratic nomination for governor of Colorado, becoming the third member of the LGBT community to win a gubernatorial nomination so far this year. In a state like Colorado where Progressive Democrats compete with libertarian-minded Republicans, being gay is not a deal-breaker for voters. Polis's biggest hurdle in November won't be that he's gay -- it will be convincing voters to back his strongly Progressive agenda -- "Medicare for All," universal pre-K, and slowly transitioning Colorado, a state with plenty of oil and gas business, to all-renewable energy. But Polis has the money to make his case. He built a fortune by running several internet startups and has already spent $10 million of that fortune on his race for governor. Polis will face Walker Stapleton, the two-term state treasurer and Bush family relative, who is ttying to become only the second Republican elected Colorado governor in 44 years. • • • TRUMP HAS CLOUT. Trump flexed his presidential MAGA muscle and solidified his political clout in primaries on Tuesday, helping to shepherd two incumbents lawmakers he backed -- Representative Dan Donovan of New York and South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster -- through their respective primaries. • In one of the most bitter primary battles of the cycle, Donovan trounced former GOP Representative Michael Grimm in the Staten Island primary. Grimm was looking to make a political comeback after serving an eight-month prison sentence for tax fraud. Trump took center stage in New York’s 11th District primary, where the two Republicans battled over their loyalty to the president. Grimm sought to fashion himself as a fierce ally of the president, arguing that Donovan doesn’t support Trump since he voted against the GOP’s tax overhaul. But Donovan earned a critical endorsement from Trump, who warned that backing Grimm could lead to another Alabama, where Republicans last year ceded a winnable race to Democrats. And in the final days of the race, Donovan got reinforcements from the White House, including Donald Trump Jr. and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who’s now Trump’s personal lawyer. • In South Carolina, McMaster also won his GOP primary runoff against businessman John Warren. McMaster faced three well-funded challengers in a primary earlier this month, but failed to avert a runoff, which triggered Tuesday’s race. Trump made a last-minute swing through South Carolina on the eve of Tuesday’s primary on behalf of McMaster, who was the first statewide official to back Trump in the 2016 GOP presidential primary. McMaster spent the primary campaign telling voters South Carolina was in good shape, and that he is the experienced candidate to keep the winning streak going. The governor, the lieutenant governor who took over when governor Nikki Haley wentto the UN as ambassador, beat the charge that he is not conservative enough to win the SC governor's race. McMaster won the Republican governor runoff Tuesday against political newcomer John Warren, a Greenville business owner and Marine veteran who self-financed his campaign while billing himself as a political outsider. • And, we now have Mitt Romney back. Trump endorsed him, but I still feel very negative about this #NeverTrumper getting into the Senate. Yet, Romney took the Republican nomination in Utah’s US Senate runoff race with 73% of the vote. His opponent, state Representative Mike Kennedy, got about 25%. In his laidback style, Romney said at 8:24 PM on Tuesday : "Well, it looks like our team won the primary." He and his wife, Ann, delivered brief remarks at 8:40 PM.” That was it. • • • WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? American Thinker's Thomas Lifson talked about the Crowley defeat : "The architecture of the 20th century Democratic Party is slowly dissolving before our eyes, as identity politics and socialism replace the old center-left coalition. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28 year-old Bernie Sanders organizer and endorsee of the Democratic Socialists of America, resoundingly defeated Rep. Joe Crowley, a ten-term incumbent who hadn’t faced a primary opponent in 14 years, and who spent at least ten times as much money in the race. Ocasio-Cortez’s face at her campaign party when she realized she had won reveals the extent of the shock." • Ocasio-Coirtez' primary victory means that she will almost certainly win election to the House in November. Her district that gave 78% of its vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016, and is 49.8% Hispanic and about 20% white. She will replace Minnesota’s Keith Ellison as the radical socialist/identity politics standard-bearer in Congress. Lifson said : "A comparison of Crowley’s defeat to that of Eric Cantor, also a member of his party’s congressional leadership, is reasonable. Both incumbents grew out of touch with their constituents and focused on internal party politics and maneuvering. CNN quoted Ocasio-Cortez harping on one theme similar to that used by Rep. Dave Bratt to defeat Cantor : 'This is not an end, this is the beginning. This is the beginning because the message that we sent the world tonight is that it's not OK to put donors before your community,'....The New York Times published a scathing editorial criticizing him [Crowley] for skipping a debate with his opponent. The pair had debated days before, and met again for a debate shortly after the editorial published....she focused on grass roots organizing and was not taken seriously by the party establishment....She said she also benefited from supporters across the country phone-banking and writing postcards to voters in the district. Ocasio-Cortez said her campaign had five core staffers and a couple of hundred volunteers....Ocasio-Cortez, like President Trump, did not spend money on the old guard political consultants, and had a lean campaign. She also has a good visual sense, as her campaign graphics were striking, and appealed to non-English speakers. As a visually striking, young embodiment of the New Democratic Party of minorities seeking socialism while denying the reality of its practice, Ocasio-Cortez will attract national attention in the campaign and when she is seated in Congress. In the immediate prospect, she may help the GOP. But if her version of the Democratic Party ever holds power, God save the United States." • American Thinker's Patricia McCarthy wrote on Tuesday before the primary results were in, but her focus was right, noting "the face of the Democratic Party...that lovely duo, Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi....So deluded as to why Trump won, they seem to think their particular brand of madness that includes the public shaming of anyone and everyone in the Trump administration is going to win back the House and Senate for their party." McCarthy is right about the state of the Democrat Party : "It is by now undeniable that the hate-Trump left has gone stark- raving mad. Its members have lost all semblance of sanity, decorum, and class. With Mad Maxine Waters leading the way, they are encouraging public interference and assaults in the form of hastily assembled mobs to shame anyone connected to the Trump administration who has the temerity to venture out in public....They think the American people are so stupid, so thoroughly uninformed, that they will fall for the lie that what Trump is doing at the border is unlawful and cruel. In fact, the practice of separating migrant children from the lawbreakers who show up at the border with children in tow is of long standing throughout the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. The conditions in which the Obama administration kept unaccompanied children was far worse than how they are being cared for now. Obama's policy was to simply turn them over to so-called care facilities, many of which were fronts for child sex-trafficking. Obama lost track of thousands of young children he encouraged to come to the southern border, who then simply disappeared into the interior of the country. To where and to whom, no one knows. Many of them are sent as potential mules for the drug cartels, others to be trafficked by the enormous network of pedophiles on which AG Sessions has been cracking down hard....The senseless murders of innocents like Kate Steinle mean nothing to Nancy Pelosi, and that murder happened on her watch, in her district. Her city has been ravaged by her ruinous progressive policies. Like Los Angeles, it is overrun with homeless people, drug addicts who urinate, defecate, and cast off their dirty needles anywhere they please, all over the city. No one goes to San Francisco as a tourist anymore. It's blighted and dangerous. This is what the policies of our left hath wrought." • • • MAD MAXINE WATERS. The Democrat Party's troubles in Tuesday's primaries was driven home in the outrageous calls for mob action by Maxine Waters, who has become the face of the radical Progressive left side of the Democrat Party. Waters is 80 years old and ought to know better than to incite violence. Her Los Angeles 43rd District, which includes Watts, must remember the Watts riots of 1965 and 1992. But, Waters lives and votes in what the LA Times calls a $4.5 million mansion in Vermont Knolls, just outside California's 43rd District. The house was located in the 43rd District when she purchased it in 2004, but redistricting that followed placed Waters’ home a few blocks outside her home district. Some real estate estimates disagree with the LA Times, placing a value of $2.8 million on the house -- still not bad -- and not really indicative of the already high and escalating real estate valuations in LA since Waters bought the properrty in 2004. Mad Maxine also reportedly owns another property worth up to $1.1 million and a time-share property in Palm Springs. Maxine’s husband, Sidney Waters, is a former NFL football player, Mercedes dealer and minority business dealer who has partnered with former teammate and NFL great Jim Brown. Sidney also receives pensions from the NFL and Mercedes-Benz, in addition to a few other sources of income, according to the couple’s financial disclosures. Hre 2018 net worth is estiamted at $5 million. • MSNBC and CNN defend Maxine, of course, apparently finding her calls for mob harassment of public officials with undertones of violence okay -- while most Americans are horrified by her calls. But, there she is -- alongside Nancy Pelosi -- the face of the Democrat Party. And, even Nancy Pelosi has enough brains to realize that openly advocating mob action against high-level federal officers and ICE agents might not play well back home. On Monday, Pelosi and others tried to walk back Maxine Waters's odious calls for such acts. • GOP Representative Andy Biggs wasn't satisfied with Pelosi's slap on the wrist -- or Speaker Paul Ryan's either. Biggs has introduced a measure that would censure Representative Waters over her speech to constituents that urged supporters to confront and harass Trump administration officials. In her speech, Mad Maxine shouted at ther supporters : "And so, let's stay the course. Let's make sure we show up wherever we have to show up and if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere....Mr. President, we will see you every day, every hour of the day, everywhere that we are to let you know you cannot get away with this!" Biggs believes that Waters should not only apologize for the remarks, but resign her seat in Congress as well. Biggs told TheHill that Waters' comments do "not become somebody who's in Congress" and warrant disciplinary action : "So we just introduced it, we have some cosponsors, but what she did was to basically incite people to come after and attack members of the President's cabinet....And also spread that out to more people. Everybody agrees that it was just highly objectionable what she did." But, the Biggs censure resolution won't get much traction. Repulbicans are afraid of criticizing the senior Black House member and taking the catcalls of 'racist' and 'bigot' that would follow. So, no matter how crazy or unbalanced Waters and other black Democratic congressmen are, the potential backlash against Republicans has them lying low. That is too bad, because forcing Democrats to vote to condemn violence or support Waters would present them with the choice of being representatives of all of America of supporting identity group politics as usual. • Former Bush administration Ari Fleischer also called for Congress to censure Waters : "There's enough in this society, you don't engage in those types of practices. And, Maxine basically denied that she called on people to harass others. No peace, no rest. So she is still sticking by what she has done. The press needs to have a feeding frenzy among the left as they always do on the right. It's her turn now. Frankly I'm at the point where, if she continues to double down the House ought to take up a motion to censure her. Because this does lead to violence." • • • THE DEMOCRAT MIDTERM PLATFORM. What we saw on Tuesday was a fleshing out of the Democrat platform for November. It is being written by the radical Progressive wing of the Party and it is a far cry from the center-left Democrat platforms of the Kennedy-Clinton eras. It calls for OPEN BORDERS with no right of defense for America as potentially hundreds of thousands of migrants with no asylum justification storm into the US -- think Europe today. It calls for public MOB HARASSMENT of Republicans, conservatives, and everyone now working in the Trump administration, including all ICE employees, hounding them out of restaurants, theaters, and hotels, and threatening their families and children -- think extreme socialism like that in Venezuela or Cuba today. • American Thinker labels the Democrat platform clearly : "When a major figure in the Democratic Party issues a call to hound, threaten, and harass federal officials and law enforcement personnel, it is the duty of every Republican campaign official and candidate to set that call with a branding iron into the forehead of the Democratic Party and all its candidates. The Democratic Party and its irresponsible fellow travelers and propagandists in the corporate media have created the climate of hate for this president that, predictably and inevitably, produced a call for action approaching violence. That call is unprecedented in American history and deeply ominous for the near-term future of the Republic. The Democratic Party should be made to pay a heavy electoral price for Maxine Waters's call to harassment, intimidation, and the illegal obstruction of immigration law enforcement. By defining itself as the party of open borders and endless illegal immigration, and by calling for un-American mass intimidation of federal officials and obstruction of immigration law enforcement, the Democratic Party has handed the president, the Republican Party, and every embattled Republican congressional candidate two huge electoral issues. We already know that the President is a fighter. He proves that again and again simply by going to the office every day in this unprecedented atmosphere of hatred and media propaganda masquerading as 'news.' He has earned, many times over, the intense admiration, gratitude, and devotion of the overwhelming majority of those who voted for him. As a fighter, the President no doubt knows how to use the two powerful electoral issues he has been handed over the last couple weeks by the unhinged new Democratic Party. Can the same be said for those running the national Republican congressional and senatorial campaigns?" • • • TRUMP WILL FIGHT, BUT WILL THE GOP ELITES? That is the real issue. Can we depend on the traditional Republican Party elites to stand up for America and stand beside President Trump. Will the GOP elites, for example, follow William Sullivan's advice about amnesty? Sullivan wrote in American Thinker on Tuesday : "Amnesty for illegal aliens has never been a winning issue for Democrats. Barack Obama seemed to operate with this knowledge. But his successors obviously don't share his political cunning....Deportations had to happen by law, he asserted. But beneath the table, he was undermining the laws of the people as only the shiftiest despot might. Take what's commonly become known as his 'catch and release' policy, more formally known as his administration's 'prosecutorial discretion' guidelines. Under these guidelines, ICE data from 2013 reveal, 'hundreds of thousands [of illegal aliens] who were identified in the interior of the country were released instead of removed.' In that year, only 25% of criminal trespassers in America were charged with their crime. To make matters worse, a large number of those released were criminals, even beyond their having committed the crime of entering this country illegally. In fact, 68,000 (or 35% of the illegal aliens encountered by officers) had 'criminal convictions,' and they were released into the population 'without formal notice to law enforcement agencies and victims.' For the record, more than 80% of Americans disagree with this 'catch and release' policy to this day." Sullivan points out that : "Three quarters of illegal trespassers not being charged with a crime and being released into the 'shadows' is not something easily missed by those desiring to break the law, you see. The summer of 2014 saw illegal aliens, and peculiarly massive numbers of unattended children, surge across the border by the tens of thousands. The American people witnessed this spectacle and became angry at the policies of the administration that led to it....In mid-June of 2014, he told the Mexican government, then facilitating much of the flow-through of migrants from Central America, that immigrants crossing illegally 'won't qualify for legalized status or deferred deportation, including children.' This was damage control in anticipation of the coming election, and in response to his dismal approval polling (which, by the way, was significantly lower in June 2014 than Trump's current approval rating)....In 2013 alone, the administration's Health and Human Services Department had 'as many as 25,000 unaccompanied children in its care across 80 shelters.' That is, these were the same shelters being hyperbolically likened to Auschwitz by some sympathetic observers now that Donald Trump is the President but that went curiously undiscussed in previous years. November of 2014 was the most immediate reckoning for all of Obama's shenanigans around illegal immigration. Republicans showed up in huge numbers to vote Democrats out in November of 2014, and few honest observers would say that the election was not predicated upon the central issues of Obamacare and illegal immigration policy." • Fast forward to 2016. Donald Trump drove home the illegal immigration and 'catch and release' poliices of Obama and created a politicla force around that building of a wall and secure America's borders by applying US immigration laws strictly until they could be revised by Congress. And, in 2018, when Democrats argue that 800,000 DREAMers should be made legal citizens, President Trump upped the ante by offering that 1,800,000 of them be made legal citizens -- BUT only in exchange for stronger border control measures and a wall to curb illegal immigration. Democrat leaders were defiantly opposed to Trump's deal. Instead, ProgDems jumped on the "zero-tolerance" policy as it applies to separating children from their parents who've been incarcerated for having broken our immigration laws. Trump again called their bluff, ordering federal border enforcement to hold children and the parents in incarceration together. Within four hours of her demand, Democrat leaders said that solution "will not fix the problem." • Of course it won't. Trump knows that. But, what he had done was to tell Democrats -- you can have families together, but only in incarcetaion circumstances. What the ProgDems wanted was a return to Obama's "catch and release" policies. • Sullivan says the real problem for Democrats is "no longer that they're being 'ripped' or 'torn' from their parents, but that the children get to stay with their parents in incarceration for having broken our laws. What ProgDems are demanding from President trump is "the absolute decriminalization of illegal entry into this country." Hoxever, says Sullivan : "Absolute amnesty is still not a winning position with the American people. Democrats would do far better by going back to the drawing board to drum up new outrage about climate change or doubling down on transgender rights as their flagship issue, something like that. Trump has forced Democrats to show their hand on illegal immigration, and in so doing, he may have ensured that the 'blue wave' Democrats were once optimistic would sweep America this November will become little more than a fanciful myth some media outlets and college professors told to hopeful leftist dupes in early 2018." • • • THERE IS PLENTY TO FIGHT ABOUT. Peter Fonda callaing for pedophiles to rape Barron. Kathy Griffin symbolically beheading Trump. Soros's Black Lives Matter calling for the killing of police and whites. Mad Maxine Waters saying God supports her call for mob harassment of Trump cabinet members and the President himself. Snoop Dog portrayed shooting President Trump in the head. with its agenda. Democrat Laurence Key vowing to kill Republican Brian Mast's kids over our immigration policy. Schumer refusing any negotiation on immigration reform or DREAMER solution becasue he does not xant to close the border wiht a wall. • WHY? Because all ProgDems really care about is flooding our country with unskilled illegals who will be dependent on government and vote for Democrats whether as citizens or as ringers. • • • DEAR READERS, where is the Democrat or mainstream media approval for Trump having reduced Black or Hispanic unemployemt to their lowest recorded levels? Where is their rejoicing over Trump's 3.8% unemployment rate that now means there are more jobs than people to fill them? Where is their satisfaction over the fact that Trump has increased petroleum production so much that the US now has enough for domestic uses and exports 3 million barrels a day, instead of importing the bulk of its own needs? Where is the ProgDem relief that ISIS is shattered? Where is their pleasure in seeing Trump actually reach out to dangerous nuclear nations like North Korea, while taking measures to force Iran out of the nuclear business? Where is the salute for Trump's ability to get NATO funded more equitably and to call out the UN when it abuses Israel? Where is the Democrat voice that speaks up positively for reduced taxes and regulation that benefit Americans and small businesses and set big business booming in the US? • Every Trump victory for America only leads to more vicious and greater noise from the radical left Progressive Democrat Party -- more insanity, more outrage, and more dangerous efforts to destroy the America that Donald Trump has gotten off its knees and into its rightful place as world leader on every issue. • These achievements are why it is critical that we make sure the GOP maintains a majority in the House and Senate in November. And, not just a majority but an increased majority with new members whose conservative MAGA-Trump-supporting credentials are upfront. • And, this should be our message to Mitt Romney and every other Republican elected in November -- if you come to Washington as a Swamp Creature ready to join the #NeverTrump losers, we will sideline you as we have done to others who see government as a playpen for elites. • President Donald Trump spoke to young people in Washington on Wednesday, urging them forward in their lives and careers. The President had a stirring message for them : "There’s never been a better time to be young and American. We’re citizens of the freest strongest and greatest nation on earth. Greatest nation ever to exist, and we’re getting stronger every day....You bring fresh eyes to old problems because as young people you’re not burdened about the failed thinking of the past....“You got to love what you’re doing and if you don’t, then just do something else....Never, ever quit. I see people quitting. And if they had just hung on a little longer, they would've won." • President Trump has lifted the Grand Old Party far above the losing ways of 2008 and 2012. He is lifting America to its shining hill. Now is the time to hold our position and add more Americans who support our winning agenda. Making America Great Again is everybody's job.

Prince William in Israel Marks His New Key Role for the Queen, as well as Marking Israel's Growing Key Role in the Middle East and the World

TODAY'S NEWS IS ABOUT PRINCE WILLIAM'S HISTORIC AND TIMELY VISIT TO ISRAEL. • • • PRINCE WILLIAM GOT A LOT OF ADVICE BEFORE ARRIVING IN ISRAEL. A week ago, long before Prince William arrived in Israel on Monday, JTA's Josefin Dolsten gave William 5 things to remember about Israel. (1) Dolsten pointed out that, despite the media hype, William’s visit to Israel is not the first by the royal family. William’s visit is being billed as the first "official" one. Prince Phillip, William’s grandfather, visited the country in 1994 for a ceremony honoring his mother, Princess Alice, for her sheltering of a Jewish family during World War II. Phillip accepted the Righteous Among the Nations award on behalf of his late mother and planted a maple tree in her memory at Yad Vashem. Prince Charles, William’s father, visited Israel to attend the funerals of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 and President Shimon Peres in 2016. (2) William will visit his great-grandmother’s grave on the Mount of Olives. Princess Alice of Battenberg has a special connection to the Jewish people. Alice, who was married to Prince Andrew of Greece, helped shelter three members of the family of a late Greek-Jewish politician in her palace in Athens during World War II. The Gestapo was suspicious of Alice, even questioning her, but the princess, who was deaf, pretended not to understand their questions. Alice later became a nun. Before her death in 1969, she said she wanted to be buried at the Convent of Saint Mary Magdalene on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, near where one of her aunts, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna, was laid to rest. Alice was buried initially at Windsor Castle. However, in 1988, her remains were transferred to Jerusalem. In 1993, the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Israel named her a Righteous Among the Nations for her war-era bravery. (3) Jerusalem is not Occupied Palestinian Territory, as was noted in William's official schedule, which listed Jerusalem as being in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories.” Zeev Elkin, the Israeli Cabinet member in charge of Jerusalem , called on William’s staff to correct the itinerary. Elkin said : “United Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel for 3,000 years and no distortion in the tour itinerary can change that reality. I expect the prince’s people to correct the distortion.” All is silence on this. (4) Prince William will stay at the historic King David Hotel. Opened in 1931, the King David has played a pivotal role in Israel’s history. The hotel has hosted royalty and heads of state, including King George II of Greece, who set up his government there in 1942 when the Nazis occupied his country. During the British Mandate, the hotel’s southern wing was turned into British administrative and military headquarters. In 1946, the hotel was the target of a bombing by the Irgun Zionist paramilitary group that killed 91, including 15 Jews. Two years later the hotel became a Jewish stronghold, as Israel declared its independence. (5) There’s a tattoo parlor in Jerusalem’s Old City where several royals are said to have been inked. If William has any desire to get a tattoo, Razzouk seems like the obvious choice. King Edward VII, King George V and Prince Albert are all said to have been inked there with Jerusalem crosses. The shop, run by the Razzouk family for some 500 years in the Christian Quarter, is popular among visitors to the city. The family uses wooden block stamps, some of them hundreds of years old, to stamp religious symbols onto the skin before the tattooing process begins. Tattoo artist Wassim Razzouk offered to do the tattoo should William be interested, telling Haaretz “it would be a great honor.” • Then came the lessons William should take away form his visit. These were provided by Aish.com's Dr. Yvette Alt Miller, who noted that : "Starting on Tuesday, June 26, Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, will spend three days touring Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, visiting with Israeli and Palestinian politicians, and attending a ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. His visit has already sparked controversy, and his every move seems sure to be scrutinized. As William tours the Jewish state, here are five lessons about Israel that I sincerely hope he takes back home with him to London." (1) "Israel is the eternal homeland of the Jewish people. Prince William’s trip is taking place at a momentous time in Britain, when the government has gone out of its way to emphasize its support for the existence of a Jewish homeland. 101 years ago, the British government declared its official support for 'a national home of the Jewish people' in the land of Israel in the Balfour Declaration. In 2017, some called for Britain to disavow this century-old commitment. Instead of doing so, Britain doubled down on its historic support for a Jewish homeland in Israel. Sajid Javid, a British Moslem cabinet secretary, spoke for millions of Britons when he declared, 'To apologize for the Balfour Declaration would be to apologize for the existence of Israel and to question its right to exist.' He said Britain would celebrate the Balfour Declaration “with pride.” Prince William’s visit seems to be part of that spirit of celebration, at long last normalizing British royals’ relationship with Israel. When William visits the Western Wall in Jerusalem, he will be standing at the site where the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem once stood, the very heart of the capital of the Jewish state for the past 3,000 years. Prince William’s visit will also highlight the urgent need for a Jewish state today. On his visit he’ll meet Jews whose ancestors fled from over 100 countries, all seeking safety to live as Jews in the Jewish state. When he tours Yad Vashem, Prince William will help memorialize the millions of Jews who were murdered just a generation ago because they had no national homeland willing to take them in." (2) "Israel is a bastion of civil rights and religious freedom. One of the many 'Righteous Among the Nations' heroes memorialized at Yad Vashem is none other than Prince William’s own great-grandmother, Princess Alice. She was a daughter of Queen Victoria who married a Greek prince, later eschewed her royal family, and during the Holocaust sheltered her Jewish friend Rachel Cohen, as well as her two sons in her Athens apartment. After the war, Princess Alice turned her back on royal life and became a nun. She is buried in the Church of Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem, and Prince William plans to lay a wreath there on his visit." Dr. Miller points out that William will notice that Christians are free to practice their faith unencumbered in Israel, just like all of Israel’s ethnic and religious groups because "freedom of religion and non-discrimination are built into the very legal framework on which the State of Israel was founded. All of Israel’s citizens enjoy this protection. In addition, thousands of Christian pilgrims visit the Jewish state each year. In 2009, Israel opened a historic 40 mile hiking and walking trail through Israel’s breathtaking countryside, incorporating Christian sites. The network of trails, information centers, refreshment areas and other amenities sends a message to Christians around the world that they are valued and welcome in the Jewish state. At a time when Christians find themselves under attack from Islamist extremists in much of the Middle East -- including areas under Palestinian Authority control -- Israel’s freedom of religion and vigorous guarantee of all its citizens’ safety is more important than ever." (3) "Israel is one of the world’s great tourist destinations." That’s what Travel and Leisure magazine said when it rated Jerusalem one of the world’s top ten not-to-be-missed cities to visit. Prince William is staying at the King David, described by the UK Daily Telegraph as a “luxurious retreat overlooking Jerusalem’s Old City, featuring elegant interiors, spacious rooms, a fine dining restaurant and spectacular views.” In 2017, Forbes magazine ran an article titled “Why Israel Might Just Have the World’s Best Restaurant Scene.” Dr. Miller says : "With vibrant art and music, wonderful restaurants, world-class hiking and historical sites, and some of most spectacular beaches on the planet, Israel is a vibrant tourist destination. Word seems to be getting out : 2017 saw 3.6 million tourists sample the pleasures of the Jewish state, a 25% increase in visitors from the previous year. The number of visitors in 2018 is higher than ever, and seems set to surpass last year’s record." (4) Israel, like the younger royals, is forward-looking, says Dr. Miller : "Prince William and his brother Prince Harry have broken with a number of old-fashioned royal conventions and are charting their own paths in the modern, multicultural world. Prince Harry recently married Meghan Markle, a mix-raced divorcee who is older than Harry, something unthinkable for a British prince just a few years ago. Prince William’s wife Kate was born a commoner; the royal couple had to battle incredible prejudice and snobbery to be together. Given his trailblazing credentials, it’s likely that Prince William will appreciate Israel’s forward-thinking sensibilities as well. Israel is the sole country in the Middle East that guarantees universal education, health care, equal rights, protections for minorities, and extends the vote to all citizens, regardless of gender, religion or ethnicity. A robust and independent press and independent courts ensures that Israel remains one of the freest and most open societies on earth. Ironically, although Israel is often bashed as an 'apartheid state' and derided in some quarters, nothing could be further from the truth." As Sarah Zoabi, an Israeli Arab who appeared on the Israeli TV show “Master Chef” declared on national television : “I want to say to all the Arabs of Israel...We live in Paradise. Compared to other countries, to Arab countries -- we live in paradise.” It’s a sentiment that many Israelis -- including Israeli Arabs -- share. And, Israeli women make up 60% of students completing a bachelor’s degree, 61% of students completing a master’s degree and 50% of students completing a doctorate. Israel’s Knesset is over 28% female, and 54% of judges in Israel are women. As Prince William will no doubt discover, that Israel is in tune with the modern world and its emphasis on human rights and freedoms. (5) The world is beginning to appreciate Israel more than ever. Prince William has long been on the cutting edge of social trends, and his visit to Israel shows that the savvy prince can gauge public sentiment. His 2018 visit will coincide with a Gallup poll that recently showed nearly three quarters of Americans have a favorable view of Israel, a near record number. According to Dr. Miller : "In Prince William’s native Britain, public perceptions of Israel seem a little more complex. A 2015 survey about Britain’s attitudes towards Israel showed that Israel was seen both as one of the least admired countries by Britons, and also one of the most admired. Chatham House, a London- based think tank found that while some British people regarded Israel as the world’s second worst country (behind only North Korea), another cohort of Britons ranked it as the world’s 8th most admired nation. It seems that while some people in Britain really dislike the Jewish state, a large number take a more clear-eyed view, and appreciate Israel’s many admirable qualities." • If that sounds like a travelogue for Israel, it is, but we should note that Yvette Alt Miller earned her BA at Harvard University, her Postgraduate Diploma in Jewish Studies at Oxford University, and has a Ph.D. In International Relations from the London School of Economics. She lives with her family in Chicago, and has lectured internationally on Jewish topics. Her book Angels at the table: a Practical Guide to Celebrating Shabbat takes readers through the rituals of Shabbat and more, explaining the full beautiful spectrum of Jewish traditions with warmth and humor. It has been praised as "life-changing", a modern classic, and used in classes and discussion groups around the world. So, with Dr. Miller, "let’s hope that Prince William’s visit helps his compatriots – and people around the world -- see Israel for what it really is: a vibrant, open, modern society that guarantees human rights and religious freedoms for all its citizens -- a place where history is palpable, where visitors from around the world meet – and the eternal homeland of the Jewish people." • • • WILLIAM SEES A LOT OF ISRAEL. With that as prelude, what has Prince William done so far while in Israel in his trip for the British government, which has reversed British policy not to make an official royal visit until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was resolved. British officials have given no detailed explanation for the change in policy. • Israel Hayom reported on Wednesday about William's visit : "In Israel, Prince William says he looks forward to meeting as many Israelis as possible, understanding Israeli history and culture." Following his engagements in Jerusalem, William went to Tel Aviv where he was met by the city's mayor, Ron Huldai. Sporting sunglasses and an open-necked shirt, the Duke of Cambridge strolled along the Mediterranean shore, chatting with beach-goers and quipping, "I should have brought my swimming trunks." Together, William and Huldai watched a beach volleyball game and checked out a lifeguard station. William took in a Jewish-Arab youth soccer game, and met Eurovision winner Netta Barzilai. • Speaking at a reception in his honor at the British Ambassador's Residence in Tel Aviv at Ramat Gan, William said his visit to Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem had been a "profoundly moving experience." He told dignitaries, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, that he was "well aware that the responsibility falls now to my generation to keep the memory alive of that great crime as the Holocaust generation passes on, and I commit myself to doing this." After a brief opening greeting in Hebrew, William said, "Israel's remarkable story is partly one of remembering its terrible past but also looking forward to a much more hopeful future...the modern story is one of inventing, creating, innovating and striding confidently into its future." William then joined the Netanyahus in viewing an exhibit on the technological developments of four Israeli companies. • Earlier in Jerusalem, at Yad Vashem Holocust Museum, the prince spoke with two men who survived the Nazi genocide through British intervention. Henry Foner, 86, and Paul Alexander, 80, were among the thousands of Jewish children taken in by Britain from a continental Europe that was falling to German conquest as part of the 1930s "Kindertransport." Alexander said he told "His Royal Highness that this is a unique opportunity for me to express my thanks to the British people for opening their homes to me and to the other 10,000 children who came." Foner described the Prince as very warm and said he "gave us a good feeling." Foner said he thanked William, as a representative of the British people, for saving me at that time." He said talking to the Prince was "like talking to a friend I haven't seen in a long time." Wearing a black kippah, William laid a wreath at the Hall of Remembrance, where an eternal flame flickers and the names of extermination and concentration camps are engraved in the floor. "Terrifying," William said, viewing a display at the memorial's museum of shoes taken by the Nazis from Jews at the Majdanek death camp. "(I'm) trying to comprehend the scale." Tens of thousands of Jews and other victims were killed at the camp, near Lublin in what is now Poland. In the Yad Vashem guestbook, William wrote : "It has been a profoundly moving experience to visit Yad Vashem today. It is almost impossible to comprehend this appalling event in history. Every name, photograph and memory recorded here is a tragic reminder of the loss suffered by the Jewish people. The story of the Holocaust is one of darkness and despair, questioning humanity itself. We must never forget the Holocaust -- the murder of 6 million men, women and children, simply because they were Jewish. We all have a responsibility to remember and to teach future generations about the horrors of the past so that they can never reoccur. May the millions of Jewish people remembered by Yad Vashem never be forgotten. The actions of those few, who took great risks to help others, are a reminder of the human capacity for love and hope. I am honored that my own great-grandmother is one of these Righteous Among the Nations." • After the tour of Yad Vashe, William was greeted by the Netanyahus at the Prime Minister's Residence against the backdrop of British and Israeli flags. There, the Prince met relatives of the late Rachel Cohen, who was hidden from the Gestapo along with two of her five children by Princess Alice, the mother of William's grandfather, Britain's 97-year-old Prince Philip, in her palace in Greece. The Greek royal family -- Princess Alice was married to Prince Andrew of Greece -- had been acquainted with Cohen's late husband, Haimaki, a former member of Greece's parliament. Natanyahu said : "You must be very proud of your great-grandmother, who saved defenseless Jews," as he gifted William a replica Righteous Among the Nations Certificate for Princess Alice, who was granted the title in 1993. Princess Alice was recognized as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, gentiles who rescued Jews, by Yad Vashem in 1993. A devout Christian, she is buried on the slopes of Jerusalem's Mount of Olives. William will visit her tomb on Thursday. • At a meeting with President Reuven Rivlin, William, on a visit described by Britain as nonpolitical, said he hoped "peace in the area can be achieved. I had a very moving tour around Yad Vashem this morning, which really taught me quite a lot more than I thought I already knew about the true horrors of what happened to the Jews over the war," William told President Rivlin. Rivlin told William : "This land knows a lot about history, today you are writing a new page in history. Many kings and princes have visited Jerusalem over the years, and you come not just as a prince but as a pilgrim to the Holy Land.” Rivlin spoke with William of his experience growing up in Jerusalem : "Your Royal Highness, I was born as a British subject. I walked to school every day down King George Street, but also past King David Street. We were here 100 years even before the Balfour Declaration, a declaration which helped the people of Israel, the Jewish people, from all around the world bring to reality the idea and the belief that the Jewish people have to return to their homeland....We really appreciate the connection and the cooperation between our two states; the cooperation, the trade between us, and the friendship." • President Rivlin noted that William was to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Wednesday, and asked that the prince convey a "message of peace. It is about time that we have to find together the way to build confidence as a first step to bringing an end to the tragedy between us that has gone one for more than 100 years." William thanked President Rivlin for his warm welcome : "It is my first visit to Israel, and I am obviously looking forward to getting to meet as many Israelis as possible and understanding Israeli history and Israeli culture over the next few days." President Rivlin presented William a copy of an album of pictures taken between 1850 and 1865 of Prince Albert Edward -- who went on to be King Edward VII -- Prince William's great-great-great-grandfather, who visited the Holy Land in 1862. The album included an article by Rivlin's great-grandfather Yosef describing the prince's welcome. • • • PRINCE WILLIAM IN RAMALLAH. Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told Prince William that the Palestinians are serious in their wish to achieve peace with Israel. William and Abbas met in the Palestinian presidential compound in Ramallah in the first visit of its kind to the West Bank by a member of the British royal family. Abbas said : "We want to reach peace through negotiations," expressing hope that the Prince's next visit would be "after the Palestinians had achieved their independence." Abbas said he believed that the visit would strengthen friendly relations between the Palestinians and the British people. Abbas also pointed out that Britain had recently provided $45 million in aid to the United Nations Works and Relief Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). • The Ramallah meeting was attended by a number of senior Palestinian officials, including Saeb Erekat and Hanan Ashrawi. Prince William, for his part, said that he was delighted to visit Ramallah and meet with Palestinians, according to a statement released by the PA president's office, which read : "I'm very glad our two countries work so closely together and have had success stories with education and relief work in the past, so, long may that continue....My sentiments are the same as yours in hoping that there is a lasting peace in the region." • On Tuesday, President Rivlin publicly asked the prince to bring Abbas "a message of peace" and tell him it is time to find a way to "build confidence" between Israel and the Palestinians. But, using one of the most dsiputed fact in all of the disputes between Israel and the Palestinians, during William's visit Abbas said : "The Palestinian side is committed to the peace process with the Israelis, so both states could live peacefully together within the borders of 1967." Abbas and the Palestinians behaved badly, as they always do -- using the non-political visit of Prince William as a platform to express their political positions that make peace impossible. Did Abbas really think William would rise to the bait?? • • • SADLY, ALL IS NOT ROSES IN ISRAEL, EVER. Israel Today reported on Wednesday that "Syrian civilians fleeing a fresh military offensive by their own government and its Russian allies have begun massing on the border of Israel's Golan Heights." Why? Because they say that being as close as possible to Israeli forces is the safest place to be, presumably because Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and Russia are wary of drawing Israel further into the country's bloody civil war. • The Assad regime has managed to regain control over most of Damascus and its suburbs, with the help of the Russians, and now, says Israel Today : "Assad wants to end the official rebellion (which is largely unrelated to the fight against ISIS and other jihadist groups) by retaking the last major rebel stronghold, the Daraa region of southwestern Syria. The Daraa region borders both Jordan and Israel. It is through Daraa that well over half a million Syrians have crossed the border to find refuge in Jordan. But, the Hashemite Kingdom has now said 'no more.' Jordan this week officially closed its border to additional Syrian refugees. It was the worst possible timing for the residents of Daraa, as regime and Russia warplanes began indiscriminately bombing everything in sight in preparation for a major military push into the region. Waseem Kiwan, a resident of Daraa city, told the AP that the Russians are bombing everything, including hospitals and UN facilities. As a result, many of these Syrians now feel that the 'safest place is the border with Israel because the regime and Russian airplanes cannot strike the area near the Israeli border,' said Kiwan. Another observer, Qalaat Al Mudiq, posted photos and videos of the fighting in Daraa, as well as the migration of Syrians toward Israel, to his Twitter profile @QalaatAlMudiq." Israel Today points out that : "This is a rather remarkable development, considering that most Syrians were raised believing the Israelis to be bloodthirsty and merciless enemies. Clearly, a great many people no longer believe such lies, as previously evidenced by the flood of wounded Syrians seeking medical treatment in Israel." • Yes, despite being officially at war, the Quneitra border crossing has seen Israel grant entry to thousands of Syrians seeking medical treatment. Will the Jewish state now open its gates to a much larger number of Syrian refugees? We don't have na answer yet, but we cna be sure that an open-border policy will never be put in place. • • • DEAR READERS, Prince William has made several stops on his trip, including the visit with Palestinian Authority President Abbas in Ramallah. What we have seen is a Prince William who has grown into his role as second in line to the British throne, who is obviously at ease with his role and who puts everyone he meets at ease with him. We cannot help but think of his mother, Princess Diana, and see her openness and warmth in William. But, his visit to Israel is also important for other reasons. It drives home the fact that Israel is a key player on the world stage, that it has become fully accepted as a leader in the Middle East, and that despite -- or perhaps because of -- Britain's struggle with Islamic radicalism and terrorism at home, it is now reaching out to Israel as a key to stability in the Middle East and a voice for peace in the world. But, peace and stability come at a price, as Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu noted : "I am very proud the Jews are no longer defenseless. We have, thank God, a military to defend ourselves by ourselves."

Americans Reject Democrat Harassment Tactic as Violence Aimed at Destroying President Trump

TODAY, WE THINK OF AMERICA. It is a nation in pain, feeling the anguish of being attacked by her own citizens. • • • THE TROUBLE IS NOT CAUSED ONLY BY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. If that were true, the acknowledgement by President Obama's Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on “Fox News Sunday” that illegal immigrant children were being separated from their families under Obama would have stopped the attack and the trouble. Johnson told Fox : “We believed it was necessary at the time. I still believe it is necessary....without a doubt the images and the reality from 2014 just like 2018 are not pretty. And so, we expanded family detention. We had then 34,000 beds for family detention, only 95 of 34,000 equipped to deal with families....We believed it was necessary at the time. I still believe it is necessary to main a certain capability for families. We cannot have catch and release and in my three years we deported or repatriated, or returned over a million people.” Stating the obvious, thereby agreeing with President Trump’s insistence Sunday that the problem must be dealt with at the border, Johnson said : “But, again, you can deal with this on the border. You can try different things. We did not want to go so far as to separate families.” Photos of the Obama facilities for children are found at < 2014 Obama facilities for children of illegals at : < https://patriotpost.us/articles/56662 >. • President Trump tweeted on Sunday that US immigration laws are a mockery : "We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order. Most children come without parents...[US policies] very unfair to all of those people who have gone through the system legally." • Federal law prevents children from being held in the same detention facility as those charged with unlawful entry, causing border patrol agents to separate children from their families. However, the President signed an executive order Wednesday to stop separating parents and children at the US border, explaining to the media after the signing : "We are keeping families together, and this will solve that problem. At the time, we are keeping a very powerful border, and it continues to be a zero tolerance [policy] -- we have zero tolerance for people that enter our country illegally." • When Congress insisted last week that Trump hire more immigration judges; he responded : "We don't want judges, we want security on the border." President Trump continues to accuse Democrats in Congress of obstructing all efforts to repair bad US immigration laws that were largely adopted when Democrats controlled Congress. When Republicans in the House failed to pass a conservative immigration bill last week, Trump urged congressional Republicans to "stop wasting their time" on immigration until after the midterm elections. • • • THE HARASSMENT GOES ON. Examples are everywhere. • One result of the hysterical reaction of Leftists to President Trump’s enforcement of federal immigration laws was a Border Patrol agent with a broken ankle this weekend. He broke it trying to protect an older woman from unruly protesters in McAllen, Texas, who were blocking a bus full of illegal immigrants from a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility. The protesters, who belong to the League of United Latin American Citizens, surrounded the bus and tried to physically stop it from moving forward Saturday afternoon. One protester said : “This is to make a point that they need to leave children alone. This is not the America we fought for and died for. My community has fought. There’s no reason for them to do this to these children. These people have these children in a bus like criminals. They haven’t committed any crime." • Ironically, polls show that a majority of Americans agree with Trump. A majority also blame the plight of illegal immigrant children on their parents, not the President. Not that any of this matters to the radical Progressive Left. A Rasmussen poll released last Thursday showed : "When families are arrested and separated after attempting to enter the United States illegally, 54% of Likely US Voters say the parents are more to blame for breaking the law, with only 35% believing that the federal government is more to blame for enforcing the law. Among all voters, 49% say the administration is too aggressive trying to stop illegal immigration, wiht 25% saying it's not aggressive enough, and 21% view the administration's policies as about right. And, 54% agree with President Trump when he says, "The United States will not be a migrant camp. And it will not be a refugee-holding facility -- it won't be." • American Thinker's Thomas Lifson reminds us that ProgDem leaders are worried. Lifson cites "the sudden appearance of adult supervision at the Washington Post, where the editorial board opined yesterday afternoon, 'Let the Trump team eat in peace.' After ritually denouncing the Trump administration for most of the editorial, the editors wrote : 'We nonetheless would argue that Ms. Huckabee, and Ms. Nielsen and Mr. Miller, too, should be allowed to eat dinner in peace. Those who are insisting that we are in a special moment justifying incivility should think for a moment how many Americans might find their own special moment. How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families? Down that road lies a world in which only the most zealous sign up for public service. That benefits no one.' " ESPECIALLY not the WP and its ProgDem audience of Washington elites. Here's what Obama insider David Axelrod tweeted : "Oh yes, let's get REALLY tough and deprive the Trumpies of their chanterelle and scape risotto! That will change EVERYTHING!"....Kind of amazed and appalled by the number of folks on Left who applauded the expulsion of @PressSec and her family from a restaurant. This, in the end, is a triumph for @realDonaldTrump vision of America : Now we’re divided by red plates & blue plates! #sad." Lifson quotes the New York Times, on January 28, 2016 : "The Department of Health and Human Services placed more than a dozen immigrant children in the custody of human traffickers after it failed to conduct background checks of caregivers, according to a Senate report released on Thursday. Examining how the federal agency processes minors who arrive at the border without a guardian, lawmakers said they found that it had not followed basic practices of child welfare agencies, like making home visits." HOME VISITS?? That tells us just how unreal are these ProgDems who now hate Trump for being kinder to these children used by their parents to gain access to the US illegally. Trump tweeted : "Such a difference in the media coverage of the same immigration policies between the Obama Administration and ours. Actually, we have done a far better job in that our facilities are cleaner and better run than were the facilities under Obama. Fake News is working overtime!" • The ProgDem elites' propagandist media is still telling us that Trump is a historically-unpopular President, but that’s not what the polls say. In survey after survey of the American electorate, Trump’s numbers are rising and he is looking at the same job approval numbers enjoyed by his predecessor, the Wildly Popular Leftist God, Barack Obama. The latest Gallup poll has Trump at a record high of 45%, up eight points from January. This is a President who, despite a nearly-unanimous onslaught of negative coverage from the mainstream media, is only becoming more popular with every passing day. Obama’s approval rating from the exact same point in his presidency? It was 45%. • Even Glenn Beck -- who defaulted on his conservative credentials by becoming a #NeverTrumper in 2016 -- has had enough. He walked off a CNN interview with Brian Stelter, saying CNN's over-the-top propaganda masquerading as “news” is dividing the country and inciting violence against Border Patrol agents and female Trump aides; later tweeting : 1.”border patrol agent injured by anti-obama mobs.” “Obama’s daughters threatens with Rape, kidnapping and murder by right wing ‘star’”;’gop activist arrested for threatening to rape and kill Dem congressman’s children.”....2. Had the exact same events that occurred this week happened under Obama." Beck blamed CNN and the mainstream media for fomenting manufactured, selective outrage that has escalated into violent rhetoric and abuse. Beck told Stelter : "You’re dividing us even more!. We’ve had two people threaten the lives of a congressman’s child and the President’s child. Where are the people that were so worried about language and tone on television? Don’t you understand what you’re doing? You’re driving people into the arms of Donald Trump....This is all about ratings! Stop dividing us.” Maybe Glenn Beck has re-become a conservative. He wore a red MAGA baseball cap to the CNN interview and recently announced he’s now on the Trump Train and will vote for him in 2020, predicting that President Trump will win the 2020 election in a “landslide,” citing the public’s growing distrust of the irresponsible, biased media. • • • WE KNOW HOW DISHONEST THE MEDIA AND PROGDEM LEADERS ARE. • We know that Time magazine exposed itself as Fake news again by using the photo of a crying girl plastered on its anti-Trump cover -- but the child was not separated from her mother by US authorities. The mother took the little girl away without telling her husband and leaving her 3 other kids behind in Honduras. The girl’s father told the Daily Mail his wife Sandra Maria Sanchez basically kidnapped their 2-year-old daughter, Yanela Denise, and paid $6,000 to smugglers to sneak into the US against his wishes. Hernandez, 32, has since learned that his wife and daughter are doing well and are being detained together at a taxpayer-funded family residential center in Texas. IN ADDITON, we know that Sandra Maria Sanchez was deported back to Honduras in 2013 but snuck in illegally again in June 2018. Because she had been deported before, Sandra should’ve been criminally prosecuted under President Trump’s zero-tolerance policy, which means she should have been separated from Yanela. But that did not happen, according to an ICE statement : "On June 12, 2018, Sandra Maria Sanchez, 32, a previously deported woman from Honduras illegally re-entered the United States. She was arrested by agents with US Customs and Border Protection’s Border Patrol near Hidalgo, Texas, while traveling with a family member. On June 17, 2018, Sanchez was transferred to ICE custody, and is currently housed at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. Her immigration proceedings are ongoing. On July 3, 2013, Sanchez was encountered by immigration officials in Hebbronville, Texas. On July 9, 2013, she was transferred to ICE ERO custody. On July 18, 2013, Sanchez was removed to Honduras under expedited removal." Hernandez said he is employed in Honduras and his family lives well, but his wife wanted to go to the United States to experience “the American dream.” Despite the fact that Sandra was not being persecuted in her homeland, she’s seeking asylum, even though she’s an economic migrant trying to replace actual political refugees who legitimately need asylum. • Yes, we know that Time at first stuck by the cover story, but finally issued a correction at the very bottom of their Fake news article about the little girl being taken away by border patrol agents, that read : “The girl was not carried away screaming by US Border Patrol agents; her mother picked her up and the two were taken away together.” Time, however, is still standing by its cover, stating it captures ‘the stakes of the moment.’ And, Fake news personality Jorge Ramos was quick to attack Trump : "This is Trump’s America. What’s going to happen to this 2-year-old Honduran girl? The new policy is to separate her from her mother. Shame!!!" • Yes, we know that there are 5 US Consulates along the border IN Mexico, so there is an easy way to ask for asylum without entering the US illegally. There should be NO asylum granted to those who cross the US border illegally. • Yes, we knwo that there is a lawsuit against the abusive detention of children at a Virginia center. And, in the AP story describing the abuse and the lawsuit, Donald Trump's name is mentioned four times. BUT, we also know that the AP article that spread like wildfire on social media last Thursday morning and was picked up by other news outlets describing the horrible story of serious abuse of minor immigrants in the custody and care of the United States government, usggesting it all occurred since Trump has become President -- AP allegations included children being handcuffed, beaten, left in solitary confinement. In reality, the lawsuit covers a time prior to Trump taking office, involving alleged incidents before and during 2016, when we had President Obama, who was mentioned zero times in the article. As American Thinker wrote about the AP article : "Eventually, the AP altered the story slightly : In court filings, lawyers for the detention facility have denied all the allegations of physical abuse. The incidents described in the lawsuit occurred from 2015 to 2018, during both the Obama and Trump administrations....We shouldn't lose sight of the horrific nature of this story, which details some awful treatment of teens. People should be held accountable for the abuse. But the blatant partisan spin given to this story by the AP should also be noted, and the wire service should be called out for its extraordinary bias." • BUT, I bet we didn't know that the United States has passed Germany to become the largest recipient of new asylum applications worldwide, according to the United Nations. The UN Refugee Agency released a report on Tuesday showing the number of individual asylum applicants fell by 73% in Germany between 2016 and 2017, from 722,400 to 198,300. Meanwhile, the US saw a nearly 27% increase in new applications within a year, reaching 331,700 in 2017. Germany's sharp drop in new asylum seekers is attributed to the closure of a route through the Balkans commonly taken to reach the country at the height of the refugee crisis in 2015, as well as an EU migration deal negotiated by German Chancellor Amgela Merkel with Turkey in 2016. Regarding refugees in absolute numbers, Turkey continued to host the highest number with 3.5 million people total, mainly Syrians. Relative to its national population, Lebanon had the largest number of refugees, 164 per 1,000 inhabitants. • • • THE NATIONAL REVIEW CAN STILL BE CONSERVATIVE. NR's former #NeverTrump presidential candidate and writer David French reminds us : "Those of us with a trace of historical memory know that the Trump administration is merely asking the courts and Congress to adopt the Obama administration's legal position. Yes, you read that correctly. As the Trump administration seeks to modify the Flores consent decree to allow for family detention past 20 days -- and as GOP members of the House and Senate introduce bills that would overrule Flores -- they are following in Obama's footsteps. Don't believe me? Read the exact words of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Flores v. Lynch, the 2016 case that extended the Flores consent decree to cover children with families : 'In 2014, in response to a surge of Central Americans attempting to enter the United States without documentation, the government opened family detention centers in Texas and New Mexico. The detention and release policies at these centers do not comply with the Settlement. The government, however, claims that the Settlement only applies to unaccompanied minors and is not violated when minors accompanied by parents or other adult family members are placed in these centers.' There are pictures of children in detention from the Obama years that elicited no outrage from the weepers and garment-renders on the left. Even CNN anchor Brook Baldwin was so taken with this failure that she asked Wisconsin Democrat Senator Tammy Baldwin whether or not she spoke out against family detention during the Obama years and got a lot of embarrassing verbal shuffling around in non-response as her answer : However, by relentlessly hectoring the public with this propaganda blitz, the MSM were able to divert attention away from the release of the Horowitz IG report and, especially, the hearings with Horowitz testifying before a Senate and a House committee. But even this ploy may backfire, for Horowitz avoided connecting any dots as to the effects of bias, merely supplying the raw data that indicated it." Well done, David French. • • • THE REAL CRISIS -- HASASSMENT. Trump staff, especially women, are being singled out by ProgDem activists as targets for harassment just because they work for the President. • The Washington Post published this on Monday : "Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Republican who is close with President Trump, was accosted by liberal activists on Friday night as she watched a documentary called 'Won’t You Be My Neighbor?' Ironically the film highlights Fred Rogers’s teachings of love and kindness, but Bondi had to be escorted from the theater in Tampa by police as partisans screamed at her. 'I'm not Mister Rogers,' one of the activists told the Tampa Bay Times afterward. 'I don't have the poise or temperament of Mister Rogers.' 'We're coming to where you're watching a movie or eating dinner,' added another. 'Sorry, not sorry.'....On [the] same night Bondi got heckled in Florida, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant in Virginia and protesters rallied outside the home of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. That came at the end of a week in which Nielsen and White House domestic policy advisor Stephen Miller were heckled at separate Mexican eateries in DC. One website even posted Miller’s personal cellphone number. There are growing fears at senior levels of the government that threats and protests could turn violent. The acting deputy secretary of DHS is warning employees of a 'heightened threat' against them in a memo : 'This assessment is based on specific and credible threats that have been levied against certain DHS employees and a sharp increase in the overall number of general threats against DHS employees -- although the veracity of each threat varies,' wrote Claire M. Grady. 'In addition, over the last few days, thousands of employees have had their personally identifiable information publicly released on social media.' ” • Instead of condemning the veiled calls to violence, the WP blamed President Trump and warned ProgDems that the harassment could backfire : "All of this reflects widespread progressive disgust with Trump, which has been inflamed by his policy of separating immigrant families, and anyone implementing or even defending the President’s agenda. But these episodes, which have gone viral on social media, risk backfiring by playing into Trump’s hands. It supercharges the President’s sense of grievance and gives fodder for the argument, made in his stump speech, that he and his followers are disrespected. In a backlash to the backlash, there’s evidence in the polls of Republicans rallying around the flag. The nastiness could also alienate and depress middle-of-the-road independents who prize pluralism." • "Rallying around the flag." That was meant by the WP to call out the negative historical sense of the phrase -- it was often applied to know-nothing patriots who were rabble rousers -- but today, the right to rally around anything but what the Progressives support is in danger -- physical danger for those who try to take non-ProgDem positions or to support the President. • Disgustingly, the WP says this about the restaurant owner asking Sarah Sanders and her family to leave a Red Hen : "Privately, Republican operatives are downright giddy after an elected Democrat called for activists to actively 'harass' members of the Trump Cabinet." • The WP cited the outrageous calls of Represnetative Maxine Waters who, the WP noted, is in line to chair the Financial Services Committee if Democrats win the House, saying : "Waters cheered those who booed Trump officials at restaurants and picketed their homes. 'Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up,' Waters said during a Saturday rally in Los Angeles. 'If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store (or) at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.' She doubled down during an appearance yesterday on MSNBC. 'I have no sympathy for these people that are in this administration who know it is wrong what they’re doing...but they tend to not want to confront this President,' Waters said. 'The people are going to turn on them. They’re going to protest. They’re going to absolutely harass them until they decide that they’re going to tell the President : 'No...this is wrong. This is unconscionable. We can’t keep doing this to children.’ ” Fellow Democrat Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, weakly rebuked Waters in a tweet, saying Trump’s “daily lack of civility has provoked responses that are predictable but unacceptable.” We could ask Nancy to explain how calling for quasi-violent harassment represents "civility." • Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was heckled at a Mexican restaurant in Washington last Tuesday night. On Friday, the progressive group CREDO Action organized a protest outside Nielsen’s home, playing audio of crying immigrant children while chanting “No justice, no sleep!” Fox News reported the protesters shouted at the DHS secretary as she walked from her home to her car. • Consider these comments, pointed out by American Thinker, that went unattacked by ProgDems in the past. "We have to send a clear message: Just because your child gets across the border, doesn’t mean your child gets to stay. We don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or that will encourage more children to make the dangerous journey.' __Hillary Clinton on CNN 2014. "The American people are a welcoming and generous people. But those who enter our country illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of law. And because we live in an age where terrorists are challenging our borders, we simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked. Americans are right to demand better border security and better enforcement of the immigration laws. All Americans, not only in the States most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens." __Bill Clinton in 1995. "“The American people are fundamentally pro-legal immigration and anti-illegal immigration. We will only pass comprehensive reform when we recognize this fundamental concept. The following seven principles are all based on this concept and comprise what I believe to be the framework for a bill that can receive overwhelming and bipartisan congressional support. First, illegal immigration is wrong, and a primary goal of comprehensive immigration reform must be to dramatically curtail future illegal immigration.” __Chuck Schumer in 2009. • HYPOCRISY thy name is Progressive Democrat Socialist Anti-Trump Hatred Purveyors. • • • HARASSMENT BEGETS VIOLENCE. Rush Limbaugh issued a warning Wednesday that if the media war against President Trump continues, it’s going to end very badly : “I’m just gonna say it here. If the media keeps this up -- if they keep up generating this hysteria -- somebody’s gonna get killed. I think we’re pretty close to somebody getting killed already, and I’m not being hyperbolic, and I’m not trying to call attention to myself. I’m genuinely worried about the out-of-control aspect of this. The news media’s fanning the flames. The news media is leading the way on this.” Limbaugh traces the media agenda against the President back to when he defeated media darling, Hillary Clinton, in 2016 : “Donald Trump committed an unpardonable sin, and that was winning the presidential election. This today is not about kids and the way they’re being treated anywhere. This is about Donald Trump winning and these people not being able to do anything about it. Look at everything they’ve thrown at Trump. They’ve had full-blown intelligence community FBI, CIA, DOJ, special counsel investigations all happening simultaneously designed to drive Donald Trump from office in six months....they’ve failed....But his critics now have reached the boiling point. Virtually every news story today has a component driving it, which is hate. And it is hate for victors, hate for the successful, hate for Donald Trump. They don’t have any outlet for it! This hatred is a poison. It is intensifying because there’s no outlet for it....And when presented with solutions or when told to fix it because you wrote the laws, ‘Oh, no, no, no, no! No, no, no. This is the presidency, the President’s, responsibility. We can’t...’ They don’t want this solved. This isn’t about the kids. It isn’t about separated families. Those circumstances are just the opportunity. They are just the stage on which to run this latest operation. The Democrats now more than ever are rabid, unhinged....They’ve already begun shooting Republicans at baseball practice." Limbaugh cited threats by Hollywood stars, such as Peter Fonda, and others against the President’s son, Barron, the children of federal officials and employees, and more : “This is who the American left is. They have been trending in this direction for the entire time I’ve been hosting this particular program. Yeah, it happened before, but now it is full-blown, five-alarm, 9.8 Richter scale, DEFCON 5 rage. I really mean I think somebody’s gonna get seriously hurt here before this is all over.” • House Majority Whip Steve Scalise -- the baseball player Limbaugh referred to -- and Scalise's staff are responding to calls from Democrat Representative Maxine Waters, calling her statements troubling and the complete antithesis of American democracy : “Civility and respect always prevails over harassment and disrespect.” Lauren Fine, the spokesperson for Scalise, told the Daily Caller : "Whip Scalise knows firsthand the dangerous consequences that can result from making political differences personal and vitriolic. We are lucky to live in a country where we have the right to freely debate our differences civilly. Harassment is never an acceptable method of disagreement.” The comments from Waters calling for near mobs against White House officials comes just over one year after a gunman shot Scalise. The gunman, 66-year-old James T. Hodgkinson, targeted Republicans at a congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, and was killed by Capitol Police. He nearly killed Scalise on June 14, 2017, when the bullet he fired entered Scalise's body, shattering his hip and tearing up internal organs. Hodgkinson was an avid supporter of Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and other liberal causes. He was a member of Facebook groups like “Terminate the Republican Party,” “Expose Republican Fraud” and “Donald Trump is not my president.” • Conservative actor James Wood tweeted to warn his Republican followers to prepare for potential violence following Maxine Waters' calls for a campaign of harassment and intimidation against Trump administration officials. Woods tweeted : “Now that a United States Congresswoman has called for harassment against Republicans and the inevitable violence that will come of it, I urge all of you to a) get armed, and b) vote. Your life literally depends on it." • • • WHY SUCH VIOLENT PROGDEM OUTBURSTS NOW? The insanity from the ProgDem Left is a sure sign that Democrats expect Trump to survive Robert Mueller’s bias-driven Russia "collusion" probe. ProgDems also obviously think Trump and the GOP will hold and perhaps increase their majorities in the House and Senate in November. • In a bellweather signal of what's likely ahead in November, Pennsylvania's largest labor union just threw its weight behind a moderate Republican congressman one year after its President warned that union officials may have grown too complacent with the Democrat Party. Pennsylvania AFL-CIO president Rick Bloomingdale said the union is backing the first term congressman over Progressive millionaire Scott Wallace. Bloomingdale told the Washington Free Beacon : "We always tend to look at the record and not just the party. We're not the Democratic Party. We're the labor movement. If a guy shows that he's for us, we're for him." The union has endorsed a number of Republicans for state legislative elections, but Fitzpatrick was the only party member to receive it for a congressional run. • AND, of all people we would not expect to support President Trump on anything, Pope Francis -- a liberal activist on immigration -- has told Reuters that that the Obama administration also detained children : “During the Obama years I celebrated Mass in Ciudad Juárez while on the other side of the border 50 bishops concelebrated and in the stadium there were many people. The problem already existed there. It’s not just an issue with Trump but goes back to prior governments.” That may not be a 21-gun salute for President Trump, but it surely knocks Obama down several pegs. • To quote Rush Limbaugh again : “The fact of the matter is, the Republican Party and Donald Trump are being lied about regularly and consistently multiple times a day. And the left is doing it with increasing vulgarity, with increasing perversion and promiscuity....Trump can’t do it all...he does the lion’s share of it....But where is the Republican Party that represents all of these people being attacked?” • American Thinker's Daniel John Sobieski says it plainly : "Someone is going to get killed. We have gone beyond the severed presidential head help by the unfunny and untalented Kathy Griffin to mob action, including the physical harassment of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Sobieski asks how the media could possible give a "free pass" to Peter Fonda's disgustingly violent tweet : "WE SHOULD RIP BARRON TRUMP FROM HIS MOTHER’S ARMS AND PUT HIM IN A CAGE WITH PEDOPHILES. We only need to surround their schools and scare the sh*t out of them and worry the f*ck out of the agents frm CBE ICE & REGULAR BORDER PATROL AGENTS. WE NEED TO SCARE THE F*CK OUT OF THEM! NEED TO MAKE THEIR CHILDREN WORRY NOW." Fonda then turned his hate towards two women, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, who he attacked with the sexist slur 'gash,' and Kirstjen Nielsen, the Department of Homeland Security, who he wanted to see "stripped naked and publicly whipped." • Sobieski points out that Democratic leaders from Nancy Pelosi, to Bernie Sanders, to Jerry Brown to Maxine Waters, have said Republican policies, from healthcare to climate change, will kill people or are Nazi-inspired...setting off the leftist loons....[Now] Maxine Waters has embraced the concept of mob rule....Their hateful end-justifies-the-means rhetoric will likely inspire someone like the loon who shot up an Alexandria baseball field to take similar action. After all, if you believe in securing the border and enforcing the nation’s laws, you have it coming." • • • DEAR READERS, in late news on Tuesday, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of President Trump in Trump v. Hawaii, the controversial case concerning the President's third iteration of his order to restrict travel to the US for citizens of several majority Moslem countries. The case was central to the Trump immigration policy, presenting a key test of Trump's campaign promise to restrict immigration and secure America's borders. The immigration restriction affects people from Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. Hawaii alleged that the immigration restriction was motivated by religious discrimination, noting that a majority of the countries included in the ban have primarily Moslem populations. The President has repeatedly said that the ban is not about Islam : "This is not about religion -- this is about terror and keeping our country safe," the President said in January. • Mainstream media is already calling the Supreme Court "a Republican Court." With their harassment tactic being widely rejected, this will be the next barrage against the rule of law. • AG Jeff Sessions has finally spoken in a statement that read : "Free speech, assembly, and protest are and will be protected. But obstructing law enforcement or committing other crimes will not be tolerated." Deterrents to violence could include "threatening the President" and his family federal felony charges against Peter Fonda, and "advocating the overthrow of the government" felony charges against Maxine Waters.