The Progressive-Socialist Democrats Just Don't Get It -- America Wants a Wall

THE NEW BUDGET DEAL IS SIMPLY A WARMED-OVER OLD BUDGET DEAL. And, we'll take a look at it in our blog today. BUT, first, let's clear the air on what did and didn't happen in El Paso on Monday night. • • • PRESIDENT TRUMP HAD THE LARGER CROWD IN EL PASO. But, that misses the point. BizPac Review reported the numbers : "Veto vs Trump rally numbers : In spite of media’s wishful thinking, Trump blew him way....According to MSNBC correspondent Garrett Haake, Trump’s rally attracted between 16,500 and 18,500 attendees. But, according to Bloomberg’s Jennifer Epstein, O’Rourke’s rally attracted between only 10,000 and up to a possible 15,000 attendees." • Here is the video of President Trump supporters outside the totally full 6,500-seat El Paso county Coliseum -- < https://i.rmbl.ws/s8/2/p/C/N/T/pCNTa.baa.2.mp4?b=0&u=bt1g >. Here is the video of supporters at O'Rourke's rally nearby -- < https://i.rmbl.ws/s8/2/T/C/N/T/TCNTa.baa.1.mp4?b=0&u=bt1g >. You decide. • A couple of things are clear. First, even before the rally -- hours before lines even began to form, in fact -- some mainstream ProgDem lapdog media personalities began predicting the failed Senate nominee would outperform the President. Their claims never changed or tried to match up with reality on the ground. Second, visual evidence all points to the President having outperformed the failed Texas Senate nominee. To be fair, O’Rourke nevertheless certainly performed better than the President had predicted. • BUT, counting or looking at videos misses the point. The point is htat cnadidate Donald Trump proved to the world that there are millions of traditional Americans who support him, and tens of thousands of them turned out routinely for his rallies. They still do. The ProgDems and their media can try to prove whatever they want to -- the truth is that President Trump has connected with real Americans in a way no other President ever has. And his rallies are just the most visual proof of that remarkable lovefest between the President and America. • • • CONGRESS, THE PRESIDENT, AND THE WALL. On Tuesday morning, BizPac Review got down to the real reason President Trump went to El Paso -- to support border security and a wall. And, on Tuesday, President Trump said he will not sign a federal spending bill that would allow the mass release of criminal illegal aliens into the country, as proposed by the Democrats. The President made the remarks during the El Paso rally, when news began ot filter out of Washington that a tentative deal had been reached to avert another government shutdown. At the rally, President trump told his supporters : “I will never sign a bill that forces the mass release of illegal criminals into our country. I will never oppose or in any way mistreat our great heroes from ICE, border patrol and law enforcement. We will always stand with those brave men and women. We will always be with them. We will take care of them just like they take care of us.” • President Trump was responding to the rumor that the new budget deal cuts back on the number of ICE detention center beds available. Democrats reportedly offered $1.375 billion in funding for a barrier along the US-Mexico border and money for 40,000 beds for ICE detention beds. BUT, earlier in the day, Democrats had demanded a drastic reduction on the number of beds in ICE detention facilities -- a move that would lead to the release of thousands of criminal illegal immigrants onto the streets. BizPAc Revies quoted Deputy ICE Director Matthew Albence, who called the suggestion “extremely damaging for the public safety of this country.” • Fox News host Sean Hannity tore into the latest Democrat offer of $1.375 billion for the border wall, saying it’s not enough : “$1.3 billion? That’s not even a wall, a barrier. Any Republican that supports this garbage compromise, you will have to explain. Look at the country. Look at CBS News: Even they say 72% of the American people want the heroin to stop, the cartels to stop, the gang members to stop and those that wish us ill.” Hannity was referring to a CBS News/YouGov poll that showed that 72% of Americans support Trump’s position on illegal immigration. Hannity then suggested that President Trump declare a national emergency to build the border wall without help from obstructionist Democrats. • BizPac Review reported that President Trump; "...has the constitutional authority to do this. A President can declare that the nation is in a state of national emergency at his discretion. Given the heavy financial burdens and criminal costs of illegal immigration borne by US taxpayers ($113 billion a year and 5,475 Americans murdered every year by illegals), Trump has a solid argument for declaring a national emergency and building the border wall." Harvard Law professor Mark Tushnet said President Trump is on : “...very solid legal ground. The Department of Defense has funds in its account that are not specifically designated for anything. My instinct is to say that if he declares a national emergency and uses this pot of unappropriated money for the wall, he’s on very solid legal ground.” • The Washington Times reported late on Monday that : "Congress reaches deal to avert shutdown, Senator Richard Shelby says. The Senate’s top spending negotiator said Monday night that Republicans and Democrats have reached an agreement in principle on a new deal to avert a partial government shutdown. Details were scarce, and the text of the agreement wasn’t expected until later in the week, but Senator Shelby said they had settled the sticking points. If the deal holds -- and if it can pass both chambers and win President Trump’s signature -- it would avert a partial shutdown looming at the end of this week. 'We’ve had a good evening. We reached an agreement in principle between us,' said Mr. Shelby, Alabama Republican and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He said the deal will encompass all seven of the overdue spending bills, signaling the government would have full funding through the end of September. But the deal does not include disaster-relief money to assist victims of recent hurricanes and wildfires, suggesting another emergency spending bill may be needed later this year. Optimism had been building Monday, a self-imposed deadline for negotiators, that a deal could be reached, despite a weekend that saw Democrats raise an 11th-hour demand to cut the government’s ability to detain and deport immigrants living in the US illegally. House Democrats said they wanted to impose a 34,000-per-day cap on the number of people who could be detained, and an even lower cap of 16,500 on the number of those detainees who could come from illegal immigrants arrested in the interior of the US. The rest would be border arrests. Republicans said that was a non-starter, and when Democrats insisted on that Sunday, the GOP negotiators walked out of talks. Mr. Trump, who took most of the blame for December’s shutdown, said Monday that if the government did shut down again, it would be Democrats’ responsibility this time, thanks to the last-minute demand. 'That’s up to the Democrats,' the President said. Mr. Trump also vowed at an evening rally in Texas that he would build his border wall no matter what was in the deal. 'We’re building the wall anyway,' the President said....The final deal sets a target of getting to 40,520 detention beds, with Democrats dropping their recent demand for the 16,500 cap on immigrants arrested in the interior. ICE currently averages about 46,000 detainees a day, and the White House had asked for 52,000 beds. A source familiar with the deal said there is funding flexibility that would allow the government to respond to surges. Monday’s agreement also includes $1.375 billion for physical barriers on the border -- far less than the president’s goal, but more than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ante of zero....Asked whether he had sign-off from congressional leadership, Mr. Shelby said: 'Senator McConnell told me to get it done.' " • The Daily Caller spelled out the content of the deal in a late Monday post : "The agreement reportedly includes $1.375 billion for physical barriers, which would be bollard, or basically a concrete-filled barrier that protect office buildings and shopping malls across the US. There would also be nearly a 17% drop in the number of ICE beds the administration had sought, bringing the number to 40,520 overall...which Republicans have pushed back against, saying more criminals will be on the streets if they are not in ICE custody. 'We need to listen to the border security and law enforcement professionals as we negotiate an agreement on border security funding. The National Sheriff’s Association has warned against the Democrats’ proposal to limit ICE’s ability to detain violent criminals. We need to listen to the law enforcement professionals so that we can reach a result that protects our national security,' North Dakota Republican Senator John Hoeven told The Daily Caller News Foundation Monday afternoon. Alabama Republican Senator Richard Shelby told reporters on Capitol Hill that he believes Trump will approve of the agreement, according to Fox News. This comes as both House and Senate lawmakers met at a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill. The government is set to shutdown on February 15, giving Congress just four days to put forward legislation in which Trump would sign to keep a number of government agencies open. 'Republicans in Congress have zero excuses if this sham makes it to Trump’s desk. No one who supports real border security can be for it. Republican negotiators didn’t even get Democrats to support what they have voted for in the past!,' a senior a GOP aide told The Daily Caller after the news broke Monday night." • The Daily Caller says : "If Trump does not agree with lawmakers he could declare a national emergency, which lawmakers such as South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham have been pushing for. Republican lawmakers will now have to put together a bill that a number of Democrats will also support, or else Trump’s only options would be lowering his requested $5.7 billion for border security or declaring a national emergency." Later, the Daily Caller revised its report to reflect its understanding that "the number of ICE beds has not been reduced and instead the cap the Trump administration had been seeking." • • • WALLS WORK. American Thinker published a piece on Tuesday that states : "According to a February 2018 American Renaissance article, between 1945 and 1961, over 3.5 million East Germans walked across the unguarded border. When the wall was built, it cut defections by more than 90 percent. When Israel in January 2017 completed improvements to the fence on its border with Egypt to keep out terrorists and African immigrants, it cut illegal immigration to zero. In 2015, The Telegraph reported on the construction of a 600-mile 'great wall' border by Saudi Arabia with Iraq to stop Islamic State militants from entering the country. The wall included five layers of fencing with watchtowers, night-vision cameras, and radar cameras. Finally, a September 2016 article in the Washington Post reported on the new construction of a mile-long wall at Calais. 'Attacks have considerably changed the climate in France,' said Bruno Cautrès, a political analyst at the Center for Political Research at Paris's Sciences Po. 'The desire for many is to have a [French] President who can bring security back.' The United States has that kind of President in Trump. So the current trend among modern nations demanding safer environments for their people is not abandoning walls and fences in place of sophisticated surveillance and detection technology, but quite the opposite. In a May 2018 USA Today article, border walls since World War II have increased from 7 to 77. In 2016, the Economist asserted that, as a result of the refugee crisis and the conflict in Ukraine, 'Europe will soon have more physical barriers on its national borders than it did during the Cold War.' It becomes unmistakably clear that President Trump, along with U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner Kevin McAleenan and others, understands the need for border walls and fences. There is a time for politics and a time for urgent action, and Pelosi and Schumer have seriously miscalculated the gravity of the border crisis. Trump has relied on historical life-saving data, the measurable benefits that physical barriers are offering other nations, as well as common sense, to conclude that a physical barrier is immediately needed on America's southern border. It is beyond outrageous that Pelosi and Schumer have chosen political ambition over American lives." The entire article with links to corroborating wall construction articles is available at < https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/a_fenceless_border_is_defenseless.html#ixzz5fLBxRh00 >. • • • WHAT WILL PRESIDENT TRUMP DO? TheHill reported on Tuesday that President Trump knocked a bipartisan deal to avert a government shutdown while providing a fraction of the money he demanded for a wall for barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border : “I can’t say I’m happy. I can’t say I’m thrilled,” Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting. "I would hope that there won’t be a shutdown. I am extremely unhappy with what the Democrats have given us. It’s sad. They’re doing the country no favors." TheHill says that President Trump's comments "added fresh uncertainty to the emerging compromise, which must be signed into law by midnight Friday. Roughly one quarter of the federal government, including the Department of Homeland Security, will shut down for the second time this year if the deal fails. The proposal would provide $1.375 billion in funding for roughly 55 miles of new barriers along the southern border, well short of the $5.7 billion Trump demanded. In exchange, Democrats dropped their insistence that Congress place a hard cap on the number of immigrants that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is allowed to detain at a given time." • TheHill said : "Trump appeared to open the door to redirect certain federal funding dedicated for other projects toward wall construction, a move recently floated by White House advisers to begin wall construction while stopping short of making a controversial national emergency declaration....The President also did not rule out declaring a national emergency to circumvent Congress to build the wall, saying 'I’m considering everything.' • • • THE LIBERAL 9TH CIRCUIT ISSUES A FAVORABLE WALL-RELATED RULING FOR TRUMP. TheHill, always supportive of the Left, noted that "those moves could face legal challenges that could stymie any attempt to build a wall using the executive authority." • Burt, The Hill failed to point out what the Washington Tiles reported earlier on Monday : "...the Trump administration has the power to waive environmental laws in order to speed up border wall construction, dealing a major symbolic blow to the president’s opponents. The three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which President Trump regularly likes to chide as too liberal, sided with him this time. The judges said federal law gives the administration broad powers to waive any laws in order to get the wall built. 'In short, the plain text [of the law] grants DHS authority to construct the prototype, San Diego and Calexico projects,' the judges ruled. They were referring to some of the earliest wall-building projects the young Trump administration pursued. Since then, Homeland Security has constructed new fencing across the southwest border, replacing vehicle barriers and upgrading old, substandard fence. And last week the government began to build the first new barriers on the border that was previously unprotected by any barriers. In each of those cases, the Homeland Security Department has also issued waivers. The waivers cover some of the country’s most iconic protections, including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the Antiquities Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and the Eagle Protection Act. In the past, some of those laws had been used to slow border wall construction, so Congress approved the waiver authority in the 1990s and expanded it under the Bush administration." • The lawsuit was brought by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and several environmental groups, who challenged the Trump administration’s use of the waivers, arguing the waivers went too far. Monday’s decision was 2-1, with two Democratic appointees rejecting the environmentalists’ challenge. A third judge, a Republican appointee, dissented, saying the courts didn’t even have jurisdiction to hear the challenge in the first place. She said if the courts did have jurisdiction, she would have agreed with her two colleagues’ reasoning. The case has taken more than a year to wind through the courts, and construction is already complete on some of the projects and has begun on others." • • • HOW SERIOUS IS THE BORDER SECURITY PROBLEM? A report from Jim Clifton, the chairman and CEO at Gallup states : "Forty-two million seekers of citizenship or asylum are watching to determine exactly when and how is the best time to make the move. This suggests that open borders could potentially attract 42 million Latin Americans. A full 5 million who are planning to move in the next 12 months say they are moving to the US." • Yet, Democrats are using their new political clout to try to widen the catch-and-release loopholes in President Trump’s border defenses. Breitbart News reported : "Democrats say the DHS does not need so many detention beds but instead can release and track migrants or resident illegals by using "Alternatives to Detention," such as monitors strapped to migrants’ ankles. Democrats also argue that migrants who bring children should not be detained. If that rule is adopted by Congress, all migrants who bring children to the border would be quickly released into the US jobs market. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokeswoman Katie Waldman rejected the Democrats’ proposals, saying in a statement : "Without the necessary detention authority and sufficient funding for family beds to enable ICE to detain family units when they are ordered removed, ICE will still only be able to remove a very small percentage of family units, thereby increasing the pull factors and further contributing to the border crisis. For example last year, only 1% of all removals were on ATD, at a cost of $72,000 per removal." • According to Breitbart : "In December 2018, the last month for illegal border crossing totals, there were close to 51,000 border crossings at the US-Mexico border, a level that outpaced Princeton Policy researcher Steven Kopits’ monthly projection by about 3.5%. The month before, there were nearly 52,000 border crossings. Based on the latest available data, Kopits projects there to be about 606,000 crossings this year at the US-Mexico border, a level of illegal immigration that surpasses nearly every year of illegal immigration under President Obama. 'The migrants are coming, through the official entry points or away from them, but they are coming, and coming in quantity,' Kopits wrote in his monthly projection report....Should illegal immigration to the US keep pace with Kopits’ projections of more than 600,000 border crossings this year, this would be double what illegal immigration levels were in Fiscal Year 2017, Trump’s first year in office. Additionally, this would represent an increase of illegal immigration at the southern border between 2017 and this year of more than 99%....Aside from overwhelming already strained Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) resources, illegal immigration hits the country’s working and middle class the hardest, as they are left paying an annual bill of about $116 billion to subsidize the cost of illegal aliens. Mass illegal and legal immigration adversely diminishes wages and job prospects for American workers, especially black Americans who are more likely to compete for US jobs against cheaper, foreign workers. Every 1% increase in the immigrant composition of an American workers’ occupation reduces their weekly wages by about 0.5%, researcher Steven Camarotta concludes. This means the average native-born American worker today has their wage reduced by perhaps 8.5% because of current legal immigration levels. Likewise, every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of low-skilled US occupations reduces wages by about 0.8%. Should 15% of low-skilled jobs be held by foreign-born workers, it would reduce the wages of native-born American workers by perhaps 12%....Currently, the US admits more than a million legal immigrants annually, with the vast majority deriving from chain migration, whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country. In 2017, the foreign-born population reached a record high of 44.5 million. The US is on track to import about 15 million new foreign-born voters in the next two decades should current legal immigration levels continue. Those 15 million new foreign-born voters include about eight million who will arrive in the country through chain migration." • American Thinker's Monica Showalter says : "I can add that Latin America isn't the only place where people are contemplating entering the US illegally. The African and Asian continents are also loaded with aspiring illegal immigrants...So long as the US is enmired in Democrats' blockage of any funds for a border wall, yet the talk goes on of building, the message to illegal migrants is to move. Get in before the wall gets built while the Democrats are still arguing. This is the window. Don't wait for the border wall to get built. Get in under the wire. That very dynamic is a good argument for why President Trump should just skip the shenanigans with the Democrats, declare an emergency, and build the wall. The longer this drags on the more the human waves are going to build. And as Gallup reports, we're looking at a tsunami." • • • DEAR READERS, it seems the radical Democrats are "into" killing -- babies by infanticide called abortion, and our young people with legal marijuana and its after math of hard drugs that arrive through the Democrat-protected open borders with massive illegal influxes of cocaine and fentanyl, and now trying to force reductions of ICE officers. And, now Senator Kamala Harris says she is in favor of universal legal pot. These ProgDems really are a danger to America. • BUT, don't despair totally. If life seems better lately, it's not just your imagination -- and it has nothing to do with pot. "The public's quality of life has improved sharply in the past two years," Investor's Business Daily reveals. The IBD/TIPP Quality of Life Index, which averaged 53.7 when Barack Obama was in the Oval Office, is now appreciably higher at 59.3. President Trump isn't just making America great again -- he's making life better again. MAGA.