President Joe Biden talks to reporters during the first news conference of his presidency in the East Room of the White House in Washington on March 25, 2021. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Executive Branch
President Joe Biden tacked on measures to his infrastructure plan that make it easier for workers to organize and more difficult for them to avoid unionization.
“[The plan will] create good-quality jobs … while ensuring workers have a free and fair choice to organize, join a union, and bargain collectively with their employers,” the White House said in a press release.
Biden also urged Congress to pass the pro-union Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act as part of the infrastructure plan.
President Joe Biden tacked on measures to his infrastructure plan that make it easier for workers to organize and more difficult for them to avoid unionization.
The $2 trillion infrastructure plan, which Biden laid out in a speech Wednesday evening, ensures that workers are able to bargain collectively with their employers, according to a White House press release. The plan introduces new “labor protections” that enable workers to more easily organize.
“[The plan will] create good-quality jobs that pay prevailing wages in safe and healthy workplaces while ensuring workers have a free and fair choice to organize, join a union, and bargain collectively with their employers,” the White House said in the release.
Biden also urged Congress to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act as part of the infrastructure plan. The PRO Act is a compilation of various policy changes that labor unions support, which would make it easier for unions to organize private-sector employees and minimize employees’ choice in unionization.
The bill would remove workers’ ability to vote against unionization via secret ballot elections, threatens the ability for a workforce to kick a union out, redefines legal definition of independent contractors and forces non-union workers to pay union dues.
The House passed the legislation largely along party lines in March, which is expected to face roadblocks in the Senate. Republicans criticized the bill as a wish list for union leaders.
“Here’s who else is a union guy: Joe Biden,” said International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 29 member Michael Fiore who introduced Biden on Wednesday. “He said again and again, ‘unions built the middle class.’ That’s why his plan supports collective bargaining rights.”
Fiore’s remarks were prepared by the White House, IBEW Local 29 said in a blog post following Biden’s speech, which took place at a union training facility.
President Joe Biden speaks in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on March 30, 2021. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
“Biden’s pledge to unify the country takes another hit by adding a radical and overreaching poison pill like the PRO Act to his infrastructure plan that would deteriorate the relationship between employers and employees,” Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW) Chair Kristen Swearingen said in a statement.
“The PRO Act would be devastating to small businesses and employees in the infrastructure industry, especially small, women- and minority-owned contractors who would have otherwise benefited from investment in our nation’s infrastructure,” Swearingen said.
The CDW represents hundreds of thousands of employers nationwide and hundreds of trade groups like the Associated Builders and Contractors and the National Restaurant Association.
Conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) vowed to leverage its nationwide grassroots activist network to “urge lawmakers to reject harmful elements of the proposal.”
“[The infrastructure plan provides] favors to labor unions that undermine workers’ rights and their ability to find work,” AFP President Tim Phillips said in a statement.
But Labor Secretary Marty Walsh called the plan historic and said he would work to ensure workers from across the country received access to the opportunities provided in the proposal.
“President Biden’s American Jobs Plan is a historic investment in the working people of America,” Walsh said in a statement Thursday. “It will create millions of good paying, family sustaining jobs that rebuild the middle class by empowering our workers to build America’s future.”
“As Labor Secretary, I stand ready to make sure these opportunities reach workers from all walks of life and in every corner of our country,” Walsh said.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki speaks to reporters in Washington on April 1, 2021. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images) Executive Branch
Biden has claimed that the law requires polls to close at 5 p.m. but it does not. He also said the bill bars people from providing voters who are in line with water or food. It does, but makes an exception for freestanding water receptacles that are self-serve.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended the inaccuracies after a reporter during a briefing in Washington noted them.
The bill “standardizes the ending of voting every day at five, right? It just gives options?” she said. “It gives options to expand it—right?—but it standardized it at five. It also makes it so that outside groups can’t provide water or food to people in line. Right? It makes it more difficult to absentee vote. Are those things all correct?”
“So, no, our tone is not changing. We have concerns about the specific components of the package, including the fact that it makes it harder and more difficult for people to vote by limiting absentee options; by making it not viable, not possible for people to provide water to people who are in line; by not standardizing longer hours. So, if you’re making it harder to vote, no, we don’t support that,” she added.
The bill changes the vague “normal business hours” during which voting shall be conducted to 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., at minimum. However, clerks can keep polling sites open as long as 12 hours, or from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Additionally, it states that people may not actively “offer to give, or participate in the giving of any money or gifts, including, but not limited to, food and drink, to an elector,” adding later that nothing prohibits a poll officer “from making available self-service water from an unattended receptacle to an elector waiting in line to vote.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a newspaper in Georgia, offered a correction after also falsely claiming the new law would limit voting hours.
“Nothing in the new law changes those rules,” the paper said.
“It is obvious that neither President Biden nor his handlers have actually read SB 202, which I signed into law yesterday,” Gov. Brian Kemp said in a recent emailed statement to The Epoch Times. “This bill expands voting access, streamlines vote-counting procedures, and ensures election integrity.”
U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehend about two dozen illegal immigrants in Penitas, Texas, on March 11, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) Immigration & Border Security
The family-unit holding cells smell like urine and vomit. Fights break out in the unaccompanied-minor cells. Scabies, lice, the flu, and COVID-19 run rampant.
Up to 80 individuals are squeezed into each 24- by 30-foot cell, and there aren’t enough mattresses for everyone. Sheets of plastic divide the rooms.
“Any diseases that are in there, it’s being kept in there, like a petri dish. The smell is overwhelming,” a Border Patrol agent said, describing the conditions in a facility in south Texas. The agent, Carlos (not his real name), spoke to The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity, for fear of repercussions.
Border Patrol agents on the front lines are getting so frustrated that they’re now risking their livelihoods to reveal what’s really going on in the illegal immigrant processing facilities.
One or two agents are left to control 300 to 500 people during a shift. No agent wants to report physical or sexual assaults between the aliens because they’ll get blamed for “letting it happen.” They’re also forced to separate a child from an extended family member because he or she is not a biological parent.
The number of unaccompanied minors—children under 18 who arrive without a parent—is buckling the system. The law requires Border Patrol to prioritize unaccompanied minors and transfer them to the Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours.
“We’re getting them out of here as quickly as possible, but we are so overwhelmed right now,” Carlos said. “It used to be easy to get them out in 72 hours. Not anymore. They’re staying here for 10, 12 days. It’s horrible.”
A temporary processing facility in Donna, Texas, as seen in a photo released by Customs and Border Protection on Tuesday, March 23, 2021. (CBP)
So far this fiscal year (from Oct. 1, 2020), Border Patrol has apprehended more than 29,000 unaccompanied children crossing the border illegally. In all of fiscal 2020, just over 33,000 were apprehended, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics.
This year’s numbers are on a trajectory to surpass the 2019 crisis numbers, when 80,634 minors were apprehended.
CBP declined to provide the number of unaccompanied minors currently being held. “In general, CBP does not provide daily in-custody numbers, as they are considered operationally sensitive because CBP’s in-custody numbers fluctuate on a constant basis,” CBP spokesman Nate Peeters wrote in an email to The Epoch Times on March 23.
Health and Human Services confirmed on March 23 that its Office of Refugee Resettlement is holding approximately 11,350 children.
CBP and Health and Human Services have opened several extra facilities to deal with the influx, with the latest being the San Diego Convention Center.
Carlos confirmed that the majority of unaccompanied minors coming across the border already have parents or family members in the United States.
“Everybody that shows up here—even if it’s a 3-year-old kid with no one around—they all have an address on them. And they’ll give it to you: ‘Here’s my address; this is where you are sending me,’” Carlos said.
“And that’s what we do. This is the way we are being played.”
Most of the unaccompanied minors come from the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
“We’re dealing with a different culture who’s not afraid to send all their kids under the age of five, knowing they’re going to get raped, knowing they’re going to get killed,” Carlos said. “You talk to the adults or the teenagers and they’ll tell you, ‘They raped three or four girls, and they kicked them off the trains.’ They’re going to die.”
Two-thirds of migrants traveling through Mexico report experiencing violence during the journey, including abduction, theft, extortion, torture, and rape, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has been providing medical and mental health care for migrants and refugees in Mexico since 2012.
Almost 1 in 3 women surveyed by MSF said they had been sexually abused during their journey—60 percent through rape.
Border Patrol agents apprehend about two dozen illegal immigrants in Penitas, Texas, on March 11. 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Families Released
A new directive from the Biden administration is allowing for family units to be released into the interior of the United States without a notice to appear—the paperwork that states the date an illegal immigrant must turn up in court to plead their case.
“There’s no repercussions. I’m not even going to give you a court date. You don’t even have to show up at court if you don’t want to. It’d be nice, but you don’t have to. That word gets out immediately. And I mean overnight,” Carlos said.
He said it’s now common knowledge that if you bring a child, you’ll be quickly released into the United States. They’re being transported all over the country, but popular destinations include Houston, New York, and California, as well as Maryland and Washington, D.C.
“They’ll put them in a hotel for a couple of days until their flight is ready to fly them to where they are going. That’s tax dollars,” Carlos said.
“There’s no end in sight. The people that we’re apprehending are warning us of the larger caravans that are on their way.”
He said President Joe Biden’s rollback of the Trump administration’s border policies is the direct cause of the surge.
“One hundred and ten percent. They were already ready before Biden was even in office. They knew that the doors were going to be open. And now we’ve got a point where we cannot stop it,” he said.
The administration hasn’t allowed media to access the processing facilities and, according to agents, it’s even requiring that agents in the field move illegal aliens they apprehend onto private land to process them.
“Keep trying until you find us on a public road. But we’ve been instructed to move all the traffic onto ranches to make sure there’s no public eye,” an agent said.
“Biden’s strict on that. Trump was a different story. This administration is a no-go on media, I’m guessing because they don’t want to let the word out on what’s going on here on the border—to make him look good.”
Carlos said the agency has stopped dropping illegal immigrants off directly at bus stations now. “We were given strict orders from Washington, D.C., that that ceases—it’s drawing too much attention,” he said.
Now they drop the illegal immigrants nearby or at a local NGO facility near the bus station, he said.
The administration hasn’t yet called the current situation a crisis, and Biden said on March 21 that he’ll visit the border “at some point.”
Illegal border crossers, mostly from Central America, are dropped off by Customs and Border Protection at a bus station in the border city of Brownsville, Texas, on March 15, 2021. (CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)
‘Our Defenses Are Down’
Morale among Border Patrol agents has plummeted, Carlos said. “The attrition rate right now is ridiculous,” he said. “We don’t want to work for the Border Patrol anymore. It’s not the Border Patrol.”
During the Trump era, agents felt “empowered” to do their jobs, he said. “Whatever deals he made, everything was working just fine. Now we’ve got this trash.”
As agents get moved to deal with the increase in family units and unaccompanied minors, the smuggling organizations and cartels move drugs and other individuals through other, unpatrolled areas.
“Our manpower is being depleted because we need to go babysit these people, move them as fast as possible to release them into the country,” Carlos said. “It’s ridiculous. We have no backup. We’re losing more than we’re catching. And it’s no secret.
“Our defenses are down. So if there’s anybody that we should be worried about, they know this is the time to come in. They know it.”
Former President Donald Trump, in a statement Wednesday, responded to the White House infrastructure bill—which would introduce new taxes—and said it is “among the largest self-inflicted economic wounds in history.”
“If this monstrosity is allowed to pass, the result will be more Americans out of work, more families shattered, more factories abandoned, more industries wrecked, and more Main Streets boarded up and closed down—just like it was before I took over the presidency 4 years ago,” the former president said in a statement, adding that the plan will “implement the largest tax hike in American history.”
Trump, in a statement reminiscent of 2016 campaign speeches, said the measure would only serve “China and other large segments of the world” and said would make America lose “the economic war with China.”
With the infrastructure plan’s tax rates, “if you create jobs in America, and hire American workers, you will pay MORE in taxes—but if you close down your factories in Ohio and Michigan, fire U.S. workers, and move all your production to Beijing and Shanghai, you will pay LESS,” Trump said. “It is the exact OPPOSITE of putting America First—it is putting America LAST!”
“Companies that send American jobs to China should not be rewarded by Joe Biden’s Tax Bill, they should be punished so that they keep those jobs right here in America, where they belong,” he added.
Throughout his campaigns and presidency, Trump often emphasized job creation measures, low unemployment rates, and increases in the Dow Jones—while saying that high taxes and regulations would further prompt companies to move their operations and factories to China, Mexico, and other countries.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden started promoting a $2 trillion infrastructure plan, which besides aiming to fix roads and bridges also features an expansive climate change and social welfare agenda, with the White House calling it “the moment to reimagine and rebuild a new economy.”
“Every dollar spent on rebuilding our infrastructure during the Biden administration will be used to prevent, reduce, and withstand the impacts of the climate crisis,” the White House said.
Biden aims to put corporate America on the hook for the tab, which is expected to grow to a combined $4 trillion once he rolls out the second part of his economic plan in April.
Biden has proposed several changes to the tax code, including raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from the current 21 percent—the level that the Trump administration brought it down to from 35 percent.
The proposal was also panned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the largest lobbying groups in the United States, which said the higher tax proposal is too much.
A self-described key witness to the death of George Floyd—a longtime friend who was in the car with Floyd when police approached him—said through a lawyer that, if forced to testify about the incident, he’ll invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and remain silent.
Morries Lester Hall, who in a June 2020 interview with The New York Times called himself “a key witness to the cops murdering George Floyd” and said he was “going to be his voice” going forward, has asked the court to squash a subpoena calling on him to testify in the trial against Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer accused of murder.
Hall made his request via notice filed by the Hennepin County Public Defender’s Office (pdf) on Wednesday.
“Mr. Morries Lester Hall, through undersigned counsel, hereby provides notice to all parties in this matter that if called to testify he will invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination,” said a notice filed by Assistant Public Defender Adrienne Cousins. “Therefore, counsel for Mr. Hall respectfully moves this court to quash the subpoena … and release Mr. Hall from any obligations therein.”
It is unclear why Hall doesn’t want to testify at the trial.
Floyd and Hall were both from Houston, Texas, and met through a Minneapolis pastor, Hall told The New York Times in the interview. Hall said he and Floyd had been in touch every day since 2016 and he considered Floyd a “confidant and mentor.”
A man walks near the makeshift George Floyd memorial in Minneapolis, Minn., on March 10, 2021. (Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images)
Hall was in the passenger’s seat of the vehicle Floyd was in when he was approached by Minneapolis police officers on suspicion of using a fake $20 bill at nearby Cup Foods. One soundless clip captured by a Cup Foods security camera showed Floyd dressed in a black tank top approaching a cashier, making cheerful conversation, and putting his arm around a woman.
Christopher Martin, a 19-year-old cashier at Cup Foods who testified at Chauvin’s trial on Wednesday, said Floyd used the apparently counterfeit bill to pay for cigarettes. During his testimony, Martin said he felt moments of guilt since then, wondering if he could have changed how that day unfolded.
“I thought if I would not have taken the bill, this would have been avoided,” he said.
Cup Foods store employee Christopher Martin speaks as a witness on the third day of the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, in Minneapolis, Minn., on March 31, 2021. (Pool via Reuters)
Floyd died after resisting arrest, with the incident—caught on video showing Chauvin detaining Floyd by pressing his knee against his neck—sparking a spate of protests and riots last summer.
In video footage shown to jurors on Wednesday, Chauvin could be heard telling a bystander why he restrained Floyd the way he did.
“I had to control this guy because he’s a sizable guy,” Chauvin said. “It looks like he’s probably on something.”
Martin, the cashier, told the jury that they chatted about sports but Floyd was slow to find his words, and Martin concluded Floyd was under the influence of drugs.
“He seemed very friendly, approachable, he was talkative,” Martin recalled. “But he did seem high.”
Chauvin’s defense attorney has made the argument that Floyd’s drug use—combined with his heart disease and high blood pressure, as well as the adrenaline flowing through his body—caused his death from a heart rhythm disturbance.
Prosecutors said Floyd’s use of opioid painkillers and the fentanyl found in his blood at autopsy is irrelevant.
On Monday, prosecutor Jerry Blackwell showed the video to jurors, telling them that Chauvin “didn’t let up” even after a handcuffed Floyd said multiple times that he couldn’t breathe.
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin (L) in a booking photograph. (R) Chauvin, when still an officer, in a file photo. (Hennepin County Jail; Darnella Frazier via AP)
Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, countered by arguing that Floyd was resisting arrest and Chauvin arrived to assist other officers who were struggling to get Floyd into a squad car as the crowd around them grew larger and more hostile.
“Derek Chauvin did exactly what he had been trained to do over his 19-year career,” Nelson said.
He also argued that Chauvin was not to blame for Floyd’s death, as Floyd did not have any signs of asphyxiation and had fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system.
“The evidence is far greater than nine minutes and 29 seconds,” Nelson said.
Defense attorney Eric Nelson speaks to Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill during pretrial motions, prior to continuing jury selection in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, at the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis, Minn., on March 11, 2021. (Court TV/Pool via Pool)
Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill on March 19 approved a request by Nelson to admit some evidence from Floyd’s 2019 arrest.
In both arrests, as officers drew their guns and struggled to get Floyd out of the car, he called out for his mother, claimed he had been shot before and cried, and put what appeared to be pills in his mouth. Both searches turned up drugs in the cars. Officers noticed a white residue outside his mouth both times, although that has not been explained.
Paramedics who examined Floyd in 2019 warned him that his blood pressure was dangerously high, putting him at risk for a heart attack or stroke, and took him to a hospital for examination. In Floyd’s 2019 arrest, several opioid pills and cocaine were found. An autopsy showed Floyd had fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system when he died in May of last year.
“Clearly there is a cause of death issue here, and it is highly contested,” Cahill said on March 19, ruling to allow evidence from the 2019 arrest, but limiting it only to what pertains to the cause of Floyd’s death.
Chauvin faces charges of unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and manslaughter.
A Boeing 737 of Delta Airlines is seen parked at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, Calif., on Aug. 2, 2020. (Daniel Slim/AFP via Getty Images) Republicans
The Georgia state House voted Wednesday to strip Delta Air Lines of a significant tax break after the firm’s CEO condemned a recently passed voting integrity law.
Led by Republicans, the Georgia House voted to strip the firm of the break that’s worth tens of millions of dollars per year. The Senate did not take up the measure before it adjourned.
“It was very disappointing,” said House Speaker Rep. David Ralston, a Republican, said of Delta CEO Ed Bastian’s comment on the voting laws earlier this week. “You don’t feed a dog that bites your hand. You’ve got to keep that in mind sometimes,” Ralston added of the passage of the bill, according to local media reports.
The final vote in the state House was 97-73.
“The entire rationale for this bill was based on a lie,” Bastian said in a statement of the Georgia voting bill, adding: “Unfortunately, that excuse is being used in states across the nation that are attempting to pass similar legislation to restrict voting rights.”
Bastian added that Delta “joined other major Atlanta corporations to work closely with elected officials from both parties, to try and remove some of the most egregious measures from the bill. We had some success in eliminating the most suppressive tactics that some had proposed.”
But, he remarked, “I need to make it crystal clear that the final bill is unacceptable and does not match Delta’s values.”
Coca-Cola chief executive James Quincey also described the measure as a “step backward” during a TV interview.
Bastian’s and Quincey’s comments come in the midst of a Democrat-led pressure campaign against state Republican leaders. A number of celebrities—including actor Mark Hamill and director James Mangold—wrote on social media that they would boycott filming in Georgia after the passage of the measure. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden weighed in on the issue and told reporters he would “strongly support” the Major League Baseball All-Star Game being moved from Atlanta.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, said the bill is being misrepresented in the press and by Delta’s CEO.
“Throughout the legislative process, we spoke directly with Delta representatives numerous times,” Kemp said in a statement, adding that the same corporations were involved in the law’s development. “Today’s statement … stands in stark contrast to our conversations with the company, ignores the content of the new law, and unfortunately continues to spread the same false attacks being repeated by partisan activists.”
It’s not the first time Delta, which has its headquarters in Atlanta, commented on laws or social issues. Delta attacked the National Rifle Association (NRA) following the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, several years ago, and during that public spat, Republicans eliminated a tax break for the firm.
Delta is the state’s largest private employer with more than 30,000 employees statewide.
Congressman McClintock today voted NO on HR 1868. The Congressman delivered remarks on the House floor during debate on the measure.
McClintock was Thursday’s KVML “Newsmaker of the Day”. Here are his words:
“Mr. Speaker:
This bill is just the first taste of the bitter brew concocted by the those who pushed through $1.9 trillion of pure deficit spending last week.
This measure involves our PAYGO rules. You remember PAYGO. The current version dates to 2010, when everyone was worried about a $1.3 trillion deficit and a $13 trillion national debt. Isn’t that adorable?
PAYGO requires across-the-board spending cuts to offset any bill that spends money we don’t have. And we just spent a lot of money we don’t have. As PAYGO works, the first installment payment for the Biden binge is $345 billion of spending cuts — every year for the next five years. That includes $52 billion in PAYGO and BCA cuts to Medicare, which is expected to go broke in 2024 as it is.
That’s just to pay for the party the Democrats had the other day.
So how will they pay for it? No problem. Just For-get-a-bout-it.
Just wipe it off the books and start planning the next trillion-dollar spending spree. That’s how both parties have addressed PAYGO since we passed it. The net result is that the deficit has nearly tripled and the debt has more than doubled in less than a decade.
At least the Republican tax cuts in 2017 helped produce such a strong economic recovery that our revenues went up – not down. That should have reduced the deficit, but OUR failure to control spending instead drove the deficit still higher. In short, “It’s the Spending, Stupid.”
No nation has ever spent, taxed and borrowed its way to prosperity – but many have spent, taxed and borrowed themselves to bankruptcy and ruin. History warns us that nations that bankrupt themselves aren’t around very long – because before you can provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare you first have to pay for them.
Excessive debt saps the credit of a nation that is its lifeline in times of genuine peril.
It consumes our future prosperity as interest costs swell.
It saps the economic vitality of a nation by crowding out capital that would otherwise be available to consumers and homebuyers and businesses.
It robs the currency of its value, pilfering people’s savings and pensions.
And it alienates capital markets until interest rates rise and interest costs balloon into a debt spiral. Once this starts, there’s no way to stop it until the whole house of cards crashes down.
You want to know what that looks like? It looks a lot like Venezuela.
In the spring of 1945, there was serious concern whether we could continue the war into 1946 – bond sales were failing miserably, war taxes, spending, borrowing and inflation had hollowed out our economy and the nation’s credit was nearing exhaustion. Now consider this: we are carrying a larger percentage of debt today than we were at the end of World War II, and I fear how we could respond to a similar sustained national threat today.
When a colleague told the great economist Adam Smith that a British defeat would be the “Ruin of the nation,” Smith calmly observed, “Be assured, my young friend, that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.”
But as I look at the unprecedented and unsustainable debt these policies are producing, I can’t avoid a sense of foreboding that our nation is fast running out of ruin, and that a terrible day of reckoning is coming.
The “Newsmaker of the Day” is heard every weekday morning at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML.
Then-President Donald Trump arrives on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, on Sept. 24, 2017. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times) Donald Trump
Former President Donald Trump, in a new interview, suggested there is “hope” for a 2024 presidential run, although he did not specifically say whether he would again launch another campaign.
In an interview with his daughter-in-law Lara Trump in her podcast, the former president was asked, “Do we have hope that there’s a possibility to see Donald Trump run again in 2024?”
“You do have hope, that I can tell you,” Trump told her. “You do have hope. We love our country—this country. We all owe a lot to our country but now we have to help our country.”
“And we were there. We were so good. What we did with Iran, what we did with China,” the former commander-in-chief said. “We were all set to do some great things. And then you see what’s going on right now.”
During the 18-minute interview, Trump spoke about President Joe Biden’s policies, the incident where he fell several times on the stairs to Air Force One, and how “boring” Twitter had become after he was suspended.
“People saw a lot of things happening long-prior to the press conference—and even the trip up the stairs, up and down, three-times—there are a lot of things going on, so we’ll see what happens,” Trump remarked, saying that during his presidency, he was not afforded the same media coverage and suspected that if the same thing had happened to him, he would have been criticized.
“It was not on the evening news,” the 45th president said. “It got almost no coverage,” he added, saying it is a “sad situation” because “we don’t have freedom of the press anymore.” In late 2020, Trump said the media entered a “new phase” in that certain news outlets are now refusing to cover potentially damaging information about a political candidate or politician.
But Trump added: “I hope [Biden’s] in good shape. I hope he’s OK for the sake of the country.”
In the interview, Trump, who turns 75 over the summer, was asked about the prospect of him holding rallies in the future. Throughout his 2016 and 2020 campaign efforts, the former president’s rallies were popular among his supporters.
Should Trump run again, it would likely involve large rallies.
“Will we ever be able to attend another Trump rally?” Lara Trump asked him.
“Oh yeah, sure, I think so,” Donald Trump said. “In fact, we’re thinking about doing one relatively soon just to let everybody know that there’s hope in the future.” He did not elaborate on a possible date.
The United Nations’ role in immigration policy is growing worldwide with the establishment of a UN “Network for Migration” in dozens of countries to facilitate large migratory flows, sparking alarm among American border-security advocates already concerned about mass migration and the escalating crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The UN networks, which are led by a coalition of UN agencies, exist to support the implementation of the controversial “Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration” (GCM) adopted by the UN and over 150 of its member states in December of 2018.
Among other goals, the global agreement aims to facilitate the expansion of what the UN describes as “regular migration,” providing more legal pathways for would-be immigrants seeking to re-settle in wealthier countries such as the United States.
While the U.S. government has not been formally involved in the UN efforts of recent years to transform global migration policy, that may be changing, multiple sources told The Epoch Times.
Under the new administration, “the U.S. government has attended several GCM regional reviews, reviewing progress on implementation of the compact in all the regions of the world,” UN Network on Migration Communications Coordinator Florence Kim told The Epoch Times in a phone interview.
“This is great because even though the U.S. did not talk about any progress, they said that they would engage much more and they said they are re-considering all the discussions, and they are willing to participate much more in these forums,” added Kim, who serves as a spokesperson for the UN effort.
The U.S. State Department did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the issues by phone or email.
The UN’s refugee agency already “works closely with U.S. government agencies and [Non-Governmental Organizations] responsible for resettling refugees in the U.S.,” the international organization says, adding that the U.S. program is the largest in the world.
President Joe Biden at the White House on March 18, 2021. (JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
However, the Biden administration is warming up to the international agreement and becoming more involved in the process, even sending U.S. representatives to regional meetings on the compact, the UN official told The Epoch Times.
The growing UN push on global migration, combined with ongoing changes in immigration policy between the Trump and Biden administrations, has numerous U.S. organizations dedicated to border security very concerned.
In interviews with The Epoch Times, several leading figures in the immigration debate spoke out against the UN migration networks and the UN effort to get the U.S. government officially involved.
Instead, they insisted that U.S. immigration laws created by Americans’ elected representatives be enforced and strengthened, and that the UN be kept out of U.S. immigration policy.
“Our view is that this is a domestic policy issue,” said Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a leading immigration-focused organization that seeks to slow the flow of newcomers.
“When you add the United Nations to what should be a domestic issue, the end product is something that you’re not going to want to consume,” added Mehlman, echoing widespread concerns among immigration-policy advocates about the UN’s efforts to get more involved.
UN Pleased With Biden’s Actions
So far, the Biden administration has not publicly made any concrete moves to join the UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration rejected by his predecessor.
However, its actions on the issue have been praised by the UN and its International Organization for Migration, which is leading the charge to promote the GCM.
“The International Organization for Migration (IOM) applauds President Joe Biden’s plans to address the drivers of migration and advance safe, orderly and regular migration in the region,” the UN organization said in a statement released in early February using the precise language of the global migration pact.
The Biden administration’s executive actions on immigration “will provide a framework to expand refugee resettlement,” the UN IOM added in reference to Biden’s orders increasing the cap on refugees from less than 20,000 per year to over 120,000.
The U.N. flag in front of their German headquarters in Bonn, Germany, on July 11, 2006. (Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images)
The UN agency also boasted that it had already “assisted the United States with case processing, pre-departure health assessments, cultural orientation and transportation” of migrants from Central America.
“IOM looks forward to working with the Biden administration … to foster the positive opportunities and impacts of regular migration for individuals and their families as well as for the communities and societies with which they are affiliated,” the statement added.
As soon as Biden took office, the UN suggested that the U.S. government should re-engage in the UN’s international efforts on global migration.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, for instance, issued a statement on Biden’s first day expressing hope that the new administration would join the GCM.
“This partnership is needed now more than ever as we seek to provide assistance, protection and sustainable solutions to the displacement of record numbers of people who have been forced to flee their homes as a result of conflict, violence or disaster, or are migrating in the hopes of finding a better life for themselves and their families,” said the statement issued by Guterres’s office.
The top UN refugee official, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, anticipated closer cooperation with the Biden administration as soon as it took office.
“We look forward to deepening the strong and trusted partnership with the United States, and to working with the new administration and Congress to address the many challenges of forced displacement around the world,” Grandi said on Jan. 20.
Trump Led Global Opposition
Under the Trump administration, which sought to reduce illegal immigration and some forms of legal immigration into the United States in favor of merit-based programs, the UN efforts to boost its involvement in migration policy received a cold shoulder.
It represented a clean break from the Obama administration, which in 2016 played a key role in the UN’s New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants that eventually led to the GCM negotiated at a December, 2018, summit in Morocco.
Trump blasted the effort. Indeed, a forceful statement released by the U.S. State Department on Dec. 7, 2018, slammed the GCM as a flagrant attack on sovereignty that was unacceptable to the United States.
“The Compact and the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, which called for the development of the Compact and commits to ‘strengthening global governance’ for international migration, contain goals and objectives that are inconsistent and incompatible with U.S. law, policy, and the interests of the American people,” the State Department said, adding that the U.S. government objected to and would not be bound by the UN deal.
President Donald Trump participates in a ceremony commemorating the 200th mile of border wall at the international border with Mexico in San Luis, Ariz., on June 23, 2020. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
“The United States proclaims and reaffirms its belief that decisions about how to secure its borders, and whom to admit for legal residency or to grant citizenship, are among the most important sovereign decisions a State can make, and are not subject to negotiation, or review, in international instruments,” the statement continued, adding that the U.S. government would maintain the sovereign right to control its borders.
Beyond that, the Trump administration said the UN efforts represented an attempt by the UN “to advance global governance at the expense of the sovereign right of States to manage their immigration systems in accordance with their national laws, policies, and interests.”
“While the United States honors the contributions of the many immigrants who helped build our nation, we cannot support a ‘Compact’ or process that imposes or has the potential to impose international guidelines, standards, expectations, or commitments that might constrain our ability to make decisions in the best interests of our nation and citizens,” the State Department said before outlining a large number of specific criticisms of the GCM.
Among other concerns, the Trump administration said the UN compact was a threat to free expression, immigration enforcement, American workers, and even a proper understanding of “rights.”
Aside from an apparently automated message indicating she was on leave until March 29, Leslie Marshall with the Press Office of the U.S. Bureau of Global Public Affairs did not respond to repeated requests for comment asking about the State Department’s current position.
Numerous other governments that declined to participate also warned that the UN agreement sought to increase the flow of immigration into Western nations, usurp the sovereignty of national governments in determining policy, and even redefine migration as a “human right.”
Following Trump’s lead, dozens of nations and governments decided against adopting the UN compact including Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Austria, Israel, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Latvia, Poland, Australia, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Chile, and more.
“It cannot … be that any formulations are adopted that could perhaps or possibly be interpreted to mean that migration can be a human right,” argued Austrian Vice-chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache at the time. “That can and must not be the case.”
Other European leaders warned that the UN’s efforts would exacerbate the migration crisis in Europe while encouraging even more mass migration.
In the end, only about 150 governments—mostly governments of nations sending rather than receiving migrants—joined the compact.
Over 40 governments, including many of the top destinations for migrants, declined to support the UN deal.
GCM Via Backdoor?
However, even without having supported the UN GCM, its policies and objectives are quietly being implemented in nations where authorities rejected the agreement.
Without naming specific governments, UN Network on Migration Communications Coordinator Kim told The Epoch Times that most of the governments that declined to participate or approve the UN agreement were nonetheless implementing its “common sense” provisions.
“You don’t need to adopt the GCM to actually implement it,” she said. “They will implement it at their own rhythm.”
“Sometimes it can be politically sensitive, so countries [governments] did not adopt it,” added Kim, who works at the UN’s offices in Geneva. “But a majority of those countries are implementing at least some parts of it.”
The United States is actually surrounded by nations where governments are enthusiastic supporters of the UN effort. In fact, the governments of both Mexico and Canada are considered “champions” of the GCM, Kim said.
“Mexico has agreed and requested to pilot some tools developed by the UN agencies through the Network for Migration,” Kim said, adding that the Mexican government served as “co-facilitator of the negotiations.”
Illegal immigrants listen to instructions at an outdoor Border Patrol processing center under the Anzalduas International Bridge after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico near Mission, Texas, on March 23, 2021. (John Moore/Getty Images)
“They know how relevant migration is for their own country, so they know they need to manage it better, to make sure those crossing the country or leaving from Mexico are protected,” she added.
“The fact that Mexico can be supported by the UN in protecting migrants leaving or crossing can have an impact on the United States,” continued Kim. “We are talking about international migration here, so anything implemented by one country has an impact on neighboring countries.”
To the North, Canada is also a GCM “champion country,” she said.
“Canada has been implementing quite a lot, they are quite progressive in this sense, meaning that their policies are much more gender responsive, they are quite active in the integration of migrants,” continued Kim.
All of that will have an effect on America, she said.
“The U.S. is a bit surrounded by GCM champion countries and the latest declarations from the U.S. representatives show there is a real willingness to improve migration management and make sure that migrants in the U.S. are protected and included,” Kim continued. “This will benefit the whole population.”
UN Migration Networks
As part of the implementation of the GCM, the UN has set up “Migration Networks” in about 40 countries around the globe so far.
Most recently, the UN announced the creation of a “Network for Migration” in Iraq, one of the nations sending large numbers of migrants into the West.
In a statement, a deputy special representative of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the network would coordinate UN support to “improve migration governance in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals.”
The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also referred to as UN Agenda 2030, represent a comprehensive global effort to reform governance and the economy to be more in line with what the UN considers to be sustainable.
The Chinese Communist Party boasted that it played a “crucial role” in the SDG plan, which UN leaders said represents a “master plan for humanity” that will “transform our world.”
Leading the Networks for Migration are a number of key UN agencies, including several that are run by Chinese officials loyal to Beijing.
Kim, the UN spokesperson for the migration networks, said the goal of the UN was to try to pool its expertise in supporting governments in the implementation of the UN global migration pact.
“For Mexico it is important to support the government with the ongoing situation with the U.S., trying to adjust the migration policies, trying to protect the migrants going through or leaving from Mexico,” she said.
The networks also serve as a “tool for advocacy,” Kim explained, adding that a trust fund run by the UN Network was supporting migration-related projects around the world.
In addition to the nine UN agencies on the executive board and the dozens of UN entities involved are hundreds of “civil society” organizations, Kim said.
Unaccompanied minors are loaded into a U.S. Border Patrol transport van after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, in Hildalgo, Texas, on March 25, 2021. (John Moore/Getty Images)
Among the priorities of the UN agency are ending detention of what Kim described as “irregular migrants,” known more commonly in the United States as illegal immigrants.
Asked about “irregular migration,” she said: “Calling migration illegal is not accurate, a person cannot be illegal.”
When asked if the sort of policies being supported under the UN’s programs would encourage even more migration, Kim hesitated but suggested there were limits.
“We are not there to say ‘let’s have all the migrants in the world, and have them go anywhere,’” Kim clarified. “The compact aims to ensure that migration is well governed. We find the right balance that benefits those that want to come to a country, those who live in the country, and the governments involved.”
In Europe, she suggested creating new and larger pathways for legal migration would prevent people from crossing the Mediterranean.
“If they have legal means to come to Europe in a controlled, more-governed way, then the migrants don’t have to risk their lives,” she said, adding that this would provide more labor and tax revenue for the receiving countries.
She also argued that attempting to stop mass migration was futile.
“You can build all the walls in the world that you want, but when people have to leave, they will,” she said.
Critics Say No to UN Involvement
While the UN and the tax-funded refugee agencies and NGOs involved with the global organization have been pushing the U.S. government to deepen its involvement in UN migration programs and further expand legal avenues for immigration, critics have sounded the alarm.
In a phone interview with The Epoch Times, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) Media Director Ira Mehlman said the UN should not be involved in U.S. policy discussions about migration.
“These are domestic policy issues,” he said. “Each nation should make these decisions based on their own criteria.”
“What happens when these kinds of international organizations get involved, you basically have other countries telling the United States and Germany what they should do,” added Mehlman. “Once you throw this into the international arena it becomes very easy for other countries to sit back and tell ours what we should be doing when it’s not really their business.”
Mehlman also argued that the governments pushing increased global migration via the UN were mostly not those that would be forced to deal with the consequences.
“They should not be telling us what we should be doing,” he said. “This is passing the buck, and that never works.”
Instead, elected representatives at the national level should make decisions in the best interests of their own nations, he said.
The U.S. Capitol is seen through barbed wire fencing at sunrise in Washington on Feb. 8, 2021. (Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images)
In the case of the United States, he said that meant stopping the “chaos” at the Southern border, tightening the asylum process, enforcing existing law, and better distinguishing between economic migrants and true refugees.
Another expert in the field and longtime activist for increased controls over migration flows into the United States, William Gheen with Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, also slammed the UN efforts.
“The American public should resist these United Nations programs because they are designed to facilitate and increase harmful third world legal and illegal immigration into America and Europe as part of a wider plan to overwhelm our nations and force Americans into a global form of government which will be dominated by China,” he argued.
National identity, borders, and the independence and freedom enjoyed by Americans are a major obstacle to “socialists, communists, global corporations, and robber baron billionaires who feel they should be able to rule and dictate by fiat,” he said.
However, by rapidly importing millions of people from abroad without an understanding of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the United States is being “conquered” by what Gheen described as “fourth generational warfare backed by the UN.”
That is why it is so crucial for Americans and lawmakers to resist “amnesty” efforts currently being considered by the U.S. Senate.
A new but influential voice on the immigration policy scene, Angel Families of America Founder Agnes Gibboney, a legal immigrant whose son was killed by a previously deported illegal immigrant, also blasted UN efforts and mass migration into the United States.
“We are a sovereign nation and should decide our own laws, policies, and all aspects of our immigration, not foreign countries,” she said, adding that the UN “should not play any role in U.S. immigration policies.”
On a broader level, she told The Epoch Times that the United States could not solve the world’s problems by importing significant numbers of people from around the world.
“The problems in another country is where the problem needs to be solved, not in ours,” said Gibboney, whose family fled the communist regime in Hungary via Brazil before eventually finding their way to the United States legally.
“We don’t have resources to take care of the current migration crisis,” she added, calling on Congress to decline participation in UN immigration programs and agreements.
Congress is currently working on several major overhauls of U.S. immigration law that would bring U.S. policy more in line with the UN’s vision, including providing amnesty to the estimated 15 million or more illegal immigrants already in the United States.
The Biden administration did not respond to requests for comment on its position
