The Biden Administration accidentally released tightly guarded plans for “immediate Federal action” in halting one of the most outrageous and unnecessarily violent, continued, and intentional killing of innocent lives” ever documented on US Interstate highways. Until today this unspeakable carnage has continued without any acknowledgement of its existence, much less a plan to investigate and stop the activity by the Biden administration which has only fueled further stories questioning not only the logic of, but the legitimacy of an administration which follows the most contested and suspicious election in US history.

“This escalating and violent activity against another species will be adequately addressed in the very near future by the “big guy himself” quipped a Biden spokesperson who evidenced a bit of “rabbit drool” meandering down his napkin tucked chin during the unscheduled early morning verbal exchange during a Bar-b-q on the White House south lawn yesterday morning.

“The chairman will no doubt give this matter all the attention he believes it truly deserves” belched the White House official while almost continually dabbing his mouth with a White House embroidered napkin. “Absolutely disgusting that such a transparent plan to slaughter nonviolent, innocent animals on sacrificial painted asphalt concrete highways can continue every single day. A death penalty for animals who were only seeking life-giving sustenance for survival. What sort of people devise such plans to unethically dispatch life like this? How has this been permitted to continue for this amount of time (since Biden Admin began) without some form of humanitarian challenge by the progressive Left Biden (burp) group” another bunny stuffed official gurgled while tongue churning a huge portion of rabbit stew within his often open mouth last Sunday morning.

“Apparently the designers, perpetrators and benefactors of this shocking activity expect the American public to believe they had no idea of the honorific consequences that would develop when placing abundant, open and easily accessible food supplies on the opposite side of non fenced and extremely busy multi-lane highways directly across from their permitted bunny breeding business. Bunny breeding facilities where hordes of these prolific animals are neither controlled or confined to the sprawling, and itself, exponentially expanding facility.”

“Yup, It’s not rocket science”, snapped another attendee at the impromptu feast while gnawing on a slightly overdone rabbit hindquarter, “they are just animals and will go anywhere they want <hiccup>, and where they want to go (when thirsty and/or hungry) is where the food and water is – and the food and water just happens to be directly across from those major highways with all the high speed vehicle traffic zipping back and forth like a high powered butcher’s saw blade. (The speaker rips another chunk of meat with his teeth from the hindquarter tightly held in his left hand and continues to talk with his mouth full of food as tiny particles of flying rabbit meat exit his mouth as he rambles on) How can anyone now defend such activity by complaining the results of such a 1 + 2 =3 sort of set up were somehow unforeseeable?”

“Remember the old Frogger video game?” (An unidentified commenter voiced from behind the elaborately decorated White House self serve table of various offered rabbit prepared dishes) “Well, just replace the frog with a rabbit and you have a good idea of what is happening right now on the highways within this country – but also remember those in power, whether the exercised power is legitimately acquired or not, and their family members, friends and associates are clearly benefiting in someway from such bloody chaos, well, (nonchalantly dabbing “rabbit-run dribble” from chin with WH napkin) you can bet your lucky rabbit’s feet nothing is going to change in the near future regardless of the traditional political rhetoric in response to public demands for accountable change <extremely loud gurgled belch> Ahhh there she is! Phew! That felt good!”

“No idea of the horrific consequences of their activity? Arguable, but I think not” still another attendee quipped while cleaning food stains from his shirt with a moistened WH napkin. “Please also understand and be cognizant of the fact there are many other players and spinoff industries and businesses radiating out from this, at first blush unnecessarily violent, unethical operation, that are of great concern to the Biden Family personally, <belch> in addition of course, to whatever concern they may or may not have for the country itself, <hiccup> the citizens, or further potential military deployments and/or other national security threat related domestic matters. <farts and fans posterior with one hand while holding on to what appears to be half a cooked rabbit in the other> “Emotional knee-jerk responses cannot be permitted to influence or stop this situation as they had in the prior administration.” <Casually farts again and side steps away while casting a disturbed look at another oblivious attendee – who when “gets the drift” collapses to the ground without assistance> Bunny Bootie Massage Parlors, The Hunter Tail Collection Museums, Rab-bit Restaurant chains, Floppy Ear Investigations, Virus Is Us, this and much more could be irrevocably and financially damaged if improper corrective action were to be instituted immediately and prematurely without careful consideration for the long term objectives and goals of the Biden Administration which is clearly moving at warp hip-pity hop-pity speed without a care in the world toward their anticipated and well earned reward of inconceivable massive wealth which is only awaiting for their forth coming arrival just beyond this portion of clear open stretch of Interstate (sudden outrageously loud blast from an 18 wheeler tractor air horn immediately overhead) “WHAT THE FUC …….” <loud thud and squishy noises from multiple tires quickly fades as the vehicle disappears into the stark horizon>

My best to you and yours, Lew

Those “green all electric” 18 wheeler tractor-trailer rigs sure are quiet aren’t they? lol

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) speaks at the weekly news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on Dec. 3, 2020. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images) Congress

By Jack Phillips March 18, 2021 Updated: March 18, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) filed a resolution Thursday to remove Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) from the House Intelligence Committee following reports that he may have been compromised by a Chinese Communist Party spy.

“Swalwell engaged in a years-long relationship with a suspected Chinese spy, and his conduct makes clear he has no place serving on the committee in charge of America’s top secrets,” said McCarthy, referring to allegations that he was involved in a relationship with a woman—known as Fang Fang—accused of spying for the CCP.

McCarthy told Punchbowl media that “if an individual could not get a clearance in the private sector, they shouldn’t be on Intel,” referring to the House Intelligence Committee. Previously, he called on Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to remove Swalwell from the committee.

Last year, Axios reported that Fang helped in fundraising efforts for Swalwell, whose district encompasses part of California’s Bay Area, during his 2014 campaign.  Fang ultimately left the United States in 2015 following a federal investigation.

And, according to the report, Fang also allegedly targeted other Democrats in California. It was also reported that at the time of the Axios article, Swalwell’s family members were still Facebook friends with Fang.

“Rep. Swalwell, long ago, provided information about this person—whom he met more than eight years ago, and whom he hasn’t seen in nearly six years—to the FBI. To protect information that might be classified, he will not participate in your story,” Swalwell’s office told Axios in December.

But the resolution from McCarthy declared that Swalwell “has not denied public reporting that a suspected Chinese intelligence operative helped raise money for Representative Swalwell’s political campaigns” and “other troublesome elements of public reporting.”

Swalwell said Thursday that McCarthy’s resolution was a bid to “deflect” from McCarthy’s “support for QAnon.” McCarthy has repeatedly denounced the QAnon movement.

“Meet the New McCarthyism,” Swalwell also wrote. “Multiple sentences in resolution state ‘Swalwell has not denied…’ Yet fails to include multiple FBI statements of ‘no wrongdoing’ and did nothing but ‘cooperate.’”

Officials have not charged Swalwell with any wrongdoing, while he previously said he is no longer in contact with her.

When Pelosi was asked about removing Swalwell in December, she said, “I don’t have any concerns about Mr. Swalwell … In terms of Mr. Swalwell, in the spring of 2015, the leadership of the House and the committee were informed that overtures from a Chinese person were being made to members of Congress. When that was made known to the members of Congress it was over.”

The Epoch Times has contacted Swalwell’s office for comment about McCarthy’s resolution.Help us spread the truth. Share this article with your friends.

A 3D-printed Facebook logo is seen placed on a keyboard in this illustration taken March 25, 2020. (Dado Ruvic/Illustration) Censorship & Socialism

By Isabel van Brugen March 18, 2021 Updated: March 18, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Facebook announced Wednesday that it has implemented a number of changes on the social media platform that seek to reduce the reach of, and in some cases ban, groups that violate its policies.

The tech giant said in a statement that it has taken action to curb the spread of “harmful content, like hate speech and misinformation,” and is making it harder for certain groups to operate or be discovered.

“When a group repeatedly breaks our rules, we take it down entirely,” the announcement from Facebook’s VP of engineering, Tom Alison, said.

As part of the changes, Facebook will notify users who wish to join a group if the group has previously approved posts that violate the platform’s “community standards.” Users can then opt to review the group before joining.

The social media platform said it will also remove political and civic groups from all group recommendations.

“While people can still invite friends to these groups or search for them, we have now started to expand these restrictions globally. This builds on restrictions we’ve made to recommendations, like removing health groups from these surfaces, as well as groups that repeatedly share misinformation,” the company said.

When a group begins to violate the platform’s community standards, Facebook will show them lower in its recommendations list, making it less likely that people will discover those groups, Alison said.

Group admins and moderators will also be required by Facebook to “temporarily approve all posts when that group has a substantial number of members who have violated our policies or were part of other groups that were removed for breaking our rules.”

Further, users who repeatedly violate platform rules in groups will be temporarily barred from posting in any group, and will be banned from both creating new groups, and inviting others to groups.

The changes come a week before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is set to testify at a hearing on misinformation in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Facebook has come under increasing scrutiny over censorship of its users’ speech. Facebook has repeatedly claimed its platform doesn’t favor one political viewpoint over another.

Facebook whistleblower Ryan Hartwig, who lifted the lid on the social media giant’s pattern of censoring conservatives, told The Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders” on Feb. 28 that censorship at the company has become “outrageous.”

Hartwig, a former content moderator at a third-party company that provided services to Facebook, made news in June 2020 when he alleged that moderators were told to enforce the social media platform’s policies selectively to allow, under certain circumstances, content that demonized the police or white males.

“I saw that Facebook gave exceptions to, essentially, silence conservatives,” he said in an interview during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida.

Hartwig, who worked for nearly two years for Cognizant, a firm hired by Facebook to handle part of its manual content policing, said in the interview that Facebook provided guidance on a number of occasions that he said was biased in favor of left-leaning causes and perspectives.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said at the CPAC event last month that censorship by Big Tech is “probably the biggest problem that we face right now in this country, as a party.”

Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.Help us spread the truth. Share this article with your friends.

Benny Thomas, Global Planning lead – Creative & Experiential at Facebook, in a video released by Project Veritas on March 16, 2021. (Project Veritas/Youtube) Media & Big Tech

By Petr Svab March 17, 2021 Updated: March 18, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Facebook’s drive to register 4.5 million voters swayed the November election to President Joe Biden, a Facebook executive opined in hidden camera footage.

The executive, Benny Thomas, expressed grim views of the giant tech company, but counted the voter drive among its positives while secretly being recorded earlier this year by reporters with Project Veritas, an undercover journalism nonprofit.

“This is the good side of Facebook. … We made a big difference,” he said in a video released by Veritas on March 16, explaining that Facebook exceeded its goal of registering 4 million people and could only accomplish the task because of its “sheer scale and reach.”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure we [Biden] won that way,” the reporter said.

“Yea!” Thomas replied, laughing. “Exactly!”

“What do you think?” the reporter jumped in.

“Exactly. I think so too,” he said.

Thomas’s LinkedIn profile describes his position as Global Planning Lead – Creative & Experiential at Facebook since September 2019.

Facebook didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

Thomas suggested to one of the reporters that Facebook needs to do more to control speech on its platforms.

“People are believing whatever they see, and it’s just causing a crisis,” he said in another video published by Veritas on March 15.

When asked about his views on solutions, he said, “The answer is just more controls, more safeguards. … To give people a guide to behavior.”

Behavior needs to be kept in check through surveillance, he suggested.

“That’s called democracy. Somebody is always watching you so that you behave well,” he said.

On the other hand, he acknowledged that Facebook’s judgments are necessarily biased, even when machine-driven.

“There’s always built-in bias because this is the myth that computer programmers told us, which is, ‘Oh, these are computers, computers don’t have bias.’ But guess what? Human beings wrote that code. And that human being has bias.”

Conservatives and some liberals have long complained that Facebook is censoring political speech based on vague, partly secret, ever-changing, and unevenly enforced policies.

Thomas also said Facebook and Google have grown so powerful, they need to be broken up.

“The government needs to step in and break up Google and Facebook. I’ll make less money, but it’s a better thing for the world,” he said.

Facebook needs to be stripped of its major subsidiaries, he suggested.

“Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, Oculus, WhatsApp. They all need to be separate companies. It’s too much power when they’re all one together,” he said.

“It needs to be broken up the way the telecom companies were broken up and the oil companies were broken up. But better than that, because those guys just came back together pretty soon after that. I hope we’ve learned from that. But that’s really the one thing, as you said, I would break it up, and I would remove Zuck [Mark Zuckerberg] as the CEO.”

Facebook’s power ceases to be innocuous, he said, “when you weaponize it as a politician and you go, ‘Tell me, show me people who are racist,’” such as when “a racist politician” is looking to target messaging to “several racists who will vote” for him.

When the reporter asked who would decide what makes one a racist and how would Facebook determine it, Thomas mused, “What would be a proxy for a racist?”

“Lives in all-white town, education, religious preference,” he said. “So you can triangulate three or four data points and say, ‘She’s likely to be racist.’”

Thomas also criticized Zuckerberg’s investment in gene-editing technology.

“It’s eugenics. I don’t know any way to stop it. I think the genie’s out of the bottle,” he said.

He worries the technology would lead to the development of a “superior race” of people and extreme polarization of society into “haves” and “have-nots” that goes beyond mere wealth differences.

“They have a thing that I can never have,” he said, describing the position of the “have-nots.”

When confronted by one of the reporters, Thomas refused to go on record and clarify his comments. Follow Petr on Twitter: @petrsvabHelp us spread the truth. Share this article with your friends.

Border Patrol agents apprehend a group of illegal immigrants near downtown El Paso, Texas, on March 15, 2021. (Justin Hamel/AFP via Getty Images) Immigration & Border Security

By Ivan Pentchoukov March 17, 2021 Updated: March 17, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Career officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned then-President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team that revoking President Donald Trump’s border policies would have “catastrophic consequences,” according to Stephen Miller, who served as Trump’s top adviser on immigration issues at the White House.

“Biden’s transition team was warned by career DHS officials that terminating our proven border security measures would lead to catastrophic consequences. … They ignored those warnings and voluntarily unleashed chaos,” Miller wrote on Twitter on March 17.

“By 2020—defeating a flood of meritless years-long litigation—we had in place the most effective, rock-solid, profound border security measures ever realized. Biden inherited an unbeatable system. He then immediately shredded it & created this rapidly-escalating emergency.”

Miller, who is now a senior adviser to Trump, made the remarks in response to a news report about Biden telling Central American migrants to stay in their communities and not make the trek to the United States to cross the border illegally.

“I can say quite clearly: Don’t come over,” Biden told ABC News.

The Biden administration is facing a surge of illegal border crossings on pace to be the highest in two decades. The influx coincided with Biden taking office and swiftly revoking more than a dozen key Trump immigration measures.

“Maybe nobody on his staff informed him, but Biden’s DHS implemented nationwide Catch-and-Release,” Miller wrote. “Illegal migrants from all over the world, in ever-growing numbers, will descend on the border until the Trump policy of Detain-and-Remove is restored.”

Trump criticized Biden’s border agenda in an interview aired on Fox News on March 16, particularly lamenting the decision to halt the construction of his signature wall on the southern border.

“They should finish it,” Trump said about the wall. “But they’re destroying our country. People are coming in by the hundreds of thousands.”

Biden said there’s been a surge of illegal immigrants over the past two years but agreed the current wave “could be” worse. The president said on March 16 that he doesn’t currently plan to visit the border.

Officials in border states have said some illegal immigrants are testing positive for the CCP virus but aren’t being forced to stay in quarantine, stoking concerns about them spreading COVID-19.

Biden sent a contingent of officials earlier this month to view the situation on the ground. He hasn’t offered a perspective on what they saw, and it isn’t clear whether he’s been briefed by them yet. White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington on March 15 that the administration feels it has a handle on the border situation.

“We recognize this as a problem. We’re focused on addressing it,” Psaki said.

Bowen Xiao contributed to this report. Follow Ivan on Twitter: @ivanpentchoukovHelp us spread the truth. Share this article with your friends.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki speaks during a briefing at the White House in Washington on March 17, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Executive Branch

Psaki Stonewalls Queries on Press Access to Border Facilities

By Zachary Stieber March 18, 2021 Updated: March 18, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

The Biden administration has repeatedly championed its commitment to transparency, but won’t let reporters into facilities holding child immigrants near the U.S. border.

A growing surge of illegal border crossings, including a jump in unaccompanied minors, has led to intense scrutiny of the administration’s immigration policies. At the same time, reporters have clamored for access to facilities housing the child immigrants.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki has repeatedly stonewalled questions on when that access will be granted.

“We remain committed to doing that,” she told reporters at the White House in Washington on Wednesday.

The administration is working with the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, which oversee the facilities, to arrange tours, while “respecting the privacy and, obviously, the health protocols required by COVID,” she said.

Pressed on why the administration itself also hasn’t released images from the facilities, Psaki added: “We remain committed to transparency. I don’t have an update for you on the timeline for access, but it’s certainly something we support.”

Some reporters said they’d been denied requests to ride along with Border Patrol agents. Psaki deferred questioning on the matter.

“We fully support transparency, and I would encourage you to talk to the Department of Homeland Security about any requests you have for press access or what you’re looking to accomplish at the border,” she said.

The Epoch Times recently traveled with Border Patrol agents in Texas as they apprehended illegal immigrants.

The Biden administration’s reversal of key Trump era policies has driven the surge in illegal immigrants, according to experts, Republican lawmakers, and some Democrats. Among the reversals: ending Trump’s remain in Mexico policy and allowing unaccompanied minors to stay in the country, even amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Psaki defended the policies, saying, “We decided that we will be more humane about how we approach this” and that it will take time to deal with the higher numbers of child immigrants.

“Our policy continues to be: We’re not going to send a 10-year-old back across the border. That was the policy of the last administration. That’s not our policy here,” she said.

Asked if that amounted to incentivizing parents to send their kids across the border alone, Psaki pointed to how President Joe Biden said this week that people should not cross the border into the United States.

“And he believes, as he talked about last night, that no parent is looking and just trying to make a bet on whether their kid can, kind of, make it,” she said.

“This is a very difficult and treacherous journey. Most of these kids are fleeing very challenging circumstances. And his view is that there’s a number of steps we need to take and steps that he hopes he can work with Democrats and Republicans on. So that’s his goal.” Follow Zachary on Twitter: @zackstieber

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin looks on as President Joe Biden speaks, in the White House in Washington on March 8, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) Republicans

By Zachary Stieber March 16, 2021 Updated: March 16, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

The top Republican in the House of Representatives on Monday called for a halt to what he described as politicization of the military.

“Uniformed service members recently criticized a private citizen for his First Amendment rights, & today a Dem lawmaker used soldiers in a political stunt against a GOP member,” Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) wrote in a social media statement.

McCarthy tagged Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin before adding: “This sets a dangerous precedent. It must stop now.”

The military is forbidden from getting involved in politics while in uniform but multiple members recently criticized Tucker Carlson of Fox News after Carlson critiqued the military’s focus on including women, arguing that it would be best for it to spend more time combating rivals like China.

Additionally, on Monday Rep. Michael F.Q. San Nicolas (D-Guam) took uniformed National Guard members with him to confront Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) at her office, after Greene reportedly suggested last month that Guam was not a part of the United States.

Greene wasn’t in her office but San Nicolas asked a staffer to speak to Guard personnel. The staffer did so.

Maj. Gen. Esther Aguigui, adjutant general of the Guam National Guard, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that “we appreciate Congressman San Nicolas’ efforts to represent our culture of Inafa’ Maolek, or bringing harmony, practiced here in Guam.”

“We also thank Congresswoman Greene for ultimately helping raise awareness of Guamanians as citizens of the United States, and our rich tradition of service and sacrifice to our nation. As a non-partisan entity, the Guam National Guard is here to continue this legacy of supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States and the freedoms it provides. We will continue to be always ready and always there, to serve our great nation and contribute to a fair, prosperous, compassionate, and safe Guam,” she added.

The Pentagon declined to respond directly to McCarthy. The Department of Defense’s inspector general declined to say whether it was probing either situation.

Greene said via email that “It’s time for our great men and women of the National Guard to go home from Washington DC and be with their families.”

“The Democrats need to stop using them as political theatre and drama on Capitol Hill. Shame on Democrats for disrespecting our military,” she added.

The office of San Nicolas didn’t return an inquiry.

Other members of Congress have also questioned the military’s recent actions, which included issuing a press release that critics said distorted Carlson’s comments.

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?height=321&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FCongressmanMichaelF.Q.SanNicolas%2Fvideos%2F446647236424486%2F&show_text=false&width=560

The Pentagon alleged that Carlson “used his show to denigrate the contributions of women in the military and to say the Chinese military is catching up to the U.S. military because it does not allow women to serve in the percentage the United States does.”

Carlson during a recent show pointed to President Joe Biden talking about designing military flight suits and easing hairstyle restrictions in a bid to have women feel safe and respected in the military.

“It’s a mockery of the U.S. military. While China’s military becomes more masculine as it’s assembled the world’s largest navy, our military needs to become, as Joe Biden says, more feminine, whatever feminine means anymore since men and women no longer exist. The bottom line is, it’s out of control, and the Pentagon is going along with this,” Carlson said.

Attacks were lobbed by the Pentagon’s press secretary, a top Space Force official, and a number of other military members in return. Through the spokesman, Austin also expressed disdain for Carlson’s comments.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has said he requested a meeting with the head of the Marine Corps after the Marines joined in the attacks, telling one social media user to “come back when you’ve served and been pregnant” and using a pejorative against Carlson.

The Marine Corps later deleted the tweets.

Cruz told Austin in a letter that he’s “deeply troubled” by the situation, accusing the Pentagon of mobilizing “systematic, public attacks” against Carlson.

A Pentagon spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email, “As with all congressional correspondence, the secretary will respond directly to the author of the letter as appropriate.”

The Senate had to approve a waiver for Austin, a retired general, to serve as the defense secretary. During confirmation hearings, he told senators that he understood concerns they had and that “the safety and security of our democracy demands competent civilian control of our armed forces.”

“If you confirm me, I can assure you the Pentagon under my leadership will respect your oversight responsibilities. We will be forthcoming and transparent,” he added. Follow Zachary on Twitter: @zackstieberHelp us spread the truth. Share this article with your friends.

Police tape in a stock photo. (Carl Ballou/Shutterstock) Immigration & Border Security

By Jack Phillips March 16, 2021 Updated: March 16, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Authorities in Texas said that at least eight illegal immigrants have died in a head-on collision in Val Verde County, Texas—located near the U.S.-Mexico border—following a high-speed chase.

Officers with the Texas Department of Public Safety arrested the driver of the vehicle after he allegedly tried to run away following the crash, authorities told Fox29 in San Antonio.

Eight people were confirmed dead at the scene. Texas Department of Public Safety officials told the outlet that they are all had no documentation. The fatal crash happened at around 1:30 p.m. Monday nearly 30 miles north of Del Rio, KSAT reported.

Officials told the outlet that troopers were chasing a red pickup truck on U.S. 277 when it collided with a white Ford F-150 truck.

“Due to injuries sustained, eight undocumented passengers from the Dodge pickup were pronounced deceased on scene,” the Department of Public Safety told the outlet. “The driver and a child passenger from the Ford pickup and one undocumented passenger from the Dodge pickup were transported to a hospital in San Antonio and are in stable condition.”

Other details about the incident are not clear.

Several weeks ago, in Southern California, officials said that more than a dozen illegal immigrants were killed following a collision with another vehicle. Immigration authorities confirmed that the SUV, which was carrying about 25 people, entered the United States from Mexico in early March via a hole in the border fence.

“We pray for the accident victims and their families during this difficult time,” said El Centro Sector Chief Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino in a news conference on Wednesday. Agents, he said, believe the deceased individuals were part of a larger group of about 44 migrants who were smuggled through a hole in the fence near Calexico, a California city that lies along the border and is next to the Mexican city of Mexicali.

Bovino added that an “initial investigation into the origins of the vehicles indicate a potential nexus to the aforementioned breach in the border wall,” while adding that “human smugglers have proven time and again they have little regard for human life.”

In recent weeks, the number of migrants attempting to enter the United States via Mexico has surged to levels not seen in 20 years, said Department of Homeland Security Chief Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday.

U.S. border agents conducted about 100,000 apprehensions or rapid expulsions of migrants at the border in February, officials have said.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement agency for comment.Help us spread the truth. Share this article with your friends.

A Customs and Border Protection officer speaks with immigrants at the U.S.–Mexico border in Matamoros, Mexico, on Feb. 25, 2021. (John Moore/Getty Images) US News

By Charlotte Cuthbertson March 9, 2021 Updated: March 11, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Mexican cartels are getting stronger as the Biden administration weakens security at the border, according to several current and former law enforcement officials.

Most cartel violence occurs in Mexico as different factions fight for territory along the border into the United States. Smuggling drugs and humans is their primary business, and they control the border.

But the cartels are also embedded inside the United States, and indications point to more violence stateside this year, according to Jaeson Jones, a former captain for the Texas Department of Public Safety, where he ran the border security operations center.

“The game has changed now,” Jones told The Epoch Times on March 3. “They don’t fear us. It’s just not like it used to be. And you can’t blame them. I mean, they have no reason to—we’ve done nothing to contain them. They’re just completely out of control.”

Jones said cartels will “absolutely” cause more violence “everywhere, much deeper” into the United States. He said the problem with cross-border crime and cartel violence is that it’s not identified as such in the FBI’s uniform crime data system.

“So when you hear from a lot of people who say, ‘There’s no proof that cross-border violence is occurring,’ that’s wrong. It is. It’s occurring every single day in many, many ways,” Jones said.

He pointed to an example of a double murder in Alabama in 2018 of a 13-year-old autistic girl, who was beheaded, and her grandmother, who was a drug smuggler with reported ties to the Sinaloa cartel.

In 2019, two Border Patrol agents were fired upon from the Mexican side of the Rio Grande while they were patrolling by boat.

“Agents saw four subjects with automatic weapons who shot over 50 rounds at them. The boat was hit several times but no one on board was injured,” said an Aug. 9, 2019, Customs and Border Protection statement.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Jones said, an alert went out to agents that Cartel de Golfo (CDG) intended to kill agents on a boat the next day.

He said CDG is losing the battle for territory in the small city of Miguel Alemán in Mexico, across the river from Roma, Texas. The cartel wanted to blame the shooting on rivals Cartel Del Noreste (CDN), a faction of the Los Zetas, “to cause the Mexican government to come after CDN,” Jones said. “Think how bold that is.”

He believes President Joe Biden, “whether he wants to or not,” will be forced to take action against the cartels because of the fentanyl issue.

Illicit fentanyl coming across the Mexican border is chiefly responsible for fueling the escalating opioid crisis, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Overdose deaths are at record highs in the United States.

“The overdose deaths are not going to get lower,” Jones said. “They’re going to go through the roof this year because of the migration issue. Because as they [border agents] focus on migration at the border, they’re not focusing on [drug] seizures. So you give up one for the other.”

Often, the cartels will send large groups of migrants to cross the border illegally in one area to tie up Border Patrol resources while they smuggle drugs and other people through another area nearby.

Sheriff A.J. Louderback from Jackson County, Texas, said Border Patrol has been apprehending about 1,000 illegal border-crossers every day for the past three weeks in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, mostly in large groups.

“We essentially have an open border today on the southern border of the United States,” Louderback told The Epoch Times on March 5.

The Cartel de Golfo controls the Mexican border into the Rio Grande Valley area in Texas; anyone who wants to cross illegally has to pay the cartel. The lowest price he’s heard is $250 per person, Louderback said.

“So 1,000 people a day … you’re looking at a quarter million dollars a day, coming in and funding the cartel for its future violence, and future enhancement of all things criminal that go along here in Texas and the United States,” he said. “So fundamentally what we’ve done is promote this.”

Jones said the price for crossing has recently skyrocketed to $2,500 per person, or even higher, depending on their country of origin. Many of those who cross don’t have enough money and are then indentured to the cartel once they’re in the United States.

Law Enforcement

The Mexican government has also made moves that hamper U.S. law enforcement, particularly the DEA, inside Mexico.

In mid-December 2020, the Mexican government introduced a law that would require “foreign agents” operating in Mexico to share information with the Mexican government. The foreign agents will also no longer have immunity, and Mexican officials will have to get permission before meeting with a foreign agent and to submit a report afterward.

The DEA has offices in Mexico and has had agents operating there for decades. Homeland Security also operates to disrupt drug and human trafficking routes.

Derek Maltz, former head of the DEA’s special operations division, said the new law will “completely expose” law enforcement agents and their operations.

“And so Mexico is taking full advantage of America during all these turbulent times with the transition of presidents, with the COVID, with the weak immigration policies put forth by Joe Biden’s administration,” Maltz told The Epoch Times on Feb. 24.

“They’re setting it up so the only people that win are the corrupt government officials, the Chinese organized crime groups, and the cartels.

“And there’s no doubt in my mind—based on all my experience, and looking at drug enforcement and immigration-related matters—that the cartels are in a much easier place now to position their manpower throughout America, [and] continue to distribute all these poisonous drugs and pick up the mass amounts of proceeds that have been generated from the business.”

As an escalating number of illegal immigrants enter the country, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced an operation to surge Texas law enforcement personnel to the southern border to help combat drug and human smuggling.

“Texas supports legal immigration but will not be an accomplice to the open border policies that cause, rather than prevent, a humanitarian crisis in our state and endanger the lives of Texans,” Abbott said in a March 6 statement. Follow Charlotte on Twitter: @charlottecuthboHelp us spread the truth. Share this article with your friends.

Scott Adams, author of “Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America,” in New York on Nov. 4, 2019. (Brendon Fallon/The Epoch Times) Censorship & Socialism

By Petr Svab March 16, 2021 Updated: March 16, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Famed cartoonist and political commentator Scott Adams told his audience that YouTube removed two of his videos because they contained comments regarding the November election. He said it feels like YouTube is setting him up for a penalty that could lead to his channel being purged from the Google-owned online video platform.

In his March 15 daily livestream, Adams said that YouTube informed him that two of his January videos “promoted false election claims” and were taken down. As far as he could tell, the videos did no such thing, but YouTube, per its common practice, didn’t explain what specifically Adams said that irked its censors.

“I don’t even have a guess why I got censored,” he said.

Normally, an alleged policy violation results in a “strike” and if three accumulate, the entire channel gets deleted. For many a YouTube personality, that’s nearly a career kill. In this case, however, YouTube spared Adams the penalty.

“They’re saying we’re not going to give you a strike because you probably didn’t know you did anything wrong. But what happens the next time?” he asked.

“Then next time, can they not say, ‘We warned you’? I feel like they could, because they did warn me but they didn’t tell me what it was that I did. So I don’t have the option of avoiding it because I don’t know what it was. Now, do you see what’s happening? … Doesn’t that look like a setup to you?”

In response to The Epoch Times inquiry, a Google spokesperson asked for links to the deleted videos. The Epoch Times located the links through the Internet Archive, but didn’t receive further response from Google by press time.

Adams’s situation is part of a pattern that appears designed to induce self-censorship. Tech companies tend to make their content rules vague, keep part of them secret, and not inform users what exactly they did wrong. The result is that people try to guess the boundaries of the censorship themselves and are likely to cage themselves more tightly than the rules would require.

Adams is known to comment on news and politics from a mix of liberal and conservative perspectives. A trained hypnotist, his specialty is pinpointing and decoding persuasion methods, explaining how to use them as well as avoid being affected by them.

He said it looks like YouTube is already throttling his channel as “the monetization, everything for the channel just plunged.”

“I feel as if they’re pushing me to the situation where I will accidentally cancel myself and I’ll never know I did it. I’ll just be cancelled,” he said.

The deleted videos are his Jan. 3 live stream titled, “Episode 1240 Scott Adams: My Impression of Mayor Ted Wheeler Negotiating, China Bad, Election Audit,” and his Jan. 6 livestream titled, “Episode 1243 Scott Adams: Georgia Election Credibility and Where Do We Go From Here?”

His take on election fraud was that it’s likely widespread on both sides of the aisle because the reward is high, there are likely a lot of people willing to engage in it, and the chances of getting caught are low.

In the first video, he said there are “signals” and evidence that the election result was illegally affected, though he also acknowledged that he could be wrong.

In the second video, he called for more inquiry into certain allegations, but voiced skepticism about specific claims.

“It could be all of them, but at least 95 percent of the [voter fraud] claims are bogus,” he said.

He maintained his position that, judging from the election system setup alone, fraud does take place.

“Guaranteed your elections have been fraudulent all of your life, and probably longer, and you didn’t even notice,” he said. Follow Petr on Twitter: @petrsvabHelp us spread the truth. Share this article with your friends.