Month: July 2024

Authored by Lorenz Duchamps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The number of illegal immigrants arrested at the U.S. southern border fell by nearly 30 percent in June, reaching the lowest monthly total since January 2021, according to figures released this week.

Arrests totaled 83,536 illegal immigrants in June, down from 117,901 in May, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced in a June 15 statement.

The agency attributed the decline to President Joe Biden’s order announced on June 4 that halts asylum requests at the southern border once the average daily number of illegal immigrant arrests exceeds 2,500 for seven days.

“Recent border security measures have made a meaningful impact on our ability to impose consequences for those crossing unlawfully, leading to a decline of 29 percent in U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions from May to June,” Troy Miller, acting CBP commissioner, said in a statement.

President Biden issued the proclamation as his administration had been dealing with historic levels of illegal immigrant encounters at the U.S.–Mexico border, while Americans rank border security as one of the country’s top concerns.

The order is a proclamation under Immigration and Nationality Act sections 212(f) and 215(a) and prohibits immigrants who cross the southern border unlawfully from receiving asylum when, as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a June statement, “high levels of encounters at the southern border exceed our ability to deliver timely consequences.”

This is the same legal rationale former President Donald Trump used to take some of his toughest executive actions to address border security during his term.

Meanwhile, Mr. Miller also said the seven-day average of border-crossing encounters has decreased by more than 50 percent in the past six weeks to below 1,900 per day.

“We are continuing to work with international partners to go after transnational criminal organizations that traffic in chaos and prioritize profit over human lives,” he said.

Since the executive action went into effect on June 5, the Department of Homeland Security has “removed or returned more than 70,000 individuals to more than 170 countries, including by operating more than 150 international repatriation flights,” according to the CBP.

The border agency noted that the total number of removals and returns over the past year is the highest of any year since 2010.

Decline in Illegal Border Crossings

Arrests have fallen by more than half in recent months after reaching an all-time high of 249,785 in December.

Border officials said the agency has registered sharp declines across various nationalities, including Mexicans as well as Chinese people, who generally fly to Ecuador and travel to the U.S. border over land.

San Diego was the busiest of the Border Patrol’s nine sectors bordering Mexico by number of arrests, followed by Tucson, Arizona.

In addition, more than 41,800 immigrants were processed through an online appointment app called CBP One in June. The agency said more than 680,500 immigrants have successfully scheduled appointments since the app was introduced in January 2023.

“The top nationalities processed subsequent to arrival for their appointment are Venezuelan, Cuban, and Haitian,” the border agency stated.

Meanwhile, nearly 500,000 migrants from four countries have been allowed entry into the country under the Biden administration’s Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela CHNV parole program from October 2022 through June 2024, according to the CBP.

The agency said they include 104,130 Cubans, 194,027 Haitians, 86,101 Nicaraguans, and 110,541 Venezuelans.

The parole program was set in motion for Venezuelans by President Biden in October 2022. It was intended to help ease the number of illegal border crossings by flying people from certain countries directly to the United States. It was expanded in January 2023 to include nationals from Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

From NTD News

Before the failed assassination attempt, before the catastrophic (for Biden) first presidential debate, Donald Trump gave Bloomberg an extensive interview in which he laid out the core tenets of Trumponomics 2.0 that will define his next presidency. Here are the key highlights:

According to the interview, if Trump wins, he will…

• enforce huge bilateral sanctions even though he claims “I don’t love sanctions,” he says. He keeps circling back to William McKinley, who he says raised enough revenue through tariffs during his turn-of-the-20th-century presidency to avoid instituting a federal income tax yet never got the appropriate credit.

• allow Jerome Powell to serve out his term as chair of the Federal Reserve, which runs through May 2026

• will lower the corporate tax rate to as low as 15%

• no longer plans to ban TikTok.

• considers Jamie Dimon to serve as secretary of the Department of the Treasury

• ambivalent (if not outright hostile) to the idea of protecting Taiwan from Chinese aggression and to US efforts to punish Putin for invading Ukraine.

While the broad strokes of Trumponomics might not be different from what they were during his first term, what’s new is the speed and efficiency with which he intends to enact them. He believes he understands the levers of power much more deeply now, including the importance of selecting the right people for the right jobs. “We had great people, but I had some people that I would not have chosen for a second time,” he says. “Now, I know everybody. Now, I am truly experienced.”

Maybe he is, or maybe he just is surrounded by better people. Here is the inner circle of Trump economic policy advisors:

In a world where everything else has been tried – and has pushed US debt to stratospheric levels that virtually assure the US will lose the dollar reserve status in coming years, Trump is betting that his unorthodox agenda of tax cuts, more oil, less regulation, higher tariffs and fewer foreign financial commitments will appeal to enough swing state voters to hand him the election. And it’s working: debate and assassination attempt boosts aside, recent polling has showed that Black and Hispanic men are shifting to the Republican Party as they tire of historically high prices for food, housing and gas. As many as 20% of Black men now back Trump while Biden is struggling to sell key voters on his catastrophic economic record (not to mention the panic over his age). While Trump is almost assured a win in November according to online prediction markets, many Democratic leaders are increasingly concerned he’ll also deliver Republicans control of the House and Senate along with the White House: a sweeping red tsunami. In such an outcome, Trump would have unprecedented leverage to shape the US economy, the climate for global businesses and trade with allies for decades to come.

But there is one hurdle: while the business leaders Trump would be working with prize stability and certainty, they didn’t get much of either in Trump’s first presidency. This time around, his campaign is more professionally run, but he hasn’t produced a detailed economic policy agenda to reassure them. The vacuum has generated confusion among those who are planning for a second Trump term.

So Trump took advantage of the interview to set the record straight on some key items:

The Fed

In late April, a few of Trump’s informal policy advisers leaked to the Wall Street Journal an explosive draft proposal to severely curb the independence of the Federal Reserve. It was inferred that Trump had endorsed the idea, which didn’t seem like a stretch given his prior attacks on Powell. In fact, the Trump campaign insisted he’d endorsed neither the proposal nor the leak, and his top campaign brass were furious about it. But the episode was a consequence of Trump’s still-unformed policy, which has left wonks from such think tanks as the Heritage Foundation battling to fill in the details and jockey for influence. Other conservative policy entrepreneurs have been pushing proposals to devalue the dollar or institute a flat tax. At Mar-a-Lago, Trump makes it clear he’s fed up with the unauthorized freelancing. “There’s a lot of false information,” he complains. He’s eager to set the record straight on several topics.

First, there’s Powell. While in February, Trump told Fox News that he wouldn’t reappoint the Fed chair; now he states unequivocally that he’ll let Powell finish his term, which would last well into a second Trump administration. “I would let him serve it out,” Trump says, “especially if I thought he was doing the right thing.”

Even so, Trump has thoughts on interest-rate policy, at least in the near term. The Fed, he warns, should abstain from cutting rates before the November election and giving the economy, and Biden, a boost. That would be a problem for a market that has already priced in not one but two rate cuts in the second half (the first of which in September). “It’s something that they know they shouldn’t be doing,” he said.

Inflation

Trump has been ruthlessly critical of Biden’s stewardship of the economy. But he sees, in the anger generated by high prices and interest rates, an opportunity to woo voters who typically don’t support Republicans, such as Black and Hispanic men. Trump says he’ll bring down prices by opening up the US to more oil and gas drilling. “We have more liquid gold than anybody,” he says, even though the tariffs he plans on implementing will certainly lead to higher prices for imported goods. A report from the Peterson Institute estimates that Trump’s tariff regime would impose an additional annual cost of $1,700 for the average middle-income family. And Oxford Economics estimates that Trump’s combination of tariffs, immigration restrictions and extended tax cuts could also increase inflation and slow economic growth. The through line of these policies, says Bernard Yaros, lead US economist at Oxford Economics, is “an increase in inflation expectations.”

Immigration

He believes harsh restrictions are key to boosting domestic wages and employment. He characterizes immigration restrictions as “the biggest [factor] of all” in how he’d reshape the economy, with particular benefits for the minorities he’s eager to win over. “The Black people are going to be decimated by the millions of people that are coming into the country,” he says. “They’re already feeling it. Their wages have gone way down. Their jobs are being taken by the migrants coming in illegally into the country.” Trump’s language turns apocalyptic. “The Black population in this country is going to die because of what’s happened, what’s going to happen to their jobs—their jobs, their housing, everything,” he continues. “I want to stop that.”

Budget deficit

Trump’s desire to renew his landmark 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and to further reduce corporate taxes means that the budget deficit, having ballooned to war levels, will not shrink any time soon if ever. Coupled with the upward pressure on interest rates that economists expect from his protectionist policies, Trump’s plans could exacerbate the country’s growing debt burden. In the end, however, Trump’s other positions could be enough to sway business leaders to his side. Harold Hamm, a Trump donor and the executive chairman of oil giant Continental Resources Inc., writes in an email: “There seems to be outright hostility to free markets in the Biden Administration. As a result, capital is parked on the sidelines. Why? Because of regulatory uncertainty and in some cases downright regulatory hostility toward certain sectors.” Hamm cites the pause Biden put on liquefied natural gas projects in January as one example. “When Trump is re-elected,” he predicts, “that capital that was parked on the sidelines will be unleashed once again.”

Treasury Secretary Dimon

It is no secret that most Fortune 1000 CEOs have never been fans of Trump, but slowly the tide is turning. Overnight, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, announced he would donate $45 million a month to a Trump PAC. Expect many others to follow. But the biggest praise for Trump in recent months has come from a card-carrying Democrat and the CEO of the largest US bank: “Be honest,” Jamie Dimon said at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January. “He was kind of right about NATO, kind of right about immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked. He was right about some of China. … He wasn’t wrong about some of these critical issues, and that’s why they’re voting for him.” According to Bloomberg, Trump relishes the compliment. He’s changed his view of the man he attacked on Truth Social last year as “Highly overrated Globalist Jamie Dimon” and now says he could envision Dimon, who’s thought to be contemplating a political career, as his secretary of the Treasury. “He is somebody that I would consider,” Trump says.

Tariffs and Foreign Policy

As president, Trump shattered the long-standing Republican orthodoxy of favoring free trade. He says he’ll go further if reelected. To Bloomberg, he offered an impassioned defense of US tariffs — he’s been studying McKinley, dubbing him “the Tariff King” — to make it clear he intends to ratchet up levies not just on China but on the European Union, too. “McKinley made this country rich,” Trump says. “He was the most underrated president.” In Trump’s reading of history, McKinley’s successors squandered his legacy on costly government programs such as the New Deal (“the whole thing with the parks and the dams”) and unjustly poisoned an important tool for economic statecraft. “I can’t believe how many people are negative on tariffs that are actually smart,” Trump says. “Man, is it good for negotiation. I’ve had guys, I’ve had countries that were potentially extremely hostile coming to me and saying, ‘Sir, please stop with the tariff stuff.’”

Another confirmation that Trump was right: despite rampant criticism, Biden maintained Trump’s tariffs on China, even increasing ones on steel, aluminum, semiconductors, electric vehicles, batteries and other goods. “This is going to add price inflation across the board, all in the name of ‘tough guy’ election-year politics,” Yaël Ossowski, deputy director of the Consumer Choice Center, a nonpartisan advocacy group, said in May. And sure enough, in Trumpworld, Biden’s actions are seen as validation that Trump was right, and his Democratic critics were wrong, about the threat China poses to the US economy and security. Trump is eager to prescribe more of the same medicine, including to European allies. In addition to targeting China for new tariffs of anywhere from 60% to 100%, he says he’d impose a 10% across-the-board tariff on imports from other countries, citing a familiar litany of complaints about foreign countries not buying enough US goods.

“The ‘European Union’ sounds so lovely,” Trump says. “We love Scotland and Germany. We love all these places. But once you get past that, they treat us violently.” He mentions reluctance in Europe to import US automobiles and agricultural products as key drivers of the more than $200 billion trade deficit, a statistic he considers a critical measure of economic fairness.

Taiwan

Asked about America’s commitment to defending Taiwan from China which views the Asian democracy as a breakaway province, Trump makes it clear that despite recent bipartisan support for Taiwan, he’s at best lukewarm about standing up to Chinese aggression. Part of his skepticism is grounded in economic resentment. “Taiwan took our chip business from us,” he says. “I mean, how stupid are we? They took all of our chip business. They’re immensely wealthy.” What he wants is for Taiwan to pay the US for protection. “I don’t think we’re any different from an insurance policy. Why? Why are we doing this?” he asks. Another factor driving his skepticism is what he regards as the practical difficulty of defending a small island on the other side of the globe. “Taiwan is 9,500 miles away,” he says. “It’s 68 miles away from China.” Abandoning the commitment to Taiwan would represent a dramatic shift in US foreign policy, as significant as halting support for Ukraine. But Trump sounds ready to radically alter the terms of these relationships.

Saudi Arabia

His views about Saudi Arabia are far more amicable. He says he’s spoken to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud within the past six months, though he declines to elaborate on the nature and frequency of their talks. Asked if he worries that increasing US oil and gas production would upset the Saudis, who wish to maintain their primacy in energy, Trump replies that he doesn’t think so, pointing once more to a personal relationship. “He likes me, I like him,” he says of the crown prince. “They’re always going to need protection … they’re not naturally protected.” He adds: “I’ll always protect them.” Trump blames Biden and former President Barack Obama for eroding US relations with Saudi Arabia, saying they pushed the country toward a key adversary. “They’re not with us anymore,” he says. “They’re with China. But they don’t want to be with China. They want to be with us.”

Ukraine

Western allies are taking extensive measures to prepare for his possible return to the White House. These include increasing defense spending, transferring control of military aid for Ukraine to NATO, racing to improve relationships with Trump’s advisers and affiliated think tanks, and reaching out to Republican governors and thought leaders to divine his intentions. At a NATO summit in Washington, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged allies to act quickly to help his country repel Russia’s invasion instead of waiting for the election results in November to decide what to do. Dan Caldwell, a policy adviser at the right-leaning think tank Defense Priorities, says that “it’s actually in Europe’s interest to ‘America-proof’ their defense and to start operating on the assumption that the United States has other, more urgent national security priorities, and domestic ones as well.”

TikTok

The one exception to Trump’s claim to not want to harm US tech companies, and to privilege domestic ones over foreign ones, is TikTok. Discussing his recent embrace of the Chinese-owned social media platform, where he’s already quite popular, Trump mentions that banning it in the US would benefit a company and a CEO he has no desire to reward. “Now [that] I’m thinking about it, I’m for TikTok, because you need competition,” he says. “If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram—and that’s, you know, that’s Zuckerberg.” It’s an outcome he won’t abide. He’s still stung by Facebook’s decision to bar him indefinitely in the wake of the Jan. 6 attacks. “All of a sudden,” Trump grouses, “I went from No. 1 to having nobody.”

Crypto

His reversal on cryptocurrency has been marked by similar dynamics: not long ago he criticized Bitcoin as a “scam” and a “disaster waiting to happen.” Now he says it and other cryptocurrencies should be “made in the USA.” He frames this about-face as a practical necessity. “If we don’t do it, China is going to figure it out, and China’s going to have it—or somebody else,” he says.

Crypto becoming a top 2024 election issue as expected. On one hand you have Pocahontas and her “Anti-Crypto army”, and now you have DeSantis going all-in crypto, anti-CBDC and anti-Warren. https://t.co/cmrGcPQIcY https://t.co/vK5MqiOhNj

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 2, 2023

Not coincidentally, the crypto industry – spurned by the Democratic Party, brimming with cash and eager for friends in Washington – has now found its way to Trump. “Thanks largely to the actions of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Biden administration has stumbled into becoming anti-crypto,” says Justin Slaughter, policy director at the crypto-focused investment firm Paradigm. “Given that about 20% of Democrats own crypto, per polling, and its ownership skews young and non-White, this was politically unwise.” Trump has moved to fill the void, declaring in a May speech that he would “stop Joe Biden’s crusade to crush crypto.” The following month he reaped the benefits, raising money from Bitcoin miners at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser. Trump’s campaign then announced it would “build a crypto army,” and it now accepts crypto contributions.

More in the full Bloomberg interview here.

Authored by Laurence Vance via The Future Of Freedom Foundation,

In October of 2017, a gunman in a hotel room on the Las Vegas Strip fired multiple guns from his hotel window on a crowd of 22,000 gathered for an outdoor country music festival. After shooting over 1,000 rounds in about 10 minutes, 60 people lay dead, and more than 860 people were injured before the gunman took his own life. The incident was the deadliest mass shooting committed by an individual in the United States.

Naturally, even while the dead bodies were still warm, gun-control advocates began clamoring for more and stricter gun-control laws—especially when it was discovered that the shooter had used a bump stock.

Slide Fire Solutions SSAK-47-XRS-RH Bump Fire Stock mounted on a GP WASR-10/36 AK-47. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

A bump stock is a device that when attached to a semiautomatic rifle allows it to more rapidly fire bullets by harnessing the rifle’s recoil, but it does not turn a semiautomatic weapon into an automatic one. Between 2010 and 2018, Americans spent more than $100 million purchasing an estimated 520,000 bump stocks.

Until the Las Vegas shooting, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) classified bump stocks as a “firearm part” not subject to federal regulation. Only two states had banned bump stocks prior to the shooting, but since then, about 15 more states and the District of Columbia have banned them.

But it’s not just Democrats and progressives who were advocating more gun-control laws after the Las Vegas shooting. After the shooting at Parkland High School the following year, and at the instigation of then-President Donald Trump, the ATF announced that it would reclassify bump stocks as machine guns subject to the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968. Tweeted Trump: “As I promised, today the Department of Justice will issue the rule banning BUMP STOCKS with a mandated comment period. We will BAN all devices that turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns.”  The final rule issued by the ATF to ban bump stocks was published in the Federal Register on December 26, 2018. It banned new sales and required current owners to destroy or surrender their bump stocks to the government.

The ban, however, was just overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Garland v. Cargill.

Michael Cargill, a Texas firearms store owner, sued the ATF in 2019 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. He maintained that the ATF lacked authority to issue the final rule because its interpretation of what is a machine gun conflicted with the statutory definition. The suit was dismissed in 2020, and in 2021, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the ban. That opinion, however, was vacated in 2022, and the case was reheard en banc, then reversed in 2023. Upon appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the 2018 final rule was vacated in a 6–3 decision.

Wrote Justice Clarence Thomas in his majority opinion:

A bump stock does not convert a semiautomatic rifle into a machinegun any more than a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger does. Even with a bump stock, a semiautomatic rifle will fire only one shot for every “function of the trigger.” So, a bump stock cannot qualify as a machinegun.

We conclude that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a “machinegun” because it does not fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger.”

A bump stock is not a “machinegun” for another reason: Even if a semiautomatic rifle with a bump stock could fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger,” it would not do so “automatically.”

Predictably, Justice Thomas was joined by conservative justices John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch. And just as predictably, liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. “Today’s decision to reject that ordinary understanding will have deadly consequences,” said Justice Sotomayor.

The Supreme Court certainly made the right decision. As Justice Thomas also wrote in his opinion:

For many years, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) took the position that semiautomatic rifles equipped with bump stocks were not machineguns under the statute. On more than 10 separate occasions over several administrations, ATF consistently concluded that rifles equipped with bump stocks cannot “automatically” fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger.”

And as Justice Alito wrote in his concurring opinion:

The horrible shooting spree in Las Vegas in 2017 did not change the statutory text or its meaning. That event demonstrated that a semiautomatic rifle with a bump stock can have the same lethal effect as a machinegun, and it thus strengthened the case for amending §5845(b). But an event that highlights the need to amend a law does not itself change the law’s meaning.

The Supreme Court’s decision struck a blow to the bureaucratic administrative state that makes its own laws independent of Congress, although Congress rarely does anything about it.

Democrats in Congress are already trying to pass legislation to institute a federal ban on bump stocks. Republicans in Congress, many of whom supported a bump stock ban when Trump was president, are now opposing legislation to reinstate the ban. As usual, Republicans are wetting a finger and holding it up to see which way the political winds are blowing.

The issue before us, then, is whether bump stocks should be illegal.

There is no question that Congress could pass legislation to ban bump stocks, just like Congress has passed legislation to ban all sorts of things and all manner of activities. Although such a ban would clearly be unconstitutional, in reality, the Constitution has nothing to do with it. Congress has been passing unconstitutional legislation for over a hundred years; otherwise we wouldn’t have Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, federal job training programs, the war on drugs, and a thousand other federal programs and agencies.

There is also no question that the states could institute a bump stock ban, as at least 15 of them have already done. This is because, as James Madison explained in The Federalist, No. 45, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite.” Of course, it’s conceivable that such state bans might not survive a challenge under the Fourteenth Amendment.

So, should bump stocks be illegal?

Of course not.

If the guns that bump stocks are attached to are not illegal, even though they can be used to kill large numbers of people in a short time, with or without the help of a bump stock, then neither should bump stocks be illegal.

But more importantly, bump stocks shouldn’t be illegal for the same reason that no inanimate objects should be illegal.  An object—whether it be a gun, a knife, a hammer, a saw, a needle, or a pen—can be used for good or ill. Should pillows be banned because they can be used to smother someone?

The right to own a bump stock is essential to a free society. It is what you do with the bump stock that is the issue. If someone uses it to help him shoot more people, then the fault lies with him, not the bump stock.

The outrage of some family members who lost loved ones in the Las Vegas shooting over the Supreme Court’s decision is misplaced. The gunman who shot himself after killing all those people at the music festival is the culprit — not the gun, not the gun dealer that sold the gun, not the gun manufacturer, not the ammunition, not the ammunition manufacturer, not the store that sold the ammunition, and not the bump stock.

Former sniper and defense contractor Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) triggered a CNN host on Tuesday after suggesting that “intentional” failures may have resulted in the assassination attempt on Donald Trump on Saturday.

“The amount of negligence, the amount of mistakes that was made here, I have a very difficult time not leaning myself towards this was intentional, as opposed to fecklessness,” Mills told anchor Kate Bolduan.

“If I have a building 160 yards perfectly adjacent to the stage, that’s an obvious threat,” he continued. “Especially with an elevated position that has overwatch? That’s a sniper’s paradise.“

Mills, an Iraq war veteran and former DynCorp security specialist, co-founded private security company Pacem Defense, and says he’s overseen security for thousands of events.

After a stunned Boulduan pressed Mills, he replied: “I sit here and scratch my head. You don’t want to be the conspiracist. That’s the issue. You walk this fine balance, but you look at it and think ‘How could this have gone so wrong?’.”

TRUMP SHOOTING “COULD HAVE BEEN” SET UP * pic.twitter.com/IXXMefw0sh

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) July 16, 2024

Meanwhile, journalist Laura Loomer  spoke with Mills outside the Republican National Convention, where he told her that he plans to create a ‘J13 committee’ that’s ‘bigger than the J6 committee,’ and that he will push to be in charge of it.

WATCH: Today, at the RNC Convention, I spoke with Florida Congressman Cory Mills @CoryMillsFL about the attempted assassination of President Trump and what he plans to do to get answers about this massive security blunder that many are calling an inside job.

He told me he plans… pic.twitter.com/9Ud4qtTK8X

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) July 16, 2024

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Drivers in California are paying the highest prices in the nation for gas this summer by nearly 6 cents after a higher gas tax went into effect earlier this month.

The extra 2 cents per gallon added July 1 was announced earlier this year by the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration. The department is required to adjust the gas and diesel fuel tax rates on July 1 each year, based on inflation.

For diesel, the state’s tax rose from 44.1 cents a gallon to 45.4 cents.

In all, the state charges about 60 cents a gallon now, which bumps up the already high cost state consumers pay at the pump during summer months, when gas stations are required to sell a special eco-friendly summer blend.

The additional bump puts California at the top of the list for the highest gas price in the United States with an average price of $4.75 a gallon July 15. The national average was $1.25 less at $3.52 a gallon, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA).

The state with the second most-expensive price for gas was Hawaii at $4.69 Monday, followed by Washington state at $4.27 and Oregon and Nevada both at $4 a gallon, AAA reported.

California and Hawaii are often the top two states for gas prices, according to AAA affiliate Auto Club of Southern California Spokeswoman Anlleyn Venegas.

“It’s usually between us and Hawaii,” Ms. Venegas told The Epoch Times. “We have higher taxes and just a general higher cost of living in California.”

The Golden State also has the most drivers and must import fuel from out of state or overseas, she added.

California’s fuel prices are historically elevated during the summer, when the state requires a special blend that adds about 20 cents to 25 cents per gallon.

The state also adds a federal excise tax, 27 cents a gallon for the state’s cap-and-trade program, a low-carbon fuel tax of 11 cents per gallon, about 2 cents for underground gas storage fees, and another 3.7 percent in state and local taxes.

Despite the higher tax, California’s gas prices were 16 cents lower a gallon Monday compared to the same day last year and 4 cents down from a week ago, AAA reported.

Although the official numbers are not yet in, the drop in gas prices over last year was good news for drivers, Ms. Venegas said.

“It’s already good news that we’re paying less than a year ago,” she said. “It’s a good thing.”

Authored by Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov via Headline USA,

The widow of the firefighter who was shot and killed during the assassination attempt against Donald Trump recently said that she rejected a phone call from Joe Biden because her conservative, Trump-supporting husband would not appreciate her talking to Biden.

Helen Comperatore told the New York Post that Biden tried to call her after her husband, Corey Comperatore, died at the Trump rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13, 2024.

“I didn’t talk to Biden. I didn’t want to talk to him. My husband was a devout Republican, and he would not have wanted me to talk to him,” she told the news source on July 15, 2024.

Her husband was killed, and two people were seriously injured when Thomas Matthew Crooks tried to assassinate Trump while he was speaking at the rally.

Helen then went on to say that she didn’t blame Biden for the death of her husband, even though he and the entire establishment have been spreading the hateful anti-Trump rhetoric for almost over the decade, which resulted in the shooting.

“I don’t have any ill will towards Joe Biden. I’m not one of those people [who] gets involved in politics. I support Trump. That’s who I’m voting for, but I don’t have ill will towards Biden. He didn’t do anything bad to my husband. A 20-year-old despicable kid did,” she said.

Her husband was praised as a hero after his daughter said that he died trying to protect her and the rest of his family at the rally.

“He shielded my body from the bullet that came at us. He loved his family. He truly loved us enough to take a real bullet for us,” Allyson Comperatore, the victim’s daughter, said.

People on social media agreed with Helen’s decision.

“Understandable… Biden said it was time to put ‘Trump in the bullseye…’ [Then] her husband was murdered while someone tried to assassinate President Trump,” @USBornNRaised wrote.

Understandable. Being Biden said it was time to put “Trump in the bullseye” then her husband was murdered while someone tried to assassinate President Trump.

— Tired of being politically correct (@USBornNRaised) July 15, 2024

 

Authored by Steve Cortes via RealClearPolitics,

Undeterred by even the sting of a would-be assassin’s bullet, Donald Trump charged strongly onward into Wisconsin for the Republican National Convention. This demonstration of determination and life force provides a stark contrast to the dithering and often incoherent meanderings of his opponent, Joe Biden.

Trump further accentuated that show of vitality by selecting a running mate who is sure to help him win, serve as an invaluable second-in-command for the next four years, and then carry the banner of America first into the future after Trump completes his second term.

As someone who has spent many hours with J.D. Vance and campaigned for him vigorously in his successful underdog Senate win, I can provide insight into the five best reasons that Vance was the pitch-perfect pick:

1. His Backstory: Like Trump, Vance arrives in politics as an outsider. J.D. gained national recognition when he captured hearts and minds with his bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, and the Academy Award-winning movie adaptation. With searing eloquence, he describes the challenges facing working-class America, especially heartland communities decimated by economic decline and cultural decay.

Vance shares his rare perspective as someone who rose from a troubled family and poor communities to an Ivy League law degree and professional success. For J.D., a devoted grandmother and the U.S. Marine Corps formed his path toward upward mobility – the keys to his Horatio Alger life story that will resonate with voters, especially blue-collar citizens in battleground states.

2. America First Foreign Policy: As a veteran who was deployed with the Marines to a war zone, Vance speaks with personal authority and authenticity when he counters the schemes of the interventionist Washington foreign policy establishment. In fact, Vance has emerged as one of the most persuasive voices for a true Trumpian international approach of realism and restraint. Regarding trade policy with China or military assistance to Ukraine, Vance represents well the growing populism of Republican and independent voters who insist that we secure America’s own prosperity and our own border before prioritizing foreigners and faraway regional battles.

These issues matter materially to voters. In fact, Trump’s 2016 victory was decisively propelled by key voter shifts in the areas of battleground states with the highest concentrations of injured veterans. Those patriots rallied to Trump’s peace agenda, and they will again.

3. Media and Debate Skills: Vance won his Senate seat as an outsider political novice in a hotly contested primary against far better-financed opponents with significant political experience. This grueling come-from-behind win sharpened his media abilities enormously, and that trend has only accelerated since he joined the Senate. Unlike many Republican elected officials, Vance willingly and enthusiastically welcomes tough, confrontational interviews on hostile platforms, and handles those interrogations with aplomb.

In addition, anyone rooting for Donald Trump to serve a second term should relish the prospect of a Vance vs. Kamala Harris debate, which might prove almost as much of a mismatch as Trump’s drubbing of mumbling Biden. Vance commands mastery of policy details, yet delivers that knowledge with clarity and likeability. As for the current vice president? Well, let’s just say she will not enjoy trying to match Vance’s intellect or authenticity. 

4. The Correct Political Detractors: Vance acts as a magnet for particularly heated vitriol from the spokesmen and platforms of the American ruling class. Why? Because they see him as a former insider who turned on them. In other words, just like Donald Trump, Vance was once considered part of the “club” of elites, given his educational pedigree and experience in finance. Moreover, the huge success of his book and movie made him, briefly, the toast of the town in places like Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Like Trump, he could have continued on that path of lucrative deals and constant adulation from the supposed “important people.”

Instead, to pursue better lives for Americans in circumstances he knew as a child and young man, Vance chose the more difficult path as a populist political thinker and officeholder. He knowingly passed on rewards and accolades for higher patriotic goals, which speaks to his true character as a man and as a candidate.

5. Youth and Vigor: In a race where the cognitive state of the current president becomes a front-and-center theme of the campaign, the vitality and strength of Vance provide an important contrast. But even more importantly, beyond this election, Vance is perfectly positioned to be Trump’s effective partner and understudy for four years in the White House – and then to lead the America First movement well into the future after Trump’s term.

Intraparty contests can be tough and bruising, whether primary fights or competitions for running-mate selection. Clearly, there were other super impressive candidates in the mix for this key position as vice-presidential nominee. The GOP bench is populated and healthy!

But all Republicans should now march in lockstep behind this ticket and trust that our fearless nominee, Donald Trump, has made the best possible selection in J.D. Vance.

Unicorn companies are privately-owned, venture-backed startups worth at least $1 billion, and are therefore not publicly traded on normal stock markets.

In this chart created by Trendline, Visual Capitalist’s Ryan Bellafontaine looks at the world’s highest-valued unicorn companies, based on data from CB Insights as of June 1, 2024.

TikTok on Top

The Chinese media and entertainment company ByteDance, which owns the social media platform TikTok, is the world’s most valuable unicorn company at $225 billion.

However, as U.S. regulatory pressure grows for ByteDance to divest TikTok in the U.S., this leading valuation may be in doubt going forward.

Source: CB Insights.

Meanwhile, the largest unicorn company in the United States is SpaceX, led and founded by Elon Musk, valued at $150 billion. SpaceX is the only company on the list in the industrial category.

OpenAI, founded in 2015, is the world’s highest-valued artificial intelligence pure-play company. Best known for its groundbreaking program ChatGPT, it is worth $80 billion.

American Exceptionalism

The United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore, and China appear only once in the top 10, while the United States takes six places.

Australia’s only appearance is its graphic design company, Canva, which is worth $25 billion. Canva was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Sydney.

Revolut, a fintech company, is the United Kingdom’s highest-valued unicorn. Founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko, it is valued at $33 billion.

Finally, home to fast fashion company Shein, Singapore is the only Asian entry besides ByteDance in the top 10. That said, Shein is the world’s largest retail unicorn, valued at $66 billion.

Authored by Mark Ford via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

You have two adult children. Alissa and Tony. They are twins. At the time of their birth, you had set up a trust account designated to go to them when they turned 30.

They are 29 years old now—happily married, each with two children. As twins, they share many of the same traits. But there is a significant difference between them. Alissa is a neurosurgeon, making $400,000+ a year. And Tony is a violinist in a regional orchestra, making an eighth of that.

Alissa has already developed a net worth of $1 million and will likely become a decamillionaire before she turns 40. Tony has a net worth of zero and zero prospects of ever making a lot of money. He isn’t complaining. Nor is he jealous of his sister. He’s comfortable with the life he chose. And his wife and children are happy and thriving.

The trust account is worth $1 million. If you move forward as planned, Tony and Alissa will each be $500,000 richer on their next birthday. That will give Tony a net worth of $500,000 and Alissa a net worth of $1.5 million.

That’s a good outcome for both of them. But is it fair?

Because of the advantages Alissa already has, one could argue that the right thing to do would be to give Tony the entire $1 million. That would leave them each with the same net worth: $1 million. They would be even.

Is that what you would do?

You know the answer. You would not. You would give them each $500,000. Giving Tony a million and Alissa nothing would achieve an equal outcome, i.e. they would both end up with an equal net worth. But it would be insanely unfair.

It would be unfair to Alissa who worked her entire life to get into and through medical school. She would feel, justifiably, that she had earned the net worth she has. And it would send the wrong message to Tony: that he is entitled to have the same net worth as his sister, even though he chose a profession that is poorly paid.

This little mental exercise is meant to illustrate an ethical and social argument that is raging in American culture today. And though it is unnoticed by many, it’s beneath and/or behind some of the most important issues affecting every U.S. family, almost every U.S. company, our military, our educational institutions, and even the entertainment industry.

I’m talking about the distinction between equal and equitable.

Two Similar Words That Have Come to Mean Two Very Different Things

The first principle stated by the Declaration of Independence—as every citizen knows—is that “all men are created equal.” And when Thomas Jefferson penned those words in 1776, he was talking about equality in terms of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Of course, he didn’t mean all men exactly. He wasn’t suggesting that slaves had those equal rights. And his usage of “men” in this case did not include women with respect to such things as voting and property.

Some of these disparities were addressed in 1863 with the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation and in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment. And during the Civil Rights era, the term “equal rights” was used to include access by minorities to education, public facilities, and job opportunities.

This tells us something we should keep in mind: The original, constitutional definition of equality has been expanded to include additional rights that our Founding Fathers never even thought of.

Like equality, equitable derives from the Latin for “uniformity, impartiality, fairness.” And like equality, its meaning has evolved over the years.

Here are two simple dictionary definitions:

• Equality: The quality or state of being equal; having the same rights, social status, etc.
• Equity: Fairness or justice in the way people are treated

It’s easy to understand what equality means. But equitable is a slippery fish. Going back to the mental exercise above, giving Alissa and Tony $500,000 each would be, by definition, an equal action. But not necessarily an equitable one. And this difference, as I said, underpins arguments we are having today about just about every aspect of our lives.

Affirmative action is one example.

At one time, African Americans were not given equal opportunities for employment. The establishment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson helped, but the situation improved only marginally.

To remedy that, some businesses and educational institutions introduced their own affirmative action policies. The argument was that factors other than raw intelligence and hard work were holding minorities back. To make it fair, it was necessary for them to make adjustments to standards for minorities. The idea was something like, “Just give them a leg up. They will get the rest of the way themselves.”

I don’t have a problem with that thinking. I have promoted affirmative action efforts in my businesses and in my personal life. Giving help to people who want help seems like a sensible course of action in all areas of human interaction. (How well affirmative action works, however, is a subject for another essay.)

But in recent years, the definition of equitable has expanded beyond “equal” or even “more-than-equal” opportunities and treatment. Today, when you hear equitable used in political or social debates it means equal outcomes.

It’s not enough that everyone has an equal start. We must also guarantee an equal finish. And for those who espouse this line of thinking, that means equal outcomes in everything from childhood competitions, to test scores, to hiring and promotions, and wealth.

That is a problem.

The Only Measure of Achievement That Makes Sense

If our objective is equal outcomes, we must disregard all the factors that determine success in the real world. Such as aptitude. And ambition. And hard work. And persistence. And intellectual and emotional intelligence. And we must admit that affirmative action—and all laws, regulations, and protocols that provide disadvantaged communities with extra help and second chances—is not enough because it does not result in equal earnings.

Equal-outcome advocates are like parents who believe the fair thing is to give Tony the million and Alissa nothing, because they want their children to have equally happy and fulfilling lives. And for them, that means having an equal net worth.

They don’t understand that giving each of them the same amount is giving them the same opportunity. Tony is every bit as smart and savvy as Alissa. He can invest and grow that money as well as she can. But they also know that Alissa has a big head start with her existing net worth and a much better financial future because of her income.

They don’t want to face the reality that, unless something terrible happens to Alissa or Tony decides to give up music and get a job as, say, a plumber, Alissa and her family will continue to grow richer while Tony and his family may very well grow poorer.

They can’t change those facts. But what they can do is make their children equal for a moment in time. That, and that alone, they can do. So, they will do it.

What they refuse to see is all the damage it will do—to both children and to the relationship between them, a topic worth digging into, but that is for another day.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

The delayed day of reckoning has arrived for millions of Americans who purchased vehicles with absurdly high monthly payments they no longer can afford. New data shows auto repossessions surged in the first half of the year, driven by elevated inflation and high interest rates, resulting in increased consumer distress (read: here & here) as the labor market slows. 

Before we delve into the data from Cox Automotive, let’s revisit several of our reports from mid-2022, showing how we have been diligently tracking the perfect storm brewing for auto repossessions:

• July 2022: Are We Headed For An “Auto Loan Crisis” As Delinquencies Begin To Rise?

• December 2022: Perfect Storm Arrives: “Massive Wave” Of Car Repossessions And Loan Defaults To Trigger Auto Market Disaster, Cripple US Economy

• January 2023: “It’s The Perfect Storm”: More Americans Can’t Afford Their Car Payments Than During The Peak Of Financial Crisis

• November 2023: Americans Panic Search “Give Car Back” As Subprime Auto Loan Delinquency Erupts

• February 2024: “Garbage Deals”: Dealership Puts Customers In Cars With $3,000 Monthly Payments

Two years later, the deterioration has accelerated. Cox data shows repos jumped 23% in the first six months of this year compared with the same period in 2023. Repos started moving higher last year and have now exceeded pre-Covid levels, up 14% compared to the first half of 2019. 

“When you think about the costs for rent and shelter and insurance, all those things hit consumers and they have to choose what they will pay,” Jeremy Robb, senior director of economic and industry insights at Cox, told Bloomberg. 

Robb warned, “More people are getting behind on payments because everything is more expensive.”

Fitch Ratings data shows that the percentage of subprime auto borrowers who were at least 60 days late on their bill in June was around 5.62%, down from the record in February.

Data from Bankrate indicates that the average interest rate for a new 60-month auto loan is now 7.94%, while for a used car, it’s around 12%. The average monthly payments have risen to $739 for new vehicles and $549 for used cars. 

What’s clear is that consumers have used more debt than ever to fund near-record new car purchases. Fast-forward to today and the ominous new development is that high monthly payments in a period of elevated inflation and high interest rates have made these vehicles unaffordable for some. 

We believe this surge in nominal auto debt and elevated interest rates will crush the subprime borrowers as more fall behind on their car payments—a trend that should only accelerate.

Recently, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau officials have been concerned about troubling signs in the auto market, particularly among so-called subprime borrowers.

Now, it’s a race against time for the Federal Reserve to provide relief to consumers. Traders are anticipating the first rate cut in September, driven by cooling inflation data.