McDonald’s Meal Deal Extends Into December As Core Customers Under Pressure
McDonald’s is set to extend its $5 meal deal, originally a summer promotion launched in June, through December across all US markets. This move signals the fast-food giant’s acknowledgment that its core customers are struggling to afford Big Macs in a period of elevated inflation and high interest rates, thanks to failed Bidenomics. Recent data shows that broader low- and middle-income consumers are experiencing the financially devastating combination of insurmountable debts and depleted personal savings.
Value wars among fast-food chains are heating up and now extending: MCD rolled out the $5 meal deal in June, allowing customers to pick the following items: a McDouble or McChicken sandwich or 4-piece Chicken McNuggets, a small fry, and a small soft drink. Now, the promotion runs through December.
“Together with our franchisees, we’re committed to keeping our prices as affordable as possible, which is why we’re doubling down with even more ways to save,” Joe Erlinger, President of McDonald’s USA, wrote in a statement.
Erlinger said, “The extension of the $5 Meal Deal, and the other offerings we’re announcing for our fall line-up, are just a few of the ways we’re working hard to offer great meals at a fair price.”
The proliferation of meal deals by fast-food companies early this summer marks the moment low/mid-tier consumers hit a financial brick wall in the eyes of management teams. The weight of inflation and high interest rates has led to a consumer pullback in spending.
The latest consumer data shows that people have maxed out their credit cards and drained their personal savings to a record low. All of this is an ominous sign as storm clouds gather overhead.
Meanwhile, auto delinquencies have soared this summer as some consumers with those $1,000 monthly payments, likely drowning in negative equity, must choose between paying bills or putting food on the table.
Earlier this week, Goldman cited new high-frequency data that analyzed foot traffic at brick-and-mortar stores, which only showed ‘thrift trends outperforming.’
The lingering theme in the second half of this year is that low/mid-tier consumers are severely under pressure as the labor market cools and economic momentum trends in the wrong direction.
In six years, Tim Walz took our state budget from $44 billion to $70 billion, squandered a $19 billion surplus and turned it into a deficit even though Minnesotans overwhelmingly wanted tax cuts, raised taxes by $10 billion, increased state government spending by 40%, adopted a California emissions standard, created more government mandates and regulation including expensive leave policies, welcomed illegal immigrants and gave them drivers licenses, and cemented Minnesota as a sanctuary state, to name a few of his accomplishments.
The waste, fraud, and abuse in Walz’s administration shows just what his leadership could bring to Washington, D.C. He failed at government oversight of a massive Feeding Our Futures scandal, and another Walz administration program is under FBI investigation for potential fraud – the program saw 3,000% growth over the period of just a few years.
Minnesota started following in California’s footsteps as a liberal bastion in the Midwest. Our neighboring states reaped the benefits. In two years, Minnesota lost more than 50,000 residents – and not to warmer states like Florida, but the majority moved to Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas – all with much friendlier economic policies and lower cost of living. IRS data shows Minnesota lost $2.1 billion in income migration, which will likely only be accelerated when Walz-approved taxes on businesses and high-income earners go into effect.
Two years ago, Tim Walz ran for reelection as an unpopular sitting governor. COVID-19 and Walz’s handling of it was very fresh in our minds. At the same time, Minneapolis and surrounding cities were literally burning after George Floyd’s murder accelerated the Defund the Police movement, during which there was no leadership from our governor.
When Walz first ran for governor, he had positioned himself as a hokey member of Congress, a former educator with bad dad jokes. Now he had a record. Many thought he would be a one-term governor. What happened is very Minnesota Nice of Republicans.
I’ve worked in Republican politics for a long time, at the Republican National Committee and on campaigns in Minnesota and across the country. I have never seen such a futile effort to replace an unpopular sitting Democrat governor than when Tim Walz was reelected in 2022.
As governor, Walz kept his COVID emergency powers in place for 400 days, was an empty plaid shirt when Minneapolis burned after George Floyd’s death, oversaw historic crime rates as a radical anti-police movement was encouraged by the Democrat party, brought the fifth-highest taxes in the country, and had more people leaving the state than moving to it. And he was reelected.
There were two lessons from the 2022 election cycle that allowed Tim Walz to catapult to the vice presidential nomination.
First was the Minnesota Republican Party nearly single-handedly reelecting him with their broken endorsement process that they protect at all costs.
In 2022, there was a wide field of Republicans who were exceptionally qualified to take on Tim Walz. Instead of one of those candidates becoming the nominee, the convention endorsement process – that allows a couple thousand of the most right-wing Republican delegates to make the decision for the masses – nominated a candidate who couldn’t be elected statewide.
Because of a gentleman’s agreement that says candidates will “respect the endorsement” and drop out of the primary after the convention, there was no actual primary that allowed the rest of the Republican Party to have a say on their nominee. So unfortunately, Minnesota was left with a false choice – Tim Walz, who wasn’t as moderate as he pretended, or someone who was automatically labeled as extreme.
The second lesson was a passive-aggressive Minnesota press corps that gave Tim Walz a pass. They let him talk out of both sides of his mouth and pretend to be something he wasn’t. They allowed the Democrats to completely change the size and scope of government in Minnesota unchecked.
He shouldn’t get the same treatment nationally as he did in Minnesota. As many of us say, he will have his turn in the barrel where he’ll be getting questions from all sides. It will be the first time he will be tested.
Walz’s approval rating before COVID-19 was 65%, and by 2021 he was under 50%. Today, he’s at 48%. There are many reasons why, and they should be examined for all Americans to see.
Walz and Kamala Harris are doing their best to ride out their honeymoon. I don’t blame them. National Democrats will find they have one of the most untested and liberal tickets we have ever seen. Walz’s old congressional district is made up of the exact voters who oppose him today, and they vote a lot like Western Wisconsin.
Now we will see if Donald Trump can be disciplined enough to expose it.
Kirsten Kukowski is a former Republican National Committee press secretary and was communications director for former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s presidential campaign in 2016. She runs K2 and Company, a public affairs company based in Minnesota where she lives and works.
Elite Seal Team That Killed Bin Laden Trains For China Invasion Of Taiwan
The Financial Times curiously chose September 11 to run the following perhaps overly sensational headline, which pretty much checks every box of classic “global war on terror” fear-mongering, but which also pivots straight to the ‘next big war theater’ type rhetoric: US Navy Seal unit that killed Osama bin Laden trains for China invasion of Taiwan.
We are told in the article that “Seal Team 6, the clandestine US Navy commando unit that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, has been training for missions to help Taiwan if it is invaded by China, according to people familiar with the preparations.”
“The elite Navy special forces team, which is tasked with some of the military’s most sensitive and difficult missions, has been planning and training for a Taiwan conflict for more than a year at Dam Neck, its headquarters at Virginia Beach about 250km south-east of Washington,” the report continues.
But then there’s the following admission that this could just be more typical training for repelling an amphibious assault landing of PLA forces on Taiwan’s shores, which would not at all be primarily fought by a small Seal team – no matter how elite:
The Pentagon has in recent years sent more regular special forces to Taiwan for missions that include providing training for the Taiwanese military. The Seal Team 6 activities are far more sensitive because its covert missions are highly classified.
All breathless talk of super classified Rambo-style secret missions aside, the real question is what are the American people being prepped for with such a headline which impressively manages to include bin Laden, elite Seals, military preparations, Chinese aggression, and Taiwan… and all on the day that Americans remember the deadliest terror attack in the nation’s history?
The answer lies, unfortunately, in this: the US national security state already appears in search of its next war even as two are still raging. Washington participates in both the Ukraine and Gaza wars by proxy – but neither is going very well.
Recall too that for much of the past year CIA director William Burns has consistently said US intelligence views China as the far bigger long-term threat to the United States than Russia. “While Russia may pose the most immediate challenge, China is the bigger long-term threat,” Burns wrote in a Foreign Affairs op-ed all the way back in January.
With this in mind, the CIA’s budget has recently been doubled over the last three yearsas part of preparations to take on China. “The CIA has committed substantially more resources toward China-related intelligence collection, operations, and analysis around the world — more than doubling the percentage of our overall budget focused on China over just the last two years,” Burns revealed in his article. These efforts have involved the recruitment of more Mandarin speakers, and Burns further described that the agency is “stepping up efforts across the world to compete with China, from Latin America to Africa to the Indo-Pacific.”
Interestingly, Burns in his public comments just days ago alongside MI6 chief Sir Richard Moore also urged the West to keep its eye on the ball: China. CNN summarizes of this segment of the Saturday FT event in London:
The CIA chief does not, however, see Putin’s grip on power weakening. “He does one thing really well, and that’s repress people at home.”
Both men expressed a continued need to focus their attention on China, with Moore warning that President Xi Jinping is likely China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong and has an “ambitious agenda at home and also overseas.”
“He has a very tight control over his political system, and he has an ambitious agenda at home and also overseas. And that is why we devote so much effort into understanding China, because it’s such a hugely important actor on the international stage,” Moore said.
The MI6 chief added that China’s agenda is one that in most cases “contests our interests, contests often our values.”
It’s fascinating that given everything now happening in Ukraine and Kursk, and with the Western allies actively mulling giving Kiev the greenlight to use US/UK missiles to strike deep inside Russian territory, Burns appeared to brush off the Putin threat while warning that the threat Xi poses is on a global level.
Meanwhile, some China analysts have warned that a newly passed Congressional anti-China bill will result in a coming barrage of hawkish China/Taiwan-focused media stories…
Just remember the next time you hear “China is the biggest threat to America” the US government is investing billions in propaganda to portray China in the most negative light possible. It’s incredible sad and just ridiculous.
Are we already witnessing the first fruits of this newly authorized $1.6 billion to deliver anti-China propaganda overseas? Remember that in past historic instances of official US propaganda, it inevitably trickled back on the American populace. And there’s this not so small detail:
Crucially, HR 1157 doesn’t seem to contain any requirement that U.S. government financing to foreign media be made transparent to citizens of foreign countries (although there is a requirement to report grants to certain U.S. congressional committees). Thus, it’s possible that the program could in some cases be used to subsidize covert anti-Chinese messaging in a manner similar to the way Russia is accused of covertly funding anti-Ukrainian messaging by U.S. media influencers.
But getting back to the new FT piece in question, the author admits that a scenario wherein Seals train to join the fight against a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could be somewhat routine. “Seal Team 6” as a tier one force runs missions given to it by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), and this command center regularly has elite operatives “prepare and train for a wide range of contingencies.”
FT further points out: “As the threat from terror groups has receded, special operations forces have joined the rest of the US military and the intelligence community in intensifying their focus on China.” But then there’s this highly revealing line buried deep in the report, quoting an expert on JSOC:
“With the Pentagon’s reorientation over the past few years to focus on great power competition, it was inevitable that even the nation’s most elite counterterrorism units would seek out roles in that arena, for that path leads to relevance, missions and money,” Naylor added.
Ohio’s governor says he is sending law enforcement officials and millions of dollars in health care resources to Springfield, a city at the center of a national spotlight on Haitian illegal immigrants.
Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said he doesn’t oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which some 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020. However, he said, the federal government must do more to help impacted communities.
In a news conference on Sept. 10, DeWine said that “dramatic surges” in illegal immigrants “impact every citizen of the community,” adding that the small Ohio cities of Lima and Findlay also have had influxes.
“The federal government simply has to be part of the solution,” the governor said. “They have to step up. It’s their policies that have created these surges.”
He said the influx affects “moms who have to wait hours in a waiting room with a sick child, everyone who drives on the streets, and it affects children who go to school in more-crowded classrooms.”
On Sept. 11, the Ohio State Highway Patrol is being dispatched to help local police with traffic issues in Springfield.
City officials and social media posts have indicated that Haitian drivers are frequently involved in accidents and crashes, the governor said.
“The goal, of course, is to reduce dangerous driving regardless of who the driver is,” he said.
DeWine said he is also earmarking $2.5 million over two years for more primary health care through the county health department and private health care institutions.
Controversy over migrants in Springfield erupted earlier this month after some social media users said that Haitian immigrants were eating people’s pets, as well as ducks from a park.
People who spoke at town hall events, videos of which were uploaded online, also said that the immigrants frequently crash their vehicles, camp, and squat on locals’ property, cannot speak English, and haven’t tried to assimilate into the broader American culture.
The allegations were enhanced by Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), the Republican vice presidential nominee, who said on social media that “people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.” He added that immigrants are allegedly “causing chaos all over Springfield.”
In a newer post on Sept. 10, Vance wrote that his office received inquiries about the claims and that it’s possible “that all of these rumors turn out to be false.”
In a statement on Sept. 10, Springfield Strategic Engagement Manager Karen Graves told The Epoch Times, “There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”
Multiple requests to the Springfield Police Division for comment have not been returned.
Halt in Deportations
Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security announced Temporary Protected Status for Haitians who arrived in the United States before June 3, including those who entered illegally, protecting them from being deported back to Haiti.
DeWine’s family operates a charity in Haiti, which has built a network of schools. Earlier this year, a school founded by the charity was forced to close as armed gangs took over swaths of Haiti in the latest round of unrest to hit the impoverished country, the Ohio governor told reporters.
Long considered the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti has been beset by gang warfare since the country’s president, Jovenel Moise, was assassinated in July 2021. The U.S. Embassy currently lists the country as “Level 4—Do Not Travel,” because of crime, kidnappings, general unrest, and poor health care infrastructure.
“U.S. citizens in Haiti should depart Haiti as soon as possible by commercial or other privately available transportation options, in light of the current security situation and infrastructure challenges,” the embassy said in a bulletin last year, which hasn’t been updated.
Ukrainian Intelligence ‘Actively Recruiting’ Extremists In Syria’s Idlib: Lavrov
On Thursday Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov issued a bombshell of an accusation against Ukraine. He said that Ukrainian intelligence agents are “actively recruiting Islamist militants” in northwest Syria, the Sahara, as well as in the Sahel regions of Africa “to carry out terrorist operations.“
“Now there is information that Ukrainian envoys, those of Ukrainian intelligence, are in the Idlib de-escalation zone on the territory of Syria, where they are recruiting militants of Jabhat al-Nusra, now called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS),” the foreign minister said.
Lavrov alleged that the al-Qaeda linked militants are being recruited for “new hideous operations planned.” The fresh comments came during a conference involving the heads of Russian diplomatic missions abroad, held in Moscow.
“They are already looking further south, to the Sahara–Sahel zone of the African continent, where they are also carrying out terrorist attacks on government troops of numerous countries together with recruited extremists,” Lavrov alleged of Ukrainian intelligence.
In the remarks the top Russian diplomat highlighted the Moscow Crocus City Hall terror attack which killed at least 145 people on March 22 of this year. At the time Russian authorities alleged that the four Islamic militant attackers had links to Ukraine and that some of their associates involved in the plotting tried to escape across the border. The attack was later claimed by ISIS.
“The investigation is still underway, but it has already revealed evidence that the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry was involved in the preparation of the terrorist attack. In particular, the escape routes of the killers across the Russian–Ukrainian border were planned in detail,” Lavrov continued.
So it seems that Lavrov is accusing Ukraine of plotting more sabotage and terror attacks in side Russia by recruiting and paying Syrian and North African Islamist mercenaries.
The specific accusation regarding Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is interesting, given that the Syrian AQ group has long held Idlib province in northwest Syria. It has for years been fighting the Syrian and Russian militaries, and in 2015 Islamic fighters had first seized Idlib with the support of a NATO operations room in southern Turkey.
The only additional significant source claiming that Ukraine is tapping Syrian mercenaries is Turkish newspaper Aydinlik. The newspaper reported this week that Ukrainian government officials recently traveled to Idlib and met with members of Syria’s HTS to discuss a “drones-for-fighters” deal. “A delegation from Ukraine went to Idlib in recent months and met with the leaders of the terrorist organization,” the newspaper claimed of a meeting reportedly held in June.
However, there’s been no specific proof. But it would perhaps be an interesting way for Ukraine to solve its manpower problems. Syrian anti-Assad militants have also been known to travel to north Africa in support of Turkish defense firms. Turkey has long overseen what’s essentially a ‘jihadist highway’ in and out of Syria, or at other times “looked the other way”. It all started in and after 2011, amid US-Gulf efforts to oust Bashar al-Assad.
The University of Michigan’s Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) has granted almost $500,000 to research subjects tied to “anti-racism.”
The announcement was made by the OVPR and published by The University Record on Wednesday. The $500,000 was distributed to eight different research teams.
One of the “anti-racism research projects” is titled “Ubuntu-AI: Empowering Design Collaborations Across the Black Atlantic with Artificial Intelligence,” which will examine how “AI might reverse its potentially debilitating impact on Black artisans.”
Another group will study “Racial Capitalism and Anti-Racism in Kenyan Conservation,” a project that seeks to “identify how and why racialized conservation injustice occurs and how it can be prevented in the future.”
Another project is “Ways of Knowing and Storytelling as Diversity Training Mechanisms,” which “will examine the effectiveness of ‘ways of knowing’ and storytelling interventions on diversity training activities.”
The OVPR began its Research Catalyst and Innovation Program in 2021, which fosters research that looks into “complex societal racial inequalities to inform systemic action that achieves equity and justice.”
In the three years since, OVPR has granted almost $2 million in “anti-racism grants” to support research into “anti-racism.”
“The work these teams are pursuing is key in understanding how to dismantle the effects of systemic inequalities across multiple communities,” said Trachette Jackson, a top Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) official at the school.
Other schools have also been using research grants dedicated to promoting DEI and “anti-racism.”
This August, the National Science Foundation gave $4.5 million to Louisiana State University to found a “Center for Equity in Faculty Advancement” focused on working “to understand mechanisms that drive bias, along with policy and training interventions to mitigate it.”
Campus Reform has contacted the University of Michigan for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
“Unwelcome News” For Consumers: Ag Juggernaut Brazil’s Beef Supplies To Slide Amid Cattle Crunch In US
The combination of extremely tight beef supplies in the US, with the national cattle herd size sliding to the lowest levels since 1951 and new estimates of declining beef production in agricultural juggernaut Brazil, points to elevated burger prices for the foreseeable future, yet more bad news for cash-strapped consumers struggling with rampant food inflation.
Bloomberg cited consulting firm Datagro analyst Joao Otavio Figueiredo’s presentation at a conference in Sao Paulo this week, which noted Brazil’s cattle availability is expected to decline as early as next year. This essentially means the cost of producing beef will rise, straining global supplies of red meat at a time when the South American country has ramped up exports of beef to the US.
Figueiredo expects Brazil’s animal slaughter rates to fall 4.6% next year and 7.5% in 2026. This means that years of expanding beef production capacity in South America are ending abruptly. This is happening at a time when US companies are turning to Brazil for beef supplies to counter extremely tight domestic supplies, the lowest since 1951.
“The reduction in the Brazilian cattle herd comes when beef production is already constrained by a severe shortage of slaughter-weight animals in the US, which has eroded profits for processors such as Tyson Foods Inc. and Cargill Inc. That is unwelcome news for JBS SA, Marfrig Global Foods SA and Minerva SA, which rely on Brazilian cattle for a sizable share of their beef output,” Bloomberg noted.
Notice how US meat imports from Brazil have ramped up in the last several years.
Data from Statista shows that in 2022 , the imports of beef from Canada and Mexico to the US were 51%, while Brazil was in the number three spot with 14%.
No one is coming to the rescue to save the rapidly deteriorating US beef cattle herd.
Retail ground beef prices at the supermarket continue marching higher.
According to VP Harris, the solution to rising beef and food prices is communist price controls…
We don’t expect a meaningful rebound in the nation’s beef cattle supply until at least 2026. It will take years.
Maybe the Fed can print more beef? Oh wait, no, but you know who can: Bill Gates.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas criticized Texas’s attempts to stop illegal immigration while praising Vice President Kamala Harris’s role in addressing the “root causes” of the border crisis.
Mayorkas spoke Sept. 6 at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin.
The annual festival hosts a slate of political speakers, newsmakers, and journalists who discuss current events.
“This is the first time that in my 20 to 22 years of government service that I have seen a state act in direct contravention of national interests,” Mayorkas said.
Some 10 million illegal immigrants have entered the United States since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021. In March 2021, he put Harris in charge of dealing with illegal immigration. Harris, now the Democratic Party nominee for president, faces criticism for the border crisis as the 2024 election draws near.
Texas has spent $11 billion on Operation Lone Star, deploying thousands of Texas National Guard soldiers and Texas Department of Public Safety troopers, transporting illegal immigrants to self-declared sanctuary cities, installing strategic barriers, and building the state’s border wall, according to Andrew Mahaleris, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s press secretary.
Texas’s Operation Lone Star was introduced in March 2021 to address “dangerous gaps” in border security created by Biden and Harris, Mahaleris said in an email to The Epoch Times.
Those efforts have decreased illegal border crossings by 85 percent, he said.
“Until President Biden and Border Czar Harris step up and do their jobs to secure the border, Texas will continue utilizing every tool and strategy to respond,” Mahaleris said.
Mayorkas called Abbott’s efforts to bus illegal immigrants to other states and cities without notice to or coordination with receiving cities “incomprehensible” and not good governance.
“Is it purely to wreak havoc and disorder in the receiving communities to make a political point?” Mayorkas said.
He also criticized Senate Bill 4, which Abbott signed into law and was meant to go into effect on March 5, but it instead remains in limbo after the Biden administration sued. Mayorkas said immigration is the federal government’s responsibility.
SB 4 makes crossing into Texas unlawfully from a foreign nation a state felony and empowers state and local law enforcement to make arrests and carry out deportations. The law has some similarities to a 2010 Arizona law that ended up being mostly struck down in a 5–4 Supreme Court decision in 2012. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has said the Supreme Court got the Arizona decision wrong and that it needs to be relitigated.
In Austin, Mayorkas defended Harris, saying she had done her job in addressing the “root causes” of mass migration to the United States.
“The vice president has done an extraordinary job in a public-private partnership driving resources to the countries in the Northern Triangle: El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala specifically,” he said.
The public–private partnerships invest in those countries to build industries and generate jobs as a way of addressing why migrants leave their countries, he said.
Root causes include violence, poverty, extreme weather events, and corruption, he said.
Mayorkas said the Senate’s failed bipartisan border bill would have helped control immigration, but “forces stepped in to prevent the solution.”
Republicans blocked the bill twice, and former President Donald Trump said it would do more harm than good, writing on Truth Social that it gives border shutdown authority only after 5,000 illegal immigrant encounters per day.
Trump maintains that the president has the authority to close the border like he did without additional legislation.
Tensions between congressional Republicans and Mayorkas caused the House of Representatives to impeach him on Feb. 13. However, the effort died in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Mayorkas did not address the potential for a new wave of illegal immigrants following the resumption of a controversial parole program and a coordinated effort with Mexico to assist migrants to the U.S. border.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, announced on Aug. 23 that its updated CBP One app was expanded to operate south of Mexico City for migrants seeking appointments at U.S. ports of entry.
The app allows would-be illegal immigrants to be processed for asylum claims by CBP agents at ports of entry in border states, with most being released into the country.
Mexico recently announced that it will offer migrants in the southern parts of its country free bus rides and meals to the U.S. southern border if they have a confirmed appointment through the app.
A few weeks ago, Mexico was rounding up migrants and busing them back to the southern part of Mexico, where the app wasn’t in operation.
The result was a decrease in illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.–Mexico border between ports of entry.
Homeland Security has also resumed its parole program after it shut down over fraud concerns revealed by a government watchdog agency. The Federation for American Immigration Reform obtained the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services report, which showed instances in which the same Social Security numbers, addresses, and phone numbers were used hundreds of times.
Up to 30,000 foreign nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are allowed to fly directly into U.S. airports every month under the program.
The program was resumed with additional vetting of the sponsors, their financial records, and their criminal backgrounds, a Homeland Security spokesperson said on Aug. 29.
The program enables most to stay up to two years and receive work permits.
Parole applicants need a sponsor and to purchase their airplane tickets to qualify for the program.
Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) has called the mass parole an “unlawful” program that was introduced to obscure the problem of an overrun border.
Credit Card Processor Data Breach Exposes Personal Information Of 1.7 Million Customers
Credit card processing service Slim CD, popular in the U.S. and Canada, has revealed a massive data breach that exposed the personal information of nearly 1.7 million customers. The hack, which went undetected for almost a year, has raised serious concerns about data security in the financial sector.
The Florida-based company, which offers payment gateway services and develops credit card-processing software, discovered suspicious activity in its computer environment on June 15, 2024, according to a customer notification letter dated September 6. The company later determined that unauthorized access to its systems occurred between August 17, 2023, and June 15, 2024.
Slim CD warned that this breach may have allowed hackers to view or obtain sensitive customer data, including names, addresses, credit card numbers, and card expiration dates. A filing with the Maine Attorney General’s office estimates that over 1.69 million customers were affected. Despite the scale of the breach, Slim CD has not offered any identity theft protection services to those impacted.
In its notification to customers, Slim CD urged vigilance against potential identity theft and fraud. The company recommended that affected individuals regularly review their account statements, monitor credit reports for suspicious activity, and consider placing a “fraud alert” or “credit freeze” on their credit files to protect against unauthorized transactions.
The Slim CD incident is just the latest in a series of cyber attacks targeting financial institutions. In June, Evolve Bank & Trust, based in Tennessee, suffered a data breach that compromised sensitive information, including customers’ Social Security numbers and bank account details. Earlier in February, Prudential Financial disclosed a breach impacting over 2.55 million customers.
Cybersecurity experts warn that such attacks are becoming increasingly common in the finance industry. A July report by SOCRadar, a computer security firm, found that data breaches and leaks account for 62.52% of cyber threats targeting financial institutions, followed by credit card fraud and unauthorized access sales. The report identified the United States as one of the most frequently targeted countries for these cyber attacks.
A second-quarter analysis by Check Point Research found a 30% increase in global cyber attacks, with the finance and banking sector ranking as the fourth most targeted industry, trailing only retail/wholesale, healthcare, and manufacturing.
As cyber threats escalate, government agencies are taking note. The U.S. Department of Treasury released a report in March highlighting the “capability gap” in managing AI-specific cybersecurity threats between large and small financial institutions. While larger institutions are building their own AI systems to counter threats, smaller firms like Slim CD may lack the resources to do so, leaving them vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated attacks.
With the financial sector under siege, Slim CD’s data breach serves as a stark reminder of the need for robust cybersecurity measures to protect customer information in an age of growing digital threats.
Caban said he made the decision to resign after the “news around recent developments” had “created a distraction for our department,” according to an email to the police department obtained by The Associated Press.
“I am unwilling to let my attention be on anything other than our important work, or the safety of the men and women of the NYPD,” he added.
The Epoch Times has contacted the New York Police Department for more details.
New York Mayor Eric Adams said Thursday that he accepted Caban’s resignation. “I respect his decision and I wish him well,” he said in a streamed appearance from the Mayor’s mansion.
Caban had been on the job for a little over a year, having been appointed by Mayor Eric Adams in July 2023.
The resignation comes as part of a federal probe of high-ranking members of the Adams administration.
On Sept. 4, federal law enforcement officials seized Caban’s phone and those of his brother James, Adams’s first deputy mayor, schools chancellor, and others close to the mayor.
Federal agents also raided the homes of several administration officials. Federal authorities have not disclosed the subject of the investigation or whether there are multiple probes.
Adams said that Tom Donlon, a law enforcement veteran with experience in antiterrorism efforts, has been appointed interim commissioner.
Donlon served as the city’s director of the Office of Homeland Security, led the FBI’s national threat center, and played a role in investigating the 1993 World Trade Center attack. He started his own security firm in 2020.
In the days leading up to the resignation, members of the New York City Council, which has feuded repeatedly with the mayor over issues such as solitary confinement in the city’s jails, the accommodation of migrants from out of state, and the recording of data on persons whom the police arrest, pushed for Caban to step down.
In November 2023, agents took the mayor’s phone and iPad in order to examine them for evidence relating to his fundraising activities during his 2021 mayoral run.
As police commissioner, Caban has played a central role in Adams’s efforts to fight crime and promote public safety. But under Caban’s leadership, the NYPD’s recent record on this front has been mixed.
According to NYPD statistics for the week ending Sept. 8, 251 murders have occurred in New York City so far in 2024, only a relatively slight decline from the 288 recorded for the same period in 2023.
In other categories of serious crime, such as rapes and robberies, the rates are higher than the same period last year, the figures show.
A total of 1,119 rapes happened in the city in the first nine months of 2024, compared to 1,008 in the same period in 2023, while 11,536 robberies were recorded, up from 11,358 in the equivalent 2023 period.
In an email to The Epoch Times, Brendan McGuire, an attorney at the law firm WilmerHale which is representing Adams in the federal probe, said he had no comment.
