Border Security Cartoons

Hillary Clinton says US in middle of 'war on truth, facts and reason'

Hillary Clinton said Wednesday night that the U.S. is "witnessing an all-out attack on core values of democracy," in what appeared to be the latest in a series of criticisms of the Trump administration.
The former Democratic presidential candidate was giving closing remarks at the annual Vital Voices Global Leadership Awards in Washington, D.C. The awards honor women leaders in human rights, economic empowerment for women or political reform.
Though Clinton did not mention Trump or specifically reference his administration, she lamented, "we're seeing a retreat from the commitment to embrace women’s advancement as an objective of U.S. foreign policy."
HILLARY CLINTON CLAIMS 'FOX NEWS IS ALWAYS TRYING TO IMPEACH ME'
"I don’t think it's a coincidence that at the same time, we are witnessing an all-out attack on core values of democracy: free speech and the rule of law," Clinton went on. "A war on truth, facts and reason. So women’s voices have always been vital, but never more so than right now."
Clinton has not been shy about criticizing Trump, who defeated her in the 2016 presidential race. One night earlier, speaking at a women-only workspace in New York City, the former first lady and secretary of state said America was in "a very bad spot."
"I think it's very unfortunate to contemplate but more can happen that would put our rights at risk, our freedom at risk, our values, our fundamental views about what it means to be Americans," she said.
Clinton also took a shot at Fox News, accusing the network of "always trying to impeach me."

Judge Andrew Napolitano: What Is Robert Mueller looking for?

Robert Mueller is the special counsel appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in May 2017 to probe the nature and extent of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. The investigation began in October 2016 under President Barack Obama when the FBI took seriously the boast of Carter Page, one of candidate Donald Trump’s foreign policy advisers, that he had worked for the Kremlin.
The FBI also had transcripts of telephone conversations and copies of emails and text messages of Trump campaign personnel that had been supplied to it by British intelligence. Connecting the dots, the FBI persuaded a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to issue a search warrant for the surveillance of Page, an American.
Page never registered as a foreign agent, and working for the Kremlin and not registering as a foreign agent is a crime for which the FBI should have investigated Page. Such an investigation would have included surveillance, but not from the FISA court. Surveillance in a criminal case requires a search warrant from a U.S. District Court based upon the constitutional requirement of probable cause of crime -- meaning that it is more likely than not that the thing to be searched (internet and telephone communications) will produce evidence of criminal behavior.
But the FBI didn’t seek that. Instead, it sought a warrant to surveil Page’s communications based on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act standard, which is probable cause of communicating with a foreign power. This lower, easier-to-demonstrate and unconstitutional standard is the tool of choice these days for FBI agents because it requires less effort and is used in a court that grants 99.9 percent of search warrant applications.
The temptation to use the FISA court and its easy standard instead of a U.S. District Court and its privacy-recognizing constitutional standard to get a search warrant is often too much for the FBI to resist. This is a form of corruption because it presents a path for criminal investigators to invade the privacy of Americans that the Constitution protects.
Yet the FBI used whatever it learned from the surveillance of Page to get that surveillance extended. Even the Trump Department of Justice went to the FISA court to spy on Page. Lost in all this is the purpose of FISA -- to prevent government surveillance of Americans and limit it to agents of foreign powers.
When Jeff Sessions became attorney general, he recognized that he himself would most likely be a witness in the Mueller investigation because of his involvement in the Trump campaign, so he removed himself from all matters pertaining to Russia, and his deputy, Rosenstein, appointed Mueller to run the investigation.
What is Mueller looking for?
When the feds are examining a potential crime committed by a group, their treasure-trove of evidence can often be a member of the group who reveals the criminal behavior of his former colleagues. That’s why the feds often indict people for crimes that appear to be irrelevant to the ones they are investigating -- in this case, lying to the FBI and bank fraud allegedly committed before the 2016 election.
When such an indicted person can then be persuaded to turn on his former colleagues in return for a lesser charge or a lighter sentence, prosecutors can have a field day. This is a form of bribery -- you tell us on the witness stand what we want to hear and we’ll go easy on you -- that is permitted only to prosecutors; and the courts condone it. If defense counsel gave as much as a lollipop to a witness to shade his testimony, both would be indicted.
From the backgrounds of those whom Mueller’s grand juries have indicted and from the deals they have cut with him, it appears that Mueller is looking at three areas of potential criminal behavior. Mueller has already established as a base line the saturation of the 2016 presidential campaign by Russian intelligence agents. If his indictments of these Russians are accurate, they were here virtually and physically and they spent millions to help Trump. But the indicted Russians are not coming back to the U.S. for their trials.
Mueller is examining their potential American confederates for the crime of conspiracy -- or, as my colleagues in the media call it, collusion. This would be an agreement by campaign officials to accept something of value from a foreign person, entity or government, even if the thing of value -- for example, Hillary Clinton emails -- was never actually delivered. The crime is the agreement, and it is prosecutable after at least one of those who agreed takes a material step in furtherance of the agreement.
Mueller’s second area of examination is possible obstruction of justice by President Trump himself. Obstruction is the interference with a judicial proceeding for a corrupt purpose. Was FBI Director James Comey fired because Trump couldn’t work with him or because he was hot on the president’s trail and Trump wanted to impede that? If it was the former, it would have been licit. If it was the latter, it could have been criminal.
The third of Mueller’s areas is financial dealings by the pre-presidential Trump. These bear little surface relationship to Russian involvement in the campaign, yet evidence of wrongdoing must have come to Mueller from his FBI agents or his cooperating witnesses, and he is following the money as prosecutors do.
Where will all this go? The president cannot seem to find an experienced criminal defense lawyer. Mueller has 16 experienced federal prosecutors and a few dozen FBI agents passionately at work. And he also has witnesses he legally bribed and a few hundred thousand documents from the White House and from Trump’s financial affairs that the president has not personally reviewed.
And now Mueller wants to interview the president. Who will have the upper hand if that happens?
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel.

Many presidents have bashed business, but Trump's Amazon offensive is personal

Donald Trump isn't the first president to take on a business or industry he doesn't like.
As the New York Times reminds us, Barack Obama once went after Staples for not providing adequate health care for its workers and slammed Wall Street banks over bonuses.
Bill Clinton's administration pushed an antitrust suit to break up Microsoft.
Jack Kennedy assailed steel executives for raising prices by saying "my father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches."
And FDR railed against "malefactors of great wealth."
But Trump's attacks on Amazon are being treated very differently—and most of his predecessors didn’t name the offending CEOs.
At this point, of course, it's just words. The president hasn't actually proposed to change any policy that affects Amazon. But he's repeatedly complained about Amazon unfairly benefitting from low Postal Service rates, and that initially knocked $60 billion off the value of the company’s stock. (Many companies have continued to lose value as the markets slide with China retaliating for Trump's tariffs.)
What makes this different is that Trump's case against Amazon is so personal—and linked to, as he has told me and others, Jeff Bezos’ separate ownership of the Washington Post, a newspaper that the president is convinced has treated him unfairly. (The Post insists that Bezos has nothing to do with its news coverage.)
Amazon, for its part, has said nothing, has issued no statement challenging the president on the facts. It's a secretive company that rarely responds to journalists, and this in my view is a failure of corporate communications, even if it wants the story to die down.
The Times piece makes a larger argument about the president’s approach to corporate America: "Lately, Mr. Trump's antibusiness rants have become particularly menacing and caused the stocks of some companies to plunge."
The story notes that over the years he has attacked companies as varied as Verizon, Coke, Nordstrom, Sony and H&R Block, as well as media giants.
He has criticized the proposed merger between Time Warner (which includes CNN) and AT&T, which is under antitrust review by his administration.
The president has also gotten results. Even before taking office, he threatened to cancel Boeing's deal to build the next generation of Air Force One planes—though in the end he knocked down the price from $4 billion to $3.9 billion.
Clearly, having a career businessman as president brings both strengths and weaknesses. He's accustomed to using hardball negotiations, pointed threats and lawsuits to get his way.
But a president, unlike a real estate developer, can decimate a company's stock with a few words.
There's nothing wrong with Trump trying to get a better deal for the beleaguered Postal Service (though he names most of the board members that run the service). Yet that would affect every package shipper, not just Amazon—which, by the way, is incredibly popular with consumers even as the site (and many others) have hurt brick-and-mortar stores.
It's the perception that this is a personal feud—tied to the president's resentment of Bezos and the Post—that undercuts his case.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m.). He is the author "Media Madness: Donald Trump, The Press and the War Over the Truth." Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.

Most border-state governors back Trump's National Guard plan

Governors of several states have voiced support for President Donald Trump's decision Wednesday to deploy National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, paving the way for the White House to implement its latest anti-illegal immigration policy.
The Republican governors of Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico -- three states that border Mexico -- backed the president's move, which officials said could lead to troops on the ground as early as Wednesday night.
Arizona "welcomes the deployment of National Guard to the border," Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey tweeted.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Trump's action "reinforces Texas' longstanding commitment to secure our southern border."
In New Mexico, Gov. Susana Martinez said she appreciates the White House efforts to involve states in the policy-making.
READ TRUMP'S MEMO SENDING NATIONAL GUARD TO THE BORDER

"As Commander of Oregon’s Guard, I’m deeply troubled by Trump’s plan to militarize our border."

Even California Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, who has openly sparred with the White House over his state's pro-illegal immigration policies, signaled that his administration might cooperate.
“This request – as with others we’ve received from the Department of Homeland Security, including those for additional staffing in 2006 and 2010 – will be promptly reviewed to determine how best we can assist our federal partners,” California National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Tom Keegan said in a statement issued on behalf of Brown’s office. “We look forward to more detail, including funding, duration and end state."
The Trump administration has not released many specifics of its plan, but a lawmaker told the AP that Congress expects approximately 300 to 1,200 troops to be deployed at a cost of at least $60 million.
States farther from the border mostly avoided immediately responding to the issue. North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's office did not respond to a request for comment from the News & Observer in Raleigh.
Oregon's governor, also a Democrat, was more direct, promising to defy any request from the White House to send its troops.
STEVE KURTZ: CAN TRUMP LEGALLY SEND TROOPS TO THE BORDER?
"If @realDonaldTrump asks me to deploy Oregon Guard troops to the Mexico border, I’ll say no," Gov. Kate Brown tweeted. "As Commander of Oregon’s Guard, I’m deeply troubled by Trump’s plan to militarize our border."
The Trump administration has not requested any troops from Oregon, Brown noted. Under federal law, the president can override a state governor and effectively conscript National Guard troops into federal service.
But the White House, which has said the nation is at a "point of crisis" due to illegal immigration, has not sent any signals it will take that step, nor are there indications it will need Oregon's help.
WHITE HOUSE CALLS ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT INFLOW 'UNNACCEPTABLE'
While U.S. military forces are barred by law from carrying out domestic law enforcement actions, including some border security duties, they are generally permitted to assist federal agents in various ways.
The Mexican foreign ministry said late Wednesday that U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen promised that the troops "will not carry arms or carry out migration or customs control activities."
That was the general protocol for former President George W. Bush's deployment of National Guard troops to the border from 2006 to 2008, and former President Barack Obama's troop deployment, which began in 2010.

Voter Fraud Cartoons

Texas voter registration policy violates federal law, judge says

Texas' online driver's license registration system violates federal voting rights laws, a judge ruled in an order released Tuesday.  (AP)

Voter registration policies in Texas violate federal law, a U.S. District Court judge ruled in an order unveiled Tuesday, marking another voting-rights legal setback for the state's government.
Under the so-called "Motor Voter" provisions of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, voters who apply for or renew their driver's license must be provided an opportunity to register to vote as well.
But Texans who went online to update their driver's license information ran into roadblocks that in-person applicants did not, according to the Texas Civil Rights Project, which brought the suit against Texas in 2016.
For example, the plaintiffs alleged, users who clicked “I want to register to vote" while updating their driver's license information were directed to a form that they had to print and mail. They also received a notification stating that clicking "yes" did not complete the voter registration process.
WATCH: TUCKER DISCUSSES REPORTED WIDESPREAD VOTER FRAUD IN TEXAS
That allegedly confounded some plaintiffs and led to "widespread confusion," according to the lawsuit. The online process amounted to an illegal stumbling block, given that the in-person process was smoother, the plaintiffs charged.
The plaintiffs specifically alleged that the unequal treatment of in-person voters, as compared to online ones, violated both the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause and federal law.

"For too long, the state of Texas has ignored federal voting rights laws."

“Everybody – all of our plaintiffs and many other people we have spoken to – once they get their driver’s license, they assume that their voter registration information has been updated, too,” Texas Civil Rights Project President Mimi Marziani told NPR. “And then they show up at the polls thinking they are going to be able to cast a ballot and they are not able to."
TEXAS VOTER ID LAW RULED LEGAL -- FOR NOW
U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia said a written opinion explaining the reasoning behind his ruling will be released within 14 days.
Texas does not currently permit online voter registration, according to the Texas Tribune, and may be forced to as a result of the ruling.
“For too long, the state of Texas has ignored federal voting rights laws intended to ensure that all eligible voters have an opportunity to register to vote,” Beth Stevens, voting rights director at the Texas Civil Rights Project, told the Texas Tribune. “We look forward to seeing deep changes in [the Texas Department of Public Safety’s] voter registration practices in the coming months, affecting well over a million Texans every year.”
The ruling is the latest in a string of voting-rights cases involving Texas. The state has spent years fighting to preserve both its voter ID law -- which was among the strictest in the U.S. -- and voting maps that were both passed by GOP-controlled Legislature in 2011.

China announces additional tariffs on $50 billion of U.S. goods

China answered the White House’s tariffs announced on Tuesday with tariffs of its own on U.S. goods.

China will add tariffs covering 106 types of U.S. products. China matched the U.S. with 25% tariffs on products ranging from soybeans, and autos to chemical products.

The value of the tariffs are said to be $50 billion.

The finance ministry said that additional tariffs will be put on products such as whisky, cigars, tobacco as well as lubricants and plastic products.

China’s response is seen as retaliation for tariffs announced by the Trump administration late on Tuesday.

The U.S. is putting 25% tariffs on 1,300 industrial technology, transport and medical products, also representing $50 billion.

The latest move followed China applying duties on $3 billion worth of U.S. fruits, nuts, pork and wine, which were in response to the original U.S. tariffs on aluminum and steel announced by Trump last month.

Trump says the military will secure the southern border until wall can be built

President Trump on Tuesday said that the U.S. will secure the southern border with the military until a wall can be built, calling the move a “big step.”
Trump made the remarks during a meeting with Baltic leaders, where he said he had discussed the matter with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. A White House official revealed later Tuesday to Fox News that the plan considered by Trump would be a “substantial” mobilization of the National Guard.
“Until we can have a wall and proper security, we’re going to be guarding our border with the military,” he said. “That's a big step, we really haven’t done that before, or certainly not very much before.”
At a news conference later, he confirmed the plan, saying the border is unprotected by “our horrible, horrible and very unsafe laws.”
“We don't have laws, we have catch-and-release,” he said. “You catch and then you immediately release and people come back years later for a court case, except they virtually never come back.”
Trump did not offer specifics, but the move appears to be at least partly motivated by a caravan of over 1,000 Central American migrants heading toward the U.S. border. Buzzfeed, which first reported on the caravan, said that Mexican officials had not yet attempted to stop the flow.
In Tuesday's discussion, Trump and senior officials “also agreed on the need to pressure Congress to urgently pass legislation to close legal loopholes exploited by criminal trafficking, narco-terrorist and smuggling organizations,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said. She added that Mattis, Homeland Security Secretary Kirsten Nielsen, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford and Chief of Staff John Kelly were among the other officials present.
Reports of the caravan angered Trump, who has sent out a number of tweets threatening to end the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and to cut foreign aid to countries such as Honduras, from where many of the migrants originate.

“The big Caravan of People from Honduras, now coming across Mexico and heading to our “Weak Laws” Border, had better be stopped before it gets there,” he tweeted Tuesday. “Cash cow NAFTA is in play, as is foreign aid to Honduras and the countries that allow this to happen. Congress MUST ACT NOW!”
At the press conference he said that NAFTA was an “embarrasing” deal and that he had told Mexican officials on Monday: “I hope you're going to tell that caravan not to get up to the border.” He added that he thinks the caravan was being broken up as a result.
The Pentagon was scrambling to come up with a response to Trump's statement on the military guarding the border. But according to a memo obtained by Fox News and discussions with officials, one area where the Pentagon could contribute immediately is the Air Force’s Barry Goldwater live-fire range, which shares a 35-mile border with Mexico in southern Arizona. 
The Defense Department is already offering some support to the border, including U.S. Navy ships patrolling waters to seize drugs as well as missions involving over 100 personnel from U.S. military’s northern command -- including eight planes and a drone -- to help border patrol.
In 2010, President Obama authorized 1,200 National Guard troops to increase security at the border, although Republican lawmakers questioned their role and whether they would in fact be “boots on the ground."

Trump has struggled to secure funding for his central campaign promise of a wall, which the administration and border officials say will cost approximately $20-25 billion. In the omnibus bill signed by Trump last month, $1.6 billion was included for technology and some replacement of existing border fencing -- although it excluded the prototypes Trump recently viewed in California.

Trump briefly considered vetoing the legislation both over its lack of funding for the wall and also the failure to include a fix for the expiring Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that granted protection for illegal immigrants brought to the country as children. He has since floated the idea of getting the Pentagon to fund the wall.
Brandon Judd, President of the National Border Patrol Council, said on Fox News Radio’s “The Todd Starnes Show” that it gives Border Patrol “certainty of apprehension.”
“The criminal smugglers, this is a multibillion dollar industry. They smuggle humans, they smuggle drugs,” he said. “This criminal enterprise, if we arrest the majority of people that cross the border illegally, we put a dent into their criminal enterprise, and if you put a dent into their criminal enterprise, then you can possibly stop them.”

Mueller claims Trump is not criminal target in his investigation, report says

Special counsel Robert Mueller told President Trump's attorneys last month that he does not consider Trump to be a criminal target in his investigation of Russian actions during the 2016 campaign, The Washington Post reported Tuesday night.
The paper, citing "three people familiar with the discussions," reported that Mueller made the comments while negotiating with Trump's attorneys about a potential interview with the president. The Post also reported -- citing "two people with knowledge of the conversations" -- that Mueller reiterated his need to interview Trump to determine whether the president intended to halt the Russia investigation while in office.
According to the Post, Trump has "privately expressed relief" at Mueller's description of his legal status, but some advisers have warned that the special counsel may be baiting the president into letting his guard down for any interview.
Mueller also has said he needs to interview Trump in order to complete a report he will present to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing the investigation and who could decide to make Mueller's report public.
The report added that John Dowd resigned from Trump's legal team last month after the president ignored Dowd's advice to decline Mueller's request for an interview.
According to the Post, Trump's other attorneys -- Ty Cobb and Jay Sekulow -- have told the president that refusing to sit down with Mueller would create an awkward situation since the president has repeatedly described the Russian investigation as a "witch hunt."