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(FreedomWire.org) – After months of speculation, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis officially jumped into the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination during a Twitter Spaces session co-hosted by Elon Musk.

In a post-announcement interview on Fox News hosted by his former congressional colleague Trey Gowdy, DeSantis laid out his day-one agenda should he manage to win the presidency.

DeSantis says he would fire FBI Director Christopher Wray on his first day as president.

DeSantis went on to say, “The border, there’s a lot you can do, ripping out President Joe Biden’s anti-American energy policies. You probably could do most of the executive, you’ll probably need to do some of that legislative as well.”

Continuing, he said a priority is “re-constitutionalizing the administrative state.”

“We have a bureaucracy that’s totally out of control. You need to be willing to use Article 2 power to bring the administrative state to heel,” he added. “I will do that.”

“I think Congress also has a role in reigning in the abuses through both the power of the purse and through making sure that they are legislating through clear and defined laws that aren’t delegating huge swaths of power to unelected bureaucrats,” DeSantis said.

He also added: “One thing I think we can do legislatively is national school choice. We’ve done it in Florida, it’s made a huge difference for low-income families.”

DeSantis now faces a battle with the party’s current frontrunner — Donald Trump.

Trump responded to the news on Wednesday evening by trolling DeSantis on Truth Social with a series of posts, images of the recent polling, and even some opinions of social media users.

“I’d like to personally congratulate ‘Rob’ DeSanctimonious on finally announcing that he will be entering the race for President of the United States. Hopefully, he will get the full experience of being attacked by the Marxists, Communists, and Radical Left Lunatics of our Country, without which he will never know the kind of job he is doing. These Lowlifes & Misfits are far worse than the leaders of hostile foreign countries. They must be soundly defeated in order to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump posted.

“Ron DeSantis’ decision to announce his 2024 White House bid in a conversation with Elon Musk on Twitter on Wednesday will make a typically blunt statement about his campaign, the unruly populism of the modern Republican Party, and an accelerating conservative media revolution,” CNN’s Stephen Collinson wrote in an analysis Tuesday ahead of DeSantis’ launch.

Fox News added that DeSantis’ announcement coincided with a meeting he had this week in Miami with top financial backers.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported earlier Wednesday that, in support of DeSantis’s presidential campaign, a prominent political group is gearing up for an extensive voter-outreach initiative.

The ambitious endeavor aims to reach every potential DeSantis supporter in New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina at least four times, with an additional fifth contact in the pivotal Iowa caucuses. To accomplish it, the group is preparing a substantial $100 million investment in their outreach efforts.

“As part of a comprehensive on-the-ground organizing operation, the campaign plans to hire over 2,600 field organizers by Labor Day. This substantial number of personnel is quite extraordinary, even for campaigns with substantial funding, highlighting the significant scale and scope of their organizational efforts,” the Times added.

(FreedomWire.org) – On Wednesday, whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas testified in front of a House Judiciary subcommittee that the United States government has been operating as the “middleman” to a multi-billion dollar migrant child trafficking operation.

Rodas told Congress that in the United States children will work at slaughter houses, factories, and restaurants to pay their debt to the smugglers, traffickers and cartels.

Rodas also claimed that the US government has become the “middleman” in a sophisticated network of child trafficking that begins in the home countries of the children and ends with the government delivering the children to sponsors in the United States.

“I thought I was going to help place children in loving homes,” she stated. “Instead, I discovered that children are being trafficked through a sophisticated network that begins with recruiting in home country, smuggling to the U.S. border, and ends when ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement) delivers a child to a sponsor.”

Rodas, who volunteered to help the Biden Administration with the crisis at the southern border, was deployed to the Pomona Fairplex emergency intake site in California as part of Operation Artemis to help the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement reunite children with sponsors in the United States. She initially believed she was going to help place children in loving homes but instead discovered a dark reality.

“Some sponsors are criminals and traffickers and members of transnational criminal organizations. Some sponsors view children as commodities and assets to be used for earning income. This is why we are witnessing an explosion of labor trafficking.”

Rodas witnessed firsthand the exploitation of vulnerable children, including indigenous children from Guatemala who speak Mayan dialects and cannot speak Spanish. “That means they cannot ask for help in English; they cannot ask for help in Spanish. They become captives of their sponsors,” she said.

Rodas also spoke of apartment buildings where dozens of unaccompanied minors have been released, sponsors trying to sponsor children from multiple sites at the same time, and numerous cases of children in debt bondage. “And the child knew they had to stay with the sponsor until the debt was paid,” she added.

These revelations paint a bleak picture of the US government’s handling of the child migrant crisis. Rodas’s testimony suggests that, whether intentional or not, the US government has become complicit in a massive child trafficking operation. “Realizing that we were not offering the children the American dream, but instead putting them in modern-day slavery with wicked overlords, was a terrible revelation,” she said.

Rodas’s testimony is a call to action for the US government. “It’s my hope that you’ll take action to end this crisis, to safeguard the lives of most of these vulnerable children,” she said. She believes that oversight, transparency, and accountability are essential to ending this crisis. “If I could wave a magic wand, this, I believe, could be quickly solved by experts in the IG community,” she said.

Rodas’s speech is a wake-up call for the US government. “I witnessed firsthand the horrors of child trafficking and exploitation. My life will never be the same after what I saw.”

(FreedomWire.org) – Leaked information from inside the White House reveals why President Joe Biden is reportedly furious with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Vice President Kamala Harris has become a dark cloud hanging over President Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign plans, according to report.

Biden has indicated he will run for re-election in 2024 and has publicly said he has no plans to drop Harris from the ticket. A second term by a president who has already turned 80 would bring a sharp focus on his vice president, who could run the country if Biden faced health issues and was incapacitated.

The report by Reuters on Thursday summed up Harris as bringing to the campaign a stew that includes “low poll ratings, a failure to win over the Washington establishment and concern among fellow Democrats about an underwhelming start in the job.”

Harris has gained a reputation as the worst vice president in U.S. history with an approval rating of 28 percent. Business Insider reports this is a “historic low for any modern vice president.” Biden’s approval rating is also extremely low at just 38 percent.

A former White House official told Reuters, “A point of tension in their relationship is that I don’t think that the president sees her as somebody who takes anything off of his plate” due to a “fear of messing up.”

Harris reportedly refuses to take on any risky assignments.

Biden put Harris in charge of border issues in 2021, but she has notably neglected visiting the border, going only after she took heavy flak in the press and from interest groups. 

The National Border Patrol Council grilled Harris for failing to do her job and protect the border in January. 

“If you were given a job 2 years ago with the explicit goal of reducing illegal immigration, and then you sit around and do nothing while illegal immigration explodes to levels never seen before, you should be fired and replaced. Period,” the council wrote. 

A current administration official acknowledged Harris’ weakness on border issues  in comments to Reuters. “She, I think, is smart. She does not see this as a political win for her. Because it’s not. It’s a really hard issue,” the official said. 

Another former White House official said, “If he did not think she was capable, he would not have picked her. But it is a question of consistently rising to the occasion,” that former official said.

“I think his running for re-election is less about her and more about him, but I do think that she and the Democratic bench [are] a factor.”

A Democrat closely connected to the White House said there is a risk, according to the outlet.

“I think this is actually one of the fundamental strategic challenges for [Biden] … how to navigate this. It’s almost impossible for them to make a change.”

The second White House official added, “You cannot replace your first black woman vice president and think that black people and women are going to just vote for you. He needs her.”

Democratic strategist Bud Jackson said many Democrats “think that Biden is hopefully fine for another term and we don’t have to worry about the second-in-command, because I think, in our mind, Biden lasts another term and then Harris is not the preordained Democratic nominee [for 2028].”

(FreedomWire.org) – Now we know why Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has been such a failure at his job.

In an interview with CNN host, and former Fox News host, Chris Wallace the secretary said that he was deeply concerned about being a “nation of immigrants” and insisted that there was more than one definition to the phrase “secure border.”

“Our goal is to achieve operational control of the border, to do everything that we can to support our personnel with the resources, the technology, the policies that really advance the security of the border, and do not come at the cost of the values of our country,” he said to Wallace.

“The law needs to be changed if it does not either meet our highest ideals or actually proves to be functional in the service of those ideals,” the secretary said.

And when confronted with the fact that many Republicans have demanded he resign, he was defiant.

“I’m not going to resign,” he said. “There’s a tremendous amount of work to do, and we are doing it and I’m incredibly proud to do it,” he said.

But Wallace pressed him on his insistence that the border is secure, which is when the secretary made his “nation of immigrants” comment.

“What does ‘secure’ mean to you?” the host said.

“There is not a common definition of that,” the secretary said. “If one looks at [Congress’s 2006] statutory definition, the literal interpretation of the statutory language, if one person successfully evades law enforcement at the border, then we have breached the security of the border … Our goal is to achieve operational control of the border, to do everything that we can to support our personnel with the resources, the technology, the policies, that really advance the security of the border, and do not come at the cost of the values of our country. I say that because in the prior [Donald Trump] administration, policies were promulgated or passed that did not hew to the values that we hold dear.:”

“We, in the United States, have tremendous pride in our country as a country, a place of refuge. We are a nation of immigrants. We are also a nation of laws. Those laws provide for humanitarian relief for those who qualify. They also provide that individuals who do not qualify will be removed. That’s how we do our work at the Department of Homeland Security,” he said.

Wallace pressed Mayorkas on why he would impose pro-migration policies that negatively affect American citizens and their families.

“My parents instilled in me the profound meaning of displacement, the yearning to give one’s children a better life than what the life one has had, [and] the fragility of life. And so I understand deeply the plight of individuals who will leave their homes, whether they flee persecution or aspire to a better life. We, in the United States, have tremendous pride in our country as a place of refuge. We are a nation of immigrants,” he said.

“My mother, given the tragedy that she lived through — her father lost everybody except the sister in the Holocaust — she understood that every day is a new life. The world did not have the privilege of recognizing the beauty of my parents. And through the work I do, I hope I can communicate that in some way,” he said.

This month Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) introduced a new article of impeachment against Mayorkas that accuses him of violating his oath of office and refusing to enforce duly-passed immigration laws. The report noted further that Biggs has often called for Mayorkas to be removed from his position, accusing him in 2021 of having “engaged in a pattern of conduct that is incompatible with his duties as an Officer of the United States,” Fox News reported.

After a record 2.3 million encounters with migrants crossing illegally into the U.S. during the fiscal year 2022 — and in December alone, more than 251,000 — the impeachment push has been renewed after Republicans took over the House in January.

“Secretary Mayorkas has failed to faithfully uphold his oath and has instead presided over a reckless abandonment of border security and immigration enforcement, at the expense of the Constitution and the security of the United States,” the article states, according to Fox News. “Secretary Mayorkas has violated, and continues to violate, this oath by failing to maintain operational control of the border and releasing hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens into the interior of the United States.”

(FreedomWire.org) – Perhaps the greatest joke of Joe Biden’s federal government was putting Kamala Harris in charge of border security, a job she evidently does not take very seriously.

But where D.C. has failed, the states are now stepping up to take matters into their own hands.

America’s VP, the so-called “Border Czar,” has essentially supervised a steadily worsening immigration crisis, offering few solutions, and even fewer coherent, well-constructed opinions. Who can forget her notorious interview with Lester Holt?

This week, The New York Times noted that since Kamala embarrassingly quipped “I haven’t been to Europe,” she has shied away from doing public interviews.

“After her disastrous interview with Lester Holt… in June 2021, in which she struggled to articulate the administration’s strategy for securing the border,” the NYT reported, “White House officials — including some in her own office — noted that she all but went into a bunker for about a year, avoiding many interviews out of what aides said was a fear of making mistakes and disappointing Mr. Biden.”

Truly, one of the most important political issues of the day is in the hands of someone who is not even capable of having an intelligible conversation with the press.

Her office has long been marked by dysfunction — according to CNN, “key West Wing aides have largely thrown up their hands at Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff” — and that dysfunction no doubt marks her response (or lack thereof) to the southern border crisis.

But Kamala’s dysfunction is indicative of a much bigger problem: the federal government’s dysfunction. As I previously wrote, “yes, Kamala Harris may be bad at her job – so bad, in fact, that not even the left-leaning media can pretend otherwise – but she is simply playing her part in a broken system that is bad at its job.”

The federal government under Mr. Biden has almost single-handedly created our nation’s present border crisis. Yet despite polling that confirms a majority of voters want the president to close the southern border until immigration issues are fixed, D.C. has refused to act, condemning the American people to suffer the consequences.

But that’s where the states come in.

In response to Harris’ failed management, Texas announced it has hired its own Border Czar… notably someone who is actually competent.

“For nearly two years, the State of Texas has taken unprecedented, historic action… in response to the Biden Administration’s refusal to secure the border,” Governor Greg Abbott declared. “To continue doing what no other state in the history of our country has done to secure the border, I hired Mike Banks as the State of Texas’ first-ever Border Czar. As an award-winning Border Patrol Agent, with decades of federal law enforcement and border security experience, Mike is the perfect choice to oversee Texas’ fight against the surge of illegal immigration, lethal drugs, and deadly weapons flowing into our state and nation. I have no doubt that Mike’s strong record of leadership and wealth of experience will provide Texans—and Americans—the level of border security expertise they deserve from a proper Border Czar.”

This “proper Border Czar” responded: “Protecting our nation’s border is something I have dedicated the last 23 years of my life to, and I am very passionate about it. I look forward to strengthening our relationships with law enforcement partners and the community, leveraging all that we can to further protect our great state of Texas and the United States.”

Although born out of dysfunction, Texas’ efforts to combat Joe Biden’s immigration crisis encapsulate a healthy system of federalism at work — when the federal government falters, the states step in to protect their constituents. While Texas is the first state to hire its own Border Czar, other states, such as Florida, have also worked to slow down or end illegal immigration.

Unfortunately, their efforts continue to be frustrated by the federal government, which is why we need the states to exercise their authority to rein in Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the rest of their corrupt cronies in Washington. Granted in Article V of the U.S. Constitution, the states have the power to call a Convention of States where they could limit the size and jurisdiction of the federal government, place term limits on federal officials, and impose fiscal restraints on federal spending.

If Kamala has accomplished anything over the past two years it is proff that the states must assert their power over Washington.

(FreedomWire.org) – The Biden Department of Homeland Security has begun prepping for a potential impeachment battle over HHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

“The Department of Homeland Security has retained outside counsel to help ensure the Department’s vital mission is not interrupted by the unprecedented, unjustified, and partisan impeachment efforts by some Members of Congress, who have already taken steps to initiate proceedings,” a Homeland Security spokesperson told CNN.

“DHS will continue prioritizing its work to protect our country from terrorism, respond to natural disasters, and secure our borders while responding appropriately to the over 70 Congressional committees and subcommittees that have oversight of DHS,” the spokesperson added.

HHS was correct to note that there have been burgeoning “impeachment efforts” against Mayorkas.

But HHS was not correct to call the efforts “unprecedented, unjustified, and partisan,” according to Republicans.

For one thing, Democrats previously impeached former President Donald Trump twice, both times for flimsy reasons that led to no conviction. Note also that under his administration, the border was secure and border crossings fell to a record low rate.

Under this administration and under Mayorkas, more specifically, the border has been completely overrun, with 100,0000+ illegal aliens and so-called “migrants” crossing into the U.S. in any given month, including January.

So many migrants are flooding border communities that said communities have been forced to ship the illegals to northern “utopias” like New York City.

This, in turn, has greatly strained NYC’s resources, as the city has had to convert hotel after hotel into shelters for these hordes of migrants, including single migrant men.

Yet Democrats, including NYC Mayor Eric Adams, remain loyally supportive of the administration, despite its clear-cut failure to secure the border.

As for the Border Patrol agents who actually have to deal with all the hordes of migrants firsthand, they staunchly oppose this administration’s policies.

“Today, thousands of illegal aliens will crash the border and either escape or be released into a community near you. Most aren’t properly vetted. They will be ‘vetted’ based on their actions and behaviors in your community. And if they commit another crime it’s likely the kid gloves will come out and they’ll be coddled and protected. It’s insanity. Think about it,” the official U.S. Border Patrol union tweeted Saturday.

Whether the law firm will be able to prevent the hell awaiting Mayorkas remains to be seen. What’s known is that “House Republicans are really starting to build a case against Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security Secretary which could serve as the basis for potential impeachment proceedings,” as reported by CNN last month.

In addition, a total of three committees have thus far vowed to hold hearings on the border crisis, including the House Judiciary Committee, the House Oversight Committee, and the House Homeland Security Committee.

(FreedomWire.org) – Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are looking for answers from DHS over allegations that President Biden’s recent visit to El Paso, Texas, was “sanitized,” with migrants cleared away before the president’s first visit to the besieged southern border this month.

“For weeks, large encampments of homeless illegal border crossers—released by the Biden Administration—have encamped on the streets of El Paso,” the letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas from House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said. “These encampments were cleared immediately prior to President Biden’s visit to the city on January 8, 2023. We write to understand the circumstances surrounding the role DHS played in clearing homeless illegal border crossers for President Biden’s visit to El Paso.”

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sources told Fox News that the Central Processing Center, which was previously overwhelmed with immigrants, was no longer at capacity and the camps of migrants vanished.

Sources had told Fox that the clearing was primarily to address large groups of mostly Venezuelan migrants who crossed into the U.S. without turning themselves into the Border Patrol out of fear that Title 42 rules would get them expelled. 

Since the migrants could not get into shelters, they set up camps and the crime rate increased, with many Venezuelans getting arrested for breaking into cars. Community members complained, according to CBP sources, and Border Patrol agents started making arrests.

Biden’s visit also combined with a sharp drop in migrant encounters. The El Paso sector saw an average of

But Comer is not yet convinced and are asking for documents and communications between DHS and other agencies, as well as the city of El Paso.

“Before the President’s visit, El Paso’s migrant camps were so overwhelmed and unsanitary that local officials were concerned that the camps would become hotbeds for infectious disease,” Comer writes. “The President apparently did not see a single released illegal alien in a border town overwhelmed with illegal border crossers released by his Administration.”

Comer on Thursday announced that the committee will hold a hearing on the border in early February, and has called on a handful of Biden administration career officials to testify, including Border Patrol Chief Patrol Agents Jason Owens, Gregory Bovino and Gloria Chavez and Acting Chief Border Patrol Agent Patricia McGurk-Daniel.

(FreedomWire.org) – Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday celebrated the start of construction of a new high-capacity power transmission line between Arizona and California.

During her speech, Harris gave us one of her mesmerizing word salads on the marvels of the world around her.

Harris started with a story of when she was a child and the family would take road trips.

“I remember sitting in the backseat of my mother’s Dodge Dart — it was yellow; she let us pick out the color,” she said, with a laugh. “And we’d be sitting in the backseat, me and my sister, and trying to, you know, figure out how to occupy the time. I’ll date myself by saying sometimes we would occupy the time by counting how many VW Bugs that we saw drive by.”

“But also, sometimes, just looking out the window. And I remember watching the miles and miles of electric wires flash by the window. And it was — it was kind of mesmerizing to just see those lines as we were driving the roads. And those wires, they seemed endless,” she explained, in that nasally voice that can make one’s skin crawl.

Then Harris explained how electricity works.

“Well, let’s think about it. Today, America has more than half a million miles of transmission lines. Enough to wrap around the globe 24 times. These lines connect the power plants, where electricity is created, to homes and businesses and schools and hospitals across our nation,” the vice president continued. “Think about it: Every time you turn on a light or charge your laptop or plug in your air conditioner or put leftovers in the fridge, you rely on the power delivered by our nation’s network of transmission lines.”

Harris was only about 100 miles away from the border with Mexico, but had no plans to visit the border, even though she has been tasked by President Biden to investigate the root causes of the migrant crisis overwhelming border states. 

Harris defended her decision not to visit the southern border by saying,  “I visited the border. I will not on this trip, but I have, and I will again.”

(FreedomWire.org) – Almost two years into his presidency, Joe Biden might finally visit the southern border for the first time.

President Biden confirmed Wednesday that he plans to visit the southern border as part of a trip to Mexico City next week.

“That’s my intention; we’re working out the details now,” Biden told reporters Wednesday.

Between January 9-10, the president will join Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the North American Leaders’ Summit, where they will collaborate on growing their countries’ economies and addressing current challenges to the region.

Biden has received intense criticism for not stopping by the border once since he assumed office. Now two years into his administration, the border crisis has devolved into an outright catastrophe, with an unprecedented number of illegal immigrants crossing into the interior, overwhelming local towns, border agents, and supply centers.

Current daily apprehensions have been hitting around 7,000 a day and could reach 18,000 if Title 42, the pandemic-era policy that allowed the government to expel migrants to prevent the spread of communicable diseases, is lifted.

In late December, the Supreme Court temporarily preserved the public health measure, which was originally set to expire by the end of 2022, while legal challenges continue to play out. The emergency request was granted to 19 Republican attorneys general who petitioned to keep Title 42 in place, warning that its expiration would trigger an explosion of illegal immigration.

Vice president Kamala Harris, who Biden initially charged with tackling the border crisis and figuring out the root causes of mass migration from Central America, last visited the border in June 2021.

(FreedomWire.org) – Former President Bill Clinton says “there is a limit” to how many migrants the U.S. can accept before it causes disruption. He also criticized moves by GOP governors to transport migrants into the interior as a “stunt.”

Clinton spoke on a CNN podcast and was asked by host Fareed Zakaria about “economic migrants” who are “gaming” the asylum system.

“There is a limit to how many migrants any society can take without severe disruption and assistance, and our system is based much more on an assumption that things would be more normal,” the former president said.

There have been more than 2.1 million migrant encounters this fiscal year alone as a historic border crisis continues to ravage the southern border, prompting Republican governors to bus and fly migrants deeper into the interior to “sanctuary” jurisdictions. There were more than 200,000 migrant encounters in August alone. 

Former President Bill Clinton noted the “largest number of refugees since World War II.” 

Clinton said that when he was a boy and a young man, Mexican migrants would move back and forth across the border to work in agriculture “and it worked for people.” But he conceded that the situation was now very different.

“It’s an old story, but now you’ve got the largest number of refugees since World War II because of Syria and now Ukraine and other problems,” he said.

Clinton also noted the recent surge in migrants from Venezuela that has increased in recent months, while also taking a shot at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for busing migrants into New York City, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

“What’s happening in Venezuela, more than 2 million refugees pouring into first Colombia then nearby countries, has created unprecedented new challenges and meanwhile provides opportunities for stunts like Gov. Abbott’s — sending his refugees to some place that he thinks is advocating for a broad-minded policy that it doesn’t have to live with,” he said.

Texas has bussed more than 10,000 migrants to three sanctuary cities, sparking outrage and calls for help from the federal government from those liberal cities.

A Customs and Border Protection bus drops off dozens of migrants, mostly from Venezuela, at the City of El Paso’s migrant welcome center on Sept. 22, 2022. (Fox News Digital)

“Texas’ inundated border towns are now receiving a measure of relief, and importantly, the magnitude of this ongoing crisis is finally gaining the national attention it deserves,” Abbott said in a recent op-ed. “Americans are now witnessing a startling national security failure that [President Biden] continues to dismiss.”

Clinton also discussed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ recent move to fly migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, a wealthy liberal vacation hotspot.

“And then Gov. DeSantis sending those people to Martha’s Vineyard was amazing. That may come back to haunt him a little bit,” Clinton predicted. 

This flashback tweet is even more true today.