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Texas GOP Governor Declares Border Invasion, Again – What Next?

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ANALYSIS – The Biden border crisis just gets worse every day, with no help at all from the White House. 

And now that a federal court has invalidated Trump’s Title 42 C*VID regulation forcing would-be asylum seekers to remain in Mexico, expect a massive new illegal migrant surge.

Much of that surge and chaos is seen along the border with Texas which takes the brunt of the migrant onslaught.

In response, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that he is invoking the U.S. Constitution’s invasion clause and taking “unprecedented measures” to repel a “border invasion.”

https://twitter.com/josephanunn/status/1592639277590249474

Abbott also sent out a press release and a letter to county officials along the border.

Abbott’s declaration comes one week after he won a third four-year term as governor. Former Trump administration officials had been urging the governors of Arizona and Texas to declare an “invasion” to justify more aggressive measures to stem the illegal migrant tide.

Infuriating his partisan critics and open border advocates, the Governor can expect severe legal pushback.

The question is – can he win?

As the American Bar Association Journal notes:

The invasion clause is in Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution.

It provides: “No state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another state or with a foreign power or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.”

Abbott said he will deploy the National Guard to “repel and turn back” immigrants trying to enter the country illegally. He will also deploy the Texas Department of Public Safety to arrest and return to the border immigrants who came into the country illegally.

Abbott also plans to build a border wall in multiple counties, deploy gun boats, enter into a compact with other states to secure the border, and “enter into agreements with foreign powers to enhance border security.”

Abbott first authorized the National Guard and Texas police to act in July, directing them to return immigrants to ports of entry. He also referenced the invasion clause at the time.

However, Abbott has yet to issue a formal invasion declaration or official order. 

His office has not published such a declaration through an official news release or on the governor’s website, which means he has not yet gone much beyond his actions and declarations in July. 

National security expert and Navy JAG Jonathan Hullihan told The Center Square that if Abbott had invoked his constitutional authority on Tuesday, “he would have done so in an official document, not from a personal Twitter account.” 

Hence “No document, no order.” 

And critics question its legality. The ABA notes:

Nunn said Abbott’s actions were actually “a thinly veiled effort to take the reins on U.S. immigration policy.” But that would also be unconstitutional under U.S. Supreme Court precedent holding that immigration policy is “unquestionably” and “exclusively” a federal power, Nunn said.

“For all these reasons, the Biden administration would likely succeed in court if it sued to stop Abbott from carrying out his plans,” Nunn concluded.

But others see this as a well-played political move putting Team Biden in a position it can’t win.

“We’re literally talking about state officials doing the same exact thing that federal officials do with Title 42,” said Ken Cuccinelli, a senior fellow at the conservative nonprofit organization Center for Renewing America.

And as the Washington Examiner reports:

“He’s [Abbott] run Operation Lone Star and kept your National Guard up and running for a show. He knows it doesn’t do anything,” said Cuccinelli, adding that the state could win a battle in federal court. 

“If you’re the federal government and you sue Texas over it … they have to prove there is not an invasion, and they have the burden of proof because they’re the plaintiff in the case. Good luck proving that today with the state of the border. I don’t think it could be done.”

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Amanda Head: Are You on the #TrumpTrain for 2024?

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Donald Trump officially kicked off this third presidential campaign while delivering a speech Tuesday evening from his Mar-a-Lago resort.

Are you all in on Trump 2024 or keeping your options open?

Watch Amanda break it down below.

Biden’s Dangerously Weak and Naive Meeting with China’s Chairman Xi – ‘Strategic Insanity’

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Joe Biden via Gage Skidmore Flickr

ANALYSIS – Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse with Joe Biden, he goes and has a chummy sideline meeting with China’s communist leader-for-life, Xi Jinping, at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia.

While his partisan spinmeisters in the media dutifully reported the White House line that Biden was firm with Xi, the three-and-a-half-hour private meeting was muddled, absurdly naïve and dangerous.

At the summit, Biden stated that the U.S. aims to manage competition with China “responsibly” and that there is no need for a new Cold War. 

Biden also strongly and foolishly reaffirmed China’s ‘One China’ policy regarding Taiwan, adding (against warnings from NATO and his own national security officials) that he didn’t foresee any Chinese military action against Taiwan any time soon.

Fox News reported Biden said during a press conference ahead of the G20 summit in Bali:

“[Xi] was clear and I was clear that we’ll defend American interests and values, promote universal human rights and stand up for the international order and work in lockstep with our allies and partners…”

“We’re going to compete vigorously but I’m not looking for conflict. I’m looking to manage this competition responsibly,” Biden said. “And I want to make sure that every country abides by the international rules of the road. We discussed that.”

Biden’s messaging was clear in one area though.

He believes climate change is more of a threat than a revisionist, expansionist, power-hungry, communist dictatorship with an economy almost the size of the U.S.

And Biden is willing to risk America’s sovereignty, independence, security and freedom to get China’s faux help with his extreme climate agenda.

GOP Senator Marco Rubio of Florida was rightfully livid over Biden’s meeting and statements.

Rubio said in a statement:

President Biden’s claim that ‘there need not be a new Cold War’ between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party proves that this administration dangerously misunderstands the CCP, which openly pushes for conflict with the United States and its allies…

Last week, while Xi appeared in a military uniform and called on the People’s Liberation Army [PLA] to prepare for war, Biden’s Department of Defense pulled an entire squadron of American fighter jets out of the Indo-Pacific. Not only is the United States unprepared to defend Taiwan against a PLA invasion, President Biden is now downplaying its likelihood.

This meeting should have held the CCP accountable for its rampant human rights abuses, ongoing theft of American intellectual property, and its refusal to investigate the origins of COVID-19.

Rubio added: “Instead, President Biden demonstrated that he is willing to sacrifice everything — including our national security and the security of our allies — for the sake of pursuing ill-fated climate talks with our nation’s greatest adversary.”

Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen told Fox News on Monday that Biden’s diplomacy with China is “strategic insanity” that may only help the autocratic communist state accumulate power and global influence.

Fox News adds that “Biden reportedly has been pressuring China to essentially join him in his Green New Deal-style vision of non-petroleum power sources, which Thiessen said is one of the key areas the United States can apply pressure to Beijing if they invade their peaceable neighbor Taiwan.

“The last thing we want China to do, quite frankly, is to start weaning itself off of oil,” Thiessen said.

“If they follow Biden’s advice and wean themselves off of oil and start embracing clean energy, we lose that leverage,” Thiessen said.

“So, you know, it’s not only a sign of weakness, it’s strategic insanity.”

As I recently reported, Xi has been increasingly adamant that so-called ‘reunification’ with Taiwan can no longer wait and China will use force if necessary to control the independent democratic nation.

Top U.S. commanders and senior intelligence officials have warned that China could take forceful action against Taiwan as early as next year, and increasingly likely by 2025 or 2027, at the latest.

Meanwhile, Biden is playing footsies with Xi, hoping China will join his radical green global agenda.

Because that is all he, and his leftist puppeteers, care about. GAND

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Amanda Head: Who’s Your Pick For 2024 – Trump or DeSantis?

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As Americans continue to wait for official midterm results to trickle in Republicans are already diving themselves into two camps: Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump.

Who are you siding with?

Watch Amanda break it down below.

Amanda Head: My Thoughts On Last Night And What’s To Come

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Election results are still pouring in on Wednesday as Americans wait with anticipation to see which party will gain control of Congress.

Watch Amanda break down the situation below:

Discredited Ex-CISA Chief Says Election Lies and Denial a ‘Risk to Democracy

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Missvain, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – Apparently now to flailing Democrats, everything is a ‘threat to democracy.’ So much so that Chris Krebs, the discredited former head of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is joining the liberal chorus.

He simply replaced the term ‘threat’ with ‘risk.’

“Threat to democracy’ is the Democrats’ 2022 version of ‘Russia collusion.’

Recall that Krebs was fired by then-President Trump in 2020 after Krebs, without any way to confirm, stated that the 2020 election was the “most secure” ever. 

CISA is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and is tasked with“strengthening cybersecurity and infrastructure protection across all levels of government.”

However, while it plays a role in elections, and coordinates with the states, it is not the ultimate arbiter of whether election fraud occurred, or whether there were irregularities.

There is no ultimate arbiter of that, except maybe the American people.

Regardless, Krebs is now joining Team Biden in wailing about the ‘risk to democracy’ posed by Trump, his supporters, and many GOP politicians.

During a Washington Post Live event on Monday, Krebs said that election-related falsehoods and misinformation represent “a tactical and strategic risk to democracy,” citing the number of election denialists running for statewide offices that “have the ability to determine the certification of the 2024 election,” as well as the chilling effect that election-related lies can have on voter turnout. 

As Defense One reports:

Krebs said that lies about the 2020 midterm elections—as well as falsehoods about the accuracy of the midterm elections—exist, because “it’s a great fundraising mechanism” for the former president, his allies and political candidates, and also because “it’s a great clout-chasing mechanism.”

“It’s a benefit to them from an incentive perspective,” Krebs added. “And I think the real harm is that it is shifting the Overton window, it’s shifting what’s politically acceptable in American political discourse into something that’s much more dangerous and much more violent.”

To combat these claims, Krebs said it’s important for Republican lawmakers, in particular, to speak truthfully about the voting process and election security. 

Some of what he says is valid, and I do agree with Krebs’ last point; something Democrats ignore as they push for government efforts to quash free speech.

The best way to combat false claims by politicians (a constant for millennia, but now called ‘disinformation’), is by counterarguments. 

This is the essence of America’s democracy – the marketplace of ideas.

While I believe we must ensure our elections are secure, this involves far more than worrying about, or demonizing free speech as so-called ‘disinformation.’

It involves election integrity of the voting process, mail-in ballots, voter ID, and a range of other concrete issues Democrats ignore, rebuff, and refuse to address.

And yes, there are foreign threats to America’s elections, such as Russian and Chinese hacking and influence operations, which I have repeatedly noted, and these should also be a primary focus of our federal government. 

As Krebs added: “We’ve seen reports lately of Russia, China, and Iran back at their old tricks, and it is going to create a very chaotic environment.” 

Indeed, Mr. Krebs.

That too is a ‘risk to our democracy, and it is where the government can have the most impact in securing our elections without unconstitutionally targeting Americans or their freedom of speech.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

GOP Congress to Focus on Border, Crime, Inflation, and Investigating Bidens

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Ted Eytan from Washington, DC, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – We are just one day away from a major electoral shift with the Republicans expected to retake the House and possibly the Senate too. 

That will put a hard brake on Joe Biden and the left’s radical agenda and make Biden more of a lame duck than he already is.

It may even put an impeachment target on his back.

So, what can we expect from a GOP-led Congress in January?

According to current Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the top priority of a Republican-led House would be addressing the horrible migrant crisis at the southern border.

CNN reports: “The first thing you’ll see is a bill to control the border first,” McCarthy told CNN, when asked for specifics about his party’s immigration plans. 

“You’ve got to get control over the border. You’ve had almost 2 million people just this year alone coming across.”

Newsmax reported McCarthy as saying:

“There’s a number of different ways” Republicans could tackle the migrant crisis, McCarthy added that party lawmakers would not present a bill to fix the broken immigration system until the border is secure — something that would help stem the flow of fentanyl.

“I think ‘Stay in Mexico’ you have to have right off the bat,” said McCarthy, referring to the Trump administration’s policy that forced migrants to remain in Mexico while awaiting their immigration proceedings in the U.S.

In fiscal year 2022, U.S. border encounters with illegal migrants topped 2 million, according to US Customs and Border Protection data.

Most recently we saw a clash between flag-wielding and rock-throwing Venezuelan migrants attacking U.S. Border Patrol agents who in-turn fired pepper balls at the charging crowd.

But tackling Biden’s border fiasco is just one of several GOP priorities. 

The GOP to-do list also includes tackling Democrat-enabled, out-of-control crime and runaway inflation, 

Republicans will also be investigating the hell out of Team Biden.

And there is so much that needs investigating

Newsmax added that “McCarthy said Republicans also would perform oversight and conduct investigations into administration behavior concerning the disastrous troop pullout from Afghanistan, the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in dealing with parents and school board meetings.”

I would also hope FBI and DHS politicization gets a top spot for oversight as well. Much needs to be done in that highly concerning area.

And then they should dig into the increasingly ‘Woke Pentagon,’ and the extreme ‘Trans’ agenda.

So, expect investigations galore, and Hunter Biden’s laptop and shady international business dealings will also take center stage.

But what about impeaching Joe?

While McCarthy insisted, “We will never use impeachment for political purposes,” he left the door open to launching eventual impeachment proceedings, when he added: “That doesn’t mean if something rises to the occasion, it would not be used at any other time.”

Biden should walk on eggshells for the next two years, if he makes it that far without having the 25th Amendment invoked to remove him for senility.

The political power pendulum is about to swing back to the right, and karma is a b*tch.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Ex-CIA Officer Proposes Using ‘Counterterror’ Measures Against ‘Right-wing’ Americans

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Gage Skidmore Flickr

ANALYSIS – Can we say dangerous left-wing intelligence hack? 

With Joe Biden and the Democrats demonizing conservatives, partisan, out-of-work former intelligence officers, without much of a ‘war on terror’ to fight anymore, and looking for new work, are now targeting Americans as their new terrorist bogeyman. 

And following the bizarre ‘underwear hammer attack’ on Nancy Pelosi’s husband in San Francisco, the Democrats are on a tear blaming Republicans for violence.

This is despite the fact that the Pelosi attacker was a crazy, life-long pot-smoking hippie, left-wing nudist, and illegal alien from Canada who only started making ‘right-wing’ social media posts a few weeks ago.

But once you designate your domestic political opponents as ‘extremists’ and ‘enemies of democracy,’ you open the door to widespread abuse and repression by the state.

And targeting American citizens as if they were ISIS is the result.

As I noted earlier, we should expect to see a host of these former ‘counter-extremism’ hacks try to parlay their experiences against al-Qaeda to use against their fellow citizens.

This is the old Cold War ‘Red Scare’ in reverse.

And this is just the latest example. A partisan former CIA officer proposing we illegally use ‘counterterror’ measures against Americans.

As Fox News reports:

Former Senior Intelligence Service officer at the CIA, Marc Polymeropoulos published a Sunday piece declaring that technique once used to fight radical Islam should be turned against the right-wing in America.

Polymeropoulos’ piece for NBC News Think warned that propagandists, whether Islamic terrorists or Republicans, should be subject to counterterrorism and counter-radicalization techniques.

“I worked in counterterrorism operations for nearly my entire career at the CIA before retiring in 2019. The battle we engaged in with international terrorist groups like Al Qaeda wasn’t just with their legions of foot soldiers but with their highly effective propaganda arms as well,” he wrote. 

“The U.S. and our allies considered those propagandists fundamental cogs in a terror group’s machinery, and just as culpable as any other terrorist. So we held them accountable when innocent civilians were killed.”

Polymeropoulos suggested that the attack of Paul Pelosi was evidence that the American government needs to take a firmer approach to its own citizenry.

This type of thinking is outrageous on so many levels. Simply un-American. Unconstitutional. And extremely dangerous.

Polymeropoulos, who sounds more like a left-wing extremist than an intelligence officer, is also either willfully ignorant or outright deceptive when he claims that the American right has some sort of monopoly on violent rhetoric. 

He laughably states that there is “nothing equivalent being done on the other side of the aisle” as far as promoting violence against their political opposition. 

“Democratic politicians and leaders may not like Trump, but they don’t call for violence against him, let alone his execution,” he outrageously claimed.

Of course, this is outright false.

As Fox Notes: “He neglected to mention multiple incidents of left-wing calls to arms and violence against Republicans…”

Fox added examples:

In 2017, a far-left former Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer named James T. Hodgkinson fired upon on a group of Republican lawmakers as they practiced for the annual Congressional Baseball Game, critically injuring House Republican Whip Steve Scalise.

Democrats didn’t equate their own hyper-aggressive anti-GOP rhetoric with his violent actions.

And let’s be clear Democrat politicians do incite violence against their GOP opponents.

Fox continues:

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., endorsed harassing political opposition in public in 2018. “They’re not going to be able to go to a restaurant, they’re not going to be able to stop at a gas station, they’re not going to be able to shop at a department store,” Waters proclaimed at the time. “The people are going to turn on them, they’re going to protest, they’re going to absolutely harass them.”

Polymeropoulos also ignores left-wing activists protesting in front of the houses of Supreme Court justices, firebombing crisis pregnancy centers, and doxing (posting the addresses of public figures online). 

Not to mention the assassination attempt against Justice Brett Kavanaugh by a heavily armed man at his home.

Recall that in 2020, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., warned Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh that they “will pay the price” for rulings against abortion and “You won’t know what hit you.”

Can we say “incitement to violence” against Justices?

This ex-CIA hack also overlooks a full year of left-wing politically motivated riots in cities, often encouraged and enabled by Democrat politicians and ‘community’ leaders.

But facts, consistency, and fairness aren’t needed when you are a political hack trying to get the all-powerful government to use your now unneeded skills to target your fellow Americans who disagree with you.

All you need is your own extremist leftist rhetoric.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.