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Coast Guard leader: More money needed to keep service viable

The commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard says the service is about to award a contract for a much-needed new icebreaker, but additional vessels are needed along with more funding for operations and infrastructure.

Adm. Karl Schultz outlined the state of the Coast Guard in a speech Thursday to personnel at its base in the Port of Los Angeles.

Schultz says he appreciates the funding in the fiscal 2019 budget and in President Donald Trump's 2020 budget request. But he says the Coast Guard has deferred maintenance, a strained and undersize workforce and a backlog of more than $1.7 billion in shore infrastructure needs.

Its only working heavy icebreaker is 43 years old.

Shultz also announced initiatives to create better conditions for female and minority service members.

Source: Fox News National

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Real Politically Motivated Hate Crime Caught On Camera?

A conservative student was attacked on the UC Berkeley campus Tuesday while recruiting members for Turning Point USA (TPUSA).

The physical assault was caught on camera and sent to TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk who Tweeted it out, saying, “Imagine if the attacker was wearing a MAGA hat.”

The video is going viral online as many point out the irony of the attack taking place amid the current scandal revolving around Empire actor Jussi Smollett’s fake political hate crime.

Will the latest in a string of attacks against Trump supporters be covered by mainstream media?

Assaults against Trump supporters are extremely common as Kirk told Breitbart News, “Our Turning Point USA students on over 1,400 campuses experience this type of hate almost daily.”

“We will not back down to the Leftist inspired hate mob that wants to silence us,” he added.

The student who recorded the altercation said, “a couple of people were really getting into the [TPUSA] guy’s face. Then, one of them flipped the table over. That was when I started filming. It all happened very quickly.”

After flipping the table and punching the TPUSA member in the face, the angry man called him a “racist little ignorant bitch” and punched him again before storming off and screaming, “Fucking cunt!”

Charlie Kirk, Kimberly Guilfoyle and others have suggested the attacker was a leftist who was triggered by the pro-Trump group’s opinions.

Twitter is already exploding with reactions to the alleged anti-conservative assault.


The Reverend Al Sharpton is proof there are no penalties for hate hoaxes. Tucker Carlson and InfoWars take a close look at the Jussie Smollett Race Baiting Hoax and Al Sharpton’s checkered past.

Source: InfoWars

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Pope leads Catholics into Easter with vigil Mass

Easter vigil Mass in Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican
Pope Francis leads the Easter vigil Mass in Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, April 20, 2019. REUTERS/Remo Casilli

April 20, 2019

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis led the world’s Roman Catholics into Easter at a vigil Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Saturday night, urging the faithful to live not for transient things like wealth and success but for God.

The largest church in Christendom was dark at the start of the long service as the pope carved into a candle the numbers of the year 2019 and the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet – Alpha and Omega – signifying that God is the beginning and end of all things.

Easter, the most important day in the Church’s liturgical calendar, commemorates the day Christians believe Jesus rose from the dead.

Francis, marking his seventh Easter season as pope, wove his homily around the Bible account of the women who went to Jesus’ tomb only to find it empty and the large stone that had sealed it had been cast away.

“God takes away even the hardest stones against which our hopes and expectations crash: death, sin, fear, worldliness,” he said.

“There is another stone that often seals the heart shut: the stone of sin. Sin seduces; it promises things easy and quick, prosperity and success, but then leaves behind only solitude and death. Sin is looking for life among the dead, for the meaning of life in things that pass away,” he said.

During the Mass, Francis welcomed eight adult converts into the Church, conferring on them the sacraments of baptism and confirmation. They were from Italy, Albania, Ecuador, Indonesia and Peru.

On Sunday, the 82-year-old leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Roman Catholics is due to say a Mass in St. Peter’s Square and read the traditional “Urbi et Orbi” (To The City and The World) message.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Source: OANN

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In Brexit-on-Sea, the left-behind still want Out

The Wider Image: Tea, bingo and cockles - my journey to Brexit-on-Sea
Cockle-picker and fisherman Tony McClure, 39, who voted to leave the EU uses his cockling board to raise cockles from the sands in Flookburgh, Morecambe Bay, Britain February 26, 2019. McClure: "I'm worried about exporting cockles and mussels." REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne

April 4, 2019

By Clodagh Kilcoyne and Sara Ledwith

SKEGNESS, England (Reuters) – On a Sunday evening in March, Evelyn Ovington and her granddaughter Dana Marie went to play bingo as usual in their local town hall near Skegness, a resort on the east coast of England. Like many of the country’s seaside towns, it is battling decline and voted heavily to quit the European Union in the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Top prizes at the club that night included the ingredients for a chicken dinner. Dana Marie, who had just turned 18, marked her coming-of-age by drinking a can of beer. She and her 59-year-old gran joked with the rest of the crowd, spanning all ages, as they waited for the numbers to be called in the traditional way. When the caller said, “The street where she lives, Theresa May,” the players recognized the reference to the prime minister’s residence in Downing Street: Number 10.

But bingo calls are about as close as Evelyn Ovington expects to get to Theresa May. As the target deadline for Britain to quit the EU approached, Ovington and dozens of others whom Reuters met on a 14-day tour along England’s coastline said they felt increasingly let down by politicians. In line with recent opinion polls nationwide, few had changed their minds about backing Brexit. In these coastal areas, the majority still wanted to leave Europe.

“Get us out of there and get us our own nation back. That’s what I say,” said Ovington. “(I’m) just fed up with all the money that they give to the EU when we can spend it here. I want out.”

Britain as a whole voted by a narrow margin to leave the European Union. But around England’s coastline, dislike of EU was and is much more marked. A tally of the results as estimated by Chris Hanretty, a professor of politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, shows more than 100 of the 120 or so English parliamentary constituencies that have a coastline voted to leave. Reuters visited 10 of them: eight where most people voted to leave, and two where a majority chose to stay. From Skegness on the east coast to Morecambe Bay in the west, dozens of people said they were still convinced their fortunes could only improve outside the EU.

The main exception was Brighton, a southern town nicknamed “London-on-Sea,” partly for its appeal to those with jobs in the capital who have an hour-long commute to work. In this cosmopolitan, affluent university town, a clear majority voted to remain in the European community, which the UK joined in 1973.

The overall results reflect a wider trend. Across Europe, economic and industrial decline are driving anti-EU sentiment, according to a European Commission study from December 2018. The paper, “The Geography of EU Discontent,” found that areas with lower employment or a less-educated workforce are more likely to vote anti-EU.

In England’s case, Brexit also highlights a new layer in the political divide, which Prime Minister May alluded to in 2016 when she pledged to help those “left behind” by globalisation. Big cities are becoming younger, more ethnically diverse, more educated and more socially liberal, while smaller towns are ageing, are less diverse, more nostalgic and more socially conservative, studies by political geographers show.

All around the coastline, whether people voted Leave or Remain, they expressed nostalgic regret for a time when there was more opportunity – and kindness. “I think we used to take care of our communities a bit more,” said Brighton-based web designer and massage therapist Chris Baker, adding it was easy to be too romantic about the past. “I think, you know, we had more manners, we were nicer to people on the street.”

For Ovington, the problem is very real: She worries that her granddaughter’s 18th birthday brings nearer the moment when Dana Marie, like other young people in the region, will move away to university and work.

Ovington hopes Brexit means the local council can claim funds that in her view are currently being mis-directed into Europe, and invest them in a future for local young people. “At the moment there is no future for them, there’s nothing,” she said. “So out of Brexit, they’ll get more funding, help the kids more.”

SKEGNESS, LINCOLNSHIRE

Coastal regions were targeted in the run-up to the referendum by the anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). While UKIP has since lost ground, the frustrations it tapped remain.

Populations on the coast are typically older, whiter, less well-educated and poorer than the average. In 2013, Skegness was designated the “most deprived seaside area in Britain” in a study by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). And in 2016 the constituency returned the biggest “Leave” vote in the country, at more than 75 percent, according to Hanretty.

Skegness was the site of the first Butlin’s holiday camp for workers in the 1930s, and is still a popular seaside destination in the summer. But it sits in a poor farming region and has yet to attract year-round visitors.

The mean age of just over 44 in Skegness is older than the English average of just over 39, census data from 2011 shows. More than 93 percent of people in the area said they were white and of English or British nationalities, compared with just under 80 percent in England on average. Around 40 percent of people in the Skegness area said they had no qualifications.

“It’s been going downhill for a long time,” said Dana Marie of the town, adding she would have voted to leave the EU if she had been old enough. She is studying biology, sociology and health and social care at school, and works part time in a Burger King.

“Obviously it’s seasonal, so during the summer it’s really really good, but during the winter it’s terrible.”

In 2010, average hourly pay for people living in the Skegness area was about three-quarters of the British average. By 2018, it had fallen further behind: The national average was 14.36 pounds an hour, according to the ONS. But people living in and around Skegness were making just over 10 pounds an hour.

On a Sunday night in a pub in Wainfleet near Skegness, father and son John and Andrew Eldin were almost the only customers. John, 77, said that to stay in Europe would be to be “ruled by a load of boneheads. I voted out. Because I remembered how good it was before we went in.”

Eldin and his son, a heavy goods driver and mechanic, spoke heatedly about how there has been diminishing care for old farm hands in the region who have been afflicted by arthritis after years harvesting cabbages. Now, they said, locals are undermined in the jobs market by immigrants from eastern Europe who have freedom of access, and also compete for schools and healthcare.

REDCAR, NORTH YORKSHIRE

A militant mood is mounting in Redcar, a small town devastated in 2015 by the closure of its steelworks with the loss of around 3,000 jobs. In January, local media reported, demonstrators marched in yellow vests with the slogan “leave means leave” to urge their member of parliament, who backed the Remain campaign, to quit. The politician did not step down and tensions still run high.

“Life’s gonna change after this because of the politicians” who run the country, said Kevin Calvey, an unemployed 64-year-old. “Everything’s gonna be contested from now on.”

He thinks London is absorbing investment that the rest of the country needs. A new rail link across the capital is costing some $22 billion. The government’s refusal to grant a loan to the Redcar steelworks forced the plant to close. Redcar is a relatively young town, but more than a quarter of residents have no qualifications. Relative pay has declined since 2010.

“London just needs feeding all the time, to the detriment of the rest of the country,” said Calvey. He said he voted to leave the EU “because I didn’t want the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels telling us what to do.”

Fish-and-chip shop owner and Leave voter Mark Scorer works in Redcar because businesses in his home town of Sunderland were too expensive to take on, he said. “I just think Britain’s been on the decline since the 80s,” he said. “There’s not much out there for people, sometimes people have got to move away to get jobs. They go to university to get these degrees and then they move to London … which is a shame.”

Further up the coast, a postcard on sale in the former fishing town of Whitby depicted the shuttered hulk of Redcar’s steelworks above a banner, “dystopia-on-sea.”

WHITBY, NORTH YORKSHIRE

In Whitby harbor, kipper smoker Derek Brown said his family has been in the business for 146 years. For the past 30 or so, he says, the fish he has been smoking has had to be imported from Norway and Iceland because herring can no longer be found off the coast. The reasons for this include overfishing and climate change, but he felt London and Brussels have not helped.

When Britain joined the then European Economic Community, the country opened its fishing waters to other states, which today catch more in UK waters than do UK boats. “I want change,” Brown said. “Hopefully we’ll get our fishing grounds back.”

Pay in the Whitby area has picked up since 2010, but still lags the British average. A higher-than-average share of people say they have no qualifications, and in the 2011 census, 97 percent gave their nationalities as white English or British variants.

Guest house and tea shop owner Alice Raven, 27, said she didn’t vote in the referendum but she sees more opportunities for England outside the EU. Her gothic-themed cafe plays on Whitby’s appeal as the site where the 19th-century novelist Bram Stoker brought his villain, Count Dracula, into England.

“I think leaving would be the best option,” she said, sitting next to a skeleton outside her tea rooms. “I don’t think you can trust any of the government at the moment.”

MORECAMBE, LANCASHIRE

On the northwest coast, fisherwoman Margaret Owen, just back from delivering a batch of sprats to feed the seals in Blackpool Zoo, was boiling over at the politicians’ ignorance. She said it was preventing her from earning a living.

In the summer months Owen, 66, uses a haaf net, an ancient technique dating back to the Vikings to catch salmon and sea trout as they head upriver. The job is dangerous: Users manipulate a device like a cutdown soccer goal post while standing in deep, fast-running water. Owen has until recently been licensed to fish in this traditional way. But now salmon are an endangered species, and from this year she has been told that EU regulations mean she must discard any salmon she catches.

This, she says, is unrealistic, not least because she sometimes fishes at night.

“I stand in the water up to my chest,” she said. “It can be pitch black, turbulent, raining, sand’s going from under your feet. You get it (the fish) in the net, it goes right to the back of the net. You’ve got to catch it, kill it, and put it on your belt and let me tell you, I haven’t got time to say, ‘Are you a sea trout or a salmon?'”

Owen said she originally wanted out of the EU: “We were hoping for a change for everybody.” But now, she says she has changed her mind, because talks so far don’t look like delivering what the fishing industry hoped.

Other fishermen in Morecambe Bay gather shellfish, such as cockles and mussels, for export, mainly to southern Europe. Leaving could restrict their access to European markets, but two of them said they still wanted out, even though they worried about the potential impact on their business. UK cockle fisheries made over four million pounds in 2017.

The EU was originally set up for fair trading, said one of these fishermen, Michael Wilson, but it hasn’t worked out like that. “We’ve countries joining with no money and we were providing money, so it was time to get out or go independent, I think.”

BRIGHTON, EAST SUSSEX

The Leave vote cuts little ice in Brighton on the south coast, one of the few coastal towns with a clear majority in favor of remaining in Europe. In the wealthier part of town, almost three-quarters of voters wanted to stay in Europe.

“I believe that the Leave campaign was based entirely on lies and there was no way I was going to vote in support of that,” said Ruby McMahon, a 22-year-old literature graduate who works in a clothing store. She came to Brighton in 2015 to go to university, and said she stayed because she had been raised “in a very conservative backwards town.”

Brighton’s demographic profile is almost the mirror image of Skegness. People who live in the town, which houses the UK headquarters of American Express, earn more than the British average – almost 10 percent more in Brighton Pavilion, the richer part of town. The mean age, at 37, is younger than average, according to the 2011 census. Almost 40 percent are educated to the highest level, and around 20 percent of residents say their ethnicity is not white English or British.

McMahon – like the Ovingtons in Skegness – said her vote was partly driven by her aspirations for the future.

But where the Ovingtons want more opportunities at home, McMahon worries that Brexit will damage her chances of living and working outside England: Once outside the European Union, Britons may no longer enjoy freedom of movement.

“I’m scared of how badly handled it’s been,” she said.

(Ledwith reported from London; Additional reporting by Michael Holden; Edited by Janet McBride and Richard Woods)

Source: OANN

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Concealed carry holder, felon killed in Chicago shootout

Chicago police say a 64-year-old man with a concealed carry license and a man recently released from prison fatally shot each other in what is believed to be an attempted robbery.

Police spokeswoman Officer Michelle Tannehill says Mark Miller was outside a property he owns on the city's South Side when the 33-year-old former inmate pulled a handgun and attempted to rob him on Thursday morning. Miller then pulled out his own handgun.

Tannehill says the gunman shot Miller in the abdomen, and Miller returned fire. She says both men were found dead at the scene, along with two firearms.

Authorities have not yet identified the gunman. Autopsies for both men are scheduled for Friday.

___

Information from: Chicago Tribune, http://www.chicagotribune.com

Source: Fox News National

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Rep. Rose: Apology for Omar's Words Part of Changing Politics

Rep. Max Rose said Thursday he decided to tell a group of Jewish people in his district in Staten Island that he's sorry for the words of fellow Rep Ilhan Omar because he believes in changing American politics.

"Everybody is blaming each other," the New York Democrat told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "She caused pain in the Jewish community. She apologized, but we are working as hard as we can to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Muslims also are feeling an incredible amount of pain, said Rose, noting that Staten Island and Brooklyn have one of the largest Muslim communities in the country.

However, he said he does not believe Omar to be anti-Semitic, but he thought her tweets were, and he apologized "because they came out of Congress. This shouldn't be news that someone did this. This should be run of the mill stuff."

He also noted that on the same day or the day before Omar made her comments about Jews and the government on Twitter, there was a "very, very public threat made against her life."

"There is an incredible rise of Islamophobia in this country," said Rose, while commenting on an anti-hate resolution that was passed after Omar's tweets. Initially, the resolution was going to be against anti-Semitic statements but was widened to encompass other religions and walks of life.

"What I saw was a resolution that pronounced objection and opposition to acts of hate, as they rise across the county, particularly anti-Semitism and Islamophobia," said Rose.

Source: NewsMax Politics

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YouTube Deletes Joe Rogan Podcast After Lobbying by George Soros Front Group

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Real News with David Knight

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Avengers fans gather at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood to attend the opening screening of
Avengers fans gather at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood to attend the opening screening of “Avengers: Endgame” in Los Angeles, California, U.S., April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Mike Blake

April 26, 2019

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Marvel Studios superhero spectacle “Avengers: Endgame” hauled in a record $60 million at U.S. and Canadian box offices during its Thursday night debut, distributor Walt Disney Co said.

Global ticket sales for the film about Iron Man, Hulk and other popular characters reached $305 million for the first two days, Disney said.

(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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Funeral of journalist Lyra McKee in Belfast
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn attends the funeral service for murdered journalist Lyra McKee at St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast, Northern Ireland April 24, 2019. Brian Lawless/Pool via REUTERS

April 26, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – The leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, said on Friday he had turned down an invitation to a state dinner which will be part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Britain in June.

“Theresa May should not be rolling out the red carpet for a state visit to honor a president who rips up vital international treaties, backs climate change denial and uses racist and misogynist rhetoric,” Corbyn said in a statement.

He said maintaining the relationship with the United States did not require “the pomp and ceremony of a state visit” and he said he would welcome a meeting with Trump “to discuss all matters of interest.”

(Reporting by Andy Bruce; Writing by William Schomberg)

Source: OANN

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Libyan Minister of Economy Ali Abdulaziz Issawi speaks during an interview with Reuters in Tripoli
Libyan Minister of Economy Ali Abdulaziz Issawi speaks during an interview with Reuters in Tripoli, Libya April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Hani Amara

April 26, 2019

By Ulf Laessing

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libya’s U.N.-recognized government has budgeted up to 2 billion dinars ($1.43 billion) to cover costs of a three-week-old war for control of the capital, such as treatment for the wounded, to be funded without new borrowing, the economy minister said.

Ali Abdulaziz Issawi suggested the government hoped for business to continue more or less as usual despite the assault on Tripoli, in the country’s northwest, by forces tied to a parallel administration based in the eastern city of Benghazi.

Once Africa’s third largest producer of oil, Libya has been riven by factional conflict since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with the country now broadly split between eastern-based forces under Khalifa Haftar and the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, in the west, under Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj.

Still, with Haftar’s Libyan National Army forces unable so far to pierce defenses in Tripoli’s southern suburbs, normal life and business activities continue in much of the capital and western coastal towns.

Issawi, in an interview with Reuters in his Tripoli office, also said Libya’s commercial ports and wheat imports were still functioning normally, although some roads have been blocked.

He said the Serraj government estimates it will spend up to 2 billion dinars extra on medical treatment for wounded, aid for displaced people and other “emergency” war costs.

He said this was not military spending but analysts believe that the sum will also cover expenditures such as pay for allied armed groups or food for fighters.

“We could actually spend less,” he added, in comments that gave the first insight into the economic impact of the fighting.

Issawi said the Tripoli government, which controls little territory beyond the greater capital region, would not incur new debt to fund the war costs, sticking to a plan to post a 2019 budget without a deficit.

Tripoli derives revenue largely from oil and natural gas production, interest-free loans from local banks to the central bank, and a 183 percent surcharge on foreign exchange transactions conducted at official rates.

But with centralized tax collection greatly diminished, public debt has piled up – to 68 billion dinars in the west, including unpaid state obligations such as social insurance.

Some analysts expect Serraj’s government will be forced to raise new debt if the war for control of Tripoli drags on.

With much of Libya dominated by armed factions that also act as security forces, the public wage bill for both the western and eastern administrations has soared as fighters have been made public employees in efforts to buy their loyalty.

The east has sold bonds worth 35 billion dinars outside the official financial system as the Tripoli central bank does not fund the parallel government apart from some wages.

Despite its limited reach, the Tripoli government still runs an annual budget of around 46.8 billion dinars, mainly for public salaries and fuel subsidies.

“This year we cannot finance via debt…we will not borrow (by agreement with the central bank),” Issawi said.

According to International Monetary Fund data, Libya’s central government debt-to-GDP ratio is 143 percent, making it one of the most heavily indebted in the world on that measure.

Issawi declined to say what parts of the budget would be trimmed to support the extra outlay for war costs.

However, with some 70 percent of the budget allocated to public wages, fuel subsidies and other welfare benefits, a portion devoted to infrastructure is most likely to be axed.

Widespread lawlessness has meant there have been no major infrastructural projects since 2011, when a NATO-backed uprising overthrew dictator Muammar Gaddafi, leaving schools, hospitals and roads in acute need of restoration.

FOREX SURCHARGE

Issawi said the government planned to raise as much as 30 billion dinars by the end of 2019 from hard currency deals after imposing in September a 183 percent surcharge on commercial and private transactions done on the official rate of 1.4 to the U.S. dollar. That fee has effectively devalued the official rate to 3.9, much closer to the black market equivalent.

Some 17 billion dinars have been raised since then, with hard currency allocated for import credit letters now issued without delays, Issawi said. The forex fee has helped the government forecast a budget in the black for 2019.

Despite the narrowing spread between the two rates, the black market continues to thrive. Dozens of traders remained at their favorite spot behind the central bank headquarters in Tripoli when Reuters reporters visited it last week.

But traders said it could take time for the Serraj government to register the extra forex receipts as official banking channels were taking up to six months to approve import financing, keeping the black market in play for dealers.

Issawi said authorities planned to lower the forex fee from 183 percent, without saying when. The black market rate has dropped from 6 to around 4.1 since September but it has hardly moved of late as demand for black market cash remains high.

The Tripoli government has stopped subsidizing food and bread, which used to be cheaper than drinking water in Libya. Wheat imports are now being arranged by private traders and there are surplus stocks of flour at the moment, Issawi said.

(Reporting by Ulf Laessing in Tripoli with additional reporting by Karin Strohecker in London; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: OANN

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Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., threatened possible jail time for White House officials refusing to comply with subpoenas to testify before the House Oversight Committee.

Connolly, a member of the House panel, made his comments during an interview on CNN on Thursday. He said that “if a subpoena is issued and you’re told you must testify, we will back that up.”

He added: “And we will use any and all power in our command to make sure it’s backed up — whether that’s a contempt citation, whether that’s going to court and getting that citation enforced, whether it’s fines, whether it’s possible incarceration.”

“We will go to the max to enforce the constitutional role of the legislative branch of government.”

His comments came after three officials have refused to comply with congressional requests to testify, CNN noted.

Trump told The Washington Post that his staff should not testify on Capitol Hill, explaining that the White House cooperated fully with special counsel Robert Mueller and “there is no reason to go any further, especially in Congress where it’s very partisan.”

Source: NewsMax Politics

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“Outdated laws” need fixing to deal with the surge in illegal immigrant families crossing the U.S. border with Mexico, a top Border Patrol official said Friday.

Migrant families face no consequences if apprehended trying to cross the border illegally under present law, Border Patrol chief of Operations Brian Hastings claimed during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.”

“We need a change in the current outdated laws that we’re dealing with for this current demographic and this crisis that we have,” he said.

Hastings said as of Thursday there have been 440,000 apprehensions along the southwest border. There were 396,000 apprehensions all of last year.

SOUTHERN BORDER AT ‘BREAKING POINT’ AFTER MORE THAN 76,000 ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS TRIED CROSSING IN FEBRUARY, OFFICIALS SAY

And those numbers continue to rise, he said.

Historically 70 to 90 percent of apprehensions at the border were quickly returned to Mexico, Hastings said.

Now, 83 percent of those apprehended have come from the Central American northern triangle which includes Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, and of those 63 percent are “family units” and children who cannot be returned, he said.

“There are no consequences that we can apply to this group currently,” Hastings said. “We’re overwhelmed. If you look at agents there doing a tremendous job trying to deal with the flow.”

The law dictates children have to be released after 20 days of detention.

FLORIDA SHERIFF ON BORDER CRISIS AFTER MAJOR DRUG BUST: ‘IT MAKES ME ABSOLUTELY CRAZY’

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., says that has forced immigration officials to release entire families because “you don’t want to separate families.”

Recently, he said he is drafting legislation that would allow children to be detained for more than 20 days.

Hastings said agents are frustrated with the situation but are doing the best they can with the resources they have.

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“Up to 40 percent of our agents are processing at any given time,” he said. “That should say that in and of itself is pulling from those border security resources.”

Source: Fox News National

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