The Border Czar is Cass Sunstein NOT Kamala

Stop blaming Kamala, blame Biden himself. The president has filled his administration with militants and radicals. There is no denial. It was 14 years ago that Glenn Beck did they work and declared on this point that Cass Sunstein was the most dangerous man in government.

“There is a reason that I have called Cass Sunstein the most dangerous man in America,” Glenn said on radio this morning.

ProgressivesToday.com, the website co-founded by Kyle Olsen, the co-author of Glenn’s latest book Conform: Exposing the Truth About Common Core and Public Education, was the first to draw attention to the spooky article from the Nudge author.

Sunstein begins the article wondering what would happen if a government began a program with the explicit goal of indoctrination students:

Suppose that an authoritarian government decides to embark on a program of curricular reform, with the explicit goal of indoctrinating the nation’s high school students. Suppose that it wants to change the curriculum to teach students that their government is good and trustworthy, that their system is democratic and committed to the rule of law, and that free markets are a big problem.

Will such a government succeed? Or will high school students simply roll their eyes?

Questions of this kind have long been debated, but without the benefit of reliable evidence. New research, from Davide Cantoni of the University of Munich and several co-authors, shows that recent curricular reforms in China, explicitly designed to transform students’ political views, have mostly worked. The findings offer remarkable evidence about the potential influence of the high school curriculum on what students end up thinking — and they give us some important insights into contemporary China as well.

He goes on to explain that the indoctrination program began in 2001 when the country made “significant changes in the textbooks used by students in grades 10, 11 and 12.” Ultimately, Sunstein questions whether such a program could produce similar outcomes in a non-authoritarian country.

At the time, Sunstein was the regulatory czar…now….today he is at DHS and in charge of destroying the sovereignty of the United States as the real border czar. Obviously more dangerous today for reasons too long to list but certainly Biden has accepted the Sunstein doctrine to collapse control of immigration.

It was in 2021 that the following was published by Bloomberg:

Harvard’s Sunstein Joins Biden’s DHS to Shape Immigration Rules

  • Progressive groups had raised concern about Sunstein’s record
  • His wife is Biden nominee for international development agency

In part:

Former Obama administration official Cass Sunstein on Monday joined the Department of Homeland Security, where President Joe Biden is moving rapidly to roll back Donald Trump’s immigration policy priorities.

Sunstein is a senior counselor who will be responsible for making sure that the rules put forward by the department and its agencies are based on evidence and consistent with the law, an administration official said.

In 2018, Sunstein received the Holberg Prize, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for law and the humanities, from Norway’s government. He also worked in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the Carter and Reagan administrations.

Sunstein’s wife, Samantha Power, is Biden’s nominee for administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Power’s financial disclosures showed Sunstein earning consulting fees from Apple Inc. and Global Asset Capital LLC, as well as advisory fees and stock options from Humu Inc. He also reported royalties from dozens of book publications. More here.

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This past January, Bloomberg also reported:

The impasse over President Joe Biden’s immigration wish list on Capitol Hill has increased pressure on a Department of Homeland Security official working to overhaul the system through regulation.

The administration last year tapped Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein to advise on DHS regulations. The legal scholar is best known for his role as the Obama White House’s rulemaking czar and his writings on behavioral economics and regulation — not the finer points of homeland security.

Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wanted someone equipped for the regulatory challenges the agency faces on immigration, as well as disaster response, aviation security, and other DHS matters, Sunstein said in an interview.

“The first obligation is to do it right,” he said.

The immigration proposals in the works at DHS are critical to meeting at least part of Biden’s ambitious campaign pledge to create a path to citizenship for millions, end long-term detention, and revamp the legal immigration system. The congressional stalemate has made DHS-led efforts more urgent.

DHS first unwound several of former President Donald Trump’s policies, from restricting entry to the U.S. and expanding enforcement. Next, the agency is focused on reducing backlogs in the asylum system and reinforcing protections for immigrants brought to the U.S. as children without authorization.

Photo: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
Cass Sunstein speaks at an event at AOL Studios on May 31, 2016, in New York City.

Sunstein is shepherding those efforts. Officially, he is senior counselor to the secretary and co-chair of the agency’s climate change action group. Unofficially, he’s the wonk tasked with restoring order in a department battered by public criticism and leadership gaps during the Trump administration.

“I sensed that there was a real appetite for, let’s say, good order,” Sunstein said of the DHS regulatory team’s attitude when he joined the agency almost a year ago.

Sunstein is working on regulations and internal processes across the department’s portfolio, but immigration has taken center stage.

The agency is attempting to cement protections in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which launched via an Obama-era memorandum and has never been reinforced in an official rulemaking. The proposed rule already faces headwinds after a federal court questioned the department’s authority to offer such status.

Another proposal would revamp the asylum process for border crossers, letting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers adjudicate claims instead of funneling them to backlogged immigration courts.

The approach would streamline the process “so that people who don’t deserve asylum can get that answer in short order and they won’t live in Dante’s purgatory,” Sunstein said. “People who deserve asylum will get that answer in shorter order,” he added.

DHS is also working on a rule that would clarify who’s eligible for asylum. The department will likely release a draft this year, Sunstein said.

“Neither of these is on the backburner,” he said of the asylum measures. The Biden administration on Thursday finalized an increase in visas for temporary nonagricultural workers.

“With Congress not making any major changes in the immigration space right now, regulations are often the best way to make lasting change in the way the laws are interpreted within the department,” American Immigration Council policy counsel Aaron Reichlin-Melnick said.

Bolstering Rules

At the same time, Republicans have taken up border security as a cudgel against Democrats in the lead-up to the midterm elections, and GOP-led states are taking the fight to federal courts — with frequent success so far.

That gives Sunstein the critical job of anticipating possible critiques and making sure the agency’s actions can withstand them. His placement in DHS shows the Biden administration recognizes the legal hazards that lie ahead, former agency official Theresa Cardinal Brown said.

Sunstein “knows the process probably better than just about anybody else you could find right now,” said Brown, now managing director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “He literally has written books on this.” Read more here.

I'd consider a White House job offer in a heartbeat' - Dublin-born former  advisor to Barack Obama - Independent.ie source and adjacent article here

At the very least, czars should be defunded and let the FOIA requests begin.

 

Biden Admin Ignores Cartels Trafficking Human Organs

Will someone in the Washington DC please ask Joe Biden or DHS Secretary Mayorkas how many deaths is the right number before the border is closed?

It is not only well know but proven that the cartels have illicit partnerships with the Chinese Communist Party for trafficking narcotics especially fentanyl. Fentanyl kills on average 100,000 Americans per years. But it is worse than we know.

On the Interpol website, the following is posted in part (notice the inclusion of ‘migrants’):

Vulnerable communities

Organized criminal groups profit from the desperation of the unemployed, migrants, asylum seekers and refugees to coerce them into selling an organ. Victims of human trafficking for sexual and labour purposes also find themselves at additional risk.

The techniques used for the recruitment and control of the victims are the same as those used for other types of human trafficking, such as promises of job opportunities abroad, as well as the use of threats and violence.

Most often, victim-donors receive a smaller amount of the money than had been agreed with the recruiter or broker, and in some cases they may not get any of the promised payment. Many victim-donors have suffered post-operative complications and health issues.

The socioeconomic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to fuel THBOR as it will likely be easier for brokers to coerce vulnerable individuals to sell an organ to improve their economic conditions. This is exacerbated by the fact that legal organ donations, and therefore transplants, have suffered major decreases since the outbreak of COVID-19.

Actionable intelligence

“While trafficking in human beings for organ removal is not a new phenomenon, it is underreported due to the clandestine nature of the crime, combined with a lack of awareness by law enforcement agencies and the deficiency of information sharing channels between the medical and police sectors,” said Cyril Gout, INTERPOL’s Direct of Operational Support and Analysis. More here.

***

Then going back to 2007, Reuters published a series of articles titled the Transplant Trade listing China and Columbia as hotspots for trafficking of human organs. Where is Reuters now exactly as a follow up?

***

How about just as recently as 2020 when the National Institute of Health published much the same titled ‘The Untold Story’?

2020 May; 17(9): 3204.
Published online 2020 May 5. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17093204
PMCID: PMC7246946
PMID: 32380680

Organ Trafficking and Migration: A Bibliometric Analysis of an Untold Story

Abstract

The debate over trafficking of human beings for the purpose of organ removal (THBOR) remains largely absent from policy debates, as its crime is hardly detected, reported and sparsely researched. However, criminal networks continue to exploit vulnerable populations, particularly migrants. To help bridge this gap in knowledge, we employ a bibliometric analysis to examine whether the nexus between organ removal and migration is being addressed by the current academic literature. Our results indicate that (1) research exploring the link between THBOR and migrants is relatively scarce; (2) organ trafficking literature output is largely clustered in a couple of Western countries, and (3) despite the international nature of the topic, most empirical studies on organ trafficking and migration lack representation within the social sciences and humanities. Taken together, our results point to a huge gap on scientific publications between THBOR and migration. Quantitative data is required to lift the current knowledge constraints and better inform policymakers.

Keywords: organ trafficking, migration, health, human trafficking, THBOR, refugees
Why is all of this important? Illegal migration has been a catastrophe across the world for many years and yet no world leaders or organizations seem to address it much less prosecute it especially the United States….how about those pesky ‘American values’? So, Fox News, a news organization that has been dogged in reporting almost alone the crisis at the Southern border, the cartels and the fentanyl deaths, sent investigative reporter Sara Carter on a mission.

Biden slammed for ‘immoral’ open-border policy after human trafficker describes what happens to children

Cartels harvest children’s organs, then fill the corpse with drugs for trafficking, according to one smuggler

At least the Republicans in the House know about it and tried to advance some legislation in 2021. Where are the Democrats as co-sponsors or how come this has not advanced?

H.R.1434 – Stop Predatory Organ Trafficking Act of 2021

SEC. 2. Findings.

Congress finds the following:

The Left leaning think tank, The Brookings Institute published an extensive report on the topic. One take-away in part –>

Vanda Felbab-Brown: What struck me most in my research on China’s role in Mexico’s illicit economies was the intensifying intermeshing of drug trafficking and wildlife trafficking. Chinese criminal groups, suppliers, and consumers increasingly play a significant role in Mexico’s drug trafficking and wildlife trafficking.

In drug trafficking, Chinese brokers are the dominant suppliers of scheduled and non-scheduled, unregulated precursor chemicals for the production of methamphetamine, fentanyl and other synthetic opioids and previously also of finished fentanyl and its analogs. Mexican drug cartels then sell fentanyl and methamphetamine throughout North America and increasingly beyond. Chinese actors also launder money for Mexican drug trafficking cartels.

Related reading from the DEA

Can’t show any photos, they are too graphic.

 

The indifference is staggering. Ever wonder if there is any reporting of this in the Presidential Daily Briefing? Would it matter?

Carry on…

 

Exactly Why Was That Mar A Lago Search Warrant so Broad?

Consider the following….here is where critical thinking is important and there are some assumptions below which could turn out to be factual….could….

President Trump did have some legally and politically savvy people working for him within his administration and outside of government. It is true he also had some real duds….and post his presidency, he has had a lot of visitors come with ideas, objectives and action plans….

With all that in mind….it cannot be overlooked that the Biden administration employs hundreds of left-over Obama officials and clearly they are helping to drive so much of is damaging the country today.

The full text of the search warrant is found here.

Of note is this section: e, or transmission of national defense information or classified material; c. Any government and/or Presidential Records created between January 20.2017, and January 20, 2021; 

***

Something real fascinating is this short Reuters report –> (note the date)

The Fall of Afghanistan Report, One Year Later

Axios is reporting in part:

The White House is planning to circulate a new memo on Capitol Hill defending President Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and claiming the move strengthened national security by freeing up critical military and intelligence agents, according to a copy of the document obtained by Axios.

Why it matters: The memo comes as many across Washington are still seeking answers about the flawed evacuation. Republicans in particular are planning to use the one-year anniversary to reexamine the failures that led to the Afghan capital swiftly falling into the hands of the Taliban.

Driving the news: The memo was written by National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson in part as an attempt to preempt criticism from Republicans who are releasing an interim report on Sunday outlining what they see as the failures of the administration’s preparations for the evacuation.

  • The GOP report, led by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the likely chair of the panel if Republicans take back the majority next year, claims the Biden administration left key decisions on how to evacuate civilians from Kabul until the final hours before the city fell to the Taliban.
  • “There was a complete lack and a failure to plan. There was no plan and there was no plan executed,” McCaul said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday morning.

Details: The memo argues the GOP report is “riddled with false claims” and puts the onus on former President Trump for striking a 2020 deal with the Taliban — known as the “Doha agreement” — to evacuate the U.S. from the region by May 2021.

***

While some Afghanis fled to Iran were offered immunity to return, the report to soon be released is in stern opposition to the Biden White House positive spin. And while often inviting Biden administration officials to participate, especially the U.S. State Department, none did.

From the Military Times in part:

Thousands of Afghan security personnel, including special forces troops, likely fled to Iran with U.S. equipment and military knowledge as their country fell to Taliban insurgents last year, according to a new report released by House Republican leaders on Monday.

The 119-page document accuses President Joe Biden’s administration of failing to adequately prepare for the evacuation of Afghan allies in the months leading up to the full withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country in August 2021. This includes using just 36 consular officers to process more than 100,000 requests for evacuation.

The authors said their findings come from interviews with whistleblowers, previously unreleased State Department memos and interviews with individuals on the ground in Afghanistan in the days leading up to the withdrawal.

It does not include any direct testimony from senior administration officials, who have previously criticized Republicans’ work on the issue as politically motivated.

***

There is a somewhat accurate report published by GZERO…it reads as follows:

Contrary to the hopes of optimists, no “Taliban 2.0” has emerged. The regime hasn’t really reformed, and is as hardline as it was when it ruled the country from 1996 to 2001.

There is no constitution. Religious policing is back with a vengeance. The media is muzzled. And the recent US killing of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a Kabul enclave that houses senior members of the Haqqani Network — whose boss is the current interior minister — has confirmed the skeptics who thought the Taliban could or would never disassociate from international terrorism.

Financially, things are as bad as they can get. The economy has essentially collapsed under the weight of international isolation, sanctions, and aid cuts. It was so hooked to the war that six months after the American withdrawal, GDP fell by a third. Now, Afghanistan is near universal poverty and starvation.

Women and girls have had it the worst. Millions of them have found themselves out of school, out of jobs, and out of public life altogether. The Taliban’s supreme leader vetoed a government edict to let them back to class in March, a political development that underscores serious schisms within the regime’s conservative and moderate — by Taliban standards — elements.

On Sunday, on the eve of the re-establishment of the “Islamic Emirate,” a few brave women marched in a rare protest in Kabul. They were beaten and scared off by automatic gunfire.

Afghan women wearing traditional burqas walk past a cemetery in Kabul (AFP via Getty Images) More details here

Afghan women wearing traditional burqas walk past a cemetery in Kabul (AFP via Getty Images)

But the United States is financially providing money support in Afghanistan….

Please note –>

SIGAR noted in its January 2022 report that,4

    • The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that donors contributed $1.67 billion for Afghanistan humanitarian assistance programs in 2021. The United States contributed the largest amount, over $425 million. These amounts far exceeded previous years’ humanitarian assistance.

 

    • …On December 22, the Treasury Department broadened the types of activities authorized under U.S. licenses, and the UN Security Council established a UN sanctions exemption to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian and other forms of aid to Afghanistan.

 

    • On January 11, 2022, the White House announced an additional $308 million in U.S. humanitarian aid for Afghanistan. On that same day, the UN launched a $5 billion funding appeal for its 2022 Afghanistan Humanitarian Response Plan, the largest single- country aid appeal in UN history.

 

  • On January 26, the UN announced an additional appeal for $3.6 billion as part of its Transitional Engagement Framework. In total, the framework calls for more than $8 billion in humanitarian and other aid for Afghanistan.

No one can really estimate what is really required at this point or what arrangements the U.S. and other outside powers can make to allocate such aid to the Taliban or any other successor government, but the current outlook of estimates – that are even as high as $8.6 billion – seem to ignore several critical aspects of the financing of the past Afghan central government and the impact of its spending on the Afghan people before it was defeated and collapsed.

    • Some 75% of all Afghan government spending came from aid. As SIGAR notes, “prior to the collapse of the Islamic Republic, international aid contributed to around 40% of Afghanistan’s GDP and 75% of public expenditures.5 Total government spending financed most of the modern sector of the Afghan economy except for hard currency earnings from the export of narcotics.

 

  • For political reasons, much of the economic data on Afghanistan did not include narcotics exports. However, UNDOC estimates that, “the gross output of the Afghan opiate economy was between $1.8 and $2.7 billion in 2021, comprising the equivalent of 9–14% of Afghanistan’s GDP and exceeding the value of all of Afghanistan’s officially recorded licit exports for 2020 (estimated at 9% of GDP).6

Hat tip to at Least One Whistleblower

Primer:

According to Bloomberg News, the Biden administration is also reallocating $860 million in funding for COVID-19 relief to cover pandemic costs relating to illegal immigrant children.

In a letter reviewed by the news outlet, Health Secretary Xavier Becerra told members of Congress that his department would move funding to ensure illegal immigrant children’s safety, in addition to the staff taking care of them at shelters. Additionally, last year to General Accounting Office performed a comprehensive audit and the result(s) stinks when it comes to the Department of Defense.

source

In part:

The Department of Defense has provided U.S. Customs and Border Protection with personnel and other support for at least 2 decades. DOD evaluates requests for assistance against 6 criteria, including cost and how providing support would affect military readiness.

We looked at 4 such requests for assistance that DOD approved. We found that DOD used unreliable cost estimates and didn’t fully evaluate the effects of the requests on military readiness. Also, DOD didn’t track all costs or give Congress timely information on the full costs it incurred for homeland security support, as it was mandated to do. Our 7 recommendations address these issues. The full report is found here. 

***

As you read on….just wonder if any personnel in the National Guard sends a weekly or monthly report to the Pentagon….and…has anyone asked in there is an FBI task force at the border doing FBI stuff?

Hat tip to PM: In an exclusive sit-down interview, an active member of the National Guard has gone on record against Joe Biden sharing “America is probably the weakest it’s ever been.” From harrowing stories of finding mutilated bodies at the border, to the cartel shooting at our service members, the border has gotten so bad that this National Guardsman was willing to risk his career to speak out.


“We’re very vulnerable,” he said on condition of anonymity. “It’s only a matter of time before somebody actually gets shot, or something bad actually happens.”

When asked if he felt his life was being put at risk by the current administration’s policies at the border, he said “absolutely. You never know who is crossing. You never know who is going to cross. Under Trump, it seemed like it was a lot more controlled. The border flowed a lot easier. The numbers spoke for themselves, and now it’s kind of like, you know, everybody is allowed to come in.”

 


He explained how the cartels use extreme measures to “intimidate and scare” border agents.
“Here in the valley,” he said, “you’re going to see a lot of drug flow and a lot of violence from the cartel to try to cover that up. They push large groups of migrants across.”
“They shoot at us quite often,” he said of the cartels. He detailed how the cartels would leave bodies around “to show us like, ‘hey, this is what we’re doing.'”
In one instance, he said that National Guardsmen found the body of a man whose head had been dipped in acid by the cartel.


Of that instance, he said “Border Patrol let us know that there was a body somewhere in the area, and some of the guys went looking for it, and sure enough they ended up finding it on our side of the river, which tells us that the cartel crossed him over and left it there for us to find and went back.”
He said this was a “scare tactic” from the cartels, and that “morale wise… it puts everybody more on an edge.”
“The way I see it,” he continued, “America is probably at its weakest, as weak as it’s ever been in a long time right now. We’re very vulnerable, and I feel like it’s only a matter of time before somebody actually gets shot, or something bad actually happens. And for the administration to realize, ‘hey, maybe we do need to do something here,’ versus under Trump, he didn’t take those chances.”
Despite this, he said, it is the children abandoned at the border that haunt him.
“Probably for me being shot at, and the dead bodies, that doesn’t really hold much weight, but when I see the kids—I think that’s what has mentally been draining me.”
The Guardsman spoke about meeting an 11-year-old girl, whose mother sent her alone to America, equipping her with a box of condoms.
“When I found her, she had three condoms left in a box of like 15. Pretty much the coyotes did what they wanted with her and she was only 11,” the Guardsmen shared.
He now believes “it’s only a matter of time before a Guardsman loses his life to the cartel.”