The bill doesn’t include money for the border wall or block funds for ‘sanctuary cities.’
Congressional leaders have reached a deal on a $1 trillion spending bill that would fund the government at updated levels through the end of September but deny President Donald Trump wins on his border wall plans and his crackdown on sanctuary cities.
The bipartisan deal struck Sunday night would increase defense spending and provide $1.5 billion in new border security spending aimed at repairing existing infrastructure and increasing technology, though it would not allocate any new funding for a Southern border wall with Mexico despite the president’s insistence. Under the plan, Congress would provide $15 billion in supplemental funding requested by President Donald Trump to fight terrorism, though $2.5 billion of that is contingent on the White House presenting Congress with a plan to fight the Islamic State.
Trumps automatic response to any criticism has been to come back swinging. While is has been sometimes successful, especially against other candidates – it has also resulted in some huge losses…AKA Megyn Kelly.
The current version of that is to go after the Pope, who in current incarnation the job is filled by a pretty likeable guy who is making a lot of inroads around the world in sometimes, unexpected places. Furthermore Donald, I kind of hate to be the first one to tell you this…But in this case, the Pope actually IS Holier than thou.
Donald Trump has responded to Pope Francis, who on Thursday said the GOP candidate was not a Christian because of his comments about immigrants.
“If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President because this would not have happened,” a statement on his website reads. “ISIS would have been eradicated unlike what is happening now with our all talk, no action politicians.”
Pope Francis had criticized Trump’s rhetoric earlier today while finishing up his trip through Mexico, saying that, “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the gospel.”
Trump lashed out at the Pope for questioning his Christian faith.
“For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful,” he wrote. (Uhhhhh…Ignoring the “Obama Exception” here, Donald? Sort of like this – Cruz-loving End Times pastor uses numerology to prove Obama sacrificed Scalia in pagan ritual) “I am proud to be a Christian and as President I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened, unlike what is happening now, with our current President. (The old “Obama is a Muslim scam?) No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man’s religion or faith. (Except if that religious leader is a white, racist, fundamentalist …In which case it’s OK)They are using the Pope as a pawn and they should be ashamed of themselves for doing so, especially when so many lives are involved and when illegal immigration is so rampant.” (Hate to tell you this #2. More Mexicans have left the US to go home than have come here the last 8 years…)
Francis isn’t the only one to call Trump’s faith into question. Trump has bungled Bible quotes and verses in the past in efforts to charm religious voters.
Furthermore, characterizing undocumented border crossing as “rampant” flies in the face of reality, as immigration across the southern border is at a low and many of those crossing are fleeing violence, according to the LA Times.
Nevertheless, Trump has made talk about building a bigger wall — which he implausibly says Mexico will pay for — along the southern border his go-to crowd pleaser.
Francis stopped short of telling Catholic voters who to choose, but did say, “I would only say that this man is not Christian if he has said things like that.”
Texas - Don't Want Your Kind Comin' 'Round Here...Except to Trim the Bushes.
Texas Republican would like to join their whack job bretheren in other states like Arizona on bashing illegal immigransts and implementing Jiminez Crow…
Honest they would…
But then who is going to cut the grass and change Junior’s diapers? And then there is the small problem that there are now fewer white Republicans in Texas… Than folks with a permanent tan. Come election time, that is a sure remedy to a State’s Red stature.
In a scene from the movie “A Day Without a Mexican”, a Texas legislator bellies up to getting really tough on people who hire illegal aliens…
The latest bill addressing illegal immigration and the hiring of undocumented workers in Texas would broaden the scope of employers subject to scrutiny — and extend the penalties for violators to include possible jail time and thousands of dollars in fines. Exempt from the proposed rule? People who hire undocumented workers as domestic helpers in their family homes.
House Bill 1202, authored by state Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, would make it a state jail felony to knowingly hire undocumented workers in Texas. The bill would punish those who “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly” hire or contract with an “unauthorized alien”, or with someone who knowingly subcontracts with an undocumented worker. The maximum fine is $10,000, and guilty parties could face a stint in prison of 180 days to two years. (Riddle has also filed HB 17, legislation that would make being in the state illegally a trespassing offense.)
There are exemptions in HB 1202, however, including one that could make the proposal more acceptable to House Republicans concerned with the federal electronic employment verification system known as E-Verify. While several Republicans have filed bills mandating the use of E-Verify, others suggest it has proven flaws and could potentially act as a deterrent to otherwise capable and legal applicants. Riddle’s bill doesn’t specify E-Verify and says employers have an out if they make a concerted effort to verify status in any manner “that is more likely than not to produce a correct and reliable result.”
Jon English, Riddle’s chief of staff, said E-Verify wasn’t specified because Riddle didn’t want to constrain employers to one system. “As far as we’re concerned, it will be up to whoever is prosecuting the case, what juries are going to say fits the definition of ‘recklessly,'” he said. “But we’re pretty sure that if you make anything that amounts to a good-faith attempt to verify anybody’s information … that that would prevent you from being prosecuted.”
There is also an exception for domestic help. People who hire or contract with someone for work “exclusively or primarily at a single-family residence” are off the hook.
English said that exception was geared toward not “stifling the economic engine” in Texas, so that people who contract out for work in or on their homes don’t have to vet everyone.
The number of illegal immigrants in America stopped growing for the first time since 1990 — dropping from a peak of 12 million to 11.1 million last year, according to a Pew Hispanic Center study released Wednesday.
The average annual influx of illegal immigrants dropped as well, from 850,000 in the first five years of the current decade, to 300,000 in 2009.
The findings, based on extrapolations of U.S. Census data, may be attributable to fewer jobs in the troubled U.S. economy and harsher enforcement on the Southern border, Pew demographer Jeffrey Passel said.
About 7 million illegal immigrants were employed in the United States in 2009, down from 8 million in 2007, according to the report.
Deportations over the same period rose — from 319,382 in 2007 to 393,289, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Florida, Nevada, and Virginia saw the largest declines in illegal immigrants, according to Pew, a nonpartisan research organization.
Overall, illegal immigrants make up about 4 percent of the U.S. population.
The study is the latest talking point for all sides in the national debate about illegal immigration.
Christine Thurlow Brenner, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University-Camden and a member of a commission advising New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on immigrant integration, believes the decline is mostly jobs-related.
“Some people will spin this to say the heightened security is working,” Brenner said. “To me, the decline demonstrates that jobs really are the key attractor” and the U.S. economy is a weaker magnet at the moment.
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