AFTERNOON BRIEFING: SCOTUS ruling, Biden’s border chaos, collusion and crime, Dems trying to flip state, Store favored by conservatives exposed for DEI push, more….

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Below are important excerpts from some of the top stories in the news this afternoon:

BIG NEWS 

1 – Supreme Court rules on key Second Amendment law

From CBS News: The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a federal law that prohibits people who are subject to domestic-violence restraining orders from having firearms, ruling that the measure does not violate the Second Amendment.

The court ruled 8-1 that a person who has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion. Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter, though five of the justices issued concurring opinions.

The high court’s decision reversed a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which struck down the gun possession ban for alleged domestic abusers.

2 – American returning home after months in Turks and Caicos legal nightmare

From Fox News: The Oklahoma man who was facing 12 years in a tropical prison after Turks and Caicos authorities found four stray bullets in his luggage is coming back to the United States after a months-long ordeal.

Ryan Watson, 40, was arrested in April at the country’s main airport. At his sentencing hearing Friday, Watson received a suspended 13-week jail sentence and a fine of $2,000 – or $500 per bullet, according to family spokesman Jonathan Franks.

Watson was expected to pay the fine and get on a flight to Oklahoma City before the end of the day. Watson previously told Fox News Digital he had no intention of bringing ammunition on his vacation and that the bullets had been forgotten in his bag after a prior hunting trip.

2024 ELECTION

3 – Biden opens Obama’s playbook to flip state GOP has dominated for decades

From the Washington Exmaminer: The campaign to reelect President Joe Biden is planning on spending millions in North Carolina, hopeful they can flip the state blue as the Obama-Biden ticket once did.

Biden’s campaign has 16 offices and hired more than 60 staff members in the state so far, which is more than he invested in the state in 2020 and Hillary Clinton did in 2016. The Biden campaign has spent $5.2 million in the Tar Heel state as of June 19, an investment that could force former President Donald Trump’s campaign to spend money in the Republican-leaning state. So far, Trump’s campaign has not spent anything in North Carolina.

Biden lost the state to Trump in 2020 by just more than 1 percentage point. Before former President Barack Obama captured the state in 2008, the last time North Carolina chose a Democrat for the presidency was in 1976 for Jimmy Carter. Biden’s loss there in 2020, which was by about 74,000 votes, was the closest a Democrat has come to winning the presidency there since Obama in 2008.

NOTE: In a recent poll, Trump is leading Biden in North Carolina by 3 points.

MORE: The governor’s race in North Carolina is also getting heated, as Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a Republican, has soared ahead of Democrat Attorney General Josh Stein.

BORDER CHAOS – EXTORTION , COLLUSION & CRIME

4 – Mexican cartels offering $15K VIP ‘travel agency’ packages to help illegal immigrants sneak into US

From the New York Post: Mexican cartels are now offering VIP “travel agency” packages worth as much as $15,000 to help illegal immigrants sneak into the United States via a stream of underground tunnels.

The so-called VIP smuggling has become so lucrative that the cartels are now focusing roughly 70% of their criminal activity on getting migrants across the US-Mexico border — instead of their usual drug trafficking, USA Today reported.

The La Linea cartel, for example, has allegedly been shepherding roughly 1,000 VIP migrants from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico into El Paso, Texas every month, a senior Mexican official told the outlet.

The migration travel agency packages can range between $6,000 to $15,000 per person, according to both smugglers and migrants.

The VIP migrants are given a code, which identifies what cartel they’ve paid to help them, so they can avoid being harassed by local cops or rival syndicates as they traverse through the tunnels, according to officials. Mexican National Guard members and immigration bureaucrats, as well as local cops, are allegedly in on the VIP ruse and have been accepting bribes from cartels, officials claimed.

From USA Today: “Remittances in cities like Ciudad Juárez have doubled to nearly $90 million per trimester so far in 2024,” said Ines Barrios de la O, an immigration specialist at the college. That is up from between $40 million to $60 million in the border town in 2015, she said. Migrants come to the city from all over the globe. Some, like the Chinese, pay exorbitant fees of up to $75,000 for the VIP packages…

5 – New $72,000 migrant smuggling routes to the US start with charter flights

From Reuters: When a Legend Airlines Airbus A 340 landed at San Salvador airport on July 15 after an 18-hour flight from the United Arab Emirates, its crew quickly realized something was wrong. Salvadoran officials refused to connect the jet bridge to allow the roughly 300 passengers, all Indian nationals, to disembark, according to three former crew members on the flight who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Several passengers told the cabin crew they planned to travel onward to Mexico and cross the border there illegally into the U.S., one crew member said. Others said they were going on vacation to the Mexican border city of Tijuana, another crew member said.

Salvadorean officials were already on high alert when the flight landed. Several months earlier, U.S. and Salvadoran authorities had noticed an unusual pattern of charter aircraft landing in El Salvador carrying primarily Indian nationals. The planes were arriving full and leaving empty, a U.S. official said. And some passengers claiming to be tourists brought only a backpack for weeks-long trips. U.S. authorities later discovered that nearly all of the charter passengers disembarking in San Salvador had crossed the border into the U.S., the official said.

Such charter flights represent a new phase of illegal immigration to the U.S., five U.S. officials said in interviews with Reuters. Increasingly, they said, migrants from outside Latin America are paying smuggling networks hefty fees for travel packages that can include airline tickets – on charter and commercial airlines – to fly to Central America and then bus rides and hotel stays en route to the U.S.-Mexico border.

6 – CBP releases new illegal apprehensions data for May, as Joe Biden’s open border continues

According to new data just released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a total of 241,022 illegal aliens entered the United States during the month of May – including 170,723 who were caught coming across the southern border.

This brings the total number of illegal aliens entering during the Biden administration to over 9.7 million.

Additionally, the Biden administration continues to tout the usage of their CBP One app, which allows illegal aliens to schedule an appointment for processing at a port of entry, instead of crossing the border between ports of entry.  These are not included in the above-mentioned numbers.

In May, CBP processed over 44,500 individuals through appointments at ports of entry utilizing advanced information submitted through CBP One™. Since the appointment scheduling function in CBP One™ was introduced in January 2023 through the end of May 2024, more than 636,600 individuals have successfully scheduled appointments to present at ports of entry instead of risking their lives in the hands of smugglers. The top nationalities processed subsequent to arrival for their appointment are Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian, Mexican, and Honduran.

Another avenue the Biden administration has created for foreign nationals to enter the U.S. is through the parole program, in which they are allowed to purchase their own airlines tickets and fly directly into the country:

Through the end of May 2024, about 462,100 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans arrived lawfully on commercial flights and were granted parole under these processes. Specifically, approximately 100,500 Cubans, 193,400 Haitians, 87,800 Nicaraguans, and 113,400 Venezuelans were vetted and authorized for travel; and approximately 98,200 Cubans, 177,100 Haitians, 80,700 Nicaraguans, and 106,100 Venezuelans arrived lawfully and were granted parole.

7 – Illegal immigrant in Iowa pleads guilty to sexually assaulting 12-year-old girl

From the Washington Examiner: An illegal immigrant from Honduras who was released into the United States after coming across the southern border during the Biden administration has pleaded guilty in Iowa for the sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl.

Junior Manuel Dubon Benitez, 18, was arrested on Feb. 14 on suspicion of “sexual abuse upon Jane Doe a 12 year old child” at a residence in Waterloo, Iowa, days earlier, according to court documents obtained first by the Washington Examiner. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that Dubon Benitez was a citizen of Honduras who illegally entered the U.S. near Hidalgo, Texas, in April 2022 as a 16-year-old.

8 – Biden’s Treasury Sec Completely Fumbles Fox Host’s Basic Question: Should The Border Be Shut Down?

From the Daily Caller: Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen deflected a question about shutting down the U.S.-Mexico border Thursday when pressed about fentanyl trafficking during a Fox News appearance.

The National Center for Health Statistics estimated that 107,543 people died from drug overdoses in 2023, down only 3% from 111,029 in 2022 and the first decrease since 2018, of whom 74,702 and 76,226 were believed to have been killed by synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, according to a May 15 release. Fox News host Neil Cavuto pressed Yellen about the situation on the U.S-Mexico border, asking about shutting it down, during an interview on “Your World with Neil Cavuto.”

“Well, um, you know, my concern today is with, um, fentanyl trafficking, drug trafficking, and I’d say…” Yellen sputtered.

WATCH:

WOKE WORLD

9 – WH promotes Biden official who compared police to slave patrols, wants to abolish ICE

From Fox News: A former Interior Department communications director in the Biden administration has been hired in a new role and will be working on communications inside the Biden White House, despite sparking controversy last year over social media posts attacking police, criticizing Republicans and supporting the anti-Israel movement.

“After more than three years at Interior working for Secretary Deb Haaland, Cherry started last week as an associate communications director at the White House,” Politico reported this week. Tyler Cherry sparked controversy last year after social media posts surfaced in which he blasted law enforcement and promoted “Russiagate.”

“Praying for #Baltimore, but praying even harder for an end to a capitalistic police state motivated by explicit and implicit racial biases,” Cherry posted in 2015 amid riots that were sparked following the death of Freddie Gray, a Black man, in police custody in Baltimore.

“Apt (sic.) time to recall that the modern day police system is a direct evolution of slave patrols and lynch mobs,” he stated in a separate post months later. In 2018, Cherry called for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Homeland Security Department agency tasked with preventing cross-border crime and illegal immigration, to be abolished.

10 – EXPOSED: Farm supply chain popular with conservatives discovered to be major supporter of DEI policies

Conservative filmmaker Robby Starbuck released a bombshell report earlier this month that has been overlooked by mainstream media. He wrote:

It’s time to expose Tractor Supply. It’s one of the most beloved brands in 🇺🇸 by conservatives but what do they REALLY stand for under CEO @hallawton’s leadership?

• LGBTQIA+ training for employees
• Funding pride/drag events
• They have a DEI Council
• Funding sex changes
• Climate change activism
• Pride month decorations in the office
• DEI hiring practices
• LGBTQIA+ events at work

WATCH the video below as Starbuck reveals what he’s found:

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