Important Takeaways:
- Once a month, Kersstin Eshak visits a food pantry in Loudoun County, Virginia to stretch her family’s budget.
- Eshak’s husband works at a big box retailer. She works as a substitute teacher. They have income, but with prices up nearly 23% over the past five years — and still rising — their earnings just don’t stretch quite far enough some months.
- Food banks across the nation are seeing a similar story: A post-pandemic wave of demand for food driven by working people caught in America’s cost-of-living crunch.
- “This is a new era of food insecurity,” said Emily Engelhard, vice president of research at Feeding America, the largest US hunger relief organization. “This isn’t an unemployment issue.”
- As prices have risen, so have the share of Americans reporting they don’t have enough to eat. And despite robust economic growth and historically low unemployment, those figures have remained elevated in 2024, US Census data show.
- “Everyone sees prices getting high — for food, clothes, everything,” Eshak said in an interview at a food pantry run by Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Arlington
- Capital Area Food Bank distributed 64 million meals last fiscal year in Washington and the neighboring areas — five million more than the prior year. Their research shows the sharpest increases in food insecurity in the area were in households earning about $100,000-$150,000.
- “Increasingly, those who are food insecure are middle income and more highly educated,” said Radha Muthiah, chief executive officer of Capital Area Food Bank. “We don’t suffer from people not being employed.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Thousands of ICE officers have been dispatched to the San Diego border crossing as they prepare to take ‘100,000 immigrants’ back to Mexico and Central America in one of the biggest migrant raids in recent times.
- A White House intelligence source said: ‘There is a ‘mile long line of DHS trucks and CBP in front of Camp Pendleton right now, ready to do the biggest illegal immigrant grab in recent history.
- ‘The West Coast is this week and the East Coast is next week. It is about to get crazy in California. They need to fill 100,000 spots’, meaning arrests is the directive.
- The source continued: ‘They are going to be taking 100,000 immigrants back to Mexico, Columbia, El Salvador and Guatemala in this grab.’
- Border czar Tom Homan says he is not satisfied with the pace of migrant deportations – despite ICE’s ‘unprecedented’ number of arrests – and claims the US needs to ‘open the aperture up’ and carry out ‘more deportations’.
- Immigration arrests have reached about 1,000-1,200 per day in recent days, according to ICE, far above the daily average of 311 in fiscal year 2024.
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Important Takeaways:
- A tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas City, Kansas, has become the largest documented on record in the United States.
- As of Jan. 24, 2025, there have been 67 active cases reported in Wyandotte County (60) and Johnson County (7) since January 2024, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE).
- There have also been 79 latent, or asymptomatic, tuberculosis (TB) infections reported over the last year, including 77 in Wyandotte County and two in Johnson County.
- In a statement sent to Fox News Digital, KDHE confirmed that the outbreak is “still ongoing, which means there could be more cases.”
- TB is an infectious disease that most often affects the lungs, according to KDHE. It is caused by bacteria that spreads through the air when infected people cough, speak or sing.
- It is not spread by kissing, shaking hands, sharing food and drink, or touching objects, the same source stated.
- TB symptoms can include coughing, chest pain, coughing up blood or mucus, fatigue, weight loss, fever and night sweats.
- “One simple blood test can identify this sleeping killer before it awakes, and one course of antibiotics can stop it from infecting the people we love,” she said.
- A person with active TB will no longer be infectious “shortly after beginning treatment” with antibiotics, according to KDHE.
- Wendy Thanassi, M.D., senior medical director of TB and Infectious diseases at QIAGEN North America
- “Kansas is not alone in its battle against TB, which kills more than a million people each year,” said the San Francisco-based doctor.
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Important Takeaways:
- Mexican cartel members recently offloaded $202,500 in merchandise from train in Arizona, authorities say
- The Sinaloa Cartel raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars stealing Nike shoes from a moving BNSF train in their latest railroad heist between California and Arizona, a pattern that has been on the rise, according to law enforcement.
- Eleven members of the Mexican transnational criminal organization are in federal custody after stealing the merchandise from a train car traveling north of Phoenix with cut air brakes on Jan. 17, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) said in documents filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Arizona.
- BNSF employees notified police after spotting a severed air hose on a cargo train near Perrin, Arizona. Railroad police noticed a box truck parked a few miles away and, later, several crates positioned near the tracks.
- Over the past two years, similar thefts have been on the rise, HSI said.
- Typically, the agency said, the cartel sells its spoils on Amazon, eBay or other digital platforms or to amenable California retailers.
- “They can get hundreds of thousands if not over $1 million worth of merchandise to sell and launder through … one, two container hits,” he said. “So this is actually relatively common activity for transnational criminal organizations and cartels.”
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Important Takeaways:
- In September 2022, the arrival of five red heifers in Israel caught the world’s attention. Now, more than two years later, those cows are being cared for in ancient Shiloh and continue to attract international visitors.
- Moriah Shapira is the manager of the visitor center at ancient Shiloh. She told us why the red heifers are so important.
- “Here in Shiloh for the first time after 2000 years, we have real kosher red heifers, which is really exciting,” she explained.
- She added, “In the Bible it says when a person wants to enter the Temple, which is called the House of Life, he has to go through a process using ashes of the red heifer, meaning that the red heifers are actually the key to the Temple.”
- Jewish tradition maintains that the red heifer ashes are needed to rebuild the Third Temple. Some Christians believe a Third Temple would pave the way for the end times.
- Even Hamas reportedly blamed the red heifers in part for their invasion on October 7th, 2023, because of their belief that Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque would be in danger if the heifers were used to build the Third Temple.
- For a heifer to be selected these qualifications must be met:
- Be an adult cow with reddish-brown hair
- No hairs of a different color
- No blemishes
- Never used for any other purpose
- We were able to see the Heifers on our visit to Shiloh. Two have already been disqualified, but only one is needed to qualify for the purification for the Temple.
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Important Takeaways:
- Eight of the 33 hostages intended for release during the first phase of the ceasefire-hostage deal with Hamas in the Gaza Strip are dead, according to a list provided by Hamas.
- Israeli government spokesman David Mencer confirmed that the terrorist group stated the remaining 25 hostages are alive. The list was delivered to Israel overnight on Sunday.
- After repeatedly violating the truce deal with Israel, Hamas is to release three additional captives on Thursday, the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem announced on Sunday night.
- The hostages to be released are civilian Arbel Yehud, Israel Defense Forces soldier Agam Berger and an unidentified man. Three more abductees are to be freed on Saturday, per the terms of the ceasefire.
- So far, seven hostages have been freed. Yet 87 of the 251 individuals taken by Hamas during the terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, are still in Gaza. This includes the remains of at least 34 hostages, confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered Gaza in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier killed in 2014. Another soldier’s remains were recovered earlier this month.
- Hamas failed to provide the list on Saturday, as required by the terms of the ceasefire, prompting Jerusalem to postpone the return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza.
- In the first phase of the ceasefire, Hamas is to release 33 hostages in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian terrorists, including many convicted of deadly attacks. So far, seven hostages have been released in exchange for more than 300 terrorists.
- The next two projected phases present greater challenges. Hamas has stated that it will not release the remaining 60 hostages unless Israel ends the war, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains committed to dismantling Hamas and ending its 18-year rule over Gaza. The future of negotiations remains uncertain as both sides prepare for difficult talks.
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Important Takeaways:
- Gangs in the U.S. include prison gangs, local street gangs, and national street gangs. There are about 33,000 gangs in the U.S., with over one million members. Many of these gangs started and still exist in urban areas. For example, national street gangs developed in major cities like Chicago and New York City but later grew in other cities like Washington D.C. and Albuquerque. Gangs are active in all 50 states, all U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia.
- While gang members and gang activity exist across the country, some states have a larger gang presence than others.
- California, Nevada, Idaho, New Mexico, and Illinois have the most gang members for every 1,000 citizens of the state. Because California, Nevada, and Illinois have major cities, the amount of gang activity would be expected to be higher. New Mexico has been the focus of an FBI investigation of gang activity.
- Probably the most surprising state on the list is Idaho. There has been a growing gang presence in the state for the past few years. Many of these gangs originated in the state’s prisons, although there are members of national and local gangs as well.
- American gangs are responsible for about 48% of violent crimes in most jurisdictions. Major cities and suburban surroundings experience most gang activities, especially gang-related violent crimes.
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Important Takeaways:
- A record number of arrests – more than 1,100 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials – took place Monday as the Trump administration ramps up ICE sweeps from coast to coast.
- In Denver, agents raided a nightclub detaining around 50 people the DEA says were associated with the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. President Trump hailed the raids at a House GOP retreat Monday evening.
- “We’re tracking down the illegal alien criminals. We’re detaining them and we are throwing them the h*** out of our country. We have no apologies and we’re moving forward very fast,” Trump said.
- Military flights are taking deportees back to their home countries; and while agents are targeting violent offenders, officials say, they’re not stopping there. ICE Field Director Garrett Ripa said, “Case by case basis we make a discretionary call on every call that we arrest whether that’s a criminal or not a criminal. We’re going to take enforcement action on every individual.”
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Important Takeaways:
- NewsNation’s Ali Bradley reported that while the suspected cartel has fired shots from the Mexican side of the territory for years, things in the area have escalated “in unprecedented ways since President [Donald] Trump was elected—Even giving orders to shoot at agents recently.”
- Since taking office last week, Trump has issued a massive crackdown on illegal immigration, signing a slew of executive orders that have paved the way for mass deportations and the return of some of his first-term policies. Among those orders is one that designates Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
- Trump made immigration a central theme of his successful presidential campaign, and Americans largely support his mass deportation plans. A New York Times/Ipsos poll from January 2 to 10 found 55 percent of voters strongly or somewhat supported such plans. Eighty-eight percent supported “Deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have criminal records.” Large majorities of both Democrats and Republicans agreed that the immigration system is broken.
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Important Takeaways:
- The U.S. Geological Survey rated the shaking as a magnitude 3.9, downgraded from the initial magnitude of 4.1. It was centered off the coast of New Hampshire and Maine in York Harbor, about 12 miles underground.
- While not destructive, and fairly common in areas with more seismic activity like California, that’s relatively large for the area.
- Shaking was felt across the region — as far away as New Haven, Connecticut, and Albany, New York, according to responses sent to U.S. Geological Survey.
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