Important Takeaways:
- A current president has never before debated his predecessor
- The two men are now facing off again for the presidency and this debate will mark the first time in this election campaign that millions of Americans are sitting up and paying attention.
- Unlike past debates, this one will be conducted in a cable television studio without a live audience
- The debate will also feature muted microphones for candidates during their opponent’s allotted speaking time
- This is the earliest presidential debate in modern US history – held before either candidate has become the formal nominee of their party.
- There’s another debate scheduled in September.
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Important Takeaways:
- McDonald’s Launches $5 Meal Deal as Fast Food Prices Soar 33% Under Biden
- Fast food chains are under pressure to put the “value” back into a “value meal” after fast food prices soared 33 percent since 2019, according to the Department of Labor. Grocery prices, for context, increased 26 percent.
- The new $5 meal includes a choice of either a McDouble or McChicken sandwich, small fries, four-piece Chicken McNuggets, and a small soft drink, Axios reported.
- The $5 dollar deal contrasts the price of the Big Mac Value Meal. A Big Mac burger, a medium beverage, and a medium fries meal now costs $18 in some locations, up $10 from 2018 when former President Donald Trump was in office.
- The McDouble sandwich, which costs $1.19 on average in 2014, costs $3.19, almost three times that amount. Medium fries increased from $1.59 to $3.79, the New York Post reported.
- McDonald’s ten-piece McNugget meal, the $10.99 combo that includes fries and a drink, costs $5.00, 83 percent more expensive than in 2014.
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Important Takeaways:
- Biden’s relatively open border makes it difficult to assess, much less avoid the risk of terrorism
- What is the risk of a terrorist attack in the United States perpetrated by foreign nationals released at the border or paroled in by the Biden administration? No one knows.
- Risk is an estimate, like the number of “gotaways” who sneak into the country undetected every year. It’s not a calculation, like the 194 known or suspected terrorists (KSTs) actually caught entering illegally in Fiscal Year 2024 so far, which Customs and Border Protection (CBP) counts.
- We know that many Americans have had their lives ended or blighted by foreign nationals who had no right to be here. Children have been raped, like a 13-year-old girl in New York City last week. Women like Kayla Hamilton, murdered by members of violent gangs. Mothers like Rachel Morin whose death has allegedly been the result of murder by a man from El Salvador. Victims of drunk drivers like Ignacio Cruz-Mendoza, who had already been sent back to Mexico 16 times when he killed Scott Miller.
- Despite the obvious risk, our government seems so oblivious to potential disaster that they are allowing in, with no verification of their identity or criminal history back home – thousands of people every day (many of them young men) at our borders.
- On top of this, they are paroling another 1,400 a day. From all over the world, but particularly Afghanistan, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
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Important Takeaways:
- “These are office jobs for U.S. graduates, but the government is working with [business] to displace [U.S. graduates] from the workforce and significantly lower their wages and quality of life,” noted Kevin Lynn, founder of U.S. TechWorkers which opposes the visa-worker programs
- “They shroud it under the banner of social justice, but all they’re doing is displace Americans, lower salaries and lower the quality of life of working Americans,” he added.
- There are “probably 100,000 people that would be eligible for this D-3 waiver,” lawyer Marielena Hincapie told activists on Tuesday.
- One of the business groups lobbying for the D-3 giveaway says there are another 400,000 illegals in college and university courses around the nation.
- The Higher Ed Immigration Portal claims there are 407,899 “undocumented” students in higher education.
- If Biden’s deputies extend their D-3 amnesty to the 400,00o other illegals in colleges, it would further flood the first-rung job market for middle-class families’ college kids.
- They are enrolled alongside an additional 858,395 foreign students — most of whom can get work permits that allow them to get U.S. jobs for two to four years.
- Since 2019, roughly 75 percent of all additional jobs have gone to Biden’s flood of roughly 10 million new migrants, including foreign contract workers, blue-collar illegal aliens, and legal immigrants. His inflow has delivered roughly one migrant for each American birth.
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Important Takeaways:
- Top immigration experts are hammering the Biden administration over its plan to establish so-called “parole-in-place” qualifications for illegal immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens.
- The idea of parole-in-place stemmed from a memo crafted by President Bill Clinton in 1998 and has been used since 2016 to categorize non-citizen immediate family members of U.S. Service Members.
- A forthcoming executive order expanding the construct is expected to shield as many as half a million illegal immigrants from deportation.
- Former Acting ICE Director Thomas Homan said, “This administration has done nothing to secure the border – they’re playing a shell game. This is just another enticement… for more illegal aliens to cross the border to take advantage of a giveaway program.”
- Another expert on the issue said that whether parole-in-place allows 500,000 or many more people to come to or stay in the U.S., it essentially creates a 51st state.
- Homan, who served in the Trump administration, previously said he hopes to help establish a “historic deportation program” if the real estate mogul is elected in November.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Biden administration’s aggressive push to transition to alternative green energy is leaving the U.S. military dependent on its top adversary, China, which would be disastrous in an event of a war with the country
- Due to a heavy reliance on foreign sources, poor policy choices, and constrained transport of fuels, the U.S. military could be vulnerable to potential localized fuel shortages and Chinese economic coercion.
- In a war where China is likely to use all means to slow or cut U.S. domestic fuel transport, including cyber, the federal strategic petroleum reserve’s locations could be cut off from where the fuel is most needed.
- Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow for Naval Warfare and Advanced Technology Brent Sadler recommends strengthening energy trade across North America.
- “Canada and Mexico are the United States’ two largest energy trading partners but face unnecessary constraints. A first step to alleviating this would be permitting cross-border energy infrastructure projects, such as the Keystone XL pipeline. Doing so would make it easier and less bureaucratic for investments to more easily flow to expanded domestic port capacities for energy trade.”
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Important Takeaways:
- A major expansion underway inside Iran’s most heavily protected nuclear facility could soon triple the site’s production of enriched uranium and give Tehran new options for quickly assembling a nuclear arsenal if it chooses to, according to confidential documents and analysis by weapons experts
- At Fordow alone, the expansion could allow Iran to accumulate several bombs’ worth of nuclear fuel every month, according to a technical analysis provided to The Washington Post. Though it is the smaller of Iran’s two uranium enrichment facilities, Fordow is regarded as particularly significant because its subterranean setting makes it nearly invulnerable to airstrikes.
- Iran already possesses a stockpile of about 300 pounds of highly enriched uranium that could be further refined into weapons-grade fuel for nuclear bombs within weeks, or perhaps days, U.S. intelligence officials say. Iran also is believed to have accumulated most of the technical know-how for a simple nuclear device, although it would probably take another two years to build a nuclear warhead that could be fitted onto a missile, according to intelligence officials and weapons experts.
- In private messages to the IAEA early last week, Iran’s atomic energy organization said Fordow was being outfitted with nearly 1,400 new centrifuges, machines used to make enriched uranium, according to two European diplomats briefed on the reports. The new equipment, made in Iran and networked together in eight assemblies known as cascades, was to be installed within four weeks. A leaked draft of the Iranian plan was initially reported by Reuters.
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Important Takeaways:
- How it started… how it’s going: Cost of living still way up compared to pre-Biden norm
- President Biden welcomed Wednesday’s inflation report that showed prices rose less than expected in May, but the cost of living for millions of Americans is still much higher than it was before he assumed office.
- Data from the Labor Department confirms that housing expenses, energy and vehicle maintenance costs have all increased by double digits since January 2021.
- As of May, shelter costs are up 21.4%, home prices have increased 33.9% and rent is up 21.4%, according to indexes tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mortgage rates on a 30-year fixed loan have shot up to an average of 6.99% as of June 6, 2024, from 2.77% in January 2021 — a whopping increase of 152%, according to Freddie Mac
- Gas prices are currently sitting at a national average of $3.45 per gallon, down from $3.50 last week as low demand and increasing supply provide relief at the pump, AAA said. But overall, today’s prices are still 45% more expensive than in January 2021, when it cost $2.38 per gallon to fill up.
- Electricity costs are up about 29% since Biden took office.
- It also costs more to buy a car (20.4% increase), maintain it (30.5%) and insure it (51.3%) than it did four years ago.
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Important Takeaways:
- “This case demonstrates the abuse of power by executive federal agencies in the rulemaking process,” Doughty said in his ruling. “The separation of powers and system of checks and balances exist in this country for a reason.”
- Doughty ruled that the changes were inadmissible because the term “gender discrimination” as used in the establishment of Title IX “only included discrimination against biological males and females at the time of enactment.”
- The ruling blocks implementation of the changes in Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho.
- Title IX is a longstanding civil rights law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in schools and other education centers that receive federal funding.
- Under the administration’s new rules, sex discrimination would include discrimination based on gender identity as well as sexual orientation.
- Critics say that the change will allow locker rooms and bathrooms to be based on gender identity.
- Lawsuits against the Biden administration’s changes — similar to the Louisiana case — are underway in states across the country.
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Important Takeaways:
- Diplomats and world leaders have begun to worry that Biden’s reluctance to more fully break with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could cost him the election in November.
- Their concerns have been conveyed largely behind closed doors, out of consideration not to wade too far into U.S. domestic politics.
- But the thrust is often the same: The war has furthered the perception that the world is peppered with a variety of out-of-control hot spots and, in turn, made Biden look weak among voters back home.
- They fear that it may usher in former President Donald Trump and rupture the broader diplomatic harmony Biden has worked to establish.
- European officials say they’re more vexed that Netanyahu hasn’t publicly supported the proposal, even though the U.S. says he privately agreed to it.
- Biden officials have dismissed concerns about the impact of the war on the president’s candidacy, pointing to polling showing that it doesn’t rank among voters’ top priorities ahead of the election.
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