Supplies are being airlifted to local communities devastated by Hurricane Helene with the death toll surpassing 100. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said the death toll would rise as rescue crews and other emergency responders arrive in areas isolated from the storm.
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As she fled the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made clear she did not want to evacuate the building and expressed regret that the National Guard had not been pre-positioned to protect Congress ahead of the contentious certification of the 2020 election results, according to video footage turned over this week to House Republican investigators and obtained by Just the News.
“We’re calling the National Guard now? They should have been here to start out,” Pelosi can be heard saying as she flees through a tunnel under the Capitol on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, as her daughter Alexandra videotaped her for an eventual HBO movie.
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Two top House security aides under then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi got stark warnings from police the night before the Jan. 6 riots that protesters might try to breach the U.S. Capitol through its tunnel systems and block lawmakers from voting to certify Joe Biden’s presidential election win, according to newly obtained memos and text messages.
The documents obtained by Just the News also confirm that Pelosi’s team played a role in the botched security planning for that fateful day.
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When I was in college, one of my professors had written her PhD thesis on the cultural aspects of the post-civil-war militias, organizations that would evolve into the National Guard of today. These units proliferated at the time to give men, who lived in the shadow of their fathers’ and grandfathers’ Civil War service, a chance to emulate their exploits. When the Spanish-American War began in 1898, the men of these militias volunteered en masse. They finally had a chance to prove themselves worthy of their forbears and do something daring and dangerous.
My professor suggested that she and other academics were in an analogous situation. For them—and they were almost all on the left—missing out on the 1960s meant they missed out on a period of revolutionary change and ferment. For left-leaning academics, the 1960s was the era of breaking rules, smashing idols, and inventing new ideas and methods to address the abandonment of the old authorities. This period featured the debut of influential prophets of “unmasking” so prevalent in academic life today, such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Herbert Marcuse
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The governors of 48 U.S. states and five territories have sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin expressing a “strong opposition” to the Department of Defense’s (DOD) proposed legislation to the Senate Armed Services Committee that would permanently federalize portions of the state Air National Guard troops into the U.S. Space Force.
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Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs announced Friday that troops would be deployed to the southern border after her requests for help from the White House fell on deaf ears.
The governor signed an executive order to allow the troops to assist state and local law enforcement interdict fentanyl and human trafficking attempts, Hobbs said in her statement. Hobbs asked President Joe Biden Dec. 8 to reassign National Guard members already in Arizona, provide additional reinforcements to help reopen the Lukeville Port of Entry and reimburse the $512,529,333 the state has spent on migrant transportation, drug interdiction and law enforcement.
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Intelligence forewarning of violence kept from decision makers. A plea for National Guard rejected. Security locks on a door deactivated, allowing rioters to flood into the Capitol. And now officers losing control of gear that then gets used against them.
The evidence of serious security failures inside the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 tragedy keeps mounting as House Republicans use their new found control to expose information that was suppressed by their Democratic counterparts’ original investigation.
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Despite the Department of Defense rescinding the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, unvaccinated military members are still facing repercussions, including denied benefits, ineligibility for promotion, being non-deployable, and potentially diminished employment prospects for those already discharged.
On Dec. 23, President Biden signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the $858 billion defense spending bill that included a measure repealing the mandate. On Dec. 29, the Defense Department followed suit, rescinding the mandate that has frayed military morale and resulted in the discharge of over 8,000 service members who refused the vaccine.
In rescinding the vaccine mandate, the DOD acknowledged the NDAA requires Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to rescind his Aug. 24, 2021 memo issuing the sweeping order.
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Rape trees, river floaters, skeletal remains, and fentanyl candy. The new vernacular of illegal immigration is an indictment of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) loss of operational control along the U.S.-Southern border. A consequence of this is the transformation of cartel insurgencies into well-formed armies that recruit and employ uniformed soldiers, have supporting intelligence operations, and control terrain. The challenge now confronting state and federal law enforcement is no longer how to deter an insurgency; it’s how to defeat an army.
Modern armies are resourced by nation-states who provide moral leadership in times of war. But the accountable governments of nation-states can falter and fail. Mexico in particular has a compromised central government that is not protecting its own homeland from subversive actors. When this happens, a conglomerate of paid professionals, mercenaries, conscripts, and criminals fills the void to either protect or exploit the resources of a community. It was true within the first communities of Mesopotamia, and it is happening now in communities across Mexico. This is how armies begin. A state is incapable of securing its communities, accountable governments lose legitimacy, and subversive actors start vying for control of terrain to exploit resources.
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President Biden said it himself: the pandemic is over. So why is his Department of Defense (DoD) willing to look at the brave men and women who volunteered to serve our nation and say, “you’re fired” – all because they chose not to get the COVID-19 shot?
In the United States, the number of new servicemembers joining the military has reached a record low. Every single branch struggled to hit its recruitment goals this year, including the U.S. Army, which fell 10,000 soldiers short. At this rate, they will face a deficit of 21,000 soldiers next year. The National Guard also missed the mark by about 12,000 recruits, and expects to discharge up to 14,000 more by 2024 for refusing the COVID-19 shot.
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This year the U.S. Army missed its annual recruiting goal by 25 percent, or 20,000 soldiers. That’s more than an entire division, which includes 10,000-20,000 troops. The National Guard missed its target by 9,000 recruits and applications are down more than 20 percent at Annapolis and West Point. This has the Pentagon looking for new ways to fill the ranks, but an old one might get the nod.
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Nearly two dozen states are sending National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to help federal immigration officials grapple with an unprecedented surge of undocumented migrants.
The deployments, which were requested by the U.S. Department of Defense, call for up to 2,500 National Guard members from Republican-led states like Kentucky, South Carolina and Arkansas, as well as Democratic-led states such as Rhode Island and Illinois.
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Democrat Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser asked the Pentagon Thursday for a second time to deploy the National Guard to support illegal migrants arriving from the southern border.
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Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, reports on how different governors are approaching their Army National Guardsmen who refused to comply with President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
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Stephen K. Bannon welcomed Washington correspondent and the national political editor for The Star News Network and The Tennessee Star, Neil W. McCabe to discuss the vaccine mandate that’s stripping the National Guard of guardsmen in record numbers Thursday morning on War Room: Pandemic.
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Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, investigated how different state National Guards are reacting to the Army’s June 30, 2022, deadline for all active-duty and reserve components to comply with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
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On Tuesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R-Texas) filed a lawsuit against the administration of Joe Biden over the federal vaccine requirement for members of the National Guard.
As reported by CNN, Abbott’s lawsuit declares that the vaccine mandate for the Texas National Guard infringes on “Governor Abbott’s authority as Commander in Chief and on Texas’s sovereignty,” and that “it is unlawful for Defendants to attempt to override the Governor’s authority to govern his troops, and then leave him to deal with the harms that they leave in their wake.”
The lawsuit is in response to a policy implemented by an August memorandum from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, declaring that all members of the American military must be vaccinated or else face discharge. Austin declared that the mandate would include non-federalized National Guard members, such as state National Guards, and that any states that defied the mandate would face a funding freeze or see members be prohibited from engaging in military duties.
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On Tuesday, a district court judge ruled against the state of Oklahoma in its effort to block the coronavirus vaccine mandate for members of the state’s National Guard, The Hill reports.
U.S. District Judge Stephen Friot explained his reasoning in a 29-page ruling, in which he rejected a motion filed by Governor Kevin Stitt (R-Okla.) and Attorney General John O’Connor (R-Okla.) to indefinitely block the mandate; Judge Friot claimed that the plaintiffs’ claim was “without merit.”
“The court is required to decide this case on the basis of federal law, not common sense,” said Friot in his ruling. “But, either way, the result would be the same. The claims asserted by the Governor and his co-plaintiffs are without merit.”
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Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds is joining four other state governors in requesting the Department of Defense withdraw vaccine mandate directives to National Guard members in Title 32 duty status.
U.S. National Guard members’ deadline to be vaccinated was Dec. 2. Nearly 50,000 military members across all branches have declined to get vaccinated, Reynolds’ office’s news release said.
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On Thursday, the state of Oklahoma filed a lawsuit to exempt members of the state’s National Guard from the nationwide coronavirus vaccine mandate, The Hill reports.
The suit, filed in federal court by Governor Kevin Stitt (R-Okla.) and Attorney General John O’Connor (R-Okla.), names Joe Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin as defendants. The suit requests that the courts declare the national vaccine mandate for all members of the armed services to be unconstitutional, and thus enjoin the federal government from enforcing it on the Oklahoma National Guard; the suit also seeks to prevent the federal government from imposing its penalty for refusal to comply, which would include withholding federal funds from the state’s National Guard.
“This mandate ensures that many Oklahoma National Guard members will simply quit instead of getting a vaccine,” the suit reads in part, “a situation that will irreparably harm Oklahomans’ safety and security.”
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The Pentagon responded appropriately and in a timely fashion to urgent requests for National Guard assistance on the day of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, according to a Defense Department inspector general report released Wednesday.
“We also determined that DoD officials did not delay or obstruct the DoD’s response,” reads the report.
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Texas Republicans described President Joe Biden’s immigration policies as reckless and criticized him for claiming that he has been too busy to visit the southern border since taking office in January.
Biden said Thursday night that he “should go down [to visit the border] but the whole point of it is I haven’t had a whole hell of a lot of time to,” during a CNN town hall. The last time Biden was near the border was when he flew into an airport in El Paso, Texas, where his motorcade took him to New Mexico for a campaign event in 2008, according to The Washington Post.
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Tens of thousands of migrants from other countries are making their way north to the southern border, an open border activist and government officials warn.
Irineo Mujica, Director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, an NGO that provides “shelter and safety to migrants and refugees in transit” and accompanies them “in their journey,” says a new Haitian caravan is making its way to the U.S. border from Tapachula, Mexico.
He also says 800 Haitians and Central Americans are crossing the Guatemalan border every day making their way north.
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A $2.1 billion bill to fund the Capitol Police, National Guard and resettlement of Afghans who helped U.S. troops sailed through the Senate Thursday afternoon on a 98-0 vote.
The bill was brokered by Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy and Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, the two top lawmakers on the Senate Appropriations Committee. The deal, which also provides funding for COVID-19-related measures around the Capitol complex, was reached amid reports that the Capitol Police was set to run out of money in the coming weeks.
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National Guard troops are slated to decamp from Capitol Hill this week, nearly five months after thousands were deployed to safeguard Congress amid fears of further unrest after the violent Jan. 6 insurrection.
Personnel will fully depart the U.S. Capitol grounds this week, military officials and congressional aides said Monday, nearly five months after thousands were deployed to safeguard Congress allegedly over fears of unrest after the Jan. 6 reported “attempted insurrection” by former President Trump supporters, Politico reported.
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The Brooklyn Center police officer responsible for shooting 20-year-old Daunte Wright was identified Monday evening as agitators surrounded the local police station for a second straight night.
According to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, officer Kim Potter, a 26-year veteran of the force, fired the fatal shot in Sunday’s incident. She is currently on administrative leave and a decision regarding her future with the Brooklyn Center Police Department is expected Tuesday.
Potter mistakenly drew her handgun instead of her Taser when Wright resisted arrest, according to partial body camera video released Monday.
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The Democratic and Republican leaders of the House Armed Services Committee called the current National Guard deployment on Capitol Hill unwarranted.
Democratic Rep. Adam Smith and Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, the committee’s respective chairman and ranking member, asked the Department of Defense to implement a “measured drawdown” of the guardsmen stationed at the Capitol in a joint statement Thursday.
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Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin reportedly overruled a memo from the commanding general of the National Guard who objected to keeping troops in D.C., according to Fox News.
The memo, written by Gen. Daniel Hokanson, was disseminated among the White House National Security Council last week and cited concerns over the National Guard already being overburdened with coronavirus issues, civil disturbances and wildfires, according to a report from Fox News.
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The Pentagon is reviewing a Capitol Police request for the National Guard to remain stationed at the US Capitol for an additional two months, citing concerns about security and potential violence, defense officials told the Associated Press.
The National Guard was stationed at the Capitol following the violent breach Jan. 6 where five people died, the AP reported. Law enforcement has remained on high alert at the Capitol since Thursday after intelligence operatives uncovered a “potential plot” by far-right militia groups to storm the building.
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The Defense Department estimates the National Guard deployment at the Capitol through March 15 will cost nearly $483 million, in addition to $500 million it has already spent, Fox News reported Monday.
Approximately 26,000 National Guard troops from across the country were sent to Washington D.C. after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. The number has gradually reduced, however there are still more than 7,000 troops guarding the Capitol building with plans to gradually decrease its presence through the end of March, to fewer than 3,000 troops, according to Fox News.
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Thousands of National Guard troops protecting the Capitol Hill complex during inauguration week were temporarily forced Thursday night to leave the buildings, sparking outrage among the troops and Congress.
“Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Schumer – why are American troops who are tasked with keeping security at the Capitol being forced to sleep in a parking lot? They deserve to be treated with respect, and we deserve answers,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, in a tweet, asked the two leaders of the Democrat-controlled Congress.
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Several agencies are participating in the U.S. Secret Service’s security protections around the inauguration in Washington, D.C., including the FBI and Customs and Border Protection.
The Metropolitan Police Department and the National Guard will join the FBI and Customs and Border Protection to participate in security efforts surrounding President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20. FBI officials are investigating a substantial number of “concerning” comments online about potential events on and leading up to inauguration day, FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a briefing on Thursday.
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