March 27, 2021 - The Minnesota Sun

84 Percent of Texas Facilities Holding Unaccompanied Migrant Children Have Seen Positive COVID-19 Tests

March 27, 2021March 27, 2021 The Center Square

Thirty-seven of 44 shelters, or 87 percent, currently housing unaccompanied migrant minors in Texas reported positive COVID-19 test results between March 5 and 23, according to data collected by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Cases are identified by shelter facilities and foster care providers, which are then reported to officials at the agency.

“The Biden Administration has been an abject failure when it comes to ensuring the safety of unaccompanied minors who cross our border,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said. “The conditions unaccompanied minors face in these federally run facilities is unacceptable and inhumane. From a lack of safe drinking water in one location to a COVID-19 outbreak in another, the Biden Administration has no excuse for subjecting these children to these kinds of conditions.

Commentary: Don’t Expect Any State Flexibility Under Obama 2.0

March 27, 2021March 26, 2021 RealClearWire

The “circle back” meme in the Biden White House isn’t limited to Jen Psaki’s avoidance of tough questions at press briefings. The Biden administration demonstrated that it also intends to circle back to the way things were under the Obama years when it comes to managing Medicaid. Rather than taking a cooperative approach to the state and federal partnership, Obama 2.0 is committed to running the program by decree and eliminating flexibilities that improve the program. Unfortunately, states hoping for true flexibility will be disappointed, as Medicaid flexibility has departed for Mar-a-Lago.

U.S. Senate Confirms Dr. Rachel Levine as Assistant Secretary of Health

March 27, 2021March 26, 2021 The Center Square

Dr. Rachel Levine became the highest-ranking transgender official to serve in federal office with her confirmation Wednesday in the U.S. Senate.

Levine joins the Department of Health and Human Services as assistant secretary of health after President Joe Biden nominated her for the post in January.

At the time, Biden described Pennsylvania’s former Secretary of Health as an “historic and deeply qualified choice to help lead our administration’s health efforts.”

Members of Andrew Cuomo’s Family Received Special Priority for Coronavirus Testing

March 27, 2021March 26, 2021 Minnesota Sun Staff

In yet another potential scandal for the already-embattled Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.), a new report claims that his family members and others with close ties to his administration were given special priority with regards to early testing procedures for the coronavirus, according to The Hill.

The report, which first came from the Albany Times Union, says that Cuomo’s Health Commissioner Howard Zucker ordered the New York State Department of Health to give priority to those who Cuomo himself specifically designated, which included his brother, his mother, and one of his sisters. Such testing was conducted in their own private residences, with the officials from the Health Department going out of their way to travel to their homes just to give them the tests.

Parler Alerted Feds to Violent Content Ahead of January 6 Riot

March 27, 2021March 26, 2021 Minnesota Sun Staff

Parler, the free speech social media platform maligned by political partisans and their media associates has responded with a letter to the House Oversight Committee which is currently investigating the company for failing to “police” its content before the January 6th riot.

The social media company reports it alerted the FBI more than 50 times of posts indicating the violent action at the Capitol posted on its site. The Wall Street Journal reports:

The social-media site referred a number of posts to law enforcement, including one on Dec. 24 from a user who called for an “armed force” of 150,000 people to “react to the congressional events of January 6,” according to the letter, which included the post and communications with FBI officials among its exhibits and has been reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Top Republicans Seem Open to Some Kind of Gun Control

March 27, 2021March 26, 2021 Minnesota Sun Staff

Congressional Democrats and President Joe Biden have vowed to act on gun control in the aftermath of two mass shootings that left 18 people dead, but despite their majorities in Congress, Democrats’ proposed bills would be extraordinarily unlikely to overcome a Republican Senate filibuster.

Partisan gridlock on guns is nothing new. No major gun control legislation has passed in over 25 years, when Congress passed a 10-year assault weapons ban under former President Bill Clinton. But despite the constant stalemates, some Republicans have offered alternative plans, meaning that the possibility of some form of bipartisan gun legislation may still exist.

Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey said Tuesday that while he did not think the two bills passed by the House would overcome a filibuster, there was still opportunity for compromise.

‘The Crisis Will Continue, and Worsen’: Immigration Experts Say Border Crisis Will Continue Despite Mexico’s Policies Limiting Migration

March 27, 2021March 26, 2021 Minnesota Sun Staff

The current migrant crisis in the U.S. will continue to worsen despite Mexico implementing travel limits on March 18 at its southern border, immigration experts say.

Mexico announced non-essential travel restrictions at its southern border due to COVID-19 as thousands of Central American migrants continue to enter the country en route to the U.S.

“The crisis will continue, and worsen, until such time as the [Biden] administration decides to take steps to end it,” Ira Mehlman, the media director of the Federation For American Immigration Reform (FAIR), told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

CBP Detaining as Many as 9,000 Migrants Daily, Around Half of Them Are Unaccompanied Minors and Families

March 27, 2021March 26, 2021 Minnesota Sun Staff

Customs and Border Protection is detaining as many as 9,000 migrants daily and over half of them are unaccompanied minors and families, a senior U.S. Border Patrol official said Friday.

Around 6,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended Thursday including 1,900 unaccompanied migrant minors and families who were processed under Title 8, according to the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) senior official. Title 42 is still used to expel most single migrant adults and U.S. officials are working with other countries to identify the migrants coming into the U.S., the official said.

Steve Bannon Presents ‘War Room: Pandemic’

March 27, 2021March 26, 2021 Minnesota Sun Staff

An all new LIVE STREAM of War Room: Pandemic starts at 9 a.m. Central Time on Saturday.

Former White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon began the daily War Room: Pandemic radio show and podcast on January 25, when news of the virus was just beginning to leak out of China around the Lunar New Year. Bannon and co-hosts bring listeners exclusive analysis and breaking updates from top medical, public health, economic, national security, supply chain and geopolitical experts weekdays from 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon ET.

Ambassador Callista Gingrich Commentary: The Human Crisis at the U.S. Southern Border

March 27, 2021March 26, 2021 Minnesota Sun Staff

The surge of migrants at the U.S. southern border has dramatically increased in recent months. According to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas, “We are on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years.”

In February, changes in U.S. border policy and the search for a better life incentivized more than 100,000 migrants to travel to the United States and cross the southern border.

Commentary: Following the ‘Science’ Amongst COVID-19 to Protect Unscientific Bias

March 27, 2021March 26, 2021 Minnesota Sun Staff

Throughout the Trump years and in particular during the 2020 COVID pandemic crisis, the nation was lectured by the Left “to follow the data,” as the Democrats proclaimed themselves the “party of science.” As sober and judicious children of the enlightenment, they alone offered the necessary disinterested correctives to Trump’s supposed bluster and exaggeration—and to his anti-scientific deplorable following (often dismissed by Biden as dregs, chumps, and Neanderthals).

In truth, leftists and Democrats have become the purveyors of superstition. Their creation of a fantasy world is not because they do not believe in science per se, but because they believe more in the primacy of ideology that should shape and warp science in the proper fashion for the greater good. What prompted Paul Ehrlich, Al Gore, or Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) hysterically and wrongly to forecast widespread demographic or climatological catastrophe in just a few years was not ignorance of science per se, but a desire to massage science for our own good.

‘Neutrobots’ Breach the Blood-Brain Barrier to Treat Brain Cancer in Mice

March 27, 2021March 26, 2021 RealClearWire

In one microscale step for machine, but a potentially significant leap for the treatment of brain cancer, researchers at the Harbin Institute of Technology in China have created controllable microrobots that can breach the blood-brain barrier and deliver cancer drugs to tumors in the brains of mice.

They detailed their efforts in the journal Science Robotics.

Minnesota Supreme Court Makes Controversial Rape Decision

March 27, 2021March 26, 2021 Peter D'Abrosca

The Minnesota Supreme Court earlier this week made a controversial ruling on a case involving a convicted rapist, ordering a new trial on the grounds that the woman involved in the incident voluntarily intoxicated herself prior to the sexual encounter.

Francois Khalil was convicted of third-degree criminal sexual conduct involving a victim who was impaired in 2019, stemming from an incident in 2017. The woman involved in the case said the two had been partying when she blacked out, and woke up to Khalil raping her. He was sentenced to five years in prison by a jury in Hennepin County.