Thursday, July 2, 2020
Historic USMCA Trade Deal Takes Effect
The United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) goes into effect on Wednesday, marking a win for the Trump administration. The deal replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). President Trump called NAFTA a "disastrous trade deal,” after building a substantial portion of his presidential campaign around replacing it. Previous presidents talked about replacing the decades-old deal, but President Trump is the first to sign a substantive replacement into law.
The USMCA will incentivize production at home by implementing regulations surrounding digital trade, altering rules for trade across borders without tariffs and restructuring labor enforcement systems. In particular, USMCA will bolster job growth in the agriculture sector and auto industry.
"When I ran for President, I made a solemn promise to the American people that I would end the job-killing failure called the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and replace it with a better deal for our workers, farmers, ranchers, and businesses—the men and women of Main Street who built the most prosperous and equitable economy in human history. Today, with NAFTA ending forever and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) entering into full force, our grateful Nation pays tribute to America’s workers and celebrates their ability to overcome decades of bad deals and failed policies," President Trump said. "The USMCA is the largest, fairest, and most balanced trade agreement ever negotiated and contains innovative provisions to help grow the economy and support American jobs. It is a tremendous victory for our manufacturers and autoworkers, meaning more cars and trucks will be produced in the United States."
Prof Who Predicted Trump Win in 2016 Says It'll Happen Again & Be Even Bigger This Time
Helmut Norpoth, an election forecaster and political science professor at Stony Brook University, told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Friday that President Donald Trump will most likely win re-election based on what he calls his “Primary Model.”
And Norpoth predicted not just a win, but a landslide victory over presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
The model gives Trump a 91 percent chance of being re-elected and also predicts he will earn 362 electoral votes.
Some recent GOP victories seem to reinforce his predictions.
On May 12, Republicans won two special elections. Tom Tiffany won his race to represent Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District in Congress, while Mike Garcia flipped a Democratic seat in California’s 25th District.
“OK, the key to the November election is the primaries. And the early primaries are already giving us a lot of information,” Norpoth said on “The Ingraham Angle.”
“And based on that, Donald Trump won them very easily in his party. Joe Biden, the likely nominee for the Democrats, had a great deal of trouble holding it together. But on balance, it’s that stronger performance in primaries that gives Donald Trump the...
11,000 Assault Weapons Parts Smuggled In From China, Says U.S. Border Agency
AUTHORITIES SEIZED NEARLY 11,000 ASSAULT WEAPONS PARTS SMUGGLED INTO THE U.S. FROM CHINA IN LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY – A CITY FACING VIOLENT RIOTS RIFE WITH ILLEGAL FIREARMS – AMID A FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION INQUIRY INTO CHINESE INVOLVEMENT IN NATIONWIDE PROTESTS.
The shipment, valued at almost $130,000, originated from Shenzen, China and was intended for a residence in Melbourne, Florida.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers in Louisville, however, intercepted the illegal weapons deal, emphasizing unreported weapons minimize the U.S.’s “safe and strong” status.
“The importing of any type of munitions is regulated by the ATF,” said Thomas Mahn, Port Director, Louisville. “This smuggler was knowingly trying to avoid detection, however, our officers remain vigilant, ensuring our community is safe.”
The June 26th announcement cast Wall Street Journal reports of illegal firearms appearing around Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in Louisville and across the country in an interesting – and perhaps foreign – light.
It also follows a fatal shooting in the area leaving one American dead, perhaps, as a result of illegally imported Chinese weapons.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray stated the bureau was “looking carefully” at foreign involvement or interference, chiefly at the hands of China, in nationwide protests responding to the death of George Floyd.
Wray also noted the FBI has over 2,000 active investigations into the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Chinese state media, mouthpieces for the CCP, have reveled in the violence and destruction faced by the U.S., with a Global Times editorial noting “protests and chaos have spread from the US state of Minnesota to the rest of the country, and Chinese netizens are cheering.”
China is responsible for the deaths of countless Americans – whether fueling the country’s opioid epidemic or...
China is responsible for the deaths of countless Americans – whether fueling the country’s opioid epidemic or...
The Hubbub About ‘The Boogaloo’ Is the Worst Kind of Fake News
Meanwhile, let’s keep pretending Antifa doesn’t exist.
As self-described Marxists and anarchists rampage through American cities, threaten lives, destroy historic monuments, burn churches, and terrorize the public, the Department of Homeland Security’s crack analysts have emphasized the real threat: Hawaiian shirts and cartoon frogs.
Politico reports that the National Capital Region Threat Intelligence Consortium (NTIC), a DHS Fusion Center for Washington D.C. and the surrounding area, warned of the threat of “Violent adherents of the boogaloo” ideology, which the outlet headlined as “far-right extremists.”
That headline caused the Department of Homeland Security to object to Politico’s mischaracterization of its sharp intelligence assessment, tweeting out,
Another work of fiction by @politico. The @DHSgov intel bulletin does NOT identify the Boogaloo movement as left-wing OR right-wing. They are simply violent extremists from both ends of the ideological spectrum.
It is true that the bulletin does not refer to “adherents” as “far-right.” But this is only because the report attempts to construct an ideology essentially out of thin air, based entirely on a set of internet memes largely created by activist trolls. The DHS report warns that violent Boogaloo extremists frequently wear Hawaiian shirts and may display images of “Pepe the Frog,” an internet meme of a sad frog that became popular with some elements of the Right.
From Memes to “Menace”
The term “Boogaloo” refers to an online meme about the potential for a second American civil war. The term is derived from the 1984 break-dancing movie, “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” and the subsequent movie meme which appends the mocking term “electric boogaloo” to derivative or uninspired sequels. Boogaloo memes often take the form of hypothetical discussions about what one would do “when the boogaloo”—meaning when civil war—begins. Boogaloo memes are often sharply fantastical or couched in video game language, referring to “equipment drops” or “leveling up.”
It is of course possible, even likely, that some individuals participating in this internet subculture could attempt to actualize such fantasies. Law enforcement should be careful and take such threats seriously. But this is not the same as being a “movement,” let alone a coherent ideology.
For one thing, fear of a second civil war is no longer an extreme idea. A recent Rasmussen poll revealed substantial numbers of Americans, on both the Right and the Left, are concerned about the prospect of civil war with just over a third (34 percent) of those polled saying they believe such a national catastrophe is likely within the next five years.
Despite DHS’s tweet insisting that its Boogaloo bulletin was intended to be nonpartisan, the reality is that the report relies almost entirely on biased reporting which attempts to portray the Boogaloo internet phenomenon as an overarching and coherent far-right movement posing a dire threat.
Substandard Sources
A look at the sourcing of the Boogaloo bulletin shows that the document, like other of Homeland Security’s NTIC products, cannot withstand objective scrutiny.
One of the NTIC bulletin’s primary sources is the Tech Transparency Project, a project of the Campaign for Accountability (CfA), which is a left-leaning nonprofit that “almost exclusively targets” conservative politicians and organizations for opposition research and dubious...
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