Category: National Security

Willful Blindness: Feds Ignore Massive Illegal Alien ID Theft Plaguing Americans As U.S. Coffers Fill

Posted on by RealClearWire

By Mark Hemingway and Ben Weingarten  for RealClearInvestigations

The historic surge of illegal immigrants across America’s southern border is fueling a hidden crime spree few in Washington seem willing or able to address: widespread identity theft by migrants who need U.S. credentials to work.

An extensive review of government reports, think-tank research, news accounts, and interviews with policymakers and scholars suggests the problem involves millions of people – though measuring it with precision is difficult because of the lack of data provided by authorities.

A telling indication of the scope of the criminality is provided by a little-known government accounting book, the Social Security Administration’s Earnings Suspense File (ESF). It reflects the earnings of employees whose W-2 wage and tax statements have names and Social Security numbers that do not match official records. The total has increased tenfold from $188.9 billion at the dawn of the millennium to $1.9 trillion in 2021.

Officials have historically ascribed a “high proportion” of the file’s growth to wages reported by illegal immigrants, and it has swelled alongside their population, which stands at a conservatively estimated 11.5 million today, 7 million of whom are employed. Among those doing so on the books, federal authorities have found that well over 1 million are using Social Security numbers belonging to someone else – i.e. stolen or “shared” with a relative or acquaintance – or that are fabricated.

The data held in the ESF would enable authorities to pursue many of the fraudsters, but the IRS and other agencies responsible for enforcing the law have been reluctant to investigate, and regulations have prevented meaningful information-sharing among them. This identity-related crime is providing a windfall for the U.S. government.

A 2017 study from the conservative Federation for American Immigration Reform found that the federal government collects about $22 billion annually in tax receipts from illegal aliens, with the bulk going toward Social Security ($12.6 billion) and Medicare ($5.9 billion) – programs from which noncitizens are ineligible to receive benefits. FAIR estimated that illegal migrants also paid $3.3 billion in federal income tax – a smaller proportion primarily due to illegal aliens’ lower wage levels – and another $1 billion in state income taxes.

RELATED: After Giving Democrats Enough Gun Control Votes, Cornyn Reportedly Says Immigration Is Next

In other words, the fraud has the effect of bolstering financially shaky federal programs. In one of the agency’s rare direct statements on the issue, Social Security Administration Chief Actuary Stephen Goss told CNN in 2014 that without “undocumented immigrants paying into the system, Social Security would have entered persistent shortfall of tax revenue to cover payouts starting in 2009.

” Leading progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal echoed this observation in 2018, arguing that a “complication of [then-president] Trump’s plans to limit immigration is the effect to our Social Security Earnings Suspense File – money that keeps our Social Security system afloat,” including that provided by “undocumented immigrants.”

Given Washington’s bipartisan willingness to tolerate illegal immigration – whether driven by the multicultural left or businesses interests seeking cheap labor – authorities have focused on this apparent windfall to the U.S. Treasury. But they have largely ignored the costs. These include the significant strain illegal immigrant households place on public finances, which FAIR and others estimate vastly outweigh their tax contributions, their impacts on crime and the job market – and on the victims of identity theft.

Reports dating back over a decade show that hundreds of thousands of Americans are unknowingly “sharing” their Social Security numbers with illegal immigrants. Such victims may face tax bills for income they didn’t earn or depleted benefits.

Worse, some may experience the burden of bad credit histories and criminal records inaccurately attributed to themselves after being issued SSNs that illegal aliens had previously invented and used. The overall impact on American citizens is largely unknown because federal, state, and local governments as well as financial institutions have generally failed to notify them even when fraud is suspected.

The relevant agencies were largely non-responsive to RealClearInvestigation’s requests for updated figures on the size, scope, and extent of the fraud. Nor have lawmakers recently given voice to the victims.

Congress seems to have last held a hearing spotlighting the defrauded over a decade ago. Related legislation aimed at reducing Social Security number fraud in employment has typically languished, and many lawmakers RCI contacted indicated only a passing knowledge of the issue.

One thing experts do agree on is that the problem is likely to get worse as more illegal immigrants cross the border and seek work.

Immigration Reform Spurs Fraud

The growth in illegal immigrant identity fraud, reflected in part by the booming Earnings Suspense File, serves as an ironic instance of regulation becoming the mother of criminal innovation.

In 1986, Congress for the first time made it explicitly unlawful for employers to hire illegal immigrants. The Immigration Reform and Control Act required those seeking employment to fill out I-9 forms attesting to citizenship or work-authorized immigrant status, and provide corroborating documentation and a valid Social Security number.

The law, signed by President Reagan amid great fanfare, was supposed to end the problem of illegal immigration, and as part of the grand bargain nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants, most of them from Mexico, were granted U.S. citizenship. But the law did not slow the pipeline of immigration as it was intended to do, and it would drive many illegal aliens – not only those crossing the border under cover but also those not allowed to work while awaiting court hearings that can take months or even years to take place – to fraud.

According to the libertarian CATO Institute, the 1986 law spurred the “creation of a large‐​scale black market for legal documents in the United States. The value of document fraud increased after ICRA because false documents became necessary for illegal immigrants to fill out an I-9 form to work.”

RELATED: Texas Launches Operations Center To Oversee 15-Agency Effort To Thwart Illegal Immigration

Aliens can procure SSNs in several ways: Some simply conjure a nine-digit SSN out of thin air. Others use the numbers of their children who were born in the U.S. Still others steal them directly from individuals, purchase them from dealers for $80 to $200 along with a green card as can be done in Los Angeles, or via the dark web for as little as $4.

In a rare instance of enforcement, in June the Department of Justice announced that a joint operation between the IRS Cyber Crimes Unit and the FBI had seized the “SSNDOB marketplace” – a series of lucrative websites touted on the dark web that sold illegally obtained Social Security numbers of more than 20 million Americans. But “synthetic identity fraud” persists – the most common form of ID theft, where fraudsters create an entirely new identity by stealing the Social Security numbers of children or poor adults with little credit history.

While some illegal immigrants work off the books, the Social Security Administration has previously said that 75% are using fake or stolen numbers. By doing so, they gain access to broader employment opportunities. There is another powerful incentive for paying taxes as well.

By dint of their generally low income levels, illegals can receive reimbursements through making use of deductions and exemptions, as well as rebates via refundable credits – leaving many with tax liabilities of zero or even as net recipients of government largesse. Immigration proponents contend that many do so in the hope that paying their taxes through employer withholding will weigh in their favor in a future amnesty, reflecting good behavior.

Their fraud can be detected each year when employers submit W-2s. The Social Security Administration analyzes the W-2s to detect inaccuracies, such as mismatched names to the numbers it has on file.

This is where the Earnings Suspense File comes into play. ESF, established in 1937, was long an accounting for wayward tax and Social Security payments – for instance when a newly married woman changed her name but forgot to notify the SSA. Should a legitimate taxpayer find he didn’t get tax refunds or Social Security benefits because of a mix-up with his Social Security number, ESF records ideally would help him get what he was owed. Unreconciled filings would remain in the ESF.

For decades relatively little money was recorded in the file. According to the Government Accountability Office, in the three decades between 1950 and 1980 just $33 billion in uncredited earnings were recorded.

Contributions to the ESF exploded after passage of the ICRA in 1986, as a Social Security Administration inspector general report providing a chart showing annual contributions to the fund makes clear:

The Earnings Suspense File exploded after passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

Uncredited earnings rose to $77.3 billion in the 1980s, would double in the 1990s to $188.9 billion, and then grow by a factor of 10 over the next two decades to an accumulated $1.9 trillion today – surging by $409 billion between the years 2012 and 2016 alone, according to documents obtained by the mass migration-skeptical Immigration Reform Law Institute via FOIA request.

A 2015 audit from SSA’s IG reports that in a given year as many as one in 25 American workers supplied their employers with false information – “each year, SSA posts to the ESF 3 to 4 percent of the total W-2s and 1.4 to 1.8 percent of the total wages received from employers.”

A 2018 Treasury inspector general report documented more than 1.3 million cases of employment-related identity theft from 2011-2016, and 1.2 million cases in which illegal aliens used Social Security numbers that belonged to someone else or were fabricated in 2017 alone. The Social Security Administration projects this number will rise to 2.9 by 2040.

Private estimates of Social Security number theft have ranged substantially higher.

A 2020 GAO report on employment-related identity fraud identified more than 2.9 million Social Security numbers with “risk characteristics associated with SSN misuse.”

“There’s massive amounts of fraud, the SSA knows it’s happening, and they know it’s your Social Security numbers…being used. These IG reports make it explicitly clear,” said Jon Feere, a former Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official now with the “pro-immigrant, low immigration” Center for Immigration Studies. “And they basically say that they believe that one of the main reasons for this fraud is because of the employment of illegal aliens.”

Known Fraud, Little Enforcement

The existence of the ESF means the Social Security Administration and the IRS, with which it coordinates, are sitting on a database containing a substantial population of fraudsters against American citizens. For the better part of two decades, government watchdogs have encouraged these agencies to put the data to use, but they have been reticent.

A 2005 Social Security Administration IG report stated: “Although SSA continues to coordinate with DHS on immigration issues, it does not routinely share information regarding egregious employers who submit inaccurate SSNs. In our opinion, any serious plan to address SSN misuse and growth of the ESF must allow SSA to share such information with DHS,” reads the report.

A 2006 GAO report similarly recommended that the SSA, IRS, and DHS share data to address this problem. However, federal law severely limits the SSA and IRS from sharing information from tax forms, in part on privacy grounds. The ACLU called attempts to coordinate information-sharing between the SSA and immigration enforcement authorities during the Trump administration an “all-out assault on our legal rights and our immigrant communities.”

Since SSA lacks enforcement authority, the George W. Bush-led Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency proposed a rule setting forth potential penalties for employers who did not respond to SSA “no match letters” – notifications sent to employers informing them of employees whose SSNs don’t match government records.

The proposed rule kicked off a firestorm of opposition from immigrant advocates. In 2008, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reinstated 33 employees who had been fired by their employer after receiving a no match letter. The court ruled a no match letter alone wasn’t sufficient to determine whether employees were in violation of the law.

The Obama administration put an end to no match letters altogether. Jason Hopkins, the investigations manager for the IRLI, told RCI that the Obama administration did so in service of its Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“Dreamers”) program, which allowed illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children exemption from deportation and eligibility for work permits.

“If they went in [and] applied for a DACA application, and they had to actually admit they put in fake social security numbers, they’d be essentially admitting to perjury,” Hopkins says. “So that would have scared them off, and Obama wanted them to apply for this program.”

In 2019, the Trump administration-led Social Security Administration resumed sending out no match letters, delivering 1.6 million notices across 2019 and 2020. The Biden administration again discontinued the practice.

RELATED: Americans More Concerned As Illegal Immigration Soars To Highest In Two Decades

The SSA did not respond to RCI’s multiple attempts to contact it regarding related policies.

The IRS has enforcement powers the SSA lacks, but has historically disavowed responsibility for dealing with illegal alien ID theft. In 2016 then-IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who faced impeachment hearings for defying congressional subpoenas and the destruction of evidence, told Congress, “We have Social Security and immigration authorities and others who enforce that part of the law, and if we start looking behind the system and doing their job for them, we’re going to discourage a lot of people from paying the taxes they owe.”

Consistent with this view, a 2020 GAO report on employment-related identity fraud found that the IRS was not tracking numerous forms of employment-related identity fraud.

The IRS’ Internal Revenue Manual, which governs employees’ policies and practices, refers to those engaged in ID fraud as “borrowers,” defending this language as neutral, given that some may be “borrowing” an SSN from another family member to work, rather than engaging in “actual identity theft.”

When CNS News asked the IRS in 2018 how many taxpayer accounts it had referred for criminal prosecution, of the 1.3 million Treasury’s inspector general had flagged for identity fraud, the agency said “We do not have this information.” Similarly, the IG report recommended that the IRS notify the 458,658 victims of ID theft identified in 2017 – and the IRS does not appear to have notified anyone.

When RCI asked the IRS about its policies for handling ID theft, the agency did not confirm it had done anything in response to the IG’s findings or identity fraud specifically related to illegal immigration. A spokesman said that “in recent years, we’ve referred people” – that is, from the general U.S. population – “for prosecution all the time, and where appropriate, we work with other law-enforcement agencies.”

The IRS’s guide to employment-related identity theft highlights notices it might send to taxpayers indicating potential fraud, but it is not clear how many such letters it sends out, and the burden overwhelmingly falls on the victims to be vigilant and take steps to clear their names.

Meanwhile, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has curtailed worksite enforcement. Between halting no match letters and DHS’ leniency, Spencer Raley, a researcher with FAIR, told RCI, “From a strictly immigration-enforcement standpoint, nothing is being done to combat the issue of illegal aliens committing document fraud in order to obtain employment.”

RCI asked a series of questions of ICE, which leads criminal investigations into both document fraud and worksite enforcement, on the nature and extent of its targeting of those engaging in ID theft/fraud in employment, and whether and to what end it coordinated with other agencies on identifying such individuals for investigation. As of the time of publication, it had not responded to the questions.

Law enforcement agencies have periodically made illegal alien ID fraud busts in recent years, but not at meaningful levels relative to the previously reported number of fraudsters.

Given that Medicare is a beneficiary of the fraud, RCI posed a series of questions to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services pertaining to ESF, and whether it was aware of, or did anything to contact those whose SSNs might have been fraudulently used associated with Medicare contributions. A CMS spokesperson referred RCI to the Social Security Administration.

RCI posed similar questions to tax authorities in both California and Texas – states dominated by opposing political parties but each with substantial illegal alien populations – to ascertain whether they, like the federal government, were tracking taxes paid by those potentially using fraudulent IDs, including illegal aliens, and doing anything to pursue them.

California’s Franchise Tax Board told RCI that it does not have a state Earnings Suspense File, nor does it track how much tax revenue annually is attributable to individuals misrepresenting themselves on filings. It did note, “If we suspect identity theft on an individual tax return, we send a notice to the taxpayer to let them know they may be a victim and how to verify the authenticity of the tax return on file.” With respect to enforcement, the board indicated “Fraudulent claims and suspected ID theft cases may be sent to” its Criminal Investigations Bureau, which partners with other state law enforcement authorities. The board emphasized that California further partners with “state, city, federal and industry partners” to “protect the entire tax ecosystem,” with a focus on “widespread fraudulent schemes and threat groups,” rather than those filing and paying taxes.

As of the time of publication, Texas had not responded to RCI’s inquiries.

Banks and credit agencies also have their own extensive “sub-files” for people who share the same Social Security number, but privacy laws make it impossible to get information on someone who has stolen one’s SSN from a third party, even though the behavior of the person stealing one’s number may end up affecting one’s ability to get government benefits or credit.

Credit rating agencies Equifax, Experian, and Transunion did not respond to RCI’s queries around illegal alien identity fraud.

What Victims Face

Marcus Calvillo, a father of six from Grand Prairie, Texas, experienced one of the more harrowing episodes of identity fraud on record, at least in the eyes of the prosecutor who helped bring him justice. Calvillo’s life was upended after an illegal immigrant named Fernando Neave-Ceniceros was first arrested on drug trafficking charges in Kansas in 1993, then a slew of other ones, including a sex crime involving a minor, and his twice failing to register as a sex offender.

RELATED: Biden Once Said America Was An Idea We’ve Never Lived Up To – Here’s a List of American Firsts That Say Otherwise

The criminal activity was recorded under Calvillo’s stolen identity – Neave-Ceniceros’ fingerprints were linked to Calvillo’s name in national criminal databases – making it difficult for the innocent Calvillo to pass the cursory background checks required to hold a job and support his family.

At one point, Calvillo was working as a cable installer when he was abruptly fired. When asked why, he told the Associated Press he was only told, “You know what you did.” Calvillo also had disputes with the IRS over taxes on wages that had been paid to Neave-Ceniceros but recorded under his name.

After years of struggling to get help – a struggle similarly encountered by other victims – Calvillo contacted Assistant U.S. Attorney Brent Anderson, who had been pursuing another identity theft case, who helped him get justice. In 2016, Neave-Ceniceros was convicted on a series of charges including aggravated identity theft and misuse of a Social Security number. “I don’t know of a case where the theft of an identity had a more devastating impact than this one,” Anderson told the Associated Press.

Despite wreaking havoc on Calvillo’s life, Neave-Ceniceros was only sentenced to one year and a day in prison for his crimes.

Horror stories such as Calvillo’s still abound. “I’ve been fired from jobs and have been accused of crimes I didn’t commit because my identity was stolen,” identity theft victim Adrian Gonzalez told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram last year. “I don’t know what to do anymore, I think I might need to change my name.”

Linda Trevino, a Chicago suburb resident, was another victim, one of the hundreds of thousands NBC News cited in a report from over a decade ago. She had been denied a job at a local Target because someone using her SSN also worked there. Her number, in fact, had been used to obtain employment at 37 other employers, leaving her haunted by the IRS with letters asking her to pay others’ taxes, and facing creditors.

Children are victims of fraud too, and in fact may be prime targets given the clean records their IDs provide for thieves, and that conduct engaged in in their names may go undetected for years. Former California congressman Elton Gallegly wrote in The Hill in 2012 of a number of child victims of illegal immigrant fraud, including among them:

  • A 3-year-old issued an SSN already in use for years by a twice-arrested illegal alien, impacting the child’s credit, medical, and work history.
  • A 9-year-old denied Medicaid due to wages reported on his SSN.
  • A 13-year-old denied as a dependent on her family’s return for supposedly making too much money.

Immigration advocates downplay the criminality involved. “Most workers are buying documents they believe to be false,” a representative of the National Immigration Law Center told the Los Angeles Times. “There isn’t really any intention of stealing someone’s identity.” But even when immigration-related identity theft lacks specific criminal intent, the confusion that ID theft creates when dealing with tax bills, receiving government benefits, facing ruined credit, and other problems can upend a person’s life.

Citizens who discover someone else is using their Social Security number will quickly learn there’s little they can do about it. According to the Social Security Administration, proof that one’s SSN has been stolen and is being used by someone else isn’t sufficient reason to change one’s Social Security number. One must prove significant harm as a result, and the process is onerous – in 2014 the agency only permitted a total of 250 people to change their Social Security number. The Federal Trade Commission details the numerous steps those who believe they might have been defrauded should take to get their lives back.

The problem is so extensive that Mike Chapple, a professor of information technology at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, told Forbes, “It’s totally reasonable to assume that your Social Security number has been compromised at least once, if not many times.”

Little Legislative Relief

One of the seminal victories for proponents of ID integrity in the workplace was the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act in 1996, which launched the E-Verify system.

That its author, Rep. Ken Calvert, another California Republican, was still struggling 15 years later to move legislation making the program mandatory, illustrates the uphill battle the limited number of immigration hawks in Washington face.

The DHS-run program, which compares employment eligibility information from I-9 forms to government records, remains required solely of federal contractors. Only a small minority of states have mandated its use by employers. Republican senators Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton tried to pass a federal law that would simultaneously mandate E-Verify and raise the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour, but with the Senate controlled by Democrats, that legislation died.

On the House side, Georgia Republican Buddy Carter has sought to pass legislation multiple times that would require the IRS to produce a report on whether it could use proprietary information to identify illegal aliens fraudulently working in the U.S., to no avail.

At the state level, even Republican red Texas, mired in problems pertaining to illegal immigration, has had difficulty finding the political will to police the workplace. “At least 30 bills mandating E-Verify have been introduced in Texas in the past decade,” the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported last year. “Only one has passed, and none addressed undocumented workers, employers or temporary employment agencies using fraudulently obtained identities.”

Until recently, it wasn’t clear whether states even had the authority to prosecute identity theft by illegal immigrants. In March of 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that at least in some circumstances, they do, overturning a Kansas Supreme Court ruling that had voided the convictions of three illegal immigrants under the state’s identity theft law who had used stolen SSNs to obtain jobs.

The rapidly changing political landscape may be the only thing that could impact the broader trajectory of illegal immigration from which the fraud springs. The populist turn of the post-Donald Trump Republican Party is appealing to working class voters with a strong interest curbing illegal immigration to put upward pressure on wages.

Recent elections also show Hispanics voting for Republicans in significantly higher numbers, in part because of the Democrats’ more liberal border policies.

In the meantime, the illegal immigrant population continues to swell. The Biden administration has released over one million illegal immigrants into the U.S., in addition to the more than 700,000 “got-aways” who evaded apprehension, and over 190,000 unaccompanied minors released into the interior – for a total of nearly two million people. “To put it bluntly, the Biden administration, and other Democratic administrations, they just don’t care,” says Jason Hopkins.

Syndicated with permission from Real Clear Wire.

The post Willful Blindness: Feds Ignore Massive Illegal Alien ID Theft Plaguing Americans As U.S. Coffers Fill appeared first on The Political Insider.

Any Institution The Left Doesn’t Control They Seek To Destroy

Posted on by The Daily Signal

By Jarrett Stepman for The Daily Signal

From overturning Roe v. Wade to supporting the Second Amendment and maintaining religious liberty, the Supreme Court’s recent decisions have put the left in a sour mood.

The left certainly hasn’t taken the news well.

Despite the left’s obsession with the notion that the right is all about “undermining democracy,” the left has shown little trepidation in demanding we lay waste to republican institutions that stand in opposition to its agenda.

Pleas for “court packing” from Democrats have been building for a while. Undoubtedly, those calls will become louder now, despite caution from the Biden administration. The latter hasn’t stopped plenty of prominent Democrats from acceding to the calls of activists to “burn it down”—figuratively and perhaps even literally. 

They’ve both demanded court-packing with liberal justices and called into question the Supreme Court’s legitimacy.

RELATED: Justice Alito’s Opinion Doesn’t Just Overturn Roe v. Wade, It Shreds It to Pieces

It’s become a full-blown tantrum from people used to getting their way.

“This court has lost legitimacy. They have burned whatever legitimacy they may still have had after their gun decision, after their voting decision, after their union decision,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on ABC’s “This Week.”

“They just took the last of it and set a torch to it,” Warren said. “I believe we need to get some confidence back in our court, and that means we need more justices on the United States Supreme Court.”

Following the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., marched with protesters in front of the Supreme Court and joined in chants of “illegitimate.”

She later said that “impeachment” was on the table for Supreme Court justices, who she insinuated had lied under oath at their Senate confirmation hearings. As Tim Carney wrote in the Washington Examiner, the idea that Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch promised to uphold Roe v. Wade is completely false.

Not to be outdone, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., went off the deep end in front of the Supreme Court. “Women are going to control their bodies, no matter how they try and stop us,” Waters said. “The hell with the Supreme Court. We will defy them.”

It appears that, for the left, liberalism is the standard by which something has “legitimacy.” Any institution they don’t immediately control they seek to destroy.

RELATED: AOC Wants ‘Consequences’ For Supreme Court Justices, Impeachment For Clarence Thomas

Part of this might be fueled by their typically overwhelming institutional control, which until very recently included the Supreme Court. For half a century, the court had delivered wins for the left on numerous policy and cultural issues, even when those issues weren’t popular—or in the case of Roe v. Wade and other decisions, weren’t based on particularly sound legal reasoning.

The court could be relied upon to be the left’s sort of deus ex machina, as liberal Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith admitted.

Now, there’s certainly a case to be made that the American political system has become too reliant on courts, rather than on the democratic process, to resolve divisive legal and moral issues. That was one of the problems with Roe v. Wade. By effectively declaring that having an abortion is a “right,” the issue was taken off the table for Americans.

That issue is now going back to the American people and their local elected officials. And that’s really where it should be decided. 

Again, it’s really something to hear the left rage against unelected judges “imposing” their ideas on the country. That’s effectively what Roe v. Wade did, except without supportive language in the Constitution, like the clear text of the Second Amendment, which the justices relied on in their ruling against a New York gun law the day before they overturned Roe. 

When conservatives faced significant legal setbacks in past decades, they didn’t attempt to blow up the court or pack it with additional justices to get their way. Instead, the right worked hard to build a serious institutional and legal infrastructure in opposition, with the Federalist Society being perhaps the most noteworthy example.

With the election of President Donald Trump—who appointed three Supreme Court justices—that generational work came to fruition.

The right worked within the system to create serious and lasting change. Liberals of this generation, it seems, failed the marshmallow experiment on delayed gratification.

RELATED: Progressives Want ‘Term Limits’ For Supreme Court Justices

The left certainly didn’t learn anything from then-Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. The then-Senate majority leader used the “nuclear option” to end the Republicans’ Senate filibuster of judicial nominations in 2013, which cleared the way for Trump and Senate Republicans later getting three justices on the Supreme Court.

Oops.

It’s perhaps a lesson for conservatives today.

 If we really want to overcome the great “awokening,” we need to consider long-term plans to recapture institutions or build new ones in opposition. It’s not enough to just attack them. Short-term victory without a longer-term strategy can easily backfire.

Syndicated with permission from The Daily Signal.

The post Any Institution The Left Doesn’t Control They Seek To Destroy appeared first on The Political Insider.

AOC Wants ‘Consequences’ For Supreme Court Justices, Impeachment For Clarence Thomas

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

Far-left Democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is calling for there to be “consequences” for Supreme Court Justices she claims “lied under oath” and suggested they need to face impeachment.

The Supreme Court on Friday overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion at the federal level.

Some Senators have claimed that by stating during their Senate confirmation hearings that Roe v. Wade was “settled” – which it was at the time they went through the nomination process – Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh “lied under oath.”

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), for example, released a statement indicating he “trusted Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh when they testified under oath that they also believed” the landmark ruling was “settled legal precedent.”

“What I believe that the President and the Democratic Party needs to come to terms with is that this is not just a crisis of Roe, this is a crisis of our democracy,” AOC said in an interview with Chuck Todd on Sunday.

The congresswoman was then asked about investigations being launched as a means to remedy the left’s perceived grievance.

RELATED: Justice Alito’s Opinion Doesn’t Just Overturn Roe v. Wade, It Shreds It to Pieces

AOC Calls for Impeachment of Supreme Court Justices

Being a day that ends in ‘Y,’ AOC explained to Todd that investigations and possibly impeachment were the way to go following the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Todd asked her if she thinks “the House Judiciary Committee should begin the process of an investigation” into Kavanaugh and Gorsuch. 

“If we allow Supreme Court nominees to lie under oath and secure lifetime appointments … we must see that through,” she said of possible investigations.

“There must be consequences for such a deeply destabilizing action and hostile takeover of our democratic institutions,” AOC hyperventilated. “This is a crisis of legitimacy.”

AOC then focused her ire toward justice Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving justice, the second black justice, and the most conservative member currently serving on the Supreme Court.

“We have a Supreme Court Justice whose wife participated in January 6th,” AOC said failing to discern between those who wanted election fraud investigated and those who took part in the Capitol riot.

AOC has targeted Thomas for impeachment for some time, following reports that Thomas’ wife, Virginia Thomas, exchanged text messages with Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about alleged election fraud.

“Clarence Thomas should resign,” she has tweeted.

RELATED: AOC Calls To Impeach Clarence Thomas, The Only Black Supreme Court Justice

Ocasio-Cortez Calls Court ‘Illegitimate’

Kavanaugh has also been the subject of smears from the New York socialist, having been maligned by AOC for being “credibly” accused of sexual assault.

“Reminder that Brett Kavanaugh *still* remains credibly accused of sexual assault on multiple accounts [with] corroborated details [and] this year the FBI admitted it never fully investigated,” she tweeted in December.

“Yet the court is letting him decide on whether to legalize forced birth in the US,” Ocasio-Cortez added.

In reality, a Senate Judiciary report from 2018 which investigated the sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh showed there was “no evidence” to support any of the claims that were made against him – including the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford.

After the Supreme Court’s ruling, AOC joined protesters outside the building in chanting that the Court itself is “illegitimate,” even as Kavanaugh was the victim of an assassination attempt and there have been nearly 50 attacks on pro-life centers across the country.

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Jan. 6 panel hits prime time: Five things to watch

Posted on (Updated by Zach Schonfeld

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack is hours away from the first of its highly anticipated series of public hearings.

The prime-time hearing kicks off at 8 p.m. on Thursday and will be aired on the big three broadcast networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, as well as cable networks CNN and MSNBC. Fox News announced it will not air the hearing on its main network.

The committee described Thursday’s hearing as an initial summary of a “coordinated, multi-step effort” to overturn the 2020 election results, including previously unseen material and witness testimony.

Here are five things to watch for at tonight’s hearing:

How strongly the committee connects Trump to the riot

Some Democrats have voiced hope that the panel’s findings will amp up pressure on the Justice Department to prosecute former President Trump for his role in the attack. 

But exactly how strong the committee connects Trump himself to the riot remains a central question of the panel’s hearings.

But Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who sits on the panel, said in a Washington Post Live interview on Monday that the committee has found evidence on Trump that supports “a lot more than incitement,” the charge Democrats laid out in their second impeachment trial against Trump.

The House had voted to impeach the then-president for incitement to insurrection before Trump was ultimately acquitted in the Senate.

Raskin said he believed Trump and the White House were at the “center” of Jan. 6. 

“The select committee has found evidence about a lot more than incitement here, and we’re gonna be laying out the evidence about all of the actors who were pivotal to what took place on Jan. 6,” Raskin said.

How the committee leverages testimony from Trump’s inner circle

The committee has conducted more than 1,000 interviews in its yearlong investigation, subpoenaed more than 100 people and has promised to share video footage of some of its depositions.

The committee has pledged to air footage from interviews with “Trump White House officials, senior Trump administration officials, Trump campaign officials and indeed Trump family members,” the aide said.

The panel also sat down with a wide range of senior Trump White House officials, including some who were with the former president on Jan. 6.

It has also sat down with former Justice Department officials who spoke about Trump's pressure campaign at the department, as well as with legal advisers to former Vice President Mike Pence.

The committee has also interviewed multiple Trump family members, including Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son; his fiancee, Kimberly Guilfoyle; Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter; and her husband, Jared Kushner.

Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said on Wednesday that Ivanka Trump’s testimony would not air in Thursday’s hearing, but he left open the possibility it may be played later.

Those videotaped testimonies will be part of a multimedia presentation. The committee hired a veteran ABC producer to assist with assembling the videos as it looks to transform its evidence into a ready-for-TV package.

How organized groups played a role in spurring violence

Among the thousands of people who traveled to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 were extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Dozens of these groups’ members have been charged in connection with the riot.

The role of the Proud Boys is expected to come into particular focus on Thursday when documentarian Nick Quested appears as a witness. 

Quested filmed footage of Proud Boys members during the Capitol breach and a Jan. 5 meeting between the leaders of the two extremist groups. 

Prosecutors charged five Proud Boys leaders with seditious conspiracy on Monday. 

The committee has also taken interest in the groups that planned the now-infamous rally on the Ellipse and other events preceding the riot.

The panel issued subpoenas to individuals listed on event permits filed by Women for America First for the Ellipse event and some of the group’s contractors.

The committee also subpoenaed people affiliated with the “Stop the Steal” movement, with one organizer having said the group intended to direct Ellipse rally attendees to a subsequent event on Capitol grounds.

How the committee looks ahead to future elections

Perceptions of the committee’s end goal are varied among lawmakers. Some Democrats hope the hearings will provide a high-stakes history lesson for the public, while others desire greater accountability for the riot’s central players. 

As Democrats weigh their options, the panel itself has reportedly become divided about what long-term reforms to implement.

Axios reported on Sunday that Raskin has argued for abolishing the Electoral College to prevent future subversion of the electoral counting process. But Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the panel’s vice chair, has voiced opposition to that proposal out of concerns it would diminish the committee’s credibility, according to the outlet.

Axios reported that other committee members have pushed more modest reforms, like changes to the Electoral Count Act and federal voting rights legislation.

How Republicans combat the hearing’s messaging

The panel scheduled its first hearing for prime time in attempts to cut through to large swaths of the American public, but the committee is already facing headwinds.

Fox News announced it will not air the hearing on its cable channel, although its lower-profile sister network Fox Business will do so. Prominent Fox News host Tucker Carlson will host his show at 8 p.m. on Thursday just as the hearing begins.

But Republicans are mounting a broader media battle as the hearings approach.

The GOP is arguing the hearings are just meant to distract voters from issues like inflation and crime. The House Committee on Administration Republicans sent a letter to the Jan. 6 panel asking it to preserve all records in preparation for an investigation of the investigation.

At House Republican leadership’s press conference earlier on Thursday, just one of nine attending lawmakers said they would tune in to Thursday’s hearing: Rep. Kelly Armstrong (N.D.).

These are the lawmakers on the Jan. 6 committee

Posted on (Updated by Jared Gans

The House committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection will start holding public hearings Thursday, looking to draw national attention to witness testimony and evidence gathered during nearly a year of investigating.

The committee is made up of nine House members — seven Democrats and two Republicans. It formed last summer, about six months after the U.S. Capitol riot, to investigate the attack and events and communications around it.

After an attempt to form a bipartisan commission with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) failed, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) moved forward in appointing the entire committee.

Here are the members serving on the House Jan. 6 committee and some of their comments on the panel's work thus far.

Bennie Thompson 

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) serves as chairman of the committee. Thompson has led the committee since its inception. He has said there is “no question” that the Jan. 6 insurrection was a premeditated attack based on the evidence the committee has received.

He has called his role leading the committee “ironic” given his background as a Black man from “one of the most racist states.”

Liz Cheney 

Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) serves as the vice chairwoman and is one of two Republican members on the committee. Thompson said in September that her appointment underscores the “bipartisan nature” of the committee’s work. 

But Cheney has faced sharp criticism as a result of her decision to participate in the committee’s investigation and her rebukes of former President Trump’s claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. House Republicans voted to remove Cheney as conference chairwoman last May, and she is now facing a Trump-endorsed challenger for her primary in August. 

Cheney said last month hat Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results is a "threat we have never faced before."

Adam Kinzinger 

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), the other Republican serving on the committee, has also faced pushback after he voted to impeach Trump for his role in inciting the Capitol insurrection and joined the Jan. 6 committee. Kinzinger announced in October that he would not seek reelection to his seat, ending a 12-year career in the House. He has remained one of the most vocal GOP critics of Trump. 

Kinzinger was not originally a member of the committee, but Pelosi appointed him after McCarthy pulled his picks from consideration. 

McCarthy denied blaming Trump for the insurrection immediately following the attack, but tapes later revealed that he did, which Kinzinger said showed that Republican leaders think their voters are “dumb.”

Pete Aguilar 

Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), the vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, argued in March in favor of the Justice Department bringing contempt charges against witnesses who have refused to cooperate despite subpoenas from the committee. 

The Justice Department has brought charges for contempt of Congress against former Trump strategist Stephen Bannon and former trade adviser Peter Navarro but has not charged his former chief of staff Mark Meadows or Dan Scavino, his former deputy chief of staff for communications, who have also been subpoenaed by the committee.

Zoe Lofgren 

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the House Administration Committee, said in March on PBS’s “NewsHour” that what unfolded during the riot was a more serious threat to American democracy than Watergate. In April, she said the members of the House Jan. 6 committee are “not afraid” to release any information or call any witness to testify. 

The committee has issued subpoenas for a range of witnesses, including Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr. who spoke at the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse near the White House. Multiple family members have voluntarily cooperated, including the former president's daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner. 

The committee has not said who will testify during its upcoming slate of eight hearings.

Elaine Luria 

Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) said in an interview in late March that Kushner’s interview with the committee was “really valuable” to the investigation.

Luria also called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to act on the contempt charges the committee has recommended. 

“Attorney General Garland, do your job so we can do ours,” she said at a meeting where the committee forwarded its recommendation for charges against Scavino and Navarro. 

Stephanie Murphy 

Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) said in February that the committee needs to be aware of the impact its actions could have moving forward.

“The people who were involved were at all levels of government — local, state and federal — and the unprecedented nature of the event has led us to be very careful about how we proceed in the investigation because we are setting precedents,” Murphy told The Hill at the time. 

“But we will be thorough in how we get all the information,” she added. 

Jamie Raskin 

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who led the House impeachment case against Trump in January, has been vocal about the Jan. 6 committee’s findings and what the American people will learn from the public hearings.

He said Monday that the committee members have found evidence on Trump that is “a lot more than incitement.” Trump was impeached following the insurrection for incitement, but the Senate did not reach the requisite two-thirds majority vote needed to convict him.

Raskin told Washington Post Live on Tuesday that the hearing this week will “tell a story of a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election.” 

Adam Schiff 

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) emphasized on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the hearing this week will be the first time there will be a “comprehensive narrative” on the events surrounding the insurrection.

He said “a number of bombshells” have already been released during the committee’s investigation but that there is more to be revealed. Schiff is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which was at the center of the investigation in Trump's first impeachment for allegedly soliciting foreign help in an election.

Report: Video Shows Biden Administration Flying More Illegal Immigrants Into New York

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

A new report indicates that the Biden administration has increased the number of illegal immigrant flights into New York, with an additional airport being utilized to handle the overflow in an effort to avoid images getting out to the public.

Republican gubernatorial hopeful Rob Astorino posted a video on Sunday purportedly showing more “migrant flights from the southern border” arriving at Stewart International Airport in Orange County.

A reporter shared the video and captioned it with a disclaimer stating “officials say flights are legal under U.S. immigration law.”

RELATED: NY Rep. Calls For Biden To Be Impeached After Police Video Shows Feds Flying Illegal Immigrants Into NY

Migrant Flights Into New York On The Rise?

The Political Insider reported earlier this year on video footage originally released by Astorino, which he obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, showing illegal immigrants being flown by federal contractors into an airport in New York in the dead of night.

The video shows federal contractors explaining to a police officer in charge of security at the facility that the illegal immigrant flights, which have reportedly been conducted at the Westchester County Airport since August, are to be “on the down-low.”

“The government is betraying the American people,” one contractor can be heard telling a police officer.

The New York Post’s Miranda Devine now reports that the Biden administration “has upped the frequency of its secret flights on an industrial scale” and are now utilizing a second airport location in New Windsor.

Referencing Astorino’s latest video, she explains that “migrant flights into New York have ratcheted up in recent weeks to almost one per night.”

Devine adds that “a new airport is being utilized to handle the overflow, in an apparent bid by the administration to avoid images of border chaos before the November midterm elections.”

RELATED: Crowd Cheers When Governor DeSantis Announces Plan To Send Illegal Immigrants To Biden’s Home State Of Delaware

Call to Impeach Biden

Initial reports on the flights into New York airports in the dead of night led Representative Claudia Tenney (R-NY) to call for President Biden’s impeachment.

“This is a complete, aggravated dereliction of duty, which is why … I called for Joe Biden to be impeached and removed,” she demanded in an appearance on “Fox and Friends.”

“His primary obligation as the commander-in-chief and president of the United States is to enforce our laws, to live up to his oath, to enforce our border security and to tell the truth to the American people,” she added.

The videos show migrants being flown into the airports in the middle of the night and then shipped out on charter buses.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, responding to reports of the flights in October said, “It is our legal responsibility to safely care for unaccompanied children until they can be swiftly reunited with a parent or a vetted sponsor.”

She also pretended there was no meaning behind the late-night hours these flights are being conducted.

Fact-checkers say that Biden “secretly flying illegal immigrants” is all just a misunderstanding.

According to Politifact, such charter flights are mostly “unaccompanied minors” and admits that the flights “are not publicized and sometimes are done in the middle of the night to protect the confidentiality of those being transported and to guard against anyone who would interfere with the flights.”

Further, flights occurred under the Trump and Obama administrations.

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Trump Inexplicably Endorses GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy Despite Jan. 6 Resignation Plot

Posted on by Deborah Francisco

President Donald Trump endorsed House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as “an outstanding Representative” and a “strong and fearless Leader” in a Truth Social post Saturday, despite revelations of McCarthy’s plot to ask Trump to resign after the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

McCarthy, widely considered to become the Speaker of the House if Republicans win the midterm elections in November, represents California’s 23rd Congressional District.

“In Congress, Kevin is a tireless advocate for the people of Bakersfield and the Central Valley,” Trump said. “He is working incredibly hard to Stop Inflation, Deliver Water Solutions, and hold Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi Accountable for their catastrophic failures and dereliction of duty.”

Trump made this endorsement despite McCarthy’s resignation comments that came to light in April. 

RELATED: Tucker Rips GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy As Democrat ‘Puppet’ After Audio Surfaces of McCarthy Ripping Trump Supporters

McCarthy’s Plot to Remove Trump

McCarthy was caught on a recording with Republican leaders discussing a plan to ask President Trump to resign following the political fallout of the January 6 riot.

In the conversation, Never Trump Republican and January 6th Committee member Liz Cheney asked if McCarthy has discussed resignation with Trump. McCarthy replied that he had not asked the President yet, but he planned to do so.

“Again, the only discussion I would have with him is that, I think this will pass [Congress]” McCarhty said. “And it will be my recommendation [Trump] should resign. I mean, that would be my take. But I don’t think he would take it. But I don’t know.”

The item before Congress appears to be what would become the second impeachment case against Trump.

The comments were first reported by two New York Times reporters, Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin, in their book “This Will Not Pass.” 

Despite the recording, McCarthy vehemently denied making any comments about asking Trump to resign in a statement he posted to Twitter.

“The New York Time’s reporting on me is totally false and wrong,” McCarthy tweeted. “It comes as no surprise that the corporate media is obsessed with doing everything it can to further a liberal agenda. This promotional book tour is no different. If the reporters were interested in truth why would they ask for comment after the book was printed?”

“The past year and a half have proven that our country was better off when President Trump was in the White House…”

Whatever was discussed on the Jan. 10 phone call with Representative Cheney never came to fruition.

RELATED: GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy Caught On Audio Discussing Removing Trump From Office, Blaming Him For Capitol Riot

Trump Likes to Pick Winners

Trump’s base of MAGA voters was clearly miffed by the McCarthy endorsement, especially considering his resignation plot. Following Trump’s endorsement of the Congressman, his supporters booed the mention of McCarthy’s name at a rally over the weekend.

Twitter mentions of McCarthy’s endorsement refer to him as a RINO who lets Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) take advantage of him. 

So, what could explain Trump’s endorsement of McCarthy? Trump’s endorsements range an assortment of candidates.

They are not all the same brand of MAGA Republicans as Trump himself, but Trump likes to pick winners and there is no other Republican running in McCarthy’s race who could beat him. It may be as simple as that.

Trump explained his reasons for backing McCarthy in his own statement on Truth Social, where he listed a number of areas where McCarthy is leading Republicans in Congress. 

“As Leader, Kevin is building a commitment to Americas platform to grow our economy, fight big tech censorship, secure the border, strengthen our military, defend the Second Amendment, improve our health care, restore American energy independence, support our brave veterans, and uphold the Rule of Law and American values.”

He concludes the endorsement saying, “Kevin McCarthy has my Complete and Total Endorsement for California’s 23rd Congressional District!”

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Raskin says Jan. 6 panel has found more on Trump than ‘incitement’

Posted on (Updated by Mychael Schnell

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) on Monday said the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol has found evidence on former President Trump that supports “a lot more than incitement.”

The comment from Raskin, a member of the Jan. 6 panel, referenced Trump’s second impeachment in January 2021, when the House voted to impeach the then-president for incitement to insurrection.

The Jan. 6 panel is set to hold its first public hearing on Thursday, where Raskin said the committee will lay out information regarding individuals who played a role in the attack — including Trump.

“The select committee has found evidence about a lot more than incitement here, and we’re gonna be laying out the evidence about all of the actors who were pivotal to what took place on Jan. 6,” Raskin said during an interview with Washington Post Live.

Trump was impeached in the House by a 232-197 vote, with 10 Republicans joining all Democrats in sanctioning the president. The following month, however, the Senate acquitted him in a 57-43 vote. Seven Senate Republicans joined the entire Democratic caucus in voting to convict.

The select committee says Thursday’s prime-time hearing, scheduled to begin at 8 p.m., will feature new material and witness testimony from the nearly yearlong investigation, which has largely been conducted behind the scenes

Raskin on Monday told The Washington Post Live that this week’s hearing will “tell the story of a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election and block the transfer of power.”

Asked if Trump is at the center of that conspiracy, Raskin said “I think that Donald Trump and the White House were at the center of these events.”

“That’s the only way really of making sense of them all,” he added.

He noted, however, that "people are going to have to make judgments themselves about the relative role that different people played."

The Maryland Democrat then pointed to Trump’s second impeachment, in which Raskin was the lead manager of the Senate trial.

“Of course the House and the Senate in bicameral and bipartisan fashion have already determined that the former president, Donald Trump, incited an insurrection by majority votes in the House and the Senate,” Raskin said.

“Although, Donald Trump wasn’t convicted by the requisite two-thirds majority, but commanding majority found that he had in fact incited this insurrection,” he added.

Updated at 2:21 p.m.

Jan. 6 panel seeks to break through with prime-time programming

Posted on (Updated by Rebecca Beitsch

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is preparing for a crucial week as it prepares to finally share with the public the fruits of its months-long investigation into the riot in prime time on Thursday. 

The 8 p.m. hearing kicking off a series of meetings shows the committee is eager to reach a broad segment of Americans and relay the extent to which democracy itself was at stake that day. 

“The goal here is to construct this narrative,” said Molly Reynolds, a senior fellow in governance studies with Brookings.  

“What they want to do is go through the countless depositions that they've taken and other evidence that they gathered and figure out a way to try and convey a story to the public.” 

The challenge is making a captivating case for a wide audience, particularly those who feel they already know what happened that day or who are ready to move on from the attack. 

According to polling from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the country is nearly evenly divided on how much it wants to reflect on the day. 

While 52 percent said it’s important to learn more about what happened, 48 percent said it was “time to move on.” The divide is almost entirely partisan. 

“I do think that the committee will have difficulties in communicating messages because of the kind of segregated information environment in which a lot of the American public exists,” Ryan Goodman, co-director of the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law, told The Hill. 

“That said, I do think the visual of a solemn public hearing and live testimony plus, in all likelihood video material, could focus attention in a way [for] the members of the American public are otherwise not thinking about these issues.” 

Putting the hearing in prime-time shows the committee doesn’t want to just reach those who already view the attack as a grievous assault on democracy. It wants to reach independents and even conservatives who have heard GOP leaders brand the panel as a partisan witch hunt. 

Jesse Rhodes, a political science professor who helped craft the UMass poll, said even with the sharp partisan divide, there are those who don’t have strong feelings about the attack. 

“We're finding in the poll that about 19 percent of people are purely independent. And then there's another 9 percent who lean Democratic and another 8 percent lean Republican. So there is a little bit of mushiness in the middle. And those people potentially can be shifted,” he said, noting that just one-third of Americans strongly identify as conservative. 

“If there really is damning evidence of long-term planning, involvement in collusion by the president or his top advisers … that does have the potential to move some people.” 

Rhodes and others have warned the committee must be careful in how it frames such messaging. 

“I think the most important [thing] might be this is not perceived as a Trump versus Biden frame, which the first impeachment hearing pretty much was, but rather it imparts a Trump versus Pence framework. I think that there are many people that are concerned about the direct threat to Mike Pence that occurred on Jan. 6,” Goodman said.  

“I think that captures attention in a very different way. It’s not as political or partisan.” 

There are signs the committee could be leaning in that direction. Multiple outlets reported the panel has been in discussions about inviting Pence’s legal advisers and chief of staff to testify. 

“As soon as this is perceived as or appears to be a strictly partisan affair and an attack on the Republican Party as an institution, then you're going to get a lot of resistance or skepticism,” Rhodes said. 

“To the degree that the messages can be about upholding and maintaining institutions and values that benefit people, regardless of party, the more you will get at least a willingness to hear some of these concerns.” 

The panel’s makeup could help it.  

Republicans in the House objected during the two committee impeachment proceedings on Trump, but the two Republicans on the Jan. 6 panel agree with its objectives.

“Each hearing is going to be different than I think a lot of what we're used to seeing because everyone is rowing in the same direction. So you have the Democrats and you have [Rep. Liz] Cheney [R-Wyo.] and [Rep. Adam] Kinzinger [R-Ill.], so the committee is bipartisan, but they are all in pursuit of a shared goal in a way that just is not true of other recent high profile investigations, whether it be the Trump impeachment or Benghazi,” Reynolds said. 

“That’s going to make for a serious exposition of the facts that's just going to feel different than what we’ve gotten used to.”    

Goodman said the absence of Republicans opposed to the committee’s mission will not just change the tone but even the way in which information is presented. 

“I do not think that the hearings are going to be anything like the circus that has existed in hearings — and the impeachment hearings — in that past in which some members of Congress were simply playing to kind of a right-wing media. And so this will be a more solemn hearing which is going to be truth seeking, [that’s] the way in which I see it. And I don't think that hearings are going to be a source of disinformation. I think they're going to be a source of information,” he said. 

The committee has not yet announced who will testify at the first hearing, but it has pledged to release never before seen footage from Jan. 6. 

“The committee will present previously unseen material documenting January 6th, receive witness testimony, preview additional hearings, and provide the American people a summary of its findings about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power,” it said in a Thursday statement. 

It’s not clear what type of footage the committee plans to present at the hearing. 

While in the past it’s relied on visceral imagery — including an officer being smashed by rioters in a doorway and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) barely escaping as the mob closed in on the Senate chamber — even new footage of the attack may seem repetitive to those who watched it unfold live on television. 

But Goodman said video recordings from some of the committee’s more than 1,000 depositions could be captivating for the public. 

Rhodes also said new information will be key, especially to break through in an unusually busy summer news cycle. 

“It can be a challenge to get people to refocus on events that occurred in the past, especially when there's going to be a lot of elite disagreement between Democrats and Republicans about what happened and who was involved in with what culpability,” he said. “I think that's a real challenge even though it sounds like the committee is going to have a lot of really juicy and damning information to share.”  

“They may be able to bring attention especially if they come out with some really shocking new revelations but it is going to be a challenge to break through everything that's going on right now.” 

CNN National Security Analyst Calls For End Of Immigration Enforcement In Response To Texas School Shooting

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

CNN national security analyst and former member of Barack Obama’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, Juliette Kayyem, called for a halt to immigration enforcement in the area of Uvalde, Texas in response to the tragic school shooting.

Uvalde High School student Salvador Ramos is accused of murdering 22 people yesterday, including 19 children and 3 adults.

Kayyem, commenting on the “political issues in Texas” in an appearance on Jake Tapper’s “The Lead,” suggested the critical thing for everyone in the area right now is to have sanctuary.

“The most important thing for the federal government to do right now is to say there will be no immigration enforcement during this period in that area,” she claimed.

Kayyem noted that the demographics of the school district are overwhelmingly Hispanic.

“It has a large immigration population,” she continued. “You want parents with their kids; you don’t want people hiding right now, and we need to make that clear ASAP because of the political issues in Texas.”

RELATED: CNN Analyst And Former Obama DHS Official Demands Police Slash Tires, Arrest Canadian Truckers

CNN’s Response to School Shooting – Stop Enforcing Immigration Laws

CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem was so determined to make the point that suspension of immigration laws is the most important thing following the horrific shooting that she reiterated it moments later.

“We need the federal government to say right now, everyone is essentially safe harbor right now in terms of immigration status,” she declared, noting most illegal immigrants will avoid interaction with a heavy police presence in the area.

“We want to make sure that they know, despite all the politics going on in Texas right now, it’s the federal government that’s in charge of immigration enforcement,” she said.

“And people are safe. Get your kids, get your families together. Do not hide. The White House just needs to say that right now.”

RELATED: Kamala Harris, America’s Greatest Orator, Blesses Crowd With Latest Incomprehensible Gibberish

She Wanted Truckers Arrested

Kayyem sounded very different when talking about Canadian truckers earlier this year who were peacefully protesting against COVID mandates.

In fact, she wanted law enforcement to take drastic action.

“Slash the tires, empty gas tanks, arrest the drivers, and move the trucks,” Kayyem said.

Days after the Capitol riot, Kayyem referred to then-President Trump as the “leader of a terrorist organization.”

This is CNN.

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