☕ Daily Brief: Harris’ Tough Talk vs. The Border Crisis Reality
Also, Alabama’s non-citizen voter purge
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Best Buy has a knack for picking the up-and-coming tech products that go on to dominate the market. Their early bets on household items like Ring and Nest have a proven record of paying off.
Now Best Buy is lifting the curtain on their latest find, launching RYSE’s SmartShades in over 120 retail stores. RYSE has already hit $8M+ in lifetime revenue with over 40,000 units sold, and the numbers are rising (along with the window shades).
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The smart home industry is booming with double-digit growth projected until 2033 and billion-dollar acquisitions for companies like RYSE with retail distribution and patented technologies.
WHAT WE'RE WATCHING
🗳️ The DOJ sued Alabama over their non-citizen voter purge. The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit against Alabama and its secretary of state for removing over 3,000 voters with non-citizen ID numbers too close to election day. The DOJ claims the state violated federal law by making changes just 84 days before the election, also potentially disenfranchising wrongly-flagged natural-born citizens.
🔥 A chemical plant fire sparked mass evacuations near Atlanta. A fire at the BioLab plant east of Atlanta forced around 17,000 evacuations and shelter-in-place orders after a water-reactive chemical released hazardous fumes into the air. Interstate 20 was shut down, and environmental agencies are monitoring the air as crews work to contain the situation.
💣 Israel launched strikes in Yemen following Houthi attacks. The Israeli Air Force carried out extensive airstrikes in Yemen on Sunday, targeting key infrastructure used by the Houthi terrorists in retaliation for recent ballistic missile attacks aimed at central Israel. The Houthis claim that four people were killed and 29 were injured.
🇮🇷 Three Iranians were charged for hacking the Trump campaign. US prosecutors charged three members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who launched a large-scale hacking scheme aimed at Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The hackers were indicted on 18 counts, including wire fraud and identity theft, and were successful at stealing a private document from the Trump campaign and sending it to left-leaning news organizations.
WHAT WE’RE HEARING
Tim Walz is reportedly nervous to debate JD Vance tomorrow night.
Elon Musk said, “If Trump is not elected, this will be the last election.”
Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) revealed that internal polling shows Kamala Harris is “underwater” in Michigan.
John Kerry called the First Amendment a “major block” to fighting misinformation and climate change.
Donald Trump posted a Catholic prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel.
IN THE LOOP
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) authorized Florida’s National Guard to assist North Carolina with its response to Hurricane Helene.
Over 1,000 people are reported missing in a single North Carolina county due to Hurricane Helene.
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Israeli opposition leaders to Benjamin Netanyahu are urging a ground invasion of Lebanon.
Austria’s populist-right came out victorious in its parliamentary elections.
CENTCOM confirmed the US military killed dozens of terrorists in Syria.
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MY THOUGHTS
Israel Kills Its Enemies. The United Nations Hates It.
Good morning. Surrounded by enemies funded and armed by Iran, Israel has executed a series of stunning military successes this month.
With heavy investments in long-term intelligence, the IDF has eliminated nearly all of Hezbollah’s leadership in just weeks. After turning Hezbollah’s own communication system against them by rigging their pagers into explosives, Israel forced the terror group back to in-person meetings, setting the stage for its downfall.
Over the weekend, through airstrikes, Israel confirmed the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader and an Islamist protégé of Iran’s regime. Nasrallah built Hezbollah into Iran’s regional powerhouse, threatening Israel’s very existence. His death is a crippling blow to the group.
Yet, in typical fashion, The New York Times romanticized Nasrallah in his obituary, claiming he sought a Palestinian state promoting equality. They conveniently ignored his deeply antisemitic worldview — once stating, "If they (the Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."
With Hezbollah now leaderless, its immediate capacity to fight is uncertain. This is a massive win for Israel, the global fight against radical Islam, and Western civilization. Politically, it bolsters Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who authorized the strike while in New York for the United Nations, just after declaring:
“Israel defends itself against Iran in this seven-front war ... But I have a message for you: Israel will win this battle. We will win this battle because we don’t have a choice.”
Israel kills its enemies because it must. The United Nations and nations free from existential threats despise Israel for doing what they won’t —putting their people’s safety and future first.
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WASHINGTON
Harris’ Tough Talk vs. The Border Crisis Reality
Over the weekend, Kamala Harris made a trip down to the US-Mexico border, in what the National Border Patrol Council union described to be a 20-minute “photo op.” Now purporting to be tough on illegal migration, Harris’ record on the border cuts in contrast to her newfound tone.
During her tenure as vice president, the southern border has seen a historic spike of over 10 million illegal crossings, with 1.7 million gotaways — far surpassing the 415,000 reported during the Trump administration.
Additionally, new data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) revealed that there are currently over 425,000 non-detained illegal migrants with criminal convictions in the United States, with around half of those facing pending criminal charges.
Of the migrants facing criminal charges, over 13,000 have been convicted of homicide, nearly 16,000 for sexual assault, and 62,000 for assault. Nearly 2,000 have pending homicide charges, alongside thousands more facing charges for assault, burglary, and other serious offenses.
This data presented by ICE does not just reflect migrants who have entered the US under Biden-Harris, but those who have entered the country going back multiple administrations.
Former President Donald Trump jumped on the opportunity to criticize the Biden-Harris administration, sending out several posts about these new revelations.
As vice president, Harris oversaw the reversal of key Trump-era policies, such as the Remain in Mexico program and Title 42, a choice that conservatives argue contributed to the mass influx of illegal migrants. However, she recently lambasted the former president and his Republican allies in Congress for causing the failures at the border.
Harris blames the border crisis on Congressional Republicans shooting down a border bill earlier this year. “Donald Trump tanked it,” said Harris during a rally in the border town of Douglas, Arizona. “He picked up the phone and called some friends in Congress and said, ‘Stop the bill.’”
She suggested that she would, if elected president, slightly lower the daily crossing threshold, but stressed the importance of Congress passing a bill — despite the fact that the sitting president has the authority to take strong unilateral action on the issue.
What the media gets wrong
Kamala Harris receives very little pushback from the mainstream media on her handling of the illegal migration crisis. In fact, they tend to parrot the same point about Congressional Republicans’ supposed hypocrisy for refusing to support her border bill.
House Republicans voted against the Senate immigration bill earlier this year because they believed it failed to secure the border, incentivized more migration, and kept in place President Biden’s "catch and release" policy.
The media fact-checked Donald Trump for “distorting” the newly released ICE numbers, claiming he gave the impression that all the illegal migrants had arrived in just the past few years. However, they made no effort to hold Harris to account for the crisis of illegal migration into the US, and the unprecedented spike that occurred under her watch.
President Biden could, if he wanted to, reinstall Donald Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy that prevented migrants from coming directly to America’s border. In spite of this, the media takes the Democrats’ side by blaming Congressional Republicans.
The media also tends to gaslight Republicans, asserting that Kamala Harris was never officially the “border czar” when, in fact, President Biden tasked her in 2021 with “stemming the migration” to the US-Mexico border.
Whether she actually held the title “border czar” is irrelevant — and a way for the media to deflect from the fact that she has accomplished little in her role.
Trump was again fact-checked on rates of illegal migration, as he asserts it skyrocketed once he left office. They note that illegal crossings began to increase in the last eight months of Trump’s term, not immediately after Biden took over.
Nowhere does the media’s fact-check acknowledge the much greater surge of illegal migrants during the Biden-Harris administration, nor does the media acknowledge the troubling crime accompanied by the spike in migration, nor how migration — both legal and illegal — has been affecting small-town America.
OUR QUESTION TO YOU
📊What should the top priority be at the border?Poll results will be in tomorrow's newsletter. |
POLL RESULTS FROM THURSDAY
Who do you think is running the country?
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Joe Biden (9)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ The Cabinet (96)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 The Federal Bureaucracy (791)
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ Other (687)
Joe Biden: “When he spoke recently, he sounded presidential. He was declined at the debate, but he seems back now.” — Renee
The Cabinet: “The Cabinet is all hand-picked and has complete say on the policies the Administration follows.” — Billy
The Federal Bureaucracy: “The ‘Deep State’ has been running the country for years. It's only recently that the courts have stepped in to reign in federal agencies efforts to create their own laws, bypassing congress.” — Ernie
The Federal Bureaucracy: “Running the country? The Federal Bureaucracy. Leading the country? Someone else.” — Anonymous
Other: “Obama, Pelosi, Clinton, and their sort.” — Anonymous
Other: “No one knows!” — Dan
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Today’s newsletter was written by Brandon Goldman and Ari David.