Flyers mascot Gritty made a seven-year-old fan’s morning on Tuesday when he surprised Caiden O’Rourke at Philadelphia’s Shriners Hospital for Children. Caiden had received a new custom Gritty prosthetic leg when the beloved mascot showed up.
Caiden couldn’t stop smiling when Gritty pulled out a Flyers jersey with his name on the back.
I am pleased to announce that @HouseJudiciary and House Intel will have Special Counsel Robert Mueller testify in open session on July 17, pursuant to a subpoena issued this evening. https://t.co/wR0CEVqpJC
House Democrats on Tuesday passed a $383 billion spending package, finishing work on three-quarters of the annual appropriations bills on its docket ahead of the July 4th recess.
The package of five funding bills passed in a vote of 227-194, largely along party lines. It includes funds for Commerce and Justice; Agriculture, Interior and Environment; Military Construction and Veterans Affairs; and Transportation, Housing and Urban Development.
The legislation’s passage means Democrats have successfully completed work on nine of the 12 annual appropriations bills in their chamber. They are set to pass a 10th bill, covering financial services and general government, this week.
The other two, however, will likely come in July. The legislative branch funding bill, usually among the least controversial of the pack, was stripped out of an earlier “minibus” spending package due to disagreements over whether or not Congress should increase its own pay.
New reporting from the Washington Post details how former vice president Biden has earned millions of dollars since leaving the White House in what the Post described as “an explosion of wealth.”
Biden’s newfound wealth since leaving public office has mostly come from paid speeches, some of which earned him as much as $200,000, and book deals. The book deal for his 2017 memoir Promise Me, Dad was reportedly worth $8 million and covered three books from Biden and his wife, of which two have been published.
The former vice president’s campaign said he has given fewer than 50 paid speeches in the years since serving alongside President Obama but declined to give further details to the Post about how much he made from these speeches. Four contracts unearthed by the Post show Biden making between $150,000 to $200,000 per speaking appearance.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) acting Commissioner John Sanders will resign from his position in the coming days.
Sanders will be officially leaving his position atop CBP on July 5, the agency confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation on Tuesday. News of the acting commissioner’s imminent departure was first reported by The New York Times and CNN.
“Although I will leave it to you to determine whether I was successful, I can unequivocally say that helping support the amazing men and women of CBP has been the most fulfilling and satisfying opportunity of my career,” Sanders wrote to CBP employees Tuesday, according to CNN.
While the agency did not explain why Sanders was leaving, his departure comes amid an illegal immigration crisis at the southern border and growing reports of unsanitary and unsafe conditions at migrant detention centers.
CBP and Border Patrol have attracted criticism following reports of a migrant detention facility in Clinton, Texas, that allegedly contained children who had not showered in days, rampant flu outbreaks, and neglected infants that were left for older children to watch over.
I’ll never forget this, because it was the moment I saw with my own eyes that the America I love was becoming a nation that steals refugee children from their parents,& caged them.
More kids died after this. To date, no one has been held accountable.
On Monday, democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was criticized for pushing photos of herself seemingly intended to help quell the blowback she’s received from equating detention centers at the United States/Mexico border with WWII-era concentration camps.
The photos were apparently taken at a Tornillo, Texas, detention center, but did not show the conditions the congresswoman was upset about, rather, the pictures were merely of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez looking sad by a chain-linked fence. Users online, many of whom identify as her supporters, mocked the “photo-op” and suggested the pictures were “staged.”
“Before [AOC] hit the national stage & was just a fairly unknown House candidate [from] NYC, she took time [away from] her campaign & came [down] to #Tornillo to protest the #tentcity housing migrant children.I made these previously unpublished [photos] a [year] ago today,” posted Ivan Pierre Aguirre, the man who took the photos of Ocasio-Cortez.
Pakistan threw its full weight behind the new UN Strategy and Plan of Action to combat hate speech, saying that language was being used to secure narrow political and electoral gains in many parts of the world, including the South Asian region.
“An inevitable consequence is to fan the flames of bigotry, intolerance, anti-Muslim hatred and xenophobia,” Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi said after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres unveiled the strategy at a special meeting held in the packed ECOSOC chamber on Tuesday, says a press release.
“My Prime Minister Imran Khan has recently again called for urgent action to counter Islamophobia, which is today the most prevalent expression of racism and hatred against ‘the other’,” the Pakistani envoy told ambassadors, senior diplomats and high ranking UN officials.
The UN Strategy and Plan of Action provides a system-wide programme with the overriding objective of identifying, preventing and confronting hate speech. The secretary-general said, ‘It targets the root causes of hate speech, pointing out that these include tackling violence, marginalisation, discrimination, and poverty, as well as bolstering weak state institutions.
Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-CA) tore into the Trump Administration on Tuesday by accusing them of keeping detained migrant children in horrible conditions to force Democrats’ hands as they continue to hash out a new border security spending bill.
Bass gave an interview to CNN’s Alisyn Camerota which gravitated around numerous recent reports on how migrant children are forced to live in substandard conditions with little to no access to basic medical supplies. Bass said Congress does need to approve money on the situation, but she also accused the government of depriving these children on purpose, saying “this is inflicted on these children as punishment to try to bring Democrats to the table to compromise on the border wall.”
As Bass and Camerota talked about how family separation still happens on the southern border, the congresswoman called it “a stain on our country” and that “if any parent did anything that is going on on the border, the children would literally be taken away and put in foster care.” Bass also invoked reports on how the administration was ordering a cancellation to education and recreational programs for these detained children.
“This was deliberate,” Bass said. “How dare you torture children to try to get a compromise out of Democrats, and I am sorry, but hearing about children walking around in soiled diapers, hearing about children taking care of toddlers, you are talking about straight-up child abuse, and I think that this needs to be condemned internationally.”
Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani has branded the White House ‘mentally retarded’ after Donald Trump issued fresh sanctions against the leadership in Tehran.
Rouhani said the move proves that America is lying about wanting to negotiate and only proves that Washington is desperate and running out of options.
Speaking to a session of ministers that was broadcast on TV, Rouhani added that the new sanctions are ‘outrageous and idiotic’ and will fail because Ayatollah Khamenei – one of the main targets – has no foreign assets.
Trump imposed the sanctions Monday after Iran shot down a US spy drone which it claimed violated its airspace last week. America says the drone was in international airspace and the attack was ‘unprovoked’.
Stephanie Grisham has been the press secretary for the First Lady and is considered a solid Trump loyalist.
I am pleased to announce @StephGrisham45 will be the next @PressSec & Comms Director! She has been with us since 2015 – @potus & I can think of no better person to serve the Administration & our country. Excited to have Stephanie working for both sides of the @WhiteHouse. #BeBest
Trump administration is forcing children 2 sleep on cement floor with an aluminum blanket & lights on all night. Sarah Fabian from DOJ argued in court that it was good enough & soap was unnecessary. Companies making 750 a kid a day to torture them. pic.twitter.com/XuNIVZwkJW
This is what, the 4th or 5th time a photo of kids at the border has gone viral that ended up not telling the real story? In this case, the misleading was clearly intentional though, as you’ll see.
A picture of children sleeping with aluminum thermal blankets on the floor of a CBP detention facility made the rounds this weekend. It was posted by someone named Nancy Lee Grahn. Apparently I’m supposed to know who she is because she’s on TV and has a blue check-mark, but admittedly, I’ve never heard of her.
Yeah, I want a yacht in Hawaii, who’s paying for that?
Not my responsibility to pay for your “dream college.” Your dream, your choice, your debt. Not mine or anyone else’s. It’s called personal responsibility. https://t.co/BcplCp3e6y
I turned down a lot better colleges and went to state school specifically because the aid packages for the former were bad. If it costs $250K maybe it’s not a dream college? https://t.co/jqUgZNlKU7
AOC unintentionally explaining why Bernie's plan is so ridiculous.
It's not about getting a college education through sensible community colleges or state schools, but about the government paying for the hopes and dreams of everyone at the cost of others. https://t.co/1Pr6Ll0TBk
1. There are approximately 9043850384503 things that I've dreamed of doing that I didn't do because I couldn't afford them. 2. Attending my dream college (after I was accepted) was one of them. 3. It was the best decision I have ever made. https://t.co/74jOSYFCl9
When you say #cancelstudentdebt, you’re saying a minority of people who had the advantage of obtaining a degree should have their debt paid off by hardworking taxpayers, 2/3 of whom don’t have degrees themselves, or already paid their own student debt off.
