“What I took it as was an attack on Kamala Harris being a chameleon,” he told reporters when asked in Michigan about the former president’s suggestion that Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, had only recently identified as Black.
“I think he was observing the basic foundational reality that Kamala Harris pretends to be something different depending on what audience she’s speaking to,” Vance said. “She fakes who she is depending on the audience she’s in front of, and that’s who she is and that’s who she’s always been.”
To corporate media, this is tantamount to JD Vance “amplifying” Donald Trump’s prior answer to a question posed by Rachel Scott at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention.
However, the awkward reality is that it is corporate media asking the question, and so it is corporate media which is ignoring the realities of Kamala Harris political resume and political record.
Yet voters deserve a detailed presentation of that record. Voters deserve the chance to interrogate that record for themselves and decide for themselves the worth of that record.
Therefore I will give the voters that chance—starting right here and right now.
All Facts Matter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
One article will not suffice to detail all the notable points of Kamala Harris’ political record, so we shall begin with some of the most noteworthy—I should say notorious—aspects.
One point I have raised previously is Kamala Harris’ complicity in child labor trafficking of unaccompanied minors from the southern border into the United States and which I shall restate here.
It’s a long way from Washington and the raging debate over immigration and the political fights on cable news over the U.S.-Mexico border . But the expansion of a collaboration between small coffee farmers and Nespresso, a Swiss coffee giant, exemplifies the hope and limitations of a broader U.S. plan spearheaded by Vice President Kamala Harris that aims to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
Pitched to American audiences as a way to curb migration, the plan is premised on enlisting government and private companies to address crises in the region, which include drug cartel violence, natural disasters, environmental degradation, poverty and corruption. It calls for spending as much as $4 billion in American taxpayer dollars and spurring at least $750 million in private investments seeding an array of economic and social programs intended to instill everything from a more functional digital economy to democratic values.
It was a strategy that failed to impress just about everyone, both here in America as well as in Central America.
In an interview that aired Tuesday morning on NBC's Today show, Harris was pressed about why she has yet to visit the U.S.-Mexico border, as she has been urged to do by lawmakers from both parties.
Harris flashed irritation. "And I haven't been to Europe. And I mean, I don't understand the point that you're making. I'm not discounting the importance of the border," she said, making the point that she was focused on solving the border problem at its source.
What has been largely overlooked, however, are the consequences of such “benign neglect” of the southern border itself.
One such consequence has been what can only be described as human trafficking, including of children, with the Biden-Harris Administration’s participation.
In 2021, with as many as 18,700 unaccompanied minors crossing the border each month, the agency set up 14 makeshift shelters around the country to deal with the influx and recruited government employees from across federal agencies to staff them. Biden administration officials said those employees weren’t necessarily trained in child welfare, and stressed that many factors go into decisions about where to send the minors.
Following an internal investigation, the inspector general for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversaw a network of shelters caring for unaccompanied minors, found gaps in the process to screen temporary guardians. It said in February that 16% of records for children who were released to sponsors in March and April 2021 lacked evidence that a required safety check was conducted.
Even more disturbing is the documented fact that many of these “sponsors” are seeking to take multiple children, which some argue is a clear indicator of labor trafficking.
With the government struggling at the time to place children in safe homes, one caseworker said supervisors were warned that adoption attempts by some sponsors may indicate children were at risk because the sponsor was trying to take on at least a half-dozen children, a common indicator of labor trafficking.
It is established fact that many of these unaccompanied minors from the southern border wind up working long hours in dangerous jobs, often in flagrant violation of child labor laws.
In town after town, children scrub dishes late at night. They run milking machines in Vermont and deliver meals in New York City. They harvest coffee and build lava rock walls around vacation homes in Hawaii. Girls as young as 13 wash hotel sheets in Virginia.
Nor are the companies willing to exploit these children small “fly by night” companies. Quite the contrary, many are at the heart of the American economy:
Migrant child labor benefits both under-the-table operations and global corporations, The Times found. In Los Angeles, children stitch “Made in America” tags into J. Crew shirts. They bake dinner rolls sold at Walmart and Target, process milk used in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and help debone chicken sold at Whole Foods. As recently as the fall, middle-schoolers made Fruit of the Loom socks in Alabama. In Michigan, children make auto parts for Ford and General Motors.
Most damningly of all, however, is the reality that these children are the ones who were detained at the border and then released by officials at the border to various “sponsors”. The Department of Health and Human Services presumably monitors the status and situation of every child so released—except HHS has “lost” at least 85,000 children.
Whether through corruption or simple negligence (or both), under Kamala Harris’ watch as “border czar”, the Biden-Harris Administration has been facilitating provable child labor trafficking.
This is documented. This is proven. The media reports are there, and they even provide the names and ages of some of the children.
Appallingly, the Biden-Harris Administration’s track record on child trafficking at the southern border appears to be even worse than Obama’s disgraceful record, in which the no less a corporate media mainstay (and Democrat propaganda shill) than the Washington Post blasted the Obama Administration for releasing children into the clutches of human traffickers.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) has demanded a response from the Obama administration to whistleblower claims that thousands of those children have been released to sponsors with criminal records that include homicide, child molestation and human trafficking. Legal advocates for the children say many have wound up in abusive situations, where they have been forced to work to repay debts or living expenses. Some children simply stop showing up for immigration hearings and vanish.
“We have a large percentage of these kids that disappear, and I don’t know what happens to them,” said Jessica Ramos, a lawyer with Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, an Ohio nonprofit group that represents children in immigration proceedings.
One data point that has since been ignored by both Republicans and the corporate media: The Obama Administration did not deny the crux of the charges:
Andrea Helling, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the Office of Refugee Resettlement, said the inspector general is investigating the whistleblower allegations. She acknowledged that the agency briefly relaxed identity requirements for family members collecting children at the height of the surge in May 2014 to help place children more quickly.
What was hopefully a merely a disgraceful lapse under Obama, however, became de facto practice under the Biden-Harris Administration—which is to say while Kamala Harris was the “border czar”.
We must remember that Kamala Harris was, by corporate media’s own reporting, identified as one of the Biden-Harris Administration “border czars” in 2021.
It takes no great stretch of imagination to infer from the media’s silence on Kamala Harris’ record as border czar that they might be embarrassed by their lack of effective coverage both now and at the time on Kamala Harris’ provable facilitation of child labor trafficking—of human trafficking.
This story began two weeks ago, when the former Hawaii congresswoman returned home after a short trip abroad. In airport after airport, she and her husband Abraham Williams encountered obstacles. First on a flight from Rome to Dallas, then a connecting flight to Austin, and later on different flights for both to cities like Nashville, Orlando, and Atlanta, their boarding passes were marked with the “SSSS” designation, which stands for “Secondary Security Screening Selection.” The “Quad-S” marker is often a sign the traveler has been put on a threat list, and Gabbard and Williams were forced into extensive “random” searches lasting as long as 45 minutes.
I will interject a little thing known as the Fourth Amendment, which explicitly prohibits unreasonable searches without probable cause.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I will also note that the Supreme Court has long held that a mere assertion by a federal law enforcement officer that a person may be engaged in some federal malfeasance is insufficient to stand as probable cause1, most explicitly in Byars v United States2.
Even had the TSA agents found contraband or other illegal items in Tulsi Gabbard’s luggage, that still would not have been justification on its own for the Quad-S designation which mandated the extensive and intrusive search.
A search prosecuted in violation of the Constitution is not made lawful by what it brings to light; and the doctrine has never been recognized by this court, nor can it be tolerated under our constitutional system, that evidences of crime discovered by a federal officer in making a search without lawful warrant may be used against the victim of the unlawful search where a timely challenge has been interposed.
The whistleblowers first shared the information with Sonya LaBosco, the Executive Director of the Air Marshal National Council (AMNC), a national advocacy group for the Federal Air Marshals (FAMs). According to LaBosco, at least one of the whistleblowers is ready to go on the record with pertinent documentation. LaBosco shared that Gabbard is unaware she has two Explosive Detection Canine Teams, one Transportation Security Specialist (explosives), one plainclothes TSA Supervisor, and three Federal Air Marshalls on every flight she boards. LaBosco has attempted to contact Gabbard and her staff but has not received a response.
In particular, individuals identified at the now-infamous J6 protest cum riot have been targeted for such intrusive and harrassing surveillance, such as 20-year Army veteran Bryan Smith.
Bryan Smith is a 20-year Army veteran with an unblemished military service record. He was placed on a little-known Homeland Security list for a program called "Quiet Skies," allegedly because he had attended the Jan. 6 protest. Unfortunately, Smith's placement on the "Quiet Skies" list is just one of many ways Smith's freedoms and rights have been curtailed due to the unprecedented weaponization of our justice system.
While the corporate media delights in the misapprehension that the J6 protest was some sort of “insurrection”, the facts surrounding that event categorically disabuse the objective observer of any such notion. As I have explored in detail previously, J6 was not an insurrection.
While we may reasonably accept a depiction of the J6 events as a riot, and therefore a violation of federal law3, that violation does not, on its own, come anywhere near a reasonable establishment of probable cause for subjecting an ordinary citizen to the intrusive searches and surveillance of “Quiet Skies”.
The lunacy of “Quiet Skies” is made even more apparent when we consider that the 8-week-old son of another J6 defendant, AJ Fischer, was placed under “Quiet Skies” surveillance.
Federal air marshals have begun following ordinary US citizens not suspected of a crime or on any terrorist watch list and collecting extensive information about their movements and behavior under a new domestic surveillance program that is drawing criticism from within the agency.
The previously undisclosed program, called “Quiet Skies,” specifically targets travelers who “are not under investigation by any agency and are not in the Terrorist Screening Data Base,” according to a Transportation Security Administration bulletin in March.
At that time, the Air Marshal Association deemed the program “unacceptable”.
John Casaretti, president of the Air Marshal Association, said in a statement: “The Air Marshal Association believes that missions based on recognized intelligence, or in support of ongoing federal investigations, is the proper criteria for flight scheduling. Currently the Quiet Skies program does not meet the criteria we find acceptable.
Libertarian legal scholar and George Washington University Professor Jonathan Turley expressed significant reservations about the Constitutionality of the program when it was revealed.
“If this was about foreign citizens, the government would have considerable power. But if it’s US citizens — US citizens don’t lose their rights simply because they are in an airplane at 30,000 feet,” Turley said. “There may be indeed constitutional issues here depending on how restrictive or intrusive these measures are.”
Turley, who has testified before Congress on privacy protection, said the issue could trigger a “transformative legal fight.”
In 2020, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General released its report on Quiet Skies, and it did not have good things to say about the program.
TSA did not properly plan, implement, and manage the Quiet Skies program to meet the program’s mission of mitigating the threat to commercial aviation posed by higher risk passengers.
Specifically, TSA did not:
develop performance goals and measures to demonstrate program effectiveness, or
always adhere to its own Quiet Skies guidance.
This occurred because TSA lacked sufficient oversight to ensure the Quiet Skies program operated as intended. For example, TSA did not have a centralized office or entity to ensure the various TSA offices properly managed Quiet Skies passenger data.
LaBosco is now the Executive Director of the Air Marshal National Council (AMNC), a private organization that advocates for FAMS (Federal Air Marshals). She is highly concerned about the way air marshals are being exploited by the TSA to target and track Americans who have been designated as Suspected Domestic Terrorists (SDTs) with little or no credible basis to do so. In her Nov. 21, 2023 Fox News interview, LaBosco shares the fact that valuable law enforcement resources are being diverted away from tracking legitimate threats to the Homeland. Quiet Skies and Silent Partners, says LaBosco, have "yielded exactly zero terrorists, zero results. Not one—from the TSA program that spends about $394 million to surveil Americans without a solid basis to do it. It is just one big domestic and lucrative (for TSA) surveillance grab." Her statement referencing zero returns on their investment is confirmed by a 2020 DHS OIG report on the Quiet Skies program.
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) advisory board suggested that supporters of former President Donald Trump – as well as those who served in the military or are religious – have a greater possibility of posing domestic terrorism risks, according to internal files obtained by America First Legal (AFL).
If you are a veteran, if you are a person of faith, or if you support Donald Trump, you are an enemy of the Biden-Harris Administration.
The advisory board itself is another questionable act by the Biden-Harris Administration, as it had been meeting sub rosa for as long as four months before its existence was announced in September, 2023, according to documents obtained by America First Legal.
The “Homeland Intelligence Experts Group” even went so far as to propose that political dissent be classified as a “public health” crisis.
The very next speaker proposed another solution: reclassify “concerning” behavior into the “public health catcher’s mitt” so that “mother[s] and teacher[s]” feel comfortable coming forward.
Indeed, the Brennan-Clapper Intelligence group suggested that the best way to combat domestic extremism is to get mothers and teachers to turn in their children or students to the federal government under the guise of “public health.”
Returning to the immediate case of Tulsi Gabbard, why was she subjected to Quiet Skies surveillance? As with all Quiet Skies surveillance cases, the specifics are unknown. However, it is an amazing coincidence that just before Tulsi was placed under Quiet Skies surveillance, she appeared on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News program and stated that Kamala Harris had no clue about foreign policy or the rank corruption that is the Military Industrial Complex in this country.
Nor is the first time Tulsi Gabbard has criticized the Biden-Harris Administration’s foreign policy. In 2022, in another appearance on Laura Ingraham’s show, Tulsi accused the Biden-Harris Administration of wanting to prolong the humanitarian horror that is the war in Ukraine.
There can be no doubt that Tulsi Gabbard is the epitome of a “political dissident” where the Biden-Harris Administration is concerned. Are we to believe that Tulsi Gabbard, herself a veteran of Iraq who has served this country with distinction, is therefore now a domestic terror threat to this country?
Are we to believe that her opposition to the Biden-Harris Administration is somehow proof that she is a domestic terror threat?
Are we to believe that people demanding redress of grievance from the government—which is absolutely a characteristic of the J6 protest even though it did veer off into an unlawful riot—are inherently domestic terror threats to this country?
Is this how Kamala Harris intends to lead this country “forward”?
Yet despite the reality of my very clear opposition to the Biden-Harris Administration and its illegal and unconstitutional policies, my own biases do not alter the facts recited here. My biases do not alter the text of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution nor the legal standards which emerge as a consequence of that Amendment.
The Biden-Harris Administration is not the arbiter of civil or human rights, not in the United States and not anywhere in the world. The Biden-Harris Administraion is not the arbiter of moral right and moral wrong, not in the United States and not anywhere in the world.
Yet we have within the Biden-Harris Administration record clear and sustained disregard for the human rights of unaccompanied minors at the southern border. That these children sought to enter this country illegally does not excuse the Administration being cavalier in facilitating their being child labor trafficked into the United States—a violation of human rights as well as of the civil rights guaranteed under the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments.
We have within the Biden-Harris Administration clear and sustained disregard for the civil rights of political opponents and political dissidents in this country. People do not become domestic terror threats or existential threats to “democracy” merely because they stand in opposition to the Biden-Harris Administration. People do not lose their civil rights merely because they stand in opposition to the Biden-Harris Administration.
Donald Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, and the J6 protestors are surely not above the law. Someone needs to inform Kamala Harris they are just as surely not beneath the law either.
Someone needs to inform Kamala Harris that she also is surely not above the law. She seems to be unaware of that fact.
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Bravo, Peter! Your post today should inspire lawyers to begin their petitions, lawsuits, motions, and yes, ‘lawfare’ against Harris and her cohorts. Where’s the congressional investigation regarding Harris’ inability to account for 85,000 missing children? I want to see Trump come after her with the legal persecution that the Biden administration has been waging against him. And I hope that Gabbard will file suit against a whole slew of officials for violating her Fourth Amendment rights.
Your post today is so factual and damning that it should affect lawyers like raw meat dangled before a hungry lion. Rrrrrrgh!
Most of us have seen with our own eyes what happened to our country during the eight years of the Obama administrations. I won't recount the bold malfeasances that period foisted upon our citizens, the damage done should have served as a preview of what was to come.
That Hillary's plans for continuing the debacle were thwarted by what may have been the last fair national election I'll see in my lifetime stands out as an exception to what came after: unbridled ridicule and criticism of Trump and for what he attempted to accomplish during his four years in office, and of course so much more than ridicule on the part of our elected officials who'd sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution.
Then the pandemic. Just in time to derail Trump's second term while also doing so much harm to the rest of the world by 'authorities' who went well beyond their remit in the name of 'science' to further their malicious programs.
What happened in Minneapolis and Baltimore, Philadelphia, Indianapolis and so many more places ought to serve as a warning for what we'll face should the current Dem candidates for President and Vice President follow the same thread as this current abomination.
Bravo, Peter! Your post today should inspire lawyers to begin their petitions, lawsuits, motions, and yes, ‘lawfare’ against Harris and her cohorts. Where’s the congressional investigation regarding Harris’ inability to account for 85,000 missing children? I want to see Trump come after her with the legal persecution that the Biden administration has been waging against him. And I hope that Gabbard will file suit against a whole slew of officials for violating her Fourth Amendment rights.
Your post today is so factual and damning that it should affect lawyers like raw meat dangled before a hungry lion. Rrrrrrgh!
Most of us have seen with our own eyes what happened to our country during the eight years of the Obama administrations. I won't recount the bold malfeasances that period foisted upon our citizens, the damage done should have served as a preview of what was to come.
That Hillary's plans for continuing the debacle were thwarted by what may have been the last fair national election I'll see in my lifetime stands out as an exception to what came after: unbridled ridicule and criticism of Trump and for what he attempted to accomplish during his four years in office, and of course so much more than ridicule on the part of our elected officials who'd sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution.
Then the pandemic. Just in time to derail Trump's second term while also doing so much harm to the rest of the world by 'authorities' who went well beyond their remit in the name of 'science' to further their malicious programs.
What happened in Minneapolis and Baltimore, Philadelphia, Indianapolis and so many more places ought to serve as a warning for what we'll face should the current Dem candidates for President and Vice President follow the same thread as this current abomination.