Border Threat Update

[WEEKLY UPDATE]

IMPEACHMENT-COUP UPDATE
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The President, the rule of law, and our Constitution continue to be
abused as the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump continues.

We’ve done many media interviews on the current crisis, notably with
Lou Dobbs
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and Dan
Bongino
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(My interview
with Dan was retweeted by President Trump!) The president is going to
be acquitted but with significant damage to our republic, the very
notion of self-government, our Constitution, and the rule of law
generally. As I’ve previously noted:

There has been nothing in American history that compares to the coup
attack against President Trump. It has been nothing but a wild abuse
of the Constitution. Frankly, the word _impeachment_ should be
replaced with the word _coup_, because the president was illicitly
targeted for removal from office for doing his job in asking questions
about Ukraine corruption and its ties to Joe Biden, his son Hunter
Biden and Burisma. To be clear, the president was also attacked for
objecting to the House Democrats’ abuse of his office.

The U.S. Senate should reject these acts of tyranny by the House of
Representatives. In the meantime, you can be sure that we will
investigate the Biden-Ukraine scandal, as well as the Deep State
scandals and the illegal spying on the President of the United States.
Our republic is at stake.

I encourage you to call your senators to let them know what you think
about this latest assault on our American system. You can reach them
at 202-225-3121.

In the meantime, you can be sure that Judicial Watch will continue to
do the heavy lifting in court to expose the historic scandal that is
the criminal conspiracy and abuse targeting President Trump.

JUDICIAL WATCH FILES NEW SUPREME COURT BRIEF IN KEY ABORTION CASE

Abortion advocates around the country are abusing the law as they
challenge efforts to protect the health of women and their unborn
children. We’ve gotten involved in one Supreme Court case in
Louisiana, which passed a law requiring doctors who perform abortions
to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.

We have filed an _amicus curiae_ brief
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with
the U.S. Supreme Court in the case _Dr. Rebecca Gee v. June Medical
Services, et al._
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(No.
18-1460), in which we oppose abortion providers’ efforts to overturn
Louisiana’s Unsafe Abortion Protection Act
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The
Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in the case on March 4,
2020.

In our brief, we argue that abortion providers petitioning the court
to overturn the law lack a legally protectable interest in the
outcome, otherwise known as “standing.”

We point out that plaintiffs generally may file a lawsuit only to
protect their own rights, not the rights of others. In this
litigation, the lower courts allowed third-party abortion interests to
challenge the law on the theory they represent the interests of women.
As our brief points out, expanding health and safety requirements for
abortionists can be argued to be in the best interests of women:

Plaintiffs’ actual interests were made clear: unfettered access to
perform abortions free of any regulation, ostensibly for financial
gain. No individual women appeared as plaintiffs to the case. No women
testified that they preferred not to have their abortion providers
have admitting privileges or that they preferred abortion providers
ignore the FDA-approved use of abortion medications. It defies logic
to think women would not have an interest in these things, hence the
conflict of interests between the litigant abortion providers and the
third-party women right holders.

We urge the Supreme Court to rein in this abuse of the courts for
political ends:

Petitioners’ claim of assumed third-party standing would effectively
gut both the purpose and application of third-party standing. They
would essentially be free to challenge any law that even indirectly
touches on abortion simply because they fall into a category of
favored litigants. This defeats the purpose of the political process,
thwarts the will of the people, and contravenes the role of the
Legislature. In every case where litigants like Petitioners have used
assumed third-party standing, legislative hearings and debate, public
hearings and debate, and political and election exercises have been
for naught – completely neutralized by Petitioners’ desire to
leapfrog the political process and usurp the courts.

It’s clear that the Supreme Court should put a stop to this misuse
of the courts by interests that seek to overturn laws passed by the
people’s representatives.

HONDURAS ARRESTS U.S.-BOUND IRANIANS AS NEW CARAVAN HEADS NORTH

We now have another unnerving story about the border crisis, Iran, and
national security. Our _Corruption Chronicles_ blog reports
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As hundreds join a new U.S.-bound caravan
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in Honduras, authorities in the crime-infested Central American nation
reveal that four Iranians were recently arrested there. Like thousands
of illegal immigrants from around the world, the Iranians entered
Honduras illegally and were heading north to the United States,
according to a Honduran newspaper article
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that attributes the information to the president, Juan Orlando
Hernández. The Iranians were transported to the capital, Tegucigalpa,
and officials have launched an investigation.

Earlier this week Judicial Watch reported
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on a U.S. alert warning Mexico of armed Iranians planning to enter the
country through the southern border, but it’s not clear if the cases
are related and calls to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
went unanswered. The bulletin, issued by the Border Patrol’s
regional intelligence operation center in Arizona, said that a
Guatemalan national may try to smuggle five Middle
Easterners—including a suicide bomber—into the U.S. through
Mexico. The smuggler and four other men and a woman transited through
Guatemala and Belize before reaching Veracruz, Mexico, according to
the bulletin. The Guatemalan, whose name is redacted in the government
document, was deported from California a year ago. U.S. authorities
received the threat after picking up recordings distributed via social
media, according to a Spanish-language news story
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published by a Latin American outlet.

The U.S. alert didn’t faze a busy Mexican border city’s police
chief, who confirms the region is full of Middle Easterners, Africans
and Asians trekking north. In a Latin American news report
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published
shortly after the U.S. issued the bulletin, Mexicali Police Chief
María Elena Andrade Ramírez matter-of-factly said the arrival of
people from the Middle East, Africa and Asia as well as the rest of
the Americas is “normal” in her California border city of about a
million residents
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In a separate article published in a Mexicali paper, authorities
downplayed the situation by assuring citizens that the arrival of
people from the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Asia and the rest of the
Americas is “something normal
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They don’t magically land in Mexico. Central America has long been a
popular route for illegal immigrants from terrorist nations who want
to reach the U.S. There’s no doubt many will infiltrate the new
caravan heading to the Mexican border from the northern Honduran city
of San Pedro Sula. President Hernández says some 70,000
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immigrants from these countries cross through Honduras annually, even
without an organized caravan.

When the first Central American caravan launched from Honduras in the
fall of 2018, then Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales confirmed that
nearly 100 ISIS terrorists
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had been apprehended in Guatemala. Like its Honduran neighbor,
Guatemala too is a major smuggling corridor for foreigners from
African and Asian countries making their way into the U.S. In 2017,
Guatemala’s largest paper, Prensa Libra, published an
in-depth piece
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on
the inner workings of an international human smuggling network that
moves migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh
to the U.S.

Over the summer four ISIS terrorists
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planning to enter the U.S. through Mexico were captured by the
Nicaraguan military in a remote area where the men entered the country
illegally from Costa Rica. Nicaraguan authorities identified the men
as two Egyptian nationals—33-year old Mohamed Ibrahim and
26-year-old Mahmoud Samy Eissa—and two Iraqis, 41-year-old Ahmed
Ghanim Mohamed Al Jubury and 29-year-old Mustafa Ali Mohamed Yaoob.
The men arrived in Panama on May 12 and in Costa Rica on June 9,
according to an article
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published
in Nicaragua’s largest newspaper.

Put all of this in the context of Democrats braying when President
Trump took out Qassem Soleimani, leader of Iran’s elite Quds
military force and considered the world’s No. 1 terrorist.

TRANS STATE WORKERS SUE FLORIDA DEMANDING SUPPORT FOR CONTROVERSIAL
SURGERIES

Around the country, and now in Florida, “transgender” activists
are demanding all of us to pay for their sex-change surgeries.
_Corruption Chronicles_ has the details
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In what appears to be a growing national trend, another public
enterprise is being sued for failing to pay for transgenders’ costly
sex-change surgery. The plaintiffs in this latest case are two veteran
state workers—both men—in Florida who allege sex discrimination
because the state’s insurance policy doesn’t cover surgical
procedures to help make them women. One of them, Jami Claire, is a
senior biological scientist at the University of Florida (UF), the
state’s premier university, which is also named as a defendant in
the lawsuit. The other, Kathryn Lane, is an attorney in the
Tallahassee public defender’s office. Both men take hormones and
undergo electrolysis to make them more feminine.

Now they want taxpayers in the Sunshine State to fund expensive
surgeries to alter their genitals and face. Claire, who is 62 years
old, and Lane, 39, claim to have gender dysphoria that requires
gender-affirming care explicitly excluded by the state’s health
insurance program, which covers more than 350,000 employees and
dependents. “Gender dysphoria is a serious, but treatable, medical
condition,” according to the federal complaint
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filed this week is U.S. District Court for the Northern District of
Florida. “Left untreated it can lead to debilitating distress,
depression, anxiety, impairment of function, substance abuse,
self-surgery to alter one’s genitals, or secondary sex
characteristics, self-injurious behavior and even suicide.” That
makes “gender-affirming care” medically necessary, the lawsuit
says, adding that singling out transgender employees for unequal
treatment constitutes “unlawful sex discrimination in violation of
Title VII of the Equal Protection Clause.”

Claire, the UF scientist, is a Navy veteran who has been living as a
female for more than two decades and has a “well-established social
and professional identity as a woman,” the complaint says. In 1997
he was diagnosed with gender dysphoria and began taking hormones and
undergoing electrolysis for hair removal. His wife and children
disowned him and the “financial toll of the divorce” made
gender-affirming treatments unaffordable so he stopped them until a
few years ago. In 2016 Claire resumed gender affirmation treatments to
“live authentically as a woman,” a medical necessity, the lawsuit
says, because Claire experienced constant stress, anxiety, pain and
anguish as a man. In 2018 Claire paid for a breast augmentation to
feminize his body. Now he wants the state to pay for the surgical
removal of his testicles, but his public insurance plan denied the
procedure.

Lane, the attorney, also has a “well-established social and
professional identity as a woman,” according to the complaint. He
began experiencing gender dysphoria since the age of five but
suppressed his “female identity” for many years, causing “severe
depression and anxiety.” In 2012, Lane finally embraced his female
identity and began hormone and facial/body hair removal treatments.
Lane also began growing out the hair on his head to “be identified
more easily as a female.” In 2015 he paid for breast augmentation
surgery. The lawyer wants the state insurance plan to pay for an
expensive cosmetic procedure known as “facial feminization
surgery” essential to treating gender dysphoria. “Facial features
play an important part in being recognized as a particular gender,”
the lawsuit says. “The public’s ability to recognize an individual
as transgender based on their facial features places that individual
at risk of violence, harassment, and discrimination.”

Governments are increasingly being forced to pay for the pricey
cosmetic treatments of transgender people who claim to be stuck in the
wrong body. Thousands of dollars are annually spent to give
transgender jail inmates nationwide hormone treatments, laser hair
removal and makeup. In Massachusetts, a convicted murderer actually
sued
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the Department of Corrections to pay for sex-change surgery. Last year
a federal judge forced Wisconsin taxpayers to provide sex reassignment
surgery and hormonal procedures for low-income transgender residents
who get free medical care from the government. In his ruling
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the
federal judge wrote that Medicaid, the publicly funded insurance that
covers 65.7 million poor people, cannot deny the medical treatment
needs of those suffering from “gender dysphoria.” Officials
estimate it will cost up to $1.2 million annually to provide
transgender Medicaid recipients in the Badger State with treatments
such as “gender confirmation” surgery, including elective
mastectomies, hysterectomies, genital reconstruction and breast
augmentation.

Could any of us imagined this just a few years ago?

THE NEW ANTI-SEMITIC MOMENT

Anti-Semitism is on the rise around the world and here in the United
States, particularly in New York and in certain radical left circles,
too often with a wink and a nod from pubic officials. Micah Morrison,
our chief investigative reporter, provides the details
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The impeachment trial of President Trump rolls on, but back in the
real world, signs of a different sort of trouble are growing. It now
seems clear we are living in a new anti-Semitic moment. From American
college campuses to the streets of New York, from the cities of Europe
to the Arab countries of the Middle East, reports of anti-Semitism
emerge on a daily basis
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At Judicial Watch, we have been closely tracking developments.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton announced in May our legal action
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to shine a light on Arab government support for anti-Semitic
activities at American universities. In September, we warned
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that rising anti-Semitic incidents in New York City signaled
increasing social disorder.

The data have been moving in the wrong direction for several years. In
November, the Anti-Defamation League released a sweeping global survey
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showing that nearly twenty-five percent of Europeans “harbor
pernicious and pervasive attitudes toward Jews,” with rising numbers
in Eastern and Central Europe. The numbers are also up in Russia,
South Africa, Brazil and Argentina. The attitudes are bonkers but
familiar: the Jews control international finance, the U.S. government,
the media; they are too loyal to Israel; they talk too much about the
Holocaust.

In the U.S., anti-Semitic incidents were up 29% from 2015 to 2018, the
_Wall Street Journal_ reports
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Numbers from the NYPD show that New York City, which has the largest
Jewish population in the country, saw anti-Semitic hate crimes in 2019
jump 26%
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from the previous year.

In December, two assaults on Jews rocked the New York area. On
December 10, a crazed duo gripped by anti-Semitic conspiracy theories
assassinated a police detective and invaded a kosher market in Jersey
City, killing three. Two weeks later, during Hanukah, a lunatic with a
machete stormed into a gathering in Monsey, New York, injuring five.
The lurid attacks seized headlines, but it’s the quotidian that is
really unsettling, the daily reports filtering in largely under the
radar: anti-Semitic slurs shouted on the Upper West Side, a man
punched in the head; drunks outside a bar in Crown Heights taunt
Orthodox Jews, assaults later reported; a subway stalker in a viral
moment berating riders about Jewish power; swastikas found scrawled in
a schoolyard, on a parked car, at a beachfront cabin; a Jewish child
harassed at school for wearing a yarmulke; an Orthodox woman walking
with her three-year-old son attacked from behind: “you f—ing
Jew,” the assailant says, “your end is coming.”

Politicians in New York and Washington responded by doing the
conventional things politicians do. Congress put another $30 million
into a grants program
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to harden security at religious sites. Jewish leaders called on social
media
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to crack down on anti-Semitic hate speech. The Trump Administration,
acting on a toxic mix of anti-Israel actions and anti-Semitism on
American campuses, issued an executive order
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expanding interpretation of the Civil Rights Act to cover Jews in
academic settings.

New York’s solutions: money, cops, education. Governor Andrew Cuomo
announced $45 million in new funding to protect religious
institutions. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio boosted the police
presence in neighborhoods with large Jewish populations and announced
the creation of new safety coalitions. The head of his Office for the
Prevention of Hate Crimes said she would focus on education programs
in schools.

The New York response quickly became mired in disputes. Critics noted
that Cuomo’s “new” $45 million for security funding in fact
already was in last year’s budget. De Blasio’s hate crimes office
seems oddly adrift, understaffed and underfunded
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And the mayor himself took to the radio waves to blame anti-Semitic
acts on “right-wing forces
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De Blasio’s remarks came in the wake of the kosher market killings
and underscored why so many New Yorkers find him such a tiresome
wretch—the market murders had zero connection to right-wing
ideology. Ditto the Hanukah attack. But the two incidents seemed to
crystalize the anti-Semitic moment we find ourselves in: a time of
anti-Jewish trends at home and abroad converging from various points
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on
the ideological spectrum, sped up in an age of global social media,
often ending in bloodshed. There’s no telling how long the moment
will last or what will happen next, but history is not reassuring.

Until next week …
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