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Funding government without border wall appears back on table

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump appeared to back off his demand for $5 billion to build a border wall, signalling for the first time that he might be open to a deal that would avoid a partial government shutdown.

The White House set the tone Tuesday when press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders indicated that Trump doesn’t want to shut down the government, though just last week he said he’d be “proud” to do so. The president would consider other options and the administration was looking at ways to find the money elsewhere, Sanders said.

It was a turnaround after days of impasse. Without a resolution, more than 800,000 government workers could be furloughed or sent to work without pay beginning at midnight Friday, disrupting government operations days before Christmas.

One option that has been circulating on Capitol Hill would be to simply approve government funding at existing levels, without a boost for the border, as a stopgap measure to kick the issue into the new Congress next month. The chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., confirmed late Tuesday his office was preparing legislation to keep government funded, likely into February. The White House preference was for a longer-term package, although the conversation remained fluid and Trump has been known to quickly change course, said a person familiar with the negotiations but not authorized to discuss them by name.

“We want to know what can pass,” Sanders said at a press briefing. “Once they make a decision and they put something on the table, we’ll make a determination on whether we’ll move forward.”

She also said the president “has asked every agency to look and see if they have money that can be used.”

The turn of events kick-started negotiations that had been almost nonexistent since last week’s televised meeting at the White House, when Trump neither accepted nor rejected the Democrats’ offer. They had proposed keeping funding at current levels of $1.3 billion for border security fencing and other improvements, but not for the wall.

The Senate’s top Republican and Democratic leaders began negotiating new proposals and talks were expected to continue.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he was confident there would not be a government shutdown. McConnell said a stopgap measure could be approved, though he suggested that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who is poised to become House speaker when the Democrats take control Jan. 3, would not want to saddle the new year with a budget brawl.

“If I were in her shoes, I would rather not be dealing with this year’s business next year,” McConnell said.

Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have made it clear they are not interested in funding Trump’s border wall.

During a meeting earlier Tuesday on Capitol Hill, McConnell had proposed $1.6 billion for border fencing, as outlined in a bipartisan Senate bill, plus an additional $1 billion that Trump could use on the border, according to a senior Democratic aide unauthorized to speak about the private meeting.

Democratic leaders immediately spurned the proposal. Schumer called McConnell to reject it.

“We cannot accept the offer they made of a billion-dollar slush fund for the president to implement his very wrong immigration policies,” Pelosi told reporters. “So that won’t happen.”

Democrats also rejected the administration’s idea of shifting money from other accounts to pay for Trump’s wall. Schumer said there will be no wall money, “plain and simple.”

Pelosi will probably be able to quickly approve a longer-term measure to keep government running in the new year. She called it a “good sign” that the White House appeared to be backing off its demands.

The White House showed its willingness to budge as it became apparent the president does not have support in Congress for funding the wall at the $5 billion level. Sanders said Tuesday there are “other ways” to secure the funding.

“At the end of the day, we don’t want to shut down the government,” Sanders said on Fox News Channel. “We want to shut down the border from illegal immigration.”

Sanders pointed to the Senate’s bipartisan appropriation measure for the Department of Homeland Security, which provides $26 billion, including $1.6 billion for fencing and other barriers. It was approved by the committee in summer on a bipartisan vote.

“That’s something that we would be able to support,” she said, as long as it’s coupled with other funding.

But House Democrats largely reject the Senate’s bill because it includes 65 miles of additional fencing along the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.

Trump had campaigned on the promise that Mexico would pay for the wall. Mexico has refused.

It’s unclear how many House Republicans, with just a few weeks left in the majority before relinquishing power to House Democrats, will even show up midweek for possible votes. Many Republicans say it’s up to Trump and Democrats to cut a deal.

The standoff dispute could affect nine of 15 Cabinet-level departments and dozens of agencies, including the departments of Homeland Security, Transportation, Interior, Agriculture, State and Justice, as well as national parks and forests.

Shelby expected the stopgap measure, which would cover the seven appropriation bills for those departments, would pass. “Who would want to shut the government down?” he said.

Congress did pass legislation to fund much of the government through the fiscal year, until Oct. 1. But a partial shutdown would occur at midnight Friday on the remaining one-fourth of the government.

About half the workers would be forced to continue working without immediate pay. Others would be sent home. Congress often approves their pay retroactively, even if they were ordered to stay home.

Many agencies, including the Pentagon and the departments of Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services, are already funded for the year and will continue to operate as usual. The U.S. Postal Service, busy delivering packages for the holiday season, wouldn’t be affected by any government shutdown because it’s an independent agency.

___

Associated Press writer Laurie Kellman in Washington contributed to this report.

Lisa Mascaro, Matthew Daly And Catherine Lucey, The Associated Press





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RCMP to create fake online profiles to track Canadian ā€˜extremistsā€™: docs

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From LifeSiteNews

By  Clare Marie Merkowsky

Canada’s national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), is planning to create fake online accounts to target Canadian “extremists.”

According to an internal strategy document, the RCMP plans to conduct undercover surveillance on Canadians by creating fake online accounts and tracking what they consider “ideological extremists,” which could include pro-family, pro-life and pro-freedom content.   

“The RCMP’s lack of a covert online presence was previously highlighted in the OIR (Operational Improvement Review), which recommended that the RCMP develop its own online undercover program to assist with national security criminal investigations,” the RCMP internal document stated. 

The document, obtained by an Access to Information request and shared with CBC News, reveals that the Federal Policing National Security is “currently taking steps to address this recommendation through proactive legend-building and backstopping personas, but this work needs to be prioritized and accelerated in order to meet future demand for online undercover activities.”  

“Undercover police investigations, among many tools, remain an effective technique to thwart the commission of serious crime and resolve historic offences,” the plan continued. “The focus is on uncovering the truth, verifying facts and determining if someone is involved.” 

According to the RCMP, violent extremism is divided into three categories:  religiously motivated extremism, politicly motivated extremism, and ideologically motivated extremism. 

Ideologically motivated extremis is further categorized into xenophobic violence, gender-driven violence, anti-authority violence, and “other grievance-driven and ideological motivated violence.” The last category includes environmental, animal rights, and “anti-abortion violence.” 

While the RCMP’s move to monitor Canadians online is alarming, it is hardly the first time the government-run police force has spied on its citizens.   

In 2022, the RCMP acknowledged it uses spyware to turn on or off the camera or microphone of a laptop or phone at will to eavesdrop on one’s conversations without the suspect even knowing it.   

Spying on and tracking Canadians for sharing pro-family and pro-freedom values could prove even more dangerous if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Online Harms bill, which would punish “hate speech” online, is passed.   

Bill C-63was introduced by Justice Minister Arif Virani in the House of Commons in February and was immediately blasted by constitutional experts as troublesome. Put forth under the guise of protecting children from exploitation online, the bill also seeks to expand the scope of “hate speech” prosecutions, and even desires to target such speech retroactively.   

Furthermore, the RCMP, like the rest of Canada’s government-run organizations, appears to have been infiltrated by woke activists who label pro-family, pro-freedom, and pro-life causes as “extreme” and “dangerous.” 

In 2022, the RCMP issued a 16-page guide suggesting people tell on those who show any signs of “anti-government” or “anti-LGBTQ2” opinions on the internet.

“Some people hold social or political beliefs that may be considered ‘extreme’ or outside mainstream ideologies. Although some ideas alone may be concerning to those around them, it is when a person uses or actively supports violence to achieve ideological, religious or political goals that the police have a role to play,” the guide said. 

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Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis calls out Liberals for not supporting anti-church burning bill

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Speaking about the ‘hundreds of churches’ that have been ‘set on fire across Canada’ in the last number of years, Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis questioned why the Liberals seem completely unconcerned.

One of Canada’s most prominent pro-life MPs has called out the Trudeau government for its apparent lack of support for an anti-arson bill which aims to curb the rash of church burnings plaguing Christians in the country.

In an X post Monday, Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis pointed out that under the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, church burnings have shot up “100 percent,” and that the government does not seem to have expressed any “concern” at all.

“In the last several years, hundreds of churches and other places of worship have been set on fire across Canada. Under this Liberal government, these crimes have increased by over 100%,” wrote Lewis on X.  

“Where is the concern or action from the Liberals regarding these attacks on Christian churches?” 

Lewis’s post included a link to another X post from Conservative MP Marc Dalton, who posted a video on October 31 highlighting the recent rash of church burnings and how his bill, C-411, aims to stop this.  

“Thank you @MarcDalton for bringing forward Bill C-411, the Anti-Arson Act, an important bill to protect places of worship and increase penalties on those who would target them,” wrote Lewis. 

Bill C-411, or, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (arson — wildfires and places of worship),  was introduced by Dalton in June. 

The law, if passed, would create specific criminal offenses for setting fires to churches and for starting wildfires.

Dalton said in his video that there is a “serious problem in Canada that must be addressed” concerning Catholic and Christian churches being the target of arson. 

He highlighted how since 2010, 592 churches have been the target of arson in Canada, with a large portion of these being concentrated to the last few years.  

Dalton noted how Canada’s Criminal Code, as it stands, does not include specific protections against arson directed at religious institutions. C-411 aims to “change that,” said Dalton, noting that the bill would implement a minimum sentence of five years in jail for a first offense of this kind, and seven years for a repeat offense.

“This bill strengthens our criminal code and punishes these hateful arson attacks,” he said. 

“Commonsense Conservatives stand for strict punishments against criminals who target places of worship.” 

Since the spring of 2021, 112 churches, most of them Catholic, have beenburned to the ground, vandalized or defiled in Canada. 

The church burnings started in earnest after the mainstream media and the federal government ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some of the now-closed residential schools in Canada, particularly a school in Kamloops, British Columbia.

The anti-Catholic narrative that developed following these claims continues to this day, despite the fact that no bodies have actually been discovered.

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