From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Jason Hopkins

The Mexican government is developing a cellphone app for its citizens to use if they are in the United States and believe they are about to be detained by federal immigration authorities.

The app will allow Mexican nationals to press a tab that sends an alert notification to previously chosen relatives and the nearest consulate when they suspect they are about to be apprehended by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, Mexican Foreign Minister Juan Ramon de la Fuente said at a news conference Friday alongside President Claudia Sheinbaum. The announcement is the latest by the Mexican government as it braces for President-elect Donald Trump’s promise of a wide-scale deportation operation come January.

“In case you find yourself in a situation where detention is imminent, you push the alert button, and that sends a signal to the nearest consulate,” de la Fuente said of the project, according to the Associated Press.

He added that the app has already been tested on a small-scale and “appears to be working very well.” Government officials anticipate a full release by January, just in time for Trump’s return to the White House.

Along with plans to resume construction of the U.S-Mexico border wall, a relaunch of the Remain in Mexico program, and slapping Mexican imports with sweeping tariffs unless their government does more to stop the flow of illegal immigration, the incoming Trump administration has also vowed to launch the largest deportation program ever conducted in U.S. history. The ambitious agenda has sparked tension with Sheinbaum, an ideological leftist who is viewed as more sympathetic to the plight of illegal migrants.

As the number one source of illegal immigration into the U.S. and as the only country to share its southern border, Mexico naturally plays an outsized role in American immigration policy.

Mexicans nationals make up the largest portion of all immigrants living in the U.S. by far, according to the Migration Policy Institute. As of 2023, they accounted for roughly 23% of the 47.8 million foreign-born individuals living in the country. They also make up nearly half of the roughly 11 million illegal migrants currently residing in the U.S.

In response to Trump’s threat to impose 25% tariffs on Mexican imports unless the country did more to stop illegal immigration and the flow of drugs into the U.S., Sheinbaum penned a public letter that warned the president-elect of a “response in kind” if he were to move forward with the threat. It appears that talks of a tariff war have already created headaches for the Mexican market, with a number of manufacturers declaring that they are reconsidering investments into the country until they get more clarification on the situation.

However, Sheinbaum has also signaled she is willing to play ball, with the Mexican president declaring in November that her country is prepared to accept what is expected to be a massive number of Mexican nationals once Trump executes his deportation agenda.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

That is what happens when “science” isn’t science at all and energy reality is ignored in favor of the prevailing narratives of the political left.

As Congress struggled with yet another chaotic episode of negotiations over another catastrophic continuing resolution, all I could think was how wonderful it would be for everyone if they just shut the government down and brought an end to the Biden administration and its incredibly braindead and destructive energy-policy farce a month early.

What a blessing it would be for the country if President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were forced to stop “throwing gold bars off the Titanic” 30 days ahead of schedule. What a merry Christmas we could have if we never had to hear silly talking points based on pseudoscience from the likes of Biden’s climate policy adviser John Podesta or Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm or Biden himself (read, as always, from his ever-present TelePrompTer) again!

What a shame it has been that the rest of us have been forced to take such unserious people seriously for the last four years solely because they had assumed power over the rest of us. As Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead spent decades singing: “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

Speaking of Granholm, she put the perfect coda to this administration’s seemingly endless series of policy scams this week by playing cynical political games with what was advertised as a serious study. It was ostensibly a study so vitally important that it mandated the suspension of permitting for one of the country’s great growth industries while we breathlessly awaited its publication for most of a year.

That, of course, was the Department of Energy’s (DOE) study related to the economic and environmental impacts of continued growth of the U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG) export industry. We were told in January by both Granholm and Biden that the need to conduct this study was so urgent, that it was entirely necessary to suspend permitting for new LNG export infrastructure until it was completed.

The grand plan was transparent: implement the “pause” based on a highly suspect LNG emissions draft study by researchers at Cornell University, and then publish an impactful DOE study that could be used by a President Kamala Harris to implement a permanent ban on new export facilities. It no doubt seemed foolproof at the Biden White House, but schemes like this never turn out to be anywhere near that.

First, the scientific basis for implementing the pause to begin with fell apart when the authors of the draft Cornell study were forced to radically lower their emissions estimates in the final product published in September.

And then, the DOE study findings turned out to be a mixed bag proving no real danger in allowing the industry to resume its growth path.

Faced with a completed study whose findings essentially amount to a big bag of nothing, Granholm decided she could not simply publish it and let it stand on its own merits. Instead, someone at DOE decided it would be a great idea to leak a three-page letter to the New York Times 24 hours before publication of the study in an obvious attempt to punch up the findings.

The problem with Granholm’s letter was, as the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board put it Thursday, “the study’s facts are at war with her conclusions.” After ticking off a list of ways in which Granholm’s letter exaggerates and misleads about the study’s actual findings, the Journal’s editorial added, “Our sources say the Biden National Security Council and career officials at Energy’s National Laboratories disagree with Ms. Granholm’s conclusions.”

There can be little doubt that this reality would have held little sway in a Kamala Harris presidency. Granholm’s and Podesta’s talking points would have almost certainly resulted in making the permitting “pause” a permanent feature of U.S. energy policy. That is what happens when “science” isn’t science at all and energy reality is ignored in favor of the prevailing narratives of the political left.

What a blessing it would have been to put an end to this form of policy madness a month ahead of time. January 20 surely cannot come soon enough.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.