US energy independence is under threat from a court ruling



Two new energy enterprises in the Port of Brownsville were on the cusp of ushering in a new era of business and industry for the region. Together, they would bring in billions of dollars in investment, provide major infrastructure improvements, and create thousands of jobs.

And they would lead to a domino effect of benefits for the community, such as the $30 million Texas A&M training facility that broke ground at the port this year.

This is not governmental cooperation through agency and legal means. It’s obstructionist.

Both projects received the green light in the federal permitting process, and one had even begun construction.

But then everything came to a screeching halt at the whim of a court in Washington, D.C.

For the sake of the people of South Texas, this unprecedented move — tossing out preapproved permits, including one for a facility that is already under construction — needs to be challenged.

The Rio Grande LNG terminal, projected to be one of the world's largest liquified natural gas export projects, would cost an estimated $18 billion. It is expected to generate 5,000 construction jobs, over 400 permanent positions, and potentially another 3,000 indirect jobs in the local community.

Meanwhile, Texas LNG was finalizing its investment plans to start construction. This project, too, was set to invest billions and create thousands of jobs throughout its construction phase.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had approved permits for both projects. The companies went above and beyond to comply with environmental regulations, even incorporating a carbon capture and storage facility to reduce emissions. Ironically, the court cited these environmental efforts as the reason to revoke their permits. In response, both projects have now abandoned their carbon capture efforts to comply with the court’s demands.

As Charles McConnell, a former official in the Environmental Protection Agency under the Obama administration, wrote, “This is not governmental cooperation through agency and legal means. It’s obstructionist.”

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has urged FERC to appeal a court decision that halted the construction of two major liquefied natural gas terminals. Cruz’s letter to the FERC chairman stressed the need for regulatory clarity to ensure that legal disruptions do not discourage investors from backing future projects that could position America as the world’s leading energy producer.

“If project developers come to believe that federal permits can be overturned due to procedural missteps by the regulator, apart from any actions or fault by the developers, U.S. infrastructure projects will slow and stall,” Cruz wrote.

But for the people of South Texas, this outlandish reversal is a lot more personal. We need more industry and business to help our region flourish. The projects were expanding business access to South Texas significantly. Rio Grande LNG was already in the process of making the channel another 10 feet deeper to make the Port of Brownsville accessible to more ships. With the federal court ruling, all that progress will come to an end — and with it, a golden opportunity to turn South Texas into a hub of prosperity.

It’s easy to get lost in the legal jargon of the permitting process and lawsuits. But what FERC and the courts do has real-world implications for everyone in South Texas. More industry leads to more jobs, and more jobs lead to more opportunities, which in turn would create more opportunities for South Texans to escape poverty.

The new LNG developments could set the region up for success in decades to come — but not if bureaucratic obstructionists continue to stand in the way.

Time To Impeach Texas Judges Enabling State Democrats To Flout The Law

Two Texas state judges weighed into the affairs of the legislature and effectively appointed themselves speaker of the House, all for the sake of misbehaving Democrats.

Judicial tyranny: Ideologues are stealing our kids' innocence



Have U.S. courts become more interested in ideology than the best interests of American children?

One father, Jeffrey Younger, joined the Chad Prather Show to discuss why he believes the courts are more interested in ideology than the best interest of his son.

Younger's ex-wife, Anne Georgulas, a pediatrician, said her child - James - "began to express a desire to be a girl in 2015. When James was 3-years -old, according to Anne, he began asking to wear dresses and look like the female characters from the Disney movie Frozen.

It was reported that "Mr. Younger and Dr. Georgulas' four-year marriage was annulled in 2016, at which point Dr. Georgulas was given exclusive control of decisions regarding medical, psychological and educational issues."

Younger has fought in court to stop his ex-wife from allowing him to undergo social transition which Younger says will push James to undergo chemical transition. He explained to Chad what he experienced during his battles in the Texas court system.

Watch the clip for more from this conversation. Can't watch? Download the clip here.


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Horowitz: Texas judge gives child rapist just 180 days, while forcing a father to get experimental vaccine before seeing his kids



Rape someone else's child? Just 180 days of jail time will suffice. You want to see your own child after divorcing your wife? You can never do that unless you take an experimental gene therapy sold as a vaccine, which according to one doctor may have killed as many as 50,000 people to date. That is essentially the ethos from a pair of court decisions made by Polk County District Court Judge Travis Kitchens this month. The biggest irony of all? The local Fox affiliate reporter who broke these two stories is the same woman who tried to report about the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine and claims she was muzzled by Fox Corp. in doing so.

KRIV-TV reporter Ivory Hecker, who has since been fired, reported last week that Eli Binnion, a child rapist, was sentenced to just 180 days in jail (not prison) for a 2018 rape of a 14-year-old girl in a Polk County, Texas, motel. According to the victim's father, Judge Travis Kitchens didn't even allow the parents to testify at the sentencing hearing. While Binnion was in jail for the rape, he brutally attacked a fellow inmate, breaking his jaw. According to Hecker, "Judge Kitchens gave Binnion a three-year sentence for the assault, and because he's been in jail since 2018, he'll be out in a matter of months."

Binnion also had a prior criminal history of assault and evading arrest prior to the rape. Yet this is someone who is considered "nonviolent, first-time, and low-level" by judges in this era of de-incarceration, even in red states. Polk County was carried by Trump by a net 54 points. During the last judicial election in 2018, there was no Democrat on the ballot. Yet these are the sorts of Republicans who are often serving as judges in the reddest of counties.

Just how liberal is this alleged Republican judge? While he lets child rapists off the hook, he treats fathers like criminals unless they get the mRNA gene therapy. In May, Hecker reported that Judge Kitchens ordered Chris Staley, a father of four going through a divorce, to get vaccinated for COVID before being able to visit his children, ages 6 through 11. The father is more likely to harm his children by infecting them with nearly any other respiratory virus or bacteria, yet Kitchens is making him take an experimental vaccine that is already very problematic.

It's hard to imagine how this order does not run afoul of Gov. Greg Abbott's order barring any state government official from mandating the vaccine. Yet we are seeing all over Texas, most prominently with 117 health care workers at Houston Methodist hospital, people being forced to serve as lab rats. Clearly, the governor and state legislature are not doing enough to protect both civil liberties and public health.

The tragic irony of the forced vaccination regime is that we've known for quite some time that there are cheap and effective therapeutics against COVID that don't come with the risk of side effects. The same reporter, Ivory Hecker, recently made national news when she unexpectedly reported on a live broadcast about the Texas heat wave that the Fox company censored her from reporting about the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine.

Hecker did a sit-down interview with Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe and revealed that KRIV's VP and news director, Susan Schiller, told her to "cease and desist" posting about hydroxychloroquine on social media. She then had multiple stories about the drug that were heavily censored.

"What's happening within Fox Corp is an operation of prioritizing corporate interests above the viewer's interest and, therefore, operating in a deceptive way," she added. "Viewers are being deceived about some of the things that are going on."

Fox 26 Reporter Ivory Hecker Releases Tape of Bosses; Sounds Alarm on 'Corruption' & 'Censorship' www.youtube.com

Hecker has since been fired by the news agency.

The twisted irony is that people like Judge Kitchens are making life-and-death decisions in the form of court orders based on censored information – downplaying any positive news about alternatives to the vaccines, while censoring any negative information about the vaccines. This is just a glimpse into one local newsroom in this country by one reporter. We can only imagine the degree of censorship taking place on issues like crime, race, economy, and illegal immigration all across the country.

Malcolm X once said, "The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses."

And indeed, they influence who is guilty in the eyes of a judge. Because of the media narrative that Judge Kitchens likely consumes, he believes those who don't take the experimental vaccine are guilty and child rapists are somewhat innocent. The media also ensures that the public is not informed about issues like crime and the extent to which we have an under-incarceration problem, not an over-incarceration problem, which allows politicians to promote more leniencies on criminals. The media has made innocent the criminals and guilty the average citizen.

Which is why I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Judge Kitchens to require the child rapist to get vaccinated before his impending release from jail.

Levin drops a truth bomb on a 'tyrannical' Obama judge's anti-Trump ruling

Monday night on the radio, LevinTV host Mark Levin explained how an anti-Trump ruling from a federal judge is a disaster for the office of the presidency, the separation of powers, and the American legal system.

Earlier that day, an Obama-appointed federal judge ruled that former White House counsel Don McGahn must comply with a House of Representatives subpoena issued as part of a Democrat led-investigation in April.

"A president must be able to have legal advice ... without Congress interfering, whether it's an impeachment proceeding or any other proceeding," Levin said in opposition to the decision. "Otherwise, there's no balance of power, because the House of Representatives — unless there's a criminal investigation — is not subject to any subpoenas, they're not subject to FOIA because they don't apply it to themselves, and they have all the legal counsel they want — privileged."

"If the president can't turn to a lawyer for legal advice, then it's a disaster," Levin added, explaining how the judge undermined legal traditions and norms that predate the American legal system.

"So what she's doing is she's tilting the balance of power far away from the president to the Congress, changing the structure of our government and the ability of the chief executive to function," the host explained.

"This judge is tyrannical," Levin concluded, "and the tyrannical judiciary is back in a very aggressive way."

Listen: 

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Judge creates right for illegal alien to block deportation … so she can sue law enforcement

We are told everything illegal aliens want to do in our country is completely legal and they are entitled to all citizen rights, including citizenship for children. On the other hand, everything our law enforcement wants to do to enforce the law against them is somehow held illegal.

We are having a national debate over the effectiveness of a border wall, but we should first have a debate over whether we have a border at all. Judges are creating new constitutional rights for illegal immigrants to invade at breakneck speed, rendering our constitutional protections essentially binding on the entire globe. Nothing should surprise us any more, but the latest story of an El Salvadoran illegal immigrant from Frederick, Maryland, should jolt us all out of our slumber.

Roxana Orellana Santos is an illegal alien from El Salvador who had no right to come to this country in 2005 and no right to remain in this country against the will of the people as expressed through long-standing statute. Pursuant to our laws, Santos was detained by Border Patrol when she broke into our country in Texas and then failed to appear for an immigration hearing. In 2007, an immigration judge issued an order to deport her.

A year into her fugitive life, Frederick cops informally questioned her outside a restaurant on October 7, 2008, after they thought she was running away from them. Upon receiving information from ICE through dispatch that she was here illegally, and then acting on an outstanding immigration warrant from ICE, Frederick sheriff’s deputies arrested Santos as part of their lawful cooperation with the federal government to help apprehend illegal aliens through the 287(g) program, under 8 U.S.C. § 1357(g). It’s part of a law that passed the Senate unanimously in 1996. Frederick is one of the few jurisdictions in Maryland that participates in this program. It has experienced a growth of MS-13 and other criminal activity in this once-serene small city in picturesque western Maryland.

In a sane country, this would have been the end of the story. Santos should have been deported, pursuant to every statute on the books. But Santos, backed by an army of lawyers from the organization CASA de Maryland, sued the Frederick sheriff for what she felt was an illegal search and seizure and the county commissioners for agreeing to operate under 287(g). After endless motions while remained in the country, the district court rebuffed her claim in 2012, but the arch-liberal Fourth Circuit sided with her a year later. The court created a new right for illegals not to be apprehended by local law enforcement because of their immigration status. Last September, District Judge Catherine Blake ruled that Sheriff Jenkins could be held liable in a civil suit for the acts of his deputies. This allows Santos to proceed with a suit for civil damages. Her attorneys are seeking to milk this small county for $1 million in damages! None of us can sue her for sucking up our resources.

It’s bad enough that illegal immigrants get to break into our country, steal American citizenship from us for their kids (Santos has three American-born kids, erroneously regarded as Americans), and sue law enforcement for following our sovereignty laws. But at least she can now be deported, right?

Well, ICE did apprehend her, but Judge Catherine Blake issued a temporary restraining order against her deportation. The rationale? Santos is now entitled to finish out her lawsuit against our own sheriff’s deputies, thereby blocking her deportation.

As a Maryland resident, I must say it’s an outrage that someone can break into my state, sue those who protect us for following all the immigration and criminal justice statutes, and then use that lawsuit to nullify the most foundational federal immigration law to remain here illegally!

Santos has been allowed to remain in the country for a decade of endless litigation, and now there is no doubt the courts will delay the deportation indefinitely with other lawsuits. It’s bad enough that, in our litigious culture, American criminals get away with crime because of the broken legal profession. Are we really going to extend this legal circus to illegal aliens?

As Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, who has studied 287(g) arrests for years, lamented, “This woman originally was arrested more than a decade ago after she fled from sheriff’s deputies, knowing that she was a fugitive from immigration authorities and knowing that she had flagrantly broken our immigration laws and shown contempt for the generous due process she was given.”

Yet she is now able to use the lawsuit game to buy herself even more time.

As Justice Thomas said in Arizona v. U.S. (2010), “States, as sovereigns, have inherent authority to conduct arrests for violations of federal law, unless and until Congress removes that authority.” There is nothing in federal statute that prohibits local law enforcement from inquiring about immigration status. Indeed, it is preposterous for anyone to assert that local law enforcement can’t arrest someone who must be deported by federal law. Quite the contrary: 8 U. S. C. §1644 unambiguously says that “no State or local government entity may be prohibited, or in any way restricted, from sending to or receiving from” federal immigration officials “information regarding the immigration status” of a foreign national. And of course, §1373(c) says that ICE “shall respond to an inquiry by a Federal, State, or local government agency, seeking to verify or ascertain the citizenship or immigration status of any individual within the jurisdiction of the agency.”

That is exactly what both Frederick officials and ICE did here. Yet, 10 years later, the law has been flipped upside-down and inside-out. States can’t enforce the law, feds can’t enforce the law, and judges can nullify any law.

“Even if her original arrest was unlawful (it wasn’t), she is still deportable because she has absolutely no basis to remain in the United States,” noted Vaughan. “Because the extra time here that she bought herself with the earlier lawsuit is now up, Roxana and her legal team are now suing the good sheriff’s office and ICE just to buy more time. If she ever wants to be a legal immigrant, what she ought to do is return home and wait her turn to try to qualify as a parent of a U.S. citizen born here during the long stay we allowed her. Predatory lawsuits like this damage our system by rewarding improper behavior and they inevitably lead to more baseless lawsuits.”

And who are these people agitating lawsuits and rallies? Groups like CASA de Maryland, which get Maryland taxpayer funding. Their advocacy for illegal aliens has crossed over into aiding and abetting, inducing illegal immigration, and transporting illegal aliens, all violations of various subsections of §1324. But it is we and our police officers who are violating the law, according to these fake judges.

If your blood is not already boiling, the final disgrace to ponder here is the fact that the more illegal aliens are illegally given standing to sue our governments and illegally remain in the country, the more time they have to have babies and further allow “crime to pay.” This woman now has several U.S.-born children. Not only is the Constitution clear, contrary to administrative fiat, that one must be here with permission of the government to enjoy citizenship, our laws are clear that she should have been deported 10 years ago. Now, her husband came here illegally and is, of course, seeking asylum.

We the people have no say in who comes here, contrary to our laws. It is the ultimate violation of the foundational principle of governance by the consent of the governed, as established in the Declaration of Independence.

As we continue to debate the wall, let’s not forget that no wall can save us from this national suicide of judicial lawfare. Our laws aren’t broken. They are written properly. The case law for over 100 years was abundantly clear. Our contemporary judges and politicians are broken. The politicians are allowing unelected judges and lawless groups that abet fugitives to accomplish a degree of judicial amnesty that liberals have failed to accomplish in the legislature for two generations.

Sadly, there is no way to better construct laws that will be clearer than they already are if we are going to allow judges to destroy us from within the confines of our border – wall around it or not. And if the judicial amnesty doesn’t stop, with the intensifying flow of people coming to take advantage of us, we will not have a country left.

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Democrats are pushing another bogus lawsuit against Trump and Mark Levin is having none of it

Wednesday evening on the radio, LevinTV host Mark Levin discussed one of the Left’s latest erroneous pseudo-constitutional plans of attack against President Trump. The attack comes from the activist attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia.

Trump’s business dealings are the subject of a new lawsuit that has to do with the Constitution’s emolument’s clause. When foreign officials stay at the hotel, the argument of the attorneys general goes, Trump receives unconstitutional payments from foreign governments.

The emoluments clause, Levin explained, was originally included in the Constitution to keep people from seeking office as a stepping stone to more lucrative ventures. Levin argued that since Trump owned the hotel before taking office, the clause does not apply to him.

“So now we have another tool that will apparently be used by the Left – and if they can find these Clinton and Obama judges – to try and destroy the Trump presidency," the host concluded.

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