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Abortions slightly declined the year Roe v. Wade was overturned, CDC says

Abortions slightly declined the year Roe v. Wade was overturned, CDC says

The number of abortions in the U.S. only slightly dropped in 2022, the year the Supreme Court overturned Roe. v. Wade, returning the power to make laws on abortion access back to the states. Abortions declined by just 2% in 2022 compared to 2021, according to new surveillance data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The abortion rate also dipped by 3% and the abortion ratio decreased by 2%. The total dropped from about 622,000 abortions in 2021 to 609,000 in 2022, the data revealed. PRO-LIFE GROUPS CAUTIOUS ON RFK JR. NOMINATION AFTER EVOLVING ABORTION VIEWS This, as Republican-led states have enacted abortion bans with some exceptions such as medical emergencies after the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling. Most of the abortions were reported before nine weeks of pregnancy and more than 70% were early medication abortions, which was similar to the numbers from before Roe v. Wade was overturned, according to the data. More than 6% of abortions happened between 14 and 20 weeks of pregnancy while about 1% were done either at or after 21 weeks of pregnancy, the CDC said in its report. Women in their 20s made up more than half of abortions, the CDC said. WYOMING JUDGE STRIKES DOWN STATE ABORTION LAWS, RULING THEM UNCONSTITUTIONAL CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP The report also said that nearly 60% of the women who had abortions had also given birth before, the data revealed. The CDC data includes numbers from 47 areas of the U.S. that have published data from 2013 until 2022.

Texas has spent millions placing razor wire along the border: Is it working?

Texas has spent millions placing razor wire along the border: Is it working?

In the past couple of years the Texas National Guard and state authorities have placed over 100 miles of razor wire at some of the most critical migrant crossing points along the southern border. The state, which makes up over 60 percent of the U.S. border with Mexico, has spent well over $10 million erecting and maintaining these border barriers as part of its larger multi-billion-dollar border enforcement campaign “Operation Lonestar.” This week, a federal appeals court ruled against the Biden administration’s attempt to block Texas from continuing to place walls of razor wire – also called concertina or “c-wire” – along the border. This comes after U.S. Border Patrol agents under the Biden administration cut down Texas’ wire on a 26-mile stretch of the border in September 2023. Earlier this year, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, said that “Biden should be thanking Texas, not obstructing our efforts to secure the border.” “Joe Biden completely abandoned his constitutional duty to secure the border. Texas stepped up in his absence to build the wall, repel illegal crossings, and protect our country,” said Abbott. HEARTBREAKING VIDEO SHOWS 10-YEAR-OLD MIGRANT LEFT ALONE AT BORDER But does razor wire really keep migrants from entering the country illegally, and is it worth the cost? Andrew Arthur, a law and policy expert at the Center for Immigration Studies, says the answer is an emphatic “Yes.” He pointed to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection that shows illegal migrant encounters in Texas’ five border sectors dropped by nearly two-thirds in January after the state finished placing wire. Arthur told Fox News Digital that Texas began placing wire fortifications in May 2023 after the COVID-era measure Title 42 expired. Then, after the migrant surge in December, Texas deployed additional guard personnel, state troopers and resources to the border. “Based on the numbers that we’re looking at here, it is most definitely effective,” he said.  INCOMING BORDER CZAR HOMAN ISSUES WARNING IN TEXAS TO DEMS OPPOSING TRUMP DEPORTATIONS: ‘DON’T TEST US’ “What the wire did from my reading of this is it shifted that flow west,” he explained. “And that’s important, because that’s a much longer route. You’re adding hundreds of miles to that smuggling journey.” While effective, razor wire is not without drawbacks. More than a traditional border wall, wire needs to be constantly monitored. It also requires regular upkeep and additional wire being laid down after old wire is damaged or destroyed. “It’s a temporary solution, because you’re going to have to replace the concertina wire that they have and, at some point, they’re not going to be able to keep sending wave after wave of troopers, because a lot of those guys are hundreds of miles from their homes, because Texas is a big state,” he explained. “When I was embedded with a trooper down there, he was from Abilene, which is nowhere near the border, and he had been there for six weeks.” There are also humanitarian considerations. Arthur said that by being an effective deterrent, razor wire protects migrants from attempting the dangerous crossing over the Rio Grande. Meanwhile, Dylan Corbett, who runs an El Paso-based migrant aid and advocacy group called the Hope Border Institute, said that the presence of c-wire along the border has increased migrant injuries and deaths. Corbett told Fox News Digital that doctors working with the Hope Border Institute have had to treat the wounds of families injured by the wire, as well as “wounds caused by projectiles fired by the National Guard.”   “In El Paso, nearly our entire border has been fortified by layers of concertina wire, including part of our border with New Mexico,” he explained. “While the numbers of border deaths along the whole border appear to have gone down over the past year, in El Paso they have increased. That increase has been sharp over the past couple years and coincides with the presence of the Guard and the concertina wire, because it is forcing border crossers just to the west of the city, where they die in the desert or crossing the river.” He called for the federal government to finally step in and “assert its supremacy over managing migration at the border and fix our overall system.” “More people are dying here than ever before,” he said. “The longer we wait, states will continue to engage in uncoordinated and irresponsible enforcement actions on their own, unnecessarily putting lives at risk and needlessly diverting millions of dollars in taxpayer resources.”  

Who is Karoline Leavitt?: A look at the youngest woman ever named to serve as White House press secretary

Who is Karoline Leavitt?: A look at the youngest woman ever named to serve as White House press secretary

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – President-elect Donald Trump announced Karoline Leavitt will return to the White House next year as his press secretary, making the 27-year-old the youngest White House press secretary in U.S. history and notching another massive career benchmark.  Leavitt has been a fierce defender of Trump throughout his hard-fought campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris, which included Democrats and the Harris campaign lobbing attacks at Trump that he is a “fascist” and on par with Nazi Germany dictator Adolf Hitler, two assassination attempts and crisscrossing the nation to rally support for the former president.  “Karoline Leavitt did a phenomenal job as the National Press Secretary on my Historic Campaign, and I am pleased to announce she will serve as White House Press Secretary,” Trump said in a statement announcing Leavitt as his press secretary this month.  “Karoline is smart, tough, and has proven to be a highly effective communicator. I have the utmost confidence she will excel at the podium, and help deliver our message to the American People as we, Make America Great Again.” TRUMP PICKS KAROLINE LEAVITT TO SERVE AS WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY Ahead of her appointment as the youngest press secretary in the nation’s history – unseating President Richard Nixon’s press secretary Ron Ziegler, who was 29 when he took the same position in 1969 – Leavitt had long been in Trump’s orbit and also made her own political mark with a congressional run in 2022.  TRUMP’S SPEEDY CABINET PICKS SHOW HIS ‘PRIORITY TO PUT AMERICA FIRST,’ TRANSITION TEAM SAYS Leavitt served in Trump’s first administration as assistant press secretary before working as New York Rep. Elise Stefanik’s communications director following the 2020 election. Leavitt launched a congressional campaign in her home state of New Hampshire during the 2022 cycle, winning her primary, but losing the election to a Democrat.  During her time on the campaign trail for Trump this cycle, Leavitt sparred with liberal media outlets about Trump’s candidacy, fielded media inquiries about the 45th president’s policies and vision for the U.S., served as one of Trump’s top defenders amid legal battles and political landmines lobbed by both the Biden and Harris campaign, and maneuvered an unprecedented campaign cycle that saw President Biden drop out of the running in July amid heightened concerns over his mental acuity and age.  She was among the dozens of Republican elected officials and Trump supporters who joined Trump in Manhattan court over the spring as he faced trial over 34 counts of falsifying business records, which Trump repeatedly slammed as a “sham” case. She also reported that with the job as the campaign’s national press secretary, she became accustomed to Trump’s “sleep schedule” – which has famously only consisted of roughly four or five hours of rest before getting to work – and joined him at rallies across the nation and at the campaign’s headquarters in Florida.  Leavitt currently serves as the Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman ahead of Jan. 20, when Trump will be sworn in as president.  Leavitt made national headlines in June, before Biden dropped out of the race, when CNN’s Kasie Hunt cut her microphone off as she argued on air that CNN hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash would be politically biased against Trump while moderating a debate between Biden and the now president-elect. Biden ultimately performed terribly during the debate, which opened the floodgates to traditional Democrat allies calling on him to drop out of the presidential race and pass the torch to a younger generation.  KAROLINE LEAVITT WANTS DEMS TO ‘LOOK IN THE MIRROR’ AFTER ‘DISGUSTING’ COMMENTS AGAINST TRUMP “That’s why President Trump is knowingly going into a hostile environment on this very network, on CNN, with debate moderators who have made their opinions about him very well known over the past eight years. And their biased coverage of him,” Leavitt said to Hunt during the interview previewing the debate.  “So I‘ll just say my colleagues, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, have acquitted themselves as professionals as they have covered campaigns and interviewed candidates from all sides of the aisle. I‘ll also say that if you talk to analysts of previous debates, that if you’re attacking the moderators, you’re usually losing,” Hunt responded. As Hunt tried to redirect the interview back to previewing the debate, Leavitt said it would take just a few minutes to pull up examples of Tapper’s anti-Trump rhetoric across the years.  KAROLINE LEAVITT ON SWING STATE DEMOCRATS TOUTING TIES TO TRUMP: THIS IS THE ‘WRITING ON THE WALL’ “Ma’am, I’m going to stop this interview if you’re going to continue to attack my colleagues,” Hunt said, before Leavitt continued that she was “stating facts” about what CNN hosts had previously said about Trump.  “I’m sorry, guys, we’re going to come back out to the panel,” Hunt said. “Karoline, thank you very much for your time. You are welcome to come back at any point. She is welcome to come back and speak about Donald Trump, and Donald Trump will have equal time to Joe Biden when they both join us later this week in Atlanta for this debate.” Following the mic getting cut, Leavitt told Fox News Digital at the time that, “CNN cutting off my microphone for bringing up a debate moderator’s history of anti-Trump lies just proves our point that President Trump will not be treated fairly in Thursday’s debate. Yet President Trump is still willing to go into this 3-1 fight to bring his winning message to the American people, and he will win.” As Leavitt juggled the media, she also spent the first six months in her role as Trump campaign national press secretary while pregnant with her first child. Ahead of Mother’s Day this year, Leavitt touted the importance women and mothers have within the Trump orbit and celebrating that in July, she would welcome her own baby.  DEMOCRATS ARE THE TRUE THREAT TO DEMOCRACY: KAROLINE LEAVITT “Joe Biden can’t even define what a ‘woman’ is, and his Administration disrespectfully refers to mothers as

Five things to watch for on immigration and border security in 2025

Five things to watch for on immigration and border security in 2025

Immigration and border security were hot topics in 2024 as the Biden administration continued to tackle the historic migrant crisis at the southern border, migrant crime made headlines across the country, and both topics were top priorities for voters ahead of the November election. In 2025, those topics are likely to remain key issues. Here are five things to watch in 2025: BORDER STATE OFFERS TRUMP MASSIVE PLOT OF LAND TO AID MASS DEPORTATION OPERATION   President-elect Trump has promised to launch a historic mass deportation program next year. He has expressed openness to declaring a national emergency and using military assets in order to get it done. His team have already started looking at how to expand detention near major metropolitan areas. His border czar, Thomas Homan, has promised that national security and public security threats will be the priority, but no illegal immigrant is off the table. The Trump administration increased deportations significantly up until 2019 before COVID-19 hit the U.S., so it is expected to move in that direction again. Trump may need to rally Congress for additional resources, a task made easier by Republican control of the House and Senate, and will need to overcome potential lawsuits filed against any policies he introduces. At the congressional level, expect a push for a sweeping bill like H.R.2 — the Republican border bill passed in 2023 that would limit asylum significantly while providing additional resources at the border.   Officials in multiple Democratic states have already previewed their resistance to the deportation push by the Trump administration. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said recently he was prepared to go to jail over his opposition to Trump’s deportation plan. Meanwhile, governors in Massachusetts, Illinois and Arizona have all said that they won’t co-operate with deportations.  Trump officials say they don’t need their assistance, only for them to step aside as federal authorities do their job. But it will be something to watch to see if Democratic officials merely do not assist the administration, or if that turns to active resistance.   Mexico plays a crucial role in securing the U.S.-Mexico border, with lower levels of encounters at the U.S. border often coinciding with crackdowns at Mexico’s southern border.  That was on display in 2024, as numbers lowered at the border after Biden administration officials met with Mexican officials in December 2023. The two countries had previously come to an agreement by which the U.S. would allow in migrants via parole programs, while Mexico would consequently accept a certain number of non-Mexican returns back from the U.S. But with President-elect Trump having promised to end those programs, it is unclear to what extent Mexico will continue to co-operate. Trump has promised to impose a significant 25% tariff on goods from Mexico if it does not halt the flow of illegal immigrants across the border. It’s a similar tactic by which Trump got Mexico to agree to the 2019 expansion of the remain-in-Mexico policy. But will it work? Will Mexico keep the traffic heading north low, or will it reduce its enforcement? That will be a question answered in 2025. CLICK HERE FOR MORE COVERAGE OF THE BORDER SECURITY CRISIS  Congress has struggled to find consensus on border security and immigration, something that has frustrated multiple administrations. President Biden and former President Barack Obama were thwarted in their efforts to get Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform, while President-elect Trump struggled to get lawmakers to provide funding for the wall at the southern border. Now, Republicans hold the House and Senate, but by thin margins. So it is unclear if Trump will ever see a sweeping bill similar to the House Republicans’ border bill that passed the chamber in 2023 come to his desk. Trump can do a great deal by executive action, but his mass deportation plan will require additional funding from Congress. To what extent Congress acts on those requests could determine how successful that effort, along with additional security at the southern border to stop migrants from entering the U.S. in the first place, will be.    While illegal immigration is in the spotlight after the historic crisis at the southern border, it will likely be a key issue in the next administration, with some keen for additional restrictions on not only the use of humanitarian parole but also visas like the H-1B visa tech worker program and the H-2A agricultural worker program. Additionally, whether the administration will have another go at trying to re-implement its public charge rule, which limited legal immigrants from receiving green cards if they had been reliant on some forms of welfare and are deemed to be likely to be reliant on welfare if they receive permanent residency. The administration is expected to reduce the numbers coming in via parole, which was expanded significantly under the Biden administration, and is also expected to reduce the annual refugee cap. President-elect Trump and others in his future administration — including billionaire Elon Musk — have said at times they want more immigration, but only legal immigration. “I want a lot of people to come into our country, but I want them to come in legally,” Trump said in October.  But some in Trump’s base want lower levels of immigration overall, including legal immigration. Which side of the argument wins will become clearer as 2025 rolls on.

Eight guns smuggled from Pakistan seized in Amritsar, two arrested

Eight guns smuggled from Pakistan seized in Amritsar, two arrested

“In a major blow to illegal arms smuggling networks, Counter Intelligence, Amritsar apprehends 2 persons from Nurpur Padhri, near Gharinda, Amritsar while they were waiting for another operative to handover the weapon consignment smuggled from Pakistan,” Yadav said in a post on X.