From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By JASON HOPKINS

A tiny Central American country’s new president-elect is vowing to shut down a key corridor heavily used by migrants to enter the U.S.

Panamanian voters on Sunday elected center-right candidate Jose Raul Mulino as their new leader. The president-elect has notably vowed to shut down the trails used by hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants that run through the Darien Gap, a vast jungle region that sits across the Panama-Colombia border, and return them back to their home countries.

The 64-year-old lawyer was elected on a largely conservative platform, pledging to run a pro-private enterprise, pro-investment government and a crackdown on drug cartels, according to Bloomberg.

“The border of the United States, instead of being in Texas, moved to Panama,” Mulino said on the campaign trail, according to the Guardian. “We’re going to close the Darien and we’re going to repatriate all these people.”

Panama has served as a pivotal transit country for migrants beginning their journey in South America. More than half a million migrants crossed the Darien Gap en route to the U.S. in 2023, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

That number was double the nearly 250,000 migrants that crossed in 2022 and a significant increase from the few hundred who would cross annually a decade prior. While most of the migrants that cross the Darien Gap are Venezuelan nationals, others come from Ecuador, Haiti and also Africa and Asian countries.

With more than 90% of the votes tallied, Mulino held roughly 34% of the vote, a clear plurality over the 25% carried by nearest rival Ricardo Lombana, according to Bloomberg, and he is now due to assume office on July 1.

The number of illegal immigrants crossing the Darien Gap is expected to beat last year’s record, Juan Pappier, the Americas deputy director at Human Rights Watch, said to the Guardian. Given the first few months, the number could be as high as 700,000 or even reach 800,000 in 2024.

Mulino’s presidential victory and vow to close the gap are happening as the U.S. is months out from a presidential election, where illegal immigration has become a top concern among voters. The U.S.-Mexico border has experienced record-setting illegal migration under the current administration.

Since President Joe Biden took office, at least 6 million encounters have taken place at the southern border.

It remains to be seen how Mulino can effectively stop the flow of migrants through Panama.

Pappier framed the idea of shutting down the Darien Gap to be “virtually impossible“, given the rough terrain and dangerous drug cartels that have a presence in the region, according to the Guardian. Other experts have questioned whether Mulino is simply saying something American leaders want to hear, given the relative indifference Panamanian citizens actually have for irregular migration at the moment.

From LifeSiteNews

By Stephen Kokx

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson warned that two international agreements are being considered at this month’s World Health Assembly that surrender U.S. sovereignty to the World Health Organization

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has rallied every Republican in the U.S. Senate to sign an open letter warning the Biden administration to not support pandemic-related measures being considered at the World Health Assembly (WHA) later this month.

“Some of the over 300 proposals for amendments made by member states would substantially increase the (World Health Organization’s) health emergency powers and constitute intolerable infringements upon U.S. sovereignty,” they wrote.

The WHA is the decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO). Its annual meeting sets policies for its 194 member nations. This year’s gathering, the 77th such undertaking, will be held from May 27 to June 1 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Johnson and all 48 of his colleagues informed the Biden administration that they consider the WHO’s widely criticized Pandemic Agreement a formal treaty that requires 2/3rd approval from the Senate per Article II Section 2 of the Constitution.

“Instead of addressing the WHO’s well-documented shortcomings, the treaty focuses on mandated resource and technology transfers, shredding intellectual property rights, infringing free speech, and supercharging the WHO,” they maintained. “The WHO’s most recent publicly available draft of its new pandemic response treaty is dead on arrival.”

A growing number of public figures as well as U.S. states and elected officials have raised the alarm about the Pandemic Agreement in recent months.

During an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s podcast in January, liberal intellectual Bret Weinstein argued that the WHO is gearing up for a “re-run” of COVID-19 in order to set up a “totalitarian planet.” He noted that the agreement is being modified so the WHO will have even more power to crack down on voices that dissent from Big Pharma’s narrative.

On Thursday, April 18, a group of GOP lawmakers and conservative activists similarly warned about the agreement at a press conference on Capitol Hill organized by the Sovereignty Coalition.

‘Not Now’ Campaign to Defend America’s Sovereignty Against WHO https://t.co/ThSRYgGHtP

— Sovereignty Coalition (@sovcoalition) April 18, 2024

“The treaty would put us under the thumb of the UN and communist China and the WHO for whatever they wanted to declare a crisis, whether it’s poverty crisis, or a gun violence crisis or a climate crisis, or a health crisis, and make us listen to the WHO. That is not constitutional,” Rep. Bob Good of Virginia exclaimed.

Johnson has been one of the most consistent voices in the Senate to expose the dangers of the COVID shot as well as the collusion taking place between the mainstream media and the medical industry. In February, he organized a roundtable discussion titled “Federal Health Agencies and the COVID Cartel: What Are They Hiding?” Dr. Robert Malone, vaccine expert Del Bigtree, GOP Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene, and many others attended.

Johnson and his GOP colleagues further drew the Biden administration’s attention to the WHO’s poor track record.

“The WHO’s failure during the COVID-19 pandemic was as total as it was predictable and did lasting harm to our country,” they wrote. “The United States cannot afford to ignore this latest WHO inability to perform its most basic function and must insist on comprehensive WHO reforms before even considering amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) or any new pandemic-related treaty that would increase WHO authority. We are deeply concerned that your administration continues to support these initiatives and strongly urge you to change course.”

They concluded that “in light of the high stakes for our country and our constitutional duty, we call upon you to (1) withdraw your administration’s support for the current IHR amendments and pandemic treaty negotiations, (2) shift your administration’s focus to comprehensive WHO reforms that address its persistent failures without expanding its authority, and (3) should you ignore these calls, submit any pandemic related agreement to the Senate for its advice and consent.”