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‘There Were Bodies In Trees’: Rural South Decimated By Hurricane Helene As Death Toll Rises Above 130

Published

1 week ago

4 minute read

From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

 

By Mariane Angela

Hurricane Helene has continued to cause destruction and claim lives in the Southeast since Thursday night when it made landfall, leaving a combined death toll of 132 and nearly 600 missing as of Monday.

The catastrophic aftermath that became fully apparent on Monday left a scene of utter devastation with homes shattered, cargo containers crushed and highways engulfed in mud, according to The Associated Press. Infrastructure failures in Western North Carolina have plunged the area into crisis, cutting off roads and disrupting power and communications, forcing residents to queue for fresh water and to send messages to their loved ones to confirm that they were alive.

The storm affected Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee, the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) stated. White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall reported during Monday’s briefing that as many as 600 individuals were unaccounted for, some feared dead, AP reported.

President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit North Carolina on Wednesday to assess the damage and coordinate federal response efforts, the AP reported. Efforts to deliver relief to the affected regions are underway, with government and aid organizations attempting to reach isolated communities by various means, including air and truck deliveries, and even by mule. (RELATED: FEMA Lists ‘Equity’ Among Top Goals Even As Americans Face The Aftermath Of Hurricane Helene)

Relief efforts are ongoing in Asheville and Western North Carolina following the devastation of Tropical Storm Helene, according to the Citizen Times Monday. The full extent of the damage remains unclear, with more updates expected.

“There were bodies in trees. They were finding bodies under rubble,” Alyssa Hudson from Black Mountain, a village significantly impacted just 12 miles from Asheville, said, the New York Post reported Monday. “We started seeing videos of our house posted to Facebook. Our floors are caved in, our walls are gone. We had a shed in our backyard that they found two miles away.”

Couple Kimberly and Jimmie Scott navigated through the devastated Black Mountain to rescue their daughter from Montreat College, where 1,000 students were stranded without power.

“All along the road, there were downed trees, downed power lines, structures collapsed, cars pushed over, train tracks destroyed. Buildings collapsed on the road,” Kimberly said, The Post reported.

GOP national committee member and local homeowner Ed Broyhill reported that storm damage has devastated Chimney Rock, North Carolina, washing away the community’s tourism-driven businesses into Lake Lure, Fox News reported Monday.

“The saddest thing in the world is that a lot of the folks have etched out a living catering to tourism … They have everything from hotels and motels and restaurants and nice stores and souvenir stores and clothing stores, and all of that was washed away. Every bit of it, all of it, was washed into the lake,” he said, Fox News reported.

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Nearly One Million Foreign Nationals Flocked To US For Asylum In 2023, Shattering All-Time Record

Daily Caller

Nearly One Million Foreign Nationals Flocked To US For Asylum In 2023, Shattering All-Time Record

Published on October 9, 2024

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

 

By Jason Hopkins

Nearly one million foreign nationals applied for asylum in the United States in fiscal year 2023, showcasing how dramatic the immigration crisis has become under the Biden-Harris administration, according to federal data.

There were a record-setting total of 945,370 asylum applications filed in fiscal year 2023, according to a report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Not only were these the highest numbers in recorded history, but the report confirmed how applications in both categories of asylum — affirmative and defensive — nearly doubled in one single year under the Biden-Harris administration.

Affirmative asylum applicants are largely defined as non-citizens who initiated their asylum application with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Foreign nationals who request asylum before an immigration judge during removal proceedings are considered defensive applicants — these applicants typically include illegal migrants and other non-citizens who are in violation of their status.

There were 456,750 affirmative asylum applications in 2023, the highest on record and nearly doubling from the 241,280 affirmative asylum case filings lodged the year before, according to DHS. In 2023, 488,620 defensive asylum applications were filed, the most ever recorded and almost doubling the 260,830 filed in 2022.

The DHS report also unveiled how initiatives championed under the Biden-Harris administration have resulted in explosive growth in asylum applications for certain nationalities.

There were less than 15,000 affirmative and defensive asylum applications lodged by Venezuelan nationals in fiscal year 2021, according to the report. That number skyrocketed to 173,190 in fiscal year 2023. Similar trends were also seen in Cuban, Nicaraguan and Haitian applicants during this same time frame.

These four nationality groups are included in the CHNV program, a parole initiative launched by the White House that has allowed hundreds of thousands of them to fly into the U.S. The CHNV program, which has been plagued with fraud, has so far paroled roughly half a million foreign nationals into the U.S. since it launched in January 2023, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The Biden-Harris administration has also helped streamline the asylum application process by expanding the role of the CBP One app, which allows foreign nationals to apply for asylum on a daily basis outside of the U.S.

Border Patrol agents have encountered more than seven million illegal migrants attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border since the beginning of the Biden-Harris administration, according to the latest CBP data. While an executive order handed down earlier this year has recently dwindled the number of illegal entries along the southern border, the backlog of cases currently pending in immigration court rooms has already reached record levels, causing immense strain for federal immigration staffers attempting to process the crisis.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Daily Caller

Musk Reveals To Tucker Why He Thinks 2024 Will Be Last Election If Dems Win

Published on October 8, 2024

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

 

By Nicole Silverio

Tech billionaire Elon Musk said Monday that he believes Democrats will eliminate swing states if they are re-elected in the 2024 election.

Musk said during an interview with Daily Caller News Foundation co-founder Tucker Carlson that Democrats will legalize the status of illegal immigrants, which will in turn allow them to become citizens and vote in future elections. He said that this scenario would turn the U.S. into a “single party country,” as the illegal immigrants voting in elections will largely back Democratic candidates.

“My prediction is if there’s another 4 years of a [Democrat] administration, they will legalize so many illegals that are there that the next election there won’t be any swing states,” Musk told Carlson. “And we’ll be a single party country just like California is a single party state. It’s a super majority Dem state in California.”

The tech mogul said there will not be another election if Republican nominee Donald Trump does not win in November, causing him to endorse and support the former president.

“My view is that if Trump doesn’t win this election, it’s the last election we’re gonna have,” Musk said. “That the Dem machine has been importing so many people, bringing in so many illegals … they’re transporting large numbers of illegals to swing states. If you look at the numbers, these are the numbers from the government website, so like from the Democrat administrative government website … and there are triple digit numbers of illegals to all the swing states and in some cases, it’s 700% in the last three years.”

Musk further criticized California’s new law banning local governments from requiring voter identification.

The D.C. Council passed the “Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act” in 2022 to allow non-citizens to cast ballots in local elections. House Democrats urged members in May to oppose a Republican-led bill to bar the city government from allowing illegal immigrants to vote in local elections.

House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN’s Jake Tapper in September that several states, including swing states, have found “thousands of non-citizens” are registered to vote, warning these illegal votes could “determine the outcome of the [2024] election.” Trump and Johnson discussed drafting legislation to require proof of citizenship in order to register to vote in April, NBC News reported.

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