Border czar Tom Homan vows to hit Chicago first with mass deportation

 Incoming border czar Tom Homan came out swinging in Chicago this week, saying mass deportations would start in the Windy City, telling residents, “Your mayor sucks and your governor sucks.”

The former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement asked Mayor Brandon Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker to “come to the table” to help with the huge deportation initiative, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

But, speaking about Johnson, “if he doesn’t want to help, get the hell out of the way.”

Johnson and Pritzker have both vowed to uphold the city and state’s sanctuary city policies protecting migrants from federal agents.

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Trump’s incoming border czar Tom Homan (left) said Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson “forced” him into playing hardball.Bloomberg via Getty Images

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Homan made the blistering remarks at a holiday party hosted by the Law and Order PAC and the Northwest Side GOP Club Monday.

“Chicago’s in trouble because your mayor sucks and your governor sucks,” Homan said.

The forthcoming border boss also vowed to arrest anyone caught with migrant criminals.

“When they go find that bad guy, and when they find him, he’s probably going to be with others,” he said. “Others that are not a priority because they’re not a criminal. But guess what? They’re going to be arrested too.”

“Because he forced me into that position. So he wants to play the game. I’ll play that game,” he added.

Johnson’s office didn’t immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

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The forthcoming border boss also vowed to arrest anyone caught with migrant criminals.Bob Daemmrich/ZUMA / SplashNews.com

Homan previously told The Post that Trump may consider withholding federal funding from sanctuary jurisdictions.

At the holiday party, he also said that splitting up migrant families was a possibility, even if that’s not his ultimate goal.

“My goal is to enforce the law, but if you put yourself in that position, it may happen,” he said. “But there’s no plan in this administration right now to separate families. It just isn’t. However, we’re going to enforce the law. So if you put yourself in that position — it’s on you.”

Pritzker has already pledged legal action, calling Homan’s proposals “illegal.”

On Wednesday, the governor said he would meet with the incoming Trump administration but said his duty was to protect migrants.

“He does not have the authority to do the things he has talked about,” Pritzker said, according to WGN9. “Being a border czar is not an official position.”

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Chicago has received 51,000 migrants since August 2022.TNS
Chicago has received 51,000 migrants since August 2022.

Much of that was a result of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s busing effort, which delivered more than 36,000 of them from the southern border to the Windy City.

Homan met with New York City Mayor Eric Adams Thursday to discuss the Big Apple’s migrant crisis — the worst in the country.

https://nypost.com/2024/12/12/us-news/border-czar-vows-to-hit-chicago-first-with-mass-deportation/

Canadian Dollar Tumbles After Turdeau (sic) Reportedly Weighs Export Tax On Uranium, Oil

 In a cute show of strength, Canada has flexed its tiny muscles for a second day in a row and in what it believes is an attempt to intimidate the Trump admin, has threatened to cut off its biggest customer from the one thing that keeps Canada's economy running (hint: it's not illegal aliens or illicit Chinese real estate funs): exports.

According to Bloomberg, Canada is examining the use of export taxes on major commodities it exports to its largest trading partner - the United States - including uranium, oil and potash, to retaliate if incoming president Trump carries out his threat to impose broad tariffs.

Today's threat comes one day after Ontario premier Doug Ford (brother to infamous, and now deceased, Toronto mayor Rob Ford) also flexed what little muscles he has under that copious shell, and suggested that the province would cut off electricity exports to the US over Trump’s tariff threat (which amounts to some 14 million MWh, or enough to power to large data centers).

Citing officials familiar with the discussions inside Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, Bloomberg reports that export levies would be a last resort for Canada. Retaliatory tariffs against US-made goods, and export controls on certain Canadian products, would be more likely to come first.

But commodity export taxes, which would drive up costs for US consumers, farmers and businesses, would be a real option if Trump decides to start a full-scale trade war, said the Bloomberg sources.

The government of Turdeau, who recently hobnobbed with Trump at Mar-A-Lago exuding a self-indulgent smarminess found only among fanatical supporters of Fidel Castro, may also propose giving itself expanded powers over export controls as part of a scheduled update on the country’s fiscal and economic situation to be released on Monday. But since Turdeau's government is already socialist, will anyone know the difference.

Even though the US is essentially self-sufficient, Canada remains the largest external supplier of oil to the US as some refineries depend on buying cheaper Canadian heavy crude and have few alternatives to it (all that would be required to make Canadian oil imports redundant, is a few billion in refinery capex spending). As a result, the US Midwest may be hit by higher costs. Fuel makers in the region rely on Canada for almost half of the crude they turn into gasoline and diesel. Of course, if Canada doesn't export its oil, its economy which is far less diversified, will be hit far harder if it were to voluntarily exclude its largest trading partner.

Canadian uranium is also the biggest foreign source of fuel for US nuclear power plants, and potash from the country’s western provinces is a huge source of fertilizer for American farms. Meanwhile, the US Department of Defense has prudently been investing in Canadian projects to secure sources of cobalt and graphite and reduce reliance on Chinese supply chains.

For those reasons, analysts have said they expect Trump will exempt commodities from his threat to place 25% levies on goods from Mexico and Canada, and focus instead on using tariffs against their manufacturing industries. In Canada’s case, that includes the auto manufacturing, aerospace and aluminum sectors, which are centered in Ontario and Quebec, where about 60% of Canadians live.

It's unclear if that would change things: Turdeau’s government (sic) would have no choice but to respond if Trump simply exempted energy while hitting all other Canadian products, said Bloomberg sources, adding that’s a scenario that could prompt the use of export taxes by Canada.

But for the prime minister, going down this path would cause serious political divisions within Canada. Oil, uranium and potash production are concentrated in the western provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Those provinces are the strongest voter base for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, and their provincial governments are staunch right-wing opponents of Trudeau.

In short, while Turdeau may retaliate in a Trump trade war, such an action will likely be his last.

“It’s a terrible idea,” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said when asked about the possible use of export taxes.

“I don’t support tariffs on Canadian goods and I don’t support tariffs on US goods because all it does is make life more expensive,” Smith said. “Instead, we’re taking a diplomatic approach and we’re meeting with our allies in the US.”

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said export taxes “are the wrong approach and Saskatchewan will vehemently oppose the federal government imposing export taxes on our potash, uranium or oil.”

The market, however, does not have patience to see how all this plays out, and sent the loonie to a two year low, with the USDCAD surging to 1.420, the highest since the April 2020 depths of the covid crash.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/canadian-dollar-tumbles-after-turdeau-sic-reportedly-weighs-export-tax-uranium-oil

The Evaporation Of The Obama Mystique

 by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

Barack Obama had long been rumored as the catalyst for the 2020 Biden nomination—and thereafter played the whispering puppeteer behind the subsequent lost Biden administration years.

As such he and his coterie proved the virtual architects of the Biden administration, one of the most unpopular and failed presidencies in American history.

Recall earlier that after a flailing candidate Joe Biden lost the first three 2020 primaries and caucuses, his inert campaign was headed nowhere.

Barack Obama and fellow Democratic insiders abruptly engineered the withdrawal of his rival 2020 presidential candidates: hard left but likely sure-loser candidates, including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg.

The Obamas ignored or withheld from the public their own firsthand knowledge that Biden was suffering from signs of dementia.

Instead, they found Biden’s cognitive decline and his former concocted reputation as workingman’s Joe useful as a veneer for a veritable Obama third-term, “phone it in” administration. Or as wistful Obama once conditioned his dream of a third term—”If I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, a front man or front woman, and they had an earpiece in.”

The Obamaites then got their wish for four years of enacted hard-left directives that they could only have dreamed of while in actual power.

But their radical menu since 2021 had divided and nearly wrecked the nation—hyperinflation, 12 million illegal aliens, a ruined border, spiraling crime, a shattered foreign policy of appeasement, the popular backlash against DEI/Woke/trans chauvinism, partisan lawfare, and weaponization of the government.

And the ruling radicalism beneath the Biden facade eventually cost the Democrats nearly everything—the presidency, the House, and the Senate.

An inert Biden is departing office with a 36 percent favorability rating in a recent Emerson poll. His Democratic nominee replacement, losing presidential candidate Vice President Harris, also has virtually vacated her office with 40 days left of her tenure.

Failed candidate Harris has been roundly faulted by staffers and donors for blowing through some $2 billion in assorted 2024 campaign money.

She ended up doing worse against Trump than Biden himself had in 2020.

Many Democrats believe that they might have done just as well had Biden stayed on the ticket even in his vastly diminished state.

The Obamas were further blasted for nullifying the wishes of 14 million primary voters by forcing Biden off the ticket—ironically in the same backroom, anti-democratic manner they had cleared the way for him in 2020.

Obama emerged from his comfortable retirement to hit the 2024 campaign trail, schooling the country that President-emeritus Donald Trump was a dictator, a fascist, a tyrant, and, of course, a “racist.”

The more Trump polled even with, or ahead of, Kamala Harris, the more an exasperated and ignored Obama talked down to supposedly low-information voters.

But by the time Harris lost the election, voters had tuned out a nagging and patronizing Obama—and his stale, now-dated hope-and-changey boilerplate speeches.

What Obama did not mention, but what the voters knew, was that the border was more secure under Trump than during either the Obama or Biden tenure.

Vladimir Putin invaded countries during the Obama and Biden administrations but stayed put on Trump’s watch.

Barack Obama’s bizarre vision of a new Middle East had sought to empower Iran as a supposed counterweight against moderate Arab nations and our ally Israel.

Years ago, Obama invited the Russians into Syria, empowered dictatorial Syria, berated Israel nonstop, and all but ignored the terrorist violence of Iran’s surrogate terrorists of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

But after October 7, Israel retaliated to the mass slaughter of Jewish civilians with all-out war against Hamas and Hezbollah—rendering these once feared terrorists nearly impotent.

In an exchange of air attacks with Iran, Israel showed the world that Iran was as militarily weak as its chanting and threats were tiresome and shrill.

Iran is now tottering on the brink, as its terrorist appendages—including most recently the Assad dynasty—are melting away.

Israel and the moderate Arab regimes are in ascendance, as the entire crazy Obama-envisioned Middle East agenda melts away.

The 2024 anemic Democratic campaign and the Trump electoral college and popular vote victories—combined with record defections of Hispanic and African-American voters from the Democratic Party to Trump—proved a resounding rejection of the Obama legacy and his surrogates’ left-wing visions.

Yet after the people spoke in the election, the more Obama whined that democracy itself had failed him. Voters, he remonstrated, who disagreed with him were written off as racist and sexist.

Obama again harped that constituents did not know what was good for them.

And then, the disappointed former community organizer suddenly disappeared—pondering to which of his own four mansions his private jet would fly him home to commiserate.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/evaporation-obama-mystique

Flushing Financial seeks to raise $70 million to shore up capital as it unloads underwater bonds

 Flushing Financial,

 a New York-based commercial real estate lender, is seeking to raise $70 million to shore up its capital, CNBC has learned.

The bank’s CEO, John Buran, has told potential investors that he intends to sell low-yielding bonds and loans backed by commercial real estate, including multifamily buildings, moves that would generate a loss and necessitate the sale of fresh stock, people with knowledge of the deal told CNBC.

Bankers working on the deal have yet to finalize pricing, but it will likely be between $15 to $15.50 per share, according to one of the people, below the $17.25 level the stock closed at on Thursday.

The bank declined to comment to CNBC earlier Thursday, but later issued a release confirming the equity sale.

Banks with commercial real estate exposure have struggled after the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates through 2023, leaving them with unrealized losses on their balance sheet. New York Community Bank was forced to raise capital earlier this year after its stock sank amid concerns over its portfolio of commercial loans.

Most of the U.S. banks under pressure are community banks with under $10 billion in assets, like Flushing, which had about $9.3 billion in assets as of September.

Now, with a rebound in bank stock prices this year and the start of a Fed easing cycle in September, investors expect more banks to raise capital in the coming months. Behind the scenes, regulators have been prodding banks with confidential orders to improve capital levels.

“The rate environment is still a challenge, but we’re controlling what we can control and setting the foundation for a better future,” Buran told analysts in October.

Shares of Flushing Financial have risen about 5% this year through Thursday, trailing the 18% rise in the KBW Regional Banking Index.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/12/flushing-financial-seeks-to-raise-70-million.html