Migrant children held in the United States after crossing the border illegally were subject to “pervasive” sexual abuse at the hands of federal contractors, the Department of Justice said Wednesday. The department filed a lawsuit against Southwest Key Programs, which operates homes for underage illegal immigrants awaiting placement with “sponsors” in the United States. Federal law bars minors who cross the border illegally from being returned to their home country. Southwest Key holds more than 6,000 children in 29 shelters staffed by “youth care workers.” The lawsuit says Southwest Key records show staff members repeatedly covered for each other as they preyed on children. “A Southwest Key Youth Care Worker who in 2022 repeatedly sexually abused a five-year-old girl, an eight-year-old girl, and an eleven-year-old girl at Casa Franklin in El Paso, Texas,” the lawsuit says. “The eight-year-old girl disclosed that the Youth Care Worker repeatedly entered their bedrooms in the middle of the night to touch their ‘private area,’ and he threatened to kill their families if they disclosed the abuse.” Southwest Key has received $4 billion by the federal government since 2019. Payments have grown as illegal border crossings increased, rising from $391 million in 2020 to nearly $1 billion thus far in fiscal year 2024, according to federal spending data. The lawsuit comes amid revelations that unaccompanied minors who come to the United States are frequently subject to unsafe conditions. Federal employees told Congress this month that migrant children are first turned over to contractors with limited training, and then sent to live with unvetted sponsors. Deborah White, an HHS whistleblower, recalled the “horrifying” realization that “children were being trafficked with billions of taxpayer dollars by a contractor failing to vet sponsors and process children safely, with government officials complicit in it.” White described the process as “taxpayer-funded slavery and child trafficking.” The lawsuit describes “over one hundred Reports of unlawful sexual abuse or harassment of children in Southwest Key’s care since at least 2015. “These instances are examples of Southwest Key’s longstanding pattern or practice of illegal sexual abuse, harassment, and misconduct against children in Southwest Key’s care. Southwest Key failed to consistently correct its practices and permitted the harassment to continue without adequate intervention,” the suit reads. In one case, a teenage girl at Casa Kokopelli in Mesa, Arizona told a “clinician” that she missed her mother, and “the clinician turned the conversation to sex,” and said in a discussion with another teenage girl that he “can be more than your clinician if you would allow me to,” the suit said. “Another 2019 Southwest Key Report details how, at Casa Rio Grande in San Benito, Texas, a child reported a male Youth Care Worker told him he liked dating ‘transexuals, transgenero, personas gay,’ translated to ‘transexuals, transgender, gay individuals.’” “The Youth Care Worker asked the child if he dressed as a woman and went to work at night; while asking this, the Youth Care Worker caressed his own groin. After the child complained, Southwest Key transferred the child to a shelter in another state. Southwest Key ultimately reinstated the Youth Care Worker,” the lawsuit alleges. In 2022 at Casa Norma Linda in Los Fresnos, Texas, two employees helped a third conduct and conceal a relationship with a 16-year old unaccompanied minor. In 2023 at Casa Las Palmas in Mesa, Arizona, a minor reported that a Youth Care Worker allegedly said he wanted to “give it to her hard” and asked, “How are the women of Venezuela?” The same year, a boy said that a female Shift Leader “touched the child while he was in a shower, and verbally harassed him, ‘constantly’ telling him that she wanted him to stay in the shelter and ‘have children with her,” the suit said. Despite Southwest Key’s internal investigation finding that the employee committed misconduct, she “continued employment with Southwest Key.” There was also a Shift Leader who in 2019 allegedly “repeatedly raped, abused, and threatened a teenage girl throughout her shelter stay at Casa Montezuma in Channelview, Texas.” The girl said other employees covered for him by changing shifts with him so he could target her. The Justice Department alleges Southwest Key staff exploited the children’s illegal status and lack of parents to threaten them into silence. “A Southwest Key employee at Casa Franklin in El Paso, Texas, threatened an eight-year-old female child that if she reported his abuse to anyone, he would ‘kill her family.'” “A Southwest Key manager at Casa Montezuma in Channelview, Texas, threatened the female child he was harassing that if she reported the sexual abuse, she would be hospitalized. A Southwest Key employee at Casa Nueva Esperanza in Brownsville, Texas, discouraged a child from pursuing a report of harassment by telling the child it would delay her reunification with her family or adversely affect her placement with a sponsor,” it added. When a child reported sexual abuse by staff and was covered by hickeys, the employee she reported it to told her to “cover up” the hickeys and did not report it to anyone. The child reported it to a second employee, who notified a supervisor who allegedly ordered that employee not to write a report. That employee tried to report it directly to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees the unaccompanied minors. Southwest Key, which has received billions from ORR, claimed it did not have a phone number for the office. Anais Biera Miracle, the contractor’s communications officer, told The Daily Wire in a statement that the suit “does not present the accurate picture of the care and commitment our employees provide to the youth and children.” “We are in constant communication and continue to closely partner with the Office of Refugee Resettlement,” Miracle said. The Justice Department’s suit asks for monetary damages “to each person aggrieved by Southwest Key’s discriminatory conduct,” as well as “civil penalties against Southwest Key to vindicate the public interest.” The Biden administration has relaxed the vetting of unaccompanied migrant “sponsors,” removing DNA testing and, in many cases, FBI background checks. In some cases, the Department of Health and Human Services knowingly sent children to live with gang members. A third of unaccompanied migrants—some 85,000 children—are currently missing. White, the HHS whistleblower, says she faced blowback when she attempted to check on a migrant child. “When I checked on a child’s welfare at another facility I was told, ‘Do not do that again. Once these children leave here…they’re gone and they are no longer your responsibility.’” Related: Whistleblowers Detail How 85,000 ‘Unaccompanied Minors’ Went Missing After Biden Admin Dropped Them Off With ‘Sponsors’

President Joe Biden released a statement on Friday indicating that he has no plans of dropping out of the presidential race as calls for him to do so continue to mount from members of his own party. Biden issued a statement through his campaign where he attacked former President Donald Trump over his speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, claiming “for over 90 minutes, he focused on his own grievances, with no plan to unite us and no plan to make life better for working people.” The 81-year-old made false claims about Trump’s policy platform and falsely claimed that Trump “destroyed our economy once and will inflict pain on the middle class” and that he “wants to gut the checks and balances of our Constitution and rule as a dictator on day one.” “Together, as a party and as a country, we can and will defeat him at the ballot box,” Biden said. “I look forward to getting back on the campaign trail next week to continue exposing the threat of Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda while making the case for my own record and the vision that I have for America: one where we save our democracy, protect our rights and freedoms, and create opportunity for everyone.” Dozens of elected Democrats have called on Biden to drop out the race following his disastrous debate performance against Trump late last month where he showed obvious signs of cognitive impairment. Even as top Democrat figures have at least privately warned Biden that he needs to drop out or face dragging the entire party down with him this fall, those close to Biden are remaining defiant. Biden Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said this morning: “You have heard from the President directly time and again: He is in this race to win, and he is our nominee, and he’s going to be our President for a second term.”

The contrast between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party has never been starker in terms of the consolidation of the parties and their unity going forward. Here’s the reality: The Republican Party is unified behind President Trump in unique and extraordinary ways. And the Democratic Party might not have a candidate for the presidency come Sunday. Let’s begin with the triumphant presentation of Donald Trump as his party’s nominee for the third consecutive time, which is an extraordinary feat. On a pure political level, the fact that Trump won in 2016 was astonishing. The fact that he was the nominee the next time around was natural. The fact that after losing in 2020, he’s back in 2024, the nominee, and the front-runner for the presidency itself, is an astonishing political feat. The RNC has been about building out the Trump coalition. It’s been about providing permission structures for people, who historically have not voted Republican and who would not be spotted dead in a red hat, to actually vote Republican and wear the red hat.  It is an amazing thing., and you can feel it. You can feel there’s a vibe shift in the United States. Tons of people who never in a million years would have said they would even think about voting for Trump are now saying they are voting for Donald Trump, Take the tech bros in San Francisco for example. There are countless tech workers in San Francisco who, sotto voce, are very against the Democrats because they don’t like wokeness; they don’t like regulation. They think their economic interests are undermined by Democrats, which they are. And they believe the meritocracy, which they rely upon, is being destroyed from the inside by the Democratic Party. But for years, they would never cite those factors and say they were going to vote for Trump. But now, a lot of them are saying precisely that.  You’re starting to see this from people pretty much everywhere across the country.  The dam has now broken. For years, tremendous intimidation existed about voting for Trump or publicly speaking in support of him; social opprobrium descended upon you if you said you would even consider voting for Trump. That seems to be gone right now. That is a testament to both the Democrats’ incompetence in office and a testament to Donald Trump’s campaign thus far, which has been markedly more disciplined than ever. In the last four weeks, Trump has basically disappeared from the public scene. As a consequence, he has had the best four-week period of any presidential candidate I’ve ever seen. He had his debate with Biden, and then he had the brains to stay out of the spotlight while Biden took all incoming fire because of his incredibly terrible performance. Trump has had a few rallies here and there, but he mainly let the media focus in on his opponent. And now his opponent is so much on the ropes that he may be gone by this weekend. Then, of course, there was the assassination attempt against President Trump in which he displayed remarkable physical bravery getting up while the shooter was presumably still out there. He didn’t know the shooter was dead when he was already getting up and waving his fist, shouting, “Fight.” The first 15 to 20 minutes of Trump’s speech was some of the best Trump you’ll ever see. He spoke for the first time publicly about nearly being murdered live on national television. Trump was subdued. It was all the things you would want from Trump in this speech.  WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show I suggested earlier in the week that the best thing Trump could do would be to come out and say, “Listen. Being shot in the head changes a man, and it makes you think about the important things in life. It makes you think about the fact that we’re all Americans. And as much as we may disagree on politics, at the end of the day, we’re brothers and sisters, and we all have to be together.”  For the first 20 minutes, that’s what the speech was. After that, it turned into a Donald Trump campaign presentation. If you’ve ever been to a Trump campaign event, he basically does a comedy routine; he rambles, and he moves around. That’s what it turned into for the last 73 minutes. You could see in real time the reaction in the room. Everybody in the room loved him — but 93 minutes is a long time. Because it was so long, it started to lose momentum. Maybe that doesn’t matter very much because the purpose of the speech is simply to unify the party. And if that’s the case, then the speech is irrelevant. It really doesn’t matter what he said.  What I do believe is that it was a missed opportunity from the perspective of what it could have accomplished, which was to put the race basically out of reach for the Democrats. If the speech had been the first 20 minutes and a five-minute capper, I think this race would be over. It wasn’t, not because of anything nefarious or terrible, but because when President Trump gets in front of a crowd, he responds to the crowd; he really likes talking with his fans. I feel that this is necessary to point out because it was a missed opportunity. I’m a huge baseball fan. If you’ve ever been to a baseball game where your team is up three runs in the sixth inning with the bases loaded and one out, and one hit breaks the game wide open but the other team brings in a reliever and gets out of the situation, and then you don’t get any runs and you miss the opportunity, you start to have the feeling in the pit of your stomach like this game is not over yet; there are still a lot of moves left on this particular chessboard. On the Democratic side, we’re seeing something unprecedented: The candidate wins the nomination and then after winning the nomination considers giving it up. CNN’s Jake Tapper actually got it right, saying: Meanwhile, events no less momentous are playing out in Delaware where President Biden is self-isolating after testing positive for Covid, we’re told. To hear top Democrats tell it, President Biden is like Bruce Willis’ character in the movie ‘The Sixth Sense. He is the only one who seems unaware of his grim fate. Democrats are preparing for the coup, according to the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which wrote:  One thing we’ve learned over the years is that Washington Democrats are ruthless when threatened by a loss of power. You almost have to admire their cold-blooded calculation. President Biden is now learning this harsh lesson as the Democratic-media complex organizes to, er, persuade him to withdraw from the presidential race. That effort, which began after Mr. Biden’s failed debate on June 27, is now in full orchestrated gale. The President hasn’t taken the hint to drop out from the withdrawal calls by the media and Congress’s backbenchers, so now the big names are letting it be known they too want Joe to go. It’s very difficult to tell right now whether all the pressure tactics on Biden and all the reporting that he’s going to leave is wish-casting by Democrats in the media or whether it’s true because the media desperately want him to drop out. Democratic leadership believes the best possibility for defeating Trump is, in fact, getting rid of Biden and putting someone else in. Barack Obama tried to stick the final knife into Biden over the last 24 hours. He leaked to the Washington Post that he told allies recently that President Biden’s path to victory has greatly diminished, and he thinks the president needs to seriously consider the viability of his candidacy. According to reporter Mark Halperin, Biden will not resign the presidency and most importantly, Biden will not endorse Kamala Harris, which is the final knife in the back for her. He elevated her to the vice presidency over the advice of his wife, Jill, and then on his way out, he will stick the knife in. There have been rumors about an open Democratic National Convention. Here’s the problem with that: You can’t restrict it. Once it’s an open convention, anybody can get in. And I’m going to put out a dark horse name no one is talking about: Bernie Sanders. He has the hardest consolidated base inside the Democratic Party. Why wouldn’t he make a play for the top spot? Yes, he’s really old, but so what? He’s still significantly livelier than Biden is at this point. What happens if Biden steps aside? The delegates are pledged to him. If he frees his delegates, they do not have to go to Harris, who is a terrible, terrible candidate, but is not going to step out of the way. But with all of this said, despite the fact Trump has just had the best month of any presidential candidate in recent memory, in the Real Clear Politics polling average, he is at 47.7%. He’s not at 55%. He’s not at 54%. He’s at 47.7%. And even though he’s doing really, really well in the swing states, Republicans are going to have to fight this fight all the way down to the wire. For Republicans: Do not get complacent. You cannot afford to be complacent at this point in time.

Former member of the country duo Florida Georgia Line Brian Kelley announced that he will release a new MAGA-themed song next Friday. Following the country star’s performance on Wednesday at the Republican National Convention, Kelley shared the news on Instagram that he’d be dropping a new song titled “Make America Great Again.” While he didn’t share a clip of his new song, he did include the title which was part of former President Donald Trump’s slogan during his 2016 presidential campaign and has been part of his current run for the White House in the 2024 election.  During the third night of the RNC, Kelley rocked the house, entertaining Republican delegates with his song “American Spirit.” #Country #Music Brian Kelley Performs During RNC, Teases New Song Titled ‘Make America Great Again’ https://t.co/1Q7I9YRP1N — Brandon Thompson (@brandonpromo) July 18, 2024 The chorus reads, “American spirit, that red, white and blue/It’s flying for freedom, for me and for you/It’s what I believe in, this country I love/That American spirit runs in our blood.” It was originally released on the July 4th weekend in 2022 and pays tribute to the fallen men and women of the military along with those who have served throughout America’s history. The song was inspired by Kelley’s grandfather, John Edward Kelley, who served in the United States Army during World War II, and earned two purple hearts, Billboard magazine noted. Kelley was one of a handful of country artists who showed up at the RNC. Others included Lee Greenwood, Kid Rock, Jason Aldean, and Chris Janson, among others. In the final night of the RNC, right before Trump officially accepted the Republican Party’s 2024 nomination, Kid Rock got the crowd riled up as he performed his Trump-themed version of his song “American Bad A**,” as previously reported. The 53-year-old rocker — born Robert James Ritchie — took the stage and called on the delegates to raise their fist in the air and say, “fight, fight,” and the entire room of delegates yelled back, “fight, fight.” The comments were reminiscent of what Trump told his supporters following the attempted assassination on the former president’s life at a rally in Pennsylvania, which left one supporter dead and two others, including Trump, injured. Kid Rock rocked the room with verses about being the “cowboy, I’m the singer in black. Throw your fist in the air, let me see where you at.” “Say fight, fight,” he added. “Say fight, fight. Say Trump, Trump.” Related: ‘Fight, Fight’: Kid Rock Shows Up At RNC With New Trump-Themed Song

Finding the perfect product that will help you keep your house nice and tidy has never been easier. If you have ever searched social media for reviews or recommendations for cleaning products, you understand just how many helpful resources are out there. That said, one particularly popular steam cleaner is a part of a recent recall. So far, 157 burn injuries have been reported in relation to this product. If you are a part of #CleanTok, a popular hashtag and community on TikTok, then you may have already heard of it. The product is by Bissell, and it’s a handheld Steam Shot cleaner. But how did those 157 customers get those minor burns, exactly? Unfortunately, a malfunction has caused the steamer to potentially expel hot water or steam onto the user. This can happen during use or while heating up. As a result, people are being urged to stop using the product. Ron Lach / Pexels The steam cleaner has been available for purchase at quite a few places, including retail stores like Target and Walmart. They’ve also been sold online at Amazon, Bissell’s website, and HSN from August 2008 through May 2024. Popular #CleanTok Steam Cleaner Under Recall by Bissell — Here’s What You Need to Know and What You Can Do You can identify the recalled products by their model series — 39N7 or 2994. On the side of the steamer, you’ll find the words “STEAM SHOT” or “POWER STREAMER.” This recall includes 3.2 million steamers, including about 355,000 units sold in Canada. What can you do if you have this product in your home? Bissell says that customers have the option to get either a $60 credit or a $40 refund. For either option, you’ll want to visit their website and register for the recall. Stay safe everyone! You can find the source of this story’s featured image here! The post Cleaning Product Recalled After Going Viral On Social Media appeared first on InspireMore.

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Bette Midler said she had absolutely no idea her iconic song, “Wind Beneath My Wings,” would ever amount to anything, when it was first produced. The song has gone on to be a fan favorite for weddings and is a staple single that is widely played among fans of many generations. “Wind Beneath My Wings” […]