Jim Piwowarczyk

  Under the Biden-Harris administration, more than 2.5 million illegal border crossers were reported from Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The total excludes gotaways, those who illegally entered the U.S. and evaded capture. It also excludes the number of inadmissibles from these countries who were released into the U.S. through a so-called family reunification program (FRP) program created by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Mayorkas created at least 13 parole programs identified as illegal by U.S. House Republicans who impeached him for them and other policies they argue created the border crisis. Among them was the CHNV parole program created for inadmissible citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Combined with illegal border crossers, they total more than 3 million under the Biden-Harris administration, The Center Square exclusively reported. In July 2023, Mayorkas implemented the FRP program for inadmissible citizens ...

  The Biden-Harris administration took a tidal wave of criticism this week after U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters that the Federal Emergency Management Administration did not have enough funds to cover the rest of this hurricane season. Those comments drew criticism from Republican lawmakers, billionaire Elon Musk and former President Donald Trump because FEMA has spent at least hundreds of millions of dollars on resettling migrants in the U.S. since President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took office. “The Biden-Harris Administration’s self-inflicted border crisis has wasted American taxpayer dollars on services for illegal immigrants and is now struggling to help Americans suffering in the wake of natural disasters like Hurricane Helene,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., told The Center Square after it reported on the FEMA’s migrant spending. FEMA is subject to DHS' authority and under th...

  The Biden administration will pause its replenishment of the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves because oil has become too expensive, the White House said. Earlier in his term, Biden drained about half of the U.S. oil reserves down to their lowest level in decades in order to try to lower gas prices, which surpassed a record national average of more than $5 per gallon in 2022 before coming back down. Now, Biden’s effort to replenish those reserves have been stalled. Critics warn that lower oil reserves are a national security issue for the U.S. If the reserves are low when a larger war or crisis occurs, refilling the reserves could be much more difficult and certainly more expensive. “It’s pure insanity to watch the Biden Administration cut American oil production and then claim they can’t refill our critical reserve because of the price,” Daniel Turner, founder and executive director for Power The Future, said in a statement. “Joe Biden drained the SPR for political...

  The Biden administration has removed a federal webpage dedicated to union transparency and accountability and apparently has no plans to replace it. The Center Square on Tuesday exclusively obtained a letter from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to 10 U.S. senators defending its decision to remove a webpage built to hold unions accountable. After the accountability webpage disappeared last year, an OPM spokesperson told The Center Square "previous reports on official time are not currently available because OPM is reorganizing our website to improve navigation and customer experience." Since then, OPM has declined to comment on the issue multiple times. As The Center Square previously reported, the Office of Personnel Management created the webpage in question to track “official time,” a practice when federal employees who are union members conduct union business during normal work hours, which means taxpayers pick up the tab. The practice has gone on f...

A new Biden administration rule forces schools to comply with progressive ideology on gender and sexuality or risk losing federal aid for free and reduced-price school lunches. Legal observers say this is just the first in a slew of new rules on the horizon tying federal education funding to far-left policies on gender and sexuality. The school lunch funding controversy began in May 2022, as The Center Square previously reported , with an announcement from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which handles federal help for school lunches. The USDA said at the time it would change its longstanding interpretation of Title IX, the law broadly governing discrimination protections in education. USDA said it would expand its previous prohibition against discriminating based on sex “to include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.” School lunch funding goes through the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) of USDA. “As a result, state and local agencies, progra...

  The Biden administration cut a $7 billion check on Friday to launch its vision for a hydrogen-fueled future. The money augments $40 billion in private investment to build seven hydrogen hubs across the nation that will decarbonize transportation and industrial manufacturing, slashing 25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year. The amount “roughly” equates to removing 5.5 million gasoline-powered vehicles from the road, or just under 2% of the estimated 286 million operational cars in the United States. After calling climate change “the only existential threat to humanity” during a news conference in Philadelphia, President Joe Biden touted federal infrastructure spending as the key to reigning in greenhouse gas emissions and transitioning away from fossil fuel reliance. “Today’s announcement is all part of a bigger vision to do just that,” he said. The hydrogen hubs expand across seven regions and 16 states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virg...