WCK’s Chef Relief Team first opened a kitchen at the US southern border in Tijuana, Mexico in November 2018. Families, including many children, are fleeing violence, poverty, and instability in places like El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Once the refugees get to the border to apply for asylum, they can be forced to wait up to a year for their case to be heard. Due to financial challenges or safety concerns, many families are unable to return home, leaving them stuck at the border while they wait.

More than a year after setting up our first kitchen in Tijuana, we have opened a second location to cook for and serve refugees living at the border in Matamoros, Mexico. Nearly 1,500 miles from Tijuana, Matamoros lies just across the border from Brownsville at the southernmost point of Texas. There are currently about 2,500 refugees living in tents in a camp.

Prior to our Relief Team arriving, local organization Team Brownsville had been providing daily meals to the refugee camp. Now, we have partnered together to continue ensuring all families at the border have access to fresh, hot meals while they wait.

Each day, our team in Brownsville prepares a meal from our new Relief Food Truck. Here, Chef Elyssa is sautéing apples, sweet potatoes, and carrots in milk and buttermilk to serve with pulled pork and salsa verde!

https://wck.org/news/matamoros?utm_source=WCK+UPDATES&utm_campaign=6037b4fe0f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_11_22_05_41_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_82ab35d2e2-6037b4fe0f-122478901

President Donald Trump has repeatedly said all Americans should “stand proudly” during the national anthem, and publicly chastises those who don’t as disrespectful of the troops.

But during the national anthem at his own Super Bowl watch party Sunday night, a brief video posted to Instagram shows Trump greeting guests, adjusting his chair, and straightening his suit jacket as other attendees — including first lady Melania Trump and their teenage son — stand with their hands over their hearts. As “The Star Spangled Banner” crescendoes, Trump raises both of his hands in the air, and twirls them around as if conducting the music.

The video was included in an Instagram story by a real estate agent for a Russian-American firm who frequents Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties and events.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article239913588.html

Thank you for contacting me about the impeachment trial of President Trump. It is good to hear from you, as always.

On July 25, 2019, President Trump spoke over the phone with Ukraine’s newly-elected President, Volodymyr Zelensky. After the call, someone within the intelligence community who was not on the call filed a whistleblower complaint against the president. According to reports, the whistleblower coordinated with the staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman, Adam Schiff, staff before filing the complaint. After the whistleblower complaint was filed, Democratic Party leaders in the House of Representatives used it to justify opening an impeachment inquiry.

Despite an unprecedented act of transparency by President Trump in releasing the transcript of his call with the Ukrainian leader, the Democratic Party nevertheless plunged headlong into a rushed and partisan impeachment process, the conclusion of which seemed predetermined from the start. They ignored precedent, gave no due process rights to President Trump to defend himself against the accusations, and refused to provide Republicans in Congress with the authority to call their own witnesses. The Democratic Party claimed it was necessary to rush the impeachment because it was an “urgent” matter, yet then they chose not to even send the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate for trial for four long weeks.

The House Democrats then sought to plunge the Senate into a months-long fishing expedition by asking it to finish the House’s work for it and subpoena witnesses that the House never bothered to pursue. It is clear that that the impeachment effort against President Trump has been nothing more than a political exercise by the Democrats in the House, with no regard for truth and with the obvious purpose of leaving a cloud hanging over President Trump while distracting from our work on behalf of the American people. It is a shame that the Democratic Party chose not to dedicate even a fraction of this legislative energy to improving the lives of hardworking Americans instead.

I’m honored to serve as your senator. You, your family, and our state will remain on my mind and close to my heart in my work. Always feel free to call my office at (202) 224-2353 or visit www.cotton.senate.gov . Be sure to drop by my office and say hello if you ever visit our nation’s capital.

Sincerely,

Tom Cotton
United States Senator

The president’s claim that the wall on the Mexican border is “virtually impenetrable” has taken a lot of damage this week. Yesterday, CNN reported that a section of the barrier in California — which Trump claimed “is not something that can be really knocked down” — was knocked down by a gust of wind as its foundation settled.

Though the blustery embarrassment was localized and easily fixable, on Thursday, the Washington Post revealed a more structurally important concern:

President Trump’s border wall likely will require the installation of hundreds of storm gates to prevent flash floods from undermining or knocking it over, gates that must be left open for months every summer during “monsoon season” in the desert, according to U.S. border officials, agents and engineers familiar with the plans.

At locations along the U.S. southern border where such gates already are in operation, Border Patrol agents must manually raise them every year before the arrival of the summer thunderstorms that convert riverbeds into raging torrents that carry massive amounts of water and debris, including sediment, rocks, tree limbs and vegetation. Trump’s wall, which features 30-foot metal bollards spaced four inches apart, effectively acts as a sewer grate that traps the debris; when clogged, the barriers cannot withstand the power of the runoff.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/trumps-border-wall-needs-storm-gates-to-be-open-for-months.html

President Donald Trump has launched a bizarre attack on the Green New Deal championed by progressive Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders, telling a rally in Iowa on Thursday night that "they want to kill our cows" and, eventually, American farmers.

"During this campaign season, the good people of Iowa have had a front-row seat to the lunacy and the madness of the totally sick left," Trump told the crowd in Des Moines.

"The Green New Deal, which would crush our farms, destroy our wonderful cows. They want to kill our cows. You know why, right? You know why?"

"Don't say it. They want to kill our cows. That means you're next," he said, as the crowd laughed.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-iowa-rally-green-new-deal-kill-our-cows-2020-1