Wisconsin Right Now

  The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is doing something prominent New Mexico politicians have opposed for years: building more border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The Department is waiving 26 federal laws to finish a 20-mile stretch of wall in the Rio Grand Valley; it stopped construction there more than two years ago. In a six-page filing with the Federal Register, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas defended the decision. “There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” he wrote, citing sections of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. Border Patrol agents working in the Rio Grande Valley Sector apprehended over 245,000 foreign nationals illegally entering the country between points of entry from the start of the fiscal year

  The Department of Homeland Security has sparked controversy by adding to its Intelligence Board multiple members who signed on to the now-debunked 2020 letter saying the Hunter Biden laptop story was “Russian disinformation.” Now, House Republicans want answers, saying the new additions bring into question the federal group’s credibility and impartiality. “Your decision to appoint members to this group who have demonstrated political bias suggests misplaced priorities,” the letter said. House Committee on Homeland Security Chair Mark Green, R-Tenn., and August Pfluger, R-Texas, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence, sent the letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about the appointees. The appointments in question include former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Brennan, and former Associate Deputy Attorney General for the Department of Justice Tashina G

“As if they don’t have enough issues to deal with, they now have an idea, and I honestly thought this was a belated April Fool’s joke, but they are actually going to create in the Department of Homeland Security a Bureau of Disinformation. It’s basically a Ministry of Truth” - Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas continues to be on the defensive after announcing the creation of a new “misinformation and disinformation governance board” he first described at a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday said Florida flat out rejected the bureau, and U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, R-Louisiana, grilled Mayorkas about it in a Senate Appropriations hearing. But before their pushback, Mayorkas received widespread criticism from left- and right-leaning individuals and groups. On Sunday, he went on talk shows, and issued a fact sheet about the board on Monday justifying its purpose. DeSantis and Kennedy