Salem News Channel

Inflation and Gas Prices are Down!

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A 21-year-old semitruck driver accused of being under the influence of drugs and causing a fiery crash that killed three people on a southern California freeway is in the country illegally, U.S. Homeland Security officials said Thursday. Jashanpreet Singh was arrested and jailed after Tuesday’s eight-vehicle crash in Ontario, California, that also left four people injured. He faces three counts of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and driving under the influence causing injury, the San Bernardino District Attorney's office said. Singh is scheduled for arraignment Friday. The district attorney's office said he does not yet have a lawyer. Singh, of Yuba City, California, is from India and entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 across the southern border, Homeland Security said Thursday in a post on X. That revelation prompted Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to restate earlier concerns about who should be able to obtain commercial driver’s licenses. Duffy and President Donald Trump have been pressing the issue and criticizing California ever since a deadly Florida crash in August was caused by an immigrant truck driver the federal government says was in the country illegally. The Transportation Department significantly restricted when noncitizens can get commercial driver’s licenses last month. Duffy said this week's crash wouldn't have happened if Newsom had followed these new rules. "These people deserve justice. There will be consequences,” he said in a statement. Newsom's office responded that the federal government approved Singh's federal employment authorization multiple times and this allowed him to obtain a commercial driver's license in accordance with federal law. California's Highway Patrol said in a release that traffic westbound on Interstate 10, about 26 miles (42 kilometers) west of San Bernardino, had slowed about 1 p.m. Tuesday when a tractor-trailer failed to stop, struck other vehicles and caused a chain-reaction crash. Dashcam video from the tractor-trailer obtained by KABC-TV shows the truck slamming into what appears to be a small, white SUV in the freeway’s center lane. It continued forward, plowing into several other vehicles, including another truck. It then crossed over two lanes before crashing into an already-disabled truck on the freeway’s right shoulder. Flames can be seen erupting alongside the tractor-trailer as it crosses the two right lanes. California Highway Patrol Officer Rodrigo Jimenez says the agency has seen the KABC video and believes it is dashcam video from the truck that caused the crash. “This tragedy follows a disturbing pattern of criminal illegal aliens driving commercial vehicles on American roads, directly threatening public safety,” Homeland Security said Thursday in its X post.

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The Trump administration imposed sanctions Friday on Colombian President Gustavo Petro, his family and a member of his government over accusations of involvement in the global drug trade, sharply escalating tensions with the leftist leader of one of the closest U.S. allies in South America. The Treasury Department leveled the penalties against Petro; his wife, Veronica del Socorro Alcocer Garcia; his son, Nicolas Fernando Petro Burgos; and Colombian Interior Minister Armando Alberto Benedetti. Petro “has allowed drug cartels to flourish and refused to stop this activity,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. “President Trump is taking strong action to protect our nation and make clear that we will not tolerate the trafficking of drugs into our nation.” The move ramps up a growing clash between the Republican U.S. president and Colombia's first leftist leader, notably over deadly American strikes on alleged drug-carrying boats off South America. This week, the Trump administration expanded its crackdown to the eastern Pacific Ocean, where much of the cocaine from the world’s largest producers, including Colombia, is smuggled. And in an escalation of military firepower in the region, the U.S. military is sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off South America, the Pentagon announced Friday. Petro responds ‘never on our knees’ After the sanctions were announced, Petro named an attorney he said will represent him in the U.S. “Combating drug trafficking effectively for decades brings me this measure from the government of the society we helped so much to stop its use of cocaine,” Petro wrote on X. “Quite a paradox, but not one step back and never on our knees.” The penalties were expected after Trump recently said he would slash assistance to Colombia and impose tariffs on its exports, referring to Petro on social media in recent days as “an illegal drug leader.” “He’s a guy that is making a lot of drugs,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday. “He better watch it, or we'll take very serious action against him and his country.” The U.S. last month added Colombia, the top recipient of American assistance in the region, to a list of nations failing to cooperate in the drug war for the first time in almost 30 years. After Trump accused him of having ties to drug trafficking, Petro on Wednesday said he would resort to the U.S. court system to defend himself. “Against the calumnies that high-ranking officials have hurled at me on U.S. soil, I will defend myself judicially with American lawyers in the U.S. courts,” Petro wrote on X without naming Trump but citing a news report about his comments. A day earlier, Petro’s anti-drug policy was the subject of a meeting between him and the U.S. chargé d’affaires in Colombia, John T. McNamara. McNamara also met with Foreign Minister Rosa Yolanda Villavicencio Mapy on Thursday.

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Obama Was The Great Divider

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UK Has Censored Free Speech

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Larry Elder discusses voting rights

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Alex Marlow and Andy Ngo talk about the status of Portland, OR

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House Democrats Launch ‘ICE Tracker’ Website

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President Donald Trump said on Thursday that a wealthy private donor has provided $130 million to the U.S. government to cover potential shortfalls in military salaries caused by the ongoing government shutdown. Speaking at a White House event, Trump praised the wealthy donor as a patriot and a “friend of mine," but declined to name him. “He called us the other day and said, 'I'd like to contribute any shortfall you have because of the Democrat shutdown… because I love the military and I love the country,'” Trump said. The administration faces mounting pressure to ensure active-duty service members receive their paychecks despite the budget impasse. Trump previously signed an executive order directing the Pentagon to repurpose unused research funds to cover salaries. House Speaker Mike Johnson has called the military funding shift a temporary fix and warned that troops could soon miss their paychecks if Congress fails to pass a budget resolution. The U.S. federal government has been partially shut down since October 1 as lawmakers in Congress remain deadlocked over a new budget, with disputes over healthcare subsidies at the center of the impasse.

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The U.S. military is sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off South America, in the latest escalation and buildup of military forces in the region. The Pentagon spokesman said in a social media post Friday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group to deploy to U.S. Southern Command to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States." The USS Ford is currently deployed to the Mediterranean Sea along with three destroyers. It would likely take several days for the ships to make the journey to South America.

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More than 75 million Americans receiving Social Security and Supplemental Security Income benefits will see their monthly payments rise 2.8% in 2026, accelerating from the prior year's increase for the first time in three years. The Social Security Administration announced the annual cost-of-living adjustment to benefits on Friday, less than an hour after the Bureau of Labor Statistics published the Consumer Price Index for September, which had been delayed by more than a week by the ongoing federal government shutdown. The agency bases the annual increase, closely watched by retirees and others on benefits, on the average of the annual increase in the CPI for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, also known as the CPI-W index. That index rose 2.9% in September and for the three months of July, August and September averaged about 2.7%. The increase takes effect in January for 71 million Social Security recipients and on December 31, 2025 for nearly 7.5 million SSI beneficiaries. Some recipients receive both Social Security and SSI benefits. It was the first time the annual increase was larger than the prior year since 2023, when recipients received an 8.7% increase - the largest since 1981 - after a 5.9% increase in the prior year. For 2025, the increase was 2.5%. Inflation, which surged to the highest level in four decades as the economy emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, moderated over 2023 and 2024, resulting in a deceleration in benefits growth. Inflation, though, has edged up over the course of this year. The more widely watched main CPI index rose 3.0% in September, up from 2.9% in August, BLS said on Friday. The Trump administration called back some furloughed BLS workers earlier this month to prepare the CPI report for September so that the Social Security increases could be announced. Publication of all other economic data releases by BLS and other statistical agencies has ceased during the shutdown.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says another U.S. strike in the Caribbean targeted an alleged drug-running boat operated by the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, killing six people. It's the 10th strike on a vessel suspected of carrying drugs. The death toll of the Trump administration's campaign against drug cartels is up to at least 46 people. Hegseth warns the drug smugglers the U.S. will hunt them down and kill them. The pace of the strikes has quickened in recent days from one every few weeks in September when they began to three this week. Two of the strikes this week were carried out in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

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New York Attorney General Letitia James has pleaded not guilty to federal charges accusing her of lying on mortgage papers to secure favorable loan terms in a case pushed by President Donald Trump. James left the courthouse Friday smiling to cheers from supporters, who chanted, “We stand with Tish!” James says the case is about “a justice system which has been used as a tool of revenge." James faces bank fraud and false-statements charges in connection with a 2020 home purchase in Norfolk, Virginia. The Democrat has been a frequent target of the Republican president, especially after she won a massive civil fraud case against him.

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Is There An Off Ramp To End The Government Shutdown? With Elizabeth Mitchell, White House correspondent for The Daily Signal.

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US National Debt & Government Shutdown

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Fmr. US Ambassador to Denmark Carla Sands on the Trump Administration Foreign Policy, Russia, and more

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