Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was grilled over Biden’s border crisis during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Wednesday.

Mayorkas claimed that the southern border was “secure,” contradicting prior statements made by his own Border Patrol Chief Raul L. Ortiz.

“Chief Ortiz said that the border is not secure,” Rep. August Pfluger said to Mayorkas, referencing statements he made at a March 15 hearing in McAllen, Texas. “Do you disagree with Chief Ortiz?”

During the March hearing, Ortiz responded to a question asking whether DHS has “operational control of the entire border,” to which Ortiz said, “no sir.” Mayorkas attempted to evade the question, but Pfluger persisted, and eventually the DHS secretary folded and admitted that he did, in fact, “respectfully” disagree.

“Not a single border patrol agent I’ve talked to in the past three years has said that they trust your leadership or have faith that you’re keeping our country secure,” Pfluger added.

Mayorkas defended his record, vehemently stating that “the border is secure,” and that his team is “working every day, day and night, to increase security” at the border and deal with the “challenges” presented.

Sen. Ted Cruz slammed Mayorkas, calling his suggestion that the border was secure “utter malarkey,” and urging him to resign.

The strongest condemnation, however, came from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“You’re a liar,” Greene scolded. “You are letting this go on and the numbers prove it. You can’t lie about the facts.”

“While you live in denial,” she continued, “and sit over there with this attitude that you’re doing everything right, you are killing Americans with your policies.”

Greene went on to suggest that 300 Americans were dying every day as a result of the Biden border crisis, and was about to ask another question when she was cut off by Rep. Bennie Thompson.

He criticized Greene for calling Mayorkas a liar, and Chairman Mark Green gave her an opportunity to withdraw her remarks. When she did not, Green went ahead and struck it from the record, barring her from speaking for the remainder of the hearing.

Greene decried the decision on Twitter, saying, “we’ll never implement our conservative agenda if we can’t even call a liar a liar.”

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WATCH: House Speaker McCarthy calls for debt ceiling increase in exchange for budget cuts

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy unveiled a bill this week that would pair $4.5 trillion in spending cuts with a $1.5 trillion increase in the federal debt limit

More Californians are losing their homes as foreclosures across the state and U.S. rise

US foreclosure filings jumped 22% in the first quarter compared to the same period a year ago, according to a report from real estate data analytics firm ATTOM.

While still below pre-pandemic levels, foreclosure activity has increased on an annual basis for 23 straight months. The uptrend reflects higher jobless rates, ongoing economic challenges and backlogged foreclosures working through the pipeline after the lifting of government interventions to help struggling homeowners during the pandemic, said Rob Barber, chief executive officer of ATTOM.

“However, with many homeowners still having significant home equity, that may help in keeping increased levels of foreclosure activity at bay,” Barber said in a statement.

The number of foreclosure filings has been climbing since the federal moratorium ended in mid-2021. During the pandemic, an estimated 2 million homeowners fell behind on their mortgages.

Major metropolitan cities with populations of more than 200,000 that had the most foreclosures starts last quarter included New York (4,674); Chicago (3,549); Los Angeles (2,210); Houston (2,120); and Philadelphia (1,985).

Meanwhile, on a percentage basis, Michigan topped the list of states with a 41% increase in foreclosure filings from the previous quarter.

Major metro areas with the highest foreclosure rates in the January-March period included Fayetteville, North Carolina (one in every 526 housing units); Cleveland (one in 582); Atlantic City, New Jersey (one in 661); Columbia, South Carolina (one in 671); and Bakersfield, California (one in 688).

Barber pointed out that in January, 24 out of 30 metropolitan areas with the highest foreclosure rates had median household incomes below the nationwide median of about $71,000, according to the US Census Bureau data. Unemployment rates exceeded 5% in nine of the top 30 metros, based on December 2022 federal data.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

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Law professor falsely accused of sexual misconduct by ChatGPT

Every part of the report spit out by the program was fabricated, highlighting the dangers posed by the growing popularity of artificial intelligence in society.

On Thursday, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley revealed that he had been falsely accused of sexual harassment– not by a human being, but by ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence-powered information generator.

Every part of the report spit out by the program was fabricated, highlighting the dangers posed by the growing popularity of artificial intelligence in society.

“Yesterday, President Joe Biden declared that ‘it remains to be seen’ whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) is ‘dangerous’,” Turley wrote on Twitter. “I would beg to differ…” 

He went on to explain that while “falsely reported on a claim of sexual harassment that was never made against me on a trip that never occurred while I was on a faculty where I never taught,” ChapGPT “relied on a cited [a Washington Post] article that was never written and quotes a statement that was never made by the newspaper.”

Turley explained that he had been contacted by UCLA’s Eugene Volokh, who informed him that his name had come up in a report generated by ChatGPT about sexual misconduct by professors. The program had accused him of acting inappropriately while on a trip to Alaska in 2018.

Turley posted ChatGPT’s response, pointing out the “glaring indicators” that it was all nonsense.

“First, I have never taught at Georgetown University,” he explained. “Second, there is no such Washington Post article. Finally, and most important, I have never taken students on a trip of any kind in 35 years of teaching, never went to Alaska with any student, and I’ve never been been accused of sexual harassment or assault.”

Turley went on to slam those who have pushed for artificial intelligence to be injected into more aspects of society, warning that we don’t yet know what the technology is capable of.

In recent weeks, Twitter has been spammed with “deepfakes” of politicians and other famous figures, a phenomenon some have warned could wreak havoc on political discourse.

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