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The White House • March 4, 2019 First Lady Melania Trump takes off on three-state tour This week, First Lady Melania Trump is taking her “Be Best” initiative across America, with visits to Oklahoma, Washington, and Nevada beginning today. Be Best lifts up children—both in America and throughout the world—by focusing on three pillars that the First Lady announced last spring: encouraging childhood well-being, promoting positive social media use, and supporting families hurt by opioid abuse. Her efforts included a major trip to Africa last fall, where she met with leaders in Ghana, Malawi, Kenya, and Egypt. First on today’s trip was a visit to the Dove School of Discovery in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Recipient of the 2018 National School of Character Award, Dove School prides itself on the first pillar: the well-being of children. It’s one of a group of five public charter schools that aims to incorporate character development into all of its classrooms from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. The First Lady sat in on three classrooms, getting a firsthand look at the unique curriculum across different grade levels. She joined pre-K children for an activity that encouraged young students to think about how they can show kindness in their own lives, and she observed sixth-grade science students broken up into teams to emphasize communication and teamwork skills. “I cannot emphasize further the importance of character-based education for our children,” the First Lady said. “[Dove schools] are sculpting our next generation by creating a foundation of youth with strong character. I know they will go on to do great things.” At her next stop, the First Lady traveled to Seattle, Washington, to promote the role that tech companies can play in child welfare—including applications to teach children online safety. “She is a mother herself first and foremost, so she understands the importance of social media and the impact it has on children as they’re growing up,” the First Lady’s spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said. The story behind First Lady Melania Trump’s “Be Best” campaign In photos: The First Lady meets students in Tulsa, Oklahoma ‘Illegal immigration is not compassionate’ President Donald J. Trump addressed Americans gathered over the weekend near Washington, D.C., for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), known as “the birthplace of modern conservatism.” Speaking for more than two hours, the President explained the urgency behind his recent National Emergency declaration. “The lawless chaos on our southern border provides a lucrative cash flow to some of the most dangerous criminal organizations on the planet,” he said. “Many emergency declarations have been used to protect people in faraway nations and distant lands. Now we are protecting, finally, our people.” As a Constitutional matter, President Trump’s declaration fulfills his core Article II duties to enforce Congress’ duly passed immigration laws and prevent their violation en masse. By contrast, former President Obama’s unconstitutional orders sought to invalidate Congressional statute, effectively awarding lawful presence to those living in America illegally. The good news is that for the first time in decades, the humanitarian disaster of illegal immigration is finally being exposed. Candidate Trump brought it up the very first day he announced his run for president, and he talked about it again on Saturday. “One in three women is sexually assaulted on the dangerous journey north,” he said. “Think of how evil that is.” Yesterday, The New York Times published a report into “the hidden nightmare of sexual violence on the border.” In it, Manny Fernandez shined a light on the untold stories of migrant women exploited by criminal smugglers. “They just told us . . . ‘You have to pay with your body,’” one victim explained. That cannot be allowed to happen in the United States. “Illegal immigration is not compassionate,” President Trump said Saturday. “It’s inhumane, unjust, and cruel.” In case you missed it: Watch President Trump’s speech to CPAC 2019 Read the story: The Hidden Nightmare of Sexual Violence on the Border Photo of the Day Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks First Lady Melania Trump participates in science activities with Ms. Kelley Flemming’s 6th grade science class at the Dove School of Discovery Elementary School in Tulsa, Oklahoma | March 4, 2018 You Have to Pay With Your Body’: The Hidden Nightmare of Sexual Violence on the Border  “On America’s southern border, migrant women and girls are the victims of sexual assaults that most often go unreported, uninvestigated and unprosecuted,” Manny Fernandez reports in The New York Times. “The stories are many, and yet all too similar. Undocumented women making their way into American border towns have been beaten for disobeying smugglers, impregnated by strangers, coerced into prostitution, shackled to beds and trees and — in at least a handful of cases — bound with duct tape, rope or handcuffs.” Click here to read more. “America’s factories are hiring again,” Chip Cutter writes in The Wall Street Journal. “After years of job losses, U.S. manufacturing employment has risen for 18 straight months among those holding production or nonsupervisory jobs, the longest stretch of gains since the mid-1990s. Employers have added 274,000 non-managerial manufacturing jobs since July 2017, Labor Department figures show.” Vice President Mike Pence writes that last Friday, “the defense secretary released a legislative proposal at the president’s direction to establish the Space Force, within the Air Force, as the sixth branch of the armed forces . . . Today, the threats and opportunities in space are changing more rapidly than at any other point since the Cold War. And we must change along with them.” In Fox News, White House Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro writes that today “President Donald J. Trump will sign an executive order to help sea veterans seamlessly transition into the United States Merchant Marine. By simultaneously expanding veteran opportunities for great jobs at great wages while strengthening our Merchant Marine, this action embodies a key principle of the Trump administration: economic security is national security.” “The North Korean political and military Rubik’s Cube has confounded Democratic and Republican administrations for 70 years,” Army Major General Bob Dees writes in USA Today. “Trump’s courageous decision to walk away from negotiations rather than accept Kim’s demand for sanctions reliefs showed that he will not make the same mistake as his predecessors by offering unreciprocated concessions to the rogue state.”