Monthly Archives: February 2024

Bipartisan Border Failure

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The Progressive-Democrats running the Senate offered, in return for funding for Ukraine, Israel, and the Republic of China, money for border “security.” Disappointingly, too many Republican Senators agreed to this sucker deal, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) has committed to a cloture vote on the thing this week. Hopefully (forlornly), the bill will fail the cloture vote.

Senator James Lankford (R, OK), the lead Republican negotiator for this bill, is especially disappointing in his failure to negotiate effectively and his subsequent meek acquiescence to it.

This is part of what’s in the bill:

(B) MANDATORY ACTIVATION.—The Secretary shall activate the border emergency authority if
(i) during a period of 7 consecutive calendar days, there is an average of 5,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day; or
(ii) on any 1 calendar day, a combined total of 8,500 or more aliens are encountered.

Seems OK, so far. However.

(A) DISCRETIONARY ACTIVATION.—The Secretary may activate the border emergency authority if, during a period of 7 consecutive calendar days, there is an average of 4,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day.

And

(4) LIMITATIONS.—
(A) IN GENERAL.—For purposes of paragraph (3), the Secretary shall not activate the border emergency authority—
(i) during the first calendar year after the effective date, for more than 270 calendar days;
(ii) during the second calendar year after the effective date, for more than 225 days; and
(iii) during the third calendar year, for more than 180 calendar days.

And these provisions are only a three year “requirement.” For significant fractions of each of those years, the border is explicitly wide open—just as it is now.

And

(5) SUSPENSIONS OF AUTHORITY.—The Secretary shall suspend activation of the border emergency authority, and the procedures under subsections (a), (b), (c), and (d), not later than 14 calendar days after the date on which the following occurs, as applicable:

“As applicable” consists of those criteria under the MANDATORY and DISCRETIONARY paragraphs cited above. Whenever the illegal alien influx falls to a merely large number (4,000 per day works out to 120,000 per 30-day month or 1.46 million per year as being an acceptable flood). This is the case, even without that SUSPENSION, for those significant fractions of each year when the Secretary shall not activate the border emergency authority.

And this phrasing, which is repeated throughout (6) WAIVERS OF ACTIVATION OF AUTHORITY:

…the Secretary may, in the sole, unreviewable, and exclusive discretion of the Secretary, determine whether to activate the requirements of the border emergency authority….

This is an attempt to prevent Congressional and Judicial constitutionally mandated oversight, here of the Executive Branch, and worse, it seeks to subordinate those to branches’ authorities to the sole discretion of an unelected bureaucrat subordinate to the President. This is Lankford’s abject surrender to the administrative state.

Any one of these provisions, with the possible exception of the MANDATORY ACTIVATION section cited above (though its context deprecates even this much), should be a deal breaker. Overarching that, though is this. Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden and his DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have, from the beginning, determinedly refused to enforce our existing immigration and border control laws. On what planet can anyone (Lankford? Anyone?) believe that either of these would exercise the expulsion authority that is merely authorized in this latest bill, much less exercise the authority this bill mandates under higher illegal alien influx?

Better to require Biden to enforce those existing laws and close the border first. Only subsequently could the sort of border control tenets in this bill be discussed. But, if Biden actually did that, these tenets would be unnecessary.

The Senate’s proposed bill can be read here.

Ukraine, Israel, and the RoC absolutely need funding and arms, but that should be brought up as three separate, stand-alone bills, just as any legitimate legislative proposal should be. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R, LA) has come close with his proposal for funding Israel in a stand-alone bill, but his proposal is a supplemental bill with no means of paying for the funding—just more deficit and associated debt. That bill should be a failure in committee.

Update: Corrected an originally bad number for the number of illegal aliens crossing our border per month before there’s any sort of trigger to start closing our border. My third-grade arithmetic notes need reviewing.

Eric Adams’ Duplicity

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Or it’s the incompetence of New York City’s Progressive-Democratic mayor, Eric Adams.

After warning that a surge in illegal arrivals to the Big Apple would “destroy New York City” and blaming the influx for prompting budget cuts, New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams reportedly plans to provide illegal alien families with pre-paid credit cards.

A key aspect of Adams’ scheme:

The plan will begin with a $53 million pilot program targeting the migrant residents of the Roosevelt Hotel. Run through Mobility Capital Finance, the pilot plan will provide 500 families with an Immediate Response Card for use on food and infant care supplies.

That works out to $106,000 per illegal alien family. How does that compare with the amounts Adams’ budget commits to the city’s resident—and American citizen—homeless families? How does that compare with the amounts Adams’ budget commits to “ordinary” welfare payments to the city’s resident—and American citizen—families who are at the bottom of the city’s economy?

And this:

The city estimates that roughly 15,000 migrant families currently reside in NYC hotels and the administration plans to expand the program to all of them should the pilot program prove fruitful.

At $106k per each, that accumulates, according to my third grade arithmetic, to $1.59 billion. Beyond that, what logic supports the blatantly unequal treatment that favors those 15,000 families while leaving all those remaining illegal alien families literally out in the cold? Of course, that would run the bill up another billion-and-a-third….

From where does Adams expect to draw those $106k per family in his self-proclaimed environment of City destruction and attendant budget cuts? It’s more of his magical thinking.

Supporting Terrorists

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The House passed a bill that expanded bars against PLO officers from entry into the US to include PLO rank and file, and that further expanded those bars to include the terrorists, Hamas. The bill says that anyone who

participated in, planned, financed, afforded material support to, or otherwise facilitated [the October 7 attack on Israel or attacks after that] shall be ineligible for any relief under the immigration laws.
Any alien who carried out, participated in, planned, financed, afforded material support to, or otherwise facilitated any of the attacks against Israel initiated by Hamas beginning on October 7, 2023, is inadmissible[.]

Congresswomen Cori Bush (D, MO) and Rashida Tlaib (D, MI) voted against the bill, while Congresswoman Delia Ramirez (D, IL) merely voted “present.” Since the bill passed with 422 ayes, that suggests that even Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D, MN) voted for the bill, or that she was absent and did not vote at all.

Bush and Tlaib, with their nays, have plainly stated their support for terrorists and for terrorism.

Tlaib’s rationalization for her terrorist-supporting No vote:

It’s just another GOP messaging bill being used to incite anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Muslim hatred that makes communities like ours unsafe[.]

Bush’s rationalization:

I opposed H.R. 6679 because it is a redundant, empty messaging bill Republicans are using to target immigrants and incite anti-Palestinian hate.
Republicans have ZERO credibility on these issues.

This is those two projecting their own hatred of all things Republican and their disdain for Americans of any political bent or ethnicity, especially those who disagree with them.

This is Tlaib, in particular, displaying her own bigotry and her disdain for American culture: communities like ours. Holding some groups of Americans apart from American culture on the basis of ethnicity, indeed.

A Letter Writer Asks

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In Thursday’s Letters section of The Wall Street Journal, a correspondent asked What Does Democracy Mean to the Lincoln Project?

He then offered three examples of the Lincoln Project‘s apparent ideology that underlie his question:

  1. It has been acceptable throughout American history for advocates outside the two-party system to obtain qualifying voter signatures to get on the ballot. But for No Labels to employ that method now should offend our sense of fairness.
  2. Even though the two parties have arcane rules for candidate selection that restrict voter autonomy, adding qualified competitors to the general-election ballot will limit voter choice.
  3. Anyone with the temerity to view Presidents Biden and Trump as sufficiently inadequate choices to propose a third option is a “threat to American democracy” and beneath contempt.

For that, I suggest an answer: All within the Project, nothing outside the Project, nothing against the Project.

Overly Complex

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It’s also too limiting. Congressman Greg Steube (R, FL) and Senator Tommy Tuberville (R, AL) are introducing a bicameral bill, The Protection of Women in Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, that would bar biological males from participating in Olympic events intended for women. Good idea, bad execution.

The bill defines a female as

an individual who has, had, will have—or would have, but for a developmental or genetic anomaly or historical accident—the reproductive system that at some point produces, transports, and utilizes eggs for fertilization.

The bill defines a male as

an individual who has, had, will have—or would have, but for a developmental or genetic anomaly or historical accident—the reproductive system that at some point produces, transports, and utilizes sperm for fertilization.

That’s way too complex, and it allows for too much weasel-wording interpretation. Much more straightforward definitions are these:

Female: a human with XX chromosomes.
Male: a human with XY chromosomes.

Maybe add inclusion as Female those with XXY chromosomes and Male those with XYY chromosomes. Those combinations are exceedingly rare, though, and likely would be better handled on a case-by-case basis.

The bill is too limiting, unless a companion bill also is put forward. There’s no room for transgender athletes in this or any other bills under consideration or in effect. That’s a deficiency that’s easy enough to correct other than politically. Simply amend Title IX to require Federally funded sports programs to include substantially equal programs for transgender athletes as a separate category, in the same way substantially equal programs currently are required for male and female athletes as separate categories. That also would obviate the need to play games with whether an athlete is a member of a particular sex simply on that athlete’s say-so.