U.S. Supreme Court Gives Hamas-Linked CAIR a 9-0 Thumbs-Up thumbnail

U.S. Supreme Court Gives Hamas-Linked CAIR a 9-0 Thumbs-Up

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By Jihad Watch

The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) files many lawsuits, but actually wins comparatively few. So when it does receive a favorable decision, its operatives crow about it loudly. In the latest example, CAIR is calling a 9-0 Supreme Court ruling in its favor a “historic milestone for American Muslims.”

However, a simple reading of the Supreme Court’s decision in Federal Bureau of Investigation et al. v. Fikre, or of any of the many media reports on that decision, show that CAIR is overstating the victory.

See, for example, “Supreme Court Says ‘No Fly List’ Suit Can Proceed Against FBI, for Now”, by Jimmy Hoover, Law.com, March 19, 2024. In essence, the court ruled:

Yonas Fikre, a U.S. citizen from Sudan, can—for now—pursue his claim that the FBI violated his constitutional right to due process when it placed him on the list roughly eight years ago. He says the placement left him stranded abroad for four years and led to his torture in the United Arab Emirates.

The Government had tried to have Mr. Fikre’s case dismissed as moot, since the FBI had already removed Fikre from the No-Fly list, and as a result, there was no more damage to him. However, the Supreme Court did not accept this reasoning. From FBI vs Fikre:

In May 2016, the government notified Mr. Fikre that he had been removed from the No Fly List and sought dismissal of his suit in district court, arguing that its administrative action had rendered the case moot.”

Mootness is defined in Maniar v. Mayorkas, Civil Action 19-3826 (EGS), 36 (D.D.C. Mar. 30, 2023), as

[a] change in factual circumstances[,] . . . such as when the plaintiff receives the relief sought.

Additionally,

the party urging mootness bears a heavy burden.

However, in the present case, according to FBI vs. Fikre:

The government has failed to demonstrate that this case is moot.

Were the rule more forgiving, a defendant [FBI] might suspend its challenged conduct after being sued, win dismissal, and later pick up where it left off; it might even repeat “this cycle” as necessary until it achieves all of its allegedly “unlawful ends.” Already, 568 U. S., at 91. A live case or controversy cannot be so easily disguised, and a federal court’s constitutional authority cannot be so readily manipulated. To show that a case is truly moot, a defendant must prove “‘no reasonable expectation’” remains that it will “return to [its] old ways.”

The government had failed to meet its burden because the declaration did not disclose the conduct that landed Mr. Fikre on the No Fly List and did not ensure that he would not be placed back on the list for engaging in the same or similar conduct in the future.

Again, the court’s ruling means Fikre’s suit against the FBI can continue. But as Justice Gorsuch says in the court’s decision:

This case comes to us in a preliminary posture, framed only by uncontested factual allegations and a terse declaration. As the case unfolds, the complaint’s allegations will be tested rather than taken as true, and different facts may emerge that may call for a different conclusion.

CAIR’s very well-established pattern of overstating the results of court decisions in its favor really should be more widely discussed.

  • When Judge Anthony Trenga ruled in CAIR’s favor, saying that the terror watch list was unconstitutional, CAIR hailed this as the greatest legal decision the history of the country. Indeed, CAIR’s victory was widely reported in the mainstream media. However, when the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and remanded Judge Trenga’s decision, sending the case back with instructions to rule properly, there was little word from CAIR on that.
  • More recently, CAIR was very proud of a favorable ruling in the case A & R Engineering and Testing, Incorporated vs. John Scott, Attorney General of Texas. But CAIR minimized the fact that the judge’s ruling applied to just this one case, and only to the plaintiff, Rasmy Hassouna.
  • In the article “Why a Texas Court Ruling on Israel Boycott Was No Victory for CAIR” by Erielle Davidson, which appeared in The Algemeiner on February 4, 2022, there is this statement: “But CAIR is patently wrong in its legal analysis, rendering the recent victory lap is nothing short of bizarre. While the opinion does deem a fraction of the language in the Texas law unconstitutional, the opinion itself explicitly asserts that most of the language in the Texas statute — including the central element prohibiting economic boycotts of Israel — is constitutional.”

CAIR is, among other things, a public relations firm with itself as its biggest client. As a result, any event which is favorable to the organization and its goals is exaggerated out of all proportion, while incidents that do not fit a favorable narrative are whitewashed, hushed up, or simply ignored completely.

Although the FBI is certainly no friend of Jihad Watch, and the terror watch list may be a necessary evil, it does have value. Already, the DHS has stopped at least 160 people on the watch list from entering the U.S.’s porous border. Additionally, Project Veritas has reported that many of the Afghan refugees on the terror watch list are roaming free in the U.S.

As Justice Gorusch wrote in the court’s decision:

The government does not generally disclose the full reasoning for why people are placed on the list, and the Justice Department expressed concerns that allowing cases such as Fikre’s to move forward would needlessly force the government to reveal its sometimes-classified explanations.

Of course, the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations appears to have absolutely no regard for the national security of the United States of America.

AUTHOR

LARRY ESTAVAN

RELATED ARTICLES:

The Great Betrayal: Bidenite Follies at the UN

Full-blown global antisemitism on display as UN votes on Gaza ceasefire, tacitly supported by Biden regime

Kamala Has ‘Studied the Maps’

Gaza, Sudan, and the Media’s Selective Sympathies 

Chicago Politician Stands in Front of PLO, Iraqi Flag, After U.S. Flag Burned

What Percentage of Those Killed by the IDF in Gaza were Civilians? 

Hamas Just Brought to Life These Cartoons About Hiding Behind Babies

Were the Early Christians Nonviolent Solely Because They Didn’t Have State Power?

North Carolina: Migrant on terror watch list fires rifle outside convenience store, attacks sheriff’s deputies

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

ISRAELI Elections: Why now is not the time! thumbnail

ISRAELI Elections: Why now is not the time!

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By Dr. Martin Sherman

When Israeli voters next go to the polls, over what led to the grim events of Oct. 7, their choices must not be driven by uninformed rumor, ill-informed speculation, and misinformed emotion.

The campaign [Breaking Dawn] has reinstated Israel’s deterrence and initiative – Yair Lapid – Ynet, Aug. 8, 2023—barely a year before the massacre of October 7.

In the days preceding the surprise attack, senior figures in the IDF told the political leadership that Hamas was deterred…The deadly attack, which the terror organizations in the Strip launched, came after senior IDF officers informed the political leaders over the last fortnight that Hamas was deterred – Ynet, on the day of the October 7 massacre.

Every time an election rolls along in Israel, it is widely dubbed as “crucial”, “historic” “fateful” and so on and so forth.

However, the next election, which inevitably will be held under the baleful shadow of the October 7 barbarism, will undoubtedly be all of these and more. Indeed, how these appalling events are processed and dealt with will, in large measure, determine the resilience of Israeli society well into the future.

The core question.

It is for this reason that, when Israeli voters go to the polls, they be as fully informed as possible as to what led to the grim events of October 7, and not be driven by uninformed rumor, ill-informed speculation, and misinformed emotion. After all, if blame is to be apportioned fairly, and culpability assigned equitably, this ought to be based on what actually transpired and not on biased assumptions and skewed presumptions.

For, the voters’ verdict should not be solely the undiscerning expression of vengeful vindictiveness. After all, the decision as to who ought to be elected, and who ejected, should be made not merely to replace the incumbent government. Rather it should be made to enhance it with those deemed not only untainted by the October debacle, but endowed with the necessary acumen and aptitude to run the affairs of the nation more astutely than their predecessors.

This, of course, will be the core question that the next election must address. But to address it intelligently and effectively, voters will need reliable information that will provide them with a fact-based gauge to determine which–if any—of the candidates for office would have behaved substantially differently from the sitting incumbents on October 7. After all, nearly all the realistic alternatives to the current coalition members were deeply enmeshed in the fatally flawed “conception” that was at the root of the October 7 fiasco—no less so than most of the current coalition.

“Hamas do not want war…”

Voters will have to weigh three factors in arriving at their decision:

  1. What information was available to decision-makers immediately prior to October 7?
  2. Who, if any of the potential candidates to replace the sitting coalition, warned of the impending danger of a wide-scale invasion by Hamas?
  3. Were the incumbent decision-makers provided in a timely manner, with the pertinent information to allow them to take appropriate action to contend with the emerging threat—and if not, why not?

With regard to the first of these—the available information—clearly, it is unrealistic to expect the political leadership to be responsible for the collection and operational evaluation of intelligence. For this, they must necessarily rely on the operational organs of the defense establishment. On this matter, there was virtually wall-to-wall consensus among security circles that Hamas was not planning large-scale armed aggression against Israel. Indeed, over recent years, this assessment was virtually immutable. Thus. as early as 2019, at a gathering at Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center, then-Head of Military Intelligence, Tamir Hayman, stated that Hamas “was very deterred from initiating war, and had a desire to stay on a course of accommodation. They do not want war at all.”

“Israeli initiative & deterrence restored…”

Four years later, in September 2022—barely a year prior to October 7—the current IDF Intelligence Head, Maj-Gen Aharon Haliva echoed almost identical sentiments: “I predict that the calm following Operation Guardian of the Walls will last for five years…and I still stand behind that forecast. In Gaza–along with the use of force and substantial deterrence of Hamas—I discern that the processes promoted by Israel of economic stabilization, allowing Gazan workers into Israel and enhancing the living standards have the potential to bring long-term calm.”

But it was not only the military that made such grossly inaccurate assessments. They were also made by political figures, who are likely to be major contenders for office in any new election and candidates to replace the October 7 coalition. Thus, former interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid—today leader of the Opposition—smugly proclaimed at the end of the three-day Operation Breaking Dawn (September 2022), conducted solely against Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)—as the prevailing assumption was that Hamas has a vested interest in preserving stability and improving living standards: “In Operation Breaking Dawn, Israel reclaimed the initiative. It restored Israel’s deterrence. All our goals were achieved.”

Qatari funding “an Israeli interest”

The then-Defense Minister—and the person, who the polls predict has the best chance of replacing Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister—Benny Gantz, enumerated the achievements attained by Operation Breaking Dawn “1. Removing the imminent threat from Gaza; 2. Maintaining our freedom of action in all arenas; 3. Maintaining deterrence, while sending a clear message to our enemies in each of the arenas: Israel is determined to maintain its sovereignty and protect its citizens.” 

Even the much-maligned practice of transferring millions of Qatari dollars to Hamas was approved by the IDF High Command. For instance, the current media favorite, former IDF Chief of Staff, Gadi Eisenkot declared that Qatari funding helped maintain stability and was in fact “an Israeli interest that helped promote the economy in Gaza”

This was not a random slip of the tongue on Eisenkot’s part. Indeed, elsewhere he articulated precisely the same position when he asserted that the Qatari millions that are funneled into Gaza are for “administrative financing and that this is done to benefit both our interests “

Clearly then, the belief that Hamas was not spoiling for a large-scale offensive and that its major focus was on the economic conditions was widely held in military, intelligence, and political circles well outside the bounds of the Netanyahu-led coalition.

Beyond intelligence failures…

However, beyond the failures that led to the gruesome tragedy of October 7, there is another troubling concern that increasingly emerges as evermore information comes to light. Ongoing media coverage and investigative reporting reveal an accumulation of errors, misjudgments, dereliction, neglect, arrogance, and shoddiness that strain the bounds of credulence that all this could be the result of unintended misfortune.

Indeed, the failure of intelligence besides, what is perhaps even more difficult to understand are the operational omissions including, but not only, in the hours immediately before and after the dawn attack, as well as the often lethargic and haphazard response in the initial hours—once the assault was ongoing.

The list is bewildering in both its length and its scope:

Civilian first-response squads in border communities had their weapons—particularly long-barreled firearms—confiscated; intelligence monitoring of Hamas was curtailed; the three reconnaissance air balloons, all of which were inoperative, were left unrepaired; the “See-Shoot” RWS (Remote Weapons System) were left vulnerable to drone attacks; electronic surveillance systems were inoperative; warnings by junior officers and NCOs that a significant operation by Hamas was imminent, were dismissed/denigrated by senior officers; documents detailing Hamas’s operational intentions that fell into the IDF’s hands were not taken seriously—despite the existence of corroborating evidence…

Killing and looting unchecked

No less perplexing and perturbing were the following:

Reports by IDF look-out posts of suspicious Hamas movements prior to the October 7 atrocities went unheeded; warnings—on the night of the attack—that Hamas forces were advancing towards the fence, were ignored; a pre-dawn meeting of the IDF and the ISA officials estimated that Hamas was about to attack border communities, but this appraisal was not conveyed to the brigade command, or to the police tasked with securing the dance festival a few kilometers from the border; the IDF forces along the border were not reinforced—and were overwhelmed by the Hamas attackers; in numerous locations, the usual dawn patrols were not conducted; immediately prior to the attack, IDF forces were ordered to redeploy away from the border fence; IDF forces were not dispatched to where the fence was breached by a bulldozer, which appeared to have operated un-harassed; none of the points of penetration appear to have been shelled or blockaded; a second wave of terrorists crossed into Israel unhindered; not a single para-glider used by the invaders was shot down; the traffic routes to and from Gaza remained open until the afternoon, allowing killing and looting to go unchecked; there was no pursuit of the hostage abductors—either on foot or in vehicles; a battalion of intervention forces was delayed for hours as the key to their armory could not be found; for long hours the air force (apart from two attack helicopters) was absent from the action.

A baleful mist gathers

What is so inconceivable about the events of October 7th is, that for hours, Israel conducted itself as if it were a country, devoid of any intelligence capabilities, with only minimal deployable military forces—both infantry and armor, and—apart from two helicopters—without an operational air force. How are Israelis to account for this appalling and tragic fiasco? And how is such an account to be reflected in a future vote on the composition of a new Israeli leadership?

Given the gory specter of the October 7th slaughter, a baleful mist is beginning to gather around the furor over the gruesome tragedy, and the accompanying clamor for elections. With it, a new and sinister aspect is beginning to intrude ominously into the public debate, enveloping the effort to make sense of what transpired.

These are the startling rumors—now gaining currency—that the was some kind of purposeful complicity between certain Israelis and Hamas, which went tragically beyond their envisioned scope. Admittedly, for most Israelis—myself included—such claims seem wildly far-fetched. But then who could imagine, until recently, the behavior of some individuals who held the highest positions in the land during the 2023 protests against a proposed judicial reform bill—passed by a democratically elected government? Who could imagine a former prime minister calling on foreign countries—including the US—to boycott Israel, with all the attendant security implications?

Who could have envisaged ex-defense ministers, IDF chiefs-of-staff, heads of Mossad, and commanders of the air force condoning refusal to perform reserve duty in the IDF? Who could conceive of a man who served as prime minister, defense minister, and IDF chief-of-staff, speculating (despite a jovial and unpersuasive retraction) that his path to regaining the premiership would be paved with corpses of Jews, slain in a possible civil war?

Moronic or Malevolent?

However, no matter how far-fetched such “conspiracy theories” may seem to many, it is precisely those who are targets of these “theories” who have themselves to blame for the emerging maelstrom. After all, it was the leadership of the pre-October anti-reform demonstrations, who repeatedly threatened that, by September, Netanyahu would “have no intelligence and no military.” After all, that is what they called for—and that is precisely what transpired!!

So, if what one threatens does, in fact, happen, it is hardly surprising that many will see in that outcome a purposeful fulfillment of the threat.

Of course, in the absence of definitive diagnosis as to the cause of the calamity, imbecility is usually as plausible an explanation as iniquity. Accordingly, while the trauma of October 7 has understandably unleashed a clamor for fresh elections, it is essential that voters have adequate information at their disposal to make an informed and intelligent choice.

To hold elections now would be perilously premature. Indeed, it runs the risk of insufficient knowledge resulting in rewarding those who behaved with malevolent—albeit miscalculated—design; while unjustly—at least partially—punishing those who were victims of that malevolence.

Accordingly, while the post-October clamor for election is eminently understandable, to conduct them now would be a grave error. After all, much of what should be voted on is still shrouded by dense clouds of uncertainty as to who knew what and when—and who did not.

©2024. Dr. Martin Sherman. All rights reserved.

The Important Work Of Peter Schweizer thumbnail

The Important Work Of Peter Schweizer

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By Neland Nobel

Blood Money: Why The Powerful Turn A Blind Eye While China Kills Americans

Author: Peter Schweizer, published by Harper Collins.

Reading Peter Schweizer’s new book is a disturbing revelation.  It is a very important book, perhaps the most important book for a Conservative American to read right now.  However, it is not a pleasant book to absorb.  It is deeply disturbing on a number of levels.

His general conclusion is that China has its talons buried deep into American politics and culture, and most of us do not know it.  Further, they basically have bought off key leaders in America’s political class, who profit from betraying our country and our liberty.  This is often not a direct bribe as the Biden Family, but the threat of a loss of market in China.

In the early part of the book, he spends a good deal of time setting the table explaining unconventional warfare and the Chinese tradition of Sun Tzu and his modern-day counterparts.  The idea is to defeat your enemy by avoiding actual kinetic combat.

This can be done by dividing and weakening your enemy so they lose both the capacity and will to resist.

There are many very disturbing themes explored in the book.  One of the most important is how American political leaders, of both parties and major business leaders; have been compromised by the vast monetary incentives that flow from gaining access to the Chinese market.

Also, the American assumption, was that the more we traded with China, and the more China was integrated into the world economy, the more China would liberalize and become a nation of laws that respected liberty.  This has proven to be about as successful as when the Trojans accepted the gift of a giant horse filled with Greeks.

Almost all Chinese “corporations” are controlled by the People’s Liberation Army and the CCP.  They look like Western corporations only on the surface.

But the money to be made has been too much for many American leaders.  The “Big Three” are the Biden Family, Gavin Newsome (the Pelosi Family), and GOP leader Mitch McConnell.   However, there are many more.

According to Schweizer, his research team of 17 took over a year and a half to prepare the book and it is filled with important documentation.

As such the book has already had a significant impact in the US, mainly in the House of Representatives’ Impeachment Inquiry into President Joe Biden, and legislation currently pending concerning the Chinese government divestiture of TikTok and its malevolent influence on the youth of America.

Another grim theme is the key involvement in what could be called the “reverse opium war.”  China has never forgotten the role primarily played by Britain and some US individuals (FDR’s grandfather for example) in getting a huge percentage of Chinese citizens hooked on drugs so the country could be more easily exploited.

China is deeply involved in the production and distribution of fentanyl, which is killing more young Americans almost every year about the total we lost in the entirety of the War in Viet Nam.

They sell the components and cooperate with Mexican drug cartels, even to the extent of having more than 2000 Chinese nationals operating the supply chain with Mexico itself.  Shocking stuff.  And of course, Mexican leaders are deeply involved in either participating in the murder of Americans or conveniently looking the other way.

The same can be said for much of our political leadership.

Chinese commercial interests are also the biggest contributors to LQBTQ agitation, and the social media company, Tik Tok, which has done so much to spread this psychological contagion.

If you have felt somebody was playing with your mind, about Covid, about transgenderism, about racism; you would be correct.  It is the Chinese military intention to divide this nation and to weaken both its moral fiber and to confuse our youth.  The Chinese call this “cognitive warfare.”  You are both seeing and feeling this effort.

We have homegrown reasons for our racial divide, our sexual confusion, and our infatuation with drugs.  The Chinese are not to blame for these things. What they seem adept at is making all these things worse.

We have no room for details or documentation for these stunning charges.  You must read the book!

The current battle over TikTok is instructive of how China uses our free system to undermine our free system.  To defeat this will require some finesse because we don’t want to undermine our own liberty while fighting Chinese manipulation of our system.

For example, Rand Paul, for whom we have enormous respect, recently went on Tucker Carlson to oppose steps to make the Chinese government divest its holdings in TikTok. In a recent edition of The Drill Down, Schweizer’s Podcast, he shows where the good Senator is badly informed on the subject (a rarity we would say) and maybe even financially compromised.  Please listen to the show provided below.

The trouble is so many US businessmen have such a huge stake in China, that China can exert influence without directly funding their initiatives.  It will gladly be done by Americans, thereby providing the Chinese with plausible deniability.

TikTok is technically not completely owned by the Chinese, and that makes it look “normal”.  But US investors signed an unusual gag order, not to criticize the company.  They also don’t have voting rights. This is not a normal arrangement in the US where proxy battles and hostile takeovers are regular occurrences.

The question is not so much ownership but rather who has control.  And the party that has control is the Chinese Communist Party and its intelligence agencies.

A US tech billionaire is one of the largest investors, and he happens to fund several conservative efforts in this country, including giving more than $10 million to Rand Paul.

Even Donald Trump has recently wavered on the subject of TikTok, apparently fearing it could be taken over by the leftist Mark Zuckerberg. When President, he used an Executive  Order to force ByteDance to divest itself of TikTok.

This is how insidious our relationship with China has become.  Our own freedom, our own leaders, and our own business people can be turned to support Chinese unconventional warfare against our system and our liberty.

Some progress is being made in understanding this cancerous yet profitable relationship with China.  We will see how the attempt to separate TikTok from Bytedance will progress.  It has passed the House but now faces difficulty in the Senate.

The encouraging thing is that there has been some rare bi-partisan political action, and two major hearings are underway. 

None of this is likely without the important research done by Peter Schweizer.

As citizens, you need to understand the commercial relationship with China comes with their attempt to use unconventional warfare and cognitive confusion against us.  This is not the normal behavior of a trading partner.

How do we square this with the principles of free trade and the ability of our businesses to invest abroad?  How do we protect free speech while allowing our enemy to speak directly to our youth? Unlike FaceBook where “friends” can see conversations, TikTok was designed to be free of parental supervision and its algorithm is considered classified by the Chinese government.

In China, children’s time on the platform is strictly limited, and it mostly about history, culture, and engineering.  In America, the product has no limitation on time and is often dominated by unhinged blue hairs screaming about their psychological issues.  Why is the product so different in China than it is here in America?

It’s all part of unconventional warfare. The sooner the nation understands what China is trying to do to us, the better off we will all be.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Arizona News: March 27, 2024

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By The Editors

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Legacy Media Misses Another Culture Moment thumbnail

Legacy Media Misses Another Culture Moment

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By Bruce Bialosky

This one was easy for them to grab as it was on Bill Maher’s February 16th show (Real Time). Maybe the Legacy Media is no longer glued to whatever Mr. Maher says. Recently he has made comments which might induce graduates of “prestigious” journalism schools to light their hair on fire. This vignette was of major significance but not worthy of their mention. Leave it to the right-of-center media “heathens” to grab it for what it was – a true moment.

Maher had two guests as he typically does for his panel. One was Van Jones, who is a darling of the Left with his charming demeanor. The other was the ultimate villain of the Left (other than the Orange Man), Ann Coulter. Ann is edgy, but she doesn’t do it in a cavalier manner. She states what she thinks, and it is always well-researched. She was in the proverbial lion’s den where Maher’s live audience undoubtedly saw her as the devil incarnate. She didn’t flinch.

The hatred toward Ann is something that I witnessed firsthand. She did deep research into information from the vaults in Russia as Communism fell. Lo and behold, she discovered that quintessential “bogeyman” Senator Joe McCarthy was actually correct about many of the people he accused of being Communist shills. I mentioned that at a small breakfast I attended 20 years ago with Senator Susan Collins (R-ME). She promptly shut me down for even invoking Ann’s name. Damn the facts if they come from Coulter.

Maher began discussion about the disgusting violence during the Kansas City Super Bowl parade. He said, “as of this time we don’t know who the shooters are.” Ann immediately jumped in and said, “We have some idea. If it were a white male shooter we would know.” Van Jones smirks at this and then Maher says again we don’t know. Ann then states, “That is how we know it was not a white male.” Maher replies, “Do you think they are repressing that reporting?”

Ann then goes on to state two major instances where the nature of the shooter was not mentioned. Knowing Ann, if she were in front of her computer, she would have listed a dozen incidents just as a teaser for a column. Maher then interjects and says as of Friday night February 16th we don’t know and then makes a snarky comment. He says to Ann, “You know, you have special powers.”

No Mr. Maher. Unlike you, Ann has just been paying attention. And twelve hours later Ann was proved absolutely correct. It was underage black kids who broke existing gun laws to get access to the guns that caused this deplorable incident. And then later in the week a couple of adult blacks were identified.

Why is this such a major event and why was I so charged by it?
I have been tracking this issue for years. A white guy will immediately be branded as a “white supremacist” or now the added “MAGA” white supremacist. I cannot tell you how many times I have been reading about gun related events and turned to the Beautiful Wife and asked if she had read about this event and/or seen any info on the shooter. BW says she hasn’t seen any info on the culprit. It turns out days later or even longer it is one of a protected class who did the shooting – and that could mean a woman, black, gay, trans or Muslim. It has happened so often that if not readily shown, I say to her “Well, we know it ain’t a white guy.”

The question then becomes why neither an intelligent guy like Maher nor Mr. Jones were aware of this dark hole in the government’s and press’ reports. Willful ignorance? The fact that this is especially common is so bewildering because of the perverse interest in the shooters’ identities and motives. For example, news organizations were for ages chasing a motive for the Las Vegas shooter (you know, the guy who broke a couple windows in a hotel tower and shot at hundreds of people) and were baffled that they could not report one.

That perverse interest in a shooter and their motive amazingly dies when it is not a white male. Why would anyone want to protect the source of a mass shooting because of their gender, race, or religion? How can we stem the source of mass shootings if we are unwilling to challenge anyone other than white males? The harm this does to our society is incalculable. We are a society that repeats over and over and over we must have equal justice under the law and then we have our national press carping about mass shootings and gun laws but ignoring the sources of mayhem if it is a favored group.

Ms. Coulter and I are not the only ones to have noticed this trend. When flushing out the idea for this column and discussing this problem, people’s eyes light up and they state they had seen the same thing.

Ann is the first to bring it onto the national stage. We should all be told what the facts are regardless of where they lead us. We know the national press has this perverse attitude toward supposed “white privilege.” This is one domain where this perversion should not enter the equation.

*****

This article was published by Flash Report and is reproduced with permission from the author.

Image Credit: YouTube screenshot Bill Maher show

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Immigration Overtakes Inflation As Top Voter Concern In 2024: POLL thumbnail

Immigration Overtakes Inflation As Top Voter Concern In 2024: POLL

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By The Daily Caller

Immigration has overtaken inflation as the top concern for voters in 2024’s elections, according to a survey released on Monday by The Harris Poll for Harvard University’s Center for American Political Studies (CAPS).

Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential election, along with Republican candidates nationwide, have sought to make illegal immigration and the United States’ international border with Mexico a top political issue, owing to the high number of illegal crossings by foreign nationals during President Joe Biden’s term. The Harvard CAPS-Harris poll showed a 36% plurality of respondents ranked immigration as the top issue facing the country, beating inflation and cost-of-living issues, which 33% reported as being the top issue.

“When people ask themselves the Reagan question: ‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’, the answer increasingly is no,” said Mark Penn, co-director of the poll for Harris, according to Cision PR Newswire. “The sizable number of independent voters who are still undecided will determine this election, and they continue to be personally concerned about the border crisis and their grocery store prices.”

Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll for March 2024 by Daily Caller News Foundation on Scribd

Among respondents, 53% of Republicans and a 37% plurality of independent voters ranked immigration as the top issue, while a 26% plurality of Democrats ranked inflation as their top issue. Immigration was also identified as the top issue by pluralities of white voters (39%) and Hispanic voters (41%) as well as suburban voters (40%).

Additionally, 57% of respondents believed that Biden inadequately addressed immigration during his State of the Union address to Congress on March 7. A 46% plurality also indicated that Biden’s biggest failure while in office was that he “[c]reated an open borders policy and a historic flood of immigrants,” with that rating being 21% higher than his perceived failures on inflation.

The survey was conducted between March 20 and March 21 among 2,111 registered voters across the United States, with the margin of error being 3 percentage points.

The Biden and Trump presidential campaigns did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

ARJUN SINGH

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Khamenei: U.S. is ‘left with no option but to withdraw from the region’ in changed ‘world order’ after Oct. 7 thumbnail

Khamenei: U.S. is ‘left with no option but to withdraw from the region’ in changed ‘world order’ after Oct. 7

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By Jihad Watch

Many factors have combined recently to magnify the strength of Iran and its proxies — from Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal that only benefited Iran to the Islamic Republic’s current alliances with China and Russia, as well as its continuing to be underestimated and misunderstood by the West.  The Iranian regime has been emboldened for years. The West’s tendency to ignore or discount this has given Iran an opportunity to become a key player in the global order, while America under Biden declines. As the Ayatollah Khamenei put it in a recent statement:

The United States’ long-standing ambition to dominate the region has been undermined by the resilience of the Axis of Resistance. The United States is now left with no option but to withdraw from the region.

A recent article in the Jerusalem Post discusses how the Middle East, and global politics, has changed since October 7. “Iran’s Khamanei [sic] using Gaza war as step to change world order,” by Seth J. Frantzman, Jerusalem Post, March 24, 2024:

Iran’s Supreme Leader believes the US is in decline in its influence in the Middle East. According to a statement last week, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed that the current war against Israel, which Iran launched using proxies in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack, has “disrupted” the US goals in the region.

The October 7 attack can be read as a turning point in the world order, in which Iran, Russia, Turkey, China, and others see the attack as a major shift that is taking place and seek to exploit it to achieve their goals.

Both the current weak administration governing America and the October 7 attacks have greatly contributed to a “turning point” in the world order.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force Commander Esmail Qaani has also threatened that “that the resistance front has yet to exhibit the maximum of its capabilities in terms of military and deterrent power”. Qaani’s reference to the “resistance” includes Hamas, jihadists in  “Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and other places.” Embedded in Qaani’s threat is that the West has seen nothing yet.

Khamenei believes that the US has lost all influence in the region, and that it “is now left with no option but to withdraw” altogether. With Joe Biden in the White House, Khamenei isn’t far off regarding America’s loss of influence. And as for withdrawing from the region, America isn’t adequately standing up for Israel nor even against its own enemies, so it has a weak presence.

The rising world powers increasingly appear to be Russia, China, and even possibly Iran — that is, America’s foremost enemies. Recently, Russia and China managed to broker a safe passage deal with the highly underestimated and Iran-supported Houthis, who now have the Red Sea under siege and have expanded their activities to begin interfering with ships that are heading to the Cape of Good Hope at Africa’s Southern tip. Biden’s Red Sea Coalition continues to struggle ineffectively against the Houthis, as the Yemen-based group has an adverse impact upon Western economic stability. Recently, Hamas and Houthi top dogs met to discuss “expanding their confrontations” with Israel.

Iran has also become a formidable presence within the powerful BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), and its influence is growing. According to NASDAQ, discussions about the potential impact of a new BRICS currency are now going on, “with experts debating” this new currency’s “potential to challenge” the dominance of the American dollar. Should this happen, America’s decline would accelerate, since economic clout defines global influence and power. The American dollar is the world’s principal reserve currency for global trade. Simply put: its purchasing power is so influential that when when the American dollar appreciates, other world currencies depreciate. China is now trying to lessen global reliance on the American dollar, which would also be a major victory for Iran. Last year, China was Iran’s main trade partner. According to an Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration report in May, Iran’s trade with BRICS member states between March 21, 2022 and Feb. 19, 2023 was worth $34.98 billion USD, “which excludes crude oil exports.”

Iran’s growth has been rapid in BRICS. Last August, Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi discussed Iran’s future membership in BRICS. A similar meeting took place in November; it included dignitaries from Iran and Russia, who discussed Iran’s “active role” in BRICS. Less than two months later, at the turn of the new year, Iran officially joined the China-led BRICS economic organization.

Whether or not America and the West have accepted the fact, America (deemed the “Great Satan” by Iran) and Israel (the “Little Satan”) are currently in a limited war with Iran, which is now likely in possession of nuclear bombs, and which has powerful friends.

The Jerusalem Post states that “the war in Gaza was the first shot by Iran and other countries in a major war for the future of the world order.” One can also see the increase in popularity of the pro-Hamas lobby, which is operating without restraint in America, Canada and other Western nations.

While enemies of America, Canada, Europe and Britain advance politically and economically, America and the West continue to decline under the irresponsible and weak leadership of globalist regimes, while being simultaneously invaded by multitudes of migrants, due to reckless open-door immigration polices. The globalist regimes has never indicated that they care about the fact that most of the migrants do not hold Western values.

Khamenei is correct in stating that “the United States’ long-standing ambition to dominate the region has been undermined by the resilience of the Axis of Resistance.” But whether America under Biden will fully abandon Israel and leave the region altogether, as Khamenei predicts, is another question. As stated earlier, America, in fact, is already increasingly useless to Israel as it issues threats against its traditional ally, while virtually exonerating Hamas’ use of human shields and Egypt’s blocking of Gazan refugees (except those refugees whom Egypt could bribe). The tight relationship between the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the United Nations, not to mention the China-brokered rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, are no less sobering as indicators of the nature of the new world order that has begun emerging since October 7.

AUTHOR

CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Could Joe Biden Deliver A MAGA Tidal Wave 8 Years In The Making? thumbnail

Could Joe Biden Deliver A MAGA Tidal Wave 8 Years In The Making?

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By The Daily Caller

Republicans have a not-so-secret weapon going into the 2024 election for the first time of the Trump era: a presidential nominee running circles around his opponent in the polls.

At the top of March, Trump posted his largest lead over Biden to date in either a New York Time/Siena or New York Times/CBS poll. He continues to trounce Biden in hypothetical matchups across most swing states. The 81-year-old president battles a low approval rating and growing concerns about his age.

All signs point to a major opportunity for Republicans, and GOP strategists told the Daily Caller the road could lead to a long-anticipated red wave in November.

“I think that’s absolutely true that his low job approval is helping the Republicans, it’s no question about it. And in fact, more than that, his low job approval is causing Americans to look back on the Trump presidency with some nostalgia,” a longtime GOP adviser in Kentucky and veteran of numerous campaigns, Scott Jennings, told the Daily Caller.

Though Jennings said Republicans are certainly benefitting from Biden’s low approval rating, he added that he thought it was too early to confidently predict a red wave.

“But the conditions are right. I guess it’s the difference between a tornado watch and a tornado warning. Tornado warning means a tornado has been spotted,” Jennings said. “A tornado watch is the conditions are right. And I think the conditions are right. So I’d say that’d put us in watch territory.”

Mark R. Weaver, a GOP strategist, told the Daily Caller that the 2024 election contains several parallels to the 1980 election, when former President Ronald Reagan won a staggering 44 states.

“History tells us that Jimmy Carter was in the White House. He had been elected, promising a different kind of presidency, after Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. But he was so inept at the job that Americans were very frustrated with his administration,” Weaver explained. “Inflation was high. Food prices were high. Gas Pump prices were high and actually rationed. They were American hostages being held in the Middle East and we couldn’t get them back. We were not respected around the world.”

Weaver added that Reagan asked voters ahead of the election if they were better off today than they were four years ago — a line, he added, that could help Trump propel himself over the finish line.

“So there’s some parallels here. I always like to say Donald Trump is not Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan is once in every three or four generation quality candidate,” Weaver continued. “So Donald Trump has far more weaknesses than Ronald Reagan did. Having said that, Joe Biden’s a lot like Jimmy Carter, because people are frustrated with how inept his administration is, and they are ready for a change and in this case, the change would be back to the future.”

“Trump will use that line and he’ll be referring to a time when he was president. And that could produce a red wave,” he concluded.

Republicans have been anticipating a red wave for the last eight years, but have instead been the victims of mirages. In 2016, though Trump beat out former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the presidency, and Republicans clinched both a Senate and House majority, the party lost seats in both chambers.

Even with the majority, the makeup of congress wasn’t particularly favorable to Trump. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell endorsed Trump after he secured the nomination in 2016, but is definitionally establishment. In fact, McConnell at the time said he didn’t believe Trump would change the GOP, but that Republicans would change Trump.

On the House side,  Speaker Paul Ryan said he would vote for Trump in 2016, but added that “it’s no secret that he and I have our differences.”

In addition to skeptical leadership, Trump entered the 2016 election as an insurgent force within the Republican Party, lacking much of the institutional control he has now. In 2024, his campaign is increasingly influential over the RNC, and he plays a kingmaker role in GOP primaries.

In 2018, with Trump in office, Republicans ceded ground to Democrats, who won a House majority. And in 2020, Biden led Trump in the polls as election day inched closer, eventually defeating him for the White House. Meanwhile, Democrats retained control of the House and gained several seats to win a 50-50 split in the Senate.

Two years into Biden’s presidency, Republicans believed they would finally get their red wave, but in many ways fell short. Though they won back the House, another underperformance resulted in Democrats holding the Senate by a 51-49 margin.

“The vaunted red wave never hit the shore in midterm elections,” a Washington Post headline read.

“The red wave that wasn’t: 5 takeaways from a disappointing night for the GOP,” a Politico headline said.

“GOP Pollster: Republicans Failed to Secure Red Wave in 2022 Midterms for Four Key Reasons,” the National Review wrote.

But now, down-ballot candidates across the country, particularly those with a “MAGA” agenda and endorsed by Trump, are predicting a red wave and crediting Biden for the help.

“President Trump is going to win the White House and Republicans are going to take back the Senate Majority. Joe Biden and Ruben Gallego’s policies have crushed hardworking Arizonans with crippling inflation: high prices at the gas pump, grocery store, and even when buying a home,” Republican Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake, a long-time Trump supporter, told the Daily Caller in a statement.

Republican Texas state Rep. Steve Toth, also endorsed by Trump, told the Daily Caller that a red wave has already begun to take Texas and he pointed to Biden’s handling of the economy and the southern border as reasons why.

“But when things get bad, not only do [Republicans] turn out, but it awakens the independents that are right leaning but yet haven’t decided what they want to be when they grow up. And I think we’re all feeling the effects right now of a really crappy economy and open borders in a tremendous way. It’s straining the economy. It’s straining the workforce. It’s straining everything. I mean we’re really coming apart at the seams right now. I think people feel it,” Toth told the Daily Caller.

Both Lake and Toth have been endorsed by Trump and have similar priorities to the former president. Both politicians told the Daily Caller that Republicans should prioritize building a border wall, which did not get done during Trump’s first term.

The signature legislative accomplishment of Trump’s first term was the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a law that was championed by Reaganite Republicans and perfectly in-line with longstanding beliefs in the party. Analysts at the time wrote that the prioritization of tax cuts over immigration may have been pushed by Congressional leadership.

“That means the president is going to have to decide, very soon, how he wants the fall policy debate to play out. Does he want Congress to spend the next few months battling over the budget and funding a border wall? Or does he want lawmakers to try to pass a tax cut? If he does not develop and sell a coherent policy choice to Congress when it returns to Washington in a couple of weeks, it is likely that the congressional GOP leadership will choose for him,” Tax Policy Center’s Howard Gleckman wrote in 2017.

“In some ways, it may already have. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), whose relationship with Trump has turned icy, has made no secret that he wants to clear the legislative decks to make room for a tax bill.”

“My first action as a Republican Senator would be to introduce legislation that: 1. Secures the border by finishing the wall 2. Baby bonuses for parents and extending the child tax credit 3. Extending President Trump’s tax cuts. President Trump and Senate Republicans will get America back on track,” Lake added.

Republican Texas state Rep. candidate David Covey, also endorsed by Trump, told the Daily Caller in a statement that his priority on securing the nation’s southern border helped him secure the support of the former president.

“My opponent, House Speaker Dade Phelan, was the only Republican in the Texas Legislature not to vote for SB4. His lack of leadership on border security is one of the many reasons why former President Donald Trump endorsed me in the race for Texas House District 21. Securing the border and protecting Texas families is my number one priority,” Covey told the Daily Caller.

Texas’ State Bill four [SB4] would allow local police to arrest migrants who cross into the state illegally. The law has been the subject of a lengthy legal battle. The Supreme Court recently made the decision to allow the local police to move forward with arresting migrants who cross into the state illegally.

Immigration is at the top of Americans’ priorities heading into the 2024 election while “government” and “economy in general” take second and third place, according to a February Gallup poll. And while Americans keep immigration and economy at the top of their concerns, a majority disapprove of how the president has handled those very issues.

Sixty-nine percent of Americans disapprove of how Biden has handled immigration while 68 percent disapprove of how the president has addressed inflation, a December Monmouth University poll shows.

“The Biden administration keeps touting their infrastructure investments and a host of positive economic indicators,” Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, previously said in a press release coupled with the poll. “Those data points may be factual, but most Americans are still smarting from higher prices caused by post-pandemic inflation. This seems to be what’s driving public opinion. There is political danger in pushing a message that basically tells people their take on their own situation is wrong.”

In addition to Biden’s low polling, the former president’s team is confident that is “America First” messaging will help propel Trump to victory in November.

“Americans are suffering from the failed policies of Crooked Joe Biden, and congressional Democrats are stifling Republicans’ attempts to deliver relief through legislation like the Lower Energy Costs Act and Secure the Border Act. Voters are ready for a change, and President Trump’s America First message will bring a rising tide that will lift all boats this November,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez told the Daily Caller.

Despite optimism from some on the right and from the former president’s supporters, some continue to hold their breath.

“With respect to the campaign for president, if the election were held tomorrow morning, Mr. Trump would probably win. Please keep in mind that, as we have noted before, the race will be very close (likely decided by fewer than 500,000 votes spread across seven States and, if you like specificity, about 40 counties in those seven States),” Mike McKenna, a former Trump advisor and longtime Republican operative, wrote in a memo provided to the Daily Caller.

“The race will also be volatile. So, it is entirely possible that a month from now or six months from now, Mr. Biden may have the upper hand,” McKenna added.

AUTHOR

REAGAN REESE

White House correspondent. Follow Reagan on Twitter.

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POST ON X:

TRUMP: “They can’t win an election because of the borders, because of energy prices, inflation, because of Afghanistan..So, what they do is election interference.” pic.twitter.com/IDznwONiJx

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) March 25, 2024

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Migration Is Invasion thumbnail

Migration Is Invasion

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By Adam Ellwanger

As the situation at the Texas/Mexico border continues to deteriorate, the premise of federalism is being tested in ways not seen in more than a century. The Biden Administration has openly refused any real effort to slow illegal entries, while as many as 13 million foreigners have crossed illegally since his inauguration. It took Texas longer than it should have to grasp that they were actually working to facilitate illegal entries. Eventually, though, Governor Greg Abbott recognized that the Lone Star State would have to act alone against Biden’s open border policy. After he implemented aggressive actions to stop the flow, the feds went to extraordinary measures to ensure that the border would remain open, cutting razor wire placed along the Rio Grande and doggedly fighting Abbott’s policies in federal court.

A major escalation occurred when the governor formally declared the situation an “invasion.” Predictably, Democrats howled at the use of a term with such rhetorical force. But if “invasion” is a faithful characterization of what is happening, then we have an obligation to call it that. And if there is an invasion at the southern border, then it must be stopped by all means—whether by federal intervention or in defiance of it.

What exactly constitutes an “invasion”? What are the characteristics that have defined invasions throughout human history? I propose that there are five. The first is that an invasion is something that the inhabitants of the nation being invaded never requested or invited. Second, invading forces are comprised predominantly of military-aged men. Third, invaders are primarily motivated by self-interest. Fourth, invaders carry the insignia of their home nations with them. And, finally, an invasion must pose a genuine threat to the existing social order of the place being invaded. With these criteria in mind, let’s examine the situation at our southern border.

Who Invited You?

The first characteristic of an invasion is that the people being invaded didn’t ask for the invaders to come. The influx of Europeans to the Americas in the sixteenth century serves as a prime example. Not all of the Europeans who made the trek across the Atlantic saw conquest as the purpose of their journey. The Puritans, for example, meant only to create a habitable environment for a life of religious observance apart from the repressive order they left in England. The Spanish conquistadors, on the other hand, set out to conquer and subdue the peoples they encountered in the Americas. But regardless of their intentions, neither the Puritans nor the conquistadors were invited by the indigenous tribes of those lands.

In the same way, there has been no formal invitation for the people of Central and South America to pass through our southern border illegally. America does, in fact, invite immigrants—but it requires that they apply to do so. Advocates of unlimited immigration may argue that the United States has invited the millions who are crossing illegally. Only 40 years ago, we rewarded illegal immigrants with a mass amnesty and citizenship. Today, we allow illegal immigrants to attend our public schools (often at “in-state” tuition rates reserved for citizens); we give them driver’s licenses, welfare, and medical care. Are these benefits not an invitation? No—these are incentives, which are not the same thing.

These incentives are often extended by individual states in defiance of federal law. Chicago, New York City, and other “sanctuary cities” have declared that they will not enforce federal immigration law (though they claim it’s only to protect the illegal immigrants who have already arrived). It’s plain that these cities never intended their policy to be taken as an invitation: simply look at their outrage and complaints after states like Florida and Texas began sending them illegal immigrants.

If there’s no invitation, you’ve got an invasion.

Where Are the Women and Children?

Anyone who views photographs of the many caravans moving into Eagle Pass will immediately see that the vast majority are men—almost exclusively men between the ages of 18 and 50. Whatever women and children there are, they are outnumbered by military-aged males. This disproportionality shows that the many requests for asylum are disingenuous. When the Trump Administration began screening to determine that family groups arriving were indeed family, we learned that women and children are often used as props by unrelated men who might otherwise be rejected for asylum. The overrepresentation of men suggests these people are not refugees. If they were fleeing from war, wouldn’t the military-aged men be at home fighting? Wouldn’t the caravans be comprised mostly of women and children?

Of course, the men are (probably) not planning a military assault on Dallas or Tampa, but planned military operations are not a prerequisite for a mass migration of people to be considered an invasion. If people migrate in sufficient numbers, they may not need to attack in order to conquer the region in question. At a certain point, there are too many individuals to deport: the nation being invaded has no choice but to (attempt to) integrate the newcomers.

With or without military activity, all historical invasions have consisted overwhelmingly of men in the initial stage. Indisputably, this is what is unfolding at America’s southern border.

What Are They After?

Today’s illegal immigrants undertake a treacherous journey—and they don’t do it because they want to help American citizens. They cross the desert because they believe it will benefit them personally. We constantly hear that they are “in search of a better life.” This refrain quietly concedes that the immigrants are seeking economic advantages. They may not get rich. But they will, in all likelihood, attain a level of wealth (and various social benefits) that would have been all but impossible in their countries of origin.

Regardless of their nationality, the people in the caravans are united by one characteristic: like all invading forces, they’re motivated by self-interest.

Which Flag Do They Fly?

Just as warships or fighter jets are marked with the insignia of the nation to which they belong, all invading forces bring with them the signifiers of their home. In past eras with high immigration, newcomers to the United States willingly gave up the language of their former homes. Germans, Italians, and Poles often fully transitioned to speaking English within a generation.

In contrast, the immigrants flooding over our southern border often resist assimilation—and are encouraged to do so. There are people who have been in the United States illegally for decades who still know almost no English. These people often live a life apart from the nation at large, congregating in particular neighborhoods in our major cities. But their attempts to hold onto their language and the norms of the homes they left are not the only indications they are invaders.

Who can ignore the fact that the people leading the caravans carry the flags of their homeland? Flags from Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and El Salvador are all on display in media images of the new arrivals. This affinity remains once they are in the United States. When the U.S. soccer team plays Mexico in California, it amounts to a home game for the Mexican team. Given a choice between the nation they left and the nation they chose instead, many “Mexican-Americans” choose to cheer for Mexico rather than America. Drive around a city with a high immigrant population like Houston, Los Angeles, or Orlando and you will see a surprising number of cars with stickers that pay homage to the home they abandoned: Mexican flags, geographical outlines of central American nations, and the like.

This resistance to assimilation—a resistance that is indulged and enabled by both public and private institutions—is a key sign that the people arriving illegally are invaders. For many, the aim isn’t to become Americans: it is to exploit the opportunities that America affords, and then to send the money earned to their families who still live back in their (true) home.

A New America?

All invasions change the way of life in the region they invade. The European invasion of the Americas completely transformed the Western hemisphere. A century after England renounced its claim to India, the signs of its invasion are still seen throughout Indian society.

The idea of the “melting pot”—an American metaphor for cultural assimilation in which the many peoples who come here become one—is now seen as a form of cultural chauvinism. Since the nineties, the dominant metaphor has been the “salad bowl,” where all the different peoples who inhabit the United States retain their various identities despite living in close geographical proximity to one another. The people who insist that “diversity is our strength” are often the same ones who assure us that mass immigration will have no discernible effect on American society.

How many more Central Americans—many of whom will not be readily assimilated—can we add to the bowl before it becomes a different sort of salad? A million? Ten million? Twenty? None of the proponents of unfettered immigration will even entertain the idea that there might be a tipping point, but there are signs that we are quickly approaching it. The recent arrival of relatively insignificant numbers of illegal immigrants in New York City and Chicago have been enough to spark housing crises, budgetary strain, and a rash of public violence that is (somehow) worse than the already-demoralizing norm.

Many who cross illegally leave their home nations because they are poor. Even when working illegally in the U.S., many still fall below the poverty line, so they are often dependent on the welfare state. In these situations, housing, food, health care, and court costs are all paid by the state, which is to say “taxpayers.”

Whether or not illegal immigrants intend to change America, they are. How much life in the nation will change depends on how long citizens tolerate the crisis. But the American way of life is already being transformed, and this shows that it amounts to an invasion.

Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way

It’s true that invasion is a strong word. But by any historically-informed perspective, it is the right word. Shying away from it amounts to a refusal to acknowledge the gravity of the problem. In the face of a world-historical tide of illegal migration, any term other than invasion is just a strategy that allows one to look away from the humanitarian catastrophe happening at the border and along the way. It’s a failure of courage—a feigned blindness that deliberately ignores the onerous ramifications that the crisis has for our own citizens and the safety of those who attempt the dangerous journey to America.

If we have any prospects of thwarting the invasion—indeed, if we are even to discover the will to do so—we and our leaders need to find the strength to admit it is happening.

*****

This article was published by The American Mind and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Illegal Migration Is Invasion thumbnail

Illegal Migration Is Invasion

/in , , , /by

By Adam Ellwanger

As the situation at the Texas/Mexico border continues to deteriorate, the premise of federalism is being tested in ways not seen in more than a century. The Biden Administration has openly refused any real effort to slow illegal entries, while as many as 13 million foreigners have crossed illegally since his inauguration. It took Texas longer than it should have to grasp that they were actually working to facilitate illegal entries. Eventually, though, Governor Greg Abbott recognized that the Lone Star State would have to act alone against Biden’s open border policy. After he implemented aggressive actions to stop the flow, the feds went to extraordinary measures to ensure that the border would remain open, cutting razor wire placed along the Rio Grande and doggedly fighting Abbott’s policies in federal court.

A major escalation occurred when the governor formally declared the situation an “invasion.” Predictably, Democrats howled at the use of a term with such rhetorical force. But if “invasion” is a faithful characterization of what is happening, then we have an obligation to call it that. And if there is an invasion at the southern border, then it must be stopped by all means—whether by federal intervention or in defiance of it.

What exactly constitutes an “invasion”? What are the characteristics that have defined invasions throughout human history? I propose that there are five. The first is that an invasion is something that the inhabitants of the nation being invaded never requested or invited. Second, invading forces are comprised predominantly of military-aged men. Third, invaders are primarily motivated by self-interest. Fourth, invaders carry the insignia of their home nations with them. And, finally, an invasion must pose a genuine threat to the existing social order of the place being invaded. With these criteria in mind, let’s examine the situation at our southern border.

Who Invited You?

The first characteristic of an invasion is that the people being invaded didn’t ask for the invaders to come. The influx of Europeans to the Americas in the sixteenth century serves as a prime example. Not all of the Europeans who made the trek across the Atlantic saw conquest as the purpose of their journey. The Puritans, for example, meant only to create a habitable environment for a life of religious observance apart from the repressive order they left in England. The Spanish conquistadors, on the other hand, set out to conquer and subdue the peoples they encountered in the Americas. But regardless of their intentions, neither the Puritans nor the conquistadors were invited by the indigenous tribes of those lands.

In the same way, there has been no formal invitation for the people of Central and South America to pass through our southern border illegally. America does, in fact, invite immigrants—but it requires that they apply to do so. Advocates of unlimited immigration may argue that the United States has invited the millions who are crossing illegally. Only 40 years ago, we rewarded illegal immigrants with a mass amnesty and citizenship. Today, we allow illegal immigrants to attend our public schools (often at “in-state” tuition rates reserved for citizens); we give them driver’s licenses, welfare, and medical care. Are these benefits not an invitation? No—these are incentives, which are not the same thing.

These incentives are often extended by individual states in defiance of federal law. Chicago, New York City, and other “sanctuary cities” have declared that they will not enforce federal immigration law (though they claim it’s only to protect the illegal immigrants who have already arrived). It’s plain that these cities never intended their policy to be taken as an invitation: simply look at their outrage and complaints after states like Florida and Texas began sending them illegal immigrants.

If there’s no invitation, you’ve got an invasion.

Where Are the Women and Children?

Anyone who views photographs of the many caravans moving into Eagle Pass will immediately see that the vast majority are men—almost exclusively men between the ages of 18 and 50. Whatever women and children there are, they are outnumbered by military-aged males. This disproportionality shows that the many requests for asylum are disingenuous. When the Trump Administration began screening to determine that family groups arriving were indeed family, we learned that women and children are often used as props by unrelated men who might otherwise be rejected for asylum. The overrepresentation of men suggests these people are not refugees. If they were fleeing from war, wouldn’t the military-aged men be at home fighting? Wouldn’t the caravans be comprised mostly of women and children?

Of course, the men are (probably) not planning a military assault on Dallas or Tampa, but planned military operations are not a prerequisite for a mass migration of people to be considered an invasion. If people migrate in sufficient numbers, they may not need to attack in order to conquer the region in question. At a certain point, there are too many individuals to deport: the nation being invaded has no choice but to (attempt to) integrate the newcomers.

With or without military activity, all historical invasions have consisted overwhelmingly of men in the initial stage. Indisputably, this is what is unfolding at America’s southern border.

What Are They After?

Today’s illegal immigrants undertake a treacherous journey—and they don’t do it because they want to help American citizens. They cross the desert because they believe it will benefit them personally. We constantly hear that they are “in search of a better life.” This refrain quietly concedes that the immigrants are seeking economic advantages. They may not get rich. But they will, in all likelihood, attain a level of wealth (and various social benefits) that would have been all but impossible in their countries of origin.

Regardless of their nationality, the people in the caravans are united by one characteristic: like all invading forces, they’re motivated by self-interest.

Which Flag Do They Fly?

Just as warships or fighter jets are marked with the insignia of the nation to which they belong, all invading forces bring with them the signifiers of their home. In past eras with high immigration, newcomers to the United States willingly gave up the language of their former homes. Germans, Italians, and Poles often fully transitioned to speaking English within a generation.

In contrast, the immigrants flooding over our southern border often resist assimilation—and are encouraged to do so. There are people who have been in the United States illegally for decades who still know almost no English. These people often live a life apart from the nation at large, congregating in particular neighborhoods in our major cities. But their attempts to hold onto their language and the norms of the homes they left are not the only indications they are invaders.

Who can ignore the fact that the people leading the caravans carry the flags of their homeland? Flags from Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and El Salvador are all on display in media images of the new arrivals. This affinity remains once they are in the United States. When the U.S. soccer team plays Mexico in California, it amounts to a home game for the Mexican team. Given a choice between the nation they left and the nation they chose instead, many “Mexican-Americans” choose to cheer for Mexico rather than America. Drive around a city with a high immigrant population like Houston, Los Angeles, or Orlando and you will see a surprising number of cars with stickers that pay homage to the home they abandoned: Mexican flags, geographical outlines of central American nations, and the like.

This resistance to assimilation—a resistance that is indulged and enabled by both public and private institutions—is a key sign that the people arriving illegally are invaders. For many, the aim isn’t to become Americans: it is to exploit the opportunities that America affords, and then to send the money earned to their families who still live back in their (true) home.

A New America?

All invasions change the way of life in the region they invade. The European invasion of the Americas completely transformed the Western hemisphere. A century after England renounced its claim to India, the signs of its invasion are still seen throughout Indian society.

The idea of the “melting pot”—an American metaphor for cultural assimilation in which the many peoples who come here become one—is now seen as a form of cultural chauvinism. Since the nineties, the dominant metaphor has been the “salad bowl,” where all the different peoples who inhabit the United States retain their various identities despite living in close geographical proximity to one another. The people who insist that “diversity is our strength” are often the same ones who assure us that mass immigration will have no discernible effect on American society.

How many more Central Americans—many of whom will not be readily assimilated—can we add to the bowl before it becomes a different sort of salad? A million? Ten million? Twenty? None of the proponents of unfettered immigration will even entertain the idea that there might be a tipping point, but there are signs that we are quickly approaching it. The recent arrival of relatively insignificant numbers of illegal immigrants in New York City and Chicago have been enough to spark housing crises, budgetary strain, and a rash of public violence that is (somehow) worse than the already-demoralizing norm.

Many who cross illegally leave their home nations because they are poor. Even when working illegally in the U.S., many still fall below the poverty line, so they are often dependent on the welfare state. In these situations, housing, food, health care, and court costs are all paid by the state, which is to say “taxpayers.”

Whether or not illegal immigrants intend to change America, they are. How much life in the nation will change depends on how long citizens tolerate the crisis. But the American way of life is already being transformed, and this shows that it amounts to an invasion.

Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way

It’s true that invasion is a strong word. But by any historically-informed perspective, it is the right word. Shying away from it amounts to a refusal to acknowledge the gravity of the problem. In the face of a world-historical tide of illegal migration, any term other than invasion is just a strategy that allows one to look away from the humanitarian catastrophe happening at the border and along the way. It’s a failure of courage—a feigned blindness that deliberately ignores the onerous ramifications that the crisis has for our own citizens and the safety of those who attempt the dangerous journey to America.

If we have any prospects of thwarting the invasion—indeed, if we are even to discover the will to do so—we and our leaders need to find the strength to admit it is happening.

*****

This article was published by The American Mind and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Polls Show Who Republicans Want As Trump’s VP Running Mate thumbnail

Polls Show Who Republicans Want As Trump’s VP Running Mate

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By Casey Harper

Republican voters have suggestions for former President Donald Trump when he considers his running mate for vice president.

The Center Square Voter’s Voice poll released this week asked voters this question: “Who should Donald Trump choose as his vice presidential candidate?”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis narrowly edged out the other potential candidates. DeSantis was once seen as a serious threat to Trump for the presidential nomination, but after Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was raided by the FBI, Trump’s poll numbers soared. DeSantis was left behind in the polling and never recovered.

Now, according to the survey, 18% of Republicans want DeSantis to be Trump’s vice presidential running mate.

In a close second place is former Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who received 17% support from Republicans as Trump’s vice president.

Haley was the last Republican contender to drop out of the primary. She was able to win nearly 100 delegates, and put up a fight in states like Vermont and South Carolina. But, ultimately, she dropped out after Trump roundly defeated her on Super Tuesday.

Kate Guenther | The Center Square

Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and South Carolina Gov. Tim Scott are tied for third place with 15% support among Republicans.

Notably, Democratic former Congressman Tulsi Gabbard received 7% support, the only Democrat to get that kind of backing from Republicans.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem received 6% support among Republicans to be Trump’s running mate. Many analysts have said Trump should pick a female vice president to persuade Haley supporters and suburban women to support the ticket.

Trump has not said who he is leaning toward most for his vice president, however the New York Post recently reported that Trump has ruled out Ramaswamy, but that Ramaswamy would be considered for a cabinet position.

Trump is not expected to pick former Vice President Mike Pence since their relationship has soured in recent years.

Pence told Martha MacCallum on Fox News last week that he would not endorse Trump for president.

Pence, who was unable to pick up steam in his own presidential primary bid, said there are “profound differences between me and President Trump on a range of issues.”

There is little indication that President Joe Biden will drop Vice President Kamala Harris as his running mate.

The vice presidential pick for Trump in particular could be key to shifting what is a close race.

The Center Square poll shows Trump beating Biden 46%-45% with likely voters in a head-to-head faceoff. With such a close margin, Trump’s pick for VP could make or break the race.

Notably, if third-party independent candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, and Jill Stein stay in the race, Trump’s lead grows to 3 points.

The Center Square Voters’ Voice poll was conducted in conjunction with Noble Predictive Insights in March, querying 2,510 respondents roughly split between both parties along with 340 true independents. The margin of error for likely voters is +/- 2.1%.

*****

This article was published by the Center Square and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Feds Have Showered Blue State With Tax Dollars to Fix Homelessness. It Keeps Getting Worse. thumbnail

Feds Have Showered Blue State With Tax Dollars to Fix Homelessness. It Keeps Getting Worse.

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By Robert Schmad

A plethora of federal agencies have spent well over $200 million attempting to alleviate homelessness in Washington state over the past 17 years, only for the number of people living on the streets to keep rising.

Federal agencies like the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Health and Human Service, among others, have spent hundreds of millions of dollars since 2007 on grants to third parties intended to mitigate homelessness in Washington, federal spending data shows. Despite the nine-figure sum of taxpayer dollars spent, the number of homeless people in Washington grew by about 20% between 2007 and 2023, according to a report produced by HUD.

Washington had the third-highest raw increase in its homeless population between 2007 and 2023, according to HUD. California and New York were the first and second-highest, respectively.

An estimated 20,036 individuals were living in Washington without permanent shelter as of 2023, according to HUD. Washington’s rate of homelessness was among the highest in the nation in 2023.

The federal government has over the years attempted to assist Washington state with its mounting homelessness problem, with little to show for it.

The federal government spent heavily in Washington state during the COVID-19 pandemic, only for the number of homeless individuals in the state to grow by 15.6% between 2020 and 2022, according to HUD.

For instance, the VA has given nearly $120 million to third-party organizations to assist homeless veterans since 2007, much of which was paid out during the pandemic, according to federal spending records. Despite this injection of cash, Washington had the fifth-highest rate of veterans experiencing unsheltered homelessness as of 2023, according to HUD.

Unsheltered homelessness refers to people who primarily spend their nights at “a public or private place not designated for, or ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for people,” according to HUD.

In a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation, a spokesperson for the VA acknowledged that the number of homeless veterans increased in Washington between 2022 and 2023.

In response to the increase, “VA health care systems covering Washington State (Puget Sound, Spokane, Walla Walla, and Portland) housed a combined total of 2,238 homeless Veterans,” the spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“This was possible, in part, due to nearly $15.6 million in grants and contracts awarded to local organizations.”

Some states, like Texas and Florida, reduced their homeless populations during the pandemic, according to HUD. Florida saw homelessness drop by 5.6% and Texas reduced its homeless population by 10.3%.

In addition to growing, Washington’s homeless population also lacks access to temporary shelters at higher rates than most the country.

Washington had the ninth-highest rate of homeless people lacking temporary shelter, according to HUD. High rates of unsheltered homelessness in Washington persist despite considerable federal spending aimed at providing them with places to stay.

HUD has spent over $70 million in Washington on its emergency shelter grant program for the homeless since 2007, federal spending records show. HUD spent a further $60 million in Washington implementing its supportive housing program for the homeless.

“In the most recent System Performance Measures, communities across the country have seen reduced lengths of stay in homelessness and low rates of returns to homelessness,” HUD told the Daily Caller News Foundation when asked about its grant spending.

“By and large, the recent rise in homelessness in most communities is more attributable to the rise in the number of people who are becoming newly homeless, than any challenges with system performance.”

Officials have cited rising rents and the end of pandemic-era housing assistance and protections as contributing to the recent rise in homelessness, The Associated Press reported.

Many vulnerable people are living on the streets in Washington, despite federal funds being allocated to provide them with permanent housing.

Washington has a sizable population of young people living on the street, according to HUD. There were 2,026 homeless people under the age of 25 unaccompanied by a parent or guardian in Washington as of 2023.

The number of unaccompanied homeless youths in Washington grew by 12.4% between 2022 and 2023, according to HUD.  The Seattle area had the third-highest number of unaccompanied homeless youths in the country in 2023.

Between 2022 and 2023, HUD spent more than $7 million in Washington through its youth homelessness demonstration program, which was intended to alleviate homelessness among young people by providing the population with assistance in acquiring housing or shelter.

Homelessness in Washington is not distributed uniformly across the state.

Roughly half of Washington’s homeless reside in the Seattle area, according to HUD. The federal government has, in recent years, targeted the region in an attempt to quell homelessness.

HUD approved over $40 million in funding for the King County Regional Homeless Authority between 2022 and 2023, according to federal spending records. The King County Regional Homeless Authority is an independent government agency that relies on “data, proven practices, and principles of social justice and racial equity” to “significantly decrease homelessness throughout King County,” according to its website.

“Homelessness disproportionately harms people of color,” the agency’s website reads. “We use an equity-based decision making framework to proactively dismantle structural racism and advance equity.”

The King County Regional Homeless Authority’ total budget was $253.3 million in 2023, according to a document produced by the agency. The Seattle region had the third-most homeless people of any area in the United States as of 2023, per HUD.

The influx of migrants and asylum-seekers into Washington, rising living costs, a lack of shelter services, and the end of pandemic aid are all contributing factors to rising homelessness in the state, University of Washington associate professor Gregg Colburn told The Seattle Times.

Despite recent setbacks, the majority of Seattle residents are optimistic that the city will make progress toward reducing homelessness over the next couple of years, according to a Seattle Times/Suffolk University poll conducted in June 2023.

The King County Regional Homeless Authority and HHS did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

*****

This article was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Congress Passes Funding Package, Leaves for Recess and Fails to Secure Border thumbnail

Congress Passes Funding Package, Leaves for Recess and Fails to Secure Border

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By Federation for American Immigration Reform

Early Saturday morning, Congress passed a spending bill to fully fund the government through Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, which ends September 30. In both the Senate and House of Representatives, the bill garnered more Democratic than Republican votes. In the Republican-controlled House, the bill failed to gain a majority of Republican support, but passed by a vote of 286-134.  The final vote in the in the Senate was 74-24.

The new appropriations bill provides $1.2 trillion in funding for multiple departments within the government. These include the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and State Department, all of which are responsible for implementing our immigration laws.  Unfortunately, while the bill gives money to these departments, it does not mandate policy changes that would secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws.  In fact, it reinforces Biden Administration policies allowing the mass processing and release of illegal aliens into the country.

Supporters of the bill will point out that it includes funding for 22,000 Border Patrol agents and 41,500 detention beds, an increase from 34,000.  However, without policy changes, the Border Patrol agents will likely be used to process and release illegal migrants and the detention beds will remain unused.  Indeed, that outcome is almost guaranteed as the bill does nothing to end the administration’s catch-and-release policies, build the border wall, or stop the abuse of asylum and parole laws. This means business as usual at the border.

Subsidizing Illegal Immigration

Instead of deterring illegal immigration, some of the largest line items in the bill effectively subsidize it. The appropriations bill provides $3.9 billion to the State Department to support foreign countries with migration and refugee assistance. The bill further provides funds to Latin American and Caribbean countries for economic assistance and to address “irregular migration,” consistent with the radical Los Angeles Declaration to “promot[e] principles of safe, orderly, humane, and regular migration.” The bill provides money to support development in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras and includes a broad-based exemption for funds going to humanitarian assistance from requirements to combat corruption, human rights abuses and drug trafficking.  That exemption goes so far as explicitly noting that receiving State Department funds does not require “demonstrable actions to secure national borders and stem mass migration.”

Other funding in the bill subsidizes illegal aliens once they are in the country. The bill allocates $650 million to the Shelter and Services Program (SSP), operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to provide grants to NGOs and sanctuary jurisdictions which facilitate illegal immigration. Another $117 million is provided to the Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP) within FEMA, which in the past has been abused to provide the same type of grants for shelter and services for illegal aliens.

The appropriations bill also provides $470 million to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program. Under the Biden Administration, ATD has been used to allow illegal aliens to check in via a mobile application rather than be subject to GPS monitoring. The Biden Administration and its “abolish ICE” allies have been working to eliminate detention altogether and instead rely on ATD to allow illegal aliens to freely move about the United States.

Expanding Legal Immigration

In addition to appropriating money, the funding bill expands two visa programs: the H-2B program and the Special Immigrant Visa program for Afghan nationals.

H-2B Program Expansion. The appropriations bill authorizes Secretary Mayorkas to increase the number of H-2B visas available in FY2025 beyond the 66,000 statutory cap.  It does so by allowing the Secretary to include thousands of workers who have participated in the program in the past, also known as “returning workers,” without counting those workers against the cap. Last year, Mayorkas used a similar exemption to increase the number of H-2B workers by 64,716 – nearly doubling what Congress intended – making a total of 130,716 visas available in FY2024. Additionally, the bill changes how wages for H-2B workers are determined, allowing employers to not only use private wage surveys but also to base the prevailing wage on the geographic area (rather than the national survey data, which is generally higher).

SIVs for Afghan Nationals. The bill likewise increases the total number of special immigrant visas (SIVs) for Afghan nationals without improving the vetting process.  It makes an additional 12,000 SIVs available for Afghans in FY2025 – plus family members who do not count against the cap – despite the fact that the United States has had no presence in Afghanistan since 2021 and the program is slated to expire in December 2024. Many of the Afghans seeking SIVs were illegally paroled into the U.S. without proper vetting after the fall of Kabul in August 2021. Adding to the security risk, in 2022, the State Department and DHS took the extraordinary step of waiving certain terrorism-related inadmissibility grounds under INA 212(a)(3)(B) for Afghan nationals, which may apply to SIV applicants.

Additional Provisions

Unaccompanied Alien Children. The bill makes no policy changes to prevent unaccompanied alien children (UACs) from being trafficked or released to unvetted sponsors.  The bill provides $5.4 billion in funding for the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to process UACs and to maintain an average of 16,000 beds for UACs in their care. It also provides additional funding that is triggered if the level of children needing housing surpasses the bed space provided. The bill, however, does nothing to force the agency to better screen sponsors or increase well-being checks after minors are released to sponsors. To the contrary, it handcuffs the government from going after sponsors by expressly prohibiting ICE from using information it may obtain on an alien sponsor for enforcement action, unless that sponsor has a charge or felony conviction for certain serious crimes.

Earmarks. Finally, the appropriations bill contains more than a hundred pages of earmarks, amounting to billions for pet projects. These earmarks allow Members of Congress to request federal funds to be allocated for specific projects in their home districts. For example, Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) were successful in including $500,000 for an immigrant workforce development program; Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) was able to secure $450,000 for childcare programs specifically for immigrant families; and, in Colorado, Democratic Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper got $93,000 for the International Rescue Committee to provide services to immigrants and refugees.

Other harmful provisions in the appropriations bill include:

  • $160 million in taxpayer funds for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which is typically funded by fees and those seeking benefits, to process asylum applications and work authorizations;
  • $97 million for migrant and seasonal farmworker programs instead of supporting American jobs;
  • $15 million for the Case Management Pilot Program (CMPP) to provide welfare benefits and aid illegal aliens facing deportation;
  • $10 million for the Citizenship and Integration Grant program, which has been routinely awarded to organizations involved in active litigation against DHS; and
  • 2-year funding for the Office of Detention Ombudsman.

Conclusion

Even after the bill was passed, lawmakers continued to debate its value. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) commended passage of the appropriations bill but also promised “a series of meaningful bills” to address the border crisis in the coming weeks. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) meanwhile took the first steps to remove him as Speaker, with House Freedom Caucus (HFC) Chair Bob Good (R-Va.) saying, “Frankly, I can’t defend the speaker.”  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer praised the bill’s passage, claiming that “It is good for the country that we have reached this bipartisan deal.”

Many Republicans are no doubt frustrated because Congress has had multiple opportunities to step in and end the Biden Border Crisis and has failed to act. Nearly a year ago, the House passed the FAIR-supported H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act, but the Senate has refused to take it up. In addition, Congress has now passed FY2024 funding, four short-term spending bills (continuing resolutions), and considered a foreign aid package, all without including any of the critical policy changes from H.R. 2. Now, Congress is providing funding to the agencies responsible for enforcing our immigration laws without ending the policies have that created the worst border crisis in history.

Under the Biden Administration, Americans across the country are forced to face the consequences of its disastrous border policies in their communities and daily lives. Rather than taking a stand and fighting for border security, however, Congress opted for the status quo.  Funding alone won’t solve the Biden Administration’s border crisis, and neither will weak bills that reinforce this administration’s open-borders agenda. In the coming weeks and months, FAIR will continue to advocate for meaningful steps to secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws.  It is far past time for Congress to act.

To learn more about H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act, and how you can get involved, visit FAIR’s activist toolkit here. To read more about actions that Biden can take to secure our borders today, click here.

AUTHOR

Joe Chatham joined FAIR in 2022, bringing significant congressional, campaign, and nonprofit experience to the organization. As part of FAIR’s influential government relations team, he helps manage Capitol Hill outreach and policy, advocating for a secure border and a just, equitable legal immigration system.

Before joining FAIR, Joe worked with a large range of organizations, from congressional offices and political campaigns, to intergovernmental organizations and think tanks. Most recently, he served as counsel to a member of congress, where he handled the representative’s immigration portfolio for the House Committee on the Judiciary.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan, a Master in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FAIR Take column is republished with permission. © COPYRIGHT 2024 FEDERATION FOR AMERICAN IMMIGRATION REFORM, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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Polls Predict Trump Besting Biden in Battleground States

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By Family Research Council

Former President Donald Trump is leading incumbent Joe Biden in key swing and battleground states, according to a bevy of recent polls. Four Emerson College/The Hill polls released this week show Trump besting Biden in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin. Last week, Emerson College/The Hill surveys showed Trump leading Biden in Pennsylvania and Georgia. According to this week’s polls, in a one-on-one contest, Trump is leading Biden 52% to 48% in Arizona and Wisconsin, 51% to 49% in Nevada, and an even narrower 50.3% to 49.7% in Michigan.

When the playing field is broadened to include third-party candidates, Trump still maintains his lead. In Arizona, Trump would lead with 46%, while Biden would garner 38%, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 6.5%, and Cornel West and Jill Stein less than 2% each, with just over 7% left undecided. In Wisconsin, Trump would lead with just over 43%, Biden would earn just shy of 40%, Kennedy 6%, West, and Stein less than 1% each, and nearly 10% of voters would remain undecided. In Nevada, Trump would lead with 41%, Biden would trail behind with 36%, Kennedy with nearly 9%, West with 2%, and Stein with just about 1%, with 11% of voters left undecided. And in Michigan, Trump would lead with 43%, Biden would take just over 40%, Kennedy less than 5%, West and Stein 1% each or less, and 10% of voters would remain undecided.

Emerson College/The Hill’s surveys last week showed Trump beating Biden 52% to 48% in a head-to-head match in both Pennsylvania and Georgia. When third-party candidates were included as options, Trump maintained his lead in Pennsylvania with 44%, Biden trailed behind at 40%, Kennedy at less than 6%, and West and Stein at 1.2% each, with over 8% of voters left undecided. In Georgia, Trump would keep his 44% top post, but Biden would fall to 37%, and Kennedy, West, and Stein would see almost no change in support, but 10% of voters would be left undecided.

Significantly, Biden’s approval rating is below 40% in all six battleground states polled, with a low of 32.5% in Nevada and a high of 38.7% in Michigan. Additionally, in each state Emerson College/The Hill polled this week — Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin — more than half of respondents said that Biden “does not deserve to be re-elected.”

Emerson College/The Hill’s national survey released earlier this month showed Trump and Biden practically tied at 45% each, with 10% of voters left undecided.

Over the past several months, polls have almost unanimously shown Trump beating Biden in a November matchup. A post-State of the Union poll from HarrisX showed the 45th president beating his successor by five points, with 13% undecided. When undecided voters were asked which way they lean, Trump still lead Biden by four points, 52% to 48%. Once again, when independent and third-party candidates were added to the mix, Trump maintained a strong lead at 41%, with Biden trailing six points behind at 35%, Kennedy at 12%, and West and Stein at about 1% each, with 10% of voters undecided. When undecideds were asked which way they lean, Trump still came out on top at 44%.

Last month’s Harvard CAPS/Harris poll also found that Biden’s popularity across the nation is suffering, with illegal immigration, rampant inflation, skyrocketing crime rates, and a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan ranking among his worst failures as president. Surveyed voters also said they would reelect Trump over Biden 48% to 43%, with 9% of voters undecided. When undecided voters were asked which way they lean, Trump bested Biden 53% to 47%.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

POST ON X:

TRUMP: “November 5th I believe will be the most important day in the history of our country.” pic.twitter.com/co4y2EHKCb

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) March 25, 2024

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Wisconsin Investigators: Illegals Flooding the Voter Rolls in Swing States thumbnail

Wisconsin Investigators: Illegals Flooding the Voter Rolls in Swing States

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By The Geller Report

You don’t think these totalitarian destroyers are going to go quietly, do you? They are power without accountability, merciless, wild criminals and in-your-face oath breakers without fear of the law or punishment.

They operate with impunity.

It’s going to get worse. Much worse.

Wisconsin Investigators Allege Illegal Aliens Are Flooding the Voter Rolls in Swing States

By:  Guest Contributor Jay Valentine at The Gateway Pundit. Mar. 24, 2024

Leftist election fraud happens every 2 year cycle – it just happens a little differently each time.

Story continues below advertisement

In 2024, the unique new fraud scheme – demonstrated in the data – at scale, in multiple states – now – is allegedly registering illegal aliens, flown in via the Biden Express, delivered to newly formed homeless addresses – then sending the migrants on their way – and collecting their ballots – and voting them.

This was discovered by the Wisconsin team – using INNOVATION.

This is happening at super scale – think hundreds of thousands already – it is completely invisible to all current relational technology. It is equally invisible to the RINO bunch telling you to vote early, ballot harvest and do not question elections.

The only difference is in 2024, the Wisconsin team found it early – and has a successful, tried and proven strategy to fight it.

Here’s the scam.

Religious NGO’s (non-governmental orgs) like Catholic, Lutheran and other types of do-gooders collaborate with the Biden administration to take those migrants – the ones who arrive by plane – into the heartland – and then allegedly register them.

The details are fascinating. These NGOs set up addresses that seem like homeless shelters – but aren’t – they are migrant ballot registration collection points. Some are just offices in crappy strip malls.

We know because we drill into the actual address photos. Watch our videos on Omega4America.com.

The migrants show up, get a phone, gift cards worth several grand, get registered to vote.

The details are fascinating.

These NGOs set up addresses that seem like homeless shelters – but aren’t – they are migrant ballot registration collection points. Some are just offices in crappy strip malls.

We know because we drill into the actual address photos. Watch our videos on Omega4America.com.

The migrants show up, get a phone, gift cards worth several grand, get registered to vote.
In Wisconsin, for instance, there is a Form EL-131.

Form EL-131 says if you are homeless, check the box. You can register to vote with no supporting ID.

For you election deniers, and Republican types – read this slowly so you can comprehend this madness.

In a swing state, one of 7 that will determine the next leader of the free world – today – using Form EL-131, anyone with a heartbeat can register to vote with no ID, as long as they check the box that says “homeless.”

Or someone can do it for them! What can go wrong?

This is what the Republican Party allowed to happen – bending over and taking it – with literally zero push back.

Continue reading

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLE: Declaration of Election Fraud in Arizona

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Moscow jihad murderers screamed ‘Allahu akbar,’ death toll now 137, Russia says U.S. shared no ‘concrete information’ thumbnail

Moscow jihad murderers screamed ‘Allahu akbar,’ death toll now 137, Russia says U.S. shared no ‘concrete information’

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By Judicial Watch

The rumors are flying on X: the Jews did it, the Americans did it, etc. It seems unlikely that any of that is true, however.

Why would the Americans, who support Ukraine, mount an attack that Russia is almost certain to accuse the Ukrainians of masterminding or aiding? This attack is likely only to intensify Russia’s war against Ukraine, and the U.S. supports Ukraine, so as evil and feckless as the Biden regime is, it seems unlikely that it is behind it.

As for the Israelis, the rumor mongers’ reasoning is that this will enable people to see that jihadis really are evil. That also, however, is unlikely. Neither Israel nor the U.S. acknowledges the reality of Islamic jihad. Few see the Israeli/”Palestinian” conflict as a jihad, although that is what it is. And so few are likely to see any connection between this attack and Hamas’ jihad against Israel.

“Allahu Akbar” is what the terrorists shouted after killing innocent Russians in Moscow. ISIS is getting stronger and stronger again. Today Moscow tomorrow Amsterdam , London, Berlin or Paris unless we stop them. #MoscowAttack pic.twitter.com/gzfdFxaO31

— Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) March 24, 2024

Moscow terror attack: 4 gunmen arrested, death toll rises to 137

by Patrick Reevell and Tanya Stukalova, ABC News, March 24, 2024:

The death toll in the terror attack at Moscow’s Crocus City Hall has risen to 137 people, including three children, Russia’s Investigative Committee said Sunday, as the search operation continues for bodies under the rubble.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was informed Saturday that four suspected gunmen responsible for the attack were arrested near Russia’s western border with Ukraine, Russian news agencies reported.

Seven others have been detained and the search for other accomplices is ongoing, the state news outlets reported.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the deadly attack Friday night, in which gunmen opened fire on concertgoers at one of Moscow’s largest entertainment complexes. The attackers then set the complex on fire….

The death toll as a result of the terrorist attack has increased to 137, Russian investigators said Sunday, adding that three of the victims are children….

Investigators said more than 500 rounds of ammunition and 28 magazines, as well as two Kalashnikov assault rifles, were found at the scene….

“The terrorists also used flammable liquid to set fire to the premises of the concert hall, where there were spectators, including the wounded,” the statement said….

Putin did not acknowledge the ISIS claim for the attack, saying Russia was still investigating. But he sought to suggest that Ukraine could bear some responsibility, saying the suspected attackers had been detained while trying to cross the border to Ukraine and claiming they may have received some help from there.

“According to the preliminary data, they had a crossing of the border prepared from the Ukrainian side,” Putin said.

Ukrainian officials vehemently denied any involvement and warned that the Kremlin would try to exploit the attack by falsely blaming Ukraine to drum up greater support for its war….

The U.S. said it shared intelligence with Russia that warned that ISIS was preparing similar attacks on concerts in Moscow just two weeks ago. A U.S. State Department official said Saturday that the U.S. government had shared information on a possible attack with Russian authorities in accordance with its longstanding “duty to warn” policy….

Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said the U.S. didn’t pass along any “concrete information” prior to the attack….

Continue reading.

ROBERT SPENCER

RELATED ARTICLES:

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The UN’s Ayisha Siddiqa: Whites are to Blame for Everything

‘We warned you not to convert Muslims to Christianity, but you failed to heed. This has cost your life.’

Pro-Palestinian Nurses in England Mistreat a Nine-Year-Old Jewish Patient

Harris won’t rule out ‘consequences’ if Israel enters Rafah

The Spectacular Raid on Hamas Combatants Inside Al-Shifa Hospital

POST ON X:

One of the apprehended terrorists responsible for the attack in Moscow had to be wheeled into court with a wheelchair. He was fine when they caught him. pic.twitter.com/5fQ7FPhaO6

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) March 24, 2024

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Bigger Meaning of Schumer’s Speech in a Nutshell thumbnail

The Bigger Meaning of Schumer’s Speech in a Nutshell

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By Marvin A. Treiger

Senator Schumer’s speech during which he called for “regime change” in the government of a democratic ally on the floor of the Senate was unprecedented in American history. Let that sink in.

It reflects a new level of anti-democratic big power arrogance designed to achieve for Hamas and the Jihadists the victory they cannot achieve on the ground. He dares to do this because he thinks he can get away with it. Biden approved the speech the following day.

Behind him rests the entire U.S. apparatus of influence and subversion that has been mobilized against and inside Israel as well. Threats of cutting off aid, activating sympathetic contacts in the retired IDF ranks, government and the media and even seeking to mobilize mass demonstrations against the standing government of Netanyahu.

Schumer knows that new elections in the middle of a war would bog Israel down for six months and guarantee their defeat. He omits the overwhelming support Israelis have for eliminating Hamas on the one hand and for not creating a sovereign Palestinian state led by the corrupt and semi-Jihadist Palestinian Authority on the other.

He denies Bibi’s increasing popularity and solid popular support for finishing the job against Hamas. Schumer’s speech was based upon a tissue of lies and calumnies against the Israeli polity using Bibi as a cipher.

Schumer, “our” leader is the one who threatened that our own Supreme Court would “reap the whirlwind” for its Constitutionally inclined decisions. Properly understood, this  actually reflects the growing desperation of our governing elites in the face of populist nationalism in America, in Israel, and indeed, around the world.

Schumer’s speech reflects that desperation.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Behind it all is the pro-Iran policy initiated by Obama beginning in 2008 after his election. The recent release of ten billion in funds to Iran at this time cannot be understood in any other way. They may now continue to freely finance their proxy wars.

U.S timidity in the face of Iran’s direct attacks on us through its proxies especially by the Iraqi Shias and  the Houthis, with Hamas, Hezbollah and elements of the security forces of the PA taking on Israel, is not primarily fear of a regional war. It is a reflection of a Mullah/Democratic Party alliance to establish a new middle east while avoiding a regional war.

Iran is the world’s third largest potential supplier of oil and the fourth largest of gas. The deal from the beginning was this: certain connected companies get access to your resources and eventually you get to have nuclear weapons.

The biggest problem with this scenario is that the Jihadis have their own agenda as do other forces in the region. Shia Islam seeks to triumph over Sunni Islam by obliterating Israel as proof they are the true Islam. Acquiring the bomb assures their hegemony over the region as a springboard for their larger agendas.

So, Iran takes what we give them and attacks us anyway. Hamas, pretends to negotiate to “save themselves” as the U.S. argues it must, but keeps making ludicrous demands that Israel has no choice but to turn down. Watch negotiations in Qatar for  the outcome.

Desperate, Schumer finds himself as a shill for Iran and the Jihadis by seeking to overthrow the only force in Israel capable of insuring that nation’s survival.

All this is going on as our own elections heat up with Biden trailing in key swing states. A Trump victory is seen as a fatal blow to this whole mid-east project. Internationally, Trump would resume creating a functional Arab/Israeli rapprochement bringing peace to the region.

And, much worse for the ruling elite, a MAGA victory would break up the governmental, military censorship apparatus that is key to manipulating the public. There would be hell to pay and our “overseers” know it.

The violation of democratic norms through lawfare, etc., has been so egregious that they have become so fearful of a Trump victory that for them this is an existential crisis.

What do you do when you believe you are facing an existential crisis? You pull out all the stops and resolve to prevail no matter what. Of course, you hope you won’t have to but you get nervous if too many signs suggest your loss starts to seem likely.

We seem to be moving towards such an inflection point  All the signs are there. Strap yourselves in.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Young People Aren’t Nearly Angry Enough About Government Debt thumbnail

Young People Aren’t Nearly Angry Enough About Government Debt

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By Laura Williams

Young people sometimes seem to wake up in the morning in search of something to be outraged about. We are among the wealthiest and most educated humans in history. But we’re increasingly convinced that we’re worse off than our parents were, that the planet is in crisis, and that it’s probably not worth having kids.

I’ll generalize here about my own cohort (people born after 1981 but before 2010), commonly referred to as Millennials and Gen Z, as that shorthand corresponds to survey and demographic data. Millennials and Gen Z have valid economic complaints, and the conditions of our young adulthood perceptibly weakened traditional bridges to economic independence. We graduated with record amounts of student debt after President Obama nationalized that lending. Housing prices doubled during our household formation years due to zoning impediments and chronic underbuilding. Young Americans say economic issues are important to us, and candidates are courting our votes by promising student debt relief and cheaper housing (which they will never be able to deliver).

Young people, in our idealism and our rational ignorance of the actual appropriations process, typically support more government intervention, more spending programs, and more of every other burden that has landed us in such untenable economic circumstances to begin with. Perhaps not coincidentally, young people who’ve spent the most years in the increasingly partisan bubble of higher education are also the most likely to favor expanded government programs as a “solution” to those complaints.

It’s Your Debt, Boomer

What most young people don’t yet understand is that we are sacrificing our young adulthood and our financial security to pay for debts run up by Baby Boomers. Part of every Millennial and Gen-Z paycheck is payable to people the same age as the members of Congress currently milking this system and miring us further in debt.

Our government spends more than it can extract from taxpayers. Social Security, which represents 20 percent of government spending, has run an annual deficit for 15 years. Last year Social Security alone overspent by $22.1 billion. To keep sending out checks to retirees, Social Security goes begging to the Treasury Department, and the Treasury borrows from the public by issuing bonds. Bonds allow investors (who are often also taxpayers) to pay for some retirees’ benefits now, and be paid back later. But investors only volunteer to lend Social Security the money it needs to cover its bills because the (younger) taxpayers will eventually repay the debt — with interest.

In other words, both Social Security and Medicare, along with various smaller federal entitlement programs, together comprising almost half of the federal budget, have been operating for a decade on the principle of “give us the money now, and stick the next generation with the check.” We saddle future generations with debt for present-day consumption.

The second largest item in the budget after Social Security is interest on the national debt — largely on Social Security and other entitlements that have already been spent. These mandatory benefits now consume three quarters of the federal budget: even Congress is not answerable for these programs. We never had the chance for our votes to impact that spending (not that older generations were much better represented) and it’s unclear if we ever will.

Young Americans probably don’t think much about the budget deficit (each year’s overspending) or the national debt (many years’ deficits put together, plus interest) much at all. And why should we? For our entire political memory, the federal government, as well as most of our state governments, have been steadily piling “public” debt upon our individual and collective heads. That’s just how it is. We are the frogs trying to make our way in the watery world as the temperature ticks imperceptibly higher. We have been swimming in debt forever, unaware that we’re being economically boiled alive.

Millennials have somewhat modest non-mortgage debt of around $27,000 (some self-reports say twice that much), including car notes, student loans, and credit cards. But we each owe more than $100,000 as a share of the national debt. And we don’t even know it.

When Millennials finally do have babies (and we are!) that infant born in 2024 will enter the world with a newly minted Social Security Number and $78,089 credit card bill for Granddad’s heart surgery and the interest on a benefit check that was mailed when her parents were in middle school.

Headlines and comments sections love to sneer at “snowflakes” who’ve just hit the “real world,” and can’t figure out how to make ends meet, but the kids are onto something. A full 15 percent of our earnings are confiscated to pay into retirement and healthcare programs that will be insolvent by the time we’re old enough to enjoy them. The Federal Reserve and government debt are eating the economy. The same interest rates that are pushing mortgages out of reach are driving up the cost of interest to maintain the debt going forward. As we learn to save and invest, our dollars are slowly devalued. We’re right to feel trapped.

Sure, if we’re alive and own a smartphone, we’re among the one percent of the wealthiest humans who’ve ever lived. Older generations could argue (persuasively!) that we have no idea what “poverty” is anymore. But with the state of government spending and debt…we are likely to find out.

Despite being richer than Rockefeller, Millennials are right to say that the previous ways of building income security have been pushed out of reach. Our earning years are subsidizing not our own economic coming-of-age, but bank bailouts, wars abroad, and retirement and medical benefits for people who navigated a less-challenging wealth-building landscape.

Redistribution goes both ways. Boomers are expected to pass on tens of trillions in unprecedented wealth to their children (if it isn’t eaten up by medical costs, despite heavy federal subsidies) and older generations’ financial support of the younger has had palpable lifting effects. Half of college costs are paid by families, and the trope of young people moving back home is only possible if mom and dad have the spare room and groceries to make that feasible.

Government “help” during COVID-19 resulted in the worst inflation in 40 years, as the federal government spent $42,000 per citizen on “stimulus” efforts, right around a Millennial’s average salary at that time. An absurd amount of fraud was perpetrated in the stimulus to save an economy from the lockdown that nearly ruined it. Trillions in earmarked goodies were rubber stamped, carelessly added to young people’s growing bill. Government lenders deliberately removed fraud controls, fearing they couldn’t hand out $800 billion in young people’s future wages away fast enough. Important lessons were taught by those programs. The importance of self-sufficiency and the dignity of hard work weren’t top of the list.

Boomer Benefits are Stagnating Hiring, Wages, and Investment for Young People

Even if our workplace engagement suffered under government distortions, Millennials continue to work more hours than other generations and invest in side hustles and self employment at higher rates. Working hard and winning higher wages almost doesn’t matter, though, when our purchasing power is eaten from the other side. Buying power has dropped 20 percent in just five years. Life is $11,400/year more expensive than it was two years ago and deficit spending is the reason why.

We’re having trouble getting hired for what we’re worth, because it costs employers 30 percent more than just our wages to employ us. The federal tax code both requires and incentivizes our employers to transfer a bunch of what we earned directly to insurance companies and those same Boomer-busted federal benefits, via tax-deductible benefits and payroll taxes. And the regulatory compliance costs of ravenous bureaucratic state. The price paid by each employer to keep each employee continues to rise — but Congress says your boss has to give most of the increase to someone other than you.

Federal spending programs that many people consider good government, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and health insurance for children (CHIP) aren’t a small amount of the federal budget. Government spends on these programs because people support and demand them, and because cutting those benefits would be a re-election death sentence. That’s why they call cutting Social Security the “third rail of politics.” If you touch those benefits, you die. Congress is held hostage by Baby Boomers who are running up the bill with no sign of slowing down.

Young people generally support Social Security and the public health insurance programs, even though a 2021 poll by Nationwide Financial found 47 percent of Millennials agree with the statement “I will not get a dime of the Social Security benefits I have earned.”

In the same survey, Millennials were the most likely of any generation to believe that Social Security benefits should be enough to live on as a sole income, and guessed the retirement age was 52 (it’s 67 for anyone born after 1959 — and that’s likely to rise). Young people are the most likely to see government guarantees as a valid way to live — even though we seem to understand that those promises aren’t guarantees at all.

Healthcare costs tied to an aging population and wonderful-but-expensive growth in medical technologies and medications will balloon over the next few years, and so will the deficits in Boomer benefit programs. Newly developed obesity drugs alone are expected to add $13.6 billion to Medicare spending. By 2030, every single Baby Boomer will be 65, eligible for publicly funded healthcare.

The first Millennial will be eligible to claim Medicare (assuming the program exists and the qualifying age is still 65, both of which are improbable) in 2046. As it happens, that’s also the year that the Boomer benefits programs (which will then be bloated with Gen Xers) and the interest payments we’re incurring to provide those benefits now, are projected to consume 100 percent of federal tax revenue.

Government spending is being transferred to bureaucrats and then to the beneficiaries of government spending who are, in some sense, your diabetic grandma who needs a Medicare-paid dialysis treatment, but in a much more immediate sense, are the insurance companies, pharma giants, and hospital corporations who wrote the healthcare legislation. Some percentage of every college graduate’s paycheck buys bullets that get fired at nothing and inflating the private investment portfolios of government contractors, with dubious, wasteful outcomes from the prison-industrial complex to the perpetual war machine.

No bank or nation in the world can lend the kind of money the American government needs to borrow to fulfill its obligations to citizens. Someone will have to bite the bullet. Even some of the co-authors of the current disaster are wrestling with the truth.

Forget avocado toast and streaming subscriptions. We’re already sensing it, but we haven’t yet seen it. Young people are not well-informed, and often actively misled, about what’s rotten in this economic system. But we are seeing the consequences on store shelves and mortgage contracts and we can sense disaster is coming. We’re about to get stuck with the bill.

*****

This article was published by AIER, American Institute For Economic Research, and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Biden’s New Rule on Auto Emissions Will Accelerate Death Spiral for Auto Manufacturers thumbnail

Biden’s New Rule on Auto Emissions Will Accelerate Death Spiral for Auto Manufacturers

/in , , , , , /by

By Ronald Stein

For one of the wealthier countries on this planet, America, with 330 million that represents about 4% of the world’s 8 billion on this planet, President Biden is speeding ahead with EV mandates to ditch most new gas cars by 2030.

Biden may not be cognizant that 80 percent of the 8 billion on this planet earning less than $10 a day, which is more than 6 billion on this earth, may never be able to enjoy the materialistic living styles of those in wealthier countries, nor ever own an automobile.

In America, the elites have bought EV’s, and the elites may continue to buy EV’s, BUT we’re quickly running out of elites!

  • The average debt in America is almost $60,000 across credit cards, mortgages, auto loans, and student loans.
  • The common folk need a workhorse vehicle, not just a second car toy that sits in the garage to be used on short ventures!
  • The current EV ownership profiles are reflected in the oligarchic elite that are highly educated, highly compensated, multi-car families, with low mileage requirements for the families second car.
  • Current EV owner profiles are dramatically different from most vehicle owners as they are single-car owners, not as highly educated, nor as highly compensated, and have higher mileage requirements for their workhorse vehicle.

Mandating a change to EV ownership and further austerity onto those that can least afford, the Nation and the other 96% on this planet may face a rebellion from those that need transportation.

Biden seems to be oblivious to the fact that there are more than 1.4 billion vehicles in the world, and almost 300 million trucks in the world, there’s been a mandate movement to have EV’s replace ICE vehicles to reduce emissions from the vehicular transportation sector.

Well, to-date, the mandate to EV’s has been a failure as we’re running short of elites that are buying them, and the auto manufacturers are starting to absorb the financial hits !

The previous worldwide gasoline usage peak was in 2019 before the Pandemic.

  • Today, there are 30 million EVs on the world’s roads that are owned by the elites that can afford them, and are mainly 2nd vehicles parked in the garage, or with low mileage usage, vs the high mileage workhorse vehicles that are internal combustion engines.
  • Today, there are also hundreds of millions of workers that now work virtually since the Pandemic and thus do not “drive” to work as often.

Well, even with those 30 million EV’s and millions of workers not driving as much, gasoline usage continues to rise. The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that global gasoline consumption in 2023 blew past the pre-lockdown 2019 peak !

By re-enforcing the mandates to EV’s, Biden is forcing automobile manufacturers into a death spiral, as most of the 8 billion on this planet will never be able to afford an EV !

*****

This article was published by The Heartland Institute and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Victory: Landmark Decision on Voter ID! Time to Take Action and Demand Voter IDs in Every State of the Union! thumbnail

Victory: Landmark Decision on Voter ID! Time to Take Action and Demand Voter IDs in Every State of the Union!

/in , , , , /by

By ACT For America!

In a significant win for election integrity, a federal judge has upheld Arizona’s crucial election integrity laws, dismissing unfounded challenges from the Biden DOJ and leftist groups.

This ruling should empower all 50 states to now pass Voter ID laws in time to impact our 2024 election!

At the heart of this victory is HB2492, championed by State Rep. Jake Hoffman, which mandates proof of U.S. citizenship to register for any election. This landmark legislation, signed into law by former Governor Doug Ducey, ensures that only eligible citizens participate in Arizona’s democratic process, guarding against voter fraud and bolstering public trust in our elections.

Watch Must-See Video Warning America on One-Party Takeover Plot.

WATCH: The Democrat Open Borders Plan to Entrench Single-Party Rule | Explained in Under Two Minutes

Moreover, HB2243, another vital component of Arizona’s election integrity efforts, focuses on purging voter rolls of individuals who are no longer eligible to vote in the state. This measure aims to maintain accurate and up-to-date voter registration records, further strengthening the integrity of Arizona’s electoral system.

Despite challenges and claims of discrimination from opponents, District Judge Susan Bolton aptly recognized the paramount importance of preserving the integrity of Arizona’s elections. Her ruling affirms that the state’s interest in preventing non-citizens from voting and ensuring public confidence in the electoral process outweighs any minimal burden placed on voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship.

This ruling marks a significant victory for election integrity advocates and underscores Arizona’s commitment to upholding the rule of law in its electoral practices. By safeguarding the integrity of our elections, Arizona sets a standard for transparency, fairness, and accountability in democratic governance.

Let’s celebrate this triumph for democracy and remain steadfast in our efforts to preserve the sanctity of the ballot box!

TAKE ACTION: Voter ID in Every State of the Union

RELATED ARTICLE: The Supreme Court Deals A New Blow To Voting Rights, Upholding Arizona Restrictions

EDITORS NOTE: This ACT! for America column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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