Pres. Biden’s open-border policies – not climate change – are to blame for the record illegal immigration into the U.S., Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday, responding to DHS Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas’ claim that climate change is a “root cause” of illegal immigration.
Sec. Mayorkas made the claim earlier in the day during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” while attacking Gov. Abbott for sending some of the illegal aliens who’ve broken into his state to Democrat-run, self-proclaimed “sanctuary cities” that claim to want them.
"The only climate that's changed is the refusal to enforce the immigration laws of the United States,” Gov. Abbott told Fox News Channel Host Sean Hannity. “You saw what happened four years ago when we had the lowest illegal immigration in 40 years,” Abbott added, citing border security policies instituted by former Pres. Donald Trump - which Pres. Biden immediately began reversing on his first day in office.
Biden should focus on securing the border and stop taking legal action against Texas’ efforts to secure its border, the governor wrote in a social media post:
“Mayorkas blames climate change for illegal immigration, not Joe Biden's open border policies. Biden is now suing Texas AGAIN for stepping up to stop illegal immigration. Time for the Biden Administration to stop the lawsuits and start to enforce federal immigration laws.”
“Climate change? Mayorkas is pathetic. The REAL reason illegal immigration records are being set is because Biden refuses to enforce immigration laws,” wrote in another post , vowing that Biden won't stop him from keeping Texans safe:
“We will send more buses and planes. We will continue building the razor wire walls that Biden wants to tear down.”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Republicans must focus on the American family, not President Joe Biden’s family.
Jean-Pierre said, “It is so unfortunate that Republicans in Congress want to focus on the president’s family instead of the American family. We want to work with them in a bipartisan way to get things done. We just talked about, leading to your question, we talked about a list of things that I discussed, that we discussed, that we really need to work on for the American family.”
She continued, “The president, first day in his administration, in a couple weeks we’ll hit three years since the president has been in the administration, the first thing that he put forward was a comprehensive immigration law. That’s what he put forward to Congress. That’s because he believed that our system was broken and that it had been broken for decades and wanted to take that seriously.”
Jean-Pierre added, “But we need Republicans in Congress to work with us on that. We appreciate the negotiations that are currently happening in the Senate. It is headed in the right direction. We want to come up with a bipartisan agreement. But we saw what the House passed ending of last year. They wanted to take away law enforcement folks who are at the border, trying to protect our border. So, that’s not what we want to see. We want to figure out how we work together. I just talked about the unity agenda. There’s a lot of ways that we can work with Congress. Instead of them going after the president’s family, they should really, truly, truly focus on the American family.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
On Friday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Last Call,” CNBC Contributor and former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) stated that even with many people working multiple jobs, “they don’t feel financially secure,” and “the mistake that the Biden campaign is making is telling everybody, smile, it’s great.” And they “haven’t really gotten out there to explain their plan on how to make families prosperous again.”
Heitkamp said, “When you think about jobs, think about the fact that a lot of people have jobs, they know they can get a job, and a lot of them are working two jobs. The question is, are they making enough to make ends meet? And what they’re basically telling us, through these numbers, is, they don’t feel financially secure, even though they feel secure in employment. And so, it’s the cost of living that we have to focus on. Yes, it is coming down. But the misery index is the piece. Everybody wants to measure GDP and jobs. Guess what? What people look at is, what’s in your checking account at the end of the month or at the end of the week.”
Later, she added, “I think that the mistake that the Biden campaign is making is telling everybody, smile, it’s great. … People don’t feel like the economy is good. And it doesn’t matter what those macro numbers are. You’ve got to look at — as my friend Barbara Mikulski used to say — the macaroni and cheese numbers, not just the macro numbers. And I think they haven’t paid enough attention to the macaroni and cheese issues and haven’t really gotten out there to explain their plan on how to make families prosperous again.”
Heitkamp added that if the mac and cheese numbers don’t change between now and the election, “you’ve got to start by talking about where we came from after the pandemic, be honest about it. But also, I think people just want to be heard and they want to know that people hear their complaint, they know what they’re talking about when they say, I can’t make ends meet. And…insurance costs, those are also adding to this. And so, let’s take a look at all the things that you can control and then tell people you’re working on those things that will make the economy better and hopefully wages higher and will offer an opportunity to actually have the American Dream.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
A report by the Department of Homeland Security says the agency has released 2.3 million migrants into the United States up to September 2023.
However, the report hides the entry or stay of at least three million additional illegal migrants via various other routes during President Joe Biden’s three years.
Overall, the multiple routes delivered an increase of at least five million illegal migrants — or roughly one migrant for every two American infants born during Biden’s presidency.
The report was leaked and then posted late Saturday by the Washington Post , whose editors picked a stark headline, “U.S. released more than 2.3 million migrants at border since 2021, data show.”
That headline — although understated — is an extraordinarily dramatic description of the huge migrant numbers admitted by Biden’s pro-migration border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas.
It is also shocking because the true numbers have been successfully hidden by the established media from ordinary Americans for many years.
The report says the 2023 inflow includes 370,191 people allowed in via the “parole” loophole, 909,450 people allowed while officials begin multi-year deportation proceedings, and 118,100 child migrants who are sheltered by the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Post ‘s article about the DHS report — “Immigration Enforcement and Legal Processes Monthly Tables ” — revealed long-secret deportation numbers: “The DHS data … show more than 4 million border-crossers have been expelled to Mexico, returned to home countries or otherwise removed from the United States over the past three years.”
But the Post ‘s reporters also showed the headline claim of 2.3 million admitted migrants is understated because millions of additional migrants sneaked in via other routes and times.
For example, in the 17th paragraph of their article, they noted:
The 2.3 million releases by CBP do not include the roughly 365,000 unaccompanied minors encountered by the agency since 2021 who were transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services.
The vast majority of the “unaccompanied minors ” are older teenagers seeking jobs in the United States, often in labor-trafficking networks that pay for their migration through Mayorkas’ border.
In the 27th and last paragraph, the Pos t’s reporters noted:
The report does not include estimates for the number of border-crossers who were detected by CBP but not taken into custody, a category the agency refers to as “gotaways.” CBP detected about 600,000 gotaways in 2022 and 389,000 in 2021, according to a May 2023 report by DHS’s Office of Inspector General.
Those two inflows — teenage workers and 2021-2023 “gotaways ” — added roughly 2 million migrants to the official count of 2.3 million, yielding a total of roughly 4.3 million.
The DHS report only includes data up to September 2023. Since then, roughly 900,000 additional migrants have crossed the U.S. border in October, November, and December. If half were deported, then an additional 450,000 migrants should be added to the inflow numbers.
However, the official report — and the Washington Post article — also ignored Mayorkas’ decision to minimize deportations from the country’s interior, and his massive increase in “overstay” legal visitors who stay in the United States when their visas expire.
For example, under Trump, DHS deported roughly 500,000 illegals in 2018 and 2019, according to federal data. But Mayorkas has only deported about 250,000 people in three years — leaving roughly 500,000 additional migrants in the United States.
RELATED: Houston Driver Smuggling Illegal Immigrants Attempts to Run Away from Texas DPS, FAILS
Texas Department of Public Safety
Government officials do not closely track the number of illegals who overstay their visas to take U.S. jobs. But there is much evidence that many foreigners — especially Indians — arrive legally carrying B-1/B-2 visitor visas or F-1 student visas while intending to illegally work in jobs that would otherwise go to better-paid Americans.
In June 2023, Mayorkas’ DHS released its annual visa overstay report for Fiscal Year 2022, revealing that an estimated 795,000 visitors remained long after their visas expired. The number is up by 313,000 from the 482,000 overstays in 2015 .
The overstay number does not include the B-1/B-2 visitors who illegally work but return home before their visa expires.
Mayorkas’ s 500,000 not-deported migrants and his additional 313,000 overstays were not mentioned in the new report. But if those numbers are added, then Mayorkas’s stock of new illegal migrants jumps from 4.3 million to 5 million.
Moreover, Mayorkas and the Department of State have tried to raise the legal inflow of foreign contract workers via the H-1B, L-1, J-1, TN, H4EAD, F-1/OPT, H-2A , and H-2B programs. Those visa worker programs keep a population of roughly 500,000 migrants in agricultural and blue-collar jobs — and keep roughly 1.5 million foreign graduates in U.S. white-collar jobs that would otherwise go to better-paid American professionals.
Legal immigration inflows add another 1 million migrants each year.
The administration’s deliberate decision to sneak mass illegal migration into Americans’ society has smashed public support for migration — and is giving former President Donald Trump a huge boost in his 2024 race.
A YouGov poll conducted from December 31 to January 2, for example, showed that 54 percent of U.S. adults believe the migration issue is “very important.”
The DHS report is difficult to read, partly because the data is hidden in database tabs rather than in conventional charts or columns.
RELATED: OPERATION LONESTAR FOOTAGE Shows Texas DPS Clearing Brush and Erecting Barbed-Wire to Deter Illegals
Texas Department of Public Safety / YouTube
But the report includes many additional revelations. In 2019, for example, Trump’s border officers accepted 12,000 irregular arrivals of illegals at airports. But Biden’s airport inflow spiked to 350,000 in 2023.
Many Mexicans are trying to migrate into the United States, despite Mexico’s elections and economic growth. The report cites the arrival of 2.1 million Mexican migrants at U.S. borders in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
The vast majority were sent home in 2021 and 2022. But more than 130,000 Mexicans were allowed to enter the United States in 2023 as Mayorkas negotiated migration-management deals with Mexico.
Extraction Migration
Biden has imported or accepted roughly 5 million illegal migrants for economic purposes in less than three years.
That Extraction Migration economic strategy has helped investors by inflating real estate prices and reducing Americans’ wages .
That flood is urged and welcomed by business groups because it cuts Americans’ blue-collar wages and white-collar salaries . It also reduces marketplace pressure to invest in productivity-boosting technology , heartland states , and overseas markets . and it reduces economic pressure on the federal government to deal with the drug and “Deaths of Despair” crises.
Biden’s easy-migration policies are deliberately adding the foreigners’ problems to the lengthening list of Americans’ problems — homelessness , low wages , a shrinking middle class , slowing innovation , declining blue-collar life expectancy , spreading poverty , the rising death toll from drugs , and the spreading alienation among young people.
So handing Joe $14 billion to secure the border, is in fact handing him $14 billion to open the border. That's seven times what President Trump asked for for the construction of a border wall, which actually would have secured the border
Funny how it costs more to open a border than build a wall
Back in the old days, when President Trump sought a piddly couple of billion to build a border wall, Democrats bellowed that it was too costly and America couldn't afford it.
My, my, how things have changed.
These days we learn that if shutting down an open border with a wall is costly, prising open a border wider for all illegal comers is even more costly, and I'm not talking about the lifetime of taxpayer-paid "services" illegal border crossers are going to be requiring once they get in.
Right now, Joe Biden is calling for $14 billion to "protect" the border, and blaming the GOP-controlled Congress for not giving it to him.
Congress has resisted all right, and Byron York has pointed out an interesting reason for that which hasn't gotten much attention:
Joe Biden has already been spending a lot of money on so-called border control.
According to York, in a Washington Examiner column:
In fiscal 2021, according to the report , Congress appropriated $4.869 billion for Border Patrol operations and southwest border surge funding. In fiscal 2022, that figure grew to $6.235 billion. In fiscal 2023, it grew to $7.153 billion. Altogether, that is a 47% increase in funding for the border during the Biden years. During that same time, the report notes, monthly encounters with illegal crossers at the border have grown from 163,043 in fiscal 2021 to 230,549 in fiscal 2022 to 266,762 in fiscal 2023. That is a 63% increase. And so far, in fiscal 2024, the number has jumped again, to 308,933.
So they've handed Biden billions after billions, raising the Border Patrol's budget by 47% in Biden's three years, but somehow ended up with a 63% increase in illegal border crossings through 2022 and probably more in 2023. More money, more illegal crossings, and it's not a one-to-one-ratio, it's exponentially higher on the migrant side the more cash that gets shoveled in.
We've seen this dynamic elsewhere -- the more money that gets spent on schools, the lower their outcomes in test scores and literacy. We've also seen that the more money that gets spent on homeless programs, the more homeless a city has. Economist Thomas Sowell has described that as having all the poverty you'd like to pay for, and this border crisis spending would definitely would go into that category.
After all, if Joe Biden had wanted to invest his own money on something with this kind of a return, he'd have a outperforming portfolio.
More money equals more illegal border crossings, basically because Joe spends that money on speedier migrant "processing," the way opening more checkout lines in a supermarket contributes to higher turnover.
York attributes it to the baseline of the problem which is policy:
The current catastrophe resulted from one act: Upon taking office, Biden signaled to the world that if you enter the United States illegally, you will be allowed to stay. Since then, millions have come — lowest estimate 6 million, and perhaps many more than that — and only a small portion has been turned away. That has created an enormous magnet to draw immigrants, nearly all of whom do not have a legitimate claim of asylum. It is a problem entirely of Biden's creation.
Biden blames much of the influx on poverty. Yes, lots of people in the poorer parts of the world would like to come to the U.S. for more money and a better life. But that has been true for a long time. What changed in January 2021 was that Biden opened the door — come, and you can stay.
Migrant satisfaction comes first. Actual border security contradicts the first purpose, so no border security.
So handing Joe $14 billion to secure the border, is in fact handing him $14 billion to open the border. That's seven times what President Trump asked for for the construction of a border wall, which actually would have secured the border
Is it too much to say that giving Joe Biden twice the money for border contol which is what he is asking for, might just double or triple the illegal border crossings now seen going on in the states?
It doesn't seem as though there could be any other outcome.
York notes that Republicans are onto this, which is a good thing.
Now, Johnson and his fellow House Republicans have prepared a report on how much money has already been spent on the border during the Biden years. The spending has been going up, up, up, and it just brings more illegal border crossers. "Congress has appropriated more funds, always beyond President Biden's budget requests, and seen record crossings at the border," the report says.
Now it's time for Republicans to get the word out about this disastrous spending to the voters.
Image: Bruce de Torres, via Flickr // public domain
Invasion Inversion: Turning America Upside-Down
Behold: It’s the leprechaun-logistics theory of magic migration that tells us hordes of clean, fed, and comfortably shod invading migrants miraculously and spontaneously appear at the America end of their personal rainbows, where they demand pots of U.S. taxpayer gold.
But with no backpacks to carry water, energy snacks, or even spare socks for their journey? Shoot, our children don’t go off to neighborhood elementary schools without backpacks full of supplies. So how is it these folks walk the 1,300-mile south-to-north expanse of Mexico, not to mention trekking from Central and South America, without backpacks?
Watching thousands of illegals daily pour across America’s southern border forces recognition that this mass invasion didn’t just pop out of the woodwork or happen organically. The magnitude and duration of this invasion demands answers to four core questions: 1) Who organizes these people? 2) Who provides water, food, and critical support for these hundreds of thousands of people? 3) Who arranges and distributes the go-to-this-enabler contact lists these invaders are given and then carry with them so they know with whom to connect when they step off free-pass buses and gratuitously ticketed airplanes? And 4) Who recruits, coordinates, and supports the many enablers named on these contact lists — located in cities across America — who connect the invaders with free-to-them services and unending support?
Media tell us that many invaders traveled far distances and have endured harrowing conditions. But they don’t look all that travel-worn. Any reader who has traveled in developing countries, especially in adventure-travel mode (ostensibly, walking through the Darien Gap and the length of Mexico qualifies) knows that it is a neat trick to keep self and clothes clean and body hydrated and nourished.
By absence of any mention, mainstream media imply that this is all organic. It’s all just happening. Relax, folks — there’s nothing hidden here. This faux non-explanation is not believable on its face. The big lie lives in all of this, and the big liars are journalists who don’t do their jobs and politicians who’ve been doing a job on America through the full spell of this invasion.
Now bring to this that “remittances from the U.S. given to Mexicans in Mexico reached a record $55.9 billion in 2022” and American “taxpayers could pay up to $451 billion to care for migrants who entered the US illegally.” This steals needed greenbacks from American household budgets.
How can largely unskilled and relatively uneducated migrants, who — thanks to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its partners in Congress — often work under the table for less than minimum wage, manage to send to their families in Mexico an average $390 per month ? Historian Victor Davis Hanson explains :
Much of this gifting is made possible by generous American state and federal subsidies to illegal aliens. Frequent subsidized housing, health care, legal assistance, education and food in the United States are often used to free up cash for illegals, who then send it to Mexico.
When trusted people and institutions repeatedly ignore the obvious, this breach of trust can induce confusion and self-doubt in the trusting person, which is the aim of gaslighting .
Consider four historical examples of media malfeasance — psy ops, really:
1) The Soviet Union, where its “enemies of the people” were forced to confess to crimes they had not committed — and the people acquiesced to Pravda’s promoted show trials.
2) Nazi Germany, whose propaganda machine targeted certain groups to justify persecution — and the people subscribed and consented.
3) North Korea, where Dear Leader uses the machinery of mass communication to shape and control the thoughts and beliefs of his people — and people weep and worship at the sight of him.
4) China, whose propaganda engine manipulated public opinion and suppressed dissent — and the people passively assented while tens of millions died.
Is national suicide America’s fate? If not, the necessary singular rallying point must be for rank-and-file Americans to resolve absolutely that America is for Americans, and beyond that, only for a measured number of legal immigrants and visa-holders, who must follow our laws and rules, speak intelligible English, embrace and support the American ethos, and have skills to sell on the legal labor market. Allowing anything less writes large that the American Experiment is failing, rapidly and irreversibly.
To turn this around, to save America, we the little people must clearly and forcefully communicate to political power players that they are to 1) stop all illegals from crossing our borders and 2) reverse the flow of illegal migration. Illegals now in America must return to their home countries or to other nations that accept them. America has reached the point where We the People must be heard and heeded.
This is winner-take-all. Either American citizens win or the invaders win. One political party supports this invasion. One political party allows this invasion. And your and my tolerating politicians’ wrong actions or their feckless inaction is killing Americans, especially paycheck-dependent working-class Americans.
There are four ways to force these fixes on our elected leaders and the administrative state to whom these leaders sell public trust.
The most difficult and critical one first, trite as it is: 1) Clean political house. Vote out career status quo–protectors, and vote in a nasty breed of mission-first hard-charging restorers of American sovereignty.
2) Post articles that critically challenge quick-buck media channels — as I have done here — to uncover and broadcast truth.
3) Publish open letters to named journalists and policy experts respectfully, if sharply, demanding answers to the four questions presented at the top of this article.
4) Ask wealthy conservatives to set up and support multiple teams of skilled, honest, and fearless investigators to find answers to the four core questions and others that emerge from their deep investigations.
The Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus taught his students that words and theory without action are meaningless. This article is this Stoic’s action. Now it could be your turn to act, for history is showing that this is America’s “Stand or Die ” order.
Greg Moo is a former high school principal, Alaskan commercial fisherman, college teacher, certified all-position welder, organization development consultant, and author of articles and a still relevant old book.
Image: woodleywonderworks via Flickr , CC BY 2.0 .
It’s your thing Joe
The latest from the border is that the Department of Justice is picking another fight with Texas. As you may know, Texas passed a law making illegal immigration a state crime. According to Governor Abbott, the Biden administration has forced Texas to fend for itself. So it’s more “court time” for Texas vs. the DOJ.
I agree that Texas is pushing the limit and the DOJ may be technically right about its criticism of the law. At the same time, being technically right does not fix the problem if your policy is totally wrong.
The Dallas Morning News nailed it in Friday’s editorial :
Texas’ latest law aimed at stemming migration is likely to present constitutional concerns. But the federal government drove this moment to its crisis by throwing up its hands in the face of hundreds of thousands of migrants crossing into the U.S. every month.
Immigration officers logged nearly 2.5 million migrant encounters last year. That’s a city more than double the size of Dallas.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has come in for easy criticism from immigration advocates who think the state’s policies are inhumane, from creating new physical barriers to busing or flying migrants to other parts of the country.
But the Biden administration’s response is to condemn any effort Texas makes in the name of enforcement. That includes suing the state over a new law that authorizes the arrest and potential deportation of suspected migrants.
We have serious concerns about that law. But no one should be surprised that the state is now passing laws around immigration when there has been so little action by the federal government to act to protect the state.
Yes, there are concerns but the reality on the ground can not be overlooked. From Laredo in the east, to El Paso in the west, to neighboring Arizona, the situation is beyond unsustainable.
What happens if this case goes to the Supreme Court? I don’t know, but the Biden administration is risking a double loss here. First off, the justices may agree that Texas is under siege and entitled to self-defense. Secondly, and this is bad, but the ruling will confirm that the federal government has been missing in action.
P.S. Check out my blog for posts, podcasts, and videos .
Image generated by AI.
Schadenfreude: Biden campaign volunteers quitting 'in droves'
Is there any hope left for the U.S.S. Biden?
It's not just that his polling numbers are reaching the point of no return.
Now his campaign staff are fleeing -- "in droves."
According to Newsweek:
A group of staffers working on President Joe Biden 's reelection campaign warned the president that his volunteers are quitting "in droves" over his handling of Israel's military response in the Gaza Strip.
Biden has faced immense pressure from members of his own party over the United States' policies in light of the surprise Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, which killed about 1,200 people and resulted in roughly 240 hostages, including some Americans . In response, Israel launched an extensive air and ground offensive in Gaza, killing nearly 22,000 Palestinians over the past several weeks, according to Gaza health officials cited by the Associated Press (AP).
In a letter published Wednesday on Medium, an anonymous group of Biden's campaign staffers demanded the president call for a ceasefire in Gaza, citing concerns that not shifting his policy on the issue could hurt his 2024 chances.
The money quote from the letter is here :
"Biden for President staff have seen volunteers quit in droves, and people who have voted blue for decades feel uncertain about doing so for the first time ever, because of this conflict," the Medium letter read.
"It is not enough to merely be the alternative to Donald Trump ," the campaigners continued. "The campaign has to shift the feeling in the pits of voters' stomachs, the same feeling that weighs on us every day as we fight for your reelection. The only way to do that is to call for a ceasefire."
That feeling in the pits of all those stomachs is more likely that the campaign is losing and nobody wants to be on a losing team, working like the dickens to save it, and in the end losing. That's the more likely reason the staffers are fleeing -- the voting public doesn't want their 'product.'
Palestine looks more like just an excuse. Since when have these people actually cared about Palestine?
While there have been a few high-profile resignations from the Biden administration over Israel's attempt to defend itself from terrorism coming from Palestine -- it's chiefly from Palestinian- and Palestinian-linked Arab- and Muslim-Americans, where it's far more plausible that these characters have lives that revolve around Palestine, the way the life of Rashida Tlaib, who waves a Palestinian flag in a congressional office, does.
The young hipsters of the Biden campaign who are jumping ship look more like they may be using Palestine as the opportunity to just get out. We already know that odds are good they are anti-Semitic, but to insist that their lives revolve around Palestine rather than what happens here and the power they can obtain here if they win this election is simply ridiculous.
Because odds are, they know they're losing the election with an embarrassment like Joe at the helm. Young people are fleeing him, black people are fleeing him, Hispanics bolted a long time ago . Most voters say he's too old to be president and many are disgusted with his policy failures around inflation, the economy, the open border, and crime. Joel Kotkin has an excellent piece describing why the left is losing against the right in what increasingly looks like a great change of direction .
So Palestine and all that supposed love of the Palestinian children offers the perfect opportunity for them to jump ship, which, it turns out, the paid staffers are contemplating, too.
Yesterday, Axios reported that there was trouble even among that group.
The White House chief of staff shelled out his own cash to put on a "morale-booster" holiday party for them :
White House chief of staff Jeff Zients is throwing an off-campus party for hundreds of Biden staffers to celebrate their last three years — and steel the team for the final sprint ahead of the election, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: Zients, a millionaire former businessman, knows that White House staff have a grueling year ahead of them. He's using his personal funds to convey appreciation for Biden aides who spend most of their waking hours at work.
Obviously, he knows they want out, too. Seems a lot of people want out, what with Biden's wretched record of 'achievements' which his team is pathetically bragging about. Maybe it's too much even for them.
The latest polling average from RealClearPolitics shows that President Trump is ahead of Joe Biden by one point , a shocking thing given that Trump is always supposedly behind and the polling companies in great numbers usually bias leftward.
Sean Trende, the RealClearPolitics political numbers cruncher, points out that not only is Trump bouncing up in polls, he's now the favorite to win
The correct position right now is that Trump is better positioned in the polls to win this election than any GOP nominee since at least 2004. Not only that, he habitually over-performs his polls. Frankly, if you are willing to set favorites this far out, you should almost certainly declare Donald Trump the favorite.
What's more, Biden's public approval rating at around 40 percent or so has sunk so low that many analysts say it's at the point of no return, with no candidate ever going on to win an election from an approval rating that low.
It's ugly out there and going to be a lot of work to win over the public to this jalopy of a president. Who'd want to do that? No wonder they're getting out while taking their chance to grandstand for Palestine. This is rats fleeing the sinking ship.
Image: Monica Showalter , with use of public domain images
Mayorkas ‘Parole’ Plan for Labor Migration Stalls Border Talks, Ukraine Funds Graeme Jennings, Guillermo Arias/Getty Images 12:57
GOP legislators want the White House to shut down its new “parole” migration pathway — but White House officials involved in the border negotiations are rejecting any restrictions.
Democrats “don’t want to deal with parole,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) told Breitbart News. “They want to leave it wide open” because they want to create a parallel immigration system run by government-funded non-profits, and operating alongside the legal migration system and illegal cross-border flow of migrants, he said.
Democrats who are worried about the political damage from President Joe Biden’s migration should “call up the White House and say, “Work with Republicans to change asylum, change parole [and] implement a Title 42 authority that would stop the inflow,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told “Face the Nation’ on December 31. “We’re full,” he added.
House Speaker Mike Johnson warned the White House that the House has already voted for a bill – H.R. 2 – to shut down the parole pathway. He released a December 21 letter to Biden and his deputies saying, “Cease exploitation of parole authority, and ensure it is granted solely ‘on a case-by-case basis’ instead of using parole for entire classes of aliens.”
The parole issue is rarely mentioned in media reports about the slow-motion migration talks , partly because most reporters are cheerleading for more migration. Also, White House officials and GOP Senators prefer to tout claimed progress in the less important issue of asylum.
Yet parole is the bigger problem, in part, because White House officials are rejecting any curbs on parole. “Biden officials have told Hispanic lawmakers that they are resisting GOP demands to limit the administration’s authority to release migrants through the legal tool known as parole ,” Axios reported on December 19.
The Democrats are resisting compromise because they using their parole claim to create a parallel, administration-directed immigration system under the control of Biden’s ambitious pro-migration border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas.
RELATED: “I’m Done with You” — Rep. Clay Higgins Tells Off Alejandro Mayorkas to His Face
Homeland Security Committee Events / YouTube
That parole goal is being protected even though Democrats choose to combine border security with a funding package to help Ukraine survive amid the war against Russia.
For decades, the border officials who regulate the inflow of legal visitors and tourists have also been allowed by Congress to “parole ” individuals into the United States in emergency circumstances, such as a boat crewman’s medical emergency. Various administrations exploited the loophole to import many people — often with the tacit approval of congressional leaders — until Congress tightened the law in 1996.
Congress “limited the executive branch’s authority to parole aliens as a class [by] allowing it to do so ‘only on a case-by-case basis,'” according to a December 2023 report by Andrew Arthur , a former immigration judge who now works with the Center for Immigration Studies.
“Second, it struck the phrase ‘for emergent reasons or for reasons deemed strictly in the public interest’ and substituted in its place ‘for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,'” said the CIS report.
But Congress’ 1996 limits on parole are being ignored by Mayorkas, who is both a lawyer and a pro-migration zealot. Since 2o21, he and his deputies have given parole to more than 1.4 million people in multiple categories — far more than the annual inflow of 1 million legal immigrants.
For example, Mayorkas ignored the”case-by-case” legal requirement when he provided parole to roughly 100,000 Afghans. Many of the Afghans got their parole documents after they were first flown to a safe airport outside Afghanistan, and even though many had done little to help their government fight the Taliban armies.
Mayorkas also provided a parole welcome to roughly 200,000 Ukrainians and 25,0000 Russians, nearly all of whom had safely passed through safe European countries on their way to Mayorkas’ parole welcome.
Mayorkas is giving parole to 360,000 migrants per year who fly in from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela. They are given parole under the justification that they would otherwise break the law by crossing the border illegally — and despite the damage to their home country caused by their exit .
RELATED: Mayorkas Refuses to Use Term “Illegal Immigrants”
C-SPAN
Mayorkas is also using his parole loophole to sneak economic migrants past Congress’ law that asylum seekers wait six months before getting a work permit. The six-month delay was written to prevent companies from importing cheap and desperate foreign workers as asylum seekers. But now border migrants can get parole and work permits, allowing them to quickly flood the labor market.
Mayorkas is giving parole to the family relatives of legal migrants from Central America. This allows the relatives to bypass the line for the roughly 250,000 green cards annually authorized by Congress for the reunification of extended families.
He has also given parole to many of the 600,000 Mexican single adults who have been admitted amid backroom promises by Mexico’s pro-migration government to streamline the flow of migrants to the U.S. border.
This massive parole inflow is in addition to the inflow of roughly one million legal immigrants, and roughly one million white-collar and blue-collar visa workers, This vast legal and illegal inflow inflicts massive pocketbook damage to ordinary Americans by cutting their wages and driving up their housing prices.
For Mayorkas, parole is a far more powerful tool than asylum — despite several lawsuits against his use of parole.
Since 2021, Mayorkas and his allies have encouraged migration by touting asylum to would-be migrants.
However, while asylum gets migrants into the country, they are still in illegal status until they win their court plea for asylum. Also, they can get only work permits after several months., Also, relatively few migrants go through the asylum process because few expect to win their often bogus asylum pleas.
So this asylum doorway gets migrants in — but it also expands the visible population of penniless illegals that fuels public opposition to Democrats’ claim that the United States is a “Nation of Immigrants.”
In contrast, parole approval gives migrants instant legal status and fast-track work permits, and also puts them on a path to welfare and medical benefits . This economic package helps migrants anchor themselves in U.S. society, to bring in their spouses and children, and then apply for the “Adjustment of Status” rolling amnesty that gets them a green card and citizenship.
Moreover, parole allows migrants to fly quietly into U.S. airports, thus reducing the visible monthly inflow of illegal migrants.
So the Cuban-born, pro-migrant homeland security chief is using parole — not asylum — to build a parallel migration system alongside the migration system established by Congress in 1990 and 1996.
RELATED: Kari Lake — Fentanyl Coming Across “Wide Open Border” Is a “Weapon of Mass Destruction”
Matt Perdie / Breitbart News
For example, he is using parole to bypass Congress’ limits on family chain migration into American communities, to import hundreds of thousands of cheap and compliant workers for companies, and to implement the administration’s efforts to reshape the nation’s economy and labor market for the benefit of investors and CEOs.
He is using parole to anchor economic migrants in America, partly because the migrants get work permits. Also, the two-year parole status can be renewed, and it provides a five-year path to the U.S. welfare programs that allow low-wage migrants to stay in the United States. Moreover, parole migrants from Haiti and Cuba get instant access to welfare programs. “As they walk out of the airport with that wet stamp, they’re eligible for Medicaid. welfare and food stamps,” Arthur told Breitbart News.
Mayorkas is also setting up”Safe Mobility Offices ” in foreign countries where U.S. officials can grant parole, refugee status, or temporary work visas — to applicants seeking to live in Americans’ society. Mayorkas’s pending “magnet ” request for $14 billion in extra funding asks for $1.3 billion to expand the inflow of parole migrants in 2024.
Overall, Mayorkas has repeatedly and consistently called for a Canadian-style, immigration-first economic strategy that would expand government power over Americans’ labor supply and the business sector.
In March 2023, for example, he told a Senate hearing:
It is an economic security threat, the shortage of workers … Regrettably, regrettably, our legal immigration system is not designed to meet the need of employers here in the United States, despite the fact that individuals from other countries want to come here to work — even seasonally, even temporarily — earn the money that they can bring back to their home countries and support their families there.
In December 2022, for example, Mayorkas told ElPasoMatters.org:
We look to our partner to the north that has a much more nimble immigration system that can be retooled to the [national government’s] needs at the moment. For example, Canada is in need of 1 million workers and they have agreed that in 2023, they will admit 1.4 million … immigrants to fill that labor need that Canadians themselves cannot. We are stuck in antiquated laws that do not meet our current needs.
This goal of a cheap labor, migrant-inflated economy– and the use of parole to create it — is backed by the FWD.us , a group founded by West Coast investors that urged Senators to confirm Mayorkas as homeland secretary in 2021. The founders include Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who spent more than $100 million on programs to boost turnout in Democratic districts in 2020.
But Canada’s high-migration economy has flooded the nation’s labor market with cheap and lesser-skilled migrants that have flatlined national productivity. It has spiked rents, housing prices, homelessness, and inflation , and has even forced down the nation’s birthrate .
Similar policies have produced similar results United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, France, and Germany, forcing extensive backtracking this year as polls shift against the pro-migration incumbents.
Yet Mayorkas and his team are rejecting any curbs on their use of parole in the Senate talks. Politico reported on December 22:
Mayorkas’ talks with Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) are advancing despite facing huge hurdles. They’ve made progress on changes to asylum standards but remain at odds over dialing back the president’s parole authority and new expulsion authority, according to a second person briefed on the talks.
Even if parole is included in the deal, GOP staffers will have to scrutinize the language for new loopholes, Arthur told Breitbart:
Negotiators and members need to be very explicit about any proposal to expand the ability of the Biden administration to allow foreign nationals into the United States on parole, because the Biden administration has shown willingness to abuse the very, very limited parole authority it already has.
There is also little trust among Republicans, even Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) who helped clinch Senate passage of the 2013 “Gang of Eight”cheap labor bill. On December 221, he told Politico:
“I don’t think Mayorkas gets it done. I mean, you’ve seen his performance on the border, it’s worse than abysmal,” Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said. “We have him up for hearings. And he sits there and says the border’s secure. He’s not even dealing with reality.”
“We’re not going to reach any kind of agreement until the president tells us what, if anything, he’s willing to do to secure the border,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told Politico.
But the GOP leadership is eager to show they are all opposed to Mayorkas’ parole programs.
“Our [GOP] colleagues at the negotiating table are under no illusions about how difficult it is to fix our nation’s broken asylum and parole system,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said in a December 18 floor speech. “There’s no longer any disagreement that the situation at the southern border is unsustainable and requires the Senate to act.”
The Worst President in the Last 100 Years" - Victor Davis Hanson Poll: Biden Holds Worst Net Approval Rating for a President in Modern History at This Time in Office President Joe Biden, 81, holds the worst net approval rating in history at this time in office, 1,080 days into his tenure, FiveThirtyEight polling found this week, highlighting just how unpopular Biden is going into a presidential election just ten months away.
The following is the net approval rating of previous presidents in the modern era at the same time of their presidencies:
Biden: -17.2 points Trump: -11.8 points Obama: -0.6 points Carter: +9.6 points Clinton: +11.2 points H.W. Bush: +12.5 points Nixon: +14.6 points Reagan: +15.3 points Truman: +16.7 points G.W. Bush: +20.3 points Eisenhower: +62.6 points Biden’s approval rating stands in the mid-thirties, while his disapproval rating is the mid-fifties, FiveThirtyEight found :
FiveThirtyEight
Biden’s popularity never recovered after he directed the deadly Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021. Soaring inflation after massive post-pandemic spending, low consumer sentiment, and draconian coronavirus mandates kept his approval numbers poor throughout 2022 and 2023.
As Biden looks to rebound heading into 2024, he will need to dramatically reverse course to improve his popularity.
“And if he can’t get his approval ratings up — and quick — then he and the Democratic Party need to have a serious conversation about replacing him on the Democratic ticket in the 2024 presidential race,” Madison Hall wrote in December at Business Insider.
Biden’s top five worse polls in 2023 are here .
Follow Wendell Husebø on “X” @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality .
Politicians have long behaved badly but were heretofore sufficiently self-conscious to still perform a sort of “constitutional fan dance” to at least present a fig leaf of legitimacy to obscure their rapacious behavior. NOT JOE BIDEN!
JOE BIDEN is known as a serial liar , a "public servant" who has somehow managed to accrue tremendous wealth , a race-baiting opportunist, a Catholic-in-name-only , and a bought-and-paid-for politician in bed with criminal cartels and foreign foes . In another era, Joe Biden would have been run out of his country much the same way Benedict Arnold was two and a half centuries ago; in an era when integrity, honor, fortitude, fidelity, and grit have been jettisoned for immorality, unscrupulousness, weakness, betrayal, and craven pliability, however, he is elevated to king sleazeball in a city drowning in sleaze. JB SHURK
January 4, 2024
‘First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All the Lawyers!’
Shakespeare famously wrote, “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” This startling suggestion is offered by the character “Dick the Butcher” in Shakespeare’s play, Henry VI, Part II .
Often considered a somewhat tongue-in-cheek criticism of self-interested or otherwise morally compromised practitioners within the legal profession, it has since entered the lexicon of Western societies as shorthand for the upending of the law by those charged with safeguarding it.
The United States was once thought immune to such anti-liberty chicanery — at least as immune as any society comprising fallible human beings can be — but recent decades have shown us to be as vulnerable as Achilles.
Politicians have long behaved badly but were heretofore sufficiently self-conscious to still perform a sort of “constitutional fan dance” to at least present a fig leaf of legitimacy to obscure their rapacious behavior.
Sadly, that façade became obsolete with the wholesale loss of media objectivity, at least as far as Democrats were concerned. Traceable to the campaign of one William Jefferson Clinton, the major media ran interference for the missteps and criminality of his subsequent administration, refusing to adequately investigate obvious avenues of corruption and malfeasance.
In the years between then and now, that dynamic has only advanced, never diminished.
However, while the playing field had been deeply slanted in favor of the political left, the loyal opposition have found themselves under even greater scrutiny as countless journalists with lots of time on their hands, and a perpetually dull axe to grind, focused the entirety of their efforts on only one side of the aisle.
This terrible, immoral poisoning of our body politic accelerated dramatically under the direction of Barack Obama, shielded, like Clinton before him, by a media that was by turns studiously incurious and stridently activist.
Both modes ensured that the American people would face nearly insurmountable obstacles in holding the left accountable for running roughshod over our rights.
The brazen corruption and anti-constitutional behavior that are the hallmarks of Biden’s tenure have set a new standard for ruling hubris. Democrats now openly govern with a mafioso’s attitude of “whatcha gonna do ’bout it?”
In this fertile totalitarian soil have sprouted the mechanisms and processes that, once matured, will finally rid the left of any need for pretextual fig leaves, either constitutional or moral.
This isn’t new ground. Hearkening back to the lawyers Dick the Butcher wanted to exterminate, the path to perdition has long wound dizzyingly among dense thickets of willfully misinterpreted and misapplied laws, along with brazen lawlessness.
Tyrants routinely appeal to the population’s desire to “restore” this or that characteristic of the government or society by passing illegitimate, unlawful legislation under the guise of setting things right.
Think the Nuremburg Laws of the 1930s in Germany, where Jewish residents were stripped of citizenship, ownership of assets, and ultimately, of their status as human beings was sold as a necessary step in returning Germany to pre-WWI greatness.
It is a rare instance indeed that sees government trampling rights underfoot without having a “law” or regulation to wave before those who oppose their usurpations.
In Poland right now, there is underway just such an attempt to reorder society and government to better suit the authoritarian left. There is a strong push within the European Union to gain veto power over any act of a member-nation, an essential precursor to transitioning to a single European government.
Poland is a parliamentary republic and as such has a president and a prime minister. Following the recent election, these two offices are now filled by men diametrically opposed to each other’s politics.
The new arrival, Prime Minister Donald Tusk, is an unapologetic advocate of further enmeshment with the E.U., to the point of ceding Polish sovereignty to the European Parliament and judicial system. This is no tentative first step, but a bold leap toward administrative totalitarianism.
He is opposed by the president of the Republic of Poland, Andrzej Duda, who has rightfully challenged Tusk’s administrative coup. Duda has pointed out that Tusk’s citing of European Court judgements as legal justification for ignoring the unambiguous language of the Polish constitution carries no weight of law in Poland.
To facilitate this takeover, Tusk and his cronies have declared the supreme judiciary of Poland to be illegitimately appointed — again, based on the application of European Union judicial decisions that have no force in Poland.
Tusk’s minister of justice and attorney general, Adam Bodnar, issued a decree demanding the replacement of said judges and the nullification of their rulings made since 2018.
Here in the U.S., Democrats engage in lawfare using left-leaning activist judges who routinely issue rulings made out of whole cloth that, unsurprisingly, always advance the leftist “cause.” Poland hasn’t had the opportunity to pollute the courts with puppets as leftists in the U.S. have done, so they are attempting to do so in one fell swoop under the guise of setting things right.
Claiming to be “restoring the rule of law,” the new Polish government is instead ruling in an entirely unlawful manner it describes as a necessary “transitory period.”
According to an interview given by Bodnar, in practice, the transitory period will require the new government to deviate from the normal principles of a law-abiding and democratic state by undertaking actions without legal grounds.
According to an in-depth exposition by Polish legal foundation Ordo Iuris, included among these “deviations” is the use of violence, as evidenced by the violent assault of one member of Parliament who rose to defend Polish public media, the primary broadcast medium made an early target of the new regime seeking to control the narrative.
Bodnar and Tusk admit they will be forced to take “subversive actions,” including undermining the constitution in order to “save it.”
Astute observers will notice the parallels between the behavior of Polish and European leftists and our homegrown American ones.
The many spurious challenges to existing election law crafted to advantage Democrat candidates (and preserve avenues for perpetrating fraud) offers a perfect example of the very activities that prompted Dick the Butcher to offer his prescription for ridding society of dangerous malcontents.
Obviously, our American circumstance would not be well served by following old Dick’s advice, but recalling his reasons may prompt us to forestall the damage to a republic that comes from permitting “transitory periods,” such as one that might be described using the words “fundamental transformation.”
Presently, America’s governments at all levels are pursuing this lawlessness in a largely de facto fashion, but should the left succeed in doing so with no meaningful resistance, like Poland, and Nazi Germany before it, the lawlessness will quickly become de jure .
No one in his right mind wants to live in a world where standing against lawlessness is treated as lawlessness. The destruction of the legitimacy of law is necessary for tyranny to take hold, and the attempt to do so, whether in Eastern Europe or the United States, should trigger a harsh and vigorous response from the people.
We need not resort to following Dick the Butcher’s exhortation, but should we continue pretending the left has our best interest in mind, we’ll discover too late the lethal result of our error.
Mr. Herring is a writer and broadcaster based in Omaha, Nebraska and welcomes visitors to his website, www.dailyherring.com .
Image: Radosław Czarnecki via Wikimedia Commons , CC BY-SA 4.0 .
JOE BIDEN IS THE GREATEST DANGER AMERICA HAS EVER FACED
JOE BIDEN is known as a serial liar , a "public servant" who has somehow managed to accrue tremendous wealth , a race-baiting opportunist, a Catholic-in-name-only , and a bought-and-paid-for politician in bed with criminal cartels and foreign foes . In another era, Joe Biden would have been run out of his country much the same way Benedict Arnold was two and a half centuries ago; in an era when integrity, honor, fortitude, fidelity, and grit have been jettisoned for immorality, unscrupulousness, weakness, betrayal, and craven pliability, however, he is elevated to king sleazeball in a city drowning in sleaze. JB SHURK
Immigration: broken Congress, broken law
Congressional Republicans are fond of loudly complaining about the border invasion and its effect on our citizens, economy and national security. They’re less fond about doing anything about it, though they recently made a small gesture they may or may not sustain:
Democrats and their media allies are pressuring Republican leaders to endorse a $14 billion slush fund that would hide President Joe Biden’s migration flood during the 2024 election campaign.
“They ought to give me the money — I need to protect the border,” Biden told reporters on Jan. 2 about his “Emergency Supplemental” funding request.
“Protect?!” Does he have a clue what he’s reading?
But House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and other GOP leaders say the funding will be used to accelerate — not block — the inflow of Biden’s poor economic migrants during the 2024 campaign year.
“What the White House is proposing is more money to process and allow more illegals into the country,” Johnson told CNN host Jake Tapper on January 3. “We need to do the opposite of that.”
Image: James O'Keefe, X screenshot
It would help if Republicans exercised the power of the purse and shut things down unless bills are passed on a single-issue basis. No more omnibus –“for all” bills. As John Belushi used to say: “but nooooooooo!”
The funding fight is hidden from the public under the media’s skimpy coverage of Senate negotiations on border reforms and dramatic demands for aid to embattled Ukraine and Israel. Those negotiations have stalled amid the Democrats’ determination to protect their “parole” backdoor at the border, forcing the Democrats to step up their demands for the $14 billion.
They’ve spent much more:
In his first three years, Biden and his deputies have spent billions of Americans’ taxes to import — not exclude — at least six million migrants into the United States.
The funds — and the requested authority to transfer yet more funds — are intended to operate the network of quasi-government non-profits that help transport and shelter migrants into many cities around the nation. The request even asks for $800 million to operate new “Safe Mobility Offices” in Ecuador and other countries that are intended to help more migrants reach the U.S. border.
Wait a minute. Don’t we have laws about this sort of thing, and doesn’t the President swear to uphold them?
The $14 billion bill is intended to quietly smuggle 2024 migrants through the country and to pay off cooperation by Democrat-run cities, said Jessica Vaughan, founder of the Immigration Accountability Project .
The requested billions are not enough to conceal Biden’s migrant flood from Americans in 2024, she added:
‘There’s not enough money, even in the $14 billion … with the numbers that are coming over right now. … People are seeing it, and they’re gonna keep seeing it. They’re going to see it in the schools. They’re going to see it in their emergency rooms, they’re going to see it in their housing costs. They’re going to see it everywhere.
Their children are going to come home and and talk about all the foreign languages being spoken. And if they’re, you know, if they happen to live in a suburban neighborhood and the house next door is rented out to four different families who are living there at the same time, they’re going to see that too.’
“I think it’s going to have a huge impact on suburban America,” she said.
No kidding.
The Washington Post joined on January 4, saying:
Thomas S. Warrick, a former DHS official who is now a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Atlantic Council, said the [$14 billion] cash injection is “absolutely vital” to keep the U.S. immigration system from breaking down further.
“A system that was already under enormous strain is now stretched to the point where even the most basic legal and humanitarian requirements can’t be met,” Warrick said.
“We need more resources,” [White House spokeswoman Karine] Jean-Pierre said. “House Republicans keep getting in the way of doing the work to deal with what we’re seeing at the border,” she said.
The immigration system isn’t “breaking down.” But if Warrick means the “c’mon in/money for nothing” system, he’s right.
“Giving the Biden Admin more money to fuel its disastrous open-borders resettlement operation is insanity,” said Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN). “It would worsen the border crisis, not stop it,” he tweeted on October 20.
The funding will “offer ZERO actual border security while providing more money to process more people … & continue to rack up mountains of debt,” said a tweet by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX).
“We’re in serious, serious, dire straits as a nation and we have to address those things seriously,” Johnson told Tapper on January 3.
I guess the obvious—close the border and enforce the law—is too obvious for our Self-Imagined Elite. That, by the way, includes far too many congressional Republicans.
Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.
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