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May 2023

New York’s Migrant Influx Tests the Sanctuary City’s Limits Already Mayor Eric Adams is asking a judge to excuse the city from its court-approved ‘right to shelter.’ Jason Riley

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yorks-migrant-influx-tests-the-sanctuary-citys-limits-mayor-adams-f3264896?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began busing illegal immigrants to Northern cities last year, he said he wanted to call out progressive sanctuary-city elitism and draw more attention to a humanitarian crisis with which border states have been struggling for decades. Mr. Abbott has succeeded and then some.

Big-city Democrats who once dismissed the complaints of Republican officials such as Mr. Abbott are now begging for mercy. Chicago declared a state of emergency in the wake of its migrant influx, and the District of Columbia was compelled to establish an Office of Migrant Services. Earlier this month in New York, which has seen the arrival of more than 70,000 undocumented migrants since last spring, Mayor Eric Adams asked a judge to allow the city to suspend its longstanding “right to shelter” rule.

“It is in the best interest of everyone, including those seeking to come to the United States, to be upfront that New York City cannot single-handedly provide care to everyone crossing our border,” Mr. Adams said in a statement. “Being dishonest about this will only result in our system collapsing, and we need our government partners to know the truth and do their share.”

New York is spending an estimated $5 million a day to house and feed these new arrivals. It tried placing them in homeless shelters, which quickly filled to capacity. Next, they were sent to hotels, dormitories and even unused jail cells. Mr. Adams tried persuading upstate counties to accept some of the migrants, but he lacks jurisdiction to force the issue and pushback has been stiff. The courts may be his last option.

New York’s right-to-shelter rule is the product of a 1979 lawsuit brought by homeless advocates. In a subsequent settlement, the city agreed to provide universal housing to men, and later to women and families. Because of the settlement, the state’s top court never issued a ruling on the matter. “One presumes that the city settled the case to avoid the inflexibility that a final high court ruling would have created,” the Manhattan Institute’s Nicole Gelinas wrote in City Journal recently. “But in the current crisis, the city has done nothing with the flexibility that it retains.”

Will Your Next Auto Be An EV? Most Say No: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/31/will-your-next-auto-be-an-ev-most-say-no-ii-tipp-poll/

Policymakers inside the Biden administration have repeatedly assured Americans that electric vehicles (EVs) are an unavoidable and essential part of the “net-zero” carbon emissions world that they’re trying to regulate into existence. But despite hefty subsidies and future bans of gasoline-powered cars, Americans aren’t ready to jump on the EV bandwagon, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

For our most recent online public opinion poll of 1,412 drivers, taken from May 3-5, we asked a straightforward question of consumer intent: “How likely will you consider buying/leasing an electric vehicle for your next car?”

Among those responding, 53% said they were “not likely” to consider an electric car, while 39% said they were “likely” to. The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points.

But, to spout an inevitable cliche, the devil once again lurks in the details. Just 16% of those answering the poll said they’re “very likely” to consider an EV, versus 23% who said they were “somewhat likely.”

On the other side, more than a third — 36% — said they were “not at all likely” to consider an EV. Another 17% said they’re “not very likely” to do so.

THE DURHAM REPORT AND HISTORY SYDNEY WILLIAMS

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

In his 1982 story of a small Irish village, Passing the Time in Ballymenone, American historian Henry Glassie (1941-) wrote: “History is not the past but a map of the past, drawn from a particular point of view…” All histories reflect the author. But good historians account for that, differentiating between actual events and their personal opinions. The Founding Fathers were conscious of history when they selected Washington as the capital of the new United States in 1790. It was a “federal enclave,” separate from both the commercial/industrial north and the agrarian south. It was not beholden to one party or one faction.

However, over time, as its bureaucracy increased and as public sector unions took sway, Washington changed; so that today in the District, according to the Pew Research Center, Democrat registrations, among federal government employees, outnumber Republican registrations two to one. While the leaders of Washington’s agencies reflect whichever party is in power, permanent federal government employees are, on balance, sympathetic to the Democrat Party.

The purpose of the Durham Report was to shine light on nefarious attempts to affect the outcome of the 2016 election – to address the widely accepted view that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to affect the outcome of the Presidential election that year. It also offers an alternative (and more accurate) perspective on subsequent efforts to undermine Mr. Trump’s Presidency. The Report details how the nation’s premier investigatory and intelligence services, in cooperation with the Clinton campaign, falsely implicated Mr. Trump as having colluded with Vladimir Putin to sway the election.  

Foreign Interference? How Non-Citizens Are Voting in American Elections by J. Christian Adams

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19679/non-us-citizens-voting

You probably know the [National Voter Registration Act] as “Motor Voter.” It is the federal requirement that requires state motor vehicle offices to offer voter registration and the ability to update your address.

Sounds convenient? Now, we have data showing one of the side effects of Motor Voter is to put non-citizens onto American voter rolls.

[W]e have collected extensive records of non-citizens asking to be removed from the voter rolls. Sometimes those records reveal how the foreign citizen was registered to vote, and the Motor Voter process represents the vast majority of cases.

Chicago officials provided registration records where some foreign nationals even checked “NO” to the question of whether the person is a United States citizen, and were still registered.

The Pennsylvania State Department admitted that due to what election officials referred to as a “glitch” that they had been accidentally registering foreign nationals to vote for two decades. They have been fighting for over five years to conceal details, including the number of foreign nationals the Commonwealth registered to vote by mistake.

The reports from Maricopa County and Chicago are not an inventory of every non-citizen vote, but only those who informed election officials they were not American citizens. So, the catalog of confessed non-citizens is almost certainly just the tip of the iceberg.

What can be done about non-citizens registering to vote?

Congress can solve the problem by allowing states to validate citizenship effectively. This could be as easy as providing a passport, birth certificate or other evidence of being an American at the time of voter registration.

Another easy fix is for Congress to add citizenship to the National Voter Registration Act’s reasonable voter list maintenance requirements for states. Motor Voter does not put the same obligation for states to keep voter rolls free from non-citizens as it does, for example, dead voters.

This month marks the 30th anniversary of President Bill Clinton signing the National Voter Registration Act into law. You probably know the law as “Motor Voter.” It is the federal requirement that requires state motor vehicle offices to offer voter registration and the ability to update your address.

Sounds convenient? Now, we have data showing one of the side effects of Motor Voter is to put non-citizens onto American voter rolls.

DIE Litmus Tests are Robbing the Campus By Janet Levy

https://www.americanthinker.com/

Universities are forums for the free exchange of ideas, for learning how to think, not what to think; for debate, not indoctrination.  Unfortunately, that can no longer be said of American universities.  Open inquiry and critical thinking untainted by ideology have been supplanted by leftist dogma, including Critical Race Theory and social justice advocacy.  Except at the increasingly rare institution offering a classical liberal arts education, it has become impossible for impressionable students to earn a degree without becoming steeped in leftist rhetoric and the extreme ideas of race and gender.  They end up believing that America was built on racism and defining themselves as either oppressors or victims.

These ideological intrusions were insidiously mainstreamed from the seventies onward, especially in the humanities departments, by gradually building an ecosystem fostering faculty members who are left-leaning and sidelining those who are not.  Universities are now taking this to the next level by precluding the recruitment of independent thinkers and conservatives.  They are requiring prospective faculty to submit a loyalty oath to the tenets of diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE; sometimes DEI) as a de facto litmus test of their political affiliation.

Examples abound of universities where DIE statements are a prerequisite for consideration for any job.  At Arizona’s public universities, they are a standard feature of the hiring process for all faculty, professional, and staff positions.  Some institutions in the state require prospective candidates to demonstrate their allegiance to DIE ideology even before a review of their qualifications takes place.  At the University of Washington, support for DIE principles is de rigueur, and faculty applicants must justify their commitment by describing their past actions and explaining how they will continue to pursue DIE goals if appointed.  The University of Pennsylvania website gives applicants guidelines for composing effective DIE statements.  And at all campuses of the University of California (U.C.), faculty applicants must submit DIE statements that will determine if they merit consideration, regardless of their academic credentials or their teaching and research plans.  From their statements, applicants are evaluated for DIE awareness and experience and their plans for advancing DIE on campus.  They must agree to treat individuals differently based on their race, sex, and gender identity.  

Climate Modelling: Rubbish In, More Rubbish Out: Michael Kile

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2023/05/climate-modelling-rubbish-in-rubbish-out/

“The rest is history: the history of how dodgy “post-normal” science joined up with a pseudo-scientific “precautionary principle” to corrupt the UN, IPCC and WMO and, despite the “vast uncertainties”, ultimately created the NetZero decarbonising monster that is disrupting countries — and energy markets — everywhere on the bogus pretext of “fighting climate change”.

Complexity and perplexity go together like a horse and carriage, or in this case, the climate and a modeller. When probability claims masquerade as genuine predictions and international agencies and governments promote alarmism at every opportunity and confirmation bias distorts the search for truth, the outcome is today’s witch’s brew of “climate change” hyperbole and “save-the-planet” activism that is now disrupting every aspect of life.    

Consider the World Meteorological Organization’s press release of May 17, 2023: Global temperatures set to reach new records in the next five years. It warned that:

Global temperatures are likely to surge to record levels in the next five years, fuelled by heat-trapping greenhouse gases and a naturally occurring El Niño event, according to a new update issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). 

There is a 66% likelihood that the annual average near-surface global temperature between 2023 and 2027 will be more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one year.  There is a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest on record.

A temporary reprieve from a french-fry fate is possible. But hold the champagne. The world is still going to exceed 1.5°C “with increasing frequency”. Unless we prostrate ourselves with more fervour at the altar of NetZero it could become permanent. Whatever happens, like Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca, we will always have Paris. 

Three Years Later, No Justice for BLM Insurrection in D.C. D.C.’s lead prosecutor has turned a blind eye to a six-month campaign of terror in the nation’s capital in 2020 so he could keep his sights on the mostly nonviolent protesters of January 6, 2021. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/29/three-years-later-no-justice-for-blm-insurrection-in-d-c/

“Our office prosecutes all acts of violence, regardless of political motivation, the same.”

So said U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves—under oath, mind you, and with a straight face—during a hearing of the House Oversight Committee earlier this month. 

Representative Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) questioned Graves’ disparate treatment of Black Lives Matters rioters who terrorized Washington, D.C., in 2020 versus Trump supporters involved in the events of January 6, 2021.

Although the start of both incidents was a mere seven months apart, they are a world away in terms of accountability. 

In what Graves calls the “Capitol Siege” investigation, more than 1,000 Trump supporters have been criminally charged. Graves, a Biden appointee, has promised to double that caseload before he’s finished. His office announces new arrests every week.

That, however, is not the case for rioters who caused far more violence and inflicted far more damage in the nation’s capital in 2020. The rioting that began on May 29, 2020 at Lafayette Square prompted the lockdown of the White House; Donald Trump, his wife, and teenage son were ushered to an underground bunker for their safety as looters and arsonists repeatedly tried to scale the fence and break through police barricades erected outside the White House.

And what started that night in 2020 didn’t just last a few hours, as was the case with the Capitol protest. On June 1, rioters burned part of St. John’s Church, an historical landmark across from the White House, and set ablaze other areas of the public park.

Chaos continued throughout the summer with the president, his family, and White House staff under constant threat. Police arrested 11 people at Lafayette Square in July 2020 for various offenses including assault of a police officer. “The Tuesday night incidents that stretched over hours are the latest confrontations to transpire near the White House, where protesters have been gathering daily for more than a month to protest for racial justice after the killing of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police,” the Washington Post reported on July 8, 2020.

Three Cheers for Tommy Robinson The backbone of Britain. by Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/three-cheers-for-tommy-robinson-2/

The last time we heard from Tommy Robinson was early last year. In a revealing documentary called The Rape of Britain, he took us to the town of Telford, England (population 142,000), where Muslim gang members had raped innumerable white girls while local police had refused not only to arrest the perpetrators but also to protect the victims. Now he’s back with an equally illuminating documentary entitled Silenced.

 It begins with a minor incident that took place in 2018 on the playground of the Almondbury School in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. According to the mainstream media version, Bailey McLaren, a racist white boy in his early teens, had “waterboarded” Jamal Hijazi,  an innocent refugee from Syria of about the same age, and had acted utterly without provocation.

The story spread quickly around the globe. There was just one problem: it wasn’t remotely true. Bailey hadn’t waterboarded Jamal. He’d thrown a cup of water at him. It was on video. It wasn’t about race, and it certainly wasn’t unprovoked. In fact, Jamal had threatened to rape Bailey’s sisters. And, as Tommy discovered by doing the kind of footwork on the case that no other reporter bothered to do, Jamal had done much else besides. He’d knocked one classmate unconscious. He’d caused a boy to bleed by sticking him in the leg with a compass (presumably the kind used in math classes, not in navigation).

He’d threatened to stab a boy. He’d beaten up girls. He hit one girl with a hockey stick and bit another one so viciously that it caused a horrible wound. He routinely called female teachers “bitches.” He’d been caught carrying a knife and screwdriver at school. Adults who’d worked there described him as rude, nasty, a “little bastard,” a “horrible boy” with “no respect for women at all.” “He started on everyone,” recalled one school worker.

And they denied that Jamal was the victim of racism on anybody’s part. There’d been several other Syrian kids in the school at the same time, and none of them had experienced – or caused – any problems. Much was made by the media of a photo of Jamal with his arm in a cast; though the injury was blamed on Bailey, it turned out to be the result of another incident in which Jamal attacked a much younger boy only to be pulled forcefully off the child by a kid his own age.

Defund The IRS

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/30/defund-the-irs/

The debt ceiling deal reached by the Republican leadership and the administration is far from perfect in the eyes of anyone who cares about runaway government spending (which is the only government spending we know of). But it appears House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was able to block, at least for a year, the hiring of a field army of IRS soldiers. Like a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean, it’s a good start, though there’s still a long way to go.

Among the hundreds of sections in the 99-page bill, No. 251 is “Rescission of certain balances made available to the Internal Revenue Service.” More specifically, the legislation, if passed and signed as is, cuts almost $1.4 billion “of the unobligated balances of amounts appropriated or otherwise made available for activities of the Internal Revenue Service” through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

Through the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration had obtained an additional $80 billion for the IRS, more than six times its current annual budget. Funding for enforcement was to increase by 69% through fiscal 2031. Such a “generous injection of other people’s money” would mean, according to the Washington Free Beacon, that the IRS will “employ more bureaucrats than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined.”

The expansion will now be delayed for at least one fiscal year.

The Bigotry That Proudly Speaks Its Name From Dodger Stadium to Washington, indulging anti-Catholic sentiment is an elite pastime. By Gerard Baker

https://www.wsj.com/articles/anti-catholic-bigotry-is-an-elite-american-pastime-la-dodgers-white-house-sisters-of-perpetual-indulgence-joe-biden-jfk-bde742cc?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

When John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960, he felt compelled, memorably, to make a declaration of political independence from the authorities of his Catholic faith.

His opponents had notoriously exploited anti-Catholic sentiment in key states to suggest that somehow a papist in the Oval Office would owe principal loyalty to the Vatican and would take instruction from the pope on critical questions of the presidency.

The issue had dogged him through Democratic primaries and threatened him in a close general election, so in remarks to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September, Mr. Kennedy sought to lay the calumny to rest: “I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me.”

Sixty years on, Joe Biden, the second Catholic president, hasn’t had to make a similar declaration. It would be nice to think that is because America is a more tolerant place than it was in 1960. But with each day of his presidency it seems the opposite is true. Anti-Catholic bigotry is entrenched among the left-wing elites who control the Democratic Party, and they have no fear that Mr. Biden in office would lift a finger to restrain it. Far from being a secret agent for the Vatican, the president seems content to be a very public agent for the continuous denigration of those who hold to traditional Catholic doctrine.