Immigration
July 23, 2017 — Scott Johnson
When three Somali Minnesotans went to trial in Minneapolis last year on terrorism charges, the New York Times skipped the proceedings. Times reporter Jack Healy arrived in town just in time for the verdicts. Healy’s article reporting the verdicts, written with freelancer Matt Furber, turned for comment to Burhan Mohumed, a “community organizer” and friend of the defendants who condemned the verdicts as “purely political.” Judge Michael Davis presided at
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July 22, 2017 — John Hinderaker
American liberals want to take in lots of Islamic refugees from the Middle East and Africa, presumably because that policy has been so successful in Europe. This is, of course, a dubious premise, as we have noted many times. This story comes from Austria, and it must be legit because it is reported in the Sun. Heh. As best I can tell, though, it is authentic: A swimming pool has
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July 11, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Natalia Veselnitskaya is the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump, Jr. at Trump Tower in June 2016. Trump, Jr. met with her because he thought she might have information damaging to Hillary Clinton. Apparently, she had none and wanted to talk instead about the Magnitsky Act, about which more later. These facts are well known to anyone who has been following the news recently. What’s less known is that
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July 8, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Last weekend, Linda Sarsour, the radical activist who helped organize the Woman’s March against Trump in January, created a stir by talking about a jihad in the context of opposing President Trump. A careful (I hope) reading of Sarsour’s speech (which you can listen to here) shows that she did not call for violence or unlawfulness. But the speech is disturbing nonetheless. Sansour introduced “jihad” into her speech by quoting
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June 26, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Reading the Supreme Court’s per curiam (unsigned) opinion in the Trump v. IRAP (Fourth Circuit) and Trump v. Hawaii (Ninth Circuit) “travel ban” cases today, I was struck by this. The Court unanimously stayed most of the injunctive relief granted by the lower courts in the two cases. In doing so, however, the Court doesn’t even address the usually key factor of likelihood of success on the merits. Apart from
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June 26, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
A lot went down this morning at the Supreme Court, as was to be expected considering that this was the last day of the Court’s term. First, the Court decided to allow a limited version of President Trump’s already limited ban on travelers from six mostly Muslim countries to take effect. In technical terms, it partially stayed lower court decisions striking down the ban. The Court also agreed to decide
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June 25, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Douglas Murray (@DouglasKMurray on Twitter) is associate editor of Britain’s Spectator and a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute. He is a prolific columnist. Gatestone has compiled his columns for the institute here. Murray’s new book is The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam. It is a book full of portents and warnings for us. Murray launched his book with a lecture at the Heritage Foundation last week posted
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June 20, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Peter Beinart, a smart center-left writer once affiliated with The New Republic before it went crazy, nowadays is at The Atlantic, and he has a barn-burner of an essay out today on the subject, “How the Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration.” It is a long article, but very much worth reading the whole thing. The point is, Beinart honestly confronts the craven partisan political calculation behind the liberal line
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June 17, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
I don’t think we have commented yet on President Trump’s decision to continue, for now, President Obama’s amnesty program (known as DACA) for illegal immigrants who came to the United States as small children. On Thursday evening, the Trump administration announced that the so-called Dreamers will still have legal status and be able to receive work permits, renewable every two years, assuming they satisfy certain minimal conditions. On Friday, however,
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June 6, 2017 — John Hinderaker
The mere election of Donald Trump has had salutary effects with regard to illegal immigration. Reportedly, for example, the number of people trying to enter the country illegally has dropped dramatically. The Associated Press hasn’t expressed an opinion on that trend, to my knowledge, but it is concerned about a similar phenomenon: fewer illegal immigrants are signing up for food stamps. A crackdown on illegal immigration under President Donald Trump
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May 27, 2017 — John Hinderaker
A CBS station in Sacramento headlines: “Trump threats, minimum wage, overtime hitting California farmers hard.” Put this one in the category of “inadvertently revealing.” Faced with an urgent shortage of workers, California farmers are desperate to be heard. “If we can’t change the way we’re doing business, we’re at risk,” said Brad Goehring, a fourth-generation wine grape grower in Lodi. The state has been struggling with this farm labor shortage
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May 20, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), an arm of the Boston Police Department, has released its “2016 Heroin Overdose Report.” The findings regarding heroin overdose are disturbing, though probably not surprising. I want to focus on certain findings in the BRIC report regarding drug traffickers. According to the report, only 39 percent of those arrested for Class A Trafficking claimed to have been born in the United States. 26 percent
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May 9, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Sen. Jeff Flake (along with fellow Arizona Senator John McCain) has proposed worthwhile legislation to fix one of the cracks in immigration enforcement. Here’s the crack: ICE frequently issues detainer orders to local law enforcement agencies to pick up illegal immigrants. The locals are supposed to hold the illegal for up to 48 hours while ICE comes to pick him up. However, two federal district courts (D. Minn. and N.D.
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May 7, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Ross Douthat’s recent New York Times columns on French politics here (April 29) and here (May 3) are both not only good, but also full of interesting reading in the links accessible online. Referring to the French presidential candidate who is predicted to lose the election being held today, Douthat asserts in the first of these two columns: [T]he politician that Le Pen has obviously strained to imitate is not
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May 1, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The more I think about Judge Orrick’s decision striking down President Trump’s executive order on sanctuary cities, the more outrageous it seems. Kent Scheidegger at Crime and Consequences tears the decision to shreds. Scheidegger starts, as one normally should, with the relevant language from the executive order at issue: Section 9. Sanctuary jurisdictions. It is the policy of the executive branch to ensure, to the fullest extent of the law,
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April 26, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
There is considerably less to Judge Orrick’s ruling on “defunding” sanctuary cities than initially seemed to be the case. Andy McCarthy explains that the ruling is basically an “advisory opinion” (which courts aren’t supposed to issue). The ruling is advisory because neither San Francisco nor Santa Clara, the municipal plaintiffs before Judge Orrick, faced any sort of enforcement action pursuant to the executive order they challenged. Indeed, no entity anywhere
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April 25, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Judge William Orrick, III, appointed by President Obama after he raised at least $200,000 for his fellow left-liberal, has issued an order blocking President Trump from withholding funds to communities that limit cooperation with U.S. immigration authorities. Judge Orrick ruled that the president has no authority to attach new conditions to federal spending. The ruling sounds high-minded and principled. However, as someone said in an email, if a city wanted
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