Under the proposal, as described by two sources briefed on the talks, the president would be permitted to temporarily halt new asylum claims by foreigners who arrive in the United States anywhere other than an official port of entry if border crossings reach 4,000 a day over a two-week period. Federal officials could then quickly turn back those migrants to Mexico without a hearing. Such a “shutdown” would become mandatory if the daily number of crossings reached an average of 5,000 over a week or 8,500 in one day.
The US experienced about 10,000 border crossings per day in December, the latest month in which data is available.
Even in the event of a shutdown, the U.S. would continue to process 1,400 asylum claims per day by people who do arrive through an official port of entry. (According to one source, those migrants would count toward the 4,000 needed to trigger the president’s emergency powers.) There’s also a cap on the number of days the emergency authority can be used in a year, both sources said.
Our system of government was purposefully constructed to make it difficult to impose policy without overwhelming support, thus requiring advocates to win adherents in the crucible of public debate. As Americans, we have always engaged in robust political debate for this purpose, but our politics are different than it once was. More dangerous. More consequential.
The difference seems to be that in ages past, both political parties adhered to a fundamental respect for the process and institutions of our nation. Imbued with legitimacy accorded by the Founders and the many years since their creation, there was near universal respect for our institutions and the process by which we confer the consent of the people upon the wielders of political power.
In recent years, the Democrats, and to a much lesser, but not negligible, extent, the Republicans, have jettisoned respect for, and adherence to, the process, institutions, and constitutional constraints of our system of government in favor of an outcome-based approach to obtaining and wielding political power. This has coincided with the growing Marxist faction of the Democratic Party wielding increasing power over the wilting traditional liberals. In this doctrine, the outcome justifies subverting, ignoring, or modifying the processes and institutions as required to achieve the outcome. Just as ancient and medieval princes justified their tyranny for the sake of necessity and the greater good, so, too, do our modern tyrants. Whether for the cause of security, climate change, COVID, or democracy (whatever that means), political objectives are elevated to the stature of existential causes to justify any action that leads to the desired outcome.
We see this infection reddening the organ and connecting tissues of all aspects of our government. In Wisconsin, we see it with the newly leftist Supreme Court. The settled process for reapportionment as prescribed by the state Constitution and long practiced by both parties is being abandoned by the court. The leftist justices and their adherents justify the action for the sake of “fairness” — as defined by them. To the leftists, the constitutional and long-established process for apportionment did not result in the outcome they wanted, so they are jettisoning the process to dictate their desired outcome.
When the United States Supreme Court ruled that President Biden lacked the constitutional or legal authority to arbitrarily absolve tens of thousand of debtors from their obligation to repay their student loans, thus thrusting that cost onto taxpayers, Biden simply ignored the order. Without making any effort to involve Congress or obtain the required authority, Biden has been illegally transferring billions of dollars of student debt to taxpayers. For Biden, the outcome of appeasing this constituency justifies ignoring the protestations of the coequal branch of government charged with adjudicating his actions.
Perhaps nowhere else do we see the destructive force of an outcome-based political system than at our southern border. Despite a constitutional responsibility and reams of laws empowering and funding the federal government to secure our federal borders from people illegally crossing them, President Biden has chosen to ignore that responsibility and use those resources to facilitate and accelerate the ingestion of millions of illegal aliens into our nation. The full resources of the federal government are being used to greet, provide resources for, and diffuse illegal aliens into the interior.
We know that this invasion is Biden’s intent because the border was all but secure at the end of the previous administration. Since then, the Congress has not passed any border or immigration legislation, yet the border is gaping open. It is estimated that well more than a million illegal aliens have been dispersed throughout our nation every year of Biden’s term. Biden’s intentional effort to flood communities with people he thinks will be more likely than not to vote for Democrats someday justifies unburdening himself from the confines of statute or Constitution.
Outcome-based politics always precedes tyranny. By abandoning the constitutional, legal, and traditional processes and institutional implements of power for the sake of necessity, we necessarily concentrate power and silence the moderating effect of opposition voices. The same slide preceded Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler — tyrants all, who stood astride the ashes of the republics they replaced. The slide can be reversed, but it becomes more difficult with each passing day.
by Owen | 2055, 29 Jan 2424 | Politics | 0 Comments
Wut? They have different alert systems based on the race of the missing person?
The Feather Alert, signed into law in 2022, was designed to be similar to the Amber Alert, which since its inception in 1996 has located more than 1,100 missing children nationwide. Assemblymember James Ramos (D-Highland), who was the first California Native American elected to the Legislature, argued that the state needed a separate system for missing Indigenous people because of high rates of violence and abductions in tribal communities. It’s one of seven categories of missing-person alerts in California.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is calling on the United States to restore the funding to the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, which is facing allegations that 12 of its workers were involved in Hamas’s attack on Israel.
“Cutting off support to @UNRWA – the primary source of humanitarian aid to 2 million+ Gazans – is unacceptable. Among an organization of 13,000 UN aid workers, risking the starvation of millions over grave allegations of 12 is indefensible,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote Monday on X, formerly known as Twitter.
While we should avenge the deaths of our own, we also shouldn’t take the bait. It is clear that with the escalations in Yemen and now here, that Iran is trying very hard to pull Western powers into another war in the Middle East. Iran wants to rally the Muslim nations and assume the ascendency of those forces. This is about an Iranian power play for supremacy in their region. Let’s not spill anymore American blood on it. But hey… I’m just a dude with a blog.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — President Joe Biden said Sunday that the U.S. “shall respond” after three American troops were killed and dozens more were injured in an overnight drone strike in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border. Biden blamed Iran-backed militias for the first U.S. fatalities after months of strikes by such groups against American forces across the Middle East since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
[…]
With an increasing risk of military escalation in the region, U.S. officials were working to conclusively identify the precise group responsible for the attack, but they have assessed that one of several Iranian-backed groups was behind it.
Biden said in a written statement that the United States “will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner (of) our choosing.” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said “we will take all necessary actions to defend the United States, our troops, and our interests.”
The leftist-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court is continuing its rampage to strip Wisconsinites of self-governance and reshape the state to their will. Where leftists could not win support for their ideology at the ballot box, they will use the power of the court to advance it.
Unless you are a political nerd, it is difficult to convey how bad the court is acting in regard to Wisconsin’s legislative maps. Article 4 section 3 of the Wisconsin Constitution is crystal clear that it is the duty and responsibility of the state legislature to redraw the state’s legislative boundaries every 10 years after the federal census. The maps are redrawn to adjust for population shifts to ensure that each district is roughly equal in population.
After the 2020 census, the Republican legislature did their duty and redrew the maps. Democrat Governor Evers vetoed them, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court ended up settling the issue. The maps were challenged multiple times in state and federal court, but the maps were universally ruled constitutional and went into effect for the 2022 election.
This was a settled issue. Leftists are frustrated that their supporters are concentrated in a couple of areas in the state. This results in Wisconsin being evenly politically divided in statewide elections, but since legislative districts are geographically dispersed, the leftists’ geographic concentration puts them at a disadvantage in legislative elections. This is why challenging the legislative maps was high on the list of things for the newly Leftists Supreme Court to redo.
Right before Christmas, the Supreme Court threw out all of the legislative maps and committed to redrawing them under their own authority, thus usurping the express power conferred to the Legislature in the constitution. The fig leaf they used to cover their overt power grab was that all of the districts were not physically contiguous. Wisconsin’s districts have not been physically contiguous for many decades, but that was their excuse. In fact, in 1992, a Democrat-led legislature drew maps without physically contiguous districts and a federal judicial panel ruled them constitutional. It is goofy, but it is not unconstitutional.
Even if one accepts that incontiguous districts are unconstitutional (they are not); and even if one considers the issue so egregious that it must be dealt with now and not at the next apportionment (it is not); the court could have taken the least disruptive action of just redrawing the relevant districts. They did not take the least disruptive action. Instead, they threw out all of the maps and are completely redrawing them in the middle of a presidential election year. The court’s actions reveal the depth of their power grab.
On Jan. 12, seven interested parties submitted new maps to the court for them to consider. According to a review by the Marquette University Law School, all seven maps still result in a Republican advantage for the Assembly. That is just how the political math works in an age of ideological ghettoization.
The Republicans would also have an advantage for the Senate in five of the seven submitted maps.
The Supreme Court does not have to use any of the submitted maps. They could just ignore them all and draw their own. One thing is certain, however: The new maps will maximize the advantage for Democrats even if districts are gerrymandered such that they will be renowned as a piece of abstract art. One need only look to our neighbors in Illinois to see the depths to which Democrats will gerrymander districts to their advantage.
But the deeper outrage of the leftist court’s actions is not the “what,” but the “who.” Our government of self-governance relies on the rule of law and the separation of powers. The leftists are rejecting both of these bedrock principles in one stroke. They are substituting ideology for law and brazenly snatching an express constitutional power from the legislative branch of government.
We are watching a judicial coup unfold before our eyes. These are menacing times.
Spot on. And it’s good to see Nik Clark on the interwebs.
It’s my observation most Republican legislators as well as political consultants who run campaigns for Republicans in Wisconsin think the “gun vote” is a bunch of Generation X and Baby Boomers who hunt, fish, and would likely be found at a Pheasants Forever or Ducks Unlimited banquet. This is a 1990-2010 understanding of “the gun vote” and is as dated as Scott Walker’s Kohl’s sweater vest. Because a majority of this demographic is already voting “R“, Madison Republicans think they already have “the gun vote” in the bag, much like Democrats assume “the black vote” is secured. They are both wrong. What is the “gun vote” in 2023?
For the past 5 years, most attendees of our Milwaukee area classes are non-white, non-male. Women and minorities are the new face of concealed carry. Especially women. Ask anyone who works at a retail gun store for confirmation. Starting with the riots of 2020 and extending to today, the realization Milwaukee and Madison’s soft-on-crime criminal justice system treats law-abiding citizens like criminals and criminals like victims, and uses the streets as a jail, resulting in a flood of concern from urban and suburban women for their safety and ability to protect their children. Citizens are collateral damage in the democrat’s failed social-justice crime experiment. People who never before considered a firearm for personal protection have changed their minds.
This changing face of concealed carry presents an opportunity for Republicans to appeal to demographics that traditionally voted Democrat, but would likely consider a republican candidate who offered the real chance to make them safer. Elected Republicans ‘tough-on-crime’ policies are more symbolism than substance because local DAs and Judges drive the criminal justice system and can side-step new legislation. Elected Republicans CAN provide safety for urban and suburban voters by making concealed carry more attainable and more practicable.
HUD reports in December 2022 and April 2023 showed HACM was at risk for fraud and abuse and allegedly mismanaged millions of dollars. In May 2023, HUD deemed some of HACM’s programs, including its Section 8 Program, ‘troubled’.
“We pay our rent, we deserve better, you know, better treatment,” one HACM resident said.
Now, HUD is mandating HACM to hire an outside agency to run its multi-million-dollar Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) division, which includes Section 8 housing. In an email, a HACM spokesperson said this includes nearly 6,000 voucher households.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy is starting to enlist individuals who didn’t graduate from high school or get a GED, marking the second time in about a year that the service has opened the door to lower-performing recruits as it struggles to meet enlistment goals.
The decision follows a move in December 2022 to bring in a larger number of recruits who score very low on the Armed Services Qualification Test. Both are fairly rare steps that the other military services largely avoid or limit, even though they are all finding it increasingly difficult to attract the dwindling number of young people who can meet the military’s physical, mental and moral standards.
Under the new plan, Navy recruits without an education credential will be able to join as long as they score 50 or above on the qualification test, which is out of 99. The last time the service took individuals without education credentials was in 2000.
Car insurance rates have climbed 36% since January 2020, according to an ABC News analysis of consumer price data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Within the past year alone, rates for car insurance have soared more than 20%, BLS data shows.
“Prices for a lot of things have gone up over the last few years,” Tom Simons, an economist at Jefferies who studies the auto industry, told ABC News. “The difference with car insurance is that it’s still going up while others have subsided.”
[…]
The rate increases tie directly to the surge in vehicle prices, analysts told ABC News, noting that the elevated car prices left owners more likely to seek repairs for their current vehicle than opt to buy a new one.
In turn, a spike in demand for car repairs sent up the price of such services, which led to ballooning insurance rates, analysts added. Those rates have continued to rise as repair shops weather expenses like pay increases for in-demand workers and high costs for parts, even as the supply shortages have begun to ease.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The United Nations’ top court ordered Israel on Friday to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in its military offensive in Gaza, but stopped short of ordering a cease-fire.
South Africa alleged that Israel’s campaign in the tiny coastal enclave amounted to genocide in the case, which goes to the core of one of the world’s most intractable conflicts, and had asked the court to order Israel to halt the operation.
While the ruling stopped short of that, it nonetheless constituted an overwhelming rebuke of Israel’s wartime conduct and adds to mounting international pressure to halt the offensive that has killed more than 26,000 Palestinians, decimated vast swaths Gaza, and driven nearly 85% of its 2.3 million people from their homes.
The UN is a defunct organization rife with antisemites and tyrants. It lacks the moral authority to levy judgment. As an example, the nation that brought this case, South Africa, is currently in the process of committing a slow genocide on their white population. Nobody cares.
by Owen | 1929, 24 Jan 2424 | Politics | 0 Comments
Yes, this is bribery and/or money laundering in broad daylight. Smart to use art because the value of art is extremely subjective. But I guarantee you that Hunter’s paintings will never be in a museum or sold at auction for more than they were originally purchased. Never.
Two of Biden’s top allies − a Los Angeles gallery owner and a Hollywood attorney and novelist − revealed those financial details to the House GOP involved in those probes. The gallery owner who sold the paintings, George Berges, and California lawyer Kevin Morris, who loaned the money, both told the House committees they did not discuss their business with the White House or seek favors.
There are some “facts” that Biden likes to recite in almost every speech. In the past year, in more than 30 appearances, the president has referred to billionaires paying about 8 percent in federal income taxes. He said it in his last State of the Union address, and odds are he will say it again when he addresses Congress in March.
The line is a key part of his argument to impose a minimum 25 percent tax on all taxpayers with wealth greater than $100 million. That would raise about $360 billion over 10 years, the administration estimates.
But if you check Treasury Department calculations for what the richest Americans already pay in taxes, you would see that the richest 1 percent pay in excess of 20 percent in income taxes and more than 30 percent in all federal taxes. Even if you drill down to the top 400 wealthiest taxpayers – data that was publicly available on an annual basis until President Donald Trump killed the report – they paid an effective tax rate of 23.1 percent in 2014. These taxpayers – with $127 billion of income – that year paid $29.4 billion in income taxes, or more than 2 percent of all income taxes, the IRS said. That’s more than the bottom 70 percent of taxpayers combined.
The Ohio Senate has voted to override Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto against Ohio House Bill 68 in a 23-9 vote. This bill would ban transgender minors from receiving gender-affirming medical care and prevent transgender girls from taking part in girls’ and women’s sports.
The Ohio House voted to override the veto on Jan. 10.
The bill restricts the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapy or surgeries for transgender youth. The bill does not restrict the use of this care on non-transgender youth, and specifically includes an exception for intersex youth with ambiguous or abnormal sex characteristics.
Here we go! Referendum pending. I would remind readers that I and other local professionals did and analysis and made recommendations to improve and adjust facilities for the district four years ago. It would have reduced the footprint to match enrollment and made substantial improvements. Cost? About $50 million. The study was utterly ignored and they continued to neglect facilities like they had for the decade before. When the referendum comes, vote no. Don’t reward poor management.
WEST BEND — The West Bend School District’s construction partner, Findorff, provided financial estimates for four broad groups of building and site work that total $229.4 million over 15 years across the district, or more than $15 million a year on average.
The West Bend School Board heard the presentation at its Jan. 22 meeting, learning about how the detailed building and site conditions assessment completed in December of 2023 by Eppstein Uhen Architects (EUA) were being used to develop the preliminary 15-year budgets.
That assessment covers current and future capital maintenance needs of the district’s facilities and sites, according to a recent release. The budget estimates presented at the meeting do not include estimated costs for the other two components of the facility assessment related to educational adequacy and capacity/space utilization.
According to Jen Wimmer, superintendent of the West Bend School District, the ongoing capital maintenance needs of the West Bend School District’s buildings are significant.
The leftist-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court is continuing its rampage to strip Wisconsinites of self-governance and reshape the state to their will. Where leftists could not win support for their ideology at the ballot box, they will use the power of the court to advance it.
Unless you are a political nerd, it is difficult to convey how bad the court is acting in regard to Wisconsin’s legislative maps. Article 4 section 3 of the Wisconsin Constitution is crystal clear that it is the duty and responsibility of the state legislature to redraw the state’s legislative boundaries every 10 years after the federal census.
[…]
The Supreme Court does not have to use any of the submitted maps. They could just ignore them all and draw their own. One thing is certain, however: The new maps will maximize the advantage for Democrats even if districts are gerrymandered such that they will be renowned as a piece of abstract art. One need only look to our neighbors in Illinois to see the depths to which Democrats will gerrymander districts to their advantage.
But the deeper outrage of the leftist court’s actions is not the “what,” but the “who.” Our government of self-governance relies on the rule of law and the separation of powers. The leftists are rejecting both of these bedrock principles in one stroke. They are substituting ideology for law and brazenly snatching an express constitutional power from the legislative branch of government.
We are watching a judicial coup unfold before our eyes. These are menacing times.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Nearly 30,000 professors, librarians, coaches, and other workers at California State University, the largest public university system in the U.S., walked off the job Monday in a weeklong strike to demand higher wages.
The stoppage across Cal State’s 23 campuses comes two weeks after CSU officials ended contract negotiations with a unilateral offer starting with a 5% pay raise this year, effective Jan. 31, far below the 12% hike that the union is seeking.
With the new semester beginning Monday, classes for many of the system’s 450,000 students could be canceled, unless faculty individually decide to cross picket lines.
Legal experts say the court’s conservative justices appear very likely to significantly reduce the scope of the Chevron doctrine, if not eliminate it altogether. A final ruling is expected in early summer.
Perspectives
If Chevron is eliminated, the government’s power to do just about anything will be weakened
“Here’s the bottom line: Without Chevron deference, it’ll be open season on each and every regulation, with underinformed courts playing pretend scientist, economist, and policymaker all at once.” — Mark Joseph Stern, Slate
Harvard’s account acknowledges that the university did not handle the review perfectly, suggesting that the university was in crisis as it faced an uproar over its handling of antisemitism on campus.
“These allegations arose in a time of unprecedented events and tension on campus and globally,” the report said. “We understand and acknowledge that many viewed our efforts as insufficiently transparent, raising questions regarding our process and standard of review.”
On Friday, Harvard also announced new rules to rein in student protests.
In a message just before the start of college classes Monday, Harvard said that demonstrations would not be permitted in classrooms, libraries, dormitories or dining halls without permission. Instead, protests are limited to “courtyards, quadrangles and other such spaces” and cannot block students from walking to class.
The clarification did not directly address the question raised at the congressional hearing that contributed to Gay’s resignation: whether protesters chanting slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — which many supporters of Israel interpret as a call for wiping out Israel — would be against Harvard’s code of conduct.
