EXPERT: Best hope for reforming U.S. Refugee Program is under President Trump

“I saw first-hand the flagrant abuses and scams that permeate the refugee program.” – Mary Doetsch, retired Foreign Service Officer

Will President Donald Trump and soon-to-be Secretary of State Pompeo, do what must be done and overhaul the USRAP?

Trump and Pompeo

Mary Doetsch is a retired U.S. State Department Foreign Service officer who spent eight years (of a 25-year career) as a Refugee Coordinator serving on four continents.

As someone who has worked on the inside, her op-ed at the Washington Examiner today carries more weight than anything I could ever write as an outsider looking in!

Entitled:

US refugee program needs a complete overhaul

Ms. Doetsch opines (emphasis is mine):

During my career in the State Department, I became a refugee coordinator in the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, or USRAP, because I wanted to help and support persecuted persons in legitimate need of international protection. But the pervasive fraud I saw during my eight years in the field was alarming.

It cries out for a fix, and President Trump might just be the person to do it.

Undoubtedly, many individuals who work within the refugee field have humanitarian aims. But refugee resettlement has morphed into a numbers-driven, financially motivated business, growing blindly at the expense of the American public and our national security.

The US Department of State logo is displ

There once was a time when private charities, civic groups and faith-based organizations provided the bulk of funds and volunteers to resettle and help assimilate refugees in the United States. Today’s deeply flawed system relies almost exclusively on nine federal contractors (paradoxically referred to as “Voluntary Agencies” or VOLAGS) to resettle refugees.

[….]

The contractors have a vested interest in processing ever-larger numbers of applicants, since they make money on every refugee settled. And as non-governmental organizations they can and do lobby for advantageous changes to law, something they could not do if they were government agencies. Their lobbying umbrella wields enormous influence over refugee admissions policy, pressuring Congress and the bureaucracy to increase admissions and provide ever greater funding. They stage political rallies, file lawsuits against unfavorable policies, and lobby for causes that coincidentally help their bottom lines, yet this linkage is rarely, if ever, mentioned.

This isn’t just important from the oft-discussed security perspective, but also because of the rampant fraud and abuse that has permeated this program for generations.

[….]

As a former Refugee Coordinator who served throughout the Middle East, Africa, Russia and Cuba, I saw first-hand the flagrant abuses and scams that permeate the refugee program. I witnessed widespread exploitation and misuse, from identity fraud to marriage and family relation scams, and from private individuals profiting from their involvement in USRAP to distortion of the actual refugee definition to ensure greater numbers of people who should really just be migrants are admitted as refugees.

[….]

While refugee admissions have been declining under the Trump administration, without structural reform in the USRAP these numbers could again skyrocket under a new administration more favorable to the refugee industry.

Midway into fiscal year 2018, fewer than a quarter of the 45,000 individuals proposed in the FY18 refugee ceiling have entered the country. This slow-down in admissions may reduce the problem of fraud, but it cannot be eliminated without a complete overhaul of the program.

I’ve only snipped a portion of Doetsch’s op-ed, click here to read it all.

What you can do….

Contact the White House and tell the President it is now or never to overhaul the US Refugee Admissions Program, or once out of office the program will go back in to high gear.  Reducing numbers for a few years is not enough!

RELATED ARTICLE: Supremes to hear Trump travel ban case today, fears Trump will win

What do Islamophobia and Voter Suppression Have in Common?

Predictable cries of Islamophobia are heard after every terrorist attack even when jihadis screaming “Allahu Akhbar” (Allah is greater) make it irrefutable that they are killing in the name of Islam. Leftists and their apologists ignore this obvious fact and instead steer the discussion to Islamophobia.

So what is Islamophobia?

A phobia is an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something. Islam is a set of ideas. Criticizing a set of ideas that blatantly states its intention to destroy Western civilization and replace it with a worldwide religious Islamic caliphate is not irrational. Considering that Islam’s particular set of ideas has also created a military corps of jihadists willing to die killing infidels (non-Muslims) to make their Islamist dreams come true, it is not irrational to fear it or be averse to it. Self-preservation is the most basic of human instincts – it is neither irrational nor phobic.

The Leftist/Islamist axis deliberately blurs the boundary between criticizing ideas and criticizing people to shut down any rational debate about the ideology that is Islam. The accusation of Islamophobia is an accusation of bigotry. It is an emotional and deceitful political strategy designed to restrict freedom of speech and advance the goal of open borders. Why do Leftists and Islamists seek open borders? Because both groups have the shared goals of toppling America-first President Donald Trump and destroying American democracy. This is how it works.

The Leftist/Islamist axis requires social chaos to achieve its shared ambitions. If the alliance is successful in toppling the President the Leftists seek to impose secular socialism, and the Islamists seek to impose a religious caliphate. At this moment in history their shared goals take precedence over their separate goals. War on America makes strange bedfellows and explains the unlikely partnership between Leftists and sharia compliant Islamists.

So, what does any of this have to do with voter suppression?

California allows non-citizens to obtain drivers licenses and its 2015 New Motor Voter Law automatically registers all eligible voters to vote when they obtain or renew their driver’s licenses at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Voters are no longer required to fill out a separate voter registration form. Here is the problem. The boundary between eligible and non-eligible has been blurred which seriously threatens the integrity of elections.

Election integrity is the single most important element in a representative government. Voting is an American privilege and responsibility reserved for American citizens exclusively. The American public places its trust in legitimate elections that honestly calculate their votes. Non-citizens are not legally eligible to vote. Any policy or person that encourages illegal non-citizen voting is corrupting the integrity of the electoral process.

Why would Barack Obama invite illegals to vote? Why would Governor Jerry Brown sign the 2015 New Motor Voter Law into effect just in time for the 2016 presidential election? Because non-citizens vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Non-citizen votes are enough to swing elections. Joan Swirsky has just published an extraordinary article exposing the vehement Democrat opposition to President Trump’s Commission on Election Integrity and his determination to investigate voter fraud.

Why would any honest American oppose election integrity?

Think about it. Democrats reflexively scream “Voter Suppression” when confronted with voter ID requirements specifically designed to protect election integrity. They also reject any investigation that would expose voter fraud capable of illegally tilting elections. Judicial Watch’s Election Integrity Project discovered a shocking discrepancy between census statistics and voter registration rolls. There are 3.5 million more people on the United States election rolls than are alive among America’s adult voters! These 3.5 million “ghost voters” suspiciously coincide with the number of popular votes that crooked Hillary insists were hers. Dead voters, non-citizen voters, voting in more than one place have all been documented and the Leftist/Islamist axis wants to stop any further investigation. They scream “Voter Suppression” for the same reason they scream “Islamophobia” – the noise drowns out the honest voices demanding a rational debate about the existential dangers of voter fraud and Islamism.

What “Islamophobia” and “Voter Suppression” have in common is that they are both deceitful political slogans being used by the Leftist/Islamist axis to bring down President Trump’s government. Americans wishing to preserve the freedoms our Founding Fathers enshrined in our Constitution must oppose manipulative sloganism and actively support the courageous efforts of truth seekers like Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton.

We are at a pivotal time in American history.

We must fight to preserve our individual freedoms and liberty or we can be silenced and surrender them to the deep state. I reject the deceitful cries of “Islamophobia” and “Voter Suppression.” I unapologetically choose freedom and pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. I unapologetically choose election integrity. I unapologetically choose America first, national sovereignty, protected borders, the meritocracy, and unrestricted freedom of speech without which there is no other freedom.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the Goudsmit Pundicity. 

Podcast: California Tries to Silence Social Conservatives

California state lawmakers are considering a bill that would curb speech about LGBT matters. The Daily Signal’s Jarrett Stepman joins us to discuss. Plus: Dr. Michelle Cretella, who has written for The Daily Signal, gets dozens of protesters when she goes to speak at a church about transgender issues.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Katrina Trinko

Katrina Trinko

Katrina Trinko is managing editor of The Daily Signal and co-host of The Daily Signal podcast. She is also a member of USA Today’s Board of Contributors. Send an email to Katrina. Twitter: @KatrinaTrinko.

Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

VIDEO: Candace Owens Explains Why Trump’s Policies Are Better for Black Americans

Turning Point USA’s Candace Owens spoke to The Daily Signal’s Rob Bluey about why conservative policies are better for the African-American community. Owens appeared at the White House’s Generation Next forum for millennials Thursday. An edited transcript of her Daily Signal interview is below.

Rob Bluey: How did you become a conservative?

Candace Owens: I think for most people, watching Donald Trump run in 2016, something had to wake up inside of you. This is a man who was celebrated by the media. They could not get enough of Trump. You’re listening to rap and hip-hop music, they glorified him. Everyone wanted to end up at Mar-a-Lago. They said they were acting like Trump.

And then the second he won, he became a racist instantly. In that moment, I understood that racism was being used as a theme and a mechanism to control black Americans, and that the black community needed new leaders to sort of see them through that complete lie.

Bluey: You’ve made the case that Trump and his policies are better for the black community. Why is that?

Owens: Of course, our conservative policies are better for a black community. If you think of everything that we’ve gone through historically, it is because of Democratic policies that we are worse off today than we were 60 years ago.

For sure, no one would be foolish enough to say that America is a more racist country today than it was 60 years ago. So what happened? LBJ happened, the Great Society happened. Government dependency happened, welfare happened. All of this happened and came from the Democratic Party.

Bluey: When you’re talking to young people at Turning Point USA, what is your message to them?

Owens: My message to them is just that the time is now. President Trump represents the first opportunity for black Americans to get off of, what I refer to as, the ideological slave ship, to step outside of this line—this myth and this illusion—and to understand that we’ve had our power essentially stripped from us.

We continue to allow that by being afraid of racism, which is no longer an actual threat in this society for black Americans.

Bluey: You’re somebody who isn’t afraid to engage on Twitter or in the media. What gives you that courage to stand firm on these principles?

Owens: Honestly, I was born aggressive. I think I came out shouting orders at everyone.

I’ve been really strong-minded from the time I was a little girl, and I hate being told what to think. So propaganda just doesn’t really work on me. I’m not afraid. It takes fearlessness.

You can’t be afraid to be referred to as a “coon” or an “Uncle Tom,” which, by the way, Uncle Tom, for people that actually read the book, was the hero of the novel. That term does not work.

It’s going to take people with some courage to step up and say, “You can call me whatever you want, this movement is happening. You can get on board or you can watch it.”

Bluey: We’re approaching in the next couple of weeks the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. How did MLK influence your life?

Owens: The most important thing to understand is that what he wanted was a society where people would not be judged by the color of their skin. Everything that the Democrats are advocating for is for us to only be judged by the color of our skin, by our sex, me as a black woman, they want me to constantly remember that.

You are black, you are a woman, and you cannot exist outside of that. So we need to understand that in many ways, we’ve gone backward from the themes that he was teaching when he gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.

His dream is being realized, but it’s not being realized by the Democratic Party right now.

INTERVIEW BY

Portrait of Rob Bluey

Rob Bluey

Rob Bluey is editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal, the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation. Send an email to Rob. Twitter: @RobertBluey.

Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

The Defrauded Friar

Fr. Michael D. Calabria

Fr. Michael Calabria, a Franciscan Friar of Holy Name Province, is director of the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies at St. Bonaventure University.  His extensive travels throughout the Islamic world and the subject matter of his broad list of speaking engagements and presentations appear to indicate that he has drifted from his original path.

The Founder of Calabria’s Order of Franciscans, St. Francis, similarly traveled into Islamic Egypt during the Fifth Crusade, in 1219, to meet with Sultan Malik al-Kamil in a courageous, but naïve, attempt to evangelize. He had undoubtedly been shown the censored version of Islam and returned impressed with the frequency of Islamic prayers, their 99 names in praise of God, and their reverence of bowing to the ground, and he adopted the Order’s devotionals accordingly.  Unfortunately, he had not been told that devout Muslim spirituality was largely practiced under threat of the sword. In 1220, five friars were martyred in Morocco, and more were slaughtered in later centuries.  In 1291, Franciscans left the Holy Land when Acre, the last Crusader stronghold, fell.  Fr. Calabria is also bewitched by a mythical Islam.

He is scheduled to speak as an apologist for Islam this summer at the Chautauqua Institute, in New York State.  Founded as a Christian institution in 1874, there is a current Jewish presence, and the Institute’s Department of Religion began inviting a series of lecturers about Islam in the mid-1990s, with the aim of reaching its nearly 150,000 annual visitors.  Calabria will be yet another of many speakers invited to woo the unwary audience into esteeming the misrepresented Islam.

In past lectures and on his website, Calabria managed to compose a non-violent version of Mohammed’s hijra (journey) to Mecca and Medina, never divulging the Islamic leader’s beheading of as many as 900 Jews, sexual enslavement of the women and children, and demands of jizya (protection money) from the surviving Christians  The methods used by Islam to conquer the non-Islamic world continue unchanged to this day, with intolerance and invasion, rape, seizure and slaughter throughout Africa, into Europe and the Americas.  Yet, Calabria presents a sanitized picture of the prophet, and encourages Christians to offer hospitality and friendship to the alleged oppressed Muslims, and to guarantee their freedom and safety, united against injustices.   

Furthermore, he will repeat verbatim Islam’s own false claims of astounding achievements.  As I noted in my 2015 reply to aspiring presidential candidate Carly Fiorina’s erroneous treatise about Islam on the Hewlett-Packard site, the self-styled “Islamic arches” were already Roman, Byzantine, Persian, Egyptian, Babylonian and Greek. The vaulted and hemispherical ceilings were invented by non-Muslim Romans.  The first numerical system was developed by Babylonians, 800 years before Islam.  The misnamed “Arabic numerals” were adopted from the Hindus, in India. Arab scientists were largely Jews who were forcibly converted.  Arabic philosophers and scientists were Jewish and Berber survivors of massacres.  Arab astronomers were inspired by the great physician, Isaac Israel of Kairouan; and the greatest of “Arab” scientists, Avicenna (980-1037), was probably of Jewish origin from Bokhara.  Their astronomers used instruments, such as the astrolabe, to facilitate world-girdling sea voyages, but created by a “remarkable Jewish genius,” Mashala of Mosul; their astronomical tables were created by the Jewish Joseph ben Wallar at Toledo, and by Judaic specialists, including Immanuel ben Jacob in Aragon.

The sincere, but deluded, Calabria asserts that Muslims played a positive part of American society for more than a century when, in fact, the part they  played was that of Barbary corsairs  These were Ottoman pirates known as the Scourge of the Mediterraneanwhose raids and invasions had strangled world trade, caused economic disaster, and stopped shipments of papyrus to create a decline in writing, literacy and books written – the crucial cause of the European Dark Ages.  For centuries they had been capturing European merchant ships and holding for ransom or enslaving their crews.  When they began attacking American ships after the end of the American Revolution, and diplomatic talks failed, US President Thomas Jefferson, in 1798, formed the United States Department of the Navy in order to end the attacks, tributes and ransoms paid and to protect our commerce.  Such has been the real Islamic contribution to Western civilization.

Regarding slavery, it had been the Muslims themselves who forcibly kidnapped their co-religionists, as many as 11 million Black (Muslim) slaves, the men being trafficked for harsh labor, the women primarily for sexual slavery. Taken from their African homelands and sold into Europe and South and Central America for great profit (only 5 percent came to the United States), the traders were prepared to deal with the journeys’ high mortality rate (between 80 and 90 percent), and still be confident of sufficient financial gain.

Native-born American Muslims are mainly African Americans, many converted to Islam during the last 70 years  Although an estimated 10 to 30 percent of the slaves did arrive as Muslims, their adherence was suppressed on plantations, but the non-enslaved Muslims in North America were merchants, travelers and sailors, from the 16th and 17th c. Ottoman and Mughal Empires. Their increased number today is a result of the recent influx of migrants, following the Koranic commands of conquest by invasion (al-hijra) and breeding (al-wilada).  Nearly 96,000 became legal residents in 2005, with another 115,000 in 2009.  While world population may increase by 32 percent, Muslims are predicted to increase by 70 percent.  Their supposedly rich history remains undefined, their beneficial contributions to mankind undetermined, but Calabria remains convinced of an Islam that exists in the imagination only.  

Contrary to his ardent claim of Islam’s wellspring of contributions, the “Muslim genius” appears to be their unique ability to invade and feign victimhood, to insinuate their laws into the host country and protest discrimination, to force civilizations to relinquish their treasured mandates of truth and freedom, to convince a world of a non-existent history, to receive unending entitlements and support, and to contribute nothing beneficial and to destroy their host culture while declaring provenance over every field of endeavor.  Fr. Calabria has strayed from the original path and walks in Mohammed’s shoes.

RELATED ARTICLE: Why doesn’t Pope Francis view Islam as his namesake St. Francis did — As Christianity’s mortal enemy?

Army Chaplain Bombarded for Marriage View

Army Chaplain Scott Squires has been to battles all over the world — but he never imagined he’d be fighting his biggest one right here at home. For Squires, who’s spent 25 years serving his country, no one was more surprised than he was that the same military who hired him for his faith is now punishing him for exercising it. Turns out, some Obama-era habits are hard to break.

Like a lot of chaplains, Scott watched the military change under the last administration. He saw morale tank. He heard the unbelievable stories of airmen, sailors, and Marines who were targeted for their faith. And until Wes Modder nearly lost his job, he might have thought military chaplains were safe. Squires found out this year how wrong he was. The administration may have changed, but the intolerant attitudes of some have not.

When he was transferred to Fort Bragg last year, Squires picked up where he’d left off at other bases with the Army’s Strong Bonds program. For years, he’d been speaking at the event, trying to help soldiers develop healthier relationships in a stressful military life that’s led to some of the highest divorce rates in the country. When a lesbian couple wanted to join the marriage retreat, Scott realized he couldn’t, in good conscience, participate. So, he did what Army regulations demanded: he found another chaplain to oversee it.

Now, even though he followed Army policy, he could lose his job! To this couple, Scott’s actions weren’t an accommodation, they were “discrimination.” An official military investigation was launched — and Squires, despite his chaplain status, is being recommended for discipline! “The Army E.O. policy states that no service will be denied to any member of the Armed Service, regardless of race, color, national origin, gender, religious affiliation, or sexual orientation,” the report reads. “CH Squires should be reprimanded for his failure to include (name deleted) in the initial Strong Bonds Retreat.”

Asked how he was taking the news, Squires said he was “shocked.” After all, his attorneys at First Liberty point out, he was following the Army’s own policy! He couldn’t lead the session, so he found someone who could. If anything, this should be a lesson in the art of compromise. His solution accomplished the perfect balance of accommodating his faith and serving these women. Even so, he points out, “…[T]he investigator concluded that I should be reprimanded for doing something I’m required to do under Army regulations and my endorser’s rules. I hope the Army sees that I was simply following Army regulations and the tenets of my church.”

Remember when the Pentagon said religious liberty wouldn’t be a casualty of open homosexuality in the military? So do we. Unfortunately, it’s just another broken promise of the same-sex marriage movement. Now, because of the culture of hostility created in the military under Obama, the Army refuses to accept a compromise that should have satisfied everyone. But, as we should all know by now, the Left isn’t interested in coexistence. Instead, it wants to punish a father of three, who served multiple tours in Afghanistan, Africa, and the Middle East.

And of course, there’s the other piece of this, which is Chaplain Squires’s sponsoring organization: the Southern Baptist Convention. As Fox News’s Todd Starnes explains, the SBC’s North American Mission Board (NAMB) doesn’t support same-sex marriage — and its 2013 memo reiterated as much. “NAMB endorsed chaplains will not conduct or attend a wedding ceremony for any same sex couple, bless such a union or perform counseling in support of such a union, assist or support paid contractors or volunteers leading same-sex relational events, nor offer any kind of relationship training or retreat, on or off a military installation, that would give the appearance of accepting the homosexual lifestyle or sexual wrongdoing.” He’s not only bound by his own conviction — but the conviction of his military sponsors. And yet, this investigator thinks Chaplain Squires should be punished just for explaining his beliefs to the offended soldier!

Mike Berry, Squires’s attorney at First Liberty, can’t believe the terrible precedent this would set. “That would mean a chaplain can’t even talk about their religious beliefs without being accused of discrimination. That would strip thousands of chaplains across our military of their most basic freedoms under the First Amendment.” Something this president, who’s fought to restore religious liberty, would never stand for.

As FRC’s own Lt. General Jerry Boykin has said, “If the military wants a chaplain corps, then they have to be prepared for chaplains to be chaplains. A chaplain isn’t worth anything if he isn’t allowed to minister and counsel according to his faith. If the Army won’t allow him to be a chaplain, then he becomes nothing more than a social worker.”

If anyone should be free to exercise their faith, shouldn’t it be chaplains? It’s time for the Army to refresh its memory on a little thing called the First Amendment and reread the president’s executive order on religious liberty. Both documents ought to be all the proof they need that Chaplain Squires is guilty of nothing but doing his job. And, by all accounts, doing it well.


Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.


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Excellent Black American Role Models Are Being Erased From History

There is a tragedy of historical and philosophical ignorance that is benefitting a tiny handful of people at the expense and well-being of the vast majority of black Americans.

This tragedy is the ongoing, purposeful scrubbing from the education system the history of successful, self-reliant black Americans before the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s, and the reason for their success and that of large numbers of other blacks.

The leading black American at the turn of the 20th century was Booker T. Washington, whose approach was the virtual opposite of today’s grievance-focused approach that looks to government for personal progress. Washington, born into slavery, thought the black man’s best hope lay in personal responsibility, education, entrepreneurship, business and family. And indeed, there were great economic gains arising from that until the 1970s.

The result of this erasure of Washington and others (such as Frederick Douglass) is that black Americans have ever more intently looked to government, ironically still run largely by the dominant race of white Americans, for their future success. This means too many black Americans’ reliance ultimately rests on the largesse of white people, the total opposite of what was being promoted successfully for 60 years after the Civil War.

The Civil Rights Movement was an imperative for black Americans and the strength of all of America, crushing the last poisons of fully institutionalized racism (at least until hiring quotas, affirmative action and intersectionality began reintroducing the poison.) But if it had been married to the earlier teachings of Washington the result almost assuredly would have been a dynamic, black community in full competition with white and Asian Americans.

Washington was born into slavery in 1856, but grew from emancipation to be an American educator, author, orator, advisor to multiple presidents of the United States and for a quarter century until his death in 1915 was the dominant leader in the American black community.

He was a forceful proponent of black-owned businesses and a founder of the National Negro Business League. Based at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama as lynchings in the South peaked in 1895, Washington delivered his “Atlanta compromise” speech. He called for black progress through education and entrepreneurship, rather than trying to challenge directly the Jim Crow segregation and the disenfranchisement of black voters in the South. (Although he quietly helped those who were fighting the Jim Crow laws.) He felt blacks best situation would be had by being self-reliant.

Washington mobilized and led a broad, nationwide coalition of the growing middle-class of blacks, church leaders who were not so much political as Christian, and white philanthropists and politicians who supported his vision. His goal was the long-term, foundational building of the black community’s economic strength and pride through self-help and schooling. In this way, black Americans would not be reliant on the government or the largesse of white people. And their economic strength would naturally integrate them into the American capitalistic culture.

This was precisely what was happening and can be seen in the economic growth among black Americans that erupted in the immediate aftermath of civil rights laws dismantling legal discrimination. This short era was while the concept of self-help was still dominant — before the welfare culture took hold.

According to an in-depth study by the University of Indiana:

“For both African–American men and women, the greatest improvement in labour income relative to their White counterparts occurred in the 1960s and 1970s (Donohue 2007, pp. 1424–25). In the 1960s, African-American men and women of all age groups enjoyed positive growth relative to their White counterparts, with the men enjoying growth rates ranging from 6.5 percent to 21.8 percent, and the women enjoying growth rates ranging from 23.5 percent to 38.7 percent.”

These high growth numbers are actually above the rate of income growth for whites during the same period, meaning that the gap was being closed. Black Americans made their biggest strides in closing the economic gap with white Americans at a time when the self-reliant ethos of Booker T. Washington and others was still somewhat intact, and discrimination laws had been eliminated.

Unfortunately, going forward, the black labor participation rate that was 90 percent in 1970, plummeted to 77 percent by 2010. The white rate went from 95 percent to 91 percent in the same time period. Of course, this was the same time period in which the Great Society took hold.

There are many other data points showing that blacks were closing the gap on whites at a quick pace economically until the welfare state took hold most deeply among black Americans. Then progress not just slowed, but stopped and in some ways went backward. We see more black people in public, successful positions now but that is because of both opportunities and certain advantages that have been created for black Americans tend to accrue to those that already “have,” compared to those who “have not.”

Classic result of state-driven social policies.

Washington understood much of what was happening in his time and what could happen if black Americans took the path that was ultimately taken. His words both lift and inspire — not just black Americans, but all Americans — just as Martin Luther King’s do.

Here are some of his fascinating and worthy insights. (Language is time-stamped. If you are offended, avoid all history and pretend it didn’t exist. But you probably have not read this far if you are of that nature.) You see how Washington consistently looks at the individual, at the character of the man as MLK pointed to, not any outside forces. He is actually far more in the traditional American mode than any of today’s progressives of any race.

“I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.”

“Character, not circumstances, makes the man.”

“Of all forms of slavery there is none that is so harmful and degrading as that form of slavery which tempts one human being to hate another by reason of his race or color. One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.”

“There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.”

“Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood. We went into slavery a piece of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery without a language; we came out speaking the proud Anglo-Saxon tongue. We went into slavery with slave chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands.”

And these two, that could with little imagination, attach to some current so-called “civil rights” leaders afflicting the county and American blacks:

“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

“I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.”

It’s truly a tragedy that Washington’s legacy has been erased, that so few students learn of him today, and that we have turned our back on the wisdom of his life and insights.

RELATED ARTICLE: W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington and the Origins of the Civil Rights Movement

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act. Please visit the Revolutionary Act YouTube ChannelHelp Us Fight For American Values.

21 Travel Tips To Make You The World’s Smart Traveler [Infographic]

Almost everyone resembles to be savvy travelers when you travel on road. At the primary stage, it is often quite common to make some mistakes. Here you will find 21 traveling tips that will make you the world’s smart Traveller.

The following infographic is courtesy of ViewTraveling.com:

Of Truth and Idols

Pope Francis celebrated and preached at the Chrism Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Holy Thursday morning. He addressed the concelebrating priests on the themes of the closeness of God and the closeness that priests should have to their people. This priestly closeness is “an attitude that engages the whole person.” He praised street priests“who are ‘close’, available, priests who are there for people, who talk to everyone.”

Closeness, he believes, is “the key to mercy” and “also the key to truth.” Further, “truth is not only the definition of situations and things from a certain distance, by abstract and logical reasoning. It is more than that. Truth is also fidelity (émeth). It makes you name people with their real name, as the Lord names them, before categorizing them or defining ‘their situation.’”

Then Pope Francis made a startling claim:

We must be careful not to fall into the temptation of making idols of certain abstract truths. They can be comfortable idols, always within easy reach; they offer a certain prestige and power and are difficult to discern. Because the “truth-idol” imitates, it dresses itself up in the words of the Gospel, but does not let those words touch the heart. Much worse, it distances ordinary people from the healing closeness of the word and of the sacraments of Jesus.

These words are troubling. An idol is a false god. Idolatry is rendering worship to something other than God – a grave offense against the First Commandment. Idolatry is essentially man worshipping himself through the medium of some created reality. He makes the choice of what idols are important to him. His false god is his own creation, and thus it serves him. This is the complete reversal of the true worship that man owes to his Creator.

Abstraction is the mental process by which we come to know metaphysical realities by considering those material things our reason grasps and drawing rational conclusions. By abstraction, we understand what underlies the reality before our eyes. Thus seeing individual men and abstracting from this knowledge, we come to know the category of humanity, and we begin to understand what constitutes human nature. Abstraction allows reality to reveal itself to our minds.

Truth is the conformity of mind and reality. The truth about God is understood when we accurately grasp the nature and purpose of His creation (natural theology), and when we believe in any supernatural revelation He may make. Jesus told us that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. All truths have their origin in the Truth who is God made man. The Christian understands that the truth is a Person.

Dogmatic and moral truths come from and lead to God. The truth banishes error, especially idolatry, because all truth is found in the Word made flesh. What is true is good and beautiful because it unites us to the good and beautiful God. He created us so that we may know Him by knowing the truth that He is.

Given this, is it possible to make the truth into an idol? Can Catholic dogmatic teachings and the truths of the moral law become false gods that we worship so as to gain “a certain prestige and power”? It’s not possible. The truth as taught by the Church is what unites us to the true God and frees us from the errors of idolatry. Truth is not an idol, it is the remedy to idolatry.

Pope Francis states that “the ‘truth-idol’ imitates, it dresses itself up in the words of the Gospel, but does not let those words touch the heart.” Is the Gospel obscured or falsified by truths taught by the Magisterium of the Church – which are drawn from that Gospel?

If the truth could be an idol, then naturally any use of the Scriptures to illustrate that particular truth would be a charade. But the truth of God cannot be an idol because what God has made known to us is our means of entering into His reality – the goal of our existence.

Francis states that this “truth-idolatry” in fact “distances ordinary people from the healing closeness of the word and of the sacraments of Jesus.”

Here we have the interpretative key to what I think he is getting at. He is defending his decision in Amoris Laetitia to allow some people who are living in adulterous unions to receive the sacraments of penance and the Holy Eucharistic while intending to continue to engage in adulterous relations.

This doctrinal and disciplinary innovation, which contradicts all previous papal teaching and legislation, was confirmed as his unequivocal intention in his letter to the Argentinian bishops of the Buenos Aires region.

Those who defend the Church’s constant teaching and practice on this matter have been subjected to various aspersions. Now they are being categorized as engaging in a horrific violation of the First Commandment because they treat Catholic doctrine as inviolable, and thus binding upon all believers.

If truth could ever lose its quality of being the means to know the will of God, and become something false, and thus evil, then mankind is lost. Without immutable truth, we have no way to live in unity with God, with reality, and with one another.

The good news is that truth can never be false. It’s not an idol, and to defend the truth is not to lead people away from God towards false worship, but rather to invite them to embrace what is, in fact, their deepest desire for goodness, happiness, and peace.

The truth will set you free, it will not enslave you in error and darkness. Those who seek to be healed by coming close to Christ in his sacraments will only realize that goal by knowing and doing what Jesus asks of them. To reject in practice his words about the permanence of marriage and the obligation to avoid adultery, and then assert a right to receive the sacraments risks making an erroneous opinion into an idol.

Fr. Gerald E. Murray

Fr. Gerald E. Murray

The Rev. Gerald E. Murray, J.C.D. is a canon lawyer and the pastor of Holy Family Church in New York City.

EDITORS NOTE: © 2018 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.orgThe Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own. The featured image is of His Holiness, Pope Francis [Franco Origlia/Getty Images].

Happy Birthday, Israel!

It was 70 years ago, according to the Hebrew calendar, that the Jewish state of Israel declared its independence. Eleven minutes after David Ben-Gurion, the founder of the modern state of Israel, made the declaration public, the United States became the first nation to recognize Israel’s rebirth.

Earlier today, we joined thousands of Israelis in celebrating this significant milestone as we kicked off a 10-day tour of the Holy Land. We started our day with a rare briefing and tour of one of Israel’s strategic air bases as citizens across the state took in military air shows and public displays of Israel’s military hardware.

For more, tune into “Washington Watch,” as former Rep. Michele Bachmann, Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, and former Ambassador Ken Blackwell join me from Israel to discuss the significance of this 70th celebration.


Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.


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Gorsuch Defends the Rule of Law in Immigration Case

If you take anything away from Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion concurring with the Supreme Court’s so-called “liberal” bloc in an immigration case this week, it should be his continued faithfulness to the rule of law and the separation of powers.

In Sessions v. Dimaya, Justice Elena Kagan wrote the court’s opinion—joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and in part by Gorsuch—holding that part of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which defines a “crime of violence” for purposes of removal proceedings, is unconstitutionally vague.

Gorsuch wrote a separate opinion expressing concerns about how vague laws can lead to the arbitrary exercise of governmental power.

Some media outlets and noted conservatives have suggested that Gorsuch’s opinion is surprising or misguided, ruling with the liberal justices and against the Trump administration. For example, a New York Post headline reads, “Gorsuch Sides With Liberal Justices in Supreme Court Immigration Vote.” And Mark Levin tweeted, “Gorsuch blows it, big time.”

Whatever you think of any immigration policies or other issues surrounding this case, one thing is clear: Gorsuch faithfully applied fundamental constitutional principles and upheld the rule of law.

In many ways, Gorsuch also carried on Justice Antonin Scalia’s legacy.

Consider what the law in this case required, and what Gorsuch wrote.

The Immigration and Nationality Act

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, any alien who is convicted of an “aggravated felony” in the United States is subject to deportation, regardless of their ties to the country. Congress defined “aggravated felony” by a long list of specific offenses and offense types (at 8 U.S.C. §1101(a)(43)), one of which is “a crime of violence” punishable by imprisonment for at least one year.

Congress defined “crime of violence” elsewhere, in 18 U. S. C. §16, in part by stating that it includes any felony “that, by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense.”

Only that provision, known as the residual clause, was at issue in this case.

But in order to figure out which convictions trigger that residual clause, the court assesses the presence of “substantial risk” by looking not at the facts of the case, or the elements of the crime, but to “the ‘nature of the offense’ generally speaking,” and asks this: Does “‘the ordinary case’ of [this] offense pose[] the requisite risk”?

Immigration judges held that James Dimaya, a Philippine native and lawful permanent resident, is deportable because he was convicted—twice—of first-degree burglary under California law. The government sought to remove Dimaya after his second conviction, and immigration judges found that first-degree burglary counts as a “crime of violence” under federal law.

Dimaya appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that the “residual clause” is unconstitutionally vague.

The 9th Circuit relied in part on Johnson v. United States, a 2015 opinion that the Supreme Court published while Dimaya’s appeal was pending.

In Johnson, the court struck down part of the definition of “violent felony” under the Armed Career Criminal Act on vagueness grounds.

That law increased the sentence of a defendant convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm if he had three or more previous “violent felony” convictions, which includes any felony that “involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.”

Scalia wrote the majority opinion for the court in that case, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan.

Scalia concluded that the residual clause left “grave uncertainty about how to estimate the risk posed by a crime,” and further “uncertainty about how much risk it takes for a crime to qualify as a violent felony.” Rather than make up those aspects of the law himself, Scalia chose instead to send Congress back to the drawing board.

For that, Scalia’s opinion advanced the rule of law and the separation of powers.

Gorsuch’s Concurring Opinion

In his concurring opinion this week in Dimaya, Gorsuch provided thorough reasoning for a narrow conclusion: that “to the extent it requires an ‘ordinary case’ analysis, the portion of the Immigration and Nationality Act before us fails the fair notice test for the reasons Justice Scalia identified in Johnson.”

Gorsuch’s concern in Dimaya was, like Scalia’s in Johnson, a fundamentally conservative one: hostility to vague laws and arbitrary power.

Gorsuch wrote that “vague laws … can invite the exercise of arbitrary power … by leaving the people in the dark about what the law demands and allowing prosecutors and courts to make it up.” Gorsuch explained:

[T]he Immigration and Nationality Act requires a judge to determine that the ordinary case of the alien’s crime of conviction involves a substantial risk that physical force may be used. But what does that mean? Just take the crime at issue in this case, California burglary, which applies to everyone from armed home intruders to door-to-door salesmen peddling shady products. How, on that vast spectrum, is anyone supposed to locate the ordinary case and say whether it includes a substantial risk of physical force? The truth is, no one knows.

Gorsuch gave the following examples of the confusion that results from the “ordinary case analysis”:

Does a conviction for witness tampering ordinarily involve a threat to the kneecaps or just the promise of a bribe? Does a conviction for kidnapping ordinarily involve throwing someone into a car trunk or a noncustodial parent picking up a child from daycare? These questions do not suggest obvious answers.

Because the statute “leaves judges to their intuitions and the people to their fate,” Gorsuch wrote, “the Constitution demands more.”

And Gorsuch explained exactly why that is.

Looking to history, Gorsuch cited early American court cases and turned to the Federalist Papers for the principle that “[w]ithout an assurance that the laws supply fair notice, so much else of the Constitution risks becoming only a ‘parchment barrie[r]’ against arbitrary power.”

And Gorsuch discussed exactly how vague laws might jeopardize other constitutional rights.

“Take the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that arrest warrants must be supported by probable cause,” Gorsuch wrote, “and consider what would be left of that requirement if the alleged crime had no meaningful boundaries.”

Finally, Gorsuch observed precisely how vague criminal laws undermine the separation of powers.

Only Congress may enact law, but if Congress writes vague statutes, Gorsuch wrote, then it leaves judges, prosecutors, and police “free to ‘condem[n] all that [they] personally disapprove and for no better reason than [they] disapprove it.’”

Thus, to “keep the separate branches within their proper spheres,” Gorsuch wrote, is “the more important aspect” of the vagueness doctrine.

And that is the most important aspect of Gorsuch’s opinion in Dimaya.

To judge how individual justices vote in particular cases in relation to one another, without regard to the substance of their opinions, unjustifiably politicizes the judiciary.

Dimaya is interesting not because of how the justices voted in relation to one another, but because of how the justices—especially Gorsuch and Justice Clarence Thomas—debated legal history and precedent, and did so respectfully.

Yes, the other conservative justices all dissented. Roberts dissented, joined by Thomas and Justices Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito, arguing that, unlike the law in Johnson, the statute at issue in this case was not vague.

Thomas also wrote a separate dissent, joined by Kennedy and Alito, challenging Gorsuch on the merits of the vagueness doctrine.

And yes, Gorsuch’s opinion is not what the government hoped for in this case.

The government had pointed to the executive’s “considerable constitutional authority” in immigration and foreign affairs but, as Gorsuch wrote, “to acknowledge that the president has broad authority to act in this general area supplies no justification for allowing judges to give content to an impermissibly vague law.”

Now, Congress can go back to the drawing board and draft a more precise law.

Gorsuch’s opinion has explained why that is a job for Congress, echoing his prior statements on the role of the judge: “to put aside their personal politics and preferences to decide cases and to follow the law and not try and make it.”

And by echoing Scalia’s opinion in Johnson, this case also illustrates how Gorsuch carries Scalia’s legacy.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of John-Michael Seibler

John-Michael Seibler is a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Twitter: .

EDITORS NOTE: The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now. The featured image of Justice Neil Gorsuch is by Oliver Contreras/Sipa USA/Newscom.

Parkland Student Plans Conservative Livestream on Columbine Anniversary [April 20, 2018]

Conservative Parkland student Kyle Kashuv is organizing a pro-Second Amendment Facebook Live show on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting.

Kashuv, 16, tweeted that the goal is to “discuss ways to save lives without infringing on [the Second Amendment] and the importance of mental health and not bullying.”

Confirmed speakers for the livestream so far include Sebastian Gorka, former deputy assistant to President Donald Trump; Charlie Kirk, founder and executive director of Turning Point USA; Anthony Scaramucci, former White House communications director; and Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union.

Originally, Kashuv planned to bring Kirk to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Friday for a discussion of the Second Amendment.

However, the school blocked Kirk from coming on the grounds that “non-school sponsored, student-initiated guest speaker assemblies/meetings are not permitted to take place on campus,” according to a spokeswoman with Broward school district, reported the Sun Sentinel.

Kirk spoke to “Fox & Friends” Sunday about his intended message, had he been allowed to speak in Florida.

“My mission would not have been to offend. I did not want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but instead … here’s what really troubles me. Ever since that horrific shooting, the national conversation predominantly from students from that school has been about gun confiscation, about taking people’s guns away,” he said.

Kirk went on to say that conversations about the law enforcement failures at state and local levels are important to address, even though the left wants to stay focused on gun control.

Another Parkland student, David Hogg, is promoting a walkout Friday.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Ginny Montalbano

Ginny Montalbano

Ginny Montalbano is a contributor to The Daily Signal. Send an email to Ginny. Twitter: @GinnyMontalbano.

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Kyle Kashuv and Patrick Petty, both Parkland survivors, hugging outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on March 13. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch /UPI/Newscom). The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

The Changes That Made California Become a Liberal Fiasco

Is America destined to become like California?

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey created a stir recently when he tweeted out an article calling for an end to bipartisanship and the beginning of nationwide, one-party rule—similar to the Golden State. He called it a “great read.”

A Twitter spokesperson told The Daily Signal in an email, “Twitter’s tools are apolitical, and we enforce our rules without political bias.”

Nevertheless, the tweet certainly brings up concern over Twitter’s political bias.

The article, titled “The Great Lesson of California in America’s New Civil War,” argued that due to the intractable division of worldviews in America, bipartisanship is unworkable. It’s time to simply obliterate the other side.

The article was authored by Peter Leyden, the CEO of a media company called Reinvent, and Ruy Teixeira, a progressive political scientist. Teixeira argued after Barack Obama’s 2008 election victory that the GOP would go extinct for a generation because demographic trends would make Democrats unbeatable.

Needless to say, that didn’t come true.

But in a larger sense, it’s worth dissecting what a disaster the Californization of the whole country would be.

The authors point to California as a model for America’s political future. They explain how a once-bitterly divided state transformed into a state dominated by one party in a very short period of time—and they tout this as a good thing.

The problem in their analysis is that they essentially compare apples to oranges. The factors involved in California’s swing to one-party dominance were unique to California and can’t necessarily be applied to the country at large.

Moreover, Democratic Party dominance in California doesn’t necessarily mean Californians have become more progressive or that progressive policies have worked.

As a native Californian who has left the state, I witnessed California’s terrible turn firsthand.

Several factors went into this political sea change.

‘Jungle Primaries’ and Redistricting

California hasn’t always been a deep blue state. At one time it voted consistently for Republican presidential candidates, even up into the 1990s. But the state has gone leftward since that time, a situation fueled by both electoral and cultural changes.

In 2006, the state passed a new law requiring candidates to participate in a single consolidated open primary, often called the “jungle primary.” In these primaries, the top two vote-getters end up on the election ballot, where they square off against each other. This system has driven many Republicans off the election ballot, as the top two slots are often won by Democrats.

Some Republicans originally backed the jungle primary law, including then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. They hoped it would help moderate candidates in elections and thus make the state more bipartisan.

But what has happened is the exact opposite. This law made California ripe for one-party rule.

As The Daily Signal’s Fred Lucas wrote in The American Conservative, it led to bizarre absurdities, such as Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein being labeled the “Republican” option in a Senate race due to the fact that her only opponent was a more militant progressive than her.

Real political challengers are simply drowned out by the number of progressive voters in these primaries, and so a single ideology with only minor variance gets represented in the general election, as was the case in 2016 where Donald Trump was the only Republican on the ballot for a statewide election.

Larry N. Gerston, a professor emeritus of political science at San Jose State University, wrote for the Los Angeles Times that the jungle primary not only wiped out the Republican Party in California, it wiped out third parties that previously could challenge the status quo.

“California reformers argued that the major parties were dominated by extremes on the left and the right, and that a top-two system would attract centrist candidates, especially in districts where one party was dominant,” Gerston wrote. “They also contended that more competitive races would increase turnout. Early studies show that neither expectation has been met.”

In addition to the one-sided jungle primary system, a redistricting plan in 2010 tightened Democrats’ grip on the state. Initially billed as a nonpartisan effort to do away with gerrymandering, the plan was hijacked by state Democrats who stacked the commission with progressive activists posing as “Republicans.”

This further wiped out opposition to the Democratic Party in the state over the last decade.

Middle-Class Californians Flee in Droves

Another major factor in California’s shift to the left is changing demographics. Many point to immigration as the primary reason for this shift, but flight has also played a significant role as people leave the state.

For a state that progressives tout as the ideal, there has been a remarkable amount of migration away from California in the last decade. Discontented Californians are voting with their feet, and those feet are moving with a quickening pace.

Though Leyden and Teixeira wrote that Republican policies have “engorged the rich while flatlining the incomes of the majority of Americans,” it’s actually been middle-income Californians who are fleeing the state while rich Americans from the Northeast trickle in.

“People making $55,000 or less a year were mostly moving out of California between 2007 and 2016 … while people making more than $200,000 a year moved in,” according to one report described in The San Diego Union-Tribune.

According to real estate website Curbed:

Due in large part to the state’s housing crisis, California is becoming wealthier and more economically stratified, as more of its citizens find it difficult to make ends meet. Every year, the state falls roughly 100,000 units short of what it needs to keep up with housing demand. That’s driving many middle-class residents out of the state, with little hope of returning.

With so many middle-income people leaving, what is left over in California is a two-tiered system of rich and poor in which the rich thrive and the poor muddle along.

Amazingly, this amazingly rich state now has the country’s highest poverty rates and lowest rating for “quality of life.”

How can this be?

A Basket Case

“California’s de facto status as a one-party state lies at the heart of its poverty problem,” wrote Kerry Jackson, the Pacific Research Institute’s fellow in California studies. “With a permanent majority in the state Senate and the Assembly, a prolonged dominance in the executive branch, and a weak opposition, California Democrats have long been free to indulge blue-state ideology while paying little or no political price. The state’s poverty problem is unlikely to improve while policymakers remain unwilling to unleash the engines of economic prosperity that drove California to its golden years.

With their opposition made toothless, progressives have been free to conduct their policy experiments unopposed. The results leave much to be desired.

The irony is that California now veers closer to the repressive Republican caricature that Leyden and Teixeira described in their piece rather than the progressive utopia they say they want for the whole country.

The state increasingly stands out in the union as an extremist and increasingly dysfunctional basket case. Wealthy residents can withstand the state’s failures, but everyone else is paying the price of bad policy.

While the harmful effects of progressive policies are statewide, and often fall hardest on the redder communities within the state, no city better reflects the end result of California-style progressivism than San Francisco.

Though it is one of the wealthiest cities in the country, San Francisco is becoming known for its notorious homelessness problem, escalating crime rates, and various other pathologies.

One FBI report noted that while overall property crime rates were down around the country in 2017, San Francisco’s rates had jumped by 20 percent in just a year.

The Federalist’s John Davidson wrote in an expose on the disintegration of this marvelously wealthy, yet increasingly dystopian city.

Here was the perfect chance for progressives to create their ideal society. With no political opposition for a generation and fabulous wealth coming in through the tech boom, it should have been easy to transform this iconic and perfectly located city into exactly what they wanted.

But Davidson poignantly notes that San Francisco fails when judged by the standards of progressives themselves.

“The absence of any organized political opposition, combined with its vast wealth, makes San Francisco a kind of proof-of-concept for progressive governance,” Davidson wrote.

“ … That’s why the housing and homelessness problems besetting the city open it up to more than mere mockery from conservatives but substantive criticism of progressive governance writ large,” Davidson continued. “It’s not just homeless encampments that bedevil San Francisco, but also the flight of the middle class and the emergence of a kind of citywide caste system: the wealthy, the service class, and the destitute. In some ways, San Francisco is becoming something progressives are supposed to hate: a private club for the super-rich.”

San Francisco has managed to create an environment that progressives claim to abhor most. It is a tragic display of how bad ideas, regardless of intentions, lead to dysfunction.

And those very ideas that are eating away at San Francisco are increasingly the dominant ideology in the state capital.

It’s no wonder that so many middle-income Californians are fleeing to more hospitable states like Nevada and Texas.

Some of these states, like Texas, are now actively encouraging California citizens and businesses to leave California to escape high housing costs, overbearing regulations, and punitive taxes.

Not only that, but some conservative expatriates have actually created organizations to help conservative Californians settle into Texas communities that better reflect their values.

And it’s working.

The result is that the state’s blue politics is rapidly becoming bluer as conservative constituencies ditch the state for greener pastures.

Resisting the #Resistance

California may be losing residents, and it may have institutional barriers that make it unlikely to see a serious change in state policies.

However, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t still a significant portion of the population that resents and opposes the actions of the state government.

While the California government is resisting the federal government and the Trump administration, many Californians are themselves resisting “the resistance.”

As The New York Times reported of the mostly rural, northernmost parts of California:

Many liberals in California describe themselves as the resistance to Mr. Trump. Residents of the north say they are the resistance to the resistance, politically invisible to the Democratic governor and legislature. California’s strict regulations on the environment, gun control, and hunting impinge on a rural lifestyle, they say, that urban politicians do not understand.

It’s not just the rural north and central valley that oppose the state’s direction. Several counties have come out in opposition to the state’s sanctuary policies that have provoked a legal battle with the Trump administration’s agenda.

Orange County in Southern California recently passed measures aimed at aiding the federal government in immigration enforcement. More cities and localities have joined it and others are likely to follow suit.

There have even been a few proposals to break up the state into a few smaller states. One such plan has been proposed by tech billionaire Tim Draper, though this will likely have difficulty getting approved by Congress.

The fact is, California is not so monolithic as it often appears to outsiders, despite the one-sided vision coming from the state’s capital and from Hollywood.

California may have one-party rule, but there is a festering opposition among the governed, many of whom are resentful that their voices are ignored in the halls of power.

This cauldron is a far cry from the blissful one-party rule that Leyden and Teixeira have predicted for the future.

And good luck bringing California-style governance to its red-state neighbors, which are now filled with ex-Californians who, like Paul Revere, are sounding the alarm about what’s to come.

As former California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, who now lives in Texas and serves as vice president of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, wrote for Fox News, “California isn’t the future, rather, it’s what America’s 2016 election of Donald Trump saved the nation from becoming. It’s not a harbinger of things to come, but it will soon be an example of the fate we narrowly avoided.”

California’s fall from being the quintessential American dream to a series of gated communities surrounded by poverty is no model for the rest of the country. To the contrary, it is a dire warning.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is an editor and commentary writer for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: .

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VIDEO: 3 Student Journalists Sue University for Covering Up Teacher’s Role in Anti-Trump Campus Rally

Three student journalists have filed a lawsuit against their Illinois university and an instructor, alleging that the teacher grabbed and broke a smartphone as they tried to report on an anti-Trump rally.

The three students’ federal suit against the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and instructor Tariq Khan says that the university got a restraining order preventing them from reporting on Khan’s involvement in the November protest against President Donald Trump.

Khan, 39, was charged with destruction of property after taking and smashing a student’s smartphone on the pavement, an action caught on video.

The suit contends that the instructor and university officials violated the students’ constitutional rights to free press, free speech, and due process, according to the law firm representing the students, Mauck & Baker, LLC.

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“The First Amendment should not be a partisan issue or something only conservatives are willing to defend,” the law firm said in a formal statement.

The suit claims that the school punished freshmen Joel Valdez and Blair Nelson and senior Andrew Minik for reporting on the anti-Trump rally, the organizers of which included the Black Rose Anarchist Federation.

The university’s restraining order on Valdez and Nelson was “to prevent them from reporting on Tariq Khan,” their lawyers said in a press release.

A video of the incident appears to show Khan, a doctoral candidate and graduate instructor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, yelling at students, physically assaulting one, and taking and throwing the phone to the pavement.

“Our attorneys are reviewing this,” a university spokesman said Friday, declining further comment to The Daily Signal on the lawsuit.

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Khan is seen in the video saying “f— Donald Trump” and telling Valdez and other members of Turning Point USA, a conservative student organization present during the demonstration, that he will “go tear down one of your flyers right now.”

The video shows Valdez appearing to anger Khan by suggesting the instructor had nothing better to do than protest Trump and asking, “Don’t you have kids to look after?”

Khan then accuses students of threatening his children at least 25 times in a span of about three minutes. He is seen raising his hand and apparently attempting to hit Nelson, who is recording him with a phone.

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The video shows Khan shouting at students when they ask him how they have made a threat, accusing them of threatening his children.

Other times he chooses not to reply, as shown in this six-minute video, which contains language many viewers may find offensive:

“Say something about my kids again,” Khan yells at Valdez. “Say one more thing about my kids, bitch.”

The university instructor is seen saying to students: “You’d better check yourself, OK? Check yourself. I’ll f— you up.”

The broken phone reportedly had an estimated value of $700.

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University police charged Khan with criminal destruction of property. His case is pending.

According to the lawsuit, the university secured a restraining order on the three students at the request of Khan after Minik, a senior, reported on the incident for Campus Reform.

“I was told that if I wanted the ‘situation to improve,’ that I should stop writing about Khan,” Minik told lawyers, according to the law firm.

The Daily Signal was not able to reach Khan, whose contact information was removed from the university’s website after the incident, and Campus Reform has said he has not responded to its requests for comment.

In February, the university’s Campus Faculty Association issued a statement supporting Khan, describing him as an Air Force veteran who is “an engaged, thoughtful, and committed scholar and a wonderful and effective teacher.”

The lawsuit alleges that Khan is “affiliated with a number of extreme left-wing groups including the Black Rose Anarchist Federation, an ‘Antifa’ group advocating revolution and expressly justifying political violence.”

Khan also is backed by Campus Antifascist Network, a far-left group that organizes protests against conservatives on campus, The Daily Signal has learned.

Campus Antifascist Network released a statement in support of Khan in January that accused Turning Point USA of instigating his actions.

The statement sought to link Turning Point USA to Campus Reform, saying the news organization is its “associated media arm.”

In fact, TurningPoint.News, not Campus Reform, is the group’s media arm.

Editor’s note: Kyle Perisic, an intern at The Daily Signal, is a former reporter for Campus Reform.

COMMENTARY BY

Kyle Perisic

Kyle Perisic is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of college instructor Tariq Khan, right, confronting student Joel Valdez. (Photo: YouTube video screenshot)

What to Expect as Trump Sends the National Guard to the Border

California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, drew surprising praise from President Donald Trump regarding plans to send the state’s National Guard troops to the southern border.

However, Brown seems to be placing many restrictions, according to an Associated Press report Monday. The report says the anonymous federal officials told the AP that California will not allow Guard troops to fix and repair vehicles, operate remotely-controlled surveillance cameras with the Border Patrol, or provide “mission support,” which could include buying gas and handling payroll.

Still other border states, with Republican governors, are stepping up, according to the Military Times.

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez’s office said the first 80 Guard troops will arrive this week. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey was expected to deploy 300. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has said he wants to send 300 troops a week and wind up with 1,000 on the border.

Brown previously had exchanged harsh words with Trump in signing a sanctuary state law to protect illegal immigrants and opposing most of the administration’s initiatives to enforce immigration law.

But Brown drew thanks from Trump after the Democrat committed to sending 400 National Guard troops to the U.S. border with Mexico.

States were reporting an initial force total of 529 National Guard personnel as of Thursday to support Southwest border operations by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers. Governors have committed to more troops.

States reportedly committed to about 2,000 National Guard troops at the border, about halfway to Trump’s goal of 4,000 troops. Defense Secretary James Mattis said the troops would be covered by the Defense Department budget but remain under the authority of their governors.

That goal of 4,000 Guard troops is fewer than President George W. Bush sent to the border, but more than President Barack Obama sent.

Brown previously wrote a letter stating the state’s refusal to enforce federal immigration laws and to oppose construction of a border wall, but didn’t provide the level of details in the AP story on Monday.

Using the National Guard isn’t ideal, but is one way to address a border crisis, said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that advocates securing the border and enforcing immigration law.

“They will be in a supportive role, and that frees up the Border Patrol to do their jobs on the front lines,” Mehlman told The Daily Signal. “It’s a stop-gap measure. When you call up the National Guard to defend the border, it means you should have done more to prevent illegal immigration to begin with.”

Mehlman said he is glad Brown isn’t resisting on deploying the National Guard, but that the California governor is taking too little action.

“Jerry Brown is sending National Guard troops, but he should have done a lot more in cutting off the incentives for people to cross the border illegally,” Mehlman said.

The Trump administration hasn’t laid out the cost, but past deployments of the Guard could offer an idea.

Cost and Benefits for Bush and Obama

Bush’s Operation Jump Start involved 6,000 National Guard troops on the border from June 2006 to July 2008, and cost taxpayers $1.2 billion, according to a Government Accountability Office report in 2011.

Obama’s Operation Phalanx, from July 2010 to June 2011, put 1,200 Guard troops on the border and cost taxpayers $35 million.

Under Bush, the Guard assisted in 11.7 percent of the captures of 186,814 illegal immigrants and 9.4 percent of the 316,364 pounds of marijuana seized, according to the GAO.

Under Obama, the Guard assisted in 5.9 percent of the captures of 17,887 illegal immigrants and 2.6 percent of the 56,342 pounds of marijuana seized.

“What happened under Bush and Obama actually did work and had a deterrent effect,” James Carafano, vice president for national security and foreign policy at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.

“People aren’t stupid,” Carafano said. “This frees up the CBP [U.S. Customs and Border Protection]. It’s not a permanent solution. But it’s a deterrence and is part of a larger strategy. The president has said no DACA, no more loopholes, and is calling for workplace enforcement.”

Carafano said he doubted the Trump administration’s operation would have a significant effect on the military budget.

There are notable differences, Steven P. Bucci, a former top Pentagon official who is a visiting research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an earlier interview.

“Today, the crisis is less well defined, although People Without Borders has promised continued marches with the intent of ‘busting’ our border,” Bucci said. “There is also a steady stream of illegal alien crossings estimated at 1,000 a day. Not the huge numbers of the earlier periods, but not a trickle either.”

The costs could be significantly different, Bucci said:

Another difference is that during Operation Jump Start, the Bush-era operation, we had much lower levels of Border Patrol agents and much less infrastructure/tech. The force-multiplier effect then was larger than we could expect today. Combined with the fewer border crossings than in 2006, the bang for your buck would be lower today.

Additionally, the military today is significantly underfunded and has been for years. Funding the entire thing with Defense Department money will be a serious drain on a budget that got its first chance at health only recently. If the operation drags on too long, this could be a detriment to our overall national defense.

The National Border Patrol Council, the union for Border Patrol agents, supports having deployment of National Guard troops at the border. But in 2014, the union questioned the effectiveness of a plan pushed by Republican lawmakers.

Governors Responding

Before Brown committed California to the effort, the Associated Press reportedthat other border state governors had committed 1,600 National Guard troops.

Governors of nonborder states, including the Republican governors of Arkansas, Mississippi, and South Carolina, have suggested that their National Guard would be called up for assistance.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican whose state has a large immigrant population, reportedly said he hasn’t been asked.

Texas’ Abbott, a Republican, committed to 250 Guard troops in the first phase of the Trump administration’s action.

Arizona’s Ducey, a Republican, announced he would deploy 225 Guard troops.

New Mexico’s Martinez, a Republican, committed 250 troops.

In a recent poll, a plurality of those surveyed, 48 percent, said they support sending National Guard troops to the border, compared to 42 percent who said they oppose it and 9 percent with no opinion.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of troops meeting April 12 with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott at the National Guard armory in far south Texas as they prepare to deploy to the border with Mexico. The soldiers will play a supporting role to federal Border Patrol agents and state troopers. (Photo: Bob Daemmrich/Polaris/Newscom)

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