Why cannot we apprehend each of them on the border? Yesterday, each President Joe Biden and his presumed opponent in November, former President Donald Trump, arrived on the southern border for a complete lot of politicking and little or no precise drawback fixing.
Media outlet after media outlet described it as a “split-screen” showdown. The New York Instances described it as a go to “pitting the president’s belief in legislating against his rival’s pledge to be a ‘Day 1’ dictator.” All proper.
“A very dangerous border—we’re going to take care of it,” stated Trump upon arrival. Biden has “the blood of countless innocent victims” on his fingers, Trump added, citing the latest homicide of Laken Riley—an Augusta College nursing pupil believed to have been killed by Jose Antonio Ibarra, an unlawful immigrant from Venezuela, whereas operating on trails on the College of Georgia.
“The United States is being overrun by the Biden migrant crime. It’s a new form of vicious violation to our country,” Trump stated, leaning laborious into fear-based messaging.
Biden, alternatively, blamed Republicans in Congress for sinking offers that might try to deal with the disaster on the border and stored meekly calling for bipartisan compromises. “Join me,” Biden stated to Trump—in what the Instances described as an “olive branch”—”or I’ll join you” in passing the bipartisan border deal that Trump lately lambasted, main Senate Republicans to activate the laws.
If at first you do not succeed, attempt…an government order? He is no border dove, although: Biden is reportedly mulling an government order to majorly crack down on asylum seekers, forcing extra rigorous entry requirements and deportations for many who don’t meet the up to date standards. Part 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act extends latitude to presidents to dam sure classes of entrants if deemed “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” This may enable him to bypass Congress solely.
Paradoxically, Part 212(f) was how Trump instituted the Muslim ban again in 2017. It is darkish horseshoe principle that Biden is now contemplating sidestepping Congress and utilizing the identical provision. It is virtually as if precise checks and balances could be useful right here, and setting cogent coverage within the first place, versus sweeping government orders to aim to bandage long-festering issues.
The variety of border crossings has reached file ranges. December noticed virtually 250,000 arrests by Border Patrol, a quantity which fell by greater than half in early January resulting from Mexican immigration authorities stepping as much as the plate. The highest 5 nationalities being apprehended are at the moment Mexicans, Venezuelans, Guatemalans, Honduras, and Colombians, however individuals from everywhere in the world at the moment are trying to cross the border as nicely—together with Chinese language migrants (the fastest-growing group of border-crossers).
Whether or not it is Biden’s pointless “join me!” pleas, designed to make the media fawn throughout him, or Trump calling unlawful border-crossers “fighting-age men”—as in the event that they’re creating some kind of militia versus searching for work as, like, dishwashers and roofers—nothing good occurred on the border yesterday, and the scenario obtained no nearer to being resolved.
Scenes from New York: Slightly earlier than 4 a.m. Thursday morning, an A prepare conductor was attacked—his neck slashed, as he caught it out the window to ensure the prepare was cleared to go away—on the Rockaway Avenue station in Brooklyn (a couple of stops earlier than mine).
By rush hour Thursday morning, prepare crews were boycotting the protection circumstances they need to work beneath and calling straphangers’ consideration to assaults on transit employees. For these of us making an attempt to take the A to work (like me, to movie a documentary for Motive), it was an enormous inconvenience, as trains operated with extreme delays. However security on the subways has gotten intolerably unhealthy: Yr over 12 months, NYPD stories a 13 p.c improve in crime inside the subway system, and an 11 p.c improve in assaults particularly. Final week, a person was shot and killed on the D prepare. In January, a person was shot and killed on the No. 3. Merely 1,000 of the town’s 6,500 subway automobiles are geared up with surveillance cameras; in the meantime, the Metropolitan Transit Authority has put in vivid yellow boundaries on the Washington Heights cease to discourage criminals from pushing individuals onto the tracks as a part of a brand new pilot program—which might be terribly costly to really scale and would not resolve many classes of subway-system crime (like yesterday’s neck slashing).
As for the conductor in query, he obtained 34 stitches and 9 sutures and fortunately survived.
QUICK HITS
Make them a buddy cop duo and name it a day https://t.co/p8fo42hSWk
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) March 1, 2024
- Congress has accepted a unbroken decision that can stop a partial authorities shutdown.
- Congratulations to The New Republic for lastly acknowledging the truth that, typically, plastic is not truly getting recycled (the place Motive has been for a decade-plus): “Between 1990 and 2015, some 90 percent of plastics either ended up in a landfill, were burned, or leaked into the environment,” stories The New Republic. Sure, we all know.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin engaged in some saber-rattling towards the West yesterday, saying that the prospect of nuclear battle should loom giant if any international locations intervene on Ukraine’s behalf. “We also have weapons that can strike targets on their territory,” Putin stated. “Do they not understand this?”
- “Several youth advocacy groups are concerned over the Secure DC bill and its potential impact on juveniles,” stories ABC7. NeeNee Taylor, the founding father of Harriet’s Wildest Desires, a nonprofit within the space, expressed concern at an occasion Wednesday night time a couple of provision that might make stealing $500 price of merchandise rise to the extent of a felony. “A couple of my young ladies may have committed retail theft—they were actually stealing clothes for themselves to wear to school,” Taylor instructed the information channel. “So what can we do to avoid them to have to steal the clothes?” Truly, they didn’t should steal the garments. Nor do they should steal $500 price of garments so as to have the ability to cowl their our bodies to attend faculty.
- Bloomberg—usually good—appears to assume that the Google Gemini scandal—during which its AI-powered picture generator merely couldn’t return traditionally correct photos of white individuals, however needed to flip, like, the Founding Fathers into black males—was truly a “Republicans pounce” scenario. (It was not.)
- Watch the dudes of The Fifth Column grace the great Megyn Kelly Present with their presence (and tear Keith Olbermann aside):
“He wants to now replace the court with something else…”@mcmoynihan, @MattWelch, and @kmele on Keith Olbermann’s meltdown over Supreme Court docket listening to Trump immunity case.
Watch & subscribe: https://t.co/Y12z2uKGMbhttps://t.co/8SsT7CZI2P
— The Megyn Kelly Present (@MegynKellyShow) February 29, 2024