Mexico

Anna Paulina Luna is a bad girl. Why else would the Washington Post be so eager to discipline her? Reporters Jacqueline Alemany and Alice Crites, truly a modern-day Woodward and Bernstein, appear convinced that the freshman congresswoman representing Florida’s 13th congressional district is a George Santos retread. The pair of bullies went rummaging through Luna’s panty drawer in search of skeletons. The result? A lengthy article intended to punish her — to which several corrections and clarifications have been added in the days since its publication.

As 2022 comes to a close, the United States finds itself confronting myriad threats. But there is perhaps no more immediate threat to Americans’ safety and security than illicit drugs. The numbers are staggering. Illicit drugs have killed more than 1 million Americans since the turn of the century, with over 108,000 dying in last 12 months alone. One drug in particular, fentanyl, is now the leading cause of accidental death for adults between the ages of 18 and 45 — more than car accidents, violent crime, and suicide. And the flood of fentanyl into the US shows no signs of abating. In view of this rising ride, the Biden administration has embraced a range of new policies focused on harm reduction and treatment, two historically overlooked areas of American drug control efforts.

It's always easier to break something than to build it. Joe Biden broke the immigration control system that he'd inherited from Donald Trump and that had been built up over several administrations of both parties. Rebuilding it after Biden's vandalism will take time. Even if Republicans win the majority in both houses of Congress in November, it will take a change in administration before any real reconstruction can begin. With more than 2 million "encounters" with illegal border-crossers over the past year, more than any year in history, restoring order may seem like an insuperable task. But as we saw right after Trump's election and during the first months of his presidency, a simple expression of will can have a huge influence on prospective illegal aliens and their smugglers.

Since President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris won’t come to the border, the border is coming to them. On Thursday, two buses of illegal immigrants unloaded in front of Harris’s vice presidential residence. Others have arrived in downtown New York, Chicago, and D.C., to the fury of local mayors and governors. A small planeload caused an uproar on Martha’s Vineyard when it landed on that self-proclaimed sanctuary island. More busloads are sure to come, probably in cities like Philadelphia, Boston, Minneapolis, and perhaps a beach community in Delaware. The immigrants are being transported from Republican-led border states to northern Democratic enclaves, which have long proclaimed themselves “sanctuaries” for the migrants they are now so appalled to find arriving.

Whew! If not now, when? As Ronald Reagan asked in another context. Maybe — as those of us closer to the situation; e.g., Texans, view it — not for a period stretching to the crack of doom. Democratic whips tell leaders of their party’s would-be juggernaut, ready to ride those vicious Republicans into the moist soil of Washington DC, that the votes just plain aren’t there. New strategies may be pursued — for instance, passing the plan in chunks, instead of as a single, sizzling dish. The trouble is that the Biden plan, whose aim is to sweep illegal immigrants and asylum into the American system with scarce thought for potential consequences, is seen as enjoying stunted appeal. Why would that be?  One obvious answer is that — like the $1.

As the teeming mass of mostly male, partly criminal, humanity stews about on Mexican side of our Southern border, entertaining itself by throwing rocks at US border officials, emoting for CNN cameras, and periodically rushing the fence in an effort to break through to America, it is worth stepping back to ask a few large questions. But first, let’s step out of the rancid pool of sentimentality with which the media, in its anti-Trump frenzy, has surrounded this episode.

You can feel the excitement in Fox News’s reports that a DHS spokesman, backing the claims that Trump has now walked back, has confirmed that the migrant caravan that has just entered Mexico includes ‘gang members’ and people with ‘significant criminal histories’, as well as people from the Middle East. How hot and uncomfortable they must be, walking all that way in an explosive vest. You can feel the disappointment in CNN’s report that by November 6, the migrant caravan ‘could still be somewhere in the middle of Mexico’, and well short of what CNN recommends as the ‘safest route’, to San Diego via Tijuana.