To the surprise of no one, an Obama bundler sitting on the 9th Circuit has enjoined Section 9(a) of President Trump’s executive order targeting sanctuary cities. Just like the federal judges who blocked previous, eminently Constitutional executive orders tackling this problem, this one used the non-textual statements of the President as justification for his actions. For those of you who would like a more detailed explanation of why using speeches, statements, and other non-statutory words by lawmakers and the executive branch to make law is such a bad idea, I’d recommend reading the late Justice Scalia’s A Matter Of Interpretation.

Suffice it to say, this is another political decision from the the federal judiciary. To understand just how politicized this process has become, it’s worth looking at this tweet in response to Professor Laurence Tribe. The idea that what President Trump is doing, vis-a-vis immigration, is unprecedented is an absurdity. Regardless of what you think of the The President’s public critiques of his judicial antagonists-personally, I think they’re counterproductive-his administration’s immigration policies are completely reasonable. The only reason they appear unusual to the commentariat is because they are accustomed to a President encouraging illegal immigration. The fact that open borders activists are no longer pushing against an open door has to be deflating. Almost as much as realizing that our sovereignty is in the hands of a group of far-left, open borders dogmatists who can’t be voted out of office.

Update: Matt Bruenig explains what happened this weekend. 

Michael Tracey raises an interesting question. 

Keith Ellison’s loss is noteworthy for a number of reasons, many of them unrelated to the fact that his victorious opponent will be the first self-identifying Hispanic to preside over the Democratic National Committee. Yes, ethnicity/race did play a pivotal role in this intra-party election, but not in the way that the mainstream media and Democratic shills would have you believe. Perez’s victory is not so much a case of Democrats implicitly rebuking President Trump and his purportedly anti-latino immigration policies as Barack Obama’s man on the inside once again stepping on the Bernie Bros.

The party hatchet-man who did so much to pave the way for Hillary Clinton’s disastrous candidacy, crafting the message which social justice warriors and feminists gleefully vomited at Bernie Sanders and his backers in the Democratic primary, is now in a position to run the Democratic Party. The former President who has done so much to divide his own party, which continues to be riven by the parallel political institutions he created, now has his own Machiavelli steering the course of the DNC.

This is not only a ratification of the open borders, corporatist, elitist vision which animated the Hillary Clinton campaign-progressives be damned-it is yet another slap in the face of African-Americans, i.e. the foundation of the contemporary Democratic Party. How do woke individuals continue to reconcile their support for Barack Obama with the concrete policies and decisions made by a man who, beyond empty gestural politics, has done absolutely nothing for the black community? To the contrary, the legacy of the 44th President is one of neglect and indifference towards the people most responsible for helping him make history.

We have just witnessed an elite cross-section of Democrats from around the country reject someone who is literally a black Muslim in favor of a Brown alum who’s whiter than Steve Bannon, and whose campaign manager would fit in perfectly at a Huffington Post editorial meeting. Don’t expect national Democrats to curtail their moral preening and sanctimony as we enter the Perez  Era. Just as we’re forced to endure lectures attacking this country from a smarmy talking head for The Reconquista whose fame and fortune were given to him by Americans, we will now experience four years of privileged leftists telling us why white people need to check their privilege. Apparently, the new head of the Dems seems to agree that white people are entitled to fewer rights based upon their skin color.

I can’t wait until 2020.

Update: CIS has published a backgrounder on this agreement. 

Whatever adjectives can be used to describe our new President, ‘diplomatic’ is not one which springs readily to mind. His phone conversation with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull merely serves to reinforce a reputation for bluntness that was already solidified within the public imagination. In this case, however, I think his impolitic speech is actually beneficial for American citizens. For the refugee resettlement swap cooked up by his predecessor, which involves the exchange of non-Muslim Central American refugees for Muslim boat people currently being detained at the behest of the Australian government, is another disastrous scheme to further erase our borders.

The ordinary refugee resettlement process is almost completely insulated from the democratic process. Seemingly benefiting everyone from United Nations functionaries, to bureaucrats in the federal government, but especially VOLAGs whose survival depends upon a constant stream of clients, refugee resettlement takes no account of the feelings of ordinary American citizens. The people whose lives could be ruined by the decisions made hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away by unelected officials.

The last-minute decision of President Obama to craft a backroom deal with his Australian counterpart, in large part as a means of papering over his own catastrophic failure to enforce this nation’s immigration laws, merely highlights the lack of accountability and fundamentally anti-democratic nature of this entire process. Naturally, open borders fanatics are using this incident to parade their virtue before the benighted American public, condemning the philistinism of the Australian and American governments, as well as the people who insist that their representatives protect the internal security of their nations.

Nevertheless, this is a reminder that who lives in our country is not a matter for international plebiscites or social justice campaigns. Thousands of Muslim foreigners being transferred to the heart of this country as part of a sleazy quid pro quo is not what what Americans voted for in November, and simply because it has the stamp of approval from our outgoing President and Australia’s current Prime Minister-the sixth in less than a decade-doesn’t mean the American public should sit back and accept it. It is the current year, and the powers that be should get used to it.

As most of you probably know, a federal judge has blocked portions of President Trump’s executive order pertaining to refugees from 7 Muslim majority nations. Josh Blackman has published a good summary of what this injunction accomplishes, as well as a copy of the temporary restraining order itself. According to reports, it applies to a few hundred foreigners who were either on American soil or on their way to the United States before the EO was issued. Although these individuals have temporary avoided the fate of the character portrayed by Tom Hanks in The Terminal, it’s worth noting that there are much bigger issues at stake in this debate.

The open borders know nothings have deftly exploited the ignorance of large swathes of the American public to score a public relations victory against a man whom they’ve impotently warred against for over a year. Ironically, one of the refugees Democratic partisans claimed to be rescuing was able to succinctly explain why our new President’s immigration policies were in fact pretty reasonable. Beyond the simple observation that this executive order is not a ban on Muslim refugees, we have to confront the truly bizarre notion that our current refugee resettlement policy is somehow beneficial to American citizens. While some armchair analysts on social media have made the assertion that this is not the point of refugee resettlement-a point on which we agree-others have claimed that not importing tens of thousands of Muslim refugees from abroad poses a risk of future terrorism. By this token, Japan-which has a de facto ban on Muslim immigration-should be as unlivable as Afghanistan or Pakistan. Or, at the very least, have as many terrorist attacks as Turkey.

It’s a patently absurd suggestion, yet one which is repeated without shame by open borders apologists who have no rational justification for our country’s bizarre refugee resettlement program. Just as the beliefs of Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande-two European leaders who have presided over an unprecedented spree of Muslim terror within their countries-is a laughable excuse to invite in potential security risks, so to is the misguided notion that we’re creating terrorists by not letting potential terrorists onto American soil. Nearly half of the refugees admitted to the United States, and over 30% of those admitted since the 9/11 attacks, are Muslim. To comprehend why this is such a problem you need only scroll through a week’s worth of posts on Refugee Resettlement Watch.

Leaving aside the potential for terrorism-both domestically and abroad-exploitation of the welfare system, and crime, there’s the fundamental incompatibility of cultures. As the economist Nassim Taleb has pointed out, Americans expect foreigners who come here to accept American values and customs-and at a bare minimum, not to impose their values upon us. Whether or not this is a realistic expectation is another matter, but the idea that every person coming here does so because they want to become part of American society-a notion regurgitated endlessly by open borders advocates-is simply preposterous.

Even those who don’t pose a direct threat to the health and safety of American citizens-who don’t engage in honor killings, as dozens of Muslims families in the United States do each year-hold beliefs that are fundamentally at odds with those which shaped this nation. While those views are normal in Iraq, Somalia, or Syria, they are not in the United States, and we should not attempt to normalize them-to borrow a phrase from the unhinged left. President Trump’s order, however crudely executed, was the right thing to do. Hopefully, it’s just the beginning of a completely new approach to this vital issue.

Update: Why DACA must end. 

For those of you on the Trump Train, I have some disappointing news. It seems that the President, at least, if we’re to believe his chief mouthpieces, has accepted DACA as a fait accompli. Although Mark Krikorian’s post in NRO frames this as an open question, the truth is that we’ve been given no indication that Donald Trump plans to do away with his predecessor’s unconstitutional administrative amnesty. The fact that he didn’t terminate this program on his first day in office means he has already broken one of his main campaign promises on the subject of immigration.

In terms of draining the swamp, we’re off to a rough start.

The fact that Samuel Rodriguez is delivering the invocation is probably not a good sign for immigration patriots, but we shall see. Hopefully, the Trump Era will be a welcome departure from the open borders chaos we’ve had to endure under his predecessor in the Oval Office. Only time will tell.

President Obama’s last week in office has brought with it a flood of breaking news. The biggest story, of course, is his commutation of Chelsea Manning’s 35 year prison sentence. My own impression is that his decision is designed as a cynical bit of legacy-building, with the added benefit of perhaps inducing Julian Assange to leave the Ecuadorian embassy. Although that prospect appears increasingly remote, it very well might have factored into his judgement. Overlooked in news coverage of the Manning commutation is the grant of clemency to Oscar Lopez Rivera, a leader of the Marxist-Leninist Puerto Rican terror group FALN. Like Bill Clinton’s pardon of previously released FALN terrorists, which was intertwined with his wife’s Senate bid in New York, this decision was politically-based. In this case, as a parting gift to violent socialists who still comprise a significant portion of the Democratic base and will populate future revolutions.

Another early Christmas present for the hard left  comes in the form of the President’s revocation of the federal government’s Wet Foot, Dry Foot policy. It should be recalled that the policy itself was implemented prior to a pivotal election year, when former President Clinton was attempting to empty Guantanamo Bay of Cuban refugees. In order to prevent a repeat of Mariel-which sunk a young Bill Clinton’s chances of being reelected governor of Arkansas-he struck a deal with Fidel Castro which limited the number of Cubans who would be allowed to enter the United States. As Humberto Fontova astutely points out, one of the unreported effects of this adjustment will be an increase in the number of dependents flowing into the United States with a commensurate decrease in the amount of skilled professionals immigrating.

Even as the Obama administration’s days draw to a close, it continues to imperil the health and safety of ordinary American citizens, as ICE and CBP effectively serve as a shuttle service for unidentified illegal aliens under the pretext of being reunited with family. How many innocent people will meet the same fate of Sarah Root because of this willful indifference to the lives of Americans? Even  as people living throughout the United States are placed in imminent danger through the reckless ideology of the outgoing administration, the tide of refugees from Asia, Africa, and broken nations like Haiti shows no signs of ebbing. The conditions Barack Obama and his lawless bureaucracy have established bear all the hallmarks of the disaster we’ve seen unfold across Europe over the past 2 years.

Unfortunately, there are also ominous hints being dropped by President-Elect Donald Trump, who has responded favorably to proposals to salvage his predecessor’s patently unconstitutional administrative amnesty. In addition to going back on one of the central planks of the platform upon which he was elected-and deflating any enthusiasm felt by his staunchest supporters-this maneuver would significantly enhance the prestige and power of the very worst people, e.g. Paul Ryan, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham. The idea that one of the first domestic policy decisions will be to embrace the instincts of open borders fetishists and neoconservatives is unconscionable. If Trump had campaigned on a promise to continue the disastrous immigration policies of the current administration, he never would have made it past New Hampshire. This is an idea which needs to be categorically rejected by any right-thinking immigration patriot.

In order not to black pill the majority of our audience, we should leave you with a bit of good news from abroad. It seems that Norway has finally shown some of the Scandinavian backbone which Sweden surrendered several centuries ago. While the Norwegians haven’t ejected every jihadist apologist and Muslim fifth columnist from their nation, 2016 did see a record number of deportations. Although too many of these deportees were Europeans, it’s significant that there is a growing movement within that country to assert its sovereignty in the face of a Muslim population that has grown to nearly 150,000.

Perhaps it’s not too late to save Europe.

We learned of Nat Hentoff’s death last night from his son, who was the first to tweet this sad news to the rest of the world. You can read his full obituary in the New York Times, but I would suggest combing the Internet to read his words for yourself. Even though he was a product of a pre-Internet age, Hentoff deftly utilized the tools of the late 20th and 21st century to spread his message of individual liberty and the rule of law. A perfect example being this Web video from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education, an organization committed to preserving free expression on college and university campuses across the country.

A fierce opponent of the past 3 occupants of the Oval Office, as well as Executive overreach in general, a man who refused to defend anti-white racism masquerading as diversity,  an idiosyncratic liberal turned libertarian-who defended the human rights of the unborn-and a lifelong advocate of the Bill of Rights, Nat Hentoff was a truly remarkable public figure. Like fellow civil liberties advocate Wendy Kaminer, he was a scathing critic of the synthetic liberals at the ACLU, who run what is essentially a left wing affinity group under the guise of defenders of the Constitution.

He was a unique man whose absence will be missed by all who cared about the fundamental freedoms enshrined in this nation’s cornerstone document. Even as progressives across the Western world silence our voices in order to placate the rainbow coalition, Hentoff bravely spoke out against the attempt to replace the 1st Amendment with sharia. He was a man from a different era, but one whose life should be a lesson for anyone hoping to preserve American freedoms into the 21st century. He will be missed.

A couple of news items before tonight’s VP debate:

-The Department of Homeland Security has scotched an investigation into the Clinton family’s bagman, Governor Terry McAuliffe, as well as Hillary’s younger brother, ex repo man/current parasite Tony Rodham. Both men were involved in a scheme to fast-track visa applications under the E-5 investor visa program, which is riddled with corruption and fraud. Of course, when the man accused of facilitating these potentially illegal acts is now the Deputy Secretary of DHS, what more can one expect?

-There were no blockbuster revelations of DNC chicanery or HRC contempt for Bernie supporters at the press conference held by Julian Assange earlier today. However, there was a promise of more disclosures to come, including information bearing on the current presidential race and the machinations of Google, a new media monopoly which continues to use AI as means of manipulating what information is available to the public. In case you were wondering which candidate Google is supporting this election cycle, take a peek at what its former CEO is up to these days.

-Finally, in a bit of good news, the Supreme Court has rejected the Obama administration’s request to rehear a case that put a halt to its unconstitutional administrative amnesty. The 4-4 decision merely serves to reinforce how important the upcoming presidential election is, because the  winner will be able to decide how far he or she is able to abuse the office of the presidency. It’s something else to keep in mind as you watch tonight’s debate.

Yesterday’s press conference was remarkable for a number of reasons, not least because it revealed the naked contempt this nation’s media has for the men and women who’ve served in the Armed Forces. A sneering condescension that they can’t mask, even as they bang the drums for more interventions in the quagmire of the Mid-East, i.e. more chaos, more refugees deluging Europe and North America, and more power for jihadists of every stripe and sect. You can just imagine the sulfuric rage these reporters had to suppress as they were forced to listen to a group of reactionary knuckle-draggers who had done nothing for their country, quite unlike the roster of exemplary Americans Hillary has assembled.

As if watching these troglodytes, who obviously don’t live in the current year, prattle on about their support of Donald Trump weren’t bad enough, our esteemed press corps had to endure the humiliation of seeing their beloved narrative vanish into thin air. The utter gall of a candidate willing to reveal how a cudgel used to impute racism to the Republican Party actually originated within the Hillary Clinton campaign! The next thing you know he’ll be implying that Sidney Blumenthal, Hillary’s very own Rasputin, was going around telling journalists that Barack Obama, the future President, was born in Kenya. Or that the Clinton machine tried to smear him in order to win the 2008 Democratic primary. Or perhaps that the Clintons view the President with disdain? Can you believe the gall of this scoundrel?!

The biggest insight to be gleaned from yesterday’s media event, however, is the discovery of how self-deluded the media remain about their own ignorance. These are individuals and entities which believe themselves to be the height of enlightened, progressive, cosmopolitan thought. In fact, many pursued their vocation expressly because it gave them the opportunity to hector those benighted cretins living in flyover states who believe in antiquated concepts like borders. Yet here they were being humbled by a vulgarian who was gauche enough to become an entrepreneur rather than pursue a respectable career like news editor of Buzzfeed or professional Hispanic activist masquerading as journalist. Even as they publicly conceded being duped by Donald Trump, acting like petulant little children who had their favorite toy taken away, they cloaked this admission in an aura of insufferable condescension, the one area in which they excel.

The reaction to the MSM’s Austerlitz on social media is equally revealing. I’m thinking specifically of this comment, which encapsulates the ethos of Twitter political commentary, i.e. an inapt pop culture reference about a  TV show which was cutting-edge 2 decades ago. No, Donald Trump is not Homer Simpson, and journalists are not Frank Grimes. He is the Roadrunner, while his hapless inquisitors are variants of Wile E. Coyote, i.e. characters who vastly overestimate their own intelligence. Yes, they hate him because his values, primarily his emphasis on American exceptionalism and distinctness-with its corresponding acceptance of national borders-are anathema to them. But that is not the reason why he drives them into rage spirals and the depths of despair-and compels them to publicly dissect their own psychological trauma in print and on television.

Trump derangement syndrome results from the fact that he not only knows how to play the game, but how to win it. On some subconscious level, the media recognize something that their acolytes refuse to even consider. Namely, that Trump-unlike any other Republican politician or conservative public figure in recent memory-understands what motivates the drive-by media and is using that knowledge to meticulously demolish them. Trump is the anti-Romney, and it drives the left, neo-Buckleyites and  the targets of his precision-guided missiles absolutely batty.

As for the rest of us, we’re delighted.