Update: Cathy Hoilman asks if the President caved on amnesty. 

Watch President Trump make the announcement live. According to reports, the choice will be former NLRB board member Alexander Acosta. This comes on the heels of the withdrawal of  Andy Puzder’s name from consideration, a decision that had been recommended by some patriotic immigration reformers, including Dan Cadman of the Center for Immigration Studies. Here are some factoids about the new nominee.

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: Remembering the victims. 

The suspect is now in custody. 

Information about our non-Hispanic, Turkish murderer, courtesy of Heavy.com. 

More details, courtesy of Hot Air. 

Details of what happened after he entered the mall. 

Gavin McInnes makes a salient point. 

What we know. 

An eyewitness account of the shooting. 

Authorities in Washington are looking for this man, the prime suspect in the Cascade Mall shooting. You can find more details, including information about how to contact police, here.

I took the image you see above in my old stomping grounds of Bay Ridge, which has earned the moniker Beirut in recent years, for obvious reasons. Aside from the Alpine Theater-which was in danger of being added to the adjacent mosque at one point-and Galaxy Comics, you would be hard-pressed to find a building along Bay Ridge or 5th Avenue whose awning was not covered in Arabic script. Judging by the number of hookah bars, halal restaurants and food carts, not to mention demure apparel shops for the fashion forward 7th century Muslima, a tourist would be forgiven for thinking he’d landed somewhere in the Maghreb rather than southwest Brooklyn.

Lest you think the Islamic Leadership Of New York is merely a benign group of patriotic citizens, here is the website mobilizing this New York’s civic-minded Muslims. Although seemingly under construction, you will notice a few things which belie the red, white and blue messaging of the banner seen in my photograph. Leaving aside the fact that every member of this group’s executive committee is a man-I’m sure there’s absolutely no Koranic basis for that anomaly-you’ll also notice a few other oddities, including the prominent place of unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings and former Louis Farrakhan acolyte  Siraj Wahhaj. After all, what could be more quintessentially American, more mom and apple pie, than working with the leader of a mosque which invites 9/11 truthers to expatiate on topics of public interest and believes this country serves no greater purpose than to enlarge upon the Caliphate?

Perhaps North American offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood, several of which are members of Majlis Ashura, including the Islamic Circle of North America, Mohammed Morsi’s old pals. It almost makes you wonder if those Americans who oppose resettling tens of thousands of Syrian Muslim refugees in the United States might be on to something after all. Is it possible that the adulatory praise Muslims receive from the American press corps, and the self-serving dawah Muslims themselves churn out for public consumption, is simply a load of manipulative crap? These are questions begging to be asked, especially since the leading presidential candidate’s closest aide is a woman intimately linked to radical Islamists.

That’s right, in addition to being an unofficial political liaison for rich donors to the elaborate money-laundering scheme known as the Clinton Foundation, Huma Abedin is also the daughter of a woman who-like most Pakistanis-doesn’t believe in quaint Western customs like women’s emancipation. Saleha Abedin does believe that Muslims in the diaspora-men, at the very least-are entitled to the full panoply of rights and privileges, including, presumably, the right not to have their religious beliefs critically examined by non-Muslims. In fairness, her parents were recruited to Saudi Arabia for the express purpose of proselytizing for the Muslim World League, an anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, Wahhabist NGO bankrolled by the Saudi government, so these beliefs shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

Whether these beliefs influenced their daughter is an open to question, but the fact that no mainstream media outlet has deigned to ask that question tells you how thoroughly corrupt the fourth estate has become. While European nations are having their national identities effaced under a flood of migration, America is undergoing its own radical transformation which is being cheered on by the ruling class. The lives our our fellow citizens are under attack, both literally and figuratively, by invaders it has welcomed into this country and their instinctive reaction is to condemn the victims of these assaults. If the Majlis Ashura gets its way, expect more attempts to squelch the speech of its perceived enemies. Their preferred candidate has already promised as much in private. After all, what difference does it make?

It seems as if the alternative media has rallied around the flag, which in Hillary’s case was probably purchased by benefactors like Goldman Sachs and the Gulf Arab slave state of Qatar. After all, who can resist GIRL POWER, even if it’s marshaled on behalf of someone who’s spent much of her career destroying the reputations of Bill Clinton’s comfort women? To get a sense of the cognitive dissonance at work, it’s worth reading this week’s Village Voice, which all but admits its preferred candidate is an inveterate liar, albeit one who can answer that 3 A.M. call!

By the way, does anyone else recognize the absurdity of Clinton backers running a variation on an ad which was universally panned-from a race which she lost-in order to lambast the purported shortcomings of Donald Trump? If there are any calls being made to a Clinton White House after midnight, I’m almost certain they will be made at the behest of sleazy foreign donors who want a return on their investment. That is indeed the purpose of the single greatest legal money laundering scheme on the planet, one which would make even El Chapo green with envy.

With all her seemingly disqualifying character traits and extensive history of semi-criminal actions, not to mention, thralldom to corporate interests, you would expect sincere leftists to express some reservations about her candidacy. You would think that even those who believe her to be the best choice in a binary election have enough integrity to admit that she is a dreadful choice, one who cares not so much about being a progressive as the acquisition and retention of power. The problem is that that is what progressivism, at its core, has become. The Faustian bargain the left has made in this election involves sacrificing its purported principles, including its increasingly hypocritical rhetoric about the underclass, in order to achieve its immediate political aims, e.g. importing millions of immigrants from the third world, cauterizing the 1st and 2nd Amendment to the Constitution, and crushing any remaining opposition to the cultural domination of social progressivism.

Fortunately, there are a handful of leftists who have some degree of integrity, including Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who was one of only public figures on the left to publicly admit that her Democratic opponent should have been indicted. Her honesty about the deficiencies of Hillary Clinton the candidate-as well as the human being-stand in stark contrast to the pathetic fealty liberal media outlets and talking heads have shown towards a woman who, were she a Republican, would probably be sitting in a federal penitentiary instead of seeking the most powerful office in the world.

Another voice remarkable for its clarity is incendiary cartoonist Ted Rall, who’s pointed out 3 of the biggest reasons why Hillary Clinton does not belong in the Oval Office. Although there are many, many more-including a capacity for deception that is boundless and a wholly repellent personality-the 3 enumerated by Rall should be of particular interest to liberals, who tout their intellectual superiority and routinely hector insufficiently feminist public actors. The fact that most are seemingly unconcerned with these very problematic issues makes one question their purported convictions.

Finally, Doug Henwood has published a book, My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets The Presidency, which should be required reading for any leftist tempted to ignore the consequences of their alliance with the Clinton machine. It begins, appropriately enough, with an epigram by Brad DeLong describing Hillary’s most relevant Executive experience, i.e. her disastrous oversight of health care reform during the first year of the Clinton presidency. Although he has also been brought to heel, this is his description of HRC’s signature issue back then:

My two cents’ worth–and I think it is the two cents’ worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994–is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn’t smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly. 

“Hillary Rodham Clinton has already flopped as a senior administrative official in the executive branch–the equivalent of an Undersecretary. Perhaps she will make a good senator. But there is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president. 

To quote another former FLOTUS, Just Say No.

Tonight is the moment that Donald Trump’s running mate, Governor Mike Pence, is introduced to the nation. As I explained after he was chosen, I think much of the furor over Pence’s impact, both positive and negative, is pointless. That said, it will be interesting to hear his speech, if only because it will reveal what sort of tone the race will take headed into November. You can watch Pence, as well as the runner-up in the Republican race, Senator Ted Cruz, on Heavy.com’s live stream.

Update: The jihadist truck driver, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, was known to police, naturally. 

English language updates from Michael Horowitz. 

What we know. 

A timeline of the attack. 

The Nice attack: a firsthand account. 

What pathological altruism looks like. 

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. 

Flashback. 

A reasonable solution. 

A column written by Pat Buchanan in the wake of the Pulse night club massacre. 

Let’s not forget the real victims of this horrific event. Muslims who might briefly feel guilty about the massacres of innocent human beings which their co-religionists routinely commit. 

State of emergency. 

More coverage of the ongoing terror attack in Nice. 

A minimum of 60 fatalities. 

What will it take?!

Unconfirmed local reports that the driver has died.

Yet another attempted mass murder in the streets of France. Follow live coverage on Sky News. More photos and video coverage, courtesy of Heavy.

With the world aflame, it’s only appropriate that our periodical digest of immigration and cultural news returns. Starting off in the States, we find that Michelle Root, after a heartfelt meeting with Donald Trump, has decided to throw her support behind his candidacy. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the case, Michelle is the mother of Sarah Root, who was murdered by a criminal alien that is now at large because of our government’s brilliant oversight of this national disaster. For a good exposition of why Donald Trump is worth supporting, I recommend David Horowitz’s fantastic piece in Breitbart, which echoes many of my thoughts regarding the Dump Trump phenomenon. In my mind, it’s the best encapsulation of the pro-Trump argument published thus far. Jack Cashill also has a worthwhile column on this subject in WorldNetDaily. However, for those of you of a more intellectual bent, I recommend reading acclaimed historian Paul Johnson’s coruscating attack on the paragons of PC culture, and explanation of how Trump’s candidacy is a breath of fresh air in this stagnant ideological environment.

Moving north, we’re pleased to note that justice triumphs over sharia, at least in this instance. Accepting this idiotic leftist neologism into our lexicon is bad enough, but allowing the congenital neuroses of social justice warriors to determine the fate of jihadists is a bridge too far. Let’s hope that a certain judge in Minnesota is paying attention to these proceedings.

Rounding out our tour of North America, we land upon Mexico, where El Chapo, formerly the world’s most-wanted fugitive, is one step closer to extradition. Sean Penn could not be reached for comment. Someone who never declines to speak his mind is former Mexican president Vincente Fox, whose torpid retirement has been enlivened by the unexpected success of Donald Trump. What’s notable about his most recent outburst is its stunning lack of self-reflection. A man whose tenure witnessed continued mass emigration-both illegal and legal-virtually no progress by any significant cultural or economic metric, and who was widely considered a more doltish version of President Bush, somehow believes that Trump supporters are the ones operating from a place of ignorance. Go figure.

In Latin America, we find that Panama has closed its border with Colombia in order to prevent Cuban emigres from using their country as a transit point to the United States. However, not before agreeing to the transfer of 3,000 Cubans to American territory. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, scores of Cubans are now flocking to American shores in order to take advantage of our wet foot, dry foot policy-implemented under President Clinton-which they fear will be coming to an end now that Barack Obama and the Castro regime have reached an uneasy detente.

Hopping across the pond, we find Britain under siege from the usual assortment of anti-fascist fascists, primarily The Religion of Peace and its prog thought enablers. While expressing public discontent with your government’s decision to repopulate your town with Islamic colonists is now grounds for being thrown into a dungeon, it appears that you can still safely threaten to behead political candidates who are not so keen on being invaded by scores of unassimilable aliens. This practice seems to have become a habit among well-integrated British Muslims, BTW. But aren’t these folks just the modern-day Jews fleeing the equivalent of Nazi Europe? No, they’re not, as even the perennially obnoxious Jamie Kirchick readily concedes, although we understand why someone conditioned by decades of open borders propaganda by the likes of NPR would think that’s an apt analogy. The same way it’s understandable that some have convinced themselves that Brexit represents an existential threat to the United Kingdom, although not as great as that posed by Donald Trump, evidently. The truth is much less flattering to the ruling class, alas.

However, truth is worth embracing for its own sake, in addition to its subsidiary benefits. Islamic refugees do pose a threat to European identity-and to the national sovereignty of the countries they’re invading-regardless of how politically incorrect this thought might seem to the gatekeepers of acceptable opinion. Even as the flood of colonizers from the Islamic world seek new paths of ingress, the results of Europe’s dangerous experiment in openness continue to pour in, most recently with a mysterious outbreak of mental illness in Munich, where the Palestinian knife jihad seems to be one more glorious import Mama Merkel has blessed her countrymen with. Is it any wonder that “far-right” thought criminals are catapulting to power in Central Europe?

Speaking of electoral politics, it looks like The Philippines has a new President-elect. Although that country has had its fair share of colorful leaders, Rodrigo Duterte seems to be in a class by himself. In addition to promising cabinet positions to the New People’s Army-a Maoist terrorist group which has waged a nearly half-century battle against the Filipino state-he has also pledged to negotiate with Islamic insurgents in the south of the country. Whether or not this promise includes the creatures who ritualistically sacrificed Canadian citizen John Ridsdel remains to be seen.

Over on the dark continent, we learn that Kenya has finally decided to shut down the world’s largest refugee camp. Followers of this site, or world events in general, can probably recite the litany of atrocities committed by Muslims living in Kenya-particularly those who are Somali refugees-so the decision to potentially repatriate some of these foreign nationals will come as little surprise. Neither will the howls of outrage from human rights groups, which lodged similar protests-equally spurious, as Philip Gourevitch has pointed out-against Rwanda’s effective campaign to close down terrorist havens in the Congo many years ago.