Author Archives: jsh54

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 6.

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            President Donald Trump tasked “Special Government Employee” Elon Musk with downsizing government.[1]  Musk, it is often pointed out, is an “unelected billionaire.”[2]  Musk immediately exhibited the drive and ruthlessness that made him a billionaire in the first place.  In his own offensive phrase, he and his myrmidons “spent the weekend feeding US AID into the wood chipper.”[3]  He also sent his people into the Treasury Department Finance section, the General Services Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Veterans Administration, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Education.  In most cases, they seemed to be after the computer and record systems.[4]  Along the way, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) e-mailed federal employees offering a choice between resigning now and receiving eight months’ pay or risking being fired at some point in the future. 

            Criticism followed.  Senator Charles Schumer warned that “an unelected shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government.”  Yale historian Timothy Snyder called it “a coup.”  Journalist David Rothkopf warned of the approach of “the worst form of malevolent dictatorship.”  Senator Elizabeth Warren insisted that “Elon Musk is seizing the power that belongs to the American people.”[5]

            Lawyers saw the Musk task force’s actions as “wildly illegal” and unconstitutional.  Neither they nor President Trump can close down federal agencies created by Congress or impound funds appropriated by Congress. 

            A final, perhaps revealing, criticism is of the people doing Musk’s work.  They are “a coterie of engineers barely out of college.”  They are “young” and they are “engineers.”  In contrast, Charles Schumer is 74, Elizabeth Warren is 75, Dick Durbin is 79, Mark Warner is 70, Amy Klobuchar is 64, Tammy Baldwin is 62, Cory Booker is 55, Chris Murphy is 52.  All are lawyers.  Many of the younger-than-them people on their staffs doubtless are also lawyers. 

            Do engineers and lawyers think in different ways?  Not being one or the other, it’s difficult to say.  However, law schools instill a reverence for precedent.[6]  Engineering schools emphasize problem-solving and simplification.[7]  On the second issue of older versus younger, there are both stereotypes and more evidence-based analyses.[8]  It should surprise no one that young engineers think and act differently from aged lawyers.  One thing that is clear is that the “Old Order” is unable to address our national problems.  Will a “New Order” make them worse? 

[1] Musk is commonly identified as “the world’s richest person,” rather than as the “creator of several massively innovative companies—including one that may have to bring back two astronauts stranded on Gilligan’s Satellite.

[2] All Cabinet members are “unelected.”  According to a 2021 article in Forbes, the median wealth in the “poor man’s cabinet” of Joe Biden was $5.5 million; average wealth was $6.8 million.  The figures were far higher for the first Trump cabinet, and for the first Obama cabinet.  Musk isn’t a cabinet-member, but the principle is the same. 

[3] Bing Videos  Well, he likes the Coen Brothers. 

[4] “Musk launches offensive on government agencies,” The Week, 14 February 2025, p. 4. 

[5] Although, in fact, the American people delegated all those powers to their elected government.  The current head of the Executive Branch of that government is Donald Trump. 

[6] Precedent – Wikipedia 

[7] There is an interesting analysis at Do Engineers Think Differently? Yes, Learn The 6 Ways | Engineer Calcs

[8] See: Old Versus Young: The Cultural Generation Gap | The Pew Charitable Trusts and II. Generations Apart — and Together | Pew Research Center 

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 5.

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            From the adoption of the Constitution until 1974, Presidents were assumed to have the power—inherent in their office–to not spend money appropriated by Congress.[1]  In 1801, Thomas Jefferson chose to prioritize debt reduction over national defense.  He impounded $50,000 that had been appropriated for gunboats requested by the Navy.  Many of his successors impounded funds. 

By the early 1970s, members of Congress believed that President Richard Nixon was abusing his official powers in a variety of ways.  One example came in his impoundment of appropriated funds.  Nixon held up spending on “water pollution control, education and health programs and highway and housing construction.”[2]  The amount came to “$53.2‐billion during its first five years in office.”[3]  In the context of other struggles with President Nixon, House Speaker Carl Albert called it a struggle between Congress and “one-man rule.”  On a broadly bipartisan basis, Congress struck back.  The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 barred the President from impounding funds appropriated by Congress.[4]  It did permit a Presidential request for “rescission” if approved by Congress.[5]  Already mired in “Watergate,” Nixon signed the bill into law.  As a result of Nixon’s surrender, the law was never tested before the Supreme Court.  Do extreme cases make good law? 

That doesn’t mean that Presidents think that impoundment is a bad idea.  Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all supported the restoration of the authority stripped from the office because of that damn fool Nixon.  Other unsuccessful candidates for President—John McCain, Al Gore, and John Kerry—supported restoring the authority to impound.[6]   

Which brings us to President Trump.  During the campaign, he promised to “squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings.”[7]  From the get-go he stopped appropriated spending on D.I.E. initiatives; payments to non-governmental organizations; foreign aid (for a 90 day review period); and all federal loans and grants (almost immediately rescinded).  Trump wants to bring the issue to the Supreme Court for the hearing it didn’t get in the 1970s. 

The key issue here is self-restraint.  The ballooning national debt, fueled by unbalanced annual budgets, threatens the financial stability of the government.  Nixon’s abuse of the powers of his office went well beyond what other presidents had done, alarming many people in both parties.  Trump seems determined to disrupt the established “way we do things around here” patterns that have taken the United States to the brink of multiple crises.  He, too, is alarming people in both parties.  He wouldn’t be on the verge of shifting the balance of power if all of us had shown more self-restraint.  Not meant as an exculpation of Trump.   

[1] Impoundment of appropriated funds – Wikipedia 

[2] Richard D. Lyons, “Nixon’s Impounding of Billions in Federal Money Is Complicated Issue, Abounding in  Misconceptions,” NYT, 7 October 1973. 

[3] Compared to $39 billion impounded by Lyndon Johnson. 

[4] Passed by the House 385-23 (204 Democrats and 181 Republicans voting in favor); passed by the Senate 80-0 (50 Democrats and 29 Republicans). 

[5] Since then, Congress has rarely approved rescission requests, so Presidents rarely request them.     

[6] President Joe Biden did not.

[7] Charlie Savage, “Are Presidents Empowered to Block Spending Authorized by Congress?” NYT, 29 January 2025. 

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 4.

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            “Teflon Don.” 

            Republicans long accused Democrats of waging “lawfare” against Donald Trump, either to bait the Republicans into making him their candidate so that Joe Biden could beat him in November 2024 or to render him incapable of holding office without asking the voters what they preferred.  There is something to be said on both sides of some of the cases, and nothing at all that can be said against others.[1]   

            In early December 2024, Special Counsel Jack Smith asked a judge to dismiss—without prejudice—two cases against President-elect Donald Trump.  Department of Justice policy bars prosecuting a sitting president.  In late January 2025, Judge Juan Merchan decided that he couldn’t “encroach…on the highest office in the land” by jailing President-elect Donald Trump for his conviction in the New York City hush-money case.  The conviction stands.[2] 

            Soon afterward, President Trump issued a blanket pardon for almost 1,600 people convicted by federal prosecutors for their part in the 6 January 2021 riot.  Why did he do this when two-thirds of Americans opposed pardons for “violent” offenders?  Even his Vice President, J.D. Vance had not expected him to go that far. 

            Trump went beyond just releasing the worst of his supporters.  He appointed another supporter, Edward Martin, Jr., as interim United States attorney for Washington, D.C.  Martin immediately ordered that all pending cases be dismissed.  Then he ordered a review of the use of felony obstruction charges against the rioters.  Democrats feared that the released rioters might feel empowered to threaten their prosecutors.[3] 

            On his way out the door, “I’m-still-President” Joe Biden—predictably, understandably—broke his promise not to pardon his son Hunter Biden.  He pardoned him for both those things of which he had been convicted and of anything else he might have done since 2014.  Biden argued that Hunter had been “selectively and unfairly prosecuted” by Biden’s own Justice Department.[4]  Believing that Trump would seek “revenge” on everyone who displeased him, Biden issued pardons to people like Dr. Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley, the members of the House 6 January investigative committee, and the Capitol police officers who testified before the committee.  He also pardoned another five members of his family.[5] 

            Angry Special Counsels took their last shots.  David Weiss, who had investigated Hunter Biden, denounced Joe Biden’s “baseless allegations.”  Jack Smith, who had investigated Trump, insisted that he could have convicted him if he hadn’t been able to shelter in the White House.[6] 

“I fought the law and the law…lost.”  Grubby versus Filthy. 

[1] Alvin Bragg and Laetitia James both ran for their state elective offices with promises to prosecute Trump.  Fani Willis may have had a partisan motivation, but she built a substantial (perhaps overly ambitious) case.  Jack Smith seems to have had Trump dead to right on the purloined documents case.  He probably had at least as good a case as did Willis on the election interference case.  For Republican charges of “lawfare,” see “Trump: Beyond the reach of law,” The Week, 13 December 2024, p. 17. 

[2] “Trump: Prosecutions end with a whimper,” The Week, 24 January 2025, p. 17. 

[3] “Impunity: MAGA violence is A-OK,” The Week, 7 February 2025, p. 16. 

[4] “Biden: Why he broke his promise not to pardon Hunter,” The Week, 13 December 2024, p. 6. 

[5] “Biden: A flurry of last-minute pardons,” The Week, 31 January 2025, p. 17. 

[6] The Week, 24 January 2025, pp. 6 and 7. 

“The System Is Blinking Red” 3.

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            In 1989-1990, the Soviet Union collapsed.  With it went the credibility of autarkic, centrally-planned economies.  Determined to maintain its monopoly on power, the Communist Party of the Peoples’ Republic of China hastened to adopt a new course.  It opened China to the global market and capitalist methods.  Essentially, use foreign-supplied capital and technology to become the workshop of the world.  Start by making cheap simple stuff, then climb up the ladder.  Pull its people out of impoverished rural life into urban prosperity.  Pull China out of Developing Country status into global power. 

American business and political leaders took an optimistic view of these developments.  China would be a cheap producers of consumer goods for Western markets, raising living standards for Western peoples by lowering costs.  China would become a consumer of high-end  Western products and expertise.  An economic revolution in China would create a growing—and increasingly assertive—middle class.  This would nudge China toward political democracy.[1]  Naturally, there would be some job losses suffered in the West.  Experience with the rise of Japan in the 1970s and 1980s showed that displaced workers would shuffle into new jobs. 

In 2001, China won admission to the World Trade Organization.  Many restrictions on Chinese exports were removed.  Things did not work out as planned.  China moved much faster than expected and on a much larger scale than had been expected.  “Many U.S. manufacturing towns couldn’t compete.”[2]  Factories downsized.  Manufacturing shrank as a source of employment in many towns.  Some workers were laid off, but most were attritted through retirement.  They were not replaced.  Most of the displaced workers were White and Black men without a college education. 

Then, it seemed, the hard-hit areas bounced back.  They didn’t return to the original state.  Instead, “affected areas recover[ed] primarily by adding workers to non-manufacturing who were below working age when the shock occurred.  Entrants are disproportionately native-born Hispanics, foreign-born immigrants, women, and the college-educated, who find employment in relatively low-wage service sectors such as medical services, education, retail, and hospitality.”[3] 

Readers may question the argument that “towns” came back, while “workers” did not.  “Those communities experienced higher unemployment, lower wages, higher use of food stamps, higher disability payments, higher rates of single parenthood and child poverty, and elevated mortality.”[4]  Would make a good movie if John Sayles was still working.[5] 

The natural response is to connect all this distress to the rejection of globalism and—eventually—to the rise of Donald Trump.  What stands out, though, is the failed hopes of the people who set China policy and their failed sense of social solidarity when the choices they made had a harmful impact on ordinary people.  Now US AID is on the block. 

[1] That’s how it had worked in Western Europe in the 18th and 19th Centuries.  Why wouldn’t it be the same with China? 

[2] Justin Lahart, “How ‘China Shock’ Upended U.S. Workers,” WSJ, 5 February 2025.  Lahart is reporting on a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by David Autor, et al. 

[3] Places versus People: The Ins and Outs of Labor Market Adjustment to Globalization | NBER 

[4] Justin Lahart, “How ‘China Shock’ Upended U.S. Workers,” WSJ, 5 February 2025. 

[5] See: “Sunshine State” (2002) and “Casa de los babys” (2003).   

American attitudes toward immigration.

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            We are all immigrants or the descendants of immigrants.[1]  Yet “Americans” have often been ambivalent about—or hostile to—new arrivals.  In the 17th Century Native Americans made repeated attempts to wipe out English settlers.  The early European settlements, especially those of the English, were starved for settlers.  They generally welcomed newcomers with open arms. 

            After independence from Britain had been won, the new United States had to define its own policy on immigration.  Generally, the new nation desired immigrants.  Immigrants could bring valuable skills, and the labor to transform the continent’s abundant resources into national wealth.  All residents enjoyed the same civil and legal rights.  The initial residency requirement for citizenship was two years, later set at five years.  No one coerced them to abandon their own culture, or even language. 

            In the 1830s began a great wave of immigrants, predominantly Germans and Irish.  Trouble arose from the reality that “new” Americans were not immediately and might never be “real” Americans in the eyes of the “old” Americans.  Increasingly, the “voluntary” Americans were drawn from countries where absolute monarchy prevailed.  This included all those who belonged to the “absolute monarchy” of the Papal Catholicism.[2]  Other American feared the United States would be swarmed by left-wing radicals in flight from more repressive regimes. 

“Nativism” arose as a political force, culminating in the American or “Know Nothing” Party in the 1850s.  They expressed Thomas Jefferson’s earlier fears that people raised under ana absolute monarchy could not learn how to participate in a democratic republic.[3] “Nativism” made impressive progress until swamped by the larger crisis of the Civil War. 

After the Civil War, as any textbook will tell you, the country bounded forward in both industrialization and the exploitation of the Trans-Mississippi West.  Vast amounts of natural resources (minerals, timber, grains and livestock) just needed manpower to put them to work.  British, German, Irish (and French-Canadian in New England) immigrants poured in.  Anti-Catholicism, anti-Semitism revived, and a new anti-Socialism joined them as inspirations to immigrants.  Then, in the 1880s, there began a tidal wave of “new immigration” from Southern and Eastern Europe.  Poles, Russian Jews, Italians, Hungarians, Greeks, and others arrived in huge numbers.  Only the First World War (1914) paused most European emigration. 

This latter immigration stirred bubbling cauldron of late-19th and early-20th Century social, economic, cultural, and political strife.  Both “advanced” thinkers and organized labor championed the limits; but equivalent figures argued for inclusion over exclusion.  The contest produced the first laws restricting European immigration (1923-1924).   The laws have been revised on several occasions, but the United States has been a country of regulated and restricted immigration for a century.  Recently, mass defiance of the law has combined with important political and economic forces turning a blind eye to the issue has made it an explosive problem. 

So, we go back and forth in a debate that is ever-changing and ever-the-same. 

See: Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted; Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door. 

[1] Including those whose ancestors crossed the Bering land bridge when it was still above sea level.  

[2] The “Syllabus of Errors” (1877) summed up more than a century of Papal anti-modern, anti-republican, and anti-liberal thought.  “He was agin it,” as Will Rogers said of a fundamentalist Protestant preacher’s views on sin. 

[3] Jefferson came down on both sides of many issues.  This is one such. 

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 3.

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            Among President Donald Trump’s Executive Orders (EOs) bearing in some way in illegal immigration were ones: declaring an emergency on the southern border; ordering 1,600 troops to the border to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); stopping the claiming of asylum at the border; revoking President Joe Biden’s EO granting special immigrant status to about 600,000 refugees from Venezuela’s Marxist dictatorship; increasing those eligible for “fast-track deportations”; declared drug cartels (which also engage in people smuggling) as “terrorists”; taking the Border Patrol asylum app off-line; and revoking an earlier ban on ICE raids on sanctuaries like churches, schools, and hospitals.[1]  In a blow at “sanctuary cities,” the Department of Justice threatened to prosecute state and local officials who refused to comply with deportation orders. 

The search for illegal immigrants got underway immediately.[2]  ICE corralled 5,000 illegal immigrants in the first weeks.  So did the expulsions.  Military planes began ferrying deportees back to their home countries.  Brazil, Mexico, and Columbia got the first returnees.  When Columbia tried to refuse, Trump threatened to slap a 25 percent tariff on imports from Columbia.  The president of Columbia caved-in. 

Democrats’ criticism of President Trump’s actions took three lines.  First, Trump’s EO modifying the eligibility for “birthright citizenship” met a barrage of denunciations from Democrats.  “The 14th Amendment says what it means, and it means what it says” asserted Connecticut’s Attorney General.[3]  Twenty-two states sued to block the order. 

Second, some critics saw a much greater import to the “birthright” EO.  Closing the border on the grounds that the massive illegal immigration “constitute[s] and invasion” creates the possibility that President Trump could invoke the Alien Enemies Act,[4] and then deploy “extraordinary new powers.”  So, we’re closer to fascism in this view.  On the other hand, the half of the country that elected Trump supports the mass deportations of illegal immigrants, while the half that failed to elect Kamala Harris oppose mass deportations.[5]  So, we’re living with the results of a free and fair—if tight–election in this view. 

Third, it won’t work.  A human tide of people from troubled areas of the world want to get to places of greater safety and opportunity.  They will keep coming regardless of the measures taken to stop them.  “Migrants don’t simply disappear by wishing them away.”[6]  A Trump supporter could offer two counter-arguments.  On the one hand, look at the European model.  They pay foreign countries to block passage.  On the other hand, Trump isn’t wishing them away.  He’s launching a massive effort to actually stop migration.  Time will tell. 

[1] “Asylum halted as immigration crackdown begins,” The Week, 31 January 2025, p. 5. 

[2] “Thousands arrested in immigration crackdown,” The Week, 7 February 2025, p. 5. 

[3] Which sounds a lot like “Originalism.”  Originalism – Wikipedia  That’s OK: John Marshall Harlan’s lonely dissent on Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) adopted the same perspective.  However, it is a hard swerve away from the well-established liberal position that the Constitution is a “living document” which jurist must interpret in light of changing times. 

[4] One of the Alien Sedition Acts passed in 1798; unlike the others, this Act won support from many Jeffersonians and was never repealed.  See: Alien and Sedition Acts – Wikipedia 

[5] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 7 February 2025, p. 17.  The Boston Globe put the share of supporters at 55 percent. 

[6] Juliette Kayyem in the Atlantic, quoted in “Thousands arrested in immigration crackdown,” The Week, 7 February 2025, p. 5. 

Civil Society.

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            “The order [halting government payments to external bodies] sparked chaos at universities, charities, local government, and other bodies reliant on federal funding,…”[1]  Sort of an off-the-cuff statement that arouses no alarm unless your ox is one of those getting gored.  Still, it’s worth thinking about a little bit. 

            One way of thinking about the issues is the following.  Jurgen Habermas (1929– ) is a brilliant German philosopher.[2]  OTOH, so was Karl Marx.  What did that get us?  “Boiler suits, prison camps, and a damn long march to nowhere.”[3]  One of the many interesting ideas propounded by Habermas, on the basis of deep learning in a host of areas, is the distinction between the “public sphere” and the “private sphere.”  He defined the “public sphere” as “made up of private people gathered together as a public and articulating the needs of society with the state.”  The “private sphere,” in contrast, the place where “an individual enjoys a degree of authority and tradition, unhampered by interventions from governmental, economic or other institutions.”  Religion, family life, sexual relations in private are current examples of this “private sphere.”[4]   Taken together, they create “civil society.”  By “civil society” is meant “1) individuals and organizations in a society which are independent of the government or 2) the aggregate of non-governmental organizations and institutions that advance the interests and will of citizens.”[5] 

            In recent-for-me times, the Czech writer and dissident (even when he was in power), Vaclav Havel[6] used the term civil society to describe all the groups menaced by Communism’s relentless drive to subordinate every person and group into conformity with the state’s wishes. 

            Here’s the thing: “universities, charities, local government, and other bodies” is pretty much an operational definition of “civil society.” 

            The institutions of civil society are supposed to be “individuals and organizations in a society which are independent of the government.”  The fact that they are “reliant on federal funding” indicates just how deeply the institutions of “civil society” have been penetrated and compromised by the State.  With the money comes regulations, requirements, audits. 

 Yet, “the aggregate of non-governmental organizations and institutions” are supposed to “advance the interests and will of citizens.”  They are supposed to engage in discussion and even confrontation.  Hard to do when you’re the hired help. 

None of this is the product of a sinister conspiracy.[7]  It’s just convenience, then inertia. 

[1] “Trump orders cause whiplash in Washington,” The Week, 7 February 2025, p. 4. 

[2] Jürgen Habermas – Wikipedia

[3] Jim Prideaux in John Le Carre, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974).    

[4] However, these things can shift over time.  For the Greeks and for Europeans in the Reformation, religion was a public concern that required continual and public assent, but the authorities didn’t much care if you whacked your kid.  “Boys have always been beaten and it would be a bad day for the world if boys ceased to be beaten.”  C.S. Forester, Lieutenant Hornblower.  The statement is made during the run-up to the murder of a sadistic Navy captain.

[5] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_society  NB: I reversed the order of the terms because I want to consider a particular point. 

[6] Guy reminds me a bit of Roger Williams.  Turn left when everyone else turns right.  Turn left because everyone else turns right.  “Let us honor if we can the vertical man, though we value none but the horizontal one.”—W.S. Auden. 

[7] Regardless of what Republican or Democratic activists may believe. 

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 2.

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            Between 20 January and 1 February 2025, President Donald Trump issues 45 Executive Orders (Eos) that imposed sweeping changes in government policies.[1]  President Joe Biden had issued only 26 EOs ordering sweeping changes in the same period following his inauguration and didn’t hit the 45 mark until 14 May 2021.[2] 

            Some of these EOs struck a nerve with Democrats.  Among many other things, Trump withdrew–more accurately re-withdrew–the United States from the Paris Climate executive agreement[3]; ordered the immediate dismantling of any and all government programs promoting diversity, inclusion, and equity; ordered any federal workers employed on such programs to be placed on paid leave; reversed a Biden EO permitting transgender troops to serve in the military; changed the name of the tallest mountain in the United States from “Denali” back to “McKinley”[4]; ordered that the “Gulf of Mexico” be renamed the “Gulf of America”; and reversed an EO originally issued by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 which allowed government to lean on private contractors to take “affirmative action” in hiring.[5]  In short, a bunch of sacred cows went to Bovine University. 

            More substantively, Trump withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization, (W.H.O.); said that the United States would “take back” the Panama Canal; reduced restrictions on oil and gas production that had been imposed by the Biden administration; created a “Department of Government Efficiency” (D.O.G.E.) to be led by Elon Musk; and ordered an end to “birthright citizenship.”[6] 

            More orders followed hard on the heels of the first few days.  He issued, then quickly rescinded, an order temporarily halting the payment of federal grants, loans, and other forms of assistance to a wide range of groups outside the federal government.  “The order sparked chaos at universities, charities, local government, and other bodies reliant on federal funding,…”[7]  Not satisfied with shaking hearts and minds with such dramatic action, the administration also issued a warning to federal employees that there were going to be big job cuts.  The e-mail message offered many of them the choice between retiring immediately and being paid for eight months or risking being laid off when Musk got around to them.  “Which will you have?”[8] 

            To top off the disruption, Trump fulfilled his pledge to pardon the 1,600 convicted rioters from 6 January 2021.  Or, in the words of the WSJ, “Cop Beaters.”  He’s good for his word, alas. 

[1] List of executive orders in the second presidency of Donald Trump – Wikipedia 

[2] List of executive actions by Joe Biden – Wikipedia  Biden issued his final EO, his 162nd, on 19 January 2025. 

[3] Like the Iran agreement, President Barack Obama had known that he couldn’t get a treaty through the Senate because the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote of approval for any treaty.  So, in both cases, he settled for executive agreements whose durability depended upon retaining control of the White House.

[4] Still, if you go to a GMC dealer, you won’t be offered a test drive in the “exciting new McKinley.” 

[5] Commonly believed to mean quotas. 

[6] He did not exactly end “birthright citizenship.”  He restricted it to exclude children born of parents who were illegal immigrants, and to exclude children born to a foreign national mother in the United States on any kind of short-term or temporary visa and whose father was also not a citizen.  Furthermore, the change was not retroactive and applies to children born after 19 February 2025.  The 14th Amendment had been adopted long before there had been any idea of illegal immigration. 

[7] “Trump orders cause whiplash in Washington,” The Week, 7 February 2025, p. 4.  See also: “Trump returns with a barrage of orders, pardons,” The Week, 31 January 2025, p. 4. 

[8] True Grit (2010) “Fill Your Hands!” 

Tragedy and Policy.

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            Venezuelan despots Hugo Chavez, then Nicholas Maduro sparked a gigantic flood of refugees from their country.[1]  By October 2022, an estimated 7 million people had fled the country, more than 20 percent of the population.  The emigration began with the country’s elites, then ate down into other layers of society as political oppression led to economic catastrophe.[2]  The Biden administration gestured at expelling some of the illegal immigrants under Covid-era “Title 42” provisions.  For the rest, it adopted a “remain in Texas” policy which infuriated both the people of border areas and Texas governor Greg Abbott.  In April 2022, the Biden administration ended “Title 42” expulsions.  Governor Abbott began bussing illegal immigrants from Texas to various self-proclaimed “sanctuary cities” in loudly Progressive areas.  New York City became the chief destination of both “Operation Lone Star” busees and the greater number who made their own way.[3]  Soon, New York City and many other places had migrant crises of their own.[4]  New York City began taking control of disused or under-used hotels to house the migrants.  For example, the city took over the Roosevelt Hotel as one of these facilities.[5]

            In September 2022 a Venezuelan named Jose Antonio Ibarra illegally entered the United States near El Paso, Texas.  Probably, he hoped to connect with a brother who had entered the United States illegally at an earlier date.[6]  ICE officers detained him soon afterward and then released him.  Like many other Venezuelan migrants, Ibarra traveled to New York City. where he stayed in the Roosevelt Hotel migrant shelter.  In September 2023, he was arrested for “acting in a manner to injure a child less than 17.”  Released on bond before ICE could issue a detainer order,[7] he blew town for Athens, Georgia, where his brother lived.  No sooner did the two get together than they went to stealing.  In October 2023, the brothers were arrested in possession of goods stolen from a local Walmart.  They were released.  Then Jose Antonio Ibarra was arrested for shoplifting.  He was released, but failed to appear for a court hearing in December 2023.  The judge issued a bench warrant for his arrest.   Athens, Georgia, police failed to locate Ibarra over the next two months.  On 22 February 2024, Ibarra murdered a 22 year-old nursing student named Laken Riley.  Arrested and tried, he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. 

            The case received a lot of media attention.  In March 2024, just after Ibarra’s arrest, the House of Representatives passed the “Laken Riley Act.”  The law required the Department of Homeland Security to detain illegal immigrants who “[are] charged with, [are] arrested for, [are] convicted of, [admit to] having committed, or [admit to] committing” theft-related crimes.  The vote was 251–170, with 37 Democrats and all Republicans voting in favor.  It went to the Senate, where it just sat.  Progressives argued that the law would allow the “indefinite detention, without bail, of any undocumented immigrant—including minors, asylum seekers, or “Dreamers” brought here as children—who is merely arrested for, not convicted of, nonviolent crimes like theft.”[8]  Democrats had control of the Senate at that point, so cooler heads (or colder hearts) prevailed. 

Put simply, the Laken Riley case asked the question: how many American citizens have to die in the pursuit of “a blinkered delusion with purchase on only the progressive fringes of American politics”?[9]  In November 2024, Democrats lost the Senate as well as the White House.  Anger over illegal immigration provided one big driver in the election.  In January 2025, the new Senate immediately passed the bill while adding “assaulting a police officer, or a crime that results in death or serious bodily injury like drunk driving” to the list of offenses.  In addition, the law allows states to sue the Department of Homeland Security if they believe that the law is not being enforced.[10]  This time, many Democrats scrambled to support the bill: 48 in the House and 32 in the Senate voted in favor.  The House approved the revised bill and President Donald Trump signed it into law. 

            A long and winding road from the rise of a Venezuelan Marxist dictator to the death of an American nursing student to a backlash bill over a neglected problem. 

[1] Probably not the sort of thing that gets your image on the currency a hundred years later. 

[2] A basic introduction is Venezuelan refugee crisis – Wikipedia  There is a good deal of journalism on the story, but—so far—no really good book to recommend. 

[3] GEORGE BENSON On Broadway Album Version 

[4] See: New York City migrant housing crisis – Wikipedia  See also: Nelson – ha ha 

[5] The Roosevelt Hotel had been built during a happier and more optimistic time in America.  See: Roosevelt Hotel (Manhattan) – Wikipedia and Terminal City (Manhattan) – Wikipedia  More evidence, if any is needed, that we are not the country we once were.  Could we be once more? 

[6] The brother is believed to be a member of the Tren de Aragua crime organization.  See: Tren de Aragua – Wikipedia  Both the violence and pervasiveness of the gang in the United States seems over-stated, notably by President Trump.

[7] “[T]he defining characteristic of a sanctuary city in the US” is prohibiting “the use of city funds and resources to assist federal immigration enforcement.” 

[8] “Immigration: the Laken Riley bill advances,” The Week, 24 January 2025, p. 17. 

[9] Senator John Fetterman  (D-Pennsylvania) quoted in ibid.   

[10] Laken Riley Act – Wikipedia