“You can’t buy the Seagull in the US. But I bet you wish you could.
A small hatchback around the size of a Mini Cooper, the Seagull is a fast-charging electric car and claims a range of up to 250 miles (at least according to its home country’s generous tests); BYD, its Chinese manufacturer, claims it can go from 30 percent to 80 percent charged in a half-hour using a DC plug. It’s hardly a luxury car but it’s well-equipped, with a power driver’s seat and cruise control. “If I were looking for an inexpensive commuter car … this would be perfect,” veteran car journalist John McElroy said after taking a drive.
The best part? Its base model costs about $10,700 in China. That’s about a third of the cost of the cheapest EV you can buy in the US. In South America, it’s a little pricier, but still fairly affordable, at under $24,000 for a top-trim version. Even in Europe, you can get an entry-level BYD for under €30,000.
These are absolutely screaming deals — exactly the kind of products that could turbocharge our transition away from gas and toward electric vehicles.
And it’s just one of many BYD electric cars on offer, from the compact e2/e3 hatchback and sedan (think a Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla) to the full-size, luxe Han EV, a more expensive option nonetheless selling for under $33,000 in China (it costs more than double that in Europe). Many of the options have an aquatic themed name: the Seal, the Dolphin, the Sea Lion.
The problem for Americans? The Biden administration is hell-bent on preventing you from buying BYD’s product, and if Donald Trump returns to office, he is likely to fight it as well.
That’s because the BYD cars are made in China, and both Biden and Trump are committed to an ultranationalist trade policy meant to keep BYD’s products out. They’ve seen what’s happened in other global markets that Chinese EV companies have entered. Shipments to Europe have increased astronomically; Chinese companies sold 0.5 percent of EVs in Europe in 2019 but they’re already over 9 percent as of last year. Companies like BYD make cheap, reasonably good-quality cars people are eager to buy.”
“If the idea that birth control could be at risk in America strikes you as hard to believe, I understand. There’s no proposed legislation on the table to ban it, and it does seem unbelievable that contraception — which an overwhelming majority of US women, including religious and Republican women, have used and support — could one day disappear.
But attacks on reproductive rights have never really been about public opinion, as the overturn of Roe showed and the current national debate over IVF has further proved. While it’s not an immediate threat, anti-abortion leaders have been laying the groundwork to curtail contraception access for many decades, despite birth control being one of the most reliable ways to reduce the incidence of abortion.
Their fundamental opposition is rooted in a belief that penetrative sex is sacred and should only occur within a heterosexual marriage and in the service of having children. In their eyes, birth control has encouraged sex outside of marriage — a development they charge with weakening families, absolving men of responsibility, and steering women away from domestic duties.”
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“Randall Terry, who founded the group Operation Rescue — known for blockading and protesting abortion clinics and patients — once laid out the logic against birth control plainly: “Any drug or device that prevents us from having children” is “anti-child,” he said. “How do we expect to defeat child-killing in the world when we cannot defeat child-rejection in our own midst?”
The political playbook for attacking birth control shares some similarities with the playbook for attacking abortion — a slow and steady chipping away of rights and access. Both efforts rely on measures like slashing funding for low-income patients, enacting parental consent laws to restrict minors’ use, and empowering ideologically supportive lawmakers and judges who push friendly legal frameworks.
But the major difference between pushing to restrict abortion access and pushing to restrict birth control is that leaders are typically much quieter about their goals for the latter, aware that open discussion will prompt fierce backlash. They typically try to paint those who suggest they’d take aim at contraception as alarmists and conspiracists.
When Democrats in Congress introduced a bill to codify access to birth control following the overturn of Roe, for example, they were met with emphatic performances of exasperation.
“This bill is completely unnecessary. In no way, shape, or form is access to contraception limited or at risk of being limited,” declared Florida Republican Rep. Kat Cammack during debate on the House floor. “The liberal majority is clearly trying to stoke fears and mislead the American people.”
Still, a growing number of Republican lawmakers — including Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Mike Braun — have recently declared that Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court decision establishing a constitutional right to birth control, was wrongly decided. Griswold relies on the same legal right to privacy that underpinned Roe, and in his concurring Dobbs v. Jackson opinion in 2022, Justice Clarence Thomas encouraged the Supreme Court to “reconsider” Griswold and other privacy-related decisions. Former Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters went so far as to pledge to “vote only for federal judges who understand that Roe and Griswold” should be overturned.”
“According to the Arab American Institute, only a quarter of Arab Americans practice Islam; a supermajority of them are actually Christian. Similarly, many Muslim Americans are South Asian, Black or some other non-Arab ethnicity (e.g., Iranian).”
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“According to a poll from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Muslims voted for Biden over Trump in 2020 69 percent to 17 percent (3 percent voted for a third-party candidate, and 11 percent refused to answer). And according to AP VoteCast, Muslims voted for Biden 64 percent to 35 percent. (The disagreement over Trump’s vote share really underscores how hard it is to survey such a small group!)
Meanwhile, Arab Americans told Zogby Analytics and the Arab American Institute in an October 2020 poll that they were planning to vote for Biden over Trump, 59 percent to 35 percent. Arab Americans who identified as Muslim in that poll supported Biden by a slightly wider margin, 60 percent to 30 percent. (Biden led more narrowly among Christian Arab Americans.)”
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” There just aren’t a lot of Arab American and Muslim voters out there. The U.S. is only 0.7 percent Arab American and 1.3 percent Muslim. And most swing states don’t have significant Arab American or Muslim populations; even in Michigan, which has the largest such populations, they each make up less than 3 percent. And while the 100,000 “uncommitted” votes on Tuesday sounds like an impressive number, it is over 50,000 shy of Biden’s 2020 margin in the state (154,181 votes).
Muslim or Arab American voters could still tip the scales in Michigan … but only if the state is very close.”
“Only 3 percent of the people who have applied for green cards will receive one in FY 2024, as the backlog continues to grow and migrants continue to choose illegal migration pathways in large numbers. Today’s green card processing “reveals a legal immigration system that is utterly failing to direct aspiring immigrants to pursue the American dream in lawful and orderly ways,” wrote David J. Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, in a report released last week.
About 1.1 million green cards may be issued in FY 2024, but there are currently 34.7 million pending applications. The backlog has its roots in the Immigration Act of 1924 and subsequent eligibility restrictions. While 98.1 percent of immigrant applicants were allowed to enter the country with permanent status from 1888 to 1921, just 16 percent of applicants were admitted in an average year once caps were imposed, per Bier. The rate fell to 3.8 percent in 2023.
Adding to the problem is the fact that the government has let 6.3 million green cards go to waste since 1921, failing to meet caps in large part due to processing delays.
Certain nationalities and green card categories experience more severe backlogs and selective processing. “Indians—who make up half the applicants in the employer-sponsored categories—must wait more than a century for a green card,” wrote Bier. People who try their luck at the green card lottery, which currently has about 22.2 million applicants, only have a 1 in 400 chance of getting a green card in a given year. Some who apply for family-based green cards “will face lifetime waits for many country-category combinations,” according to Bier.
By granting green cards to such a low percentage of applicants each year, the U.S. is leaving a lot of potential growth on the table. “Backlogged immigrants are likely to enter the United States and start working at higher rates than the general population, and they also appear to be more educated on average,” wrote Bier. And beyond being an important addition to the labor force, immigrants are helping to reduce the massive federal budget deficit and stave off population decline.
The Cato report suggests that Congress do away with “the unnecessarily onerous rules and arbitrary caps to approve current green card applicants.” After tackling the existing backlog, policy changes could be more modest, since “annual legal immigration would only need to increase more gradually to meet future demand.”
This report echoes the findings of June 2023 Cato Institute research, which found that “fewer than 1 percent of people who want to move permanently to the United States can do so legally.” A variety of factors keep people from qualifying for the existing green card categories, including low annual visa caps, a lack of U.S.-based sponsors (either employers or qualifying family members), narrow definitions of eligible nationalities, and cost.”