“In the roughly week and a half since former president (and presumptive Republican presidential nominee) Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies related to falsifying records to hide hush-money payments to a porn star, numerous national polls have indicated that voters have moved slightly toward incumbent president (and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee) Joe Biden.
A HarrisX/Forbes poll found Biden and Trump each getting a one-point bump after the verdict. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found a one-point bump for Biden, with Trump losing a point. A Morning Consult poll found a one-point bump for Biden, with Trump neither gaining nor losing any ground. And an Echelon Insights poll found a two-point Biden bump, with Trump support staying flat. (All poll results can be found in a chart here.)”
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“”The verdict has not overhauled the 2024 race nearly as much as Democrats hoped it would,” writes The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake. “But the totality of the evidence suggests it has dinged Trump a little.””
“we shouldn’t be oblivious about why the result was possible. It’s because of immigration. As The Indian Express points out, at least six players on the American team are of Indian descent, including several who are in the U.S. on work visas and who play on the national team essentially as a hobby.
That includes Saurabh Netravalkar, who bowled (the equivalent of pitching) the final inning for the American team. He moved from Mumbia to San Francisco when he was a student. Now he’s an engineer at Oracle. Monank Patel, who scored 50 runs in the game, moved to New Jersey from India in 2016 to start a restaurant. Nosthush Kenjige, who recorded three wickets (the equivalent of strikeouts), had been born in Alabama before moving to India and then returning to the U.S. to work as a biologist. Other players on the team were born in Canada, while some others (such as Kenjige) were native-born American children of Indian immigrants.”
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“Immigration is America’s superpower. Being one of the world’s freest and most prosperous places means talented people from all over the world want to live and work here. When they do, it’s not just their workplaces and immediate families that benefit. The country does too.
But what about all the immigrants who aren’t world-class cricketers or scientists, some might ask. No problem! Can you cook or clean or code or care for someone? Can you do road work or construction? There are 8.1 million unfilled jobs in this country right now—and there will only be more economic opportunities as the country grows—so we should welcome all the help we can get. And when the kids of those immigrants grow up to be world-class scientists or athletes or entrepreneurs, America wins some more!
Some folks on social media seem grumpy about the victory because it was a bunch of immigrants and children of immigrants who made it happen. Those people should just say what they mean: that they’d prefer to see America be less successful—and not just at silly things like cricket matches, but at stuff that matters too. Be honest about it: You want America to lose more.
Personally, I prefer winning. And I don’t care whether your parents were born in India or Indiana. Come here or stay here. Be an American. Go kick some ass.”
“He explained that it was harder to find places to stay safe in Ukraine, where more drones are being used than in any conflict in history, and artillery and long-range weapons are in constant use.
He said that “even if you’re fucking miles and miles behind the fucking front lines, you can still get hit by a fucking rocket out there.” He said it’s not like conflicts in Middle East, where if you’re on a base you’re “relatively safe.”
That same comparison has been made by other US veterans in Ukraine, who described the fight in Ukraine as more intense.”
“There are many reasons why Chinese migrants are the fastest-growing group attempting to cross the southern border (though those numbers have fallen in early 2024). Recent research and reporting—and common sense—cast doubt on the overly simplistic idea that Chinese border crossers are primarily coming to the U.S. to threaten national security and create disorder. It’s far more likely that the average Chinese migrant is coming for the same reasons that other migrants do: to seek political and economic freedom. Rather than rebuking the people who go to such great lengths to flee China’s authoritarian regime, the U.S. should welcome them.
A new report from the Niskanen Center, a public policy think tank, found that many Chinese emigrants are coming from areas experiencing repression such as Hong Kong and Xinjiang, the province where the Chinese government is committing ongoing human rights abuses against the Uyghur people. Niskanen based its estimates on Ecuadorian travel statistics: “Since most Chinese migrants enter the Americas via Ecuador, these records can reasonably be used to draw inferences about irregular Chinese migration.””
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“The Niskanen report suggests that economic decline may play a role in Chinese out-migration, noting that three provinces from China’s “Rust Belt” rank in the top third of origin regions when adjusted for population. The economic consequences of China’s pandemic policy are also at play: “In many cases those attempting to make the crossing are small-business owners who saw irreparable damage to their primary or sole source of income due to China’s ‘zero COVID’ policies,” wrote Meredith Oyen, a historian at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, last month.
“The increase in Chinese arrivals is also a response to U.S. politics,” wrote Foreign Policy Deputy Editor James Palmer last week. “During the pandemic, U.S. business and tourist visas became harder for Chinese citizens to obtain.” (Per CBS News, the U.S. issued 2.2 million temporary visas to Chinese nationals in 2016, but that number dropped to 160,000 in 2022.) “The acceptance rate for Chinese asylum claims,” Palmer added, “is a relatively high 55 percent,” at least somewhat attributable to “U.S.-China tensions and growing human rights abuses under Chinese President Xi Jinping.””
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“What pops up over and over in reports about Chinese asylum seekers is their desire for freedom. The A.P. noted that migrants said they were leaving “an increasingly repressive political climate and bleak economic prospects”—and that “there has been no evidence that they have tried to mount a military force or training network.”
Given what China is—a country under the thumb of an authoritarian government, where civil liberties and basic freedoms are under constant threat—it should come as no surprise that the U.S. is an attractive destination for the people who choose to flee. That isn’t evidence of a grand, complex espionage plan but a manifestation of all the usual reasons people choose to immigrate, and all the more reason to welcome Chinese migrants.”
“Some undocumented immigrants have committed atrocious crimes, but there are many reasons to doubt that recent incidents prove America is suffering a surging migrant crime wave.
Crime is actually down in the cities that received the most migrants as a result of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s busing operations. “Overall crime is down year over year in Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, New York and Los Angeles,” NBC reported.
“We don’t have real-time data, but the partial crime data that exist for this year show consistent declines in major crimes in major cities,” concurs David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute. “The most significant crime spike in recent years occurred in 2020—when illegal immigration was historically low until the end of the year.”
This aligns with historic trends. In 2015, the Migration Policy Institute found that undocumented immigrants have a lower rate of felony convictions than the overall U.S. population does. Criminologists Graham Ousey and Charis Kubrin, going off of “more than two decades of research on immigration and crime,” concluded that “communities with more immigration tend to have less crime, especially violent crimes like homicide,” wrote The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler.
Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies at Cato, found that illegal immigrants have a lower homicide conviction rate in Texas than native-born Americans do. “Few people are murderers, and illegal immigrants are statistically less likely to be murderers,” wrote Nowrasteh. “We should understand that more enforcement of immigration laws will not reduce homicide rates.””
“It is absolutely true that the right to self-defense is vital. And to argue that Perry—who, prior to killing Foster at a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest, wrote that he wanted to “shoot the [protesters] in the front and push the pedal to the metal”—acted in self-defense is to make a total mockery of that right and those who’ve had to exercise it.”
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“In July 2020, Perry ran a red light and drove into a crowd of protesters. That in and of itself, of course, is not enough to deduce that he was looking for a fight. His own statements prior to doing so, however, add a great deal of helpful context and show his frame of mind at the time. “I might have to kill a few people on my way to work they are rioting outside my apartment complex,” he wrote on social media on May 31, 2020. Also in May, he threatened to a friend that he “might go to Dallas to shoot looters.” And then in mid-June, he sent that message about going to a protest, “shoot[ing] the ones in the front,” and then careening his car through the hubbub.
This was part of a pattern. Austin police detective William Bursley testified, for instance, that Perry searched on Safari for “protesters in Seattle gets shot,” “riot shootouts,” and “protests in Dallas live.” It is not hard to connect the dots between his searches and messages.
So what about that stand-your-ground defense Abbott alleges the jury nullified? Core to Perry’s case and trial was whether he reasonably feared for his life that July evening. Foster indeed had a rifle on him—because open carry is legal in Texas. The Second Amendment does not solely exist for people with conservative views. The big question then: Was Foster pointing the gun at Perry when he approached his vehicle? For the answer, we can go to Perry himself, who told law enforcement that he was not. “I believe he was going to aim at me,” he said. “I didn’t want to give him a chance to aim at me.” But that is not a self-defense justification, as Perry cannot claim clairvoyance.
That the jury reached the conclusion they did is not a mystery, nor is it an outrage. What is outrageous, however, is that a governor who claims to care about law and order has made clear that his support for crime victims is at least in part conditional on having the “right” politics.”