Latest news with #Democrat-dominated
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
What level of immigration enforcement will Democrats actually accept?
Last week, the streets of Los Angeles burned over immigration enforcement. The incendiary exchange between California's political class and federal immigration authorities unfolded as America watched. But I have just one question for my friends on the political left: What level of immigration law enforcement is actually acceptable? This isn't a rhetorical jab. It's a genuine inquiry into where the line resides. At what point does enforcing duly enacted federal law become illegitimate in the eyes of those who advocate for sanctuary city policies and decry any interior enforcement as a moral outrage? Let's be clear about what federal law permits. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers don't just have the right to operate in all 50 states; they have a legal obligation to do so. More: ICE says nearly 200 immigrants arrested in Nashville during recent operations The Immigration and Nationality Act, specifically in section 8 U.S.C. § 1357, grants federal immigration officers the authority to interrogate and arrest non-citizens without a warrant if they have 'reason to believe that the alien so arrested is in the United States in violation of any such law or regulation and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest.' This isn't some obscure, rarely used statute. It's the bedrock of federal immigration enforcement. The "probable cause" standard here is consistent with what we expect from other law enforcement agencies. We can and should demand that ICE agents meet this standard, but we cannot pretend it doesn't exist. Consider the typical scenario that often gets labeled a "raid." It's not, as often portrayed, a random sweep of a neighborhood. These are enforcement actions targeted at specific employers based on evidence. In fact, worksite enforcement is a regular part of ICE operations, and it isn't limited to Democrat-dominated states. The event that started the conflagration in Los Angeles on June 6 was a basic law enforcement engagement at an apparel manufacturing business. This brings us back to the central question. If federal agents have established probable cause that a business is a hub of illegal employment, at what point in that process is it acceptable for protestors to throw rocks at officers? When is the appropriate time to set a self-driving Waymo vehicle ablaze? Is there a particular brand of sneakers that's fair game for looting when you're upset about immigration enforcement? All this boorish behavior simply demonstrates the need for even more law enforcement. The performative outrage from politicians like Gov. Gavin Newsom in his exchanges with ICE Director Tom Homan is a distraction. The issue isn't about tough talk; it's about the consistent and safe application of the law. States cannot create zones where federal law is null and void, no matter what they label them. More: Inside the volunteer group patrolling Nashville to look for ICE activity The Supreme Court has affirmed states do not have to assist in federal enforcement. They also cannot actively obstruct it. If Democrats in California and elsewhere fundamentally oppose the current immigration laws, the path to changing them runs through Washington, D.C., not through angry mobs on the streets of Los Angeles. Win a presidential election, hold majorities in Congress, and you can rewrite the nation's immigration statutes. Just don't look at the polling. As it turns out, Americans aren't into lawlessness. If Democratic leaders can't articulate a vision for how federal immigration laws can be consistently and peacefully enforced, then their position isn't that different from the masked protestor waving a foreign flag on the hood of a burning car. They might be wearing suits in positions of power, but their contempt for the rule of law is exactly the same. USA TODAY Network Tennessee Columnist Cameron Smith is a Memphis-born, Brentwood-raised recovering political attorney raising four boys in Nolensville, Tennessee, with his particularly patient wife, Justine. Direct outrage or agreement to or @DCameronSmith on Twitter. Agree or disagree? Send a letter to the editor to letters@ This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Democrats at ICE protests show contempt for federal law | Opinion
The Hill
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Supreme Court agrees to hear appeal from New Jersey faith-based pregnancy center
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear from a faith-based pregnancy center in New Jersey challenging a state investigation into whether it misled people into thinking its services included referrals for abortion. The justices agreed to consider an appeal from First Choice Women's Resource Centers, which wants to block a 2023 subpoena from Democratic New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin seeking information about donors, advertisements and medical personnel. It has not yet been served. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case nearly three years after overturning abortion as a nationwide right. Since then, most Republican-controlled states have started enforcing new bans or restrictions, and most Democrat-dominated ones have sought to protect abortion access. Attorneys for First Choice Women's Resource Centers had described the organization as a 'faith-based, pro-life pregnancy center.' Pregnancy centers generally try to steer women facing an unwanted pregnancy away from choosing an abortion. The group challenged the subpoena in federal court, but a judge found that the case wasn't yet far enough along to weigh in. An appeals court agreed. First Choice Women's Resource Centers appealed to the Supreme Court, saying the push for donor information had chilled its First Amendment rights. 'State attorneys general on both sides of the political aisle have been accused of misusing this authority to issue demands against their ideological and political opponents,' its lawyers wrote. 'Even if these accusations turn out to be false, it is important that a federal forum exists for suits challenging those investigative demands.' Meanwhile, Platkin has sought to enforce the subpoena in state court, but the judge there has so far refused the state's push to require the group to turn over documents and told the two sides to negotiate instead. The state had asked the justices to pass on the case, saying it doesn't present the kind of significant lower-court controversy that requires the justices to step in. 'The decision below is correct and does not have the impacts petitioner alleges,' state attorneys wrote. The attorney general's office did not immediately return a message seeking comment. The court will hear arguments in the case in the fall.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Supreme Court agrees to hear appeal from New Jersey faith-based pregnancy center
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear from a faith-based pregnancy center in New Jersey challenging a state investigation into whether it misled people into thinking its services included referrals for abortion. The justices agreed to consider an appeal from First Choice Women's Resource Centers, which wants to block a 2023 subpoena from Democratic New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin seeking information about donors, advertisements and medical personnel. It has not yet been served. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case nearly three years after overturning abortion as a nationwide right. Since then, most Republican-controlled states have started enforcing new bans or restrictions, and most Democrat-dominated ones have sought to protect abortion access. Attorneys for First Choice Women's Resource Centers had described the organization as a 'faith-based, pro-life pregnancy center.' Pregnancy centers generally try to steer women facing an unwanted pregnancy away from choosing an abortion. The group challenged the subpoena in federal court, but a judge found that the case wasn't yet far enough along to weigh in. An appeals court agreed. First Choice Women's Resource Centers appealed to the Supreme Court, saying the push for donor information had chilled its First Amendment rights. 'State attorneys general on both sides of the political aisle have been accused of misusing this authority to issue demands against their ideological and political opponents," its lawyers wrote. 'Even if these accusations turn out to be false, it is important that a federal forum exists for suits challenging those investigative demands.' Meanwhile, Platkin has sought to enforce the subpoena in state court, but the judge there has so far refused the state's push to require the group to turn over documents and told the two sides to negotiate instead. The state had asked the justices to pass on the case, saying it doesn't present the kind of significant lower-court controversy that requires the justices to step in. 'The decision below is correct and does not have the impacts petitioner alleges,' state attorneys wrote. The attorney general's office did not immediately return a message seeking comment. The court will hear arguments in the case in the fall. ___ Associated Press writer Mike Catalini in Trenton, N.J., contributed to this story. ___ Follow the AP's coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at Lindsay Whitehurst, The Associated Press
Miami Herald
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Gavin Newsom should get out of Trump's way in LA
'Donald Trump has manufactured a crisis and is inflaming conditions.' So says California Gov. Gavin Newsom after an X poster sent him video of his constituents setting police cars on fire and throwing rocks. What Donald Trump is doing is enforcing the law. By sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents into Los Angeles to arrest undocumented immigrants and then sending in the National Guard to restore order after riots erupted, Trump is doing nothing more than his job, something the Biden administration and Newsom himself largely abdicated. Joe Biden's border policies – somewhere between an open invitation and abject surrender before a late-term reversal – allowed waves of unwelcome migrants to enter the United States, millions of them, making it necessary for a tough surge of enforcement around the country to restore some respect for our borders. Gavin Newsom's sanctuary state policies made sure that plenty of that enforcement would need to take place in California. If Newsom didn't want to see flash bang grenades deployed in Los Angeles restaurant kitchens and heavily armed federal agents in donut shops and Home Depots, maybe he shouldn't have spent billions of taxpayer dollars making California a more welcoming home for people who broke the law. The biggest move he made was to spend the state into a deficit offering Medical (California's version of Medicaid) to those without legal status. It is a decision he has tried to partially reverse as the budget impact became clear. More appalling was a law passed by California's Democrat-dominated legislature to make undocumented immigrants eligible for six-figure housing down payment assistance or making poor citizens complete with the undocumented for scarce work-study opportunities at state universities and community colleges. You know, the places of education where citizens of El Salvador and Mexico already got cheaper tuition than those interloper immigrants from Missouri or Idaho. Newsom says 'Commandeering a state's National Guard without consulting the Governor of that state is illegal and immoral.' That's not exactly right. It wasn't 'illegal and immoral' for Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson to use commandeered National Guard units to enforce civil rights laws in 1965. And it isn't now for the threat to American sovereignty caused by Biden's feckless border policy and the violent reaction to efforts to rectify it, dangers just as grave as Alabama civil rights scofflaws were a half century ago. In both cases, protests threatened to derail the enforcement of federal law. And while Newsom says the National Guard is an unneeded provocation, the LA police chief has had second thoughts. 'Looking at the violence today, I think we've got to make a reassessment,' Jim McDonnell, told The New York Times. He's right. The Guard hasn't engaged with protestors yet, but they are an important backstop to the police who face not only local riots but the threat that others with broader anti-American agendas will come to take advantage of the chaos caused by the original timorous response from California law enforcement. It is unclear what message rioters were sending by setting multiple Waymo taxis on fire in downtown LA, but it is surely clear that unmanned transportation isn't exactly a symbol of Trump administration overreach. Maybe the violent protestors have more in mind than a confrontation over immigration enforcement. That was certainly the case in the violent riots over the murder of George Floyd that killed nine and cost billions. I have my problems with the Trump approach to immigration. Afghan patriots who served our military in trying to tame that terrorist-infested land deserve our thanks, not the boot. The U.S. has a long history of welcoming those who flee communism. Why that doesn't apply to Venezuelans, I don't know. Kicking out either group seems kinda dumb. And the policy of refusing to allow China to send full-fair paying students to our schools to subsidize American students' education doesn't make much fiscal sense to me. But if America is to return to its roots as a land built on exploiting the hard work, innovations and and entrepreneurialism of wave after wave of migrants, we have to have a reckoning over the lawlessness of the Biden years. It might get ugly in some cases, but in trying his best to kick out undocumented immigrants, Trump is only doing what we elected him for. Gavin Newsom should get out of the way.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Tom Cotton Do-Over
Five years ago last Tuesday, The New York Times, after considerable internal turmoil, published an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) advocating that the federal government unilaterally send military troops to quell the riots ripping through the country in the wake of the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd. The piece led directly to the firing of multiple Times editors, the resignation and eventual relaunch of Times controversialist Bari Weiss, and an appended 317-word editor's note lamenting that "the essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published," among other derangements. It also, crucially, did not deliver its intended result: Cities continued to burn, some for months on end, and President Donald Trump never did impose military troops on any unwilling governor. On the five-year anniversary of Cotton's unrequited exhortation to power, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles began snatching illegal immigrants and asylum seekers who had arrived for previously scheduled check-ins, and detaining them in a makeshift detention facility in the basement, some with their whole families (including U.S. citizen children). Such process bait-and-switches, including of at least one married father of four who thought he was going to his final naturalization interview, have been conducted across the country during Trump's second term as part of a White House pledge to increase immigration arrests tenfold from the 2024 average of 300 per day to 3,000. Last Tuesday's nationwide haul, assisted by text messages urging asylum seekers to check in early for appointments, reached a record 2,200. On Wednesday, as protesters began gathering outside the Roybal Building, Trump announced a travel ban on citizens of 12 countries (Cotton was pleased) and threatened "large scale fines" on California Democratic Gov. Gavin "Newscum" for allowing biological males to compete in girls' high school athletics—a precursor to a Harvard-style culture war showdown over federal funding. The stage was thus set for Friday's visually dramatic escalation of street-level conflict in Southern California. ICE that morning kicked off what it would later advertise as a 30-day campaign of raids on local workplaces suspected of employing or harboring illegal immigrants, with heavily armed agents, in both unmarked SUVs and military-style transports, throwing flash-bang grenades and tear-gas cannisters, cuffing suspected perps and objecting protesters alike. (The latter including the powerful president of Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, David Huerta.) In a Democrat-dominated city of 1.5 million foreign-born residents, in the nation's most immigrant-rich state, where infamously ineffective politicians have long touted sanctuary from immigration enforcement while defining themselves largely in opposition to Trump, the prospect of a theatrical clash probably looked to the White House like a win-win-win: Draw out the most self-defeating elements of the protest left, highlight the intransigent ineptitude of once-ambitious Dems, and continue to scare immigrant communities into self-deportation. All while releasing pent-up demand for a 2020 rewrite. "Tom Cotton," tweeted National Review's Jeff Blehar Saturday, "now has the chance to publish the funniest LA Times op-ed ever." The administration could barely contain its enthusiasm Saturday night. Even as protests Friday had been mostly limited, even in the most fed-credulous estimates, to around 2,000 combined people in two targeted locations—the Roybal detention center downtown, and the streets around a Home Depot 15 miles south in the city of Paramount near where an ICE caravan had massed—officials tripped over themselves to flex preemptive muscle over the riotous landscape. "If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can't do their jobs, which everyone knows they can't, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!" the president of the United States posted on Truth Social at 8:25 p.m. Eastern time. (Best as I can ascertain from a great distance, at the time of Trump's assertion there had been one reported protest-related looting incident, and zero looting-related arrests.) Within an hour, the White House announced the first uninvited deployment of the National Guard in 60 years. "Insurrectionists carrying foreign flags are attacking immigration enforcement officers, while one half of America's political leadership has decided that border enforcement is evil," Vice President J.D. Vance chimed in at 9:23 p.m. Eastern time. Ten minutes later Vance suggested that the presence of "foreign nationals with no legal right to be in the country waving foreign flags and assaulting law enforcement" meets the legal definition of invasion, thereby clearing the way for a more robust military response. Up jumped Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. "The violent mob assaults on ICE and Federal Law Enforcement are designed to prevent the removal of Criminal Illegal Aliens from our soil; a dangerous invasion facilitated by criminal cartels (aka Foreign Terrorist Organizations) and a huge NATIONAL SECURITY RISK," the former Fox News host tweet-shouted at 10:06 p.m. Eastern time Saturday night. "The @DeptofDefense is mobilizing the National Guard IMMEDIATELY to support federal law enforcement in Los Angeles. And, if violence continues, active duty Marines at Camp Pendleton will also be mobilized — they are on high alert." Seven hundred Marines were indeed mobilized from nearby Twentynine Palms on Monday night; the Associated Press reported unreassuringly that "the Pentagon was scrambling Monday to establish rules to guide U.S. Marines who could be faced with the rare and difficult prospect of using force against citizens on American soil." Meanwhile, the White House ordered up an additional 2,000 National Guard troops as well. By then, the administration's initial depictions of out-of-control lawlessness had graduated from anticipatory to plausible, if geographically contained largely within a five-minute walk of where this past week's conflicts began, the Roybal building. Demonstrators on Sunday shut down the 101 freeway, hurled rocks and electric scooters at cop cars, set fire to a handful of driverless Waymos, threw bottles and fireworks at law enforcement, defaced government buildings, and looted several businesses. "These past few nights we've seen a level that disgusts every good person in this city," L.A. Police Chief Jim McDonnell said Sunday, describing his forces as "overwhelmed." Such unforced protesting errors (including—yes!—waving predominantly Mexican flags at rallies backing immigration to the U.S.), were as predictable as morning fog on a June beach, not that that in any way deprives rioters of their own miserable agency. Californians looted after the deadly Altadena fires, for goodness' sake. Local Dems couldn't manage to say "knock off the rioting" without foregrounding Trump. And very little imagination is required to recall unchecked violence back in the summer of 2020, or indeed 1992. But those many conservatives, including of the otherwise anti-Trump variety, who are gleefully posting images of rooftop Koreans and cheering on federal militarism directed at residents of a great (if grossly mismanaged) American city, may benefit from reflecting on the ways June 2025 does not resemble June 2020, let alone the Bosch-style hellscape of early '90s L.A. The first is sheer scale. In Los Angeles County alone, there were at least 50 separate public demonstrations in the days after Floyd, with more than a dozen cases of looting and vandalism. Nationwide, there were 19 deaths, 14,000 arrests, and property losses estimated at $2 billion. More than 30 states activated their National Guard. Aside from the unrepeatable black swan aspect of COVID-lockdown decompression, the societal institutions most aligned with those protests—the media, academia, lefty nonprofits—are all significantly weaker than five years ago, in no small part through the are-you-kidding-me overreach and circular firing squads of that particularly insane season. The second difference is directional. Minneapolis police did nothing to residents of any city outside Minneapolis. That season's enemies were institutional, historical, impossibly overgeneralized. This year, specifically localized protests (so far, anyway) are arising—not just in L.A., but in Dallas, San Francisco, Santa Ana, and elsewhere—in response to discrete federal enforcement actions frequently carried out in disorientingly authoritarian manner. As The Wall Street Journal put it in a news article Monday, "Federal agents make warrantless arrests. Masked agents take people into custody without identifying themselves. Plainclothes agents in at least a dozen cities have arrested migrants who showed up to their court hearings. And across the U.S., people suspected of being in the country illegally are disappearing into the federal detention system without notice to families or lawyers, according to attorneys, witnesses and officials." Such actions tend to put affected communities on the defensive alert. Good!, retort immigration restrictionists, and we'll see about that. American public opinion is foursquare behind deporting criminals and prosecuting rioters; far more queasy about shipping away longtime residents with jobs and U.S. citizen nuclear family. Which brings up a final point that conservative deportation enthusiasts should be clear about, just as they press opponents to admit they don't want noncriminals to be deported: The expulsions they have longed for are sending legal residents to foreign prisons in authoritarian countries, being carried out in White House defiance of the Supreme Court, and under the auspices of a deputy chief of staff who believes this cause demonstrates that "the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended." American citizens (including a U.S. marshal) who either "fit the description" or are reckless enough to not be carrying an ID have found themselves detained and even jailed. We are almost, if not quite, living in a Tom Cotton universe. And sure enough, here was the militaristic senator taking a victory lap in The Wall Street Journal Tuesday afternoon, advocating an "overwhelming show of force," describing "areas of Los Angeles" as "lawless hellscapes," and arguing, cretinously, that "if anything, these riots are worse" than in 2020. The Insurrection Act that Cotton advocates using as of Tuesday had not yet been invoked, leaving the summoned military mostly in the role of protecting federal buildings. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who Monday night asserted that L.A. is "not a city of immigrants, they are a city of criminals," reportedly wrote a letter Sunday to Hegseth urging him to have the U.S. Marines make arrests, which would likely run afoul of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act. The protests in L.A. Monday were reportedly quieter than Sunday; Tuesday's are only now getting started. One can only hope, against all recent experience of American political violence, that both sides choose not to engage in the escalation that they have clearly, and frighteningly, been pining for. The post The Tom Cotton Do-Over appeared first on
