Lindsey Grahamnesty Is Back With a DACA Deal Republicans Would Be Fools to Take

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Well, so much for hoping Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., had finally resolved to stop making deals with devils. There was a hope that Graham was moved by the Democrats’ despicable character assassination of Brett Kavanaugh to realize that the cabal of leftists is irredeemably power-hungry and cannot be trusted. But no, Lindsey “Grahamnesty” is back in action, urging President Trump and other Republicans to strike a deal with Democrats on DACA amnesty in exchange for wall funding.

Graham made his pitch on Fox & Friends Tuesday morning when asked about a plan from House GOP leadership to introduce a stand-alone bill to supposedly fully fund the border wall.

“DACA, remember that? 690,000 kids brought here on the average age of 6, no place else to go. Trump’s going to win in court; he can repeal DACA. The day he wins in court, what do we do with these young people? So I’d like to do a deal,” Graham said. “Full wall funding for DACA.”

Fox host Brian Kilmeade asked if there would be additional reforms like ending chain migration, to which Graham cut in, “Nope, keep it simple.” Translation: Congress should punt on needed immigration reforms, so-called “poison pills” that Democrats would object to.

Only a fool would take that deal, and here’s why:

The problem with any compromise of border security for amnesty is that border security must come first. The flow of illegal immigration must halt before you can have a discussion about what to do with nonviolent illegal aliens already in the United States. Democrats will not accept a deal that delays DACA amnesty until a wall is constructed and the border made secure, and the media will pressure the government to take immediate action to end the uncertainty facing so-called “Dreamers.” But Congress’ actions are not binding on a future Congress. After DACA amnesty is codified, a future Congress could impose new requirements on wall construction, from environmental impact studies to material requirements that have the effect of delaying construction indefinitely. Opponents of a border wall will use their imaginations, and the border will remain unsecured indefinitely.

Another problem is that DACA amnesty will not be limited to the 690,000 people Graham assumes it would be. The Trump administration already offered the Democrats a deal to give DACA amnesty to at least 1.8 million illegal aliens, with a path to U.S. citizenship. When Trump made that concession to the Democrats, conservatives warned that it would be used as the baseline for any future DACA deal. Nothing has changed. Democrats will demand the bare minimum of amnesty for nearly two million illegals, since that was what was promised before, all the while labeling Trump and the GOP racists throughout negotiations.

Further, DACA is a slippery slope. If Republicans concede that nonviolent illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children should not be deported, then how will they argue that their parents should be? How can you deport the parents and adult relatives of U.S. citizens? The media and the Democrats will attack the government for separating families. All the same DACA arguments will be deployed in favor of amnesty and citizenship for all illegal aliens. Meanwhile, chain migration, unaccompanied children, E-verify, and catch-and-release policies will remain unaddressed by the compromise Graham wants.

Then there is the problem with the courts. Let’s suppose conditional amnesty is granted. If an illegal alien violates the terms of the amnesty, deportation proceedings will have to move through court. When you’re legalizing at least 1.8 million people, deportations will grind to a halt as every legalized individual will have the standing to present his or her case in a court system that is already overloaded with cases.

Full funding for the border wall is not worth what Lindsey Graham is asking for conservatives to concede in this compromise.

But prepare yourselves, because this deal is exactly where Republicans are headed. Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s stand-alone wall funding bill cannot pass through Congress. How do we know? Because Congress is in recess, and without attaching it to a must-pass government funding bill, there is no pressure to move wall funding through the 60-vote threshold in the U.S. Senate, assuming it could even pass the House, which is no guarantee thanks to several liberal Republicans. If the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives, which is likely, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has promised to take up “a bill that protects Dreamers.” So Democrats will be demanding DACA amnesty. Republicans will keep control of the Senate and demand wall funding. And President Trump will be eager to make a deal.

So Graham is preparing the way for this DACA-for-wall-funding deal because that’s what’s most likely to happen. But it’s a bad deal, one conservatives and Trump supporters should loudly oppose now, before it’s too late. (For more from the author of “Lindsey Grahamnesty Is Back With a DACA Deal Republicans Would Be Fools to Take” please click HERE)

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New Poll Shows That Limiting Immigration Is Extremely Popular With Voters

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Do Republicans want to win?

A Harvard-Harris poll from August showed that voters believe immigration is the most important issue of this election. Among Republicans, no other issue even comes close. Now, a new poll commissioned by Numbers USA shows that voters in every state subscribe to the conservative view, which has been adopted by the president, that immigration should be lower across the board and more merit-based. Why is this not a priority among Republicans both in their legislative work and on the campaign trail? Why are they prioritizing weak-on-crime laws, which are also opposed by a majority of voters, before dealing with true immigration reform?

That we have brought in too many immigrants too quickly for too long and that our system is random and oriented more toward chain migration and the third world than those with extraordinary merit is not lost on the public, even as it’s lost on the political elites in both parties. Polls have consistently shown that this is one major issue that has broad bipartisan support among all demographics and ideologies, yet there is no movement in Congress toward true immigration reform. The Americans people want less immigration and a smarter legal immigration policy, while Congress continues to define “immigration reform” as amnesty for illegal immigrants. According to the new poll, the majority of voters in 25 key states for this election cycle chose immigration levels at least 25 percent lower than the current one as their ideal levels. In most states, it was a supermajority.

The favorite choice among all options was a level requiring at least a 75 percent cut in annual numbers, from 1 million annually to 250,000. Our official level of immigration every year is about 1.1 million, but with other de facto permanent programs, as many as 1.8 million immigrants were likely admitted in 2016. The American people clearly reject it and would never support it if the numbers were advertised.

The problem with immigration polling trending the opposite way, disseminated by the media and credulously believed by the GOP, is that it is leading questions built on straw men. For example:

“Are we a nation of immigrants?”

“Do you think immigrants are good?”

“Should we deport those who served in the military?”

These are obviously politically biased and leading questions.

Isolating a largely abstract and mythical population of immigrants and encapsulating it into a poll doesn’t reflect where people’s hearts and priorities are on this issue. But the answers to very straightforward polling questions of whether we have too much or too little immigration, whether immigrants should assimilate, whether immigrants should get welfare, whether immigrants should learn English, and whether immigration should be merit-based as opposed to family-based are indeed very reflective of where the national mood is on immigration. And deep down, Democrats know this.

The question in the new Numbers USA poll was very straightforward with absolutely no bias or pretext. There was no mention of the fact that our system is not merit-based and that the sheer numbers are unprecedented:

Current federal policy adds about one million new immigrants with lifetime work permits each year. Which is closest to the number of new immigrants the government should be adding each year — less than 250,000, 500,000, 750,000, one million, one and a half million, or more than two million?

This is the question none of the policymakers want to grapple with, but the voters are clear. Overall, the combined average for the 25 states polled — a mixture of red, blue, and purple states — was 62 percent in favor of cutting immigration by at least 25 percent. Only 25 percent of respondents were in favor of the same level or more immigration. Some red states like West Virginia (72 percent-16 percent) and Louisiana (70 percent-20 percent) had lopsided margins. But even in blue states with large numbers of immigrants, such as California (56 percent-32 percent, New York (57 percent-33 percent), Illinois (51 percent-36 percent), and Nevada (63 percent-24 percent), a clear majority supported cuts to current levels.

The 25 states were polled over a 15-month period between 2017 and 2018, but the results have been amazingly durable and stable for years.

Tom Cotton’s Raise Act (S.354), which has been endorsed by the president, would reorient our system towards a merit-based points system rather than one built on chain migration and would cut immigration by 30-40 percent. It would also end the diversity visa lottery. It is simply astounding that one year after a Bangladeshi national who came here through the diversity visa lottery attempted to blow up a New York subway, there was not even a committee-level vote on ending this cloddishly random program overwhelmingly opposed by the public.

Polls have consistently shown that when respondents are asked unbiased and intuitive questions about immigration, they overwhelmingly oppose the status quo of the political class. Several months ago, a comprehensive poll from Harvard-Harris showed that voters favored a merit-based immigration system over a family-based one by 79-21 with supermajorities in support among self-described Hispanics, blacks, and liberals.

The GOP is sitting on its best issue and refuse to adopt it and message it hard every day. Imagine what Republicans’ electoral prospects would look like if they’d spend every day militating against our stolen sovereignty at the border and against the backward immigration system?

There’s an important lesson for the silent majority of the country. Aristide Zolberg, one of the leading immigration historians of recent memory, asked the question in his scholarly book, “A Nation by Design,” how it is that during every immigration battle since 1965, the public wanted a cool-off but the legislation wound up “moving in the opposite direction.” Citing other commentators, he noted that “while public support for a reduction in legal immigration was broad, it was not well-organized. … In contrast, a liberal coalition of well-organized organized groups, including ethnic organizations, churches, and employer associations, articulated strong opposition to proposals for restricting legal immigration.”

Conservatives need to get organized every day between every other November to focus on the pending legislative, budget, and primary fights rather than hibernate between every election. We can’t afford to go back to sleep after submitting our ballots. Voting Republican does nothing if the franchise is not followed up with accountability. If Republicans lose the House, rest assured they will issue another “autopsy report” suggesting the need to move further left on immigration. Lindsey Graham, the big “conservative hero,” is already pushing another round of amnesty.

As it says in Proverbs 4:19, “The way of the wicked is like pitch darkness; they do not know on what they stumble.” We must be ready to shine light on the truth of this important issue and finally demand true immigration reform. (For more from the author of “New Poll Shows That Limiting Immigration Is Extremely Popular With Voters” HERE)

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Feds Collect Record Individual Income Taxes in 2018; Still Run $779b Deficit

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The federal government collected a record $1,683,537,000,000 in individual income taxes in fiscal 2018 (October 2017 through September 2018), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today.

However, the federal government also ran a deficit of $778,996,000,000 during the fiscal year, according to the statement. . .

The previous record for individual income tax collections in a fiscal year was in fiscal 2015, when the Treasury collected $1,634,657,240,000 in individual income taxes (in constant September 2018 dollars). . .

Despite the record amount collected in individual income taxes in fiscal 2018, overall real federal tax revenues in fiscal 2018 were lower than in any of the previous three years. In fiscal 2018, total tax collections equaled $3,328,745,000,000, according to the Treasury statement. That was less than the $3,446,613,230,000 (in constant September 2018 dollars) that the Treasury collected in fiscal 2015; less than the $3,415,674,450,000 (in constant September 2018 dollars) collected in fiscal 2016; and less than the $3,390,373,210,000 (in constant September 2018 dollars) collected in fiscal 2017.

While the federal government was collecting more income taxes from individuals in fiscal 2018, it was collecting less from corporations. Total corporation income tax collections in fiscal 2018 were $204,733,000,000. In fiscal 2017, they were $303,811,700,000 (in constant September 2018 dollars). In fiscal 2016, they were $313,233,700,000 (in constant September 2018 dollars); and in fiscal 2015, they were $364,738,790,000 (in constant September 2018 dollars). (Read more from “Feds Collect Record Individual Income Taxes in 2018; Still Run $779B Deficit” HERE)

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Here’s What Elizabeth Warren Is Really Doing With Her Dumb DNA Test

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Elizabeth Warren doesn’t need to prove she’s Native American, and that’s not why she released the results of a DNA test to the Boston Globe. The Globe reports, quoting the DNA report, “Warren’s pure Native American ancestor appears in her family tree ‘in the range of 6-10 generations ago.’” This gives a range of 1/64 to 1/1024 Native American (the other 1023/1024 is straight cis white woman privilege). Warren herself claimed it was her great-great-grandmother who was Native American; that would give a fraction of 1/32. The Boston Globe had to correct its story because it initially got the math wrong and misreported the range of her possible ancestry. That’s hardly going to silence her critics, least of all President Donald Trump, who takes delight in derisively calling her “Pocahontas” at his rallies.

Questions about Warren’s claimed Native American heritage have doggedly followed her since her 2012 campaign for U.S. Senate, when GOP opposition research discovered a Fordham Law Review article touting her as Harvard Law School’s “first woman of color” on the faculty. Years earlier, Warren was listed as a minority faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania. Warren is the butt of many jokes in conservative media, often referred to as Fauxcahontas or Chief Spreading Bull, but Warren is not trying to make the jokes go away. She’s only added fuel to the fire. No, the point, as she explains in a video that was released in conjunction with the DNA report, is pure identity politics.

“Trump can say whatever he wants about me, but mocking Native Americans or any group in order to try and get at me, that’s not what America stands for,” Warren narrates in, let’s face it, the opening ad of her 2020 presidential campaign about her family’s story.

“[My parents] were real people. The love they shared, the struggles they endured, the family they built, the story they lived will always be etched on my heart. And no one — not even the president of the United States — will ever take it away from me,” she says.

The facts of the DNA test, which is inconclusive, do not matter. This is all about feelings. This is all about mean old President Trump using racial “slurs” to demean a woman who’s fighting for “change” in Washington D.C. If Warren identifies as a Native American, who is Donald Trump or anyone else to tell her she’s wrong? A bigot, that’s who, and that’s all that matters, and that’s why minorities can vote for Elizabeth Warren in 2020.

Now notice what’s not being discussed. The kind of change Elizabeth Warren’s progressivism advocates is the soft tyranny of a ubiquitous federal government that reaches out and nationalizes American businesses, but it’s more fun to mock her claimed heritage. Her plan to double down on Obamacare’s failures with more subsidies, more price controls, and more regulations as a prelude to a single-payer Medicare for All scheme is ignored. Her open-borders zealotry and demands to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to appease to her far-Left base? Forgotten.

And what alternatives are conservatives offering to these demands from the Left?

It may be great for clicks and views to follow the mainstream media’s narrative on Warren’s ancestry, but it doesn’t do a thing to advance conservatism. Former Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., tried to make Warren’s lies about her ancestry a campaign issue, and do you know what happened to him? We call him former senator.

Why don’t we stop the clickbait and challenge Warren and the Democrats on the issues that will actually matter when Americans go to vote, before we lose? (For more from the author of “Here’s What Elizabeth Warren Is Really Doing With Her Dumb DNA Test” please click HERE)

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Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton Finally Admitted Democrats Think It’s Okay to Cheat to Win

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Within the span of a week, two high-profile Democrats verbalized their party’s perspective on politics. “When they go low, we kick them,” former attorney general Eric Holder frothed to a group of loyalists. “That is what this new Democratic Party is about,” Barack Obama’s former cabinet official proclaimed to shouts of “fight, fight, fight.” (Holder later backtracked.)

Then a few days later Hillary Clinton told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about.” Holder and Clinton have finally voiced the reality: There’s politics. There’s dirty politics. And then there’s the trifecta of progressive politics—lying, cheating, and stealing to win. . .

With the filibuster gone, Democrats play politics with a different detail: Senate rules that, absent consent, require a formal “cloture” vote for any presidential appointee subject to confirmation, followed by a day without action, then 30 hours of post-cloture debate. This tactic, so perfected by Democrats that The New York Times branded their efforts the “art of the delay,” translates into “an average of three and a half days spent considering each nominee.” To put that into perspective, it would take a full “11 years and four months to fill all possible Trump administration spots.”

But that’s politics. Politics might not be pretty, but it’s fair and it’s the American way. Republicans have the power to alter the rules or use them against the Democrats should the left ever regain power. That’s one thing.

Then there’s dirty politics: the sensationalistic election-year advertisements that portray opponents as tossing a wheelchair-bound grandma off a cliff; or icing a debate opponent with a surprise news conference featuring Bill Clinton sexual assault accusers Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, and Juanita Broaddrick. (Read more from “Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton Finally Admitted Democrats Think It’s Okay to Cheat to Win” HERE)

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Sen. Mocks Elizabeth Warren’s DNA Test Results With an Epic Tweet

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By Townhall. Politicos on both sides of the aisle have talked about Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) DNA test results throughout the day. After all, the fact that she might be 1/1,024th Native American is mind-blowing. But, remember, she really touts herself as a “minority.”

Republicans saw through her act right from the beginning. Everyone wanted to see DNA test results for how long? Months? Years, even?

Once it was finally released, everyone harped on her, including Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). He took to Twitter to mock her DNA test. All I can say is… Well played, Senator. Well played.

(Read more from “Sen. Mocks Elizabeth Warren’s DNA Test Results With an Epic Tweet” HERE)

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Obama Campaign Manager Says Warren’s DNA Results Hurt Democrats in 2018

By The Daily Caller. Former Obama campaign strategist Jim Messina questioned the timing of Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren releasing a DNA test Monday.

Warren released the results Monday after being mocked and attacked by Republicans for claiming Native American heritage with no verification for decades. Warren’s results showed that she may have between 1/64th and 1/1,024th Indian DNA, though the test that did not use Native American DNA.

Messina, who served as President Barack Obama’s White House deputy chief of staff for operations and 2012 campaign manager, was not happy about the media storm that Warren created by releasing the results into the contentious 2018 election cycle. (Read more from “Obama Campaign Manager Says Warren’s DNA Results Hurt Democrats in 2018” HERE)

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CNN’s ‘Reliable Sources’ Speculates Trump Inspired Murder of Saudi Journalist

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On CNN’s Sunday broadcast of “Reliable Sources,” host Brian Stelter and Washington Post editorial editor Fred Hiatt used a segment about disappeared Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi to baselessly speculate that President Trump’s harsh criticism of mainstream Americans news outlets could have had a part in inspiring Khashoggi’s murder.

Although they still had no direct evidence that Khashoggi had even been killed at that point, let alone any information about why the Saudi government would murder him, Stelter felt the urge to suggest that Trump, along with “other world leaders,” might be responsible for motivating Khashoggi’s murder and dismemberment. . .:

HIATT: I think, even for people who wanted to give MBS [Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman] the benefit of the doubt, this has to be a watershed moment. This is, if the reports are true, a crime of an entirely different caliber, and it should not be possible for anybody to go back to business as usual.

STELTER: To lure someone to a consulate, to dismember a body and take it back to Saudi — it is a crime of a different caliber. I wonder if you look at what’s happened in the last twelve days and you wonder if “enemy of the people” rhetoric — not just from President Trump, but also then from other world leaders — has anything to do with this, anything at all?

Although he seemed a bit hesitant to fully agree with Stelter’s premise at first, Hiatt did ultimately concur that Trump’s “enemy of the people”-type statements about American journalists were “part of the big picture” surrounding Khashoggi’s presumed murder. After stressing that his killers should be the “focus” of any condemnation or investigation, Hiatt also argued that Trump’s lack of liberal international moralizing about “democratic values” had opened up the possibility of murdering journalists. (Read more from “CNN’s ‘Reliable Sources’ Speculates Trump Inspired Murder of Saudi Journalist” HERE)

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What This ‘Study’ Claiming You’re More Likely to Be Shot by a Cop in Pro-Gun States Doesn’t Mention

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Researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Northeastern University came together to study the correlation between states’ gun ownership and officer-involved shootings. The researchers published their findings in the Journal for Urban Health. Their grandiose takeaway: if you live in a state with “looser” gun laws – AKA you’re allowed to utilize your Second Amendment rights – then you’re more likely to be shot by police officers.

Their abstract has three main points that are rather troubling:

Although numerous studies have examined how rates of police killings of civilians are related to several ecologic determinants of these events, no peer-reviewed study to date has examined the extent to which variation in police involved firearm homicides is explained by firearm prevalence while adjusting for violent crime rates (the most well-established ecologic factor associated with fatal police shootings).

What do researches consider a “violent” crime? Are they using the FBI’s definition which includes “murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault”? . . .

The researchers are using data from the Washington Post, a liberal, anti-gun publication. You know what that means: they’re going to cherry pick which “data” they include. And you know the data they store is going to fit their gun control narrative. (Read more from “What This ‘Study’ Claiming You’re More Likely to Be Shot by a Cop in Pro-Gun States Doesn’t Mention” HERE)

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This Is What Happened With the Stormy Daniels Lawsuit

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A federal judge on Monday dismissed porn star Stormy Daniels’ defamation lawsuit against President Trump, saying the president was well within his First Amendment rights when he took to Twitter to mock her.

Judge S. James Otero said Mr. Trump was using understandable hyperbole when he accused the woman, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, of a “con job” after she released a sketch artist rendering of a man she said threatened her to stay silent about her alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump years ago.

The judge, a Bush appointee, said the back-and-forth was standard politicking from both sides, and he wouldn’t step in to limit the president’s ability to fight back.

“In short, should plaintiff publicly voice her opinions about Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump is entitled to publicly voice non-actionable opinions about plaintiff,” he ruled. “To allow plaintiff to proceed with her defamation action would, in effect, permit plaintiff to make public allegations against the president without giving him the opportunity to respond. Such a holding would violate the First Amendment.” . . .

[Avenatti] also said the judge’s ruling was “limited,” and insisted they’ll pursue Mrs. Clifford’s other lawsuits against Mr. Trump and his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who she says paid her $130,000 in hush money to keep her from talking about an alleged sexual encounter from years ago. (Read more from “This Is What Happened With the Stormy Daniels Lawsuit” HERE)

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Jeff Sessions Rips Judges Over Anti-Trump Bias

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions unleashed a blistering assault on federal judges Monday, saying anti-Trump bias has led some to abandon their role as legal referees and become “political actors” erecting roadblocks to the president’s policies.

In unusually stark language, Mr. Sessions suggested judges could soon face “calls for their replacement” if they don’t cool it.

He blasted one judge who called the president’s policy toward illegal immigrants “heartless,” and said another judge put “the inner workings of a Cabinet secretary’s mind” on trial to pave a path to block the government from asking about citizenship on the 2020 census.

“Once we go down this road in American government, there is no turning back,” Mr. Sessions said in a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation. “We are seeing it in case after case. When a hot-button policy issue ends up in litigation, judges are starting to believe their role is to examine the entire process that led to the policy decision — to redo the entire political debate in their courtrooms. . .

Others, including a majority of justices on the Supreme Court in this year’s ruling upholding the president’s travel limits, looked chiefly at the policies themselves, saying that’s the crux of their judiciary’s role in the government overall. (Read more from “Jeff Sessions Rips Judges Over Anti-Trump Bias” HERE)

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