July 18, 2024

Mark Dimunation

—This is a guest post by Mark Dimunation, the former chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

The term for the political tactic of manipulating boundaries of electoral districts for unfair political advantage derives its name from a prominent 19^th-century political figure — and from a mythological salamander.

The term, originally written as “Gerry-mander,” first was used on March 26, 1812, in the Boston Gazette — a reaction to the redrawing of Massachusetts state senate election districts under Gov. Elbridge Gerry.

Though the redistricting was done at the behest of his Democratic-Republican Party, it was Gerry who signed the bill in 1812. As a result, he received the dubious honor of attribution, along with its negative connotations.

Gerry, in fact, found the proposal “highly disagreeable.” He lost the next election, but the redistricting was a success: His party retained control of the legislature.

One of the remapped, contorted districts in the Boston area was said to resemble the shape of a mythological salamander. The newly drawn state senate district in Essex County was lampooned in cartoons as a strange winged dragon, clutching at the region.

The person who coined the term gerrymander never has been identified. The artist who drew the political cartoon, however, was Elkanah Tisdale, a Boston-based artist and engraver who had the skills to cut the blocks for the original cartoon.

Gerry was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a two-term member of the House of Representatives, governor of Massachusetts and U.S. vice president under James Madison. His name, however, was forever negatively linked to this form of political powerbroking by the cartoon shown above, which often appeared with the term gerrymander.

The Library’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division holds the original print of the image, and the Geography and Map Division holds Tisdale’s original woodblocks — preserving the origins of a political practice that continues over two centuries later.

California’s decline is no mystery: decades of one-party rule have turned America’s golden state into a warning about the costs of ideological governance.

The recent California gubernatorial and Los Angeles mayoral elections—where, remarkably, Steve Hilton and Spencer Pratt both appear to have advanced to the general election in November—offer a glimmer of hope.

Could it be that some on the Left, along with a number of Independents, have finally realized that neither wealth nor an upscale ZIP code can protect them from the Left’s vindictive socialist madness?

California gas prices, even prior to the Iran war, had reached the highest levels in the continental United States.

The cause is self-evident: left-wing policies that forbid most new gas and oil exploration, impose radical green-fuel mandates and levy the highest gas taxes in the U.S. and drive out oil refineries.

Illegal immigration has soared. Currently, some 11 million Californians—28 percent of the resident population—were not born in the U.S. This foreign-born demographic exploded at precisely the time that civic education and melting-pot assimilation and integration were denigrated in the public schools and replaced by ethnic chauvinism and pre-civilizational DEI tribalism.

A third of the nation’s welfare recipients and nearly a third of the homeless live in California. Almost a quarter of the state’s population lives below the poverty line.

California has the highest electricity rates in the mainland United States and the steepest income taxes in the nation. And yet it annually runs the highest budget deficits of the 50 states.

Despite massive unfunded pension debts of $265 billion, the state has spent billions of dollars on illegal-alien subsidies, from free health care to solar panels.

The state has wasted between $15 billion and $20 billion on its Bakersfield-to-Merced high-speed rail line since the project was approved in 2008.

Victor Davis Hanson

Amy Curtis

It appears James Talarico’s church practices what it preaches, which isn’t a good thing. His woke church, which believes God is non-binary and that Jesus would have been a-okay with abortion, is spending some of its money on woke initiatives, including a trans summer camp and funding travel for out-of-state abortions. At the Texas church where the Democrat senate hopeful preaches sermons on the need for abortion in the “trans community,” church funds are sent not only to abortion giant Planned Parenthood, but also to radical organizations that pay to help facilitate out-of-state travel for women to kill their unborn babies, and an organization that runs a summer camp for transgender-identifying kids as young as 11. St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, the woke Austin church attended by Talarico, lists Planned Parenthood, which ends the lives of hundreds of thousands of unborn babies every year, as one of the organizations that shares its “vision and goals for the world.”

The church, which The Daily Wire reported last week stocks sexually explicit books aimed at young people in its library, sets aside money every year for Planned Parenthood, according to its website. It also describes itself as a “Reproductive Freedom Congregation,” meaning it believes that “abortion is a blessing.”

At the Texas church where the Democrat senate hopeful preaches sermons on the need for abortion in the “trans community,” church funds are sent not only to abortion giant Planned Parenthood, but also to radical organizations that pay to help facilitate out-of-state travel for women to kill their unborn babies, and an organization that runs a summer camp for transgender-identifying kids as young as 11.

St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, the woke Austin church attended by Talarico, lists Planned Parenthood, which ends the lives of hundreds of thousands of unborn babies every year, as one of the organizations that shares its “vision and goals for the world.”

The church, which The Daily Wire reported last week stocks sexually explicit books aimed at young people in its library, sets aside money every year for Planned Parenthood, according to its website. It also describes itself as a “Reproductive Freedom Congregation,” meaning it believes that “abortion is a blessing.”

At the Texas church where the Democrat senate hopeful preaches sermons on the need for abortion in the “trans community,” church funds are sent not only to abortion giant Planned Parenthood, but also to radical organizations that pay to help facilitate out-of-state travel for women to kill their unborn babies, and an organization that runs a summer camp for transgender-identifying kids as young as 11. 

St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, the woke Austin church attended by Talarico, lists Planned Parenthood, which ends the lives of hundreds of thousands of unborn babies every year, as one of the organizations that shares its “vision and goals for the world.”

The church, which The Daily Wire reported last week stocks sexually explicit books aimed at young people in its library, sets aside money every year for Planned Parenthood, according to its website. It also describes itself as a “Reproductive Freedom Congregation,” meaning it believes that “abortion is a blessing.”

Notice that the church doesn’t provide support for mothers who want to keep their children, at least not publicly. It’s also unlikely they provide emotional support to mothers who have miscarried or regretted aborting their child.

It’s not much better in some segments of the Catholic Church, as this writer — a Catholic — can attest to.

Part A — Definition of Penury

America has experienced stock market crashes, great depressions, and other national financial or economic emergencies. As we enter our 250th anniversary, it seems that we’re no stranger to economic difficulty.

But there’s something about pride that keeps America from facing up to the fact that she’s sliding down the tubes. Add to that the fact that we have someone at the helm of this nation in the person of President Donald Trump that helps us to feel a little bit extra confident about our economic future. He’s experienced, he’s rich, and he constantly puts the welfare of this nation at the top of his list of important matters.

Ah, what could go wrong?

Everything could go right. Everything could go wrong, but it is pride that makes us think we can push 17 to the dealer.

Back in the sixties, this writer loved to listen to the Canadian folk duo Ian and Sylvia. One of their best songs was written by Ian Tyson, who died in 1989.

It is the one line from that song that always impressed me and made me think how we act this way with everything to do with the future, especially Americans. What is that line? Let’s see.

“Never hit seventeen
When you play against the dealer
For you know that the odds won’t ride with you”

That’s a Blackjack strategy tip — and it’s actually a common misconception worth clearing up!

The saying “never hit seventeen” refers to hard 17 (no Ace, or an Ace counted as 1). That part is solid advice — with a hard 17, hitting is statistically worse because you have a high chance of busting.

However, soft 17 (Ace + 6) is different. Basic strategy actually says you should hit (or double down) on soft 17, because the Ace can drop to 1 if you bust, giving you a safety net.

Quick guide:

• Hard 17 → Stand. Always. The risk of busting is too high (~69% chance of busting if you hit).
• Soft 17 → Hit or double down. You can’t bust in one card, and you’re likely to improve.
• Dealer showing 2–6 → Even more reason to stand on hard 17; let the dealer bust.

The full saying is better expressed as: “Never hit a hard seventeen.” The soft 17 rule trips up a lot of players who treat all 17s the same way.

No doubt some people will ask, “Why does a prophet know so much about gambling?” Let me assure you, I am not a gambler. I just love that song, and I wondered what that saying meant. I got to finally look it up. Got a little help from AI.

In an article titled “Prophecy 2022” I reveal the exact words I was given when I was told God was putting me in a prophetic ministry. Those words were hard to say back then because we were in the booming Reaganomics economy of the 80s. It’s even harder to say now because we’re in a very vigorous Trump economy. But hard or easy, this is what I was told to say.

Prophecy 2022 – Abortions, Tortured Animals, Gender Confusion and Fear of Pandemics Do Not Make for a Bright Future

Penury is a state of extreme poverty and destitution, characterized by a severe lack of money, resources, or material possessions. Derived from the Latin penuria, meaning scarcity or want, the word goes beyond ordinary financial hardship to describe a condition in which a person or community is stripped of even the most basic necessities of life — food, shelter, clothing, and security. Penury is not merely being “broke” or temporarily short on funds; it implies a grinding, persistent deprivation that limits one’s ability to participate meaningfully in society. It can be the result of systemic forces such as unemployment, lack of education, or economic inequality, as well as personal circumstances like illness, loss, or displacement.

Part B — Penury in America

In the American context, penury manifests in ways that can seem paradoxical in one of the world’s wealthiest nations. It looks like families living in cars or tent encampments beneath highway overpasses, individuals forced to choose between medication and groceries, and children going to school hungry in communities where opportunity has long since dried up. In rural areas — from Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta to tribal lands in the Southwest — entire regions have been hollowed out by economic neglect, leaving generations with little prospect of escape. In urban centers, penury hides in plain sight: in overcrowded shelters, in the working poor clocking double shifts yet still unable to afford rent, and in the elderly surviving on fixed incomes that haven’t kept pace with the cost of living. Despite a vast network of social safety programs, gaps in coverage, bureaucratic barriers, and the stigma attached to poverty leave many Americans in a state of true penury — invisible to mainstream society but very much present.

President Trump says we are about to enter America’s new golden age of prosperity and influence, and I am not going to be the person to say that is not going to happen or cannot happen. I am the person who says, “Happen or not, it will cease suddenly.”

I can’t tell you how, because I don’t know. We’re living in a time when the world has an economy that affects everyone else in the world more and more and more. When antichrist comes, he will set up an economic system. There are those who study prophecy who think America, in its pride, in its self-assurance, will not want to be part of an antichrist system. It could cost them their entire future.

Others think that America may be attacked by a Eurasian pact of nations, it could be nuclear or an attack on the grid, leaving us helpless. We don’t know exactly, and I don’t know. I do know this: the Bible shows Israel being attacked by all of the enemy she has now, but it sees no one stepping up to help her. As America is now, where is America? Why is America not acting to help Israel in that moment? I don’t know the reasons for it, but I would venture it could be found within the meaning of these words, “Ov Ov Penury”

Michael Bresciani

What can one say after one of the two major political parties in the country nominates a man who volunteered for an al-Qaeda-affiliated group, was an acolyte of the Blind Sheik, the man who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and who sides with Hamas against its victims?

I am at a loss. If you can support degenerates like this, you are broken.

Some of the very best people I know are or have been Democrats, and I still don’t believe that most Democrats truly are comfortable with evil. But they have lost their way. They are, at best, brainwashed. And at worst, total degenerates.

After watching the Democratic Party embrace truly evil policies over the past decades, you have to wonder about whether Satan himself coming out and endorsing a candidate would dissuade many Democrats from voting for he/she/it.

Probably not. Instead, they would go on a rant about Trump’s ballroom.

Democrats voted to put Jay Jones into office. They have rallied around Graham Platner. They insist that Zohran Mamdani is not a communist. They will scream in your face about how evil you are if you don’t want a young boy’s penis cut off.

Every time I have a conversation with a Democrat these days, it seems to me that they live in a different world than I do. No matter how many facts you put before them, it all comes back to Trump in their minds. I don’t see horror in their eyes when yet another man tries to kill the president, because so many of them wish he had succeeded.

When over a thousand innocent Israelis were killed, how many immediately sympathized with the killers? Were they horrified when they saw people ripping down posters of women and children being held hostage by savage Islamists?

Not many. Instead, they thrill to see monsters wearing keffiyahs, or look away, pretending that antisemitism has nothing to do with it.

I see people grasping onto every obvious hoax as an excuse to blame Republicans for all the ills in the world. No matter how absurd an accusation is, they rush to believe it as long as it confirms their priors.

Joe Biden is sharp as a tack! That illegal alien rapist has a right to stay in the United States!

I thought I had seen things hit rock bottom. Then this. Electing Jay Jones wasn’t despicable enough. No.

Why not elect Mr. Al Qaeda?! That’ll be fun. Aside from the bombing, he’s a pretty good guy. And he assures us that the Blind Sheik didn’t preach Jihad ALL the time. Just sometimes.

Otherwise, he was a pretty good speaker, you know.

I laugh when I hear them complain about Ken Paxton. Does anybody even know what he is accused of? Or is it just that they were TOLD that he was beyond the pale, unlike Graham Platner, who is just a regular guy who likes to chat on a dating app aimed at teens.

Who doesn’t? And since the alternative is the infinitely evil Susan Collins—yes, I have seen that excuse—it’s OK to vote for the guy who left his Nazi past to become a communist!

Do I sound despairing? Well, it’s because I am. I cannot conceive a world where people who dedicate their lives to “decency” will vote for people like this.

And you know what really stings? If you bring any of this up, they will excoriate you as a supporter of a pedophile who supports Vladimir Putin, and they believe that because proven liars tell them so.

It must be true. Adam Schiff told me so!

Josh Koehn

It’s unclear why so many Californians decided to light their ballots on fire, as the votes amounted to wasted trees in California’s top-two primary, especially after Swalwell suspended his campaign and resigned from Congress after a series of women — including former staffers — accused him of sexual misconduct.

Swalwell, an East Bay Democrat and once-prominent critic of President Trump, suspended his campaign after two bombshell reports by the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN detailed disturbing allegations. Swalwell denied any wrongdoing while admitting to extramartial affairs, calling the incidents “mistakes in judgment.”

The revelations came too late for Swalwell’s name to be removed from the ballot, leaving voters with the option of no fewer than 60 other candidates. And still, almost 17,000 people seemed to have been unaware or unconcerned.

Swalwell did not respond to a request for comment.

After his career imploded, Swalwell installed himself as treasurer for his defunct campaign for governor, giving him full control of a $4 million money pot. Much of that money has since gone to paying his lawyers.

Republican former Fox News host Steve Hilton held a narrow lead Tuesday night as more returns came in, with the Republican drawing 1,029,950 votes, or 26.8%, while former Biden administration health secretary Xavier Becerra followed with 990,114 votes, or 25.8%.

Progressive billionaire Tom Steyer trailed in third with 756,013 votes, or 19.7%, while Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco remained well back with 438,344 votes, or 11.4%.

Former congresswoman Katie Porter was next with 193,442 votes, or 5.0%, followed by San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan with 164,655 votes, or 4.3%, and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa with 53,177 votes, or 1.4%.

Former congresswoman Katie Porter had 191,040 votes, or 5.1%, followed by San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan with 163,135 votes, or 4.3%.

Results remain will continue to be counted before the election is certified July 10.

Spencer Pratt has confidently claimed he’s already looking ahead to a November runoff as election results Tuesday night showed him comfortably in second place behind incumbent Mayor Karen Bass.

“She knows it’s on. I hope she’s ready,” Pratt said on Tuesday. “I literally could not be more excited.”

“I am ready for whatever God puts in front of me,” he said.

“I was going to be happy if I wasn’t moving forward, but now I feel very confident.”

Pratt told reporters, “I literally could not be more excited,” when asked about a potential runoff. Andy Johnstone for CA Post Pratt said the coming months will allow him to continue building a team capable of governing Los Angeles.

“We have five months to put the best team the city could ever dream of,” Pratt said.

Pratt’s bullish comments came as Bass advanced to the November runoff while Pratt held second place ahead of socialist City Councilmember Nithya Raman in third.

While a large number of ballots remain to be counted, political observers increasingly view a Bass-Pratt matchup as the most likely outcome.

Pratt told reporters he entered election night prepared for any result.

Spencer Pratt and two other men in suits talking at an election night event. 5 While a large number of ballots remain to be counted, political observers increasingly view a Bass-Pratt matchup as the most likely outcome.

“We do have that team. We’ll see who is ready to come forward because retaliation is a real thing with Bass.”

Pratt also said a potential runoff campaign would give him an opportunity to demonstrate the amount of support behind his candidacy.

“I think the next five months I’m going to have time to build out this team to show the level of Democratic supporters I have behind me,” he said.

Jamie Paige, NY Post

A key element of the left’s identity politics is the intersectional ranking of oppression.

That’s a fancy way of saying that there are levels of oppression, and you get what amounts to points for each box you tick.

At the bottom are heterosexual white women; they are victims of the patriarchy, but also beneficiaries of white supremacy and colonization, so they really are no better than white men unless they want an abortion. Wanting to kill your child bumps you up a notch, especially around election time.

At the top would be a transgender Muslim sex offender who entered this country illegally, hates Jews, is a communist, and who identifies as a deaf furry pedophile, or something like that. Maybe their pronouns should be Jihad/pedo or something to get extra points.

You probably have noticed that there are an awful lot of Muslims suddenly popping up as Democratic Party candidates, and that their calling card is their sympathy for terrorists and their hatred for Israel, combined with a taste for communism. Most people thought Abdul El-Sayed was the apotheosis of this trend, but he has been displaced by an actual former volunteer for al Qaeda, who is almost guaranteed to win his election to Congress.

The story of Adam Hamawy seems too bizarre to be true, given that he is about to be transported to the halls of the Capitol by the Democrats, who find Islamists to be like catnip these days. Put on your keffiyah and join me and Jim Geraghty on this journey into the rabbit hole.

You might be asking, what could be worse than a Senate candidate with a Nazi tattoo?

How about a House candidate who did some work for al-Qaeda?

Adam Hamawy’s past relationship with terrorist mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman has loomed over his rapid rise in the race to succeed retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ). . . .

But just one year before Hamawy took the witness stand to describe his travels with Abdel-Rahman, the now-Congressional candidate made a different journey with another party entangled in terrorist conspiracies: to Bosnia, with a group subsequently shut down for providing “logistical support” to Al-Qaida.

In a 1996 interview with the Newark Star-Ledger, according to a copy Jewish Insider recovered through an archive of print publications, Hamawy described volunteering in Bosnia during the summer of 1994 with a Chicago-based nonprofit called the “Benevolence International Foundation.”

“I worked in Sarajevo for 10 days and then the rest in Zenica, a large regional center in central Bosnia,” Hamawy, who had just graduated from medical school, told the paper about the five weeks he spent with the organization. “We went out to hospitals around the area and in the mountains to check what supplies they needed and we tried to deliver them.”

Sarajevo and Zenica were the exact cities where Benevolence International maintained its offices — offices that Bosnian authorities raided in 2002, part of a joint effort with U.S. authorities to dismantle the group, which they had identified as a front for Al-Qaida. The 9/11 Commission Report would later identify the foundation’s base in the Bosnian capital as part of the “impressive array of offices [that] covertly provided financial and other support for terrorist activities” that Osama bin Laden established in the early 1990s.

Well, that explains why Hamawy didn’t list a reference for his work for the Benevolence International Foundation on his résumé. His boss was killed in Pakistan in 2011.

And that’s not all! He was a character witness for the Blind Sheik after the World Trade Center bombing because he knew him well. His explanation? Well, he didn’t preach murder ALL the time, you know.

Gee, that seems a bit sketchy.

Adam Hamawy’s past relationship with terrorist mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman has loomed over his rapid rise in the race to succeed retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ).

Their relationship spanned a 1991 road trip the two took together to Detroit, Hamawy’s service as the sheikh’s translator for a press conference in which Abdel-Rahman denied any role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and Hamawy’s testimony on the sheikh’s behalf at his 1995 trial, where the Islamist leader was convicted of plotting to carry out a campaign of terrorist attacks in New York City.

But just one year before Hamawy took the witness stand to describe his travels with Abdel-Rahman, the now-Congressional candidate made a different journey with another party entangled in terrorist conspiracies: to Bosnia, with a group subsequently shut down for providing “logistical support” to Al-Qaida.

He also volunteered in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war, which essentially ensures that he is a Hamas sympathize

David Strom, Hot Air

Kuwait said Wednesday that one person was killed and 63 injured in an attack that dealt significant damage to its international airport.

One person was killed and flights were suspended in Kuwait, officials said, after missile and drone strikes including an attack on its international airport. The U.S. military said it shot down Iranian drones near the Strait of Hormuz and struck Iran’s Qeshm Island a day earlier.

Repeated military exchanges between Washington and Tehran, as well as Israel’s escalating campaign in Lebanon, have added strain to efforts to end the war and reopen the crucial trade route. The two sides offered mixed messages on the status of talks, with President Donald Trump insisting they were ongoing after Iran signaled it may walk away.

In a taped interview that aired Wednesday, Trump acknowledged calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “crazy” during a terse call about Lebanon earlier this week. Trump also said it was “unlikely” the U.S. blockade of Iran would still be in place by Labor Day, adding that he believed the situation would “resolve itself fairly quickly.”

He warned that he would ultimately have to make a “determination: do we sign a deal or we do it the other way? And the other way is not nice.”

The latest flare up in the conflict saw Kuwait report early Wednesday that one person had been killed in an Iranian drone attack. A further 63 people were injured, according to the Kuwaiti Health Ministry.

The attack caused significant damage to Terminal 1 at Kuwait International Airport, Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Saud Abdulaziz Al-Atwan said, with all air traffic briefly suspended as a result.

Videos published online and geolocated by NBC News showed a blazing fire inside the airport, surrounded by debris and heavy smoke as people ran for cover. Another showed the roof destroyed, with rubble scattered on the ground as emergency responders surveyed the aftermath.

Kuwait expelled two Iranian diplomats following the strikes, condemning the “flagrant violation” of its territorial integrity and the targeting of civilian infrastructure. Kuwait’s Foreign Ministry warned Iran it had a “full and inherent right to defend itself and to take all necessary measures to preserve its sovereignty.”

U.S. Central Command said late Tuesday that Iran had launched several ballistic missiles toward regional neighbors, though it said all of the attacks had “failed to hit their intended targets.”

Two missiles fired at Kuwait had fallen short or broken apart enroute, while three missiles launched at Bahrain were immediately intercepted by U.S. and Bahrain air defense forces, it said in a post on X. CENTCOM said its forces also shot down “three one-way attack drones launched by Iran toward civilian mariners that were rightfully transiting regional waters.”

It said American forces had also conducted what it described as “self-defense strikes” on an Iranian military ground control station on Qeshm Island.

CENTCOM announced earlier that it had also disabled a Botswana-flagged tanker as it headed toward Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil terminal, saying in a post on X that the ship’s crew “ignored repeated warnings, failing to comply with directions from U.S. forces multiple times over a 24-hour period.”

It said a U.S. aircraft ultimately disabled the vessel by firing a Hellfire missile into the ship’s engine room, blocking the tanker from reaching Iran, with the post noting that the U.S. military has “disabled six commercial vessels and redirected 122” since a blockade against Iran’s ports was launched April 13.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday said it “strongly condemns the aggressive act of the US terrorist army in attacking an Iranian tanker in the Strait of Hormuz and attacking a telecommunications mast on Qeshm Island.” It said the attacks represented a violation of the shaky ceasefire agreement between the two countries as they look to negotiate a broader deal.

With talks in flux, Iran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz — a vital trade route through which some 20% of the world’s oil passes — has throttled global energy supplies since the U.S. and Israel launched the war in late February.

Oil prices rose overnight, with the international benchmark Brent Crude up by 2% to $98 a barrel.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military launched new strikes in Lebanon on Wednesday as it traded occasional attacks with Iran-backed Hezbollah despite Trump announcing both sides had agreed to de-escalate.

That intervention came after Tehran threatened to pull out of peace talks over Israel’s attacks in Lebanon.

Trump held a tense call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, a U.S. official familiar with the call and another source familiar with the call told NBC News.

Trump gave insight into the call during his interview with the New York Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast that aired Wednesday.

Asked if he had called Netanyahu “crazy,” as first reported by Axios, Trump said, “I did.”

“I wouldn’t say angry,” Trump said of his approach, adding that he was “a little perturbed at his (Netanyahu) constantly fighting with Lebanon.” Still, he said “I like Bibi a lot and I’ve worked very well with him,” using Netanyahu’s nickname.

The tensions between the close allies come as Netanyahu faces domestic pressure to keep striking Hezbollah as he prepares for new elections this fall.

Chantal Da Silva

As you are probably aware, in most circumstances and for most categories of handouts, illegal immigrants in the United States do not qualify for welfare benefits. As I’m using it here, the term “welfare” does not include Social Security or Medicare, which are not restricted by income status; but the term “welfare” does include all of the large number of what are called “means-tested” programs, which in the aggregate consume nearly $1 trillion annually of federal spending (and well over $1 trillion if state contributions are included). The biggest of the “means tested” programs are Medicaid, SNAP (“food stamps”), and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, otherwise known as classic welfare); and there are dozens more. Illegal immigrants are specifically excluded from participating in those three big federal welfare programs, and from most (but not all) of the others.

And yet there was the New York Times, in its Sunday (May 31) print edition, with a lead front page headline that may set a new record (if that is possible) for anti-Trump spin: “Trump Cuts Off Life Necessities for Immigrants.” When I saw that, my first reaction was, how can Trump “cut off” illegal immigrants from government benefits (whether or not the benefits are “life necessities”) when they are not eligible for those benefits in the first place?

The Times article (here is a link to an online version with a somewhat different headline) is a typical advocacy piece designed to defend every government benefit and every penny of government spending toward the project of creating perfect fairness and justice on earth at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer. To be fair, its discussion of “life necessities” includes not only welfare benefits, but also work authorization. But before getting into the Times piece in more detail, how about answering the question of whether there actually are large numbers of illegal immigrants currently receiving benefits from one or more government means-tested welfare programs?

The Times article does not answer that question. Looking around for the answer, I find a paper dated February 4, 2026 from the Center for Immigration Studies with the title “Welfare Use by Immigrants and the U.S.-Born, 2024.” The paper analyzes 2024 (most recent available) data from the Census Bureau from something called their “2024 Survey of Income and Program Participation.” And the answer is: The percentage of illegal-immigrant-headed households in the U.S. using one or more means-tested welfare programs is (drumroll !!!) — 61%. In other words, it’s actually a substantial majority of all the households headed by illegal immigrants.

How could that possibly be, given that the large majority of the illegal immigrants are specifically ineligible for the large majority of the programs? The simple answer is that there exist a sufficient number of loopholes, exceptions and workarounds such that the exceptions completely overwhelm the supposed rule.

And, as important as the actual exceptions themselves, there is this central facet of how the system works (from the CIS paper):

[I]t should be remembered that the job of those in the welfare bureaucracy is to help low-income residents receive the welfare for which they are eligible.

In other words, the bureaucrats view their job as being to maximize the number of people receiving handouts. Add in that virtually all stigma associated with taking government handouts has gone away, and you get an inexorable dynamic of increasing dependency.

The CIS paper lists the major reasons that illegal-immigrant-headed households are able to collect welfare benefits. The biggest single reason is that many such households (about half) have U.S.-born children who are able to collect benefits as citizens. But other major reasons, according to CIS, include such things as:

– Millions of open-ended forbearances of various sorts were granted by the Biden administration, and most of these removed some if not all welfare ineligibility. From the CIS paper: “[S]everal million illegal immigrants have work authorization, which provides a Social Security number and with it EITC eligibility. This includes those with DACA, TPS, many applicants for asylum, a large share of parolees, and those granted suspension of deportation and withholding of removal.”

– Many states provide non-federally-funded Medicaid benefits to various categories of illegal immigrants. According to the CIS paper, 14 states offer Medicaid to all low-income children regardless of Medicaid status, and several additional states offer Medicaid to low-income pregnant women regardless of immigration status. A smaller number of states offers Medicaid to all below income thresholds regardless of immigration status. (New York is one of those!)

– Some food benefits, particularly the program called “WIC” (Women, Infants and Children), do not disqualify people based on immigration status. Also, some states provide non-federally-backed SNAP benefits without regard to immigration status.

It appears that the main target of the Trump administration current efforts is to rescind the many, many Biden immigration forbearances. For example, the Biden people extended something called “Temporary Protected Status” or TPS to immigrants here illegally from some 17 countries: Afghanistan, Burma (Myanmar), Cameroon, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Lebanon, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Yemen. That’s right, pretty much anybody who could make it here illegally from places including Afghanistan and Somalia got blanket permission to stay, plus work authorization, from Biden. What could go wrong? The idea behind TPS is that the countries are so dangerous that it is not safe for anybody to go back.

But how about, for example, El Salvador? That one was actually once a very dangerous place, until Nayib Bukele got elected President in 2019. Since then, the murder rate in El Salvador has gone from over 50 per 100,000 population to under 2/100,000. Whatever you might think of Mr. Bukele’s methods, it’s hard to say that El Salvador is still too dangerous to return to.

And thus we get the first heart-rending anecdote from yesterday’s New York Times piece:

For nearly three decades, Raquel Molina — an immigrant from El Salvador who has a valid Social Security number and permission to work in the United States — swabbed the toilets, wiped down the seats and vacuumed the aisles of airplanes at Boston’s Logan International Airport. But last summer, Ms. Molina, 65, was abruptly fired from her $19.75-per-hour cleaning job, alongside dozens of other immigrants who have long legally worked at Logan. Her supervisor told her she no longer had clearance to enter secure areas at the airport. The Trump administration had decided that only U.S. citizens, green card holders and others with more permanent forms of residency should be granted access. . . .

It seems that Ms. Molina was a beneficiary of the TPS program:

In her case, the administration no longer considered T.P.S. a form of “authorized residency,” said Justin Long, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection.

The Times piece, as usual, leaves out almost everything important that you would need to evaluate Ms. Molina’s case. How did she get here originally? How and when did she get the TPS status? What government welfare benefits has she used along the way? You may not think (from what the Times has told us) that Ms. Molina is someone who should be forced to leave the country; but then, the basis on which she has been here has been TPS, and that basis no longer exists.

A concluding line from CIS:

The high use of welfare by immigrants . . . shows that past efforts to prevent immigrants, including illegal immigrants, from using the welfare system have not been very effective when the totality of the welfare system is considered. . . .

It’s not clear to me that the Trump people can make huge strides in reducing the number of illegal-headed households receiving welfare benefits, particularly with hundreds of thousands of state-level welfare administration personnel working against them.

Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian