Trump’s Border Triumph

A recently revised estimate from the Congressional Budget Office finds 1.5 million fewer illegal immigrants in the country than would have been the case had Biden’s policies continued.

The establishment political consensus has long held that it’s impossible to rein in illegal immigration until Congress passes “comprehensive immigration reform.” The Congressional Budget Office has recently made clear that all it really takes is a president willing to enforce federal immigration laws, as he is constitutionally required to do.

The CBO recently revised its estimates concerning the number of illegal aliens entering or leaving the United States. More than a year ago, just before Inauguration Day, the CBO estimated that a net 1.1 million “other foreign nationals”—those lacking “a legal immigration status”—would be added to the U.S. population in 2025. Now the CBO has revised that estimate downward by a whopping 1.5 million illegal aliens—from an increase of 1.1 million to a decrease of 360,000. This downward revision of 1.5 million people is equivalent to the population of San Antonio.

What caused this “significant reduction?” The congressional scorekeeper’s answer is clear. The decline was “driven largely by administrative actions taken since January 20, 2025.” The CBO particularly emphasizes an action that President Donald Trump took on his first day in office: “Executive Order 14165 reinstated the policy of Migrant Protection Protocols, which require people who want to apply for asylum in the United States to return to the territory from which they came.” The CBO adds, “That order also ended all categorical parole programs and ceased the use of the CBP One app as a method of paroling or facilitating the entry of people into the United States.”

Under President Joe Biden, illegal aliens who “arrived between official ports of entry”—that is, along the open (southwestern) border—“were generally released into the United States,” writes the CBO. It adds, “People could also use the CBP One app to schedule an appointment at a port of entry” and then “be released into the United States.”

The Trump administration almost immediately stopped the Biden administration’s lawless practice of releasing illegal aliens into the U.S. interior. This accounts for the CBO estimate that 1.5 million fewer illegal aliens were living in the U.S. at the end of 2025 than would have been the case with a continuation of Biden’s policies. The 46th president’s “equity”-based policies brought about a border crisis by design.

While the mainstream press emphasizes ICE raids and deportations, the Trump administration’s removal of aliens from the U.S. interior accounted for less than one-tenth of the CBO’s downward revision in net illegal immigration—it estimates that 120,000 people were removed from the U.S. interior in 2025. Far from being driven by deportations, more than 90 percent of the Trump administration’s success in reducing illegal immigration has come from limiting border crossings, per the CBO’s figures.

The CBO estimates that 540,000 illegal aliens arrived along the open border in 2024, between the ports of entry, and were released into the U.S. by the Biden administration. In 2025, such releases dipped to 20,000—a 96 percent decrease. Similarly, 960,000 illegal aliens arrived at the ports of entry and were released into the U.S. in 2024, compared with only 60,000 in 2025—a 94 percent drop. (Many of those released under Trump were unaccompanied minors, required by law to be released to sponsor families.)

What’s more, only about half of the 2025 releases occurred from February through December. Most of the releases at the ports, and many of the releases along the open border, occurred in January, when Biden was still in office for most of the month. In fact, roughly the same number of illegal aliens were released into the country during three weeks of Biden as during 49 weeks of Trump.

In addition, the Trump administration dramatically cut the number of people who evaded capture and snuck across the border. The CBO estimates that about 300,000 people escaped across the border in this manner in 2024 but only about 50,000 did so in 2025—an 83 percent reduction. In a 2023 immigration case, U.S. District Court Judge T. Kent Wetherell said the Biden administration’s “actions were akin to posting a flashing ‘Come In, We’re Open’ sign on the southern border.” When the Trump administration effectively unplugged that sign, the number of people trying to sneak across the border dropped dramatically.

In all, the CBO estimates that about 80,000 people lacking “a legal immigration status” were released into the U.S. last year (roughly half of them during the 20 days of Biden), while 50,000 snuck across the border and 260,000 overstayed their visas. Meanwhile, 400,000 decided to leave voluntarily, 120,000 were removed from the interior of the U.S., and 225,000 attained permanent legal status. That amounts to a one-year reduction in the illegal alien population of about 360,000, whereas the CBO had previously projected an increase of about 1.1 million.

The CBO now projects that over the first three years of the Trump administration, the number of illegal aliens living in the U.S. will decrease by 1 million (with reductions of 360,000 in 2025, 330,000 in 2026, and 330,000 in 2027). Over the last three years of the Biden administration, the CBO estimates a 5.7 million increase (2 million in 2022, 2.4 million in 2023, and 1.3 million in 2024) in the number of illegal aliens living in the U.S. That 6.7 million swing—from 5.7 million to negative 1 million—exceeds the combined populations of Los Angeles and Phoenix. That’s the difference between three years of Biden’s policies versus three years of Trump’s, according to the CBO.

The success that the Trump administration has had in reversing the flow of illegal immigration—simply by enforcing existing laws—was broadly thought to be impossible. Less than a year before Trump took office, the Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote that “the President needs Congress to fix the underlying incentives at the border.” A few months later, the Biden White House issued a fact sheet that began, “Since his first day in office, President Biden has called on Congress to secure our border.” When asked about illegal immigration during a 60 Minutes interview in October 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris said that “we need Congress to be able to act to actually fix the problem.”

It turns out that fixing the problem required only executing the laws already on the books—specifically the law requiring that asylum-seekers be detained while their cases are heard, rather than being released into the interior of the country. The Immigration and Nationality Act declares that “if an alien asserts a credible fear of persecution, he or she shall be detained for further consideration of the application for asylum.” Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito writes that these detention “requirements, as we have held, are mandatory.”

The foreign-born portion of the U.S. population rose from 4.7 percent in 1970 to 16.2 percent in 2023, and probably reached about 16.8 percent in 2024—easily breaking the previous all-time record of 14.8 percent set in 1890, at the height of the great waves of nineteenth-century immigration. It will take many years of enforcing existing immigration laws to see that percentage dip back down to something approaching historical norms. But as the CBO now acknowledges, the Trump administration is making significant headway—even if the congressional scorekeeper didn’t see it coming.

Jeffrey H. Anderson is president of the American Main Street Initiative and served as director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2017 to 2021.

PITTSBURGH, Pa. — Pride celebrations across the country continue to lose out on large sponsorships as corporations, a key source of funding, shrink their affiliation with diversity causes and LGBTQ+ events.

Corporate sponsorships of celebrations in several cities, including New York City, Salt Lake City, Louisville, St. Louis, Orlando, and Pittsburgh are down from previous years, organizers said.

Jordan Braxton, co-president of the United States Association of Prides, which supports Pride celebrations nationwide, said that while some smaller Prides have seen a growth in sponsorships, a majority have seen a reduction.

She said the Trump administration’s dismantling of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, has scared corporations away from sponsoring Pride celebrations. “I think that’s why some of the corporations have pulled back, because they don’t want that government scrutiny,” she said.

In his first days in office in 2025, Trump issued presidential actions targeting DEI within the federal government and encouraging the private sector to end what the administration considers “illegal DEI discrimination and preferences.”

In Pittsburgh, Pride organizers are trying to make up for lost sponsorships in time for their festival and parade in early June.

“It takes a lot of money to do this,” said Dena Stanley, director of Pittsburgh Pride. “Permittings costs, security costs, headliners costs, staging costs, cleaning crew costs, insurance costs, all of these are expenses.”

Pittsburgh Pride organizers think it will secure 30-40% of the sponsorship dollars they were able to fundraise a few years ago.

To narrow the gap, the group said they received a state grant and solicited individual donations.

E Ciszek, who researches advertising and public relations at The University of Texas at Austin, said the downturn in corporate sponsorships is happening amid a movement against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and the “attack on trans rights, in particular.”

“I think this is not just a matter of budget cuts, right?” Ciszek said. “It’s important to take a step back and see this more as a moment of risk, a moment of political pressure, and looking really at the limits of corporate allyship, particularly when LGBTQ visibility has become really politically costly.”

Corporations, she said, are calculating the risk of public support for Pride, which could expose them to litigation, political retaliation or consumer boycotts.

“What once was [an] organizational asset, has now become an organizational risk,” Ciszek said.

Lyndsey Sickler, another Pittsburgh Pride organizer, described Pride celebrations as empowering for LGBTQ+ people who live in communities where they feel scrutinized for their identity.

For some people, it’s their first time being in, “a space that is actively, loudly celebrating everything that is us,” Sickler said. “Nothing else matters at that point.”

Less sponsorship money can also impact year-round events and resources for the LGBTQ+ community.

“People sometimes look at Pride festivals just as a big party, which they are, but they’re also resource fairs, job fairs, and we also use it as a fundraising event,” said Braxton of the United States Association of Prides.

In Florida, Tampa Pride announced a one-year hiatus after a slew of corporations dropped their sponsorships, said Carrie West, who ran the organization.

“All of a sudden, bingo. Here you have no money, no grant money, no supporting money, to make operations, to plan, to get any kind of anything,” he said. “Oh my gosh, it was, it’s devastating.”

NPR

The Solidarity Center has received over $86 million from the federal government since 2008; $61 million of that was given under President Biden. Three Solidarity employees joined Biden’s Labor Department. Solidarity receives 99 percent of its total revenue from American taxpayers and serves the AFL-CIO, which gave 86 percent of its 2024 political donations to Democrats.

On the climate front: Inflation Reduction Act funds set aside hundreds of billions for the green agenda. A former staffer from an environmental group called the Coalition for Green Capital joined the Biden EPA specifically to direct $27 billion in green funding. Under his tenure, $5 billion was granted to his former organization. Power Forward Communities received nearly $9 billion despite being only a few months old when it applied—and one recipient was a group affiliated with Stacey Abrams that had only $100 in the bank when it received $2 billion.

The Environmental Law Institute, which ran a “Climate Judiciary Project” to educate federal and state judges in favor of climate tort litigation against energy companies, received millions of dollars in grants and contracts from the EPA, the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Agriculture, and State, and the National Science Foundation between 2021 and 2024.

Regarding the SPLC specifically: Despite the SPLC reporting $132.7 million in revenue and nearly $770 million in net assets for 2021, the State Department still granted honorariums and speaker fees to SPLC officials. Additionally, a Biden-era Department of Labor approved a $6 million “employment training” grant for NextGen, a nonprofit that fights for “progressive policy change” through advocacy and civic engagement.

The SPLC itself is in the news for separate reasons: the Justice Department indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on federal fraud charges, alleging it improperly raised millions of dollars to pay informants to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups.

The revolving door between these funded NGOs and Democratic administrations is a key part of the story. Personnel from Open Society Foundations and associated left-wing groups cycled in and out of the Biden White House, Justice Department, and other agencies—the same people who had previously shaped grantmaking priorities then directed government money toward aligned organizations.

In just the first month of the Trump administration, 15 groups that had received federal cash from the previous administration sued the current administration, mostly to protect their funding, which totaled $1.6 billion. This is the feedback loop in miniature: government grants activist groups → activist groups lobby for more government → activist groups litigate against anyone who tries to stop it.

Concluding Thoughts

Several converging factors explain the timing of the Treasury Department’s April announcement:

1. Congressional pressure has been building. Multiple House hearings over the past year—the DOGE Subcommittee hearing “Public Funds, Private Agendas: NGOs Gone Wild” and the Judiciary Subcommittee hearing “How Leftist Nonprofit Networks Exploit Federal Tax Dollars”—have built an extensive public record and created political momentum for regulatory action.

2. The rebrand attempt flagged the problem. Arabella’s restructuring into Sunflower Services and Vital Impact in late 2025 was widely seen as an attempt to launder its reputation and escape scrutiny. The Treasury announcement signals that rebranding won’t be sufficient.

3. Form 990 has a structural blind spot. As noted in the Treasury Department’s press release, Form 990 has no mechanism for disclosing fiscal sponsorship activities. This isn’t a bug in enforcement—it’s a gap in the regulatory framework itself, one that has been known and exploited for decades. Treasury is finally moving to close it through regulatory action rather than waiting for Congress to act legislatively.

4.The SPLC indictment and related scrutiny. The indictment of the SPLC, combined with sustained focus on the Tides Foundation’s role in funding anti-Israel groups, has elevated the broader question of nonprofit accountability in the current political moment.

5. The “revolving door” has been documented. The Biden years produced extensive documentation of personnel moving between the dark money network and government agencies, with the explicit effect of directing public funds toward aligned organizations. The Trump administration is using every available tool—executive, regulatory, and prosecutorial—to dismantle these arrangements.

The bottom line is pretty straightforward: for decades, a small number of sophisticated nonprofit aggregators have used fiscal sponsorship to create a system in which billions of dollars—from private megadonors, foreign nationals, and American taxpayers—flow to politically aligned left-wing activist organizations with direct ties to the Democrat Party with essentially no public accountability. The sponsored groups don’t file their own 990s.

The pass-through organizations don’t have to disclose which projects their money supports. And the whole system is perfectly legal under current IRS rules. The Treasury announcement is the first significant regulatory step toward forcing disclosure of these arrangements, and its timing reflects both the political will of the current administration and the groundwork laid by over a year of congressional investigation.

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant” for the body politic !

In the crowded Democratic field running to replace Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, there’s a surprising frontrunner for a battleground state: a democratic-socialist line cook who has called to abolish the police.

Francesca Hong, a 37-year-old restaurant owner and single mother who became the state’s first Asian-American assembly member in 2021, has surged to the lead in several early polls after launching a long-shot bid on a deeply progressive platform

Hong is part of an array of lefty candidates with working-class credentials running in competitive states and districts up and down the ballot in this year’s midterm elections — a crop emboldened by the popularity of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and a turn toward economic populism amid widespread cost-of-living concerns.

Abdul El-Sayed is running from the left of Haley Stevens and Mallory McMorrow in the competitive Michigan Senate primary. Zach Wahls, who is backed by Elizabeth Warren, is locked in a tight contest against the Chuck Schumer-supported Josh Turek for Iowa’s Senate nomination. In Colorado’s 8th District, where Dems see a flip opportunity, Manny Rutinel is running against the more moderate Shannon Bird. And last month, Graham Platner got a boost when Schumer-endorsed Maine Gov. Janet Mills dropped out of the race to oust GOP Sen. Susan Collins.

Establishment Democrats worry that these figures — whose platforms play well among primary voters but could bite them in a general election — might spoil the midterms at a time when the party has the wind at its back, desperate to claw its way out of the wilderness and still weary of the “woke” allegations that Republicans effectively wielded against Kamala Harris. “If Democrats hope to beat Republican incumbents in red and purple districts, then they cannot run candidates who are far outside the mainstream of their district,” the center-left think tank Third Way wrote in a memo published last month.

Hong says the party establishment just lacks imagination.

“I think they’re underestimating voters,” Hong said in an interview. “I think that has always been a problem for the Democratic Party — that we are not listening to how they are feeling.”

Her platform includes free child care, a $20 minimum wage and a full moratorium on data center construction. She is an outspoken critic of the Israeli government and helped lead Wisconsin’s “uninstructed” pressure campaign on the Biden administration’s posture toward Gaza. She’s faced backlash for past calls to “abolish” the police. And she has suggested as governor she would call the state National Guard to arrest federal ICE agents.

But Hong doesn’t think her far-left politics would pose a risk in a general election. “The liability is having someone who is the establishment and wants to maintain the status quo,” she said

Wisconsin has a deep history of socialism, including three socialist mayors of Milwaukee between 1910 and 1960. The state boasts one of the Senate’s most conservative members, Sen. Ron Johnson, but also one of its most progressive, Sen. Tammy Baldwin. And progressive Democrats in Wisconsin are quick to point out that Sanders, the country’s democratic-socialist standard-bearer, won 71 out of Wisconsin’s 72 counties in 2016.

Hong isn’t just running on a different platform than her competitors — she is also running “the most non-traditional race,” said Gordon Hintz, who served in the Wisconsin state assembly with Hong when he was Democratic minority leader. While other candidates have been more reserved so far, Hong spent — and surged — early on to boost her name recognition. Hong’s campaign says it has about 3,000 active volunteers and has already organized 250 events across the state, with an additional 230 planned for the coming months.

“She has shown up, she’s the only candidate currently who has built any infrastructure down in Rock County,” said Jim White, who leads Rock County Democrats. “She’s the only person who has active canvassers, has people showing up at events, at meetings, she’s the only one who seems to have increasing infrastructure to do outreach to voters, and that’s been something that I think we’ve all really noticed.”

But it’s still an uphill battle for Hong — especially in the fundraising fight. Mandela Barnes, the former lieutenant governor and failed Senate nominee is polling in second place and has raised more than $2 million. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley has brought in more than $850,000. Hong has raised about $635,000, according to Wisconsin campaign finance records.

Hong said she is focusing on turning one-time donors into recurring donors and has leaned on nontraditional fundraising tactics, like streaming. She has appeared with the progressive Twitch streamer Mike from PA and with Mercury Stardust, a TikToker with more than 2.6 million followers who describes herself as “The Trans Handy Ma’am.” Next month, Hong is planning to stream a DJ set and a cooking demo on Twitch, according to her campaign.

Both White and Hintz noted they still have not decided who they’ll vote for in the primary. But they both guessed part of Hong’s appeal to voters — particularly those who are young and politically disengaged — was because she is “fun.” Hong is, for example, known to host fundraisers at karaoke bars.

Her go-to song? “I Will Survive

Politico

China buys up the bullion, the relevance of paper markets on Comex (and London) is shrinking. Liquidity and relevance of paper gold and silver relative to bullion are diminishing.

This market report analyses why open interest on Comex has declined to multi-year lows and the consequences. Clearly, liquidity has been drained from western paper markets by the continual drift of bullion into firm Asian hands. We present evidence of the strains on market makers on Comex who have limited capital resources and we debate the consequences.

Open interest is now at multi-year lows

This week saw open interest in the Comex gold contract drop to under 350,000 contracts. This is the lowest it has been in at least thirteen years.

is the clearest indication of a near total absence of speculative interest on Comex, and because Comex arbitrages with London, it will be true of that market as well. This is even more remarkable given the price rise since 2023 would normally lead to greater speculative interest, but it has collapsed instead, particularly after December 2024.

We see the same trend in Comex’s silver contract, which is next:

Open interest is also the lowest for thirteen years by far, and its collapse is firmly tied to a silver price which rose sharply from mid-October last. This links the collapse in speculative interest to the extreme liquidity problem in London when silver’s lease rate rose to a stunning 40% on 9th October.

So, liquidity in futures and forwards is the problem. Higher prices must be stretching the position limits of market makers and bullion bank traders, collectively the swaps category on Comex, which traditionally takes the short side. This is evidenced in our next chart of the dollar-value of the swap category’s shorts:

For many years, this category contained its collective shorts to less than $30 billion shown by the lower pecked line. That then doubled to about $60 billion and today having peaked at double that again, the current price consolidation coupled with a drop in open interest still has it at an uncomfortable $90 billion. Average individual swap short exposure is $3.75 billion having been close to $5bn when gold peaked.

Besides the obvious strain on capital resources and the increase in systemic risk, we arrive at an important conclusion: London and New York lack the capacity to deal with higher bullion prices. In other words, as a means of diverting gold and silver demand into paper contracts and thereby containing prices, after decades of success it is now failing.

The reason is that demand for physical liquidity is now driving prices. This is the consequence of Asian selling of dollars for gold. It is reflected in Comex warehouse statistics for gold and silver which continue to be drained despite the fall in prices over the last four months. These are illustrated next:

As well as continuing demand for gold from central banks, China’s commercial banks are big buyers. They offer their customers gold accumulation accounts, which they have been forced to suspend or restrict due to lack of available bullion. They have used a falling price in the London and New York as an opportunity to replenish their stocks.

But only yesterday, it was announced that the facility was becoming available again. This was from a Chinese newspaper:

Meanwhile spot prices in London have failed to properly reflect demand for bullion, being essentially a “local” price — local that is to western capital markets. A similar situation is seen in oil, where Asian prices on the ground are significantly higher than US and European prices. Gold and silver are not the only markets bifurcating both regionally and between paper contracts and physical reality.

In London and Comex, gold and silver prices reflect a short-termism which denies actual consequences. Oil prices rise, and gold and silver get marked down. Bond yields rise, and gold and silver get marked down. In Asia the view is diametrically opposed. Oil prices rise and the dollar’s value is threatened. Bond yields rise because the dollar’s purchasing power is falling.

All reasons in Asia to sell the dollar for gold. A consequence is that when speculative interest returns to western capital markets, the lack of liquidity can be expected to see gold and silver prices squeezed significantly higher than their end-January peaks. That in itself will raise awkward questions over the future of the fiat dollar.

The New York Post Editorial Board

Since Florida launched its immigration enforcement effort, Operation Tidal Wave, in February, nearly 25,000 arrests have been made statewide.

“Florida will continue to use every available resource to identify dangerous individuals, support federal immigration enforcement and keep our citizens safe,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said. “No state has moved faster or done more to combat illegal immigration than Florida, and we will continue to lead the charge in protecting our communities.”

Operation Tidal Wave was launched as Florida leads the country with the most 287(g) U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agreements of any state, The Center Square reported. The program is named after a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1996 and authorizes ICE to delegate to state and local law enforcement officers the authority to perform specified immigration functions under its supervision.

The Trump administration expanded the program to include three models: the Jail Enforcement Model (JEM), Task Force Model (TFM) and Warrant Service Officer (WSO) model, The Center Square reported. Florida is the only state to have all of its sheriffs participating in 287(g), with most participating in the TFM and or all three models. Nearly 200 police departments, 12 state agencies and 15 state universities and colleges, as well as county commissioner detention facilities and correctional facilities, are participating in 287(g). No other state has as many agencies participating in 287(g), and primarily in the TFM, as Florida does, according to ICE data.

During the first week of Operation Tidal Wave, Florida law enforcement arrested more than 1,100 criminal illegal foreign nationals, a record for Florida. The only state with more arrests in a single week is in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star is underway. While these arrests are not solely through 287(g) partnerships, Texas law enforcement through OLS have made more than half a million arrests over the last five years, The Center Square reported. OLS is ongoing.

Key 287(g) partnership arrests were made in Florida through three recent multi-agency immigration enforcement operations: Operation Sandhill Sentinel, Operation LOCATE and Operation Criminal Return.

In south Florida, Operation Sandhill Sentinel led to the arrest of 250 illegal foreign nationals, including those with extensive criminal histories ranging from domestic violence to drug offenses, DUI and assault, among other violent crimes. Those arrested also had final orders of removal and repeat immigration violations, ICE found.

The Florida Highway Patrol (FDLE), Broward Sheriff’s Office, ICE, U.S. Border Patrol, Homeland Security Investigations, Florida National Guard and Florida State Guard were involved in the operation.

Another key arrest earlier this month was of a Honduran national and known MS-13 gang member illegally residing in Palm Beach County. A multi-agency operation led to the arrest of Luis Merary Peralta-Sevilla, who illegally entered the country in 2013 in Texas. He was never deported until the second Trump administration, which also designated MS-13 as a foreign terrorist organization. MS-13 members are also being prosecuted nationwide.

In Operation Criminal Return, FDLE and ICE sought to identify criminal foreign nationals who are registered sex offenders and sexual predators. In a 10-day targeted operation they arrested 230 people statewide, including sexual predators and sex offenders, convicted felons, a convicted drug trafficker, and convicted murderers, according to FDLE and ICE.

In Operation LOCATE, the FDLE partnered with Homeland Security in an intelligence-led initiative focused on identifying and locating unaccompanied alien children (UACs).

They located more than 400 UACs statewide and outside of Florida, verifying their safety and living conditions “while uncovering cases involving trafficking concerns, missing children, and other high-risk situations,” the governor’s office said.

UACs are foreign national children under age 18 who arrive in the U.S. without their parents or family members. They are primarily smuggled into the country and once in the U.S., the federal government doesn’t deport them but sends them to live with so-called sponsors. Florida has historically received the most UACs behind Texas and California, The Center Square reported.

As the border crisis worsened under the Biden administration, sponsors in 29 counties in Florida received more than 10,000 UACs, The Center Square reported.

In response to reports of abuse and neglect of UACs in Florida, DeSantis called for a state grand jury to launch an investigation. It found “horrible atrocities inflicted on immigrant children in Florida” including allegations of human trafficking and child abuse. It also found that the federal government lost track of more than 20,000 children in Florida and performed no background checks on the sponsors the UACs were sent to, among other issues, The Center Square reported.

Last year, the Trump administration launched an initiative to conduct welfare checks on UACs after President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said more than 350,000 UACs were unaccounted for.

Just the News

“G” was born into a Maronite Christian family in southern Lebanon, part of a community that traces its roots to the ancient Phoenicians. His early childhood unfolded in a quiet Christian village just 15 kilometers from the Israeli border, surrounded by rolling hills, farmland, and deeply rooted family traditions. Like many Lebanese Christians in southern Lebanon, his family lived modestly, valuing faith, community, and inner peace in a region increasingly consumed by conflict.

While Lebanon was embattled in a civil war from 1975-1990, and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 to drive out the PLO had left its scars, “G” remembers a childhood centered around family. There were visits to grandparents, swimming in the Litani River, and helping his grandfather work the land. His memories are not political at first; they are human. Lebanon, in his mind, was once a place of warmth and beauty – a country his family deeply loved and considered worth fighting for.

But southern Lebanon during “G’s” childhood was also shaped by external forces far beyond village life from before he was born.

Lebanon’s descent into chaos began after the arrival of Palestinian Arab terrorists expelled from Jordan following Black September in 1970. The country, once celebrated as the “Paris of the Middle East,” increasingly became a battleground. Militias formed, sectarian tensions exploded, and civil war engulfed Lebanon from 1975 onward.

For many Christians in southern Lebanon, the war was not ideological but existential. Their villages became trapped between PLO terrorists, regional powers, and the growing influence of armed Islamist groups. “G’s” community viewed itself as caught in a struggle it never chose.

Eventually, local Christian militias aligned with Israel in what became the South Lebanon Army (SLA), fighting alongside the Israeli military against militant organizations operating in the south. Then came Hezbollah.

Founded in the early 1980s with Iranian backing, Hezbollah emerged as one of the dominant armed forces in Lebanon. To many Lebanese Christians in the south, Hezbollah represented not liberation but another wave of control and intimidation. “G” grew up hearing how SLA fighters and Christian families became targets. Hezbollah’s rise fundamentally altered life in southern Lebanon, creating fear among those who opposed its ideology or cooperation with Israel.

Exile from a homeland in collapse

On May 24, 2000, when Israel abruptly withdrew from the Security Zone in southern Lebanon, everything changed overnight for “G’s” family.

He was only six years old when his father entered the house and told the family to pack immediately. Within moments, “G,” his four brothers, and his parents were in a car heading south with only a few bags and mattresses strapped to the roof. Confused and frightened, they joined thousands fleeing toward the border fence as Hezbollah forces rapidly advanced into former SLA-controlled areas.

The scene at the border remains etched in “G’s” memory: panic, uncertainty, and a feeling of abandonment. Despite SLA fighting alongside Israel, the hasty evacuation felt ill-planned and mired in bureaucracy that initially left the SLA families stuck between the advancing Shi’ite terrorists and the Israeli border they sought to cross.

Given the years of fighting terrorists side by side, it was not Israel’s finest moment as its SLA allies – who fought risking their lives for their country – feared for their lives by staying in the country. As Hezbollah pursued retreating families toward the border, for two days many waited before Israel finally allowed them entry under international pressure. In a single moment, they became refugees. But they were alive.

Arrival in Israel did not bring immediate belonging. “G’s” family, like thousands of others connected to the SLA, was first housed in military bases before being relocated to northern Israel. Their status was complicated. In Lebanon, they were labeled traitors for collaborating with Israel. Among some Arab Israelis, they were viewed with suspicion. Among many Israeli Jews, they were simply seen as Arabs with no awareness of being allies.

For a six-year-old child, those labels became wounds. “G” entered second grade in a Jewish school without understanding Hebrew. He sat through lessons staring silently at the walls, unable to follow the teacher. At recess, he hid his Lebanese identity. He was ashamed to take out the laffa with labaneh his mother packed for lunch because he feared ridicule. His struggle to fit in was more complicated than merely being an immigrant. Instead, he threw the sandwiches away.

Children in the neighborhood bullied him and called him “Arab,” a term he had come to associate with accusation and hostility. The irony was painful: His family had fled Lebanon because of Hezbollah and militant violence, yet in Israel he often felt reduced to the same stereotypes associated with the enemies his family had fought against.

The psychological toll ran deep. “G” remembers being embarrassed when his parents spoke Arabic in public. He felt caught between worlds – neither fully Lebanese anymore nor fully Israeli. Even as a child, he carried the burden of explaining a story nobody around him seemed to understand.

Yet, over time, survival transformed into adaptation. Social integration came slowly. “G” eventually connected with other marginalized children and learned how to build friendships despite cultural barriers. That ability to connect with people, he says, became one of the defining traits of his life. Gradually, he embraced both his Lebanese heritage and his new Israeli reality.

Religion presented another challenge. As a Christian in a predominantly Jewish environment, maintaining faith required effort and improvisation. There were few churches nearby and no stable clergy for the displaced community at first. Religious milestones were delayed, traditions fragmented. “G” underwent an important Christian coming-of-age ceremony years later than expected because there was no organized community structure initially in place.

Despite the hardships, “G’s” story is ultimately not one of victimhood but transformation. He slowly reclaimed pride in his identity. The food he once hid became a symbol of acceptance. He began researching the history of Lebanese Christians, the SLA, and the complex relationship between Lebanon and Israel. The shame he once carried evolved into purpose. Pride.

At the center of his journey lies a deeper understanding of displacement. Hezbollah’s rise had uprooted his family from Lebanon, but the shadow of that conflict followed them into Israel as well. Rockets from Lebanon, border tensions, and recurring wars constantly reminded northern Israeli communities – including displaced Lebanese Christians – that the conflict was never truly over.

“G” grew up living on both sides of that trauma: first as a child fleeing Hezbollah’s dominance in Lebanon, and later as a resident of northern Israel living under the continuing threat emanating from the Lebanese border.

Yet instead of embracing bitterness, he chose dialogue, resilience, and bridge-building. His childhood became a lesson in identity, perseverance, and the painful complexity of belonging between two nations still divided by war.■

Jerusalem Post

A new Texas law allows companies with SAE Level 4 or higher autonomous vehicles to offer commercial driverless transportation.

Tesla wasted no time in self-certifying their vehicles. On the same day the law went into effect, Tesla officially self-certified their FSD software on their robotaxi vehicles as Level 4 compliant.

For years, Tesla’s Autopilot and FSD software, even in Texas, has navigated the consumer market under the constraints imposed by a Level 2 driver-assist system. And while Tesla now operates in Texas as a level-4 system, this does not change the level-2 designation for consumer vehicles. Taking Responsibility

While many of Tesla’s robotaxi rides in Austin were already driverless, there’s an important distinction in level 4 autonomy.

By certifying its software as Level 4 for commercial operations, Tesla is willfully absorbing a substantial portion of the operational liability. It’s legally stating that its vehicles can operate themselves without any human supervision or intervention under certain conditions.

These conditions are typically based on weather, region (geofense), or speed.

This willingness to take on legal accountability is a major turning point for Tesla, as it is the first time the company has been certified as a level 4 system.

SAE International defines a Level-4 autonomous vehicle as:

Entire dynamic driving task (DDT): The system does all steering, braking, accelerating, lane changes, signaling, and monitoring of the driving environment.

Dynamic driving task fallback: If something goes wrong (sensor failure, road closure, etc.), the system itself must handle the situation and achieve a safe outcome. It cannot depend on a human taking over.

Operational Design Domain (ODD): The specific conditions under which the system is designed to operate (certain roads, cities, weather conditions, speeds, etc.).

Consumer Vehicles Still Level 2

This new ruling for Tesla only covers its Robotaxi vehicles. Regular consumer cars, although they use a similar FSD version, are still considered Level 2 by law, and drivers will be fully held responsible.

Vehicles in Austin have advantages over consumer vehicles, even when they run the same FSD software. In addition to being geofenced, these areas have also received additional FSD training, which has improved FSD performance.

Tesla also offers remote assistance to help these vehicles when they encounter situations where their confidence threshold is low.

Ultimately, this is another milestone for Tesla and its Robotaxi network, but it won’t affect consumer vehicles, at least not yet.

As government deficit spending diminishes economic growth, it pushes the nation’s economic output, the GDP, well below its potential.

S.T. Karnick | May 29, 2026

The U.S. national debt has crossed an ominous threshold, rising above 100 percent of national gross domestic product, or GDP. This is the first time since World War II that debt has been so high a percentage of national economic output.

That is a big problem because the federal debt undermines the value of the U.S. dollar and diverts investment from the wealth-creating private sector. The rising debt and its pressure on the nation’s economy will force the federal government and Federal Reserve, the latter led by newly confirmed chair Kevin Warsh, to make hard decisions they have put off for decades.

Many among the public will suffer as a result, especially the elderly, who rely on Social Security and Medicare.

GDP is the total amount of spending in the nation’s economy. At the end of March, federal debt held by the public was $31.265 trillion, and GDP in 2025 was $31.216 trillion.

The rise of debt-to-GDP is accelerating because the federal budget is structurally unsound. The government “is spending $1.33 for every dollar it collects in revenue, and the budget deficit this year is projected at $1.9 trillion,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Over the past two decades, the annual federal budget deficit has expanded far beyond what was normal from 1950 to 2007, which was about 25-45 percent. The federal debt quadrupled from 1970 to 1990, tripled from 1990 to 2000, and has doubled in each decade throughout this century.

Federal revenue has continued to increase. The problem is that spending is rising much more rapidly, pushing the annual budget deficit up to almost 6 percent of GDP, accelerating the increase in the national debt. As a result, the debt-rise trendline is becoming much steeper.

This is the first time the nation’s debt-to-GDP ratio has been so high without a major crisis such as a war or pandemic. There is no excuse for the recent increases in the federal debt. The federal deficit decreased by 63 percent between 2020 and 2022, erasing all the pandemic increase. Discretionary spending hikes have pushed the deficit up since then.

The numbers show that the federal government has spent the period since 1974 borrowing enormous amounts of money to spend on vote-buying with ever-greater income-transfer payments.

This politically motivated overspending has eroded the value of the U.S. dollar through inflation, which reached a crisis in 2021 through 2023 when the Congress and President Joe Biden expanded spending rapidly while greatly tightening federal regulation of the economy. Economic growth has slowed.

As government deficit spending diminishes economic growth, it pushes the nation’s economic output, the GDP, well below its potential, which further increases the deficit and debt as a percentage of GDP. The only thing that can stop such a fiscal whirlpool is a major cut in spending. That is as true for governments as it is for any household or business.

To be sure, the debt-to-GDP ratio is not some sort of magic number. GDP measures economic activity, not wealth, and net worth is the real measure of the capacity to carry debt. The United States remains the world’s wealthiest nation by far, holding 35 percent of the world’s net worth. Other than China at 19 percent, no other country has even five percent of global wealth.

The U.S. federal debt amounts to 5 percent of the nation’s total assets, according to economist John Rutledge. Although that is far, far more debt than is either advisable or justifiable, it is a little less than half the average American household’s debt, which Rutledge calculates at 10.2 percent. As Rutledge notes, “the future of our economy will be determined by the stability of our enormous balance sheet.”

That is true. Free people can create wealth by using limited natural resources and unlimited human ingenuity. The United States has an abundance of both.

Government, by contrast, can only take from what the people build, and every government extraction or regulatory impediment reduces that output. Rutledge believes that we are “about due” for a credit crisis, as do I. Americans, however, always find a way through these government-imposed predicaments as people readjust their priorities to realign with reality.

The real crisis that lies ahead is not bankruptcy of the American people but an insolvent federal government.

That is good news. If the federal government loses its ability to borrow money ever-more frenetically as massive sovereign debt pushes up interest rates, the government’s ability to borrow will collapse a few years from now, at most.

The ensuing choice between repudiation of national debt (directly or through very high inflation) or huge spending cuts will disrupt the economy badly and diminish people’s reliance on the national government.

The American people, however, can and will survive and thrive, probably with a much smaller government on the other side of the commotion. That last part sounds beautiful.

We could avert a fiscal crisis by cutting spending and regulation. We will not do so, however, because presidents and members of Congress cannot bear the idea of being held responsible for tens of millions of Americans’ loss of freebies paid for by other taxpayers. No number of dire warnings and symbolic thresholds will change that.

S.T. Karnick is a senior fellow at The Heartland Institute and author of the Life, Liberty, Property weekly e-newsletter.

There are several reasons to think we won’t see a blue wave in this year’s midterm elections. A basic one is that the Democratic party simply isn’t very popular. In late May, Donald Trump’s approval ratings in the RealClear polling aggregate stood around 40 percent, which sounds bad. Yet Trump is more popular than his party – approval of the Republican brand was in the vicinity of 38 percent. And the Democrats’ ratings were even worse – standing, or one might say wilting, at about 36 percent.

Those figures are not to be confused with “generic ballot” polling, which asks voters which party they would prefer in the forthcoming election. Democrats have lately enjoyed a lead of some seven points over the GOP in that category. Normally a number like that would portend enormous gains for the Democrats in November.

But normal isn’t what it used to be. Four years ago, Joe Biden’s approval ratings were low, prices in the supermarket were high, and Republicans had the edge in the generic ballot. They expected to do very well – but didn’t. The GOP lost a seat in the Senate and won only a thin majority in the House. Republicans had relied on economic conditions to do their campaigning for them.

Democrats misread their own good fortune, however. They assumed it augured well for 2024, which is one reason they were in no hurry to dispose of an already-deteriorating Biden. They were utterly unprepared for Trump’s electoral resurrection.

This year, the Democrats are following the playbook that disappointed Republicans in 2022. Rather than making a case for themselves, they’re hoping Trump’s lackluster approval ratings and the economic impact of the Iran war will defeat the GOP by default. Yet it’s not only the 2022 midterms that suggest these calculations are wrong. In 2020 – not a good year for Trump, to say the least – Republicans actually gained more than a dozen seats in the House. In 2020 and 2022 alike, House races proved less sensitive to the prevailing winds than experts had imagined.

There were no dramatic changes in 2024, either: Republicans lost two House seats, despite Trump’s success in winning every battleground state and a popular-vote plurality. This year, whatever losses the GOP might be set to suffer will be blunted by the mid-decade redistricting that’s added about ten seats to the red column.

Democrats are praying November midterms follow the pattern of 2018’s, which did produce a wave for their party. Their strategy is the same: make the election a referendum on Trump. Democrats may have no strong proposals of their own, and they may enjoy even less public approval than Trump does. But as long as the focus is on him, not them, their own deficiencies will go unnoticed. The party can succeed merely by defining itself as anti-Trump.

Yet that’s not a safe bet, either. The grand narrative that Trump’s opponents don’t think to question assumes that the President’s coalition is splintered and weakened, while anti-Trumpism inspires more passion than ever. Even as Trump-endorsed candidates won primary after primary this spring, his enemies insisted on interpreting the results as signs of weakness rather than strength.

Every victory supposedly meant the MAGA movement was shrinking, as if fewer factions inside a party were obviously a bad thing. This isn’t the tale that’s told whenever any faction the media doesn’t sympathize with gains ground in the Democratic party – or in the GOP, for that matter. And if Trump’s candidates had lost their races, wouldn’t the narrative have been that the President’s grip on his party is slipping and every defeat makes him weaker? The more natural read on Trump’s endorsements is that they are exactly what they appear to be – indications of party unity and party-building success.

On the flipside, however, what about anti-Trump sentiment? Does it seem as passionate as it did in 2018, when the Washington Post was blazoned with the slogan “Democracy dies in darkness”? The Post hasn’t had a change of ownership, but its owner has had a change of heart, or at least judgment: Jeff Bezos has chosen not to define his newspaper as simply anti-Trump. He tried the anti-Trump experiment and found it to be a dead end.

While Bezos may be an unrepresentative figure in many respects, sheer fear and hatred of Trump no longer seem to be the animating forces they were eight years ago, for nearly anyone. The fire just isn’t there –it’s been replaced by acceptance. Trumpism isn’t going away, and anti-Trumpism has become rote rather than fervent. Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee for the Senate in Maine, is a perfect illustration of this.

Platner has many of the qualities the President’s critics claim to find objectionable about him – though Trump, unlike Platner, has never had to alter a purported Nazi tattoo. Platner has, at one time or another, said something to offend almost every group that might consider voting for a Democrat. Yet his outrageousness has not made him a pariah within his party. The Democrats have shifted from trying to present Trump’s words and behavior as politically unacceptable to accepting someone who is far more offensive. They’ve given up – instead of trying to police Trumpism, they’re now trying to ape what they once found highly objectionable.

The Democrats are unpopular, ill-defined and divided. At some point in the not-too-distant future, a culturally leftist variation on populism will probably reshape the party and reorder its priorities as drastically as Trump has changed the GOP. The Republicans certainly are heading into the midterms under conditions highly unfavorable to them. But the party, remade in the image of MAGA, is better adapted to the landscape of the 21st century than the Democrats are.

If Republicans suffer a setback in November, they’ll recover quickly, much as Trump bounced back from the 2020 election. Democrats shouldn’t expect a wave – they should worry about being swept away by the tide.

The Spectator