President Donald Trump is reportedly preparing to invoke a rarely used 18th-century law to accelerate mass deportation. The move would be part of his broader immigration crackdown, a centerpiece of his 2024 campaign.
Sources told CNN that Trump’s team is considering using the Alien Enemies Act, a law from 1798 that grants the president sweeping powers to detain and deport noncitizens from countries deemed hostile. The law, originally passed during a period of tension with France, has rarely been applied in modern history.
Trump has already vowed to launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” targeting millions of illegal immigrants. His campaign has framed the effort as a national security measure, relaying that the Biden administration allowed record numbers of illegal crossings during their four years.
Enacted under President John Adams, the law was originally designed amid rising tensions with France, allowing the government to take action against foreign nationals deemed a threat to national security. Unlike the other Alien and Sedition Acts, which were later repealed or expired, the Alien Enemies Act remains in effect today under 50 U.S.C. §§ 21-24.
Throughout history, the law has been invoked in times of war. During the War of 1812, it was used to detain and deport British nationals.
In World War I, President Woodrow Wilson utilized it against German citizens living in the U.S. Similarly, in World War II, the law played a role in the internment of Japanese, German, and Italian nationals. While it has not been widely applied in recent history, it was referenced in national security discussions following the 9/11 attacks.
Because its application is tied to a formal state of war, its use is limited, and any modern attempt to expand its scope—such as for immigration enforcement—would likely face legal challenges. While originally crafted in an era of early American conflicts, the law’s broad presidential authority remains a subject of debate.
In January, right after assuming office, the administration declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, deploying troops to secure the border and labeling certain cartel organizations as foreign terrorist organizations. Efforts to end birthright citizenship were also initiated.
A new poll shows that most Americans support President Trump’s immigration policies. His efforts to curb illegal immigration—including increased arrests and deportations of criminal migrants—earned him his highest approval rating among seven policy areas surveyed in a CNN poll released Wednesday. Trump received a 51% approval rating on immigration, a seven-point increase from any point during his first term.
The main focus is on Tren de Aragua (TDA). TDA is a violent criminal gang that originated in Venezuela and has since expanded its operations across Latin America and beyond. Initially formed in the early 2000s within Venezuela’s Tocorón prison, the gang has grown into a powerful transnational criminal organization involved in drug trafficking, human trafficking, extortion, and contract killings.
An official announcement, expected potentially by Friday, has seen its timing shift as officials put the finishing touches on the details.
The Sorry State of U.S. Cities Is a Choice—A Really Bad One
The Greater Tokyo Area contains around 40 million people—roughly as many residents as in the entire state of California—all living within a region the size of Los Angeles County. As you’ve undoubtedly heard, Tokyo runs amazingly well for such a mammoth urban environment. The transportation system is world class. The neighborhoods offer a great quality of life with numerous cultural amenities, small businesses galore, and loads of affordable and delicious food. The streets are simultaneously busy and surprisingly quiet, all within a short walk. Crime is exceptionally low. There are very few destitute or mentally ill people on the streets. Residents are exceedingly polite, and the entire city is incredibly clean.
Having just returned from a family visit to the capital city and other parts of Japan, Tokyo’s charms and advantages are impossible to miss. Although every major city has potential downsides in terms of high housing costs, insufficient jobs offering good wages, a dearth of children, loneliness, or other social issues, Tokyo really is an urban success story. Cities everywhere around the world, and especially in the United States, could learn a thing or two from the world’s largest and best managed metropolis.
It’s important to recognize that Tokyo is not a utopia. It’s a city that works well and is highly livable for its residents due to very practical and wise policy decisions carried out by municipal authorities, businesses, and citizens. These are decisions that can be replicated by urban leaders running other cities with wildly different populations, economic models, and cultural attributes.
Tokyo’s urban success is a choice—not an immutable trait emerging from its location, history, or people.
Compare Tokyo to the current condition of many large U.S. cities like New York, L.A., Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, and Philadelphia, which are a fraction of the size of the Japanese capital yet still the most populated metro regions in America. Not to knock these places unfairly (I live in Baltimore which is both great and has numerous unaddressed social and economic problems, believe me), but would anyone seriously say that America’s biggest metropolises are living up to their full potential? Are America’s largest cities relatively easy to live and work in, with good transportation options, solid jobs, opportunities for small businesses to thrive, and mostly crime-free and socially stable neighborhoods?
Not by a long shot.
For some, mostly wealthier residents, big American cities can be a delight. People with money can afford to isolate themselves in the best parts of town with spacious apartments or houses and keep out most of the bad stuff that afflicts middle- and working-class families much more acutely. Unfortunately, many American cities today are far too expensive for normal families to live in, with poor public infrastructure, shoddy schools, tons of social problems, and extremely high levels of crime compared to many other developed cities in the world—and even within America itself.
So, why does Tokyo work so well while American cities seem to languish in comparison?
People often chalk it up to two major differences: Japan’s collectivist culture and demographic homogeneity versus America’s individualist culture and strong diversity. These are difficult factors to measure with precision but certainly cultural and population differences matter greatly in terms of the relative success or failure of our respective cities. Tens of millions of people in the Tokyo area who are mostly polite, respectful of others, diligent, punctual, and tidy don’t just emerge from nowhere—they are inculcated with these values from childhood through their families, schools, peer groups, and work environments. Likewise, even as immigration policies are changing given the country’s aging population and labor shortages, Japan is still full of people who are mostly ethnically Japanese which surely makes it easier to increase cohesion and decrease social friction. Both of these national characteristics provide clear advantages for urban development in a place like Tokyo.
The average big American city is Tokyo’s opposite. Although Japanese visitors often marvel at the freedom, commerce, and individuality of our laissez-faire urban environments, American cities tolerate (or actively encourage) far more social disorder and dysfunction than any city in Japan would accept. Think “no-go” crime areas, widespread littering, people bothering strangers on sidewalks and public transportation, crazy drivers, unsafe parks, open drug use, and street encampments of homeless people.
Rather than being well-managed places for people to work and live in safely and affordably—with solid municipal governance, good public services, and thriving private businesses—too many American cities are failed ideological projects that drastically underserve their residents.
As is the case with many of our national dilemmas, politics is at the root of our urban ills. The particular political failures in America’s cities are almost entirely due to bad governance by supposedly “pro-urban” Democrats. Most large American cities are one-party environments (65 of the largest 100 cities are run by Democratic mayors) with often corrupt or sclerotic bureaucracies and status quo institutions that block necessary change and ignore decades of mounting economic and social problems.
It’s not enough for mayors and city council members to simply throw up their hands and say crime, poverty, crumbling infrastructure, and revenue problems in urban America are outside their control and there’s not much they can do to improve things given these structural factors. This is a political choice—and a dodge.
To make better choices and improve life for all Americans in our cities, urban leaders and residents who vote for these public officials need more sustained attention to three primary goals:
1. U.S cities must eliminate or drastically reduce crime, social disorder, drug use, and homelessness within their boundaries. This is a prerequisite for all other urban improvements. Tax-paying residents and businesses will not stay in neighborhoods or commercial districts that are unsafe and unclean. Residents, business owners, and customers do not want crime-ridden and sordid commercial areas, public parks, cultural districts, schools, subways, commuter trains, and buses. If you want to improve urban life and business activity over the long term—clean up the cities and get rid of the crime and drugs. Stop coddling miscreants and accepting social disorder as a normal part of urban life. These are political choices not natural conditions.
2. U.S. cities must make it easier to build more affordable housing and public infrastructure. Big municipal projects are serious and difficult undertakings. But if city and state rules, regulations, and incumbent activist or community groups constantly block or delay any and all building of new housing, energy infrastructure, and mass transit in urban areas, U.S. cities will never be in a position to deliver a better quality of life for their residents. Ezra Klein nicely outlined the negative consequences of these political impediments in his most recent column on abundance policies:
The Second Avenue Subway project in New York City was the most expensive subway project, by kilometer, that the world has ever seen. Has New York reformed its policies to make the next expansion easier and cheaper? No, it hasn’t. Did the decades of delay and the billions of cost overruns on Boston’s Big Dig change how Massachusetts builds? Not really. California has the worst housing problem in the country. The state has 12 percent of the country’s population, 30 percent of its homeless population, and 50 percent of its unsheltered homeless population. Has this undeniable failure led to California building more homes today than it was building a decade ago? No.
Again, these are choices by urban political leaders, not static conditions that can’t be changed.
3. U.S. cities must increase internal political competition and states need to reduce the “blue-red” partisan mentality that divides urban and non-urban populations. When there is no real competition in urban politics, except between ideological factions within one political party, there is no incentive for leaders to change much in terms of governance or delivery of services for citizens. One-party rule is the basis for stagnation and status quo bias in urban America. Cities need to reform their municipal political systems to break the unchecked power of Democrats (mostly) and encourage more Republican, non-partisan, and independent candidates to run for office. The competition of ideas for improving cities between candidates of different political backgrounds will help to bring up issues and policy suggestions that may be under-examined or ignored by incumbent one-party leaders. It also gives more representation to residents with diverse political beliefs.
Likewise, states, big cities, and surrounding county governments need to take the lead in rejecting artificial divides between urban and non-urban populations. The “blue state/red state” and “blue city/red small town” dichotomy that permeates national politics doesn’t help either side of the line. Small-town and rural voters tend to resent the power of big urban centers while urban voters tend to resent the lack of attention paid by states to the specific problems they face dealing with much larger populations and more complex social challenges. This is often needless and counterproductive conflict exploited by selfish political parties. State politics should seek to improve life for residents in all of these environments and encourage people to recognize the contributions of different parts of their state—cities and small towns alike.
American cities will never develop exactly like Tokyo, nor should they try to do so. But they can take inspiration from the practical decisions and successes of Tokyo and other urban areas by first recognizing that the decrepit state of many American cities is a choice—a really bad one that should be rejected in favor of decisions that can help improve life for people from all walks of life, regardless of wealth or power.
I think it was in Ezra’s article that I read an amazing statistic about Tokyo.
Two people working for min wage full time can afford to live in a midrange 2 bedroom apartment in most places in Tokyo.
When I do the math using US wages, 2x min, times 40, times 4 weeks, minus SS taxes, times a third which is the most anyone should spend on a place to live, I come up with $669 dollars a month. That’s for a midrange apartment, not the cheapest. In an extremely safe clean city.
When I do the math backwards an average apartment in NYC is $4,000. A couple would need a min wage of $41 per person to afford the same, and eliminate almost all crime, homelessness, drug use, etc.
It is worth pondering why European cities used to work like Tokyo but now look more like American cities. Not the worst American cities but probably the mid-range. It was the mayor of London that said something like crime and terrorism is a necessary component of city life and people should just accept that. At any rate, crime is out of control and I think no-go areas is a term coined in France. I don’t know if they have single party government but they have made much the same bad choices as American cities with the same results. American drivers may seem crazy to Japanese but they are sane compared to Europeans. Rome is completely insane though I have been told that Athens is worse. The urban-rural divide is as bad if not worse. Urban disorder is rampant though of a somewhat different character than American disorder-more ideological lunacy than clinical lunacy.
An IRS tax examiner went on the record with O’Keefe Media Group and blew the whistle on the agency.
“We can’t do anywhere close to what the American people think we can,” David Nelsen, Tax Examining Technician for the IRS, told James O’Keefe. “We have very antiquated systems. They aren’t integrated. We’re basically handcuffed.”
David Nelson said there has been virtually no funding to improve anything at the agency.
“There’s been no funding for decades to try to improve anything,” Nelsen said. “When funding is provided, it’s put towards little Band-Aid issues instead of the big problem of the whole.”
“We also have very antiquated software. We use a software called Integrated Data Retrieval System (IDRS),” Nelsen added.
David Nelsen said the outdated software has led to a bloated workforce and delays in tax processing.
“We could probably reduce the size of the IRS substantially with changes, programs, a centralized inventory system, replacing IDRS,” he said.
Last month the IRS fired 6,000 employees as President Trump works to reduce the federal workforce.
The IRS is planning to cut up to 50% of its workforce.
“I’m not afraid of losing a career,” Nelson said. “I’ll fall on the sword if it means I can help the American people and help everyone else at the IRS who are doing their jobs.”
Oliver Stone posted on X on 3/11 his 2022’s views on the Ukraine-Russia war as well as Jeffrey Sach’s “Geopolitics of Peace” speech before the EU on 2/19. Sachs lays out the neocon foreign policy and NATO expansionism of the past 30 years that initiated no-win wars. Words of wisdom from peacemakers Stone and Sachs. My quibble with Stone, whose filmmaking especially “JFK” I hold in high esteem, is his unfortunate promotion of climate change. Hasn’t it occurred to him that the #1 reason exposing why the climate change agenda is fraudulent is that the largest emitter of carbon, the US military, is excluded from policies proposed to fix the alleged crisis.
No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.”
— Samuel Adams, 1775
So true. It was said in different ways by different founders of America. Some said that without morality, freedom was doomed. However you define morality, it includes a sense of self-responsibility and individualism whereby you respect the same in others. Morality and individualism go hand in hand, just like the Bill of Rights implies individualism, and vice-versa.
Over the last several generations especially, American culture has morphed from individualism into amorality, subjectivism, and the kind of “nonjudgmentalism” that inevitably seems to lead to heightened restrictions by government. The cultural experts start by saying: “Don’t worry about morality, anything goes,” and the government ends it all by saying, “Leave morality up to us. We’ll decide what’s right, and what’s wrong.” Because if people eschew the responsibility of objective judgment, then you better believe others will pick up the task for you.
You cannot live independently, and in freedom, without thinking. If you won’t think for yourself — well, you get the spectacle of Joe Biden and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC and those shrews on The View doing your thinking for you. And having their idiocy codified into law.
Most of the people that most of us rely on today for intelligence, “expertise” and wisdom in the affairs of man have no remote grasp of what I just wrote. And they don’t wish for you to understand it, either. Because the moment you do understand the value and power of independent thinking, their whole enterprise is overthrown. But not a moment sooner.
Regarding environmentalism, a reader wrote the following on my Facebook thread, in response to my article criticizing the Biden regime for imposing electric vehicles and stoves on the population, rather than leaving it to market forces and individual judgment:
As much as we want to make fun of the government, we shouldn’t attack electric vehicles.
Would you agree that there is no natural function within capitalism to take care of the environment?
Even Ayn Rand was not an anarchist.
I am not attacking electric vehicles. I am attacking the government for gradually outlawing fossil fuels — by force. If electric vehicles were as great as the Biden regime insists — or even as great as you claim — they would not need the protection of government force to create a mass market. Rest assured, the mass market would come about naturally and drive down prices. There’s a reason why electric vehicles are not ready for market, at least on a wide scale. They are not up to the job that fossil fuels are. That’s just a fact.
I don’t agree with the argument that “capitalism cannot keep the environment safe.” This is nothing more than the Communist/fascist excuse for taking over the whole economy. “If we don’t take it over, and mandate electric vehicles, etc., then the world will end.” If we EVER have to depend on people like the Communists, fascists or American politicians to save us, then — believe me — we were not capable of being saved. I have more trust in the market — in real people, the ones who eventually correct themselves (unlike unaccountable statists and politicians) — than the elites running the World Economic Forum. Good grief. I can’t even believe we need to have this discussion on a thread like this. Collectivism over capitalism — really? Have you heard of the Soviet Union? Look at how the United States economy (and culture) have degenerated since we have developed more and more central planning, starting in earnest during the New Deal and growing (with occasional pauses, as in the Reagan years a little bit) ever since.
It’s a false alternative to suggest: “You’re against the benefits and innovation of electric cars if you don’t support government environmental policies from the central planners.” B.S.!!!! It’s precisely because I SUPPORT innovation, progress and market forces that I want more and more capitalism (ideally, unhampered capitalism). Read not just Ayn Rand (and early Alan Greenspan), but also the brilliant Henry Hazlitt and especially Ludwig von Mises. Also, honest thinkers out there, please see George Reisman’s “Capitalism”; Reisman was a student of von Mises, I believe. The case has been made and won, both theoretically and in practice. Idiots who turn environmental causes into their own form of urban/suburban religion have nothing of substance to offer.
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I sure HOPE he has an enemies list. Any enemy of the Constitution and individual rights deserves what’s coming to them. The top offenders should be tried for treason.
The election of Donald Trump was a magnificent event. We should continue to celebrate. Election 2024 reminds us: Good will always triumph over evil, so long as the good steps out and asserts itself. But we must remember, this is still a war. The bad guys view this as a defeat of one battle, not a defeat in war. Not all the people who voted for Kamala are evil. But anyone who voted for her and actually thinks she was a good candidate must be pretty depraved. Millions of Americans are lost, or worse. So we are not out of the woods. Trump and all who seek to advance his agenda of less government, lower taxes, a strong military and actual borders — they are all in mortal danger. The Deep State is capable of anything. Media and academia are rotten to the core, more dishonest than state-run media in a dictatorship. We have much to overcome. The war continues, and the battles have only begun.
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A new analysis of former President Joe Biden’s use of autopens again raised the question: Who, exactly, was running the country?
The fact that virtually every document Joe “signed” as prez, on top of everything else we know about his mental decline, seems the final proof that the buck wasn’t stopping with him.
The Heritage Foundation dove deep on official documents from Biden’s time in office and found that nearly all bore the robot’s signature; the chief exception was the one dropping his bid for re-election.
Which raises the question: What did the president even know about what he was signing?
Fine, other presidents sometimes use the autopen, but none has shown the same symptoms of senility and dementia — issues we now know plagued Biden from his first days in the Oval Office.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has publicly named at least one Biden executive order (mandating a pause on liquid natural gas exports) that went out the door with the president having a fundamentally incorrect idea what the order actually did.
What other orders did Biden “sign” under similar misunderstandings?
Were there any orders he never saw at all?
And who was actually deciding what got signed?
Consider the flurry of left-pleasing executive orders in Biden’s final weeks in office — a blitzkrieg that supposedly originated with a man who months earlier on national TV had revealed himself to be incapable of basic argument or even recalling simple facts.
Thanks to the determined professional incuriosity of our journalist class throughout Biden’s decline, it’s likely impossible to ever be sure just who called which shots.
That White House, however decisions got made, gave America a string of disasters: an open border, Bidenflation and runaway federal debt, the Afghan bugout debacle, wars in Europe and the Middle East.
A Delaware Wave reader writes, “I hate to admit this, but I feel like my second grader’s mistakes and blunders are a reflection on me, as if I have somehow bungled his upbringing. Obviously, I’m as ashamed to feel this way as I am ashamed to admit it.” She signed her note, “anonymous.”
I responded to the reader thus: Let’s get right to the point: If you are secure within yourself, then you will view your child’s mistakes simply as mistakes, not necessarily as reflections of yourself. You’ll try to help him identify, correct and learn from his mistakes.
Apparently you are not secure with yourself. You want to instantly “make” him OK, because if you can’t, then somehow you’re not OK. You’ve obviously got your own problems, as your “signature” suggests, but the real damage here is to your boy: You’re sending him the message that his well-being is connected to your own sense of security, rather than to his happiness. The fact that this embarrasses you is at least a small step in the right direction.
The compulsion to turn out “the perfect child” is usually fueled by two factors. One is the parents’ tendency to take the child’s development — or lack of development — personally. This leads a child to focus not on what he wants to do, but more on pleasing others. As an adult, this emotional problem will manifest as trying to gratify others instead of trying to please himself. It’s neurotic and unhealthy, and it distracts him from trying to excel without the added pressure of making everybody else happy. Any success that is achieved will not be very rewarding, and will be hard to sustain. This is often the reason why many talented and gifted people, despite their already impressive accomplishments, exhibit psychological symptoms such as drug or alcohol abuse to cope with their anxiety.
The other reason for this “perfect child” syndrome is the unspoken philosophy behind most education. Public and private schooling in our society is generally based on a classroom model in which “socializing” the child to the “group” is deemed more important than training the individual to use his or her mind confidently. Some home-schooling and Montessori educational approaches focus less on “socializing,” and have been proven to turn out kids who score better on standardized tests and generally develop greater intellectual self-confidence, faring better than those who are taught to fit in as “good little citizens.”
If three-year-old Johnny isn’t interacting with other children the way his three-year-old neighbor is, a rational parent will NOT see this as an indication that he must be shoved into a “special” social group where, more often than not, nothing more than bad manners and germs abound. The rational parent will encourage the child to reason and observe both himself and the social and natural world around him. Socializing should be a consequence of good intellectual development, not a cause. A healthy child will eventually want to socialize, and not with just anyone. He or she will choose friends for mindful, objectively sound reasons.
Parents are advised to do two things. First, check their assumptions about educational philosophies and what really motivates them to have their kids attend certain schools. Second, remember that kids are autonomous, independent beings with minds of their own. Of course they must be guided and sometimes even told what to do, but at the same time, this guidance must be geared toward what’s best for the child; not for the parents’ egos. Even young children make choices, and in most cases their errors are not personal attacks on their parents. The parenting process should be beneficial for both parent and child, but in any conflict between what’s best for the child and what’s best (or feels best) for the parent, the child must prevail.
Dear anonymous reader, you need to set aside your fragile ego. Foster in your boy a well-trained, self-respecting mind, along with the attitude that the world is a potentially knowable and happy place. This training and respect must be for HIS benefit and development, not yours. This is the greatest and only truly long-term contribution any parent can make.
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THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 