Is Jexodus a real thing?

The New Neo Posted on by

Seems possible, although it’s difficult to know how widespread it is:

Jewish voters furious at Democrats’ defense of Rep. Ilhan Omar say they’re done with the party that has held their support for generations.

“We felt we had a home there,” said Mark Schwartz, the Democratic deputy mayor of solidly blue Teaneck, NJ. “And now we feel like we have to check our passports.”…

Mark Dunec, a consultant in Livingston, NJ who ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2014, says, “I’m physically afraid for myself and for my family,” adding, “I see my own party contributing to the rise of anti-Semitism in the United States.”

The reference in the title of this post is to this movement, a sort of #WalkAway for Jews, which has been labeled fake by the Trump opposition (much as WalkAway itself was originally attributed to Russian bots). This article at Vox by good old Matthew Yglesias, for example, sports the headline “‘Jexodus,’ the fake departure of American Jews from the Democratic Party, explained: It’s not happening, but it’s fun to pretend.” One reads it in vain to discover some facts about this purported fakeness. But one looks in vain.

Now, it certainly may be that Jexodus amounts to nothing much in terms of numbers. That wouldn’t surprise me—because, as we know, a mind is a difficult thing to change, and party loyalty is very very strong, especially for identity groups with long traditions of being part of one party or another. But that doesn’t make something fake or “fun to pretend”—although when you have no facts about a group, like Yglesias seems to have no actual facts about how many people are part of Jexodus right now, it’s “fun to pretend” that you do, especially if you’re writing propaganda of the “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” variety.

As far as I can see from looking at Yglesias’ article, his reasoning for saying it’s a fake movement is that Jews have previously been loyal to the Democrats. Then he also proceeds to say that long-term trends for Jewish allegiance to the party have been in the downward direction. He also manages to write the entire piece without referencing the fact that one of the things that has sparked this is the very very recent post-2018-election doinsg by Ilhan Omar and the party’s defense of her remarks. The only time he mentions those remarks is this:

The contention that Jews should vote Republican because Republicans are stronger backers of the Israeli government isn’t identical to the “dual loyalties” issue that got Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in trouble earlier this months, but it’s not entirely unrelated either.

Oh, so Jews are not allowed to have interests in Israel? And actually, the contention is that Jews should consider leaving the Democratic Party not just because Democrats don’t support Israel anymore, but because they have supported anti-Semitism now. Obama certainly showed a lack of support for Israel (and a real detestation for Netanyahu) compared to previous presidents, but he never (to the best of my recollection, anyway) publicly mouthed any anti-Semitic rhetoric, and things like that smiling photo of him with Farrakhan were suppressed for a long time.

Omar, however, is quite up-front about her anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments, although she’s tried to backtrack a tiny bit (a very tiny bit). Her statement just may have gotten the attention of a significant number of Jewish voters, and that doesn’t have anything to do with dual loyalty.

So, is Jexodus a real thing? I have no idea. As I’ve written before, Jews are such a tiny percentage of the electorate, and are clustered in such reliably and overwhelmingly Democratic strongholds, that they can probably be safely ignored by the Democratic Party except in very very close races—and except for the fact that they donate disproportionately to the Party. If the donors start running away in significant numbers, that will be getting some attention from Democrats.

To know AOC is to not love her

The New Neo Posted on by

Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is becoming less popular over time:

A March 15 Gallup poll, for example, found that just 31 percent of Americans view Ocasio-Cortez favorably, compared to 41 percent who view her unfavorably. It appears that as more people have gotten to know the congresswoman, the less they like her. The last time Gallup surveyed AOC’s favorable rating was back in September 2018, prior to her election to Congress, when 50 percent of respondents had no opinion or had never heard of her. That number has shrunk to just 29 percent over the past several months as the congresswoman has aggressively made a name for herself on Capitol Hill.

Gallup’s finding are in line with those of a Fox News poll of registered voters conducted in February, which found that Ocasio-Cortez had a favorable rating of just 26 percent, and an unfavorable rating of 39 percent (-13). In that poll, 34 percent of respondents didn’t offer an opinion or said they’d never heard of AOC.

Regarding the title of this post, here’s the reference:

Has anyone else noticed a strange thing about Google lately?

The New Neo Posted on by

As you might imagine, I do a lot of searches on Google. Say what you will about Google’s politics, but I’ve long preferred it as a search engine. In the past, if you chose your search terms very carefully—and I tried to do that—you could really narrow things down and find what you wanted quite quickly.

But I’ve noticed in the past couple of months, although I’m not sure when it began, that no matter how specific I try to be in my searches, the results are very generic. That makes them a lot less helpful.

Is anyone else having a similar problem? Has anyone else noticed a change like that?

It wasn’t just some Pelosi statement: the Democrats intend to give 16-year-olds the vote

The New Neo Posted on by

I wrote a post yesterday about Nancy Pelosi’s statement, “I myself have always been for lowering the voting age to 16…I think it’s really important to capture kids when they’re in high school…”

But today I want to emphasize that this was not just some isolated statement of Pelosi’s. While I very much doubt that Pelosi actually has been in favor of this for long, much less “always,” she most definitely did not just think of it when she made the statement last Thursday.

In fact, this is part of a movement within the Democratic Party. The question recently came up for a vote in the House on March 6, as an amendment to the Democrats’ For the People Act, a vast piece of “voting-reform” legislation otherwise known as H.R.1. There was quite a bit of criticism from the right about that bill at the time (see, for example, this and this), but most of it seemed to focus on aspects other than voting for 16-year-olds.

That amendment didn’t become part of the bill. But 126 Democrats (and one Republican, Michael Burgess of Texas) voted in favor of the amendment to have 16-year-olds vote in federal elections. That’s a majority of the Democrats in the House. So right now the Democrats didn’t have the votes to add this, but a very substantial majority of them were in favor of it, and not just the youngsters.

This needs to be taken very very seriously. I believe they are intent on doing it in a few years, as the party veers ever more leftward—if they ever get control of House, Senate, and the Presidency. The only way they can be stopped, other than voting them out of office, would be a constitutional amendment saying, for example, that the voting age in federal elections can be raised above 18 but not lowered below it.

Could such an amendment pass? I don’t know, but it better happen soon or it could be too late. It takes a long time to pass an amendment, as well. At present, the vast majority of Americans are not in favor of 16-year-olds voting: “The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that just 17% of Likely U.S. Voters favor lowering the legal national voting age from 18 to 16. Seventy-four percent (74%) are opposed.”

How long will that last? The Democrats are beginning to try to norm the idea and get us all used to it. Just as an example, there was this in the WaPo from a year ago, in which the case is being made for the benefits of lowering the voting age:

There are two good reasons to reduce the voting age. First, it is likely to help young people establish the habit of voting lifelong. Second, as my recently published research shows, it makes their parents more likely to vote as well.

I don’t give a rat’s patootie about either. I’m in favor of protecting people’s right to vote if they are non-felon citizens. They shouldn’t have to leap over extraordinary hurdles or face great obstacles to voting, either. But other than that, it’s their decision, as well as their responsibility. Adults are adults, and they don’t need to be coaxed into voting. Children shouldn’t be voting. The idea that children should be allowed to vote in order to make voting a habit, and or in order to coax their reluctant parents into voting, holds zero weight with me.

The Democrats feel, of course, that this entire enterprise will result in an enormous political advantage for them. And so it might. But it is also absurd and ill-conceived on its face. But don’t make the mistake of not taking it seriously.

[NOTE: I wondered who Burgess of Texas is, and why he was the sole Republican voting for it. So I looked it up, and here is his reason, apparently:

Those who pay taxes should have a voice in our democracy. As a teen, I worked & paid taxes. This week I voted for an amdt that would give young adults the right to vote – it failed by a wide margin. I support policies that encourage work & this could be part of the conversation.

Oh really, Rep. Burgess? As the author of the article where I found that quote says:

What about those who don’t pay taxes? What about those who work but don’t make enough to pay taxes? Let’s have that conversation.

No, we won’t be having that conversation. But Burgess’s reasoning appears extremely flawed, to say the least.]

Better eat your eggs quickly…

The New Neo Posted on by

…before they decide they’re not good for you again.

That article, about the back-and-forth and back-and-forth on eggs and cardiovascular health, illustrates what’s wrong with most nutritional research in humans. Way too many uncontrolled variables. A reliance on self-reports.

No wonder the results are so contradictory.

Some people think they have the answers. But even a lot of the people who are trying desperately to eat healthfully have trouble figuring out what that might entail. Everyone else has given up and shrugged.

Some people eat whatever they please. Some of them live a long and happy life; some don’t. Some people restrict themselves rigorously. Some of them live a long and happy life; some don’t.

I’m not a huge egg fan. But I like them now and then. I especially like deviled eggs, but what a pain they are to make. I’ve read about a thousand articles on the best way to peel hard-boiled eggs, and yet I’ve never found a foolproof method.

New Zealand reacts by calling for more gun bans

The New Neo Posted on by

I really don’t see how this reaction will have any real effect on curbing violence:

The estimated quarter of a million gun owners across this largely quiet, peaceful South Pacific country, many of them dedicated hunters, are bracing for what are likely to be significant reforms to New Zealand’s firearm laws. Leaders have hinted the changes will impact the proliferation and availability of semiautomatic weapons in particular.

The changes, agreed to in principle by the country’s coalition government Monday – just 72 hours after the deadliest act of gun violence in New Zealand history – put the country in line with others that have taken swift action following tragedy within their borders. Details of the changes will be announced within the week, and must be passed by parliament…

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern labeled the massacre “the worst act of terrorism on our shores” and immediately promised swift action, calling for gun laws to be changed. Her declarations have been celebrated by many in New Zealand, some of whom had no idea that military-style semiautomatic weapons were so prolific in a country famously known for its extremely low murder rate.

Let’s pause for a moment to scratch our heads in collective wonderment. I believe that even before my political change, even back when I was what I then considered to be a typical liberal, I would have found that last sentence rather odd. It seems to me that logic would dictate that if “military style semiautomatic weapons” (whatever “style” might mean) are so prolific in a country famous for its low murder rate, then the presence of military style semiautomatic weapons is unlikely to be the cause of a high murder rate. Plenty of other factors come into play.

Now, if New Zealand banned only that sort of weapon—however such weapons might ultimately be defined—it probably wouldn’t stop people from arming themselves, and so whatever deterrent value an armed populace presents would still be operating. But gun control enthusiasts rarely stop at one sort of weapon. Their goals are much bigger.

It goes almost without saying that criminals and terrorists will continue to get weapons, if not legally then illegally. But that doesn’t seem to be an argument that convinces gun control enthusiasts of much of anything, either. New Zealand may be just beginning to go down a well-worn road:

The Port Arthur massacre in Australia in 1996 shook the continent, changed gun legislation the Pacific nation, strictly restricting self-loading rifles and other weapons.

A buyback program destroyed thousands of guns and high-capacity magazines. A shooting at a primary school in Dunblane, Scotland, that same year also prompted a campaign for tighter restrictions on firearms, which led to a virtual ban on civilian ownership of handguns.

Great, just great. Disarm law-abiding citizens entirely, so that now the whole country is vulnerable. It’s not my impression that Scotland was especially riven by terrorism or violence to begin with, so this may not come back to haunt them. But it sounds mighty dangerous to me to disarm law-abiding people in general.

And then there’s the extreme of registering all firearms:

New Zealand, like the United States, also has no requirement for gun owners to register their weapons, unlike many countries in the world.

Again, there are ways to get weapons outside any system that requires registration. What’s more, registration is sometimes used by tyrannical regimes to perform a sweeping confiscation of a citizenry’s guns, in particular of the guns of these they deem enemies [see NOTE II below]. The Founders understood the importance of an armed populace; many modern people have failed to heed the warnings of history.

The New Zealand article ends this way:

The government’s decision, he said, has been in part motivated by the frequency of mass shootings in the United States, which has among the most lax gun laws in the world.

“There is a baseline determination not to go down the American road,” he said.

That presupposes, of course, that the US has a terrible record of gun shootings, and that the number here per capita is extraordinarily high compared to that of other countries, at least other first world countries not undergoing civil war. Ah, but with so many things, it depends how you choose to crunch those numbers:

Even when we use coding choices that are most charitable to Lankford, such as excluding any cases of insurgencies or battles over territory, his estimate of the US share of shooters falls from 31 percent to 1.43 percent. It also accounts for 2.1 percent of murders, and 2.88 percent of their attacks. All these are much less than the United States’ 4.6 percent share of the population.

Of the 86 countries where we have identified mass public shootings, the US ranks 56th per capita in its rate of attacks and 61st in mass public shooting murder rate. Norway, Finland, Switzerland and Russia all have at least 45 percent higher rates of murder from mass public shootings than the United States.

[NOTE I: We have reason to believe that more gun bans, and then a reaction to those gun bans, are what the shooter wished. More specifically, I’m talking about some quotes I read from his manifesto, which I’m finding difficult to find right now because Googling for anything connected with gun rights and this shooter seems to only yield a slew of articles about how New Zealand is stepping up its gun control efforts in the wake of the killings. If I had more time I could find the quote, but it was about his desire to inflame and further polarize the debates about gun control, and to ultimately spark an actual war between right and left over this issue and other issues such as immigration (a hot war rather than a cold one).]

[NOTE II: The question of how (and how effectively) the Nazis used the Weimar republic’s gun registration laws—laws meant to protect the Jews, actually—to disarm the Jews of Germany, as well as to disarm any group the Nazis thought would be a threat, has caused an enormous amount of debate. I’m not going to be covering the issue in any depth in this particular post, but I find the side that says the Nazis used the law quite effectively to be far more convincing. It’s a long, involved, complex debate, but I refer you to this shorter and this longer article, and to this for a summary of the critiques. It’s pretty fascinating stuff, by the way.]

[NOTE III: See this for a discussion of the current state of gun laws in New Zealand.]

Seeing earth from space

The New Neo Posted on by

This experience must be enthralling:

After the groundbreaking test flight, we caught up with Moses to learn about what it was like to see the curvature of the Earth and experience weightlessness in actual space. We also wanted to know how she will use this flight to improve Virgin Galactic’s future customer experience. The company, which promises quick flights to the edge of space, has sold hundreds of tickets on the VSS Unity to paying customers. And as the chief astronaut instructor at Virgin Galactic, Moses will be responsible for training hopeful passengers for the flight she just experienced…

“I felt like the Earth was so beautiful, but even more so than you can describe or can be imagined. I happened to fly on a day where we had snow on the mountains in the southwestern United States. And I remember vividly that appearance of glistening white mountaintops and blue Pacific Ocean and the green of the Earth. I told someone the other day I felt like Earth was wearing her diamonds for us that day, because it was so, so glistening and sharp.

“It just took my breath away. It was amazing. I hope everyone can see it…

“You know the Earth was so curved and the ocean was so massive. I felt like we were just suspended with this God’s-eye view of the world. It was just sharp and beautiful…

“I do feel very much more connected to myself and the people around me and planet Earth. I’m one of those glass-half-full, people-are-good, Earth-is-lovely kind of people. And I feel that even more so now.”

I well remember when we first saw photos of earth taken from space. Even the photos were enough to give a little of that feeling.

Pelosi and the Democrats: the capturers in the rye

The New Neo Posted on by

Nancy Pelosi says [emphasis mine]:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) voiced her support on Thursday for lowering the federal voting age to 16, telling reporters during a press conference that doing so would be a boon to voter engagement in the U.S.

Pelosi said Thursday that lowering the voting age would drive interest in politics among younger Americans who are learning about the subject in high school. The Speaker said that changing the voting age to 16 would help drive a higher level of voter awareness and turnout.

“I myself have always been for lowering the voting age to 16,” Pelosi said. “I think it’s really important to capture kids when they’re in high school, when they’re interested in all of this, when they’re learning about government, to be able to vote.”

Defenders will say, of course, that she meant “capture” their interest, not the kids themselves or as voters for the Democratic Party. But of course, whatever her language, that is indeed the reason behind the proposal: to capture them as voters.

Because that is the only way in which the idea makes a particle of sense at all, and it makes a great deal of sense if your goal is Democratic power. A great, great deal.

But if your goal is actually to get mature, informed voters who can make mature, informed decisions, it is an absurdity on its face. Sixteen-year-olds are not allowed to do lots of things, have not reached majority, and are not functioning at the level one would like in order to make decisions for the polity as a whole. They are not even considered capable of making good decisions for themselves, much less for society. But that is certainly not Pelosi’s concern; indoctrination is, and at that the Democrats are very very good, and they know it.

Kids also don’t learn much about government these days compared to yesteryear. But hey, that’s a feature to Pelosi, not a bug.

And I wonder whether Pelosi really thinks it’s appropriate to allow people who are just learning about something to practice on us all? Hey, I vote for having new biology students learn by operating as surgeons on Pelosi! It would certainly spark the students enthusiasm for becoming doctors, wouldn’t it? Or lawyers, or anything at all really?

When my child was small, I used to joke with other mothers that children’s enthusiasm for helping parents with tasks was inversely proportional to their ability to actually be of competent assistance. Your two-year-old would love to help you paint that wall. Your sixteen-year-old often has better things to do.

Well, voting is a lot more complex of a decision than painting a wall. At least, it should be, although I think most people do it in kneejerk fashion. And most young people would do it that way, and be very susceptible to propaganda (which, I realize, is the idea behind Pelosi and the Democrats’ suggestion). It used to not matter all that much because the less-motivated young people didn’t vote in large numbers, but the Democratic Party has figured out ways to Get Out the Vote of the youngest and most ignorant and most easily-influenced among us.

Sorry, but I don’t think I say “sorry” too much

The New Neo Posted on by

What’s more, I don’t think I’ve ever personally known anyone who does.

Unlike this professor, who seems to think too many people (that is, too many women in particular) say “sorry” far too often. And she’s definitely not talking about the one exception that comes to my mind—the mea culpas of those attacked by the online SJW crowd:

Canadian sociologist Maja Jovanovic believes the “sorry”s we sprinkle through our days hurt us. They make us appear smaller and more timid than we really are, and they can undercut our confidence.

Jovanovic, who teaches at McMaster University and Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario, became interested in this topic when she attended a conference four years ago. The four women on a panel were, she says, “experts in their chosen fields. Among them, they had published hundreds of academic articles, dozens of books. All they had to do was introduce themselves. The first woman takes a microphone and she goes, ‘I don’t know what I could possibly add to this discussion’ … The second woman takes the microphone and says, ‘Oh my gosh, I thought they sent the email to the wrong person. I’m just so humbled to be here.’” The third and fourth women did the same thing…

Jovanovic found the outside world not so different: “Apologies have become our habitual way of communicating,” she says. Since then, she’s collected needless apologies from her colleagues and students. One stand-out? “My research assistant said ‘Sorry’ to the pizza delivery guy for his being late to her house,” says Jovanovic. “She said, ‘Oh my gosh, we live in a new subdevelopment. I’m so sorry. Did you have trouble finding this place?’”

We can eliminate the “sorry”s from our sentences — and still be considerate. “The next time you bump into someone,” Jovanovic says, “you could say, ‘Go ahead,’ ‘After you’ or ‘Pardon me.’” Similarly, during a meeting, Jovanovic says, “instead of saying, ‘Sorry to interrupt you,’ why not try ‘How about,’ ‘I have an idea,’ ‘I’d like to add’ or ‘Why don’t we try this.’” The idea is to be polite while not minimizing yourself.

I’m not the least bit sorry to say that I beg to differ. Did I say “beg”? No, I demand to differ. To lump together the obligatory polite and perfectly acceptable “sorry” with the stupidly self-deprecating foot-shuffling-hat-in-hand “sorry,” and to ignore the fact that we have too few real and sincere apologies for actual wrongdoing and too many fake apologies with the word “if,” in them, as well as too many show-trial-Twitter-mob-induced mea culpas for nothing, is to make a terrible muddle of this topic.

Perhaps it’s significant that Jovanovic is a Canadian. I’ve heard they are more polite than Americans, and perhaps “sorry” is more ubiquitous there.

Oh, and while I’m at it, I might as well mention that the old quote from Love Story, “love is never having to say you’re sorry,” is garbage. Au contraire. A good apology can really clear the air, if a person has done something wrong. It doesn’t solve everything, depending on the magnitude of the offense. But it’s unreasonable to imagine that anyone in a marriage will ever be perfect, and just owning up to it in a timely and sincere fashion goes a long long way towards repairing any damage.

The New Zealand massacre: a heroic non-victim and a cowardly perp

The New Neo Posted on by

Ever since the news of the New Zealand mosque killings, I’ve been wondering how the killer was stopped and captured. Various rumors have gone around, and I suppose that this story might be just another one, but it seems pretty detailed and I’ll assume it’s true.

The man, named Abdul Aziz, was worshiping at the mosque and heard a voice outside, looked out a window and saw a man with a “large gun” and saw two bodies. He immediately realized this man was probably a killer, and then Aziz did what he says “anyone” would have done but of course most people would not have done. He grabbed the most likely weapon at hand, a credit card machine (I have no idea how big that is) and ran outside with it:

Aziz said as he ran outside screaming, he was hoping to distract the attacker. He said the gunman ran back to his car to get another gun, and Aziz hurled the credit card machine at him…

The gunman returned, firing. Aziz said he ran, weaving through cars parked in the driveway, which prevented the gunman from getting a clean shot. Then Aziz spotted a gun the gunman had abandoned and picked it up, pointed it and squeezed the trigger. It was empty.

He said the gunman ran back to the car for a second time, likely to grab yet another weapon.

“He gets into his car and I just got the gun and threw it on his window like an arrow and blasted his window,” he said.

The windshield shattered: “That’s why he got scared.”

We have a few important elements here. One is Aziz’s quick thinking, and his use of distraction by doing something unexpected—yelling at and charging towards the attacker. Another is the fact that the perp seemed to be having some difficulty at that point with a jamming firearm or one out of ammunition (if the perp’s weapon had been working, Aziz might well be dead). Another is that Aziz seemed to know that he needed to weave rather than going in a straight line, and he was partially shielded by the cars in the parking lot; if he’d tried to do something similar within the mosque, he might indeed be dead. It’s fortunate for him, and for everyone else who survived, that the gunman made noise outside the mosque, giving an alert and speedy observor enough advance warning to prepare himself as best he could, and that a heavy object (the credit card machine) was around, and that he was strong enough to haul it and throw it.

A firearm would have been better, but Aziz made the most of what he had.

Another element that matters a good deal is that the perp seems to have been somewhat cowardly. He had the firepower, but he ran away. I’ve read that this can sometimes (certainly not always) be the case—that the perp believes the weapon gives him superpowers and that defiance from someone he sees as only a victim can take him unawares and turn the tables somewhat. But don’t count on it.

I also had wondered how the perp was ultimately captured:

He said the gunman was cursing at him, yelling that he was going to kill them all. But he drove away and Aziz said he chased the car down the street to a red light, before it made a U-turn and sped away. Online videos indicate police officers managed to force the car from the road and drag out the suspect soon after.

There’s some missing information there. Did someone call 911 and describe the car? How far did the perp get before being stopped?

This is another case in which first responders, however well-intentioned and trained, appear unable to get to the scene quickly enough to prevent carnage. That makes sense because a person with a gun can do a lot of damage very quickly in a disarmed crowd. So it seems up to those under attack to stop the perp in his tracks, and an unarmed person in that position has to be strong, quick, smart, inventive, courageous—and lucky.

Evidence found that the Ethiopian airliner’s nose was being pushed down

The New Neo Posted on by

The wreckage of the doomed Ethiopian flight of a Boeing 737 Max is starting to tell the tale:

A screwlike device found in the wreckage of the Boeing 737 Max 8 that crashed last Sunday in Ethiopia indicates the plane was configured to dive, a piece of evidence that helped convince U.S. regulators to ground the model, a person familiar with the investigation said late Thursday night…

The piece of evidence was a so-called jackscrew, used to set the trim that raises and lowers the plane’s nose, according to the person, who requested anonymity to discuss the inquiry.

A preliminary review of the device and how it was configured at the time of the crash indicated that it was set to push down the nose, according to the person, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the investigation.

The jackscrew, combined with a newly obtained satellite flight track of the plane, convinced the FAA that there were similarities to the Oct. 29 crash of the same Max model off the coast of Indonesia. In the earlier accident, a safety feature on the Boeing aircraft was repeatedly trying to put the plane into a dive as a result of a malfunction.

All airplane crashes are horrific tragedies. If this preliminary report turns out to be true, then both 737 Max crashes would be especially and ironically heartrending, because an element that was supposed to protect the planes would have ended up destroying them and everyone aboard.

More on that national emergency vote

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve noticed—around the blogosphere in general as well as on some comments at yesterday’s thread about the twelve Republican senators who voted to block Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the border—that quite a few people on the right are of the opinion that there was no excuse for voting against Trump’s declaration. The idea is that anyone who voted against what he did does not have the nation’s interests at heart, and that it’s clear and completely unequivocal that Trump’s declaration was totally legal.

I disagree somewhat. I happen to think that yes, Trump is allowed by law to do exactly what he did, and (as I wrote in yesterday’s post) that the correct action for Congress to take would be to repeal the act that gave him these powers, if they don’t like what he did. But they don’t want to do that, of course. Perhaps it’s too much work, perhaps it would be impossible to pass it, perhaps they want to keep the act in place so a future president can use it for things they want to see happen, perhaps all of the preceding. But that doesn’t change the fact that the correct approach would be to repeal the act and replace it with something more to their liking.

As for the legality of Trump’s declaration, Trump declared the national emergency under this act passed by Congress in 1976. Go to this previous post of mine and you’ll find a fairly lengthy discussion of how it works and whether his declaration conforms with that act. Here’s an excerpt:

The power of a president to declare a national emergency is a statutory one, enacted in 1976 to supersede a previous hodge-podge. Such a declaration needs to be renewed annually to be in effect, and Congress can revoke it “with either a joint resolution and the President’s signature, or with a veto-proof majority vote.”

Prior to the passage of that National Emergencies Act:

…[P]residents [had] asserted the power to declare emergencies without limiting their scope or duration, without citing the relevant statutes, and without congressional oversight. The Supreme Court in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer limited what a president could do in such an emergency, but did not limit the emergency declaration power itself.

Since the signing of that bill, there have been 42 national emergencies declared; most of them limited trade in various ways in accord with another act of Congress.

Under what conditions can a national emergency be declared? It’s pretty broad:

The Act authorized the President to activate emergency provisions of law via an emergency declaration on the conditions that the President specifies the provisions so activated and notifies Congress.

There are certain exceptions, but they don’t apply to the current case (one, for example, is regulating transactions in foreign gold and silver}. But Pelosi’s rhetoric aside, there are also 136 enumerated and relatively specific powers granted, and you can find a list of them here (written in December of 2018):

Unknown to most Americans, a vast set of laws gives the president greatly enhanced powers during emergencies. President Donald Trump’s threats to bypass Congress and secure funding for a wall along the border with Mexico by declaring a national emergency are not just posturing. The Brennan Center, building on previous research, has identified 123 statutory powers that may become available to the president when de [sic] declares a national emergency, including two that might offer some legal cover for his wall-building ambitions (10 U.S.C. 2808 (a) and 33 U.S.C. 2293 on our list…).

Here is 10 U.S.C. 2808(a):

Secretary of Defense, without regard to any other provision of law, may undertake military construction projects, and may authorize Secretaries of the military departments to undertake military construction projects, that are necessary to support such use of the armed forces.

And the one I consider more relevant, 33 U.S.C. 2293:

Secretary of the Army may terminate or defer any Army civil works project and apply the resources, including funds, personnel, and equipment, of the Army’s civil works program to authorized civil works, military construction, and civil defense projects that are essential to the national defense, without regard to any other provision of law.

Looking at that, I think it’s relatively straightforward that the president has very broad powers to declare national emergencies and that what Trump proposes to do—if he uses the Army’s civil works program—might be fully legal under 33 U.S.C. 2293, if the argument is accepted that the wall is essential to the national defense or if it is found to be an “authorized civil work.” Naturally, there will be a legal challenge that the wall and the immigration situation is not the sort of immediate and threatening emergency that would justify such a declaration, and/or that it’s unnecessary for national defense and/or not an authorized civil work.

In addition, there’s the question of whether Trump can use the military to do this; here’s a discussion of that. Suffice to say the answer is “maybe,” and the issue is likely to be settled in court, as well.

So, to summarize: I think that Trump has not exceeded his powers. But I also think that reasonable minds can differ on that, and furthermore it is a valid concern that this sets a bad precedent for future presidents to go further and actually exceed their powers. Then again, they don’t need Trump for that; they can do it quite handily on their own, and the way things are going, that will happen.

So those twelve Republican senators are neither crazy, nor secret Democrats, nor open borders advocates (although some are). Some are indeed classic RINOs who tend to vote with Democrats a lot of the time, but some generally are quite conservative (some are libertarian-leaning) and my sense is that they are sincerely interested in limiting presidential power. The horse may be long gone from the barn on limiting presidents, but I don’t think anything is served by declaring that these twelve are all part of a vast uniparty that’s the enemy of the people and of the right as a whole.

The real question is a philosophical/political one: if your opponent is going to fight dirty, how dirty must you fight in order to get ahead of him because you know he will do whatever it takes at the first opportunity? And is Trump really fighting dirty in this case by his national emergency declaration, or not? I think not, but I also think that reasonable minds can differ on that. And I think some of these senators have reasonable minds. But they just might be helping to hand victory to a party that has no such reservations about power and principle, and that is the big problem.