It’s about time: Trump wants to add more accountability to the visa system

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the plan:

The State Department said it was looking [at the 55 million visa holders] for indicators of ineligibility, including people staying past the authorized timeframe outlined in a visa, criminal activity, threats to public safety, engaging in any form of terrorist activity or providing support to a terrorist organization. …

The administration has steadily imposed more restrictions and requirements on visa applicants, including requiring them to submit to in-person interviews. The review of all visa holders appears to be a significant expansion of what had initially been a process focused mainly on students who have been involved in what the government perceives as pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel activity.

Officials say the reviews will include all visa holders’ social media accounts, law enforcement and immigration records in their home countries, along with any actionable violations of U.S. law committed while they were in the United States.

A visa is a privilege, and I have no problem with deporting people who violate that privilege.

When I read about these announcements the first thing that came to mind was 9/11. I distinctly recalled that many of the suicide hijackers/murderers exploited defects in the visa system, including the fact that some overstayed their visas and were not caught.

At the time, I was shocked that the visa system was so poorly administered with so many vulnerabilities, but now it doesn’t shock me; it seems par for the course. If you’re curious about the 9/11 perpetrators’ visa violations, please read this.

Some quotes:

Three [9/11] hijackers were known or knowable by intelligence authorities as al Qaeda terrorists in early 2000, but their biographical information was not fully developed and communicated to border authorities for watchlisting at U.S. consulates abroad (by the State Department) and at the border (by immigration and customs border inspectors). The travel plans of all three also were known or knowable in 2000, in part because of cooperation from Arab and Asian country intelligence services and border authorities. …

Three were carrying Saudi passports containing a possible extremist indicator present in the passports of many al Qaeda and other terrorists entering the United States as early as the first World Trade Center attack in 1993. This indicator had not been analyzed by the CIA, FBI, or our border authorities for its significance. …

Two hijackers were carrying passports that had been manipulated in a fraudulent manner. They contained fraudulent entry-exit stamps (or cachets) probably inserted by al Qaeda travel document forgers to hide travel to Afghanistan for terrorist training. …

Thirteen of the hijackers presented passports less than three weeks old when they applied for their visas, but the new passports caused no heightened scrutiny of their visa applications. Two hijackers lied on their visa applications in detectable ways, but were not further questioned about those lies. Two hijackers were interviewed for reasons unrelated to terrorism. Most simply had their applications approved and their passports stamped with a U.S. visa. Consular officers were not trained to detect terrorists in a visa interview. …

One of the two nonpilots admitted on business was granted a one-month stay; he, along with another of the nonpilot operatives, was in violation of immigration law for months before the attack. The one pilot who came in on a student visa never showed up for school, thereby violating the terms of his U.S. visa. Another of the pilots came in on a tourist visa yet began flight school immediately, also violating the terms of his U.S. visa. This pilot came in a total of seven times on a tourist visa while in school. In both cases, the pilots violated the law after their entry into the United States.

The following is especially relevant, I think:

On August 23, 2001, the CIA provided biographical identification information about two of the hijackers to border and law enforcement authorities. The CIA and FBI considered the case important, but there was no way of knowing whether either hijacker was still in the country, because a border exit system Congress authorized in 1996 was never implemented. One of the two overstayed his visa by less than six months. Without an exit system in place at the border tied to law enforcement databases, there was no way to establish with certainty that he remained in the United States. Thus, there was no risk that his immigration law violations would be visible to law enforcement, and there was no risk of immigration enforcement action of any kind.

It’s strange to look back so many years and recall how lax the system was – including the ability to walk right onto a plane without a TSA search. So many of our onerous TSA rules have been reactions to pre-9/11 errors – reactions that perhaps have thwarted or at least discouraged repeats of that terrible day, although there’s really no way to know and many people doubt it. The visa system, however, could obviously use quite a bit of tightening up, and this new directive aims to address that.

20 billion dollars for leftists through the EPA

The New Neo Posted on by

From Lee Zeldin, on the Inflation Reduction Act’s grants to the EPA:

And when Democrats had one-party rule in Washington, D.C., they passed this bill called the Inflation Reduction Act that had tens of billions of dollars to go out through EPA.

Well, EPA didn’t know how to spend tens of billions of dollars, so they decided to park $20 billion at an outside bank and have that bank send the money through eight pass-through entities.

All these NGOs—pass-through entities—were riddled with self-dealing and conflicts of interest, former Obama and Biden officials, Democratic donors, as you pointed out. And the EPA was a party to the account control agreement with those prime recipients.

But here’s the thing: when the money goes through the prime recipients to others, in many cases also pass-throughs, EPA is no longer a party to the account control agreement. EPA is losing oversight — by design, intentionally, these grant agreements and arrangements were set up to tie EPA’s hands behind its back.

Zeldin went on to say that it’s still not known exactly how the money was spent after it passed through the pass-through entities, but he aims to claw it back.

The Israeli left, the NY Times, and Netanyahu

The New Neo Posted on by

This Tablet article by Gadi Taub is terribly depressing, although nothing in it is new to me and nothing should be a surprise. I think it’s especially disheartening, though, because it puts it all together in fairly succinct fashion: the self-destructive fantasy world of the left, which in some leftists is a result of naive idealism that flies in the face of reality and in others is merely a cover for the lust for power and hatred of the right; and the continual willingness of media outlets such as The New York Times to serve leftist purposes (and to get awards for it). In post-10/7 Israel, which is the topic of the article, the hatred of the left for Netanyahu rivals any Trump derangement in the US.

Some excerpts follow:

October 7 presented the Israeli left with a daunting challenge: how to prevent the Hamas massacre from sounding the death knell of its most cherished dream, the so-called two-state solution. …

But how could the left leverage an event that showed its side was wrong in its fundamental assumptions about Israel’s neighbors against the right, whose position was vindicated? The answer is simple: Lay Oct. 7 at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s feet.

That was the tactic from the start. As the article points out, the New York Times has been pressed into the service of attacking Netanyahu and presenting him as a monster:

A recent example of this revisionism is an 11,000-word New York Times Magazine piece by Patrick Kingsley, Ronen Bergman, and Natan Odenheimer, titled “How Netanyahu Prolonged the War in Gaza to Stay in Power.” …

The piece puts forward a neat storyline that echoes the Israeli left’s articles of faith: Netanyahu could have ended the war with a hostage deal in April 2024. However, he keeps prolonging the war to satisfy the radical, irrational hawkish wing of this coalition, all to stay in power. The real reason Netanyahu is desperate to remain in office, the piece argues, is so that he can appoint a new attorney general and thereby quash his prosecution on corruption charges.

Only, there isn’t a single true link in this imaginary chain of political logic.

The article goes on to demolish every one of the points the left makes against Netanyahu – who of course isn’t perfect but is hardly guilty of the charges the left mounts. It’s well worth reading for an overview. But perhaps the most poignant and mendaciously twisted lie by the left regarding Netanyahu and the war is this:

But the piece’s most egregious deception is its distortion of the historical record regarding the responsibility for the immense intelligence failure that led to the Hamas invasion. Kingsley, Berman, and Odenheimer exonerate the security officials directly responsible and blame the man whom these officials didn’t bother to brief until after the attack was underway.

In the authors’ rendering, military and Shin Bet intelligence saw the attack coming, but Netanyahu refused to heed their warnings. …

Israel’s responsible adults, such as former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, the piece adds, “tried to reach Netanyahu, in a previously unreported effort to get the prime minister to read Saar’s findings,” to no avail. Netanyahu stubbornly ignored repeated, written warnings by the security establishment. Shin Bet head Ronen Bar also tried to convince Netanyahu that real danger was looming, the piece adds. Netanyahu turned a deaf ear to his warnings, too.

This is not a misinterpretation. It is a falsification of the record. … These officials were so confident that no danger from Gaza was imminent that, even after the signs of an impending invasion were accumulating during the night between Oct. 6 and 7, they dismissed them and left the soldiers in the perimeter sound asleep to be slaughtered in their beds by Hamas.

The security chiefs’ mutiny against civil authority persisted until 6:29 a.m. on Oct. 7, as they did not inform the minister of defense or the prime minister of what was happening throughout the night. We now know from the little we can glimpse of their considerations that they seemed to have been more worried about “miscalculation”—a euphemism for their fear that their hawkish boss would overreact to intelligence and start a war—than they were about an impending Hamas attack. …

We now know that IDF intelligence had the full Hamas plan of attack and that the intelligence brass dismissed it as “fantasy.” The women at the scouting centers watching the border up close, some of whom were slaughtered or taken hostage on Oct. 7, likewise warned of Hamas training in plain sight at the border fence. The confidence of the security chiefs in their mistaken assessment never wavered. They overruled this evidence, too.

They were far more worried about Netanyahu than about the slaughter.

The left clings to its delusions, because giving them up is too difficult and too filled with guilt and shame. As I’ve said before, a mind is a difficult thing to change – especially if it involves saying you were wrong.

The IDF moves on Gaza City

The New Neo Posted on by

Talks on the hostages continue, but Israel’s IDF is starting to move on Gaza City:

The IDF has begun the first steps of its invasion of Gaza City, IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Effie Defrin confirmed on Wednesday.

“Our forces already control the outskirts of the city,” he said.

Additionally, he confirmed that some 60,000 conscription letters will be sent out this week, with an additional 20,000 to be sent later this month.

In his statement, Defrin confirmed that the IDF is working to provide sufficient spaces for Gazan civilians to safely evacuate, as well as to receive aid and medical care.

Israeli intelligence has determined that the hostages are in Gaza City. I don’t know whether Hamas would be able to move them at this point, but I do know they’d be able to kill them – or more likely some of them, the better to torture the Israeli people and yet retain the value of having some living hostages. This would create even more turmoil in Israel than already exists, which is already plenty.

Hamas keeps talking about a partial deal – it worked well for them before, because they know that the hostages are exceedingly important to Israel. But so far Israel is holding firm to its insistence on getting all the remaining hostages – alive and dead – back in a single agreement. Hamas doesn’t want to do that for the obvious reason that its power resides in its keeping some of the hostages as bargaining chips, psychological torture for Israelis, and pressure on the Netanyahu government. But the threat to enter Gaza City and take over seems to have put some new pressure on Hamas.

Is the death of the Democratic Party greatly exaggerated?

The New Neo Posted on by

I keep reading that the Democrats are finito, on the ropes. My question: then why is the right fighting so hard to hold onto the House in 2026?

And why do I not know a single Democrat who has abandoned the party recently? I know it’s just anecdotal, but I know a great many Democrats, and not one has changed his or her mind or considers Republicans anything but racist and homophobic fascists who are bent on destroying Medicare and the like.

Now, granted, the majority of these people are in the older age category, which seems to be the most pro-Democrat demographic in the US (I can’t find where I read that, but I know I did recently; perhaps it was in some article discussing one of these polls?). But I also know quite a few middle-aged Democrats who haven’t changed their minds, either.

Democrats now do especially poorly among young men. Well, duuuh, they’ve had an anti-man message for quite some time now.

One thing seems to be true, though: a great many Democrats are unhappy with the party. But will they leave it? If they buy the demonization propaganda about the right, I doubt they will. For example, see this quote:

A major Democratic donor was more scathing: “Our party sucks. Our leadership sucks. Our message sucks. Why would anyone want to be a Democrat?”

Why, indeed? And yet he’s described as “a major Democratic donor.” Not a former donor or a former Democrat. He says “our” party, so he clearly considers himself a member. Can he answer his own question? If he were to do so, I bet it would be that Republicans are so very awful/evil that the Democrats must be supported no matter what.

The enormous fine imposed on Trump in the Letitia James civil case is overruled

The New Neo Posted on by

This was expected, but it’s still good to see:

An appellate court has thrown out the $500 million civil fraud penalty against President Donald Trump in the high-profile case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

The New York Appellate Division overturned the penalty, ruling the disgorgement was an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment. …

Trump took to Truth Social to declare a “total victory” and rail against James and the original trial judge, Arthur Engoron.

“TOTAL VICTORY in the FAKE New York State Attorney General Letitia James Case!” Trump wrote.

No, not total victory. The panel left intact the verdict, which was absurd and should also have been overturned (I’ve written many posts about it, for example this). But because the judges were split on the issue of liability itself, the Court of Appeals of New York will be hearing the case on that issue. If that doesn’t work out well for Trump, I assume it will probably go to SCOTUS.

The wheels of justice grind slow …

Is anti-Zionism anti-Semitism?

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s an old question. I agree with Brendan O’Neill when he writes this in response:

Is it anti-Semitic to criticise Israel? Of course not. No nation on Earth should be shielded from the brickbats or even the ridicule of the world’s citizens.

Is it anti-Semitic to rage day in, day out against Israel? To think of little else? To let this tiny state occupy your every waking thought? To call it uniquely barbarous, borderline demonic, a nation that lusts after blood like no other? To dream of its destruction? To traipse through the streets every week hollering for its obliteration? To call its citizens genocidal freaks and lunatics? To taunt them with memories of their ancestors’ extermination by branding them ‘Nazis’? To devote yourself so singularly to this one nation’s erasure that you come to define your entire political personality by that warped goal and proudly declare yourself an ‘anti-Zionist’?

Yes. Yes, that is anti-Semitic. If you maniacally obsess over the Jewish homeland, and detest Jewish nationalism more than any other nationalism, and gleefully chant for the death of the Jewish nation’s soldiers, and fantasise about the violent excision of the Jewish State ‘from the river to the sea’, then you have a problem with Jews. And more of us need to say so.

“Double standard” doesn’t even begin to cover it. Israel is judged by completely unique standards and subject to completely unique demands, in addition to having to withstand a constant barrage of accusatory lies.

If true, this is very good news about Elon Musk

The New Neo Posted on by

Haven’t heard much from him lately. But here’s the report, according to “individuals close to Musk”:

Tesla CEO and former DOGE chief Elon Musk is reportedly backpedaling on the idea of forming a third political party and instead seeking to use his vast wealth to support the leading contender for the presidency in 2028.

Reportedly, Musk is keen on Vance in 2028.

[NOTE: This is my very first post in the category “Election 2028.”]

What would security guarantees for Ukraine look like?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Niketas Choniates” writes:

If a country is in NATO, that is saying “America (and Europe) will send their boys to die there and take a nuke for it if necessary”. The more countries get added to NATO, the less likely that is, and NATO just becomes a paper tiger, its bluff will get called eventually, and then we either get a real war we never wanted, or NATO ends up on the ash heap with the League of Nations.

All the people saying “Neville Chamberlain”: do you or do you not support sending US troops to Ukraine, taking a nuke for it if necessary? If yes, awesome, convince the rest of us that Ukraine is worth dying for. If no, don’t pretend that we can fight half or a quarter of a war with no risk to us at home. Russia is not Iraq or Iran, that we can work our will on with no consequences at home. Keep pushing against red lines, and finally you’ll cross one, and then we WILL have years of flag-draped coffins and possibly some nukes. If you think the risk is worth it, have the integrity and the courage to say so.

And yet no one here is saying Ukraine would or should join NATO, and Trump has made it clear that NATO membership is off the table for Ukraine, as are US boots on the ground there. For that matter, I wonder if people in the US would “take a nuke” or send US troops in order to defend France or England or Germany at this point.

Ukraine has demanded security guarantees as part of any deal, and European nations committed to providing them with the assistance of the US – but what would they look like without NATO membership? Would they have any teeth at all? They would need some formidable fangs, given Putin’s continuing desire to take over Ukraine.

The details have not been made clear – surprise, surprise – and yet I have a feeling they would need to be at least moderately convincing for Zelensky to agree to them, or for Trump to advocate them. I don’t think Trump wants a peace deal that quickly falls through.

Here’s an article that tries to describe the security possibilities:

Zelensky said the U.S. had sent a strong signal on security guarantees but said he could not offer any more concrete information until more details were nailed down in roughly the next 10 days.

Ukraine has been wary of exactly what security guarantees will look like. Just before Monday’s meetings, Zelensky said peace must be “lasting” and not echo the “so called ‘security guarantees’ in 1994.”

“They didn’t work,” Zelensky continued.

In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine agreed to give up nuclear weapons in the country in exchange for security “assurances” from the U.S, U.K. and from Russia. The agreement—a political pledge worded to safeguard the “independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine”—became known as the Budapest Memorandum. Russia violated the memorandum in 2014 and 2022. …

Zelensky also said security guarantees would also include an arms deal worth roughly $90 billion between the U.S. and Ukraine.

Russia has said it wants strict long-term limits on Ukraine’s military. Bloomberg reported on Tuesday U.S. and European officials will immediately start work on the security guarantees, and making sure there are no restrictions on Ukraine’s armed forces is a top priority.

Sounds like an impasse.

There’s talk of an Article 5-like type of guarantee, which would mean something similar to what NATO nations pledge to each other. But Article 5 has never been invoked except after 9/11, and that situation doesn’t resemble this one.

More possibilities:

Trump suggested that he wants Europeans to be “the first line of defence”, with the US providing intelligence, weapons (paid for by Europe) and air support of some kind. He was quite clear there would be no US “boots on the ground”.

Ukraine’s European allies are now mulling over what their role as guarantors of security for a peace deal might look like. It has been reported the head of the UK’s armed forces, Tony Radakin, will tell a meeting of military commanders at the Pentagon that the UK is prepared to send troops to Ukraine – not as a frontline fighting force, but to provide security at ports and air bases. How many members of the coalition of the willing are prepared to do the same remains uncertain.

It’s worthless if Putin doesn’t believe any of it will happen. It’s also at least partly dependent on who’s in charge in each country when any future Russian aggression towards Ukraine would take place. Another variable is Putin himself; he’s 72 years old, which in the present climate seems relatively young, but will his health hold out? And would a successor be inclined to have the same designs on Ukraine in the face of promised security guarantees?