Tag: great replacement theory

US-Mexico Border Quiet. A Little TOO Quiet.

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

On May 11, after seemingly endless court cases and publicity stunts by Republicans, the Biden administration finally ended the Trump-era border policy known as Title 42, which had allowed for the immediate deportation of border crossers even if they were claiming asylum. Wingnut media predictably predicted that America would be quickly overwhelmed by hordes of lawless migrants who’d be sleeping on every sidewalk and Great Replacementing all the hardworking retirees who watch Fox News.

Funny, though, because as the Washington Post reports (gift link), none of that happened. Instead, arrests of illegal border crossers have dropped by more than half, largely because of new procedures rolled out by the Biden administration. Instead of risking their lives crossing the Rio Grande and then requesting asylum when they turn themselves in to the Border Patrol, asylum seekers use a phone app to schedule an initial asylum screening (a “credible fear of persecution” interview) with Customs and Border Protection (CBP). If they pass that, they’re allowed into the US to live and work until they have a formal asylum hearing.

The other side of the new policy is that if migrants don’t use the “CBP One” app and instead cross the border outside a port of entry, they can be deported immediately and barred from applying for entry for five years.

Not surprisingly, this still has anti-immigration Republicans plenty pissed off, because even though the new procedures have led to a 70 percent drop in illegal entries since Title 42 ended, the more orderly process allows people to claim asylum and enter the US, and how dare Joe Biden actually respect the right to asylum? Plus, the relatively small numbers of asylum seekers going through ports of entry on any given day has robbed Fox News of the scary visuals of crowds of people huddling under bridges near the border, and how is that even fair?

As the Post explains,

The recent drop in illegal crossings does not mean fewer than half as many migrants are coming to the United States. President Biden is allowing roughly 43,000 migrants and asylum seekers per month to enter through CBP One appointments and accepting an additional 30,000 through a process called parole. The new legal channels appear to be absorbing many of the border-crossers who for years have entered unlawfully to surrender in large groups, overwhelming U.S. border agents.

U.S. agents made about 100,000 arrests along the Mexico border in June, the first full month that Biden’s new measures were in effect, down from 204,561 in May, according to the latest CBP data. It was the largest one-month decline since Biden took office.

The story notes that the factors in Central America that have driven immigration — gang crime, climate change, poverty, corrupt government and the like — haven’t significantly changed, but the administration’s new approach is far more orderly than the Trump approach of making the US so cruel that migrants would decide instead to stay home and take their chances with the cartels. OK, that’s us editorializing; WaPo instead says that

At the heart of the strategy is a belief that reducing the chaos and illegality of migration is more feasible than trying to stop it.

Since Republicans in Congress seem bent on never ever ever agreeing to an immigration bill — because then how could they cry about an immigration crisis? — trying to be a bit more humane seems like a fairly good approach.

In addition to using the app to make the process more orderly, changes in border facilities have helped, too. Near El Paso, CBP is temporarily holding migrants in a new detention facility built with military-style tents (the big ones with AC that we aren’t using in Iraq anymore). No more cramming hundreds of people into “the icebox,” those freezing cells at Border Patrol facilities that weren’t meant to hold that many people. Instead, some 400 to 500 detainees daily are taken to “the largest and perhaps least harsh CBP facility ever built, with capacity for more than 2,500.”

The Border Patrol supervisor running the facility likened it to a cruise ship — a small self-contained city floating on the desert. With hot showers, on-site laundry and scores of private booths where migrants can videoconference with attorneys, asylum officers and immigration judges, the facility’s operating costs exceed more than $1 million per day.

Border Patrol officials said the facility allows them to manage detainees using far fewer agents. They can reserve the more austere, jail-like detention cells at Border Patrol stations for migrants considered security risks. Family groups, unaccompanied minors and others deemed lower risk can be held at the tent complex, where contractors perform administrative and custodial tasks that have long grated on agents.

Yeah, that “cruise ship” line seemed designed for rightwing media. Still, look at Joe Biden, that sneaky bastard, relieving CBP agents of work they absolutely hated, and now they’re actually patrolling the border. Just don’t hold your breath on the Border Patrol union endorsing him, though.

None of this has made Republicans any happier, because allowing 70,000 migrants per month into the US without even beating them or taking away their kids is still too generous and scary in a nation of 335 million people, there’s simply no room at all and definitely no jobs, so Republican officials in red states are suing to make it stop. And the deportations of people crossing the border without using the app is being challenged in court by immigration advocates who point out, correctly, that there’s no app in US asylum law either, even if it’s more orderly.

So far, Fox News hasn’t yet sued over the lack of terrifying visuals. They’re pretty resourceful, and will no doubt get by with old footage, stock footage from some other country entirely, or maybe that newfangled AI that can whip up a caravan without even having to send a camera crew to Texas.

[WaPo gift link / Photo: US CBP on Flickr, public domain.]

Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please give $5 or $10 a month so we can keep you up to date!

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.

Source link

#USMexico #Border #Quiet #Quiet

Ohio Higher Ed Bill Requires Equal Time For Climate Change Deniers, Racists

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Ohio state Legislature is taking its own shot at eliminating all the liberal indoctrination Republicans are certain is running amok in universities, with a bill that not only prohibits most diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and “implicit bias” training, but also requires that instructors not promote any particular view on any “controversial topic” like climate change, diversity, abortion, or foreign policy, among others. The bill has already passed in the state Senate, and is now being considered in the state House, which has a Republican supermajority. The official title of Senate Bill 83 is the “Higher Education Enhancement Act,” but I’m just going to call it the Flat Earth Equal Time Act if you don’t mind.

For all “controversial “topics, instructors would be required to “allow and encourage students to reach their own conclusions” and “shall not seek to inculcate any social, political, or religious point of view.” Should be fun when a student sues to have openly white supremacist materials included in a syllabus. Or an oil company sues over climate science being taught accurately.

When he introduced SB 83 in March, state Sen. Jerry Cirino (R-Did We Have To Say?) explained that

it was his idea to include climate change as a “controversial” belief or policy, and that he “didn’t actually consult with climate people.”.

“My agenda was not to use this bill to impact energy policy,” Cirino said. However, he also said, “What I think is controversial is different views that exist out there about the extent of the climate change and the solutions to try to alter climate change.”

So yeah, that translates to “let’s not actually limit greenhouse emissions, because as the copyrighted 2009 cartoon by Joel Pett in USA Today asked, ‘What if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?'”

Naturally enough, actual scientists are aghast at the bill, pointing out that there really is no “other side” to the fact that humans have caused global warming by burning fossil fuels, which add carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, causing dangerous heating of the planet. There also isn’t any actual controversy over what’s needed: We need to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions — and eliminate them altogether — as quickly as possible.

There are plenty of discussions about the best way to achieve that goal, which we suppose may fit Cirino’s suggestion that there’s “controversy” over “the solutions to try to alter climate change,” but not a single one of the options includes “keep burning coal and oil.” Really!

Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, warned that if the law is enacted, it’s “going to have a chilling effect” on science education, since many instructors might decide it’s safer to not say much about climate change at all if they think they have to include climate denial nonsense and “alternative” views. Jeez, you scientists, isn’t some chilling exactly what we need to counteract all this warming?

The bill’s language is particularly vague and circular when it comes to even defining what topics are “controversial” and in need of both-sidesing in classes. It specifies some, but the language is very open-ended:

“Controversial belief or policy” means any belief or policy that is the subject of political controversy, including issues such as climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, or abortion.

Got it? A controversial topic is any topic that “is the subject of political controversy,” so tread carefully and include all sides. Including, we guess, advocacy of plural marriage and mandatory abortion? And of course, many evangelicals consider evolution controversial, so Ohio biology curricula could be in for a surprise.

Hilariously, though, another provision of the bill makes clear that some “foreign policy” matters should have only one side, since it limits a wide range of cooperative agreements with China, and specifies that Ohio universities “may endorse the congress of the United States when it establishes a state of armed hostility against a foreign power.”

Another section of the bill shoehorns in the now-familiar cookie-cutter prohibitions on “divisive concepts” that must not be taught, like the very ideas of inherent bias, white privilege, or systemic racism.

Previously In The Syllabus:

Georgia Schoolchildren Will Just Have To Learn All History From Confederate Statues

David Duke Thanks Tucker Carlson For Spreading ‘Great Replacement’ Lie

Federal Judge Stops DeSantis’s ‘Stop WOKE’ Law, Because ARE YOU F*CKING KIDDING HIM

The bill’s multi-pronged attack on diversity, equity, equity, and inclusion also led to widespread condemnation, obviously, because most university faculty, students, and officials aren’t consumers of rightwing media who are worried about the Great Replacement conspiracy theory.

That said, Dayton TV station WKRC did manage to scrape up one professor at the University of Cincinnati, criminologist John Paul Wright, who fretted about the school’s diversity and inclusion webpage, and who claimed he heard a colleague say they “will never hire another white male.” Dude is a proponent of some seriously racist “science,” and has called for more research on “the role biology plays in criminal behavior.” I’d say that this guy and his calipers account for all the “intellectual diversity” Ohio universities can stand, honestly.

Shortly before the Ohio Senate passed it, The Board of Trustees of The Ohio State University officially opposed SB 83, stating that it raised First Amendment issues and warning that it could harm the university’s ability to “attract the best students, faculty, and researchers.” It further said the bill could affect “the quality of higher education at all Ohio public universities,” even the ones that don’t insist on having a capitalized definite article in their names.

During debate on the bill, however, Cirino insisted Ohio wouldn’t experience any such brain drain, and would actually make Ohio schools more gooder by attracting … well, people with calipers, basically:

“When all is said and done here, our universities are going to be better,” he said. “We are going to attract more people who have been turned away because of the liberal bias that is incontrovertible in our institutions in Ohio.”

In addition to the gross limitations on academic freedom, which are lawsuit bait if we ever saw it, just like Ron DeSantis’s “Stop WOKE” law, SB 83 would ban strikes by academic workers, require all students to take a course in American history of government — presumably, only the GOOD parts — cut the terms of university and college boards of trustees so they can be replaced by patriots, and would weaken tenure protections.

And if it passes in the state House, will GOP Governor Mike DeWine sign it? How’s this for some impressive waffling? Earlier this month, before it passed in the Senate, DeWine simply said it was still “a work in progress” and that “I have not seen the latest version.” Sounds to us like he wants to follow the spirit of the bill and not take any particular position at all. We’d like to hope the near-universal condemnation of the bill, which will dumb down another great university system, might put his feet to the fire — as long as it’s burning green hydrogen, of course.

[Ohio Senate Bill 83 / Ohio Capitol Journal / USA Today / Ohio Capitol Journal]

Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please give $5 or $10 a month so we can keep you up to date on the vast wave of stupid in this country. And remember, the Wonkette Book Club is reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2020 climate novel The Ministry for the Future,so join us Friday to chat about Chapters 2 through 30 (they’re short chapters!) More details and Part One of our book club discussion here!

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.

Source link

#Ohio #Higher #Bill #Requires #Equal #Time #Climate #Change #Deniers #Racists

Fox News Had A ‘Great Replacement’ White Supremacy Contest And Laura Ingraham Won!

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We are not saying that all the hosts at Fox News had a meeting where they got real excited that somebody might finally notice THEM doing the Great Replacement theory — you know, the white supremacist conspiracy theory that inspires all those mass shooters! — now that Tucker Carlson, king of spreading the Great Replacement theory, is gone.

We are fully willing to accept the notion that many of the people who work at Fox News are fucking white nationalist scumbags, and enjoy spreading the white supremacist Great Replacement theory for their own reasons. And maybe, just maybe, they’ve been doing it this whole time but we just couldn’t hear them, because Tucker is just a total fucking scene-hogging diva with his racism.

In the past few days, at least three on-air Fox News hosts have done it. It could be more, but Media Matters watches Fox News all day, and these are the ones they highlighted. It’s related to the Biden administration finally ending Donald Trump/Stephen Miller’s racist Title 42immigration policy, wherein the Trump administration used coronavirus as an excuse to to pretty much immediately kick out anybody coming to the border to ask for asylum. (It was pretty much the only time they were VRY SRS about COVID being a real threat.)

SEAN! (AND VICTOR!)

There was Sean Hannity’s show on Tuesday night, with his weird racist guest Victor Davis Hanson, who said many goofy-ass racist argle-bargles about the Biden administration bringing in SEVEN MILLION ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. They were doing this to “flood the zone,” said Hanson, because “they don’t have confidence in their agenda.” Therefore they have to bring in this “new constituency” (A GREAT REPLACEMENT) to vote for them, because they are just so dang unpopular with the rest of the US Americans.

Here’s the video and the full quote:

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: You can see that in Joe Biden’s approval ratings, so they feel that they can have a new constituency and turn states like California and Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, maybe Texas, one day, and Arizona blue from red, and they can get a constituency that needs a larger government, then that’s in their favor, and the only thing they’re worried about right now is the public relations and the optics because they feel it’s so egregious that they have no public support and it’s going to alienate them. That’s all they’re worried about. But, privately, they think, “Wow, we pulled it off. We got 7 million people here illegally before they knew what was going on.” That’s all they care about.

This led Hannity to ask some real strange questions about whether Joe Biden is planning to sell US citizenship to the migrants. Victor Davis Hanson was just like nah, they are just so embarrassed about how unpopular they are, but they are secretly excited because they just succeeded in greatly replacing everybody.

Quick, how many times have Republicans won the popular vote in fucking anything in the last 40 years? But sure, whitey. Keep up your bitchin’. You’re definitely winning new voters for your racist side.

JESSE!

Jesse Watters shot his wad with it on Wednesday.

JUDGE BOXWINE: Tomorrow, when 42 is lifted, I mean, how much worse can it get — 5 million in a year, in two years? I’m sorry.

JESSE WATTERS: Yeah, and then imagine a generation from now. That’s what they want to do here. They want to make Texas a Democrat state. And you’ll never see another Republican in the White House after that.

So dang subtle.

They’re lifting Trump’s white supremacist immigration policy as part of their plan to make Texas a “Democrat state.” (Texas is probably already a “Democrat state” if you take away the racist voter suppression policies of Greg Abbott et al.)

Then Jesse whined out a story about how he was stuck behind a bus of “illegal immigrant families” for 20 minutes on his way to work that day. He asked Greg Abbott to please start sending immigrants to “Chicago or Philly, somewhere I don’t live.” He had to “get out of my Town Car and confront the bus driver.” “You can’t have this in Midtown Manhattan. We’re full.”

You know how Jesse Watters speaks for the average voter in Midtown Manhattan.

LAURA!

And then last night there was Laura Ingraham. Her shit was long and drawn-out and convoluted, but it was greatly replace-y!

Importantly, she said you are GONNA DIE because of all the immigration. Or at least her viewers will. “Untold numbers.” You betcha.

Just gonna give you the whole quote, because holy shit, this is so deranged:

LAURA INGRAHAM: Now, understand this, and understand it well. The scenes you’re watching tonight are not happening because of Biden administration incompetence. They’re happening because this is exactly what the Democrats want.

Now, let me explain this. Liberals and business elites have been working toward this for decades, and now they’re celebrating what is ultimately — if they really get their way — the destruction of America’s middle class. Sounds inflammatory, hyperbolic? Stay with me.

We’re trying.

INGRAHAM: Now, why do they want to destroy the middle class? Well, the far Left hates all those traditions that the middle class clings to, especially the flag-waving, guns, religion — you get the score.

When she says “middle class” she means only white Christian conservative Republicans.

INGRAHAM: And big business, they dislike the middle class because it’s an obstacle to keeping wages as low as possible. Remember, under Trump, the middle class was better off. Their median income was rising and we had minimal inflation. But a limitless supply of low-wage workers, that’s what makes business happiest and keeps America’s middle class the poorest.

Hooray, populism. This is 100 percent Tucker territory. Sadly, there are progressives in America who think you can separate the white supremacist fascism from the populist rhetoric, as if it’s not the precise trick of white supremacist fascists to lean into populism. That’s why there were articles after Tucker’s firing like “No, You Absolutely Do Not Have To Hand It To Tucker Carlson.” Anyway, remember all those window signs from all the mom and pop restaurants about BOO EVERYONE IS LAZY NOBODY WILL WORK FOR US, because the Boomers are all retiring and immigration’s been artificially low, but all those mad restaurant owners are probably “BIG BUSINESS” to the woman on Fox. Also, the BIG BUSINESS that is “hiring nurses to come help your mom.” There are not enough nurses either, it is a total thing! BIG BUSINESS!

INGRAHAM: The open borders radicals think every migrant sleeping on the ground tonight waiting for processing is a future Democrat voter. That’s how they see them. The wealthy donors see the migrants as a much-needed cheap labor. Now, it’s as simple as that.

White supremacist Great Replacement conspiracy theory + fake populism = still just white supremacist Great Replacement conspiracy theory.

INGRAHAM: If those two groups didn’t want this to happen, Biden wouldn’t have done it. Because of what they’ve done, an untold number of Americans will not just lose jobs, but lose their lives.

THEIR LIVES.

INGRAHAM: For these globalists, though, it’s all collateral damage. They don’t care as long as they get to hold onto power and get rich.

(((Globalists.))) We know they mean when they say (((globalists))) are trying to (((hold onto power))) and (((get rich))).

It shows up in the mass shooter manifestos too.

Anyway, damn! We think Laura Ingraham won this white supremacy contest. And with Jesse Watters in the running and everything!

We don’t know how Fox News rewards its employees for these things.

Maybe Laura Ingraham will get to keep the official jar of Tucker’s old farts in her office for a whole week or something.

[Media Matters / Media Matters / Media Matters]

Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter right here.

I would like a BlueSky invite.

I’m also giving things a go at the Mastodon (@[email protected]) and at Post!

Have you heard that Wonkette DOES NOT EXIST without your donations? Please hear it now, and if you have ever enjoyed a Wonkette article, throw us some bucks, or better yet, SUBSCRIBE!

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.



Source link

#Fox #News #Great #Replacement #White #Supremacy #Contest #Laura #Ingraham #Won