haroldblackphd

Racial gerrymandering ruled unconstitutional

Racial gerrymandering ruled unconstitutional

The Supreme Court has predictably voted 6-3 on Callais. The court has declared that racial gerrymandering is unconstitutional but has left mostly intact the Voters’ Rights act. In a 2019 case by a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts have no authority to decide whether partisan gerrymandering goes too far. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority: “The Constitution supplies no objective measure for assessing whether a districting map treats a political party fairly.” But racial gerrymandering is a different matter – so says the court.

Callais is the Louisiana case I wrote about some time ago where a lower court ruled that Louisiana had to create a second majority minority district. It basically snaked two hundred miles seeking to find majority black areas to be placed into one district. The resulting congressman was a black democrat Cleo Fields while the previous congressman was a republican Clay Higgins who sue claiming that the gerrymander was unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated the Equal Protection Clause. The court agreed.

I had pointed out previously that if the court ruled as it did, then as many as 19 congressional districts with black democrat representatives could be in danger of being redrawn and perhaps flipping to republicans. Justice Kagan wrote the dissent, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson. “The consequences are likely to be far-reaching and grave. Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter,” Kagan wrote, referring to the Voting Rights Act. “In the States where that law continues to matter—the States still marked by residential segregation and racially polarized voting—minority voters can now be cracked out of the electoral process.”

Needless to say the democrats are livid and are threatening a nationwide effort to gerrymander republicans out of their seats, much like has been done in Massachusetts where there are no republican congressional representatives. Understand that while the court says that gerrymandering is legal, it is only racial gerrymandering that is illegal. So if republicans in Massachusetts have no representation that perfectly legal. So it would be if Virginia successfully gerrymandered the state from 6 democrats and 5 republicans to 10 democrats and one republican despite republican candidates consistently receiving almost 50 percent or more of the vote in statewide and national elections.

Will the court allow TPS to expire?

The court is currently hearing arguments over whether the Trump administration can end Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians. The administration had revoked TPS for thirteen countries and order the deportation of over 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians. In total there are over 1.3 million people in the country under TPS. Not surprisingly Justice Brown Jackson asserted that the administration’s decision was racially motivated saying “The president’s insistence that immigrants from certain countries—largely, if not almost exclusively, countries with African immigrants, black African immigrants—are not allowed, and calling these sorts of names. types of things he said about Haiti.” During his arguments, Geoffrey Pipoly, lawyer for the Haitian plaintiffs, brought up Trump’s past rhetoric about “s——– countries.” Of course, the actions by the administration are racially motivated led by Stephan Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for homeland security. Even Trump had said of Miller that he (Miller) would like everyone to look like himself. Isn’t that obvious since the only people now being admitted under TPS are white South Africans?

The argument before the court is whether the administration can legally end the protected status and begin deportation proceedings. In each case where the administration wants to end the status, the “temporary” status has expired. Previous administrations have granted a “temporary” extension to the “temporary” status. The Trump administration is not going to grant further extensions. The lawyers for the Syrian and Haitian immigrants say they are here because of war, rampant crime, and natural disasters and the situation in their countries are still dire. The administration says that is irrelevant. Indeed, several justices question whether the lower courts should have even taken up the case.

It looks like the court may agree and there will be a 6-3 ruling in the administration’s favor.

What! A Unanimous vote

Yes! As a matter of fact in this term the court has ruled on 26 cases and 6 have been a unanimous 9-0. The latest was First Choice vs Davenport where New Jersey’s Attorney General in 2023 demanded First Choice, a pregnancy center providing free ultrasounds and services other than abortions, hand over the names, addresses and phone numbers for some 5,000 donations. First Choice declined and when First Choice went to go to federal court saying that the disclosure would chill their support. The judges held that it didn’t have standing, since the subpoena was still making its way through the state system, and no judge had yet compelled the group to comply. The Supreme Court disagreed and ruled 9-0 in First Choice’s favor. Justice Gorsuch writing the opinion said “All this is more than enough to establish injury in fact which isn’t limited to tangible harm but can also arise “when a defendant burdens a plaintiﬀ’s constitutional rights.” Gorsuch says that even if the AG were ordered to keep the First Choice donor information private, a government demand to turn it over is “enough to discourage groups from expressing dissident views.” The decision addresses only whether First Choice’s lawsuit may proceed. But the Justices obviously views New Jersey’s action as not only to investigate the pregnancy centers as much as to harass them. Isn’t it refreshing that the court’s three liberals actually agreed?

The other surprise unanimous decision was the one on ordering federal appeals courts to defer to immigration judges when reviewing asylum decisions, bolstering the executive branch’s authority in immigration cases and handing the Trump administration a win as it pushes an aggressive deportation agenda. That decision was actually written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson!

A change is a-coming at the Fed – or is it?

Trump’s Department of “Justice” dropped the bogus investigation of Fed chairman Jerome Power leading Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) to drop the hold on the confirmation of Kevin Warsh to a governor’s seat and to being the next Fed chairman. Warsh’s nomination went out of committee by a 13-11 vote will all the republicans voting for and all the democrats voting against. One of our favorite senators, Elizabeth Warren said “A vote today by this committee to advance Mr. Warsh will bring the president one step closer to completing his illegal attempt to seize control of the Fed and to artificially juice the economy.” Of course, this is what she would want the Fed to do if there were a democrat president, so it is curious why she would oppose this. Well it is political and she hates Trump. I presume the senate vote will only find Fetterman voting with the republicans for confirmation.

The governor’s seat is the vacancy left by Stephen Miran who went back to his old job as Trump’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. What is noteworthy is that Powell has said that he will stay on as a governor, thus denying Trump another vacancy to fill at the Board. I bet Trump is furious having indicated that if Powell didn’t resign, then he would fire him. But we have gone down that road before (somewhat). The president has been trying to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook since August 2025 when Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency accused her of mortgage fraud.

The president who had successfully fired other appointed officials at independent agencies, leapt at the opportunity to fire Cook. He already had appointed two Fed governors and relished the opportunity to add another in order to perhaps direct the Board to do his will. Note however that his two appointees (not counting Powell), Waller and Bowman consistently had been voting with Powell on the conduct of monetary policy. But Cook is still on the Board and her case is before the Supreme Court. It is doubtful that the president will prevail. Previously, the court had explicitly noted that the Fed was a unique agency and indicated that its governors could not be fired without cause. Although the president’s attorneys will argue that the allegation of mortgage fraud – if proven – would be grounds for dismissal, their case is weakened by evidence that the president himself did the same thing on two mortgage applications in Florida.

I am convinced that Powell is only staying in order to deny Trump an additional appointment to the Board. If Trump had not conducted a ceaseless barrage of insults against Powell, he most likely would have resigned. Powell was ironically nominated by Trump and has been at the Board since 2018. He probably would like to go back to the private sector and earn some serious money. However, he is staying. His term ends January 21, 2028. It will be interesting to see if he stays that long because Trump will still be able to nominate another governor since the president’s term ends on January 20, 2029.

At his confirmation hearing, nominee Warsh promised “regime change” at the Fed. Now normally “regime change” would imply a change in the leadership structure of an organization or government. It will be interesting to see what this means at the Fed where Warsh can only rearrange the deck chairs. He can alter the composition of the Fed’s committees and substitute one governor for another. He can perhaps get the president to nominate other governors as vice chair (currently Philip Jefferson) or vice chair for supervision (currently Michelle Bowman). He can replace staff members. He can bring in new economists using other monetary policy models to predict changes in economic activity. I will suspect that he will do all of this. But fundamentally, Warsh probably meant that the Fed will stick to its knitting. It will no longer allow its reserve banks to host symposia on inequality and equity. It will focus on reducing the Fed’s balance sheet and discontinue the practice of forward guidance generally intoned at the Open Market committee press conference which some say creates inflexibility in Fed’s actions.

Warsh is no rookie at the Fed. He was a governor from 2006 to 2011. He opposed the buildup in the Fed’s balance sheet then but as a single governor with one vote on the Open Market Committee could not stop it. However, Warsh, despite his public remarks about disagreements after leaving the Fed, never cast a single dissenting vote on the Open Market Committee. Now this may be because as a rule, despite disagreements during the discussions about policy at the Fed, the votes announced to the public were usually unanimous, showing a united front. It has only been recently that dissenting votes were on the record.

So I don’t expect much of a change at the Fed, despite what you may read in the press. Warsh knows the Fed and will tweak it here and there – as do all new Fed chairs. The reserve banks will keep focusing on regional economics – with the possible exception of the New York Fed. The Board will busy itself with bank regulation and monetary policy. I actually regret that Warsh is not a trained monetary economist – Waller is the only governor with that training – because I would like to see the Fed Board’s models scrutinized. There is a Fed model, and it may well be unchanged through different regimes. One of my dissertation readers left Ohio State and went to the Fed. He ended up being chief economist on the Open Market Committee. Although he was a student of Milton Friedman at Chicago and a staunch monetarist, at the Fed he morphed into what we called in the profession “a Fed economist.” No longer were monetary aggregates to be the focus of monetary policy but instead the Fed’s interest rate models were the ones emphasized. Oh well, when in Rome.

And don’t believe the reports about the Fed members being at odds with each other. Yes there were more dissents reported but I believe it was all for show with the two other Trump nominated board members hoping that the president would nominate them for chair. Note that once Warsh was named, the other two went back to voting with the others. It will only be a matter of time when Trump grows exasperated with Warsh. If Trump badgers him to lower rates, Warsh knows that he has only one vote and the other governors and reserve bank presidents may not agree. What will he do? I know of only one occasion where the Open Market Committee did not vote with the chairman and the market tanked saying the Fed was leaderless and out of control. That is why the Fed puts on (usually) a united front despite differing opinions. I think this will continue because Warsh does not want a Fed in disarray and the market in chaos.

New York’s city-owned grocery stores

So what is it with the left and grocery stores. In New York, the mayor held a press conference announcing the first of the city-owned grocery stores. At an initial projected cost of $30 million the city would own the land, cover major overhead costs and bring in a private operator to sell staple foods at discounted prices. The mayor said that this would mean lower prices on basics like bread and eggs. This will be the first of five city-owned grocery stores. Mamdani said that 65,000 New Yorkers live within a 10-minute walk of the proposed site. However, the site is not on a food desert (that’s not a chocolate cake) because there is a supermarket in the area along with several convenience stores (called bodegas in New York city), an Aldi and even a Whole Foods. There is also a fresh produce store a three minute walk from the site. So one wonders why this site for Mamdani’s store?

BTW, here is what Wikipedia says is a “food desert.” A food desert is an area that has limited access to fresh food. A food desert typically lacks the presence of a grocer and instead supplements it with convenience stores or fast food. It is interesting that Mamdani is not during the usual leftish whine about the poor pay more. Rather he and his cohorts are saying that the new grocery store will bring more nutritious food to the underserved. That implies that poor nutrition is somehow correlated with living in a food desert. Here is a statement from a paper at the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:

“Food insecurity and the lack of access to affordable, nutritious food are associated with poor dietary quality and an increased risk of diet-related diseases, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and certain types of cancer. Those of lower socioeconomic status and racial and ethnic minority groups experience higher rates of food insecurity, are more likely to live in under-resourced food environments, and continue to bear the greatest burden of diet-related chronic diseases in the United States.” https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S0002-9165%2823%2966352-X/fulltext

So presumably, bringing nutritional food into underserved areas would foster better health. Right? Well not so fast my friends. Research shows this is not necessarily the case. Adding fresh produce markets does not mean that people will stop going to McDonalds (although higher prices might). Here is a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research entitled “Food deserts and the causes of nutritional inequality.” https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24094/w24094.pdf

The study finds that food deserts have no meaningful effect on eating habits. Exposing low-income households to the same products and prices as those in high-income households reduces nutritional inequality by only 9 percent while the remaining 91percent of the nutrition gap is driven by difference in what shoppers prefer to buy. One of authors said “One of the conclusions in our study is that opening a supermarket in a food desert has very little impact on the nutritional composition of households’ shopping baskets.”

But even if this is known to those on the left, they would ignore it because it is counter to their false narrative. One wonders why $30 million? Couldn’t Walmart put one of its neighborhood markets on the site for less money and just have the city subsidize any losses? Wouldn’t that be cheaper? Alas, Walmart does not have a single grocery store in any of the five boroughs of New York city. I guess socialists don’t care for low prices after all. Well how about Aldi instead. Aren’t they known for their fresh produce? Also, why not remove property taxes, minimum wages, zoning regulations and any others for grocery stores in designated food deserts? I bet that would motivate some grocers to locate there.

Government-owned grocery stores don’t have a great track record. Socialists always shrug off failure saying “it will be different this time.” They simply don’t trust the market. Kansas City tried city-run markets and it was a failure. The store KC Sun Fresh, lost nearly $900,000 over the last year and is closing its doors after more that $18 million is subsidies. Currently large portions of the store’s shelves were bare or only partially stocked — including meat, produce and dry goods. One customer said “There’s no meat. There’s no vegetables. There’s no nothing. Are you going to take care of the community that’s surrounded around you? If not, sell the store to someone that can be more responsible.” Ironically, there’s a grocery store right down the street that is doing well. Mamdani should take heed but he says that his city-run grocery stores will “operate without a profit motive,” there will be no “price gouging” as he alleges private stores do. The stores would not have to pay property taxes, would buy and sell at wholesale prices and charge lower prices than other stores in the city. His five proposed stores are budgeted at $70 million with $30 million to the first store.

To be fair, my hometown of Atlanta has a city-owned grocery store – the Azelea Fresh Market – that is doing well. The city paid $8 million to open the store and is in an area with no grocery stores – a food desert! The mayor said that the city had failed to entice the major grocery stores to come into the market and said “well screw it, we’ll do it ourselves.” And so they did. The store is publicly funded but privately operated by a major grocery store chain. The goal is for the store to become profitable without any government subsidy within three years. The store is such a success that it is already aiding the construction of a second planned store 6 miles away, expected to open next year. That site will be a challenge since a grocery store had gone out of business there. Unlike in New York, profit is not a dirty word in Atlanta which wants its stores to be profitable. Atlanta officials think that with for-profit supermarket management they can avoid the failures of some other government grocery experiments. Any profit lost from cheaper staples is partly made up upstairs, where there is a sandwich and sushi counter. Wine and beer sold at typical prices.

There seems to be a simple reason why government-owned and operated stores fail – profit. Atlanta recognizes this but New York does not dooming those stores to either fail or to be cash drains on the city. We know that government-owned grocery stores in communist countries like Russia don’t operate as efficiently as profit-driven stores in the US. I guess Mamdani thinks his will be better.

But actually there is a large – huge – government-owned grocery store chain in the US. It’s the military commissary system funded at $1.5 billion a year. The government-backed stores do have lower prices. They pay no rent and are heavily subsidized. It leverages scale, limits markup but also is lacking in the variety of commercial stores. The losses are never realized being in the overall military budget The telltale sign is if military personnel feel the need to go off the base the purchase items that might – or might not – be sold on base. I have pointed out in the past how military medical services are not as extensive as those provided in the private sector – this is especially true for drugs. Many have argued that the commissaries need to be transformed to be more like successful commercial grocery stores. For decades, the Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA) has struggled to meet the intent of providing good, discounted groceries to service members, their families and veterans. This does not seem like a model for success. If the Federal government’s socialist stores are a market failure, will New York’s Mamdani and other socialist mayors take heed?

The Green New Deal – wherefore art thou?

Okay, I was wrong – thank goodness. A few years back I thought we were doomed. The greenie weenies were ascendant. They had taken over politics, government, industry, banking and finance. Al Gore and his buds were enriching themselves at our expense. Fossil fuels were under siege. Nuclear and coal were being shut down. Solar panels were on rooftops and in despoiling our acreage. Windmills were killing birds and disrupting the seas. Laws in the leftist states were banning gas powered appliances. New construction had to be “green.” Regulations were forcing a reduction in carbon footprints. A carbon tax was coming. EVs were subsidized. The banks and the world’s largest financial firms had formed a cabal to force green on industry. No more investing in fossil fuels. Larry Fink at BlackRock was using his considerable weight to force compliance. The EU was fully committed to going green. Only France was keeping its nukes and the once smart Germans turned green. The UN was trying to get the developing world to join the fun but there was resistance. A president of one of those countries rejected the green movement saying “no country got rich using expensive energy.” So those in the west starting trying to bribe resistant leaders to change. There was even a Climate Judiciary Project funded in part by Biden’s EPA which trained and lobbies judges on climate policy. The project says that it is a “first-of-its-kind effort” that “provides judges with authoritative, objective, and trusted education on climate science, the impacts of climate change, and the ways climate science is arising in the law.”

In the US, all this was embodied in the Green New Deal introduced by that intellectual giant AOC. I posted on this and said it reminded me of a Saturday Night Live skit or one on Rocky and his Friends. It all seemed like a joke and one that would never be implemented – except by fools or friends of Al Gore. But it was no joke and was soon embraced by the left and started being implemented by the Biden administration and states like New York and California. I was depressed. Larry Fink was pushing Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) down the throats of his clients in the name of “conscious capitalism.” In his 2021 newsletter, Fink dwelled on the climate and called it investment risk and said that the “climate transition presents an historic investment opportunity.” ESG became the DEI of the financial world.

All loved the Green New Deal – and the shower of green (dollars) that flowed from it. The politicians could commandeer more power so those on the left loved it. Larry Fink, his buddies, and the big banks could control investment decisions and gain even more control over financial decisions. All in the name of saving the planet – wink, wink.

Then things started to change. The price tag of going green starting giving consumers pause. They started grumbling about rising costs and their politicians started to listen. Several attorney generals in republican states started threatening to pull their pension funds out for BlackRock and other investment houses over their climate activism. Lawsuits started being filed on whether these green mandates were constitutional. And the political landscape at the national level changed. Donald Trump became president and famously called the Green New Deal the Green New Scam and branded it a hoax. All of a sudden even Larry Fink recanted and said that wind and solar alone “can’t reliably keep the lights on” without “major breakthroughs in storage” and wrote that it’s necessary to be “clear-eyed about our energy mix.”

What caused the change? Was it the actions of the AGs? Was it the consumers complaining about new regulations on small gas powered engines. Was it the construction industry worried about the high cost of compliance? Was it industry and banking struggling with all the new regulations. Maybe. But I think the green movement would have continued unabated if Kamala Harris had been elected. But Donald Trump became president and stopped the all-green juggernaut in its tracks. The focus changed toward more of an all-energy mix with fossil fuels and nuclear added rather than being thrown to the trash heap. Government regulations were being dismantled by cabinet members such as Lee Zeldin at the EPA.

One of Trump’s first actions was to withdraw from the United Nations’ Paris Climate Accords an international treaty to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement

This started the movement toward “net zero” – see netzeroclimate.org – and warnings about longer heatwaves, more intense storms and wildfires, famine and global doom increasing with each increase in 0.1 Celsius.

Here is a list of a few of the calmatives awaiting us: more people dying from extreme heat, higher sea levels as glaciers and ice-sheets melt, increased risks to food security in some regions due to more extreme weather, greater chances of some climate-sensitive diseases spreading, more species being threatened with extinction and the loss of virtually all coral reefs. In other words WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE! Of course, all this ignored a considerable body of research that concludes no such thing – see https://www.climatedepot.com.

In all the EPA has announced 31 actions rolling environmental regulations. The president’s press secretary call this “the most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history.” The list of targets includes reconsidering restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, rolling back vehicle emission standards meant to accelerate a transition to EVs, and changing a 2009 ruling that greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide and methane are a threat to public health. Zeldin said “Today the green new scam ends as the EPA does its part to usher in the golden age of American success.”

The question is whether these changes outlast Donald Trump. He withdrew from the Paris Accords in his first administration. Biden promptly rejoined the Accords once he got into office. However, it may be more difficult for a new administration to reinstate all the growth-income-jobs killing regulations of the Green New Deal given the experiences from the recent past. At least we can hope.

The Left is complaining about judicial activism?

What is an “activist” judge? Wikipedia defines it as “Judicial activism is a judicial philosophy holding that courts can and should go beyond the applicable law to consider broader societal implications of their decisions. It is sometimes used as an antonym of judicial restraint. The term usually implies that judges make rulings based on their own views rather than on precedent.” The president is always complaining about “activist judges.” Trump has said “We cannot allow a handful of communist radical-left judges to obstruct the enforcement of our laws and assume the duties that belong solely to the president of the United States.” Of course, Trump is trying to redefine “the duties that belong solely to the president.”

Both democratic and republican presidents have accused the courts of exceeding their constitutional role. “Judicial activism largely exists in the eye of the beholder,” says Barry Friedman, a law professor at New York University. “One person’s activism is another’s sound decision-making.” This was in full view when a judge in Virginia blocked the certification of the ballot measure that would have gerrymandered the state’s congressional map, changing it from 6 democrats and 5 republicans to 10 democrats and only one republican. The measure passed narrowly with only 51.8 percent of the vote. Tazewell County Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley blocked the certification. Hurley cited procedural failures in how the legislature advanced the amendment and “misleading” ballot language that he said improperly influenced voters. Virginia’s attorney general Jay Jones, a democrat, said an appeal was imminent saying “Virginia voters have spoken, and an activist judge (my emphasis) should not have veto power over the People’s vote. We look forward to defending the outcome of last night’s election in court.” Now when was the last time we heard a democrat accuse a judge of activism?

In 2020 Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment removing redistricting power from the Legislature and placing it in a bipartisan commission precisely to try and take partisanship out of the process. The ballot language sought to change this. But what was the “misleading” ballot language? Here it is: “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?” Hell, I would have voted “yes”. Who wouldn’t want to “restore fairness”? I really wonder if most voters knew what they were voting for – or against? How about a change in the ballot language to “Do you want to get rid of all the pro-kings republican congressmen (who love Trump) and to replace them with freedom loving democrats (who hate Trump)”?

Betrayal. No more Afghans allowed.

Betrayal!. No more Afghans allowed.

The recent terrorist actions by Afghans in the United States probably are behind the president’s not wanting to bring those 1,100 Afghans currently being housed at Camp Sayliyah in Qatar into the US. The camp is slated to be closed. Reports are that there are over 2,000 Afghans in the US with ties to terrorist groups. As a result, the Trump Administration has excoriated the Biden Administration for not rigorously vetting the Afghans under the Operations Allies Program who came into the country following the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. Now the Trump Administration is rumored to send the Qatari Afghans to the Congo (one of my DNA sources). This action would be beyond cruel. The Congo has an ongoing humanitarian crisis due to armed conflicts within their borders. I have written before about the plight of the Congolese and their role as poor artisan miners for cobalt. The country is a mess – and that is putting it kindly.

Congo is plagued by ethnic tensions, political rivalries and fighting over its rich resources. An estimated 4.5 million people have been displaced. There are over 100 warring factions, especially in the eastern Congo. Seventy five percent of Congolese are below the poverty line making it one of the world’s poorest countries. The UN calls the situation in the eastern Congo “one of the most protracted, complex, serious humanitarian crises on Earth.” The situation is so desperate that Congolese are seeking asylum in Rwanda. One wonders if Afghans would choose to go to the Congo or even back to Afghanistan where their lives would be in danger.

An administration spokesman said that looking at a third world landing site would be “a positive resolution that provides safety for these remaining people to start a new life outside of Afghanistan while upholding the safety and security of the American people.” Translation: we are not going to allow them into the country even though they have been thoroughly vetted. The Afghans include former members of the Afghan special forces, interpreters who worked with the U.S. military and others whose work puts at them risk of persecution and death at the hands of the Taliban. These 1,100 Afghanis have been extensively screened and previously approved for admission to the US. But the Trump Administration has made it clear that they are not coming here regardless. Steven Miller’s hands are all over this.

James Stavridis, a former NATO Supreme Allied Commander and retired U.S. Navy four-star admiral, said “I think of the brave Afghans that stood alongside us against the Taliban, especially those I worked with personally during my four years in command of the NATO mission there. It is incomprehensible to me that we would not bring them here to the United States, fulfilling the most fundamental obligations of trust and honor.” Senator Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois and an Iraqi War veteran who lost her legs in combat, characterized the proposal as “unconscionable. Our nation promised we would welcome our Afghan allies who helped American troops during the war—and put their families in danger in the process. Trump has been callously breaking that promise for no real reason, but now he’s trying to make them choose between facing certain death from the Taliban or moving into one of the world’s worse refugee crisis.” Not surprisingly, I have yet to see any pushback from the republican’s in Congress.

It is no doubt that the administration using the shooting of the West Virginia national guardsmen in Washington, DC by an Afghan national who served with US troops in Afghanistan as justification for not bringing more Afghans into the US to join the 190,000 already here. But isn’t it interesting that the Trump Administration is negotiating with the Congo, a country that it is restricting giving vistas for entry into the US? I would not be surprised if the administration did not try to expel the Afghans already here.

The plight of the Afghans at the hands of the Trump Administration should give pause to any foreign group that might think about aligning itself with the US in the future. Remember the Kurds? It is truly tragic that failure by the Biden Administration to properly vet the Afghans has resulted in our turning our backs on those who aided us at considerable risk to themselves and to their families.

You know you are old when

You start calling people “sonny”
When little old ladies start opening the door for you
When you are older than the president
When your children start treating you like their child
You wish there were new episodes of NYPD Blue and Homicide
You watch no new TV shows
Strange women call you “sweetie”
You bristle at being called your first name by telephone solicitors
You haven’t heard of a single grammy nominee
You wonder how all those women with nose rings blow their nose
You turn off a basketball game because you hate all the tattoos
You think AI is a steak sauce
You mention George Armstrong Custer and no one has even heard of him
All your living heroes are dead
You have a record player
Your grandparents’ living room furniture was covered with plastic
You had a slide rule
You needed carbon paper
Your grandmother made you crank the ice cream churn
There was a clothesline in your backyard
Your TV had rabbit ears with aluminum foil on it
Phone books appeared on your doorstep
You had a camera with film in it
You still miss your first dog
You had a typewriter and white out
You like silence
You make sympathetic clucking noises
You had a rolodex
You still think people should dress up for church
You start wearing black socks with Bermuda shorts
You actually know what are Bermuda shorts
You mix plaids and stripes and are not homeless
Your son has a grandson
Your son is retired
You remember green stamps
You look for your glasses and they are on top of your head
You get up, go into the kitchen and wonder why you are there
You seem to run over every pothole and every curb
You and your significant other always talk about the gas prices
You have no room on your bathroom shelf for another prescription bottle
You remember when you really had to dial a phone
An album held a record
Your grandparents called a refrigerator an icebox (your parents called it a Frigidaire)
Google was the Encyclopaedia Britannica
You still go to AAA and ask for maps
When you tell people you went to AAA they think you are an alcoholic
A memory quiz is part of your annual physical exam
You had bomb drills at elementary school where you had to get under your desk
Your desk had inkwells
Students wore coat and tie to SEC football games
Fans waved confederate flags at SEC games
College bands played Dixie
No black athletes in the SEC
You have more hair in your ears than on your head
Your first TV was black and white
You had a transistor radio
You miss Motown
Gladys Knight and the Pips sang at your high school dances
You listened to baseball games on the radio
You played outside with your friends
You got roller skates for Christmas (and a cap pistol)
You remember that Teddy Pendergrass was the lead singer for Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes (and Jeffrey Osborne with LTD)
Your university had a typing pool
You remember physical photo albums
Housewives on TV wore dresses and high heels
Coeds were not allowed to wear shorts on campus except at gym
You asked your Dad “what’s a colored restroom?”
You remember the milkman
Kids wrote cursive
You remember muscle cars
Someone else pumped your gas (and wiped off your windshield)
Your cellphone was mounted in your car
You know what 75 and 33 rpm mean
You mother had a clothes wringer washing machine
You had to use public pay phones
You still use your ipod
When you finally ask for directions you are already there
You know what an analog clock is
There was a grease can on the stove
There were paper boarding passes
There were no remote controls
You had to put the key in the ignition
You went to drive-in movies
Sears Roebuck had a catalog
You thought Amazon was a rain forest
Friends used to just drop in to visit
You saw Jackie Robinson play at Ebbitts Field
The Washington baseball team was the Senators
Houston‘s was the Colt 45s
Atlanta’s was the Crackers
Atlanta’s Nego League team was the Black Crackers
You thought Shaquille was a funny name
Democrats were racists
You had a J C Higgins shotgun
You walked to school
Only girls wore earrings
Your weight has shifted from your butt to your stomach
You are the same age as old people
You are always introduced as “the first”
Your grandparents had an outhouse
You miss your parents
Your grandparents’ parents were slaves

Pope Don versus Pope Leo

Much has been written about the recent dustup between the president and the Pope. Leo had said that he will continue to call for peace. “I will not shy away from announcing the message of the Gospel and inviting all people to look for ways of building bridges of peace and reconciliation, and looking for ways to avoid war any time that’s possible.” What I found curious was that he also said that he was not afraid of Trump. “I have no fear of the Trump administration, or speaking out loudly of the message of the gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the Church is here to do.” Now don’t you think it is a bit weird that the Pope would say that? Why would he ever be afraid of the Trump administration?

Of course, the president took this as a personal attack and again elevated his own self-importance by depicting himself as Jesus. The president tweeted that Leo was chosen because he was an American, and the Catholic Church wanted to curry favor with him. “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy. He talks about “fear” of the Trump Administration, but doesn’t mentionthe FEAR that the Catholic Church, and all other Christian Organizations, had during COVID when they were arresting priests, ministers, and everybody else, for holding Church Services, even when going outside, and being ten and even twenty feet apart. I like his brother Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA. He gets it, and Leo doesn’t! I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s terrible that America attacked Venezuela, a Country that was sending massive amounts of Drugs into the United States and, even worse, emptying their prisons, including murderers, drug dealers, and killers, into our Country. And I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History. Leo should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise. He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican. Unfortunately, Leo’s Weak on Crime, Weak on Nuclear Weapons, does not sit well with me, nor does the fact that he meets with Obama Sympathizers like David Axelrod, a LOSER from the Left, who is one of those who wanted churchgoers and clerics to be arrested. Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician. It’s hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it’s hurting the Catholic Church! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Again, Trump is all about Trump. Maybe he really would like to be Pope (except for that celibacy thing). But at least he did not call the Pope a LOSER and having a LOW IQ like he has done to almost everyone that he has a disagreement with. Trump does not like to be criticized – even by the Pope. He likely sees this as a threat to his authority. As to Leo, one Italian of note said “this is just a huge blessing. It’s wonderful for the church, all over the world, that he is the guy who can stand up to Trump.”

What is noteworthy is how the president immediately turned his ire on Italy’s Giorgia Meloni who he placed in an awkward position. As Italy’s prime minister, no one – including the president – would expect her to be silent to the president’s criticisms of the Pope. At first, she faced sharp criticisms for being silent and not defending the Pope or criticizing Trump. Her Italian critics said that she was politically weak and subservient to Trump while claiming the relationship has brought no benefits to the country. Italy is still is hit with a 15 percent tariff and just survived an attempt to place additional tariffs on its pasta exports.

Meloni’s remarks were mild: “The pope is the head of the Catholic Church, and it is right and normal that he calls for peace and condemns every form

of war. When we don’t agree, we must say it. And this time, we do not agree.” Meloni had said that she found Trump’s words to be “unacceptable.” Trump shot back that Meloni was “unacceptable.” Trump also said Meloni “doesn’t care if Iran has a nuclear weapon and would blow up Italy in two minutes if it had the chance.” “Meloni doesn’t want to help us with NATO, she doesn’t want to help us get rid of the nuclear weapon. She’s very different from what I thought.” So much for your only European friend.

Although it is against his nature, Trump should realize that in Italy the Pope is untouchable – even an American Pope – and Meloni would have to say the appropriate clucking noises in order to keep from being criticized by political friends and foes alike. What did Trump think that Meloni could stay silent or even take his side against the Pope? Trump may have fractured the friendship between the two. But as one Italian politician put it “Closeness to Trump has not benefited Italy, much less the Meloni government.”

Wait! You mean she is qualified?

The president made an obvious mistake and nominated Dr. Erica Schwartz to head the CDC. Schwartz is that rare Trump appointee in that she is imminently qualified for the job. She was deputy surgeon general in the first Trump administration. She is a board certified doctor of preventive medicine. She holds degrees in biomedical engineering and medicine from Brown University and has a master’s degree in public health. She has a law degree from the University of Maryland has been admitted to the bar in the District of Columbia and has been described as “wickedly smart.” Schwartz’s father was a career Navy master chief petty officer who joined the Navy at 17. Her three siblings all served in the military. I wonder if some of the MAGA crowd will insist that she is Trump’s DEI hire?

Schwartz spent the bulk of her career in the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard, including as the Coast Guard’s preventive medicine chief. She is also a retired rear admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. The CDC has been the subject of controversy with one nominee being withdrawn due to anti-vaccine views and another quitting soon after being named to the job. In contrast to her boss, Robert Kennedy, Jr., Schwartz is not in the anti-vaccine camp. Word is that Trump has told Kennedy to cool it with all the anti-vac rhetoric prior to the upcoming midterms.

Here is what Trump tweeted on Truth Social: “I am pleased to announce the new leadership of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It is my Honor to nominate the incredibly talented Dr. Erica Schwartz, MD, JD, MPH, as my Director of the CDC. Erica graduated from Brown University for College and Medical School, and served a distinguished career as a Doctor of Medicine in the United States Military, the Greatest and Most Powerful Force in the World, and then served as my Deputy Surgeon General during my First Term. She is a STAR!”

How Schwartz and Kennedy will coexist remains to be seen. However, Schwartz must have reached some accommodation in order to consent to be nominated. Jerome Adams who was Trump’s first surgeon general said Schwartz is “objectively the most qualified health nominee we’ve seen from this administration so far.” But warned “Recent history tells us if she’s confirmed, she will be under real threat to follow ideology over evidence in what is a vaccine-skeptical HHS.”

This nomination is a home run and should be confirmed unanimously. If the democrats oppose her, it will not be a good look. And one wonders if Pete Hegseth will try to demote her from rear admiral or get her to retire like he has done with so many blacks and women in the military. I wonder if he knows that Schwartz is a black woman?

Half of Virginia votes to disenfranchise the other half

This 1862 map by Civil Engineer E.G. Arnold of Washington, DC encompasses the original District of Columbia as laid out by Andrew Ellicott in 1791-92 as a ten-mile-square diamond straddling the Potomac River. The map itself is of historic interest. The map shows in great detail the network of roads, turnpikes, and railroads, the routes of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal and the nearly-completed Washington Aqueduct. It also shows the ring of forts surrounding the city and the hospitals built north of the city to care for those wounded in the on-going Civil War.

Unfortunately for Arnold the map was too detailed and appeared in early September of 1862 right after the Union defeat at Second Manassas (Bull Run). The War Department deemed the map to have too much detail about the topography and fortifications of the capitol and would be of immense potential value to the Confederacy. The War Department aggressively suppressed the map.The Washington Post reported “…two days after the first copy had been put on sale, the rumor of its existence reached the ears of the War Department, and the officers of the law swooped down on the bookstores and gobbled every copy in stock…. Not only were all the bookstore copies taken, but the names of those who had bought copies of the map were also learned, and those individuals were promptly called upon and given the alternative of surrendering their purchase or of going to the Old Capitol, which was then the political prison of the city. The plate from which the map had been printed was confiscated as well….” (Washington Post, Nov. 6, 1892)

This makes the Arnold map one of the most valuable maps ever produced in this country. What makes it especially interesting now is that it depicts the original layout of Washington, DC. The map shows the District carved out of portions of Maryland and Virginia. But the Virginia portion was retroceded to that state in 1846 because of slavery. That brings up a brilliant suggestion made by Chad Mizelle in Fox News: “Trump has a bold option to counter Virginia’s new gerrymander scheme.”

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-bold-option-counter-virginias-new-gerrymander-scheme

Virginia has just done a Massachusetts and gerrymandered the state to change its congressional delegation from 6 democrats and 5 republicans to 10 democrats and only one republican. The vote shows the tyranny of the majority in that the proposal passed by only 51.5% to 48.5% which is aligned with the current congressional representation. The new delegation will effectively disenfranchise 90 percent of Virginia’s republican voters and will be dominated by the left-leaning northern Virginia counties leaving the more conservative southern counties without an effective voice in Congress. Unlike the Civil War where the western counties seceded from the state to form West Virginia, although many of the southern and western counties would like to join West Virginia, that likelihood is nonexistent. To counter the gerrymander, Mizelle suggests returning the northern Virginia counties that were included in the original plat of Washington, DC back to the nation’s capitol. Virginia was excluded from DC because of slavery – Virginia had it but the capitol and Maryland did not.

Mizelle suggests that Trump (who is fond of issuing executive orders) issue one bringing northern Virginia back into DC. Mizelle notes that “presidents, including William Howard Taft, have considered retrocession unconstitutional and wanted to reclaim the land for the district, but the Supreme Court has never been asked to weigh in.” He says “President Trump could issue an executive orderdeclaring the slavery-motivated retrocession unconstitutional, triggering certain legal action, and allowing the courts to finally weigh in on whether the county of Arlington and the city of Alexandria in fact properly belong to the District of Columbia.” He notes “As some of the deepest blue areas of the commonwealth – and the country – and loaded with federal government employees, residents of this region should feel right at home as part of D.C.” As to the legality of such an order Mizelle says “This order would be on better legal footing than many of President Joe Biden’s most egregious orders, such as those imposing an eviction moratorium or forgiving billions in student debt with the stroke of an (auto) pen.”

Finally, remember that these are the same people always whining about “fairness.” There is nothing “fair” about disenfranchising half of Virginia’s citizens. President Trump should move quickly to restore northern Virginia to its rightful place as part of the District of Columbia.

Brilliant!