Category Archives: Federalist

Classical architecture is not a partisan issue.

President Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democratic Party, was an enthusiastic champion of the Greek Revivalism thankfully still visible in both the capital and his Monticello home. When he designed the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, he took great care in the landscaping and architecture, knowing their likely effects on generations of young minds.

Fifty years later, President Abraham Lincoln insisted that construction of the Washington Monument and U.S. Capitol continue despite the bloody and costly war taking place sometimes just 50 miles from the seat of government. Public beauty in civic buildings, he believed, was crucial to the future of the Union.

Democrat President Franklin Delano Roosevelt drew inspiration from the great Republican of the Civil War, championing the classical and moving ahead with Washington construction as he sought to prepare the country for the world war he saw descending on our fragile peace.

Democrat Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan played an interesting role in Washingtons architectural history, both helping to craft the 1962 General Guidelines that undid more than 50 years of ordered-classical government buildings, then later criticizing the modernism that took its place.

Twentieth Century America, he lamented in 1970, has seen a steady, persistent decline in the visual and emotional power of its public buildings, and this has been accompanied by a not less persistent decline in the authority of its public order.

The preference for the classical is not simply confined to politicians but is immensely popular with the public that lives among these buildings and sees them in either their daily business or on trips to their cities. A survey conducted by The Harris Poll and commissioned by the classicist National Civic Art Society found that, when presented with a picture of a modernist courthouse and a classical one, members of the public preferred the classical design by nearly 3:1, regardless of age, sex, or race.

But in academia and among elite art and architecture circles, the preferences of the American people and its leaders past and present are passe at best, and fascist at worst. On Monday, President Joe Biden broke with a century of precedent by demanding the resignations of four members of the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts, including Chas Fagan, Steven Spandle, Perry Guillot, and Commission Chairman Justin Shubow. His reason? He doesnt like the classic aesthetic.

The counsels office, Bloomberg reports, advised that President Joe Biden has the authority to remove the commissioners, whose staunch support for classical architecture does not align with his values.

Fagan is a renowned sculptor and painter whose statue of former President Ronald Reagan stands in the Capitol Rotunda, whose statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks stands in the National Cathedral, and whose paintings include the Vaticans official portrait of St. Mother Theresa and first lady Barbara Bushs official portrait.

Shubow serves as the president of the National Civic Art Society, a non-profit organization that fights for classicism in public works, and is at the forefront of the battle to rebuild Manhattans destroyed Penn Station. Guillots works include the new White House Rose Garden and Childrens Garden, and Spandles work includes the White Houses beautiful new Tennis Pavilion.

The four men come from different backgrounds and disciplines, but all appear to have been targeted for removal to create a more diverse and less classically oriented commission, despite Guillot not considering himself a classicist and Shubow being the first Jewish chairman in the history of the commission.

Their replacements include urban planner and Howard University architecture professor Hazel Ruth Edwards, Andrew Mellon Foundation program officer Justin Garrett Moore, architect Billie Tsien, whose firm is responsible for the Obama Presidential Library design, and Peter D. Cook, whose designs include the Smithsonians sandcrawler-esque National Museum of African American History and a pavilion seemingly inspired by the Star Trek badge.

The purge, The Washington Post reports, followed a complaint from the deputy mayor of D.C., who told the Biden White House that because of the commissions power to approve the citys development, its members could impede Washingtons progress toward racial and economic equity, climate change and affordable housing.

All four replacement commissioners are modernists, none identify as white males, and three Ruth Edwards, Garrett Moore and Tsien are outspoken allies of the administrations focus on race (and racism) in everything and above all else.Biden, the Posts chosen search-engine headline reads, removes four white men from Commission of Fine Arts.

Since the end of World War II, modernists from the elite academies have made steady progress in the United States and across the West. In the 1930s, when architect John Russell Pope was tasked with designing both the West Wing of the Smithsonians National Gallery and the Jefferson Memorial across Washingtons Tidal Basin, he saw more opportunity for beauty in reinterpreting the ancient than in embracing the novel, choosing to draw heavy inspiration for both the memorial and the center of the museum from the world-renowned Roman Pantheon.

Both [the West Building and the memorial] were conceived as temples, the Society of Architecture Historians write: one dedicated to a man of true republican principles and one a sanctuary to house refined and valuable artworks.

The West Building today regarded as one of the capitals most beautiful was, however, heaped with scorn from the elite critics of its day. When it was dedicated in 1941, Joseph Hudnut, the extremely influential dean of the Harvard School of Architecture, called the museum a pink marble whorehouse, predicting that surely the time cannot be far distant when we shall understand how inadequate is the death-mask of an ancient culture to express the soul of America.

Roosevelt, hardly an outsider to elite circles, disagreed, saying at the buildings dedication:

Seventy-eight years ago, in the third year of the war between the states, men and women gathered here in the capital of a divided nation, here in Washington, to see the dome above the Capitol completed and to see the bronze Goddess of Liberty set upon the top. It had been an expensive and laborious business, diverting money and labor from the prosecution of the war, and certain critics for there were critics in 1863 certain critics found much to criticize. There were new marble pillars in the Senate wing of the Capitol; there was a bronze door for the central portal and other such expenditures and embellishments. But the president of the United States, whose name was Lincoln, when he heard those criticisms, answered: If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign that we intend this Union shall go on.

Although today Hudnut is all but forgotten, his influence lives on through the works of the foreign Bauhaus architects he brought to Harvard, whose work in styles such as Brutalism scar landscapes from Atlantato Washington to Minnesota. Hudnut saw their European cement, it seems, as more suited to express the soul of America.

When the East Wing of the National Gallery was built in the 1960s and 70s (after the General Guidelines for federal architecture has been revamped) modernist I. M. Pei, whose firm was later sued over allegations of shoddy design over the falling-windows mess at Bostons John Hancock Tower, was chosen for the project. Completed in 1978, its novel design required an $85 million fix to prevent the giant, faceless slabs of suspended concrete on the exterior walls from crashing down.

The East Wing is, former Washington Post architecture critic Benjamin Forgey told The New York Times, is an example of why we need contemporary thought in architecture. Its what makes contemplating and experiencing cities enjoyable.

While not a partisan issue, beautiful architecture is important to the American people and is a subject on which our preferences are clear. Having lost the argument, however, certain allies of the modernist elites in the Biden White House have taken it upon themselves to push an unprecedented coup on the Commission on Fine Arts.

Its a naked power grab, nothing more and nothing else. And while it bodes poorly for the near future of American civic architecture, it is a move made from weakness: Just as their works fail to uplift or inspire, their grasping will fail to persuade.

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Why The Biden White House Declared War On Beauty In Architecture - The Federalist

New York Times coronavirus reporter Apoorva Mandavilli fantasized on Twitter Wednesday the world would stop discussing the plausible theory that COVID-19 escaped from a Chinese lab because its racist.

Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots, Mandavalli wrote in a since-deleted tweet, as if the idea COVID-19 emerged from the Chinese eating bats was much better. But alas, that day is not yet here.

The lab-leak theory, that COVID-19 came from the Wuhan Institutes of Virology (WIV) conducting gain-of-function research, was given life this week among legacy outlets which initially dismissed the idea as a conspiracy after the Wall Street Journal reported on U.S. intelligence of three lab workers hospitalized with COVID-like symptoms in the weeks preceding its first outbreak in the same area. Republicans and conservative media who gave credence to the idea from the beginning, including The Federalist, were smeared by the legacy press as amplifying a racist conspiracy theory in an election year.

Alternative theories suggest the novel Wuhan coronavirus, named for the site of its first outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan, came from bat-to-human transmission either in the wild or at a local wet-market. The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) however, with a reputation for subpar safety protocols was conducting research on bat coronaviruses which could infect humans with funding from the U.S. Institutes of National Health (NIH), the umbrella organization of Dr. Anthony Faucis National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which has refused total transparency for a thorough investigation, has pushed several bizarre alternative theories including the idea it was imported through frozen food packaging or came from a Maryland research facility.

Mandavilli doubled-down on her assertion that any inquiry into COVID-19s origins at the Wuhan lab, which killed nearly 3.5 million people globally, is racist after deleting her initial post.

A theory can have racist roots and still gather reasonable supporters along the way, the COVID-19 Times reporter wrote. Doesnt make the roots any less racist or the theory any more convincing, though.

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New York Times Reporter Wants To Kill Lab-Leak Theory Because Racism - The Federalist

By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but We, as a diverse nation, have forgotten how to converse with each other in our diversity. Instead of accepting the value of diverse thought, we have vilified those who differ with our opinion.

Members of Congress reminds me of members of rival street gangs as they have become bitter enemies. We sat and watched in fascination as the leader of the opposing party tore up a copy of the Presidents address to the nation. For four years, we suffered through mid-night tweets from a President who delivered nasty personal attacks on political friends and foes alike. We take a position and those who oppose it are not merely people who disagree with us, they have to be Nazis, racist, homophobes, sexists or whatever other derogatory term we can conjure up. When the country is desperately calling unity, we get only discourse.

President George Washington had warned the nation about the development of political parties. The growth of the party system which pitted Federalists against Democrat-Republicans was in his view the worst enemy of good government and a fire that could not be quenched. The election of 1800 proved Washington right, and the political blazed started at that time has grown to an all-consuming fire endangering the very existence of the America.

Patrick Henry, when America politics was based on region rather than party, stated: The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders, are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American. However, the greatest call for unity is probably found in Thomas Jeffersons first Inaugural Address.

The election of 1800 which pitted the Democrat-Republican Thomas Jefferson against the Federalist John Adams saw character assassination as the order of the day. Federalist accused Jefferson of all sorts of infidelities. Theophilus Parsons called him the great arch priest of Jacobinism and infidelity. Newspapers intimated that Jefferson was a Jew or even a Muslim. (Sound familiar?). Democratic-Republicans spoke of need to save the nation from John Adams and the talons of Monarchists. After the election John Adams left town on the morning of and prior to Jeffersons inauguration.

That Jefferson was being hypocritical when he wrote all men are created equal, while he owned slaves, cannot be denied. But there is no challenge to Jeffersons intellect. President Kennedy once stated at a White House dinner for Nobel Prize winners, that he was grateful to find himself among the most extraordinary collection of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

Jeffersons first inaugural address was widely reprinted under the headline WE ARE ALL REPUBLICANS; WE ARE ALL FEDERALISTS. Jefferson called for Americans to unite in common efforts for the common good. While this did not stop the partisan bickering nor the growth of political parties, it is a speech that should be read and taken to heart by all Americans. Parts of this speech makes up my Thought of the Week.

Thought of the week. During the contest of opinion .the animation of discussions and of exertions which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government cannot be strong, but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us freeSometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government,it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. Equal and exact justice to all men,; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, a jealous care of the right of election by the people absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, a well-disciplined militia, the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety. Thomas Jefferson

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No One Asked Me But (June 2, 2021) - mvprogress

USA Today retroactively edited an article written by a student that affirmed biological sex to instead appease a woke mob.

The original article, authored by collegiate track star Chelsea Mitchell, detailed how authorizing biological males who claim to be females to participate on womens high school or college sports teams ultimately hurts female athletes.

I was the fastest girl in Connecticut. But transgender athletes made it an unfair fight, Mitchell wrote. Thats because males have massive physical advantages, she went on to say later in the article, andIll never know how my own college recruitment was impacted by losing those four state championship titles to a male.

Days after the corporate media outlet published the column, however, USA Today editors caved to pressure from activists and deleted all mentions of the word male in the article, replacing them with transgender to avoid offending the captious complainers.

This column has been updated to reflect USA TODAYs standards and style guidelines, the editors note at the top of the article states. We regret that hurtful language was used.

Religious freedom attorney Christiana Holcomb, who assists in representing Mitchell, called attention to the change on Twitter and noted the hypocrisy of USA Today.

USA Today violated its principles to appease the mob. This blatant censorship violates the trust we place in media to be honest brokers of public debate, the legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom wrote.

ADF quickly republished Mitchells article detailing her unjust experience as a female athlete, along with an explanation of how the corporate media outlet used its power to silence the message wrapped into the athletes words.

On May 22, USA Today published an opinion piece from Alliance Defending Freedom client Chelsea Mitchell (Soule v. Connecticut Association of Schools) about the injustice she experienced as an athlete who was forced to compete against males in track. On May 25, editors at USA Today, without notice to Chelsea, changed the word male to transgender throughout her piece, the disclaimer at the top of the ADF article stated. We reproduce the original version of Chelseas piece below so that you can read what she wrote prior to USA Todays post-publication edits and editors note, which inappropriately assigned hurtful motives to Chelseas logical use of the word male to refer to the biology of males who compete in female sports.

While USA Today did not respond to The Federalists request for comment, the corrupt corporate media outlet has a long track record of using its editorial power to subdue dissenting opinions or push certain agendas. In addition to often issuing partisan fact checks that seek to prop up slanted, unnecessary, and long-winded explanations to cover for Democrats, the corporate media outlet also employs college students to assist Big Tech in censoring media they dont agree with or like.

In April, USA Todayedited an op-ed from Stacey Abrams after it was published to mask that the failed Democrat politician initially endorsed corporate boycotts of Georgia over its new election integrity law. The piece, first published on March 31, originally called for corporations to pull their business from the state as an impassioned response, but after woke activists lashed out at Abrams and others for potentially hurting black-owned businesses, USA Today lent her a favor and edited out her support. An editors note was not added until after media organizations such as The Federalist asked about the stealthy change.

USA Today also recently colluded with an anti-gun group funded by failed Democrat presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg to attack a major gun industry trade group shortly before President Joe Bidens nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives faced questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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USA Today Pulls 'Male' From Female Runner's Trans Op-Ed After Publication - The Federalist

FALFURRIAS, Texas The last time Deputy Don White recovered a corpse, in early May, it had been ripped apart by feral hogs. He found human body parts and clothing scattered over about a 100-foot area on a cattle ranch in Brooks County, Texas, about 70 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. The man had been dead for about three weeks.

The hogs, says White, took the arms the scapula will oftentimes come loose, and so the whole arm goes. So, the arms all the way up to scapula, and the feet were gone. At that point in the decomposition process, explains the 68-year-old White, its hard to see the bones in the grass. He found the clothing first, then a pair of yellow boots, then a mandible.

It was the yellow boots, together with some Honduran currency in a pants pocket, that confirmed this was the man White had been sent to find. The two women who drove down from Dallas a few days earlier had given the Brooks County Sheriffs office a detailed description of their nephew, along with his last known location. They hoped he might still be alive, lost somewhere in the vast ranchlands of Brooks County. But they had their suspicions, says White, that he was dead.

The man had been with a small group of other illegal immigrants, led by a smuggler, who were hiking around the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint outside the tiny town of Falfurrias, Texas. They had already crossed the Rio Grande without being detected, and their last obstacle was to get around the checkpoint unnoticed.

Groups like these single adult migrants attempting to evade law enforcement are now crossing the border in near-record numbers. Media coverage of the ongoing border crisis has focused almost exclusively on the children and families turning themselves in and claiming asylum. During the last border crisis, in the spring of 2019, the vast majority of those caught crossing illegally were children and families, mostly from Central America.

But now, the situation has reversed. Since October, children and families have accounted for less than one-third of all apprehensions at the border, while the vast majority, more than 70 percent, have been single adults.

Of the 178,000 apprehensions at the border in April, more than 111,000 were single adults. Most of them, if caught, wont be able to claim asylum. They instead face immediate expulsion under a pandemic-related safety protocol invoked by President Trump and continued under President Biden. So theyre trying not to get caught.

That means sneaking around checkpoints, hiding in stash houses, arranging to be picked up on remote country roads, and, if spotted by law enforcement, running. High-speed car chases and bailouts when a pursued vehicle stops suddenly and everyone inside bails out and runs in different directions have become common this spring in Brooks County, as have broken fences and car-jackings. The sparsely populated county is home to one of the largest and busiest of 33 permanent inland Border Patrol checkpoints, which means its a bottleneck in the northward flow of illegal immigration, and a hotbed of all the problems that come with it.

Its been a bottleneck for decades, ever since Border Patrol built the checkpoint south of town in 1994. But ranch owners and law enforcement officials tell me this is the worst theyve ever seen. Its not just car chases and broken fences, its also corpses.

The Honduran man whose corpse was ripped apart by feral hogs earlier this month was the 34th body found so far this year in Brooks County, already more than were found all of last year. And its only May. The hottest and deadliest months are still to come.

Brooks County Sheriff Benny Martinez says this year is already far worse than 2019 and reminds him more of 2012, when his deputies recovered a record 129 bodies and Texas became the deadliest state in the country for illegal immigrants. But there are some significant differences compared to 2012, he says.

Smugglers are now using GPS to go cross-country in trucks and SUVs, smashing through fences as they go. Last week, a group stole a backhoe and used it to break through ranch fences for about 60 miles until they got to U.S. Highway 285, an east-west corridor north of the checkpoint where most groups traveling on foot will get picked up.

The other big difference is that the groups are smaller. Back in 2012, says Martinez, we had groups of 75 to a hundred. Now well have five different groups at the same time that add up to a hundred. He thinks their movements are coordinated, designed to tie up limited law enforcement resources and ensure a maximum amount of human cargo gets through.

Theyre talking to each other, they got GPS on them, and theyre making every effort to evade, he says. Theyre also strategizing, watching where sheriffs deputies and state troopers are patrolling and then shooting through the gaps. Daytime, nighttime, dont matter. Theyre coming, says Martinez. Its all a coordinated effort. In fact, I think their intel is probably better than ours.

That coordination has sometimes led to a brazenness from smugglers and traffickers. Martinez mentioned to me that a group of five illegal immigrants recently walked out of the brush and into the parking lot of a big truck stop outside of town, in broad daylight, thinking their ride was waiting for them there. As it happened, some state troopers and sheriffs deputies were in the parking lot re-grouping from a high-speed chase, and took them into custody.

I later went to the truck stop and asked a cashier if shed ever seen anything like that, groups of migrants walking in from the brush. She said she usually works the graveyard shift, and yeah, It happens all the time now. You see them come in and you can tell they walked through the brush. Theyll have sticks and burrs and dirt on them. Its just obvious.

Whether they get picked up at the truck stop or somewhere along Highway 285, these groups are in communication with what Sheriff Martinez calls transportation cells. Those are networks of drivers and stash house operators stretching from Brooks County north to Houston and Dallas, where migrants are usually released from the smuggling organizations custody and sent on their way.

Its another aspect of the industrialization of illegal immigration by cartels and smuggling networks, exemplified by wrist-bands and information databases run by cartels on the south side of the Rio Grande and coordinated smuggling operations around border checkpoints further inland.

Breaking up or even disrupting these networks is an almost impossible task, even with a heavy law enforcement presence, in part because of the vastness of the natural landscape here. Since March, the area has been swarming with Texas state troopers as part of Operation Lone Star, which Gov. Greg Abbott launched to combat the smuggling of people and drugs into Texas. Along Highway 285 south of the Border Patrol checkpoint, every mile or so youll see a state trooper parked on the side of the road in what amounts to a massive stakeout.

The problem is, Brooks County covers nearly 1,000 square miles but has only about 7,000 residents. Nearly the entire county is ranches, many of them more than a century old, handed down from one generation to the next. Finding small groups of migrants in this vast landscape is extremely difficult, even with the cooperation of local ranchers.

William Jones Miller, 57, runs the Alto Colorado division of Jones Ranch, which encompasses some 400,000 acres in South Texas and was founded in 1897. Millers part of the ranch in Brooks County sits just south of the checkpoint, which means its constantly being traversed by groups of illegal immigrants, and has been for years.

I ask him whats different about the last three months or so, and hes emphatic: Right now its worse than it has ever been, ever been. Worse than it has ever been that I can recall, ever.

Thats telling because Miller, who grew up on the border, in Brownsville, has seen plenty out here. A few years back, he tells me, he came across 15 or 20 guys, with paramilitary garb, backpacks up to here and automatic weapons moving at a hard clip across my country. This is America. What the f-ck, right?

As we talk, a Border Patrol SUV drives past near the ranch house, traveling off-road through the brush. Like most of the ranchers in Brooks, Miller allows Border Patrol access to his land to conduct searches and pursuits of illegal immigrants, but it comes with a certain amount of risk. Three months back, says Miller, a Border Patrol vehicle traveling over dry grass accidentally sparked a wildfire that consumed 8,000 acres and miles of fencing.

Even so, Miller says he likes having Border Patrol on the ranch these days because of the sheer volume of illegal immigrants coming through. During the Trump presidency, even during the 2019 surge, he says the volume of migrants was way down. Now, he sees groups moving day and night, and tracks all along the pipeline roads and easements. I mean, its like somebody is herding these people like cattle.

Presnall Cage agrees. His 46,000-acre ranch sits just north of Millers but still south of the checkpoint, so hes been dealing with groups of illegal immigrants crossing his land and getting lost and dying for years. But this year is already the worst hes seen, he says, in at least 15 years. Dozens of migrants cross through his property every night, he says, And Im seeing the leftovers, those who got lost, almost every day now.

The ones who get lost often find themselves in danger. Miller tells me that if you were going to trek from Mexico into the United States, Brooks County is probably the single worst place to start because everything out here has a thorn, everything out here is trying to bite you.

And its true. Brooks County is only about 30 miles from the Gulf Coast and the soil is sandy and deep, full of burrs and difficult to walk through. The vegetation is brutal: thorny mesquite, pricklypear, horse crippler cactus, crown of thorns. Snakes and venomous insects are everywhere, especially in the spring.

And then theres the heat. Already in May, temperatures are in the 90s. For most of the summer its in the triple-digits, even sometimes at night.

Along the caliche backroads and the two-lane county roads near the checkpoint youll see bright blue 50-gallon drums with AGUA spray-painted on the side and gallon jugs of water inside. Eddie Canales, a local activist, has worked for years to get permission from landowners to place and maintain these water stations all over Brooks County.

The water gets used because many migrants have no idea what kind of terrain or climate theyre walking into. Rescued migrants often have no provisions, says Don White, the deputy, because the smugglers have lied to them about where they are and how long the trek will take, telling stragglers at night that theyre close, that the glow of lights in the distance are the lights of Houston, some 275 miles away. Just walk towards those lights, they say.

The ones who dont make it are Whites responsibility. Hes known as the body man because all he does, as a semi-retired volunteer deputy, is search for dead bodies and human remains. The work has kept him busy because migrants keep dying on ranches, and every time theres a surge of illegal immigration at the border the body count in Brooks County rises. Border Patrol conducts search and rescue operations for lost migrants, but after a day or two theyll turn the search over to the sheriffs office and the rescue becomes a recovery.

What often happens, White tells me, is that groups get dumped out just south of the checkpoint and try to follow an old pipeline road that comes out north of the checkpoint. The only problem with that is its a quick jump so nobody takes supplies. So if they get lost, they get separated, they got nothing to carry them through.

The Honduran man whose corpse White recovered earlier this month was one of those who brought no supplies. The aunts from Dallas told White their nephew was asthmatic but that he didnt bring his inhaler with him. He must have thought he was only going to be hiking for a few hours. Its a wonder he made it as long as he did, says White.

The mans scattered remains might have been left in the wilderness for years before being discovered. White has stumbled upon remains by accident before. He showed me a picture on his cell phone of a half-buried human skull he came upon recently while searching for a missing woman. He says it initially looked like a deflated soccer ball in the sand.

But in this case, someone in the group had called the women in Dallas to tell them their nephew had been left behind, unable to keep up through the harsh terrain, and given them his last known location. It didnt take White long to find the man, and because he had a description of his clothing, he knew hed found the right corpse. Someone had already gone through his pockets and taken his ID, which is common.

If the group theyre with dont take it, then in a follow-up group somebody will almost always takes their stuff, including their ID, says White. To me thats heartless, to take somebodys ID, says White, because it makes it extremely difficult to notify the family, and quite possibly it may never take place.

Originally posted here:

The Illegal Immigration Crisis Near The Border You Haven't Heard About - The Federalist

America is captivated by the recent recoupling of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, whose tabloid romance crashed and burned in the early days of this century. After splitting up with other high-profile celebrities, most recently Alex Rodriguez and Ana de Armas, theyre back together, almost 20 years later, having weathered the highs and lows of adult life.

Emily Jashinsky:Madeline, is nostalgia alone responsible for the level of excitement here? Affleck is sort of famously troubled and Jennifer just got out of an engagement with A-Rod. It seems on paper like they might not be making the best decision but I honestly cant get enough of it.

Madeline Osburn:In light of this news, I just revisitedJ.Los Jenny from the Block music video featuring Ben Affleck and it not only holds up, but makes me long for the simpler times of the early 2000s. In the same way that people freak out any time Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt are even in the same room, there is something we love about Bennifer and the relationships that kicked off an era of paparazzi and celebrity culture.

Oddly enough, the Jenny from the Block video uses her fling with Ben to send a message about her own fame coinciding with the birth of the modern tabloid by using stalking paparazzi angles for all the shots of the couple around town. I think we crave the less polarized, slower pace of the days before iPhones and social media, as well as the type of celebrity coverage that was all about who is dating who, not who is protesting what or making this or that political statement.

EJ: What an iconic video. I think theres always been something amusingly strange about this pairing, which fueled the tabloid intrigue. It wasnt just that both of them were A-listers. They seem so different, shes a put-together queen of pop and hes brooding and troubled and cinematic. To your point, now that theyre together, its interesting to take stock of how theyve grown separately and how weve grown as a culture. J-Lo is like one half of the country whos done really well, and Ben is like the other half thats had a really tough millennium. Shes been through some stuff, but is ageless as ever. Hes weathered.

Our collective intrigue seems kinder now, but its like we had to go through the jungle of the Perez Hilton era to get there. I dont know if thats better or worse.

MO:The overall tone does seem kinder, even though we are getting the exact same kind of intrusive paparazzi shots of Ben ripping cigs that we were 20 years ago. But I dont think its actually kinder as much as it is that we are just better at framing our celebrities as heroes and villains. This is 100 percent thanks to our fawning entertainment media industry, which I know we both always blame for all of our pop culture media problems, buts true here too.

The media loves J-Lo and so collectively, we love J-Lo. In a ranking of untouchable or uncancelable celebrities, I would put her up there with Beyonce. The same is true for Ben Affleck. His horrible and very public divorce with Jennifer Garner, who is also beloved, solidified his casting in the media as a brooding and troubled antagonist. Its why hes such a great meme. Now that they are an item, it will be interesting to watch the media coverage that follows.

I like your metaphor that half the country is J-Lo and the other half is Ben, but they are back together, and I dont see the same happening for the two very different Americas that have emerged from the last 20 years.

EJ:I feel like people actually dont like Ben? His relationship with Ana de Armas was the subject of endless mockery. It really annoyed some people. He also seems to have badly hurt Jennifer Garner, which was tragic to watch unfold in public. But, then again, everyone loves his back tattoo. Maybe America is Ben Afflecks back phoenix.

Were torturing the metaphor. I guess its just been interesting to watch these two capitalize on the internets ability to facilitate collective nostalgia. People love to do the back when I was young thing, but now millennials get to do it together on social media, enjoying their new status as the grizzled veterans of pop culture while Gen Z charts its own, weird path. Id probably rather go back to the days when these two were first together than keep slogging through the smartphone era, but for them, its probably wonderful to rekindle their romance through the lens of a much gentler press.

MO: Yeah, I didnt mean to say the same is true that Ben is universally loved, but that the same is true that the media doesnt like Ben and so we dont like Ben. I think thats all I have to say. Except I cant believe he kept the blingy watch she gave him 20 years ago and IMMEDIATELY busted that thing out for his Miami sleepover.

EJ:We should get back to work.

Emily Jashinsky is Culture Editor at The Federalist. Madeline Osburn is Staff Editor at The Federalist and Producer of the Federalist Radio Hour.

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Back To Bennifer: Jennifer Lopez And Ben Affleck Rise From The Ashes Of Cultural Decay - The Federalist

President Biden claims he wont raise taxes on families making less than $400,000 per year. But given Bidens twists and turns on taxeshe now wants to eliminate a loophole he and his wife exploited to avoid more than $500,000 in taxes the past four yearsAmericans have reason to take his campaign promises with a grain of salt.

Even if he does not levy taxes on middle-class families directly, Bidens free-money policies are beginning to impose a heavy indirect tax increase on families of modest means: Rising inflation. At a time the wealthiest Americans have gotten even richer due to booming times on Wall Street, pernicious inflation would give working families a crushing blow.

A recent Labor Department report noted that in April, the Consumer Price Index rose 4.2 percent on an annual basis compared to April 2020. From March to April of this year, prices rose at a 0.8 percent rate, which equates to roughly 10 percent inflation over an entire year. Both the annual and the monthly increases in April significantly exceeded the Federal Reserves 2 percent inflation benchmark.

The Federal Reserve considers this spike in inflation transitorya true enough statement, to a point. Some of the price spikes stem from anomalies due to the pandemic.

For instance, this time last year, oil prices tanked when much of the global economy shut down; that sharp spike downward last year will look like a big spike upward this year, as prices move toward higher, pre-pandemic levels. Other price increases could stem from pandemic-related supply chain issuesfor instance, the global chip shortagethat may resolve themselves as things return to normal.

But rising prices could also develop into a longer-term phenomenon. The trillions of dollars that the Federal Reserve continues to pump into the economy, coupled with trillions of dollars of federal spending pushed by Biden and congressional Democrats, could let the inflation genie out of the proverbial bottle, leading to sustained price increases.

A recent analysis in the Wall Street Journal explained in laymans terms the problem that prolonged Bidenflation would present: A fall in inflation-adjusted wages hits low- and moderate-income households especially hard, because they dedicate a larger share of their paychecks to covering daily living costs. The numbers might be temporarily skewed, but if inflation persists and is fueled by the Fed or the Biden administrations policies, it could raise questions about the costs and benefits of those policies for working Americans.

Ironically enough, even as the Biden administration has dismissed the idea of an explicit gas tax increase to pay for infrastructure spending, inflation would present a de facto increase in the price of fuelwhile also raising the price of food, clothing, rent, transportation, and other essentials that comprise a disproportionate share of working-class families budgets.

While many Americans were too young to have lived through it personally, weve seen this phenomenon before. In the 1960s and 1970s, the combination of high government spending, easy-money policies from central banks, and oil crises in the Middle East led to runaway inflation in the United States and many European countries.

In her 1979 election campaign, future British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher provided tangible evidence of how inflation harms the poor. At one famous photocall, Thatcherthe daughter of a grocer, who understood the struggles working-class families face in ways her wealthier colleagues often did notheld up two bags of groceries.

The very noticeable difference between the size of the two bags showed how five years of a Labour government had eroded the value of the pound in your pocket by sharply reducing the value of the goods Britons could buy with their currency:

Another way of looking at inflations impact: In April, real inflation grew at a 3 percent annual rateprices rose by 4.2 percent, while wages rose by only 1.2 percent. If that pace continues over the four years of the Biden administration, a worker earning a $50,000 salary in January 2021 will be able to buy only $44,265 worth of goods with that salary in January 2025.

Some people decided to brag about their $1,400 stimmy checks the federal government handed out earlier this year. But if those one-time checks lead to inflation persisting at the level we saw in April, middle-class families will end up thousands of dollars per year poorer.

The inflation spiral of the 1970s demonstrates how government policies end up harming those the left claims to help. As Thatcher famously said in 1976, socialists eventually run out of other peoples money. When they doand sooner or later, Biden and the Federal Reserve will run out of fiscal firepowerit could leave damaging effects. To put it bluntly, all this free money could end up driving American families into the poor house.

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Why Democrats' Inflation Is A Major Tax Hike On The Poor - The Federalist

President Joe Bidens $6 trillion spending proposal will force American taxpayers to fund abortions after removing the Hyde Amendment.

Since the 1970s, Congress has included the Hyde Amendment in spending bills to prevent taxpayer dollars from funding abortions except if the mothers life is in danger, she was raped, or there was incest. Bidens newest spending plan excludes this provision protecting Americans consciences and instead reinstates giving federal finances out to cover killing babies.

Studies show that Americans largely oppose funding abortions in the United States and overseas but Bidens commitment to appeasing pro-abortion activists and progressives appears to outweigh public opinion.

For more than four decades, the Hyde family of pro-life policies has kept American taxpayers out of the abortion business, with the Hyde Amendment itself saving nearly 2.5 million lives. The Biden budget throws that longstanding, bipartisan consensus out the window to fulfill a campaign promise to the radical abortion lobby, said Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser.

In 2019, Bidens campaign said he supported the Hyde Amendment. Shortly after receiving criticism from abortion extremists for his position, the campaign changed his agenda to oppose the policy, a switch that was frowned upon at the time by Bidens now-Vice President Kamala Harris as purely political.

Even after approximately 200 GOP legislators, as well as more than 60 pro-life activists,sent letters to leaders in the House and Senate asking them to preserve the Hyde Amendment, the risk that a Democrat-controlled Congress could follow Bidens lead and remove the bipartisan efforts of politicians for decades poses a great threat.

As Politico reports, Democrats who control Congress discretionary spending arent waiting for the White House to act, and have already begun quietly to draft a plan that would drop the Hyde amendment and allow Medicaid, Medicare, federal employee health insurance and the Indian Health Service to cover abortions.

Biden has also already taken drastic steps to expand American access to baby killing. The Department of Health and Human Services already began reversing former President Donald Trumps rules to reinstate taxpayer-funded abortion referrals last month, a decision that more than 20 pro-life groups have banded together to oppose.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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Biden's $6 Trillion Spending Proposal Forces American Taxpayers To Fund Abortions - The Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Emily Domenech joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss how she banded with the Travis Manion Foundation to found The Honor Project and encourage Americans to gather to recognize the fallen on Memorial Day.

Part of what makes The Honor Project really magical is its a stranger recognizing a stranger from far away and honoring their names, saying their name, sharing it with the rest of the world, and giving a moment to remember that person, Domenech said. I think most people, most civilians, go into Memorial Day and they know what it means, they know how important it is, they appreciate the military, but they havent got a clue how to reach out to touch those families who have really lost someone and they dont have a clue how to really appropriately honor those who sacrifice.

I think the lesson for civilians looking atour service members who are coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan today is to talk to them, ask them how they wanttheir comrades to be remembered. Ask, ask them how they want their service appreciated,Domenech said. Because I think the Vietnam generation did not get that opportunity. And its only just now coming out how many of them sort of I think needed itand needed the ability to share with their family and friendstheir experience overseas. And I always find those stories to be really incredible.

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Honoring Those Who Sacrificed Their Lives Should Never Be Overlooked - The Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Asra Nomani, VP for Strategy and Investigations for Parents Defending Education, joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss the proliferation of critical race theory in American schools and how parents from both the left and the right are banding together to stop it.

Its a theory. Its a philosophy. Its an ideology. Its an approach that assumes that race is critical to every single element of society and thats why you end up with this alphabet soup of weird buzzwords that they keep throwing around like the idea that its systemic racism that we have to dismantle, Nomani said.

Identity politics, Nomani said, can be exploited by both political parties so its up to the concerned families to take action.

We have to all stand up and just really refuse that kind of identity politics and really challenge it with moral courage in each of our communities because, you know, its shame that they use as a lever to silence us, Nomani said.

Do not allow their tactics of shame to silence you. Justremain dignified, live with grace, dont ever stoop to their tactics of degradation of another human beingbecause then we become what were trying to oppose. But stand strong against it, she said.

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The Proliferation Of Critical Race Theory Is Killing American Schools With Politics - The Federalist