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To the Editor:

Re Menace Grows Commonplace Among G.O.P. (front page, Nov. 13):

It is appalling what our country has become. There have always been dissension and clashes between the two political parties, but there has rarely been anything as utterly ugly as what is going on today.

That a young man at a rally can ask when can we start killing Democrats and get a round of applause is a travesty. Threats of violence have become the norm in the Republican Party, fueled by the unscrupulous twice-impeached promoter of the Big Lie.

Representative Paul Gosar should be ousted for the video in which he portrays slaying Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene should be ousted as well for promoting vile conspiracy theories and listing as traitors the 13 Republicans who voted to pass the infrastructure bill.

Because of her they are getting death threats. Their biggest crime was daring to vote for a bill that would benefit all Americans, instead of toeing the party line. The Republicans who stand by and do nothing and say nothing are equally guilty in their silence.

There is a war on our democracy. Violence is taking over our government. Our elected officials should do the job they were elected to do, uphold the Constitution and govern for the good of the people.

Milena CornickNew York

To the Editor:

So Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona tweeted an anime video altered to show him killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and swinging two swords at President Biden. When questioned, Mr. Gosars office offered this response: It is a symbolic cartoon. It is not real life. Well, duh!

While we all understand that this is not real life, we also understand that this type of political violence porn contributes to the actions of unhinged people that we saw in the Jan. 6 assault on Congress. Revving up the nutballs who are just waiting to create more havoc in our public life should not be the task of elected officials, if they are acting like adults. Paul Gosar should be ashamed of himself.

Judith Koll HealeyMinneapolis

To the Editor:

Your report gives grudging acknowledgment that elements of the left have contributed to the confrontational tenor of the countrys current politics, but then proceeds to document only statements by Republicans.

I am thinking of a statement by a Democratic representative, Maxine Waters, during the trial of Derek Chauvin over George Floyds death: Weve got to get more confrontational. Weve got to make sure that they know that we mean business. This pales in comparison with recent comments by a Black Lives Matter leader, Hawk Newsome, about possible changes in policing: There will be riots, there will be fire and there will be bloodshed.

It isnt only talk. The looting and fires in New York City in June 2020 were not by Republicans. And lets not forget Kenosha, Portland and Minneapolis.

Alexander GoldsteinBrooklyn

To the Editor:

The biggest threat to our democracy is not an outside threat, but politicians and their followers who are willing to threaten their opponents over the results of free and fair elections.

If Republican leaders felt that this violence was unwarranted and harmful to their political brand, they would immediately denounce these assaults against democracy. Why are so many so complacent about attacks that would be considered existential if they came from foreign actors?

Edwin AndrewsMalden, Mass.

To the Editor:

Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin are facing criticism from Democrats for not toeing the party line. As a bisexual Democrat, I find it horrifying to watch the criticism of Ms. Sinema devolve into sly biphobic attacks that are increasing in frequency and ferocity.

Recent articles about Senator Sinema, including in The New York Times, focus on her person, not her politics. Democrats are attacking her because she is not voting the way they want her to vote, and the attacks are using her bisexuality as a weapon against her.

One article, for example, refers to Ms. Sinemas style choices viewed as a type of pinkwashing: leveraging positive associations with gay culture and identity to distract from ones negative actions.

Meanwhile, without federal anti-discrimination legislation, bisexuals face discrimination across the United States. One of the places making strides to eliminate L.G.B.T. discrimination is Arizona, Ms. Sinemas state.

Whether or not one agrees with all of Ms. Sinemas policy positions, and I often dont, as an American who cherishes democracy I believe that it is her right (and, as an elected official, her duty) to determine her own political positions, free from attacks on her identity.

(Rev.) Marian Edmonds-AllenNew YorkThe writer is the executive director of Parity, a nonprofit that works on faith and L.G.B.T. issues.

To the Editor:

Re How Maps Reshape American Politics (charts, Nov. 12):

Take all redistricting out of the hands of people who serve to gain unfairly from it.

Create an algorithm that divides each state into as many rectangular districts as the state is allowed, and have each districts boundaries moved enough to create relatively equal population numbers that ignore any voter characteristics such as political party, race, etc.

Ted KallmanOcracoke, N.C.

To the Editor:

Re Immigration Laws Racist Legacy, by Reece Jones (Opinion guest essay, Nov. 1):

Our nations guilty conscience for laws and actions of the past should not be the basis of badly needed immigration reform. After all, the stain of the past was often directed at specific races.

Our lawmakers must decide how many people can immigrate to our country each year. Open borders are disruptive, expensive and harmful to Americans who need assistance. Money used for undocumented immigrants is money that could be used to subsidize poor Americans, including the aid being proposed in Congress today.

Many Americans who are not xenophobic want the crisis on our southern border to end, not because they hate one group of people or another, but because millions of people are entering the country illegally.

The essay suggests that the United States accept the unprecedented illegal immigration on our southern border because of actions that took place long before most of us were born.

Salvatore J. BommaritoNew York

To the Editor:

A Faltering Shadow War Against Somali Militants (front page, Oct. 25) left me apprehensive that the United States is heading for another Afghanistan-like disaster in Somalia.

The article describes a corrupt, ineffective and highly unpopular central government, propped up by an African peacekeeping force and American-trained soldiers, fighting against Al Shabab, a strong local guerrilla group that has built up a parallel state that collects taxes and has a functioning judicial system.

But what about the more popular regional governments resisting central control from Mogadishu and, at least in most of the country north of the capital, free from Al Shabab as well as reasonably uncorrupt? In the Somaliland Republic, which broke away from the south as a self-declared country, there have been democratic elections and peaceful transitions between administrations, and it, too, has contained Al Shabab.

If so many Somalis reject the central government, why should the United States support it? Continuing to back what your article calls the fractious political elite in Mogadishu is a prescription for a mini-Afghanistan on the Horn of Africa.

Martin R. GanzglassWashingtonThe writer served in the Peace Corps in Somalia as legal adviser to the Somali National Police Force and adviser to the U.S. ambassador to Somalia during Operation Restore Hope.

Continued here:
Opinion | Threats of Violence in Todays Political Discourse - The New York Times

BYRON YORK| Amarillo Globe-News

In the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump's highest-profile promise was to build the wall -- that is, to construct a barrier along about 1,000 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. Once elected, Trump's best chance to win money from Congress for a wall came in 2018, when Republican Speaker Paul Ryan controlled the House and Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell controlled the Senate.

It didn't happen.

Now, one of Trump's strongest supporters on Capitol Hill, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, is out with a new memoir, "Do What You Said You Would Do," on Nov. 23 that describes those months when GOP lawmakers fought over competing visions of immigration reform.

The battle was intense, it was passionate and it came to nothing. No stricter immigration laws were passed, and there was no significant funding for a wall. For that failure, Jordan points the finger of blame straight at then-Speaker Ryan. "Paul Ryan is not where the American people are," Jordan writes. "Paul Ryan's position on immigration is the same as the positions of the National Chamber of Commerce."

In the world of conservative immigration policy activists, accusing someone of siding with the Chamber of Commerce is about as harsh as it gets. As Jordan tells it, Ryan sabotaged Republican immigration reform by refusing to support a bill that the large majority of Republicans supported, instead pushing a weaker bill that the Chamber supported.

The result was that, facing united Democratic opposition, neither Republican bill passed. The bill promoted by Jordan and his colleagues in the House Freedom Caucus would have "ended family-based chain migration apart from spouses and children," Jordan writes. "It contained mandatory E-Verify language for employers and eliminated the visa lottery ... [it] also defunded sanctuary cities and appropriated $30 billion for construction of the wall."

The bill, Jordan argues, "was consistent with the message of the 2016 election." The bill supported by Ryan would also have funded the wall, albeit with $25 billion. "But it did nothing else to address the problems we were elected to solve," Jordan writes. "It had no language to address chain migration, E-Verify or sanctuary cities ... [It] also created a renewable six-year legal status for up to 2.4 million illegal immigrants and gave those individuals a path to legal citizenship."

Finally, while the bill ended the visa lottery, it "reallocated those visas to amnesty recipients." "Which bill do you think Speaker Ryan supported?" Jordan asks. "You already know the answer." Ryan, Jordan charges, did not want to allow the House to vote on the Freedom Caucus bill. He did so only after the group threatened to sink a big, must-pass farm bill if they didn't get a vote on immigration.

And then, the speaker declined to put pressure on -- or whip, as they say on Capitol Hill -- any Republicans to vote for it. And still, the conservative bill got 193 votes -- a solid majority of the 241 Republicans in the House at that time. Ryan did push for the other bill -- what Jordan calls the Chamber of Commerce bill -- but in the end it got only 121 votes.

"Why push for a bill that was 100 votes short of passing instead of a bill that got 193 votes and therefore was just a few votes shy of passing?" Jordan asks. "You already know why. Paul Ryan doesn't want the legislation President Trump and the American people supported."

The Jordan-Ryan clash was a classic Republican immigration debate. While Democrats are virtually unanimous in support of amnesty and more liberal immigration laws, the GOP is divided between a conservative faction, which favors more restrictive measures, and a business-oriented faction, which favors less restrictive measures and higher levels of immigration.

Trump's border wall proposal ran straight into that preexisting conflict. In the end, Trump found other ways to build some of the wall. By the time he left office and President Biden stopped construction, about 450 miles had been built, most of it replacing existing but dilapidated older barriers.

The Republican Congress' failure to fund a wall has had real-life consequences, most recently in the crisis in Del Rio, Texas, when 15,000 illegal border crossers waded across the Rio Grande and created a squalid migrant camp just inside the United States. The Biden administration allowed thousands of them to stay. It was a crisis that is sure to be repeated, probably in the near future.

But the story might have been different had Republicans not been so divided in that 2018 debate.

Byron York is chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner. DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION FOR UFS 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO

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York: The GOP fight that stopped Trump's immigration plan - Amarillo.com

Greece is increasing border guards along its border with Turkey in anticipation of a spike in illegal immigration brought on by the chaos in Afghanistan, officials said Monday.

In the comings months, some 250 officers will join the 1,500-strong border force and an additional 800 extra border guard personnel will also be hired to staff airports and regions close to the Greece-Turkey border.

FILE: Police officers patrol alongside a steel wall at Evros river, near the village of Poros, at the Greek-Turkish border, Greece. (AP)

Greece has toughened its migration policy and border policing over the last two years, extending a wall along its land border with Turkey and installing a high-tech surveillance network to try to deter asylum-seekers from making the crossing.

The recent increase in personnel was spurred in part by the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, authorities said.

WEST POINT GRAD BLASTS BIDEN ADMIN'S WEAKNESS IN TALKS WITH TALIBAN: COMPLETE EMBARRASSMENT'

Greece has also denied mounting allegations from human rights groups that migrants caught after crossing into Greece are being deported without being allowed to claim asylum.

Poland and Lithuania in recent months have been struggling to cope with a surge in migration, mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan, arriving at their borders with Belarus. They accuse Belarus' government of encouraging the flow of migrants to exert pressure on the entire EU.

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Greece, Poland, and Lithuania were among 12 countries that sent a letter to the European Commission last week to call for more extensive EU measures against illegal immigration.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Greece sending more guards to protect border amid fears over illegal immigration from Afghanistan - Fox News

The Floridian first reported that illegal immigrants that crossed over the southern border were getting transported to Florida back in March of this year, and now it appears as if more potential busloads of illegals are being sent into Florida.

The Biden administration recently said that Haitian immigrants caught crossing over illegally would be sent to Florida, and now a new video posted on Twitter by Bill Garber shows a small group of US Government buses traveling east on I-10 in Jefferson County, which is just east of Tallahassee.

@DHSgovis aiding and abetting a massive illegal migration across the southern border. This is impacting states and the nation, and represents a failure to faithfully execute the law, tweeted Gov. DeSantis earlier this year

Democratic Senator Jason Pizzo poked fun at DeSantiss assertion that the Biden Administration was bussing in illegal immigrants from the southern U.S. border with a tweet showing the distance between Brownsville, Texas, and Pensacola, Florida.

Pizzo and many other Democrats who questioned the federal governments relocation efforts of illegal immigrants appear to have been proven wrong.

To fill the void left by the federal government, Florida deployed its own law enforcement officers to the border, and theyve told that many of the illegal aliens apprehended there plan to end up in Florida, commented DeSantis, mentioning that Floridians welcome responsible immigration that serves the interests of our citizens, but we cannot abide the lawlessness that this administration is aiding and abetting, and frankly encouraging, on the southwest border.

An estimated 12,000 illegal Haitian immigrants are said to have entered the U.S. over the past couple of weeks, with tens of thousands more from other Latin American countries, having already crossed over after President Biden softened standing U.S. immigration policy.

Republicans contend that the waves of illegal immigrants coming to the U.S. are a direct result Biden winning the presidency over former President Donald Trump.

See original here:
Government Buses Potentially Filled With Illegal Immigrants Enter Florida - The Floridian

Americans may be divided on whether to impose a COVID-19 vaccine mandate on citizens, but when it comes to illegal immigrants jumping the border, theres little debate: Most people say the government should give them the shot.

A new poll sponsored by the National Sheriffs Association found the public overwhelmingly in favor of COVID-19 tests for those border jumpers, with 96% saying it is important to administer tests.

When it comes to giving them the jab, 74% said they want to see the feds require vaccination, compared to 15% who opposed the idea. The rest werent sure.

The poll, conducted by TIPP, surveyed 1,308 Americans, though the immigration questions were asked of a smaller subset of 766 people who said they were following the border situation either very closely or somewhat closely. The poll was conducted from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2.

Sheriff Mark Dannels, head of the associations border security committee, said in a memo on the poll results that sheriffs have prodded Washington over COVID-19 policies and the border. What theyve heard back isnt reassuring.

Federal officials often delegate this important responsibility to local non-profit groups who are already overwhelmed and underfunded, which has led to a surge in COVID-19 cases across the south and the country, Sheriff Dannels wrote.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas recently revealed to Congress that about 20% of illegal immigrants at the southern border are arriving ill.

Thats a staggering rate, and its prompted new questions about the way the Biden administration has handled the migrant surge.

President Biden has imposed a vaccine mandate on federal workers and contractors and has urged companies to do the same.

And as of Oct. 1, people applying for immigration benefits who must undergo a medical examination are now required to show proof of a COVID vaccination as part of that.

Yet the White House has refused to require illegal immigrants to meet the same standards.

Nonessential legal travelers have been blocked from the border since the start of the pandemic, leading lawmakers from across the political spectrum to chide Mr. Mayorkas for allowing tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to enter and be released into communities each month.

Fiscal year 2021 ended Sept. 30, and while final numbers arent yet available, it was flirting with the all-time record for the worst year on record in terms of Border Patrol apprehensions. It long ago shattered the record for most unaccompanied illegal immigrant children.

Experts say those arrests dont account for hundreds of thousands more known gotaways, whom the Border Patrol knows made it by them.

Nearly all of them end up paying smuggling cartels for the trip, with typical prices ranging from $7,000 to $12,000.

The Sheriffs Association survey found Americans overwhelmingly agreed with the statement that Mexican cartels are undermining U.S. safety.

Original post:
Americans want border jumpers to have to get COVID-19 vaccine - Washington Times