On Sunday, Senate negotiators released the text of a $118 billion bipartisan bill to reform the country’s immigration policies. The negotiators were Jim Lankford (R-Oklahoma), Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), and Krysten Sinema (I-Arizona). Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House of […]
immigration
Just how progressive is Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman?
Can a politician still be a “progressive” in today’s Democratic Party if he supports Israel and wants restrictions at the southern border? Adam Gabbatt of The Guardian tackles this question in a piece on Fetterman. Here is a taste: There […]
Trump opposes an immigrant bill that does not yet have a text. Republicans line-up behind him.
The Senate is putting the finishing touches on a bipartisan border policy deal that would also provide aid to Ukraine. We are waiting for the text of the bill. Without a text, no one knows what is in the bill. […]
Trump: Immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”
Some of my critics often say that I have “Trump derangement syndrome.” I usually ignore these criticisms since those who make them are in danger of normalizing Trump, Trumpism, and his rhetoric. I refuse to do that. Donald Trump’s brand […]
Fact-checking Trump on “Meet the Press”
In case you missed it, NBC News journalist Kristen Welker began her new gig as host of the “Meet the Press” with a Donald Trump interview. This morning NBC News published a piece fact-checking Trump: “Former President Donald Trump made […]
If president, Vivek Ramaswamy would deport American citizens
Here is NBC News: Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy says that as president, he would deport American-born children of undocumented immigrants. “The family unit will be deported,” said Ramaswamy when asked by NBC News if the deportations would include American-born […]
Siena-New York Times poll shows Trump with a massive lead
The poll was conducted from July 23-27 among “the likely electorate in the Republican primary”: Other observations: The poll asked GOP primary voters about where they get their news. Here are the results:
A former undocumented Salvadoran immigrant is now an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Washington
Over at The Washington Post, Karen Tumulty tells the moving story of Evelio Menjivar-Ayala: Three times in the space of a year, the undocumented teen fleeing war-torn Central America tried and failed to make it over the southern border of […]
The Author’s Corner with Kevin Kenny
Kevin Kenny is Professor of History and Glucksman Professor in Irish Studies at New York University. This interview is based on his new book, The Problem of Immigration in a Slaveholding Republic: Policing Mobility in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Oxford […]
“It’s the Gospel, stupid”
Here is Oxford church historian, journalist, and Pope Francis biographer Austen Ivereigh at Commonweal on why the pontiff focuses so much on migration: Yet neither the current scale of the problem nor Francis’s own background is sufficient to grasp why […]
How turn-of-the-20th-century Italian immigrants were tricked into debt peonage
Writer Brad Ricca tells the story of the Italian immigrants of Sunnyside Plantation in Arkansas. Here is a taste of his piece at The Washington Post: In the early 1900s, a small travel agency in Greenville, Miss., began sending representatives […]
Evangelical leaders on Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s Martha’s Vineyard stunt
Peter Smith of the Associated Press reported on this last month. I must have missed his piece. If you are not familiar with my reference to DeSantis’s “Martha’s Vineyard stunt” get up to speed here. Here are some quotes from […]
More on the Reverse Freedom Rides and DeSantis’s Martha’s Vineyard stunt
We did a post on Reverse Freedom Rides after Florida governor Ron DeSantis sent several refugee families to Martha’s Vineyard as a political stunt. Read that post here. Rick Massimo of WTOP radio recently interviewed University of Sussex historian Clive […]
Charlie Kirk: Democrats are letting migrants into the country because they want to diminish and decrease “white demographics in America”
The evangelical nativist Charlie Kirk, a regular visitor to megachurches across the country, “said the quiet part out loud” yesterday on his radio show. Here is a clip: I have posted the video of the entire show below. The conversation […]
President Joe Biden responds to the DACA decision
Yesterday a federal judge in Texas ruled that the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals program, or DACA, is illegal. DACA is Barack Obama’s 2012 program that protects the so-called “Dreamers,” undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as […]
Lou Barletta will run for governor of Pennsylvania
Here is Max Greenwood at The Hill: Former Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.), who challenged Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) for his seat in 2018, is running for Pennsylvania governor. Barletta becomes the most prominent Republican yet to jump into the race to succeed Gov. Tom Wolf, […]
The Biden backtrack on refugees explained
Last week the Biden Administration announced that it would not raise the number of refugees permitted to resettle in the United States. In the process, he broke a promise he made to faith-based groups. During the 2020 presidential campaign Biden […]
Biden responds to evangelical World Relief’s call to raise the refugee ceiling
Evangelicals are doing good work. Here is a taste of Jack Jenkins’s reporting at Religion News Service: President Joe Biden’s administration has reversed a decision to keep in place a historically low cap on refugee admissions left by Donald Trump, […]
The Author’s Corner with Crawford Gribben
Crawford Gribben is Professor of History at Queen’s University Belfast. This interview is based on his new book, Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America: Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest (Oxford University Press, 2021). JF: What led you to write […]