National Populist Newsletter
December 17th-24th
Note: This will be my last newsletter of the year. I’m taking next week off, but I look forward to writing more newsletters, deep dives, analyses, and opinion pieces in the new year. I want to thank all subscribers for supporting me and remaining interested in what I have to say. This issue of the newsletter is free for everyone. I hope you will all enjoy it and subscribe next year. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
News:
United States
Immigration
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced that 242,418 migrants were encountered at the border during November. This is the third-highest month since the beginning of the migrant crisis.
Bill Melugin tweeted that CBP tweeted that there have been over 45,000 encounters in the first four days of the week.
The New York Post reported that border agents at Eagle Pass, Texas, are being outnumbered 200 to 1 by migrants.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services quietly announced a significant change to our student visa process. Under the new guidelines, international students (F visas) can directly apply for employment-based visas so they don’t have to go to their country of origin beforehand. This huge giveaway to the tech lobby was widely celebrated in the Indian press. (The Hindustan Times)
A Hispanic farmer from upstate New York has been arrested for helping Guatamaleans illegally cross the border, forcing them into unpaid agriculture labor, threatening them with deportation if they complained, and raping a 16-year-old. These are the consequences of open borders. (Miami Herald)
Philadelphia has become the first U.S. city to ban sending illegal aliens to their native countries to receive long-term medical care. Effectively, the bill will require hospitals to keep illegal aliens needing medical attention in Philadelphia when they would otherwise be sent to their native countries. City agencies will investigate hospitals that issue complaints over the issue. (Breitbart News)
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has signed a new bill to counter the flow of migrants entering the U.S. border. The law, known as SB4, gives Texas law enforcement authorities the power to stop, arrest, and jail migrants on new, state-level illegal entry charges. It also allows state judges to issue de facto deportation orders against suspected law violators. The law takes effect in March 2024, and the ACLU is suing the state to prevent its implementation before then. (CBS News)
The immigration court backlog in the US has reached 3 million pending cases, an increase of 1 million in the last 12 months. Each immigration judge now has an average of 4,500 cases each. (TRAC Immigration)
Economy
President Biden and a bipartisan coalition of Senators, including Fetterman, Vance, Rubio, and Hawley, are concerned about the proposed acquisition of U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel. Lael Brainard, the director of the National Economic Council, said in a statement that Biden “believes the purchase of this iconic American-owned company by a foreign entity — even one from a close ally — appears to deserve serious scrutiny in terms of its potential impact on national security and supply chain reliability.” (Associated Press)
U.S. Consumer Sentiment is finally improving, with the most significant jump in months, yet it is still near the levels it was at the end of the Great Recession.
Education
Oklahoma’s Secretary of Education Ryan Walters announced that his state could be the first to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in all public schools. Walters is the most high-profile Republican Secretary of Education in the country because of his ambitious plan to counter progressives on cultural issues. If he successfully bans DEI, many other states are likely to follow. (Fox News)
Abe Foxman and David Harris, two former longtime leaders of the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee, have called for an end to DEI at all colleges nationwide. This is a significant development. Neither man is conservative, and the organizations they used have been some of the biggest supporters of DEI policies. Their call to end DEI signals to other center-left Jews that it’s okay to call for an end to the bureaucracy or withhold financial donations to these organizations until they change. (Jewish Insider)
The number of first-time freshman students attending a Michigan public university is back to pre-pandemic levels. The number of first-time freshmen rose to 41,222 this fall, up 3.9 percent over 2022, the highest number since 2018. (Bridge Michigan)
Major Stories
A new report from the Census found that 102,000 people left New York State between 2022 and 2023, the most of any state. The only states to lose population even as millions of migrants enter the U.S. are New York, California, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois, Louisiana, California, Oregon, and Hawaii. (The New York Post)
At the current rate of interstate migration, blue states like New York and California are set to lose many seats in the 2030 reapportionment, while red states, including Texas, Florida, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee, are set to gain. That means if a Republican wins all the states Trump won in 2020, they would be at 244 electoral college votes instead of 232.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a bill to create a Community Commission to Study Reparations Remedies with the possibility of issuing reparations, including direct payments, for descendants of enslaved African people living in the state. California passed a similar commission, which went nowhere after the estimated total was $800 billion, more than a quarter of the state’s GDP. This is a tactic used by the Democrat Party to feed false hopes to black voters and further divide the electorate. If you read deeper into polls about reparations, it’s generally viewed negatively by every race aside from blacks. (The Gothamist)
South America
Argentina:
Since 2001, Argentinians have taken to the Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires’s central square, to protest and riot against economic conditions. Left-wing agitators called for thousands to show up this year to protest President Milei’s new government and his proposed budget cuts. Milei’s new Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, just days before, announced any protestors would be put down if they blocked the roads and would have their welfare payments cut. As a result, most of the protestors chose to stay home, and the protest was underwhelming. (The Economist)
Millei announced the beginning of new economic reforms, including privatizing multiple government-owned businesses and repealing more than 300 regulations. Yet Congress may invalidate his reforms because it “violates the division of power.” (La Nacion)
Europe
European Union:
The EU reached a new agreement designed to share the cost and work of hosting migrants more evenly and to limit the number of migrants coming to the continent. The Italian Prime Minister spearheaded the deal and would force countries not on the border to choose between accepting their share of 30,000 asylum applicants or paying at least 20,000 euros per person into an EU fund. Additionally, the new law allows border countries to reject refugee applicants who have a low chance of success, including applicants from India, Tunisia, or Turkey, from entering the EU.
Amnesty International attacked the new law, claiming, “The pact will almost certainly cause more people to be put into de facto detention at EU borders, including families with children and people in vulnerable situations.” (Reuters)
United Kingdom:
The annual report by the UK's Independent Monitoring Board points out that only 22 percent of migrants held in immigration detention centers in 2022 were deported. This is half the average from 2015 to 2019, already a paltry 44 percent. (The Guardian)
More than 137,000 immigrant women and their female children living in the U.K. have female genital mutilation. A practice in the third world that cuts women’s clitorises off to ensure that they never enjoy sexual intercourse throughout their lives. The Guardian reported that many immigrant communities are condemning the NHS for not providing free reconstructive surgery. That’s right, British taxpayers pay millions of pounds to deal with the consequences of a culture they imported.
Italy:
At a festival event featuring Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Elon Musk, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni admitted that she has failed to fulfill her campaign promise of stopping illegal immigration, which is now worse than it was before she took office. She announced that her plan to create more international deals to detain migrants like the one she struck with Albania earlier this year. When he confronted her about Italy’s low birth rate, she also told Musk that she plans to work harder to reverse the demographic decline. (The Financial Times)
France:
France’s parliament approved the most significant overhaul to its immigration system in decades. The bill, supported by Le Pen and her national-populist National Rally, creates a one-year, temporary residency permit under some conditions for skilled workers in fields experiencing labor shortages and streamlines the asylum process. Still, it also tightens rules allowing foreigners to work, live or study in France.
It also delayed foreigners’ eligibility for state subsidies like housing aid or family allowances only after living in France for several years, made it harder for immigrants to bring over family members legally, and forced international students to pay new visa fees. (The New York Times)
Macron spent months trying to move a watered-down version of the final bill through the parliament to no avail. There was nothing the far-left could agree on, so to get anywhere, he had to give concessions to Le Pen’s party and make the bill more challenging. A total of 37 members of Macron’s centrist party opposed the legislation, as did 22 members of his allies. All 88 Le Pen’s party members supported the proposal, giving it the votes they needed to pass the legislature. This is a substantial ideological victory for Le Pen and the nationalist right. The centrists understand that to beat them, they must move closer to them on issues like immigration. While the mainstream media has claimed that Macron has allowed the nationalists to win, he has acknowledged reality.
Germany:
The national populist AfD had another electoral breakthrough this past week. 53-year-old carpenter Tim Lochner became the party’s first mayor of a midsize town. Lochner won 38.5 percent of the vote in Pirna, a city in Saxony with about 40,000 residents. (The Financial Times)
Germany’s center-right CDU party, formerly led by Angela Merkel, has drastically shifted its immigration policy. Jens Spahn, their vice parliamentary leader, announced his party favors relocating asylum seekers to third countries, such as Ghana, Rwanda, Moldova, and Georgia, to process their applications. It was just ten years ago that Merkel opened the floodgates to millions of refugees and said Islam had a permanent place in Germany. (The Guardian)
Netherlands:
A study of Dutch residents who voted for Geerts Wilder’s Party of Freedom Party (PVV) found that the overwhelming reason was they believed Wilders would ensure “the Netherlands is for the Dutch again” and that the party “dares to speak the truth.” The PVV was also seen as a party that could drive change and as a protest vote against the established order. (Dutch News)
Sweden:
Magdalena Andersson, the leader of the center-left Social Democrat Party, announced in an interview that if her party won the next election, they would keep the new, more authoritarian immigration policies put forward by the national populist Swedish Democrats. “Strict migration will remain in place if there's a change of power. It is obvious and will have to remain firmly in place for a very long time. The Swedish people can feel safe knowing that Social Democrats will stand up for a strict migration policy,” she said. (The Local)
This is precisely the move made by the center-left parties in Denmark, which became an immigration restrictionist party after the national populist won their election in 2001 and changed the country’s immigration system.
Polls:
Netherlands:
According to the new Pell poll, if Dutch citizens had to hold a snap election, PVV would gain another 11 seats. Wilders would have more seats than all left-wing parties combined.
Deep Dive:
United States:
A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies finds that 59 percent of households headed by illegal aliens use at least one welfare program. This is slightly higher than households with legal immigrants, 52 percent of whom use at least one welfare program. Only 39 percent of American-born households use at least one welfare program.
ABC News reported that the last several elections have been some of the highest turnout elections in decades. Since Trump came on the scene, voters have been increasingly likely to show up and vote either for him or against him. In the five states that held elections in 2023, all had near-decade-high turnout rates, with suburban counties having the highest turnout while urban counties had some of the lowest.
Interesting Takes:
Michael Schaffer writes in Politico Magazine about how elites in both the Republican and Democrat Party are afraid of non-elites in different ways. Elites in the Democrat Party are so scared of their employees organizing or outing them for not being progressive enough. The right, on the other hand, is afraid of being canceled by their audience for disagreeing with them, so they buckle down and tell lies they don’t believe.
“I suspect the same dynamic comes into play as the two sides contemplate a general-election battle between two men party honchos view as flawed candidates who will squeak into office at best. What about looking around for the kind of candidate who might spur dreams of getting 60 percent of the vote? On the right, it involves fear of the party’s largest bloc. On the left, it involves fear of what might happen if they had to pick someone else besides Joe Biden — specifically, by passing over a demographic trail-blazer vice president. But surely, you say, Kamala Harris’ bad approval numbers are an indication that she doesn’t actually have a vast cadre of die-hards who would punish a party that spurned her? Yep. Except the place where the tumult would be most bitter wouldn’t be among election-day schmoes; it would be among the diverse employees who staff liberal offices and talk to the media.”
Matthew Schmitz writes in The New York Times that Trump’s appeal to voters isn’t because they believe he will become a dictator or want to move to the far-right but because they’re moderate, and so is Trump.
“Mr. Trump’s moderation can be easy to miss, because he is not a stylistic centrist — the sort who calls for bipartisan budget-cutting and a return to civility. His moderation is closer to that of Richard Nixon, who combined a combative personality and pronounced resentments with a nose for political reality and a willingness to negotiate with his ideological opposites. Mr. Nixon, an ardent anti-Communist, displayed his pragmatism most memorably by going to China. But his pragmatic nature was evident also in his acceptance of the New Deal order, which many conservatives continue to reject.”