National Populist Newsletter
July 3rd-10th
News:
United States
Immigration
Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Thursday ordered the Texas National Guard and the state police to begin apprehending migrants who illegally cross the border from Mexico and taking them back to ports of entry, a move that could put the state into direct conflict with the federal government over immigration. Mr. Abbott, in a statement, said the goal was to return “illegal immigrants to the border to stop this criminal enterprise endangering our communities.” The first criticisms of his order came not from immigration advocates or civil rights groups but from a former top Department of Homeland Security official under the Trump administration, Ken Cuccinelli, who implied that the governor’s order did not go far enough. Mr. Cuccinelli has been actively calling for Mr. Abbott to make the invasion declaration. (New York Times) I think without the invasion declaration it’s going to be difficult for Abbott’s order to carry any weight. The Supreme Court has been extremely consistent on immigration when it comes to the states and mandated it’s an issue for the executive branch of the federal government. Still it could be a campaign move for the base as well as Hispanics living along the border who also don’t like the level of illegal immigration.
According to Fox News, a number of House Republicans are backing the move by a number of Texas counties to declare the situation at the southern border an "invasion", as border states face overwhelming migrant numbers. Officials from several Texas counties on Tuesday declared the migrant crisis an invasion. The declarations are likely to put further pressure on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to make a statewide declaration, which some conservatives believe would give the state the authority to return migrants across the border.
Border Patrol agents apprehended nearly 192,000 migrants who illegally crossed from Mexico in June, according to government records previewed by Breitbart News. Since March 1, agents apprehended more than 182,000 migrants in the nine southwest border sectors
The pair of suspects arrested for allegedly plotting to “shoot up” a Fourth of July celebration in Richmond, Virginia — thwarted by an American citizen — are illegal aliens, court records state. The plan was thwarted thanks to an American “hero citizen” who overheard a conversation about the plot and subsequently called the police. Court records identify both both conspirators as illegal aliens living in the U.S. Specifically, one had been living in the U.S. on an expired visa. It speaks volumes that at a time of many high profile mass shootings and near record breaking illegal immigration that this story did not earn more attention from the mainstream press. (Breitbart News)
According to Breitbart News, pro-migration groups are using the record death rate among illegal migrants to demand they be hired by the government to safely import more of the coyote-delivered migrants. President Joe Biden’s government uses the coyote networks to extract and deliver extra migrants above the roughly one million legal immigrants per year set by Congress. Once the migrants are delivered through the cartel-controlled border zone, U.S. officials provide them with legal status or exemptions from deportation while they work at low wages for U.S. companies.
The Department of Justice is investigating Texas' $3 billion border security mission known as Operation Lone Star for potential civil rights violations, according to state records. The Federal Coordination and Compliance Section of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division sent a letter to the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) on May 16, saying that they've been made aware of potentially unlawful activity related to the border security mission. (Fox News)
According to Breitbart News, Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-SD) is joining Democrats, as well as the big business lobby, in asking President Joe Biden for more legal immigration to the United States to fill American jobs. Even as the nation’s foreign-born population has hit record highs, Thune says the Biden administration is not importing enough H-2B foreign visa workers to fill blue-collar seasonal jobs in the U.S. Sources on the Hill informed me that Republicans in the Senate were more resistant to massive changes on immigration than they had been before Trump. Someone close to Mitch McConnell even said it’s the strongest ideological change Trump has left on Senate Republicans.
Midterms
The Muskegon County Republican Party in Michigan has released a statement disavowing local incumbent US congressman Peter Meijer, a moderate establishmentarian who voted for recent Red Flag law legislation, and endorsed Meijer’s right-wing primary challenger John Gibbs, who formerly served in HUD and has already been endorsed by President Trump. The primary is on August 2nd. I know Gibbs and if elected he would he instantly become one of the best members of Congress. The only downside to his nomination is that his district has become much more Democrat in redistricting, voting for Biden by 8.5 percent. Gibbs would be a weaker challenger but a better member of Congress.
A piece from Texas Monthly details the GOP effort to flip congressional seats in heavily Hispanic south Texas, culminating with the recent victory of Maya Flores, an effort which has been heavily orchestrated by Latinas.
Economy
Per Bloomberg, America is seeing a rise in manufacturing production as some US-based companies have been pulling production out of China, mostly as a result of post-pandemic supply chains. The construction of new manufacturing facilities in the US has soared 116% over the past year, dwarfing the 10% gain on all building projects combined. This is fantastic news, but this is where Congress, a President, and the local governors should step in. Most of these new plants are going to states like Arizona, Alabama, and Texas. Obviously great for those workers, but efforts should be made in the form of tax cuts to try and lure some factories to open in the Rust Belt. The forgotten men and women who elected Trump in 2016 need some economic stimulus and Republicans should champion that charge.
States that lean Republicans have recovered faster economically than Democratic-leaning states, with workers and employers moving from the coasts to the middle of the country and Florida. Since February 2020, the month before the pandemic began, the share of all U.S. jobs located in red states has grown by more than half a percentage point, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by the Brookings Institution think tank. Red states have added 341,000 jobs over that time, while blue states were still short 1.3 million jobs as of May. (The Wall Street Journal)
Education
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis last month announced endorsements of 10 candidates for school boards across Florida. Some advocates expect more before the Aug 23 primary election. The 1776 Project PAC, which I founded, is investing hundreds of thousands of dollars into these races. (Axios)
Gov. Glenn Youngkin has appointed five new members to the Virginia Board of Education, which leads some to believe there is now a conservative majority on the nine member board. I have yet to investigate the actions of the board, but if they’re worth a grain of salt they’ll gut the Virginia Equity program started under the last govenor. It would have used the teachings of Ibram X. Kendi to alter lesson plans and education goals throughout the state. (ABC 7 News)
Major Stories
Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Mark Warner (D-VA) have called on the FTC to investigate Chinese-owned social media app TikTok and its China-based employees’ access to U.S. user data. The Senators believe the Chinese company’s “repeated misrepresentations” deserve deep scrutiny by the federal government, according to Breitbart News.
State Rep. Jared Patterson (R-Frisco) tweeted Tuesday that he plans to file a bill during the next legislative session that would aim to ban minors from using social media, raising the minimum age for using the platforms from 13 to 18. "It's long past time to recognize the incredible harm social media is doing to the mental health of young Texans," Patterson tweeted. "Next session, we put an end to it." Patterson's tweet was in response to a piece posted by the Cannon Online, which similarly called for limiting minor's access to social media. (Chron)
Europe
U.K.:
Well as I wrote for the last few months, BoJo’s time in office has finally come to an end after he lost the support of a majority of his cabinet members. Boris Johnson’s time as Prime Minister will undoubtable be always connected to Brexit, as will the leadership of David Cameron and Theresa May. None of the three leaders could properly tell how their base of voters were feeling about the issues of sovergnity, immigration, trade, and Europe. In the end, BoJo was the closest to actually achieving the goals laid out by Tory voters but unraveled fairly quickly because he is essentialy a liberal. He believed in the ideology of Singapore-on-Thames. The greatest failure of the Cameron-May-Johnson governments however is that they solidified the governing policies of Labour PM Tony Blair. They failed to topple any of the ideology that Blair put throughout his time in office in much of the same way he failed to repeal much of Thatcher’s labor agenda. Working-class Brits have lost leverage since the 1970s and wanted a rejection of the neoliberal agenda and instead they got the softer Tory version of it under Johnson. Vaccine passports, woke ideology in universities, more job losses, immigrants from Nigeria instead of Poland… Boris Johnson failed not because he was just a bad leader, but because he is a devout follower of a bad ideology.
A piece from Spiked details Boris Johnson’s weakness on social issues and his inability to effectively combat wokeness during his time as PM since the massive Conservative victory in 2019.
An article from The Guardian overviews the candidates vying for the spot of PM in wake of Boris Johnson’s absence, of which there are eight. The two frontrunners are Penny Mordaunt and Rishi Sunak. Both of these choices are terrible and although the betting markets believe Rishi will win, I doubt it.
Netherlands:
Dutch farmers angered by government plans that may require them to use less fertilizer and reduce livestock began a day of protests in the Netherlands on Monday by blocking supermarket distribution hubs in several cities. Amsterdam's Schiphol airport and KLM, the Dutch arm of Air France, have advised travelers to use public transport, rather than cars, to reach the airport, as farmers' activist groups said on social media they planned to use tractors to block roads. (Reuters)
Germany:
The German government is hoping to give over 130,000 migrants trapped in legal limbo the chance to stay permanently, as part of an overhaul of Germany's immigration system. Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government on Wednesday agreed on a package of reforms that will open the prospect of residency rights to people who have lived in Germany for more than five years with a so-called Duldung, or tolerance status. (DW)
Polls:
United States:
A new University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll finds 15 percent of Texans expressing support for a complete ban on abortion access in polling conducted primarily in the week prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s announcement of its landmark opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. While 37 percent of Texas voters say that they support "trigger law" that would ban abortion in most cases in Texas in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling, no more than 36 percent would foreclose all access to legal abortion across a range of circumstances. The poll also shows major findings of voters opinions on the economy, guns, and local elections. (UT Austin)
According to a new Gallup poll, Americans are less confident in major U.S. institutions than they were a year ago, with significant declines for 11 of the 16 institutions tested and no improvements for any. The largest declines in confidence are 11 percentage points for the Supreme Court -- as reported in late June before the court issued controversial rulings on gun laws and abortion -- and 15 points for the presidency, matching the 15-point drop in President Joe Biden's job approval rating since the last confidence survey in June 2021.
Deep Dive:
A study from Herbert P. Kitschelt and Philipp Rehm found that across 21 countries, the left has lost most support among low education, high income voters. Left gained most among high education, high income votes, but only reached parity there. So left support is now concentrated among high education low income voters.
A study from the Harvard Business School found that direct cash payments of $500 to $2,000 to low-income families had no positive impacts on our the participants outcomes at any time point. We further find no significant differences between the groups that were given $500 and $2,000.
Interesting Takes:
Professor Matthew Goodwin wrote a sympathic piece in Unherd about BoJo’s legacy. He writes that Boris Johnson changed the Conservative Party forever because of his ability to shake off the Cameron and May failure to get Brexit done. His failings however was his inability to know what to do with his incredible electoral success:
While they wanted less immigration, he gave them more. While they prized aspiration and economic freedom, he gave them the highest tax burden since the Fifties. While they were instinctively suspicious of the state; he put it on steroids. While they expected a serious strategy for Levelling Up, he consistently failed to provide one. While they wanted a strong pushback against the illiberalism of radical “woke” progressivism, he appeared reluctant to get involved. While they thought they had elected a political fighter, he too often worried about how he was perceived by cosmopolitan liberals. While they thought he was on their side, he appeared to treat them with contempt. And while they wanted an economy and a system that did more for ordinary working people, he often appeared more interested in building Singapore-on-Thames. Consistently, Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has leaned more to the Right on economics and more to the Left on culture than many of its new voters.
The brilliant Ed West wrote a more negative opinion of Boris Johnson’s legacy in his Substack:
Whether you liked them or not, both Thatcher and Blair reshaped Britain in their image, the first in the guise of economic liberalism and the latter the inevitable social liberalism that followed. Someone might have gone into a coma on the night of 5 May 2010 and awoken with no idea who had been in charge this whole time. Immigration has reached record levels, the Pride flag flies from every building, DEI teams are ever more powerful and embedded in every university, government body and corporation in the country. The only hint at who’s been in charge might be the visible increase in homelessness, the one tangible result of Tory rule.