It is not the first time that Trump has demonstrated a weird view of Jewish people and Israel
The quadruple indicted former President is at again, demonstrating that he still can’t help attacking Jewish people despite his appeals to Israel. In a deranged and overtly antisemitic post on his site Truth Social, the former President released a flyer that blamed “liberal Jews” for allowing Democrats to destroy America and Israel.
The post, which mockingly accuses liberal Jewish people of believing “false narratives,” lists various accomplishments that Trump seemingly believes entitle him to the Jewish vote. Among the accomplishments Trump listed was his administration’s decision to recognize Israel’s capital as Jerusalem instead of its internationally recognized capital, Tel Aviv, childishly saying “no other president had the balls to do it.” He also notes his recognition of Israeli control over the Golan Heights despite serious international controversy and backlash from Syria.
But perhaps what is more fascinating and insulting about Trump’s post is that he mocks objections by Jewish people and advocates against antisemitism by writing, “clearly, one of the greatest antisemites of our time!” As if working to help Israel makes it impossible to hold antisemitic beliefs.
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The comments play on age-old stereotypes towards Jewish people, suggesting that Jewish people are inherently tied to a dual loyalty to Israel and the United States. As Talking Points Memo’s Emine Yücelnotes, Trump has received immense backlash from activists and academics alike, saying:
Columbia Journalism Professor Bill Grueskin described the post as “Trump’s casual anti-semitism,” adding “it’s utterly absurd to think that most ‘liberal Jews’ cared whether the US embassy was in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. Or that they supported Israeli sovereignty over settlements in Judea and Samaria.”
“Even by Trumpian antisemitic standards, this is pretty disgusting,” CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs Amy Spitalnick tweeted. “And on Rosh Hashanah. We have normalized a very old school, very familiar type of antisemitic fascism in this country. It’s scary stuff.”
And Eric Columbus — a President Barack Obama appointee at the Department of Justice and a former special litigation counsel for the House of Representatives — let the post speak for itself by posting it alongside President Joe Biden’s Rosh Hashanah message.
These protests will likely do little to dissuade Trump despite repeated failures to appeal to Jewish voters in 2016 and 2020, something that is sure to frustrate the former President.
In 2016, the former President only got 23 percent of Jewish voters to support him compared to Hillary’s 71 percent. In 2020, it was even worse for the Republicans. Biden secured 77 percent of the Jewish vote. Whether or not Republicans like it, Trump has never been good at appealing to Jewish people.
And while I am not Jewish and can’t speak for Jewish people at large, I can’t help but notice a horrific attitude in Trump’s words.
What Trump’s actions demonstrate, maybe even scream, is an intense entitlement to Jewish support and respect that he has not earned. No demographic deserves to have political figures demand their unconditional support, Democrat or Republican. But it is especially galling for a former President to demand support for a group of people he has repeatedly tied to a foreign country that many of them have never seen.
Produced by NateTalksToYou for The Progressive American
With the most recent arrest of former President Donald Trump, there is a question as to what degree the charges against Trump in Georgia will impact the upcoming election in 2024, more specifically, how the mug shot will impact Trump’s base and the electorate at large.
When it comes to issues of legal action against political figures, there are always concerns about the influence of partisan reactions. How the public will react within their respective political outlooks and factions is an unavoidable issue.
For some, this division is reason enough to have avoided the mugshot entirely as the other three prosecutors did when Trump surrendered to their custody. To many, it would be dangerous to give Trump and his Republicans a rallying cry via his mugshot, with the idea that it could be used to symbolize the abuse of the law.
However, as I argued before, the law must supersede political concerns to apply justice consistently. There can be no stable legal system if the law makes exceptions to the law for the sake of convenience.
What matters here is not merely the political response by Trump but how the law has finally, after seven years of absurd conduct by Trump, decided that it has reason to bring the hammer down on Trump. For once, politics is secondary. Trump’s gross disregard has thoroughly damaged the law, and it is high time that its ability to hold him accountable is demonstrated.
Though largely symbolic, mugshots are illustrative of the equal application of the law. Merely because it may be controversial is not reason enough to prevent Trump or any other political figure from being arrested from going through standard procedure.
But even if we were to accept the premise that the political side of the mugshot mattered, there is evidence to suggest that a mugshot and, indeed, even the indictments against Trump might hurt him, not increasing his support among the general public.
A recent Politico Magazine/ISPOS poll of 1,032 found that nearly half of the country believes that Trump is guilty of the charges against him, and even more want the trials to take place before the 2024 election. Half of Americans even go beyond that, arguing that Trump should go to jail if convicted.
Such negativity towards Trump’s current legal problems, though not explicitly about the mugshot, would suggest that, at the very least, the public is inclined to view Trump’s legal issues with a negative view of his conduct rather than that an example of DOJ misconduct.
While Trump’s base may attempt to use this as a means to rally around their candidate, the fact that independents and Democrats manage to make up enough of the population to, within the last month, create a wing of Americans that support the indictments suggests that Trump may not be able to expand beyond where he currently is politically. And more likely than that, the indictments may even prevent him from winning in 2024.
As the cases proceed, the conditions may change, but so long as they remain the way they are now, it is unlikely that Trump will be able to use the court of public opinion against prosecutors.
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The Republican Party has finally started its primary in all of its chaotic passion, with the first primary debate. The debate, which took place on Wednesday of this week, had many tense moments involving the various candidates, but perhaps one of the most frustrating moments came from candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
During the debate, moderators brought up the American response to Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. When asked whether or not he would be willing to send more aid to Ukraine, Ramaswamy said that he would be a hard no for further aid, arguing that America should be using the military equipment that was sent to Ukraine to defend against what he sees as “an invasion” of the southern border.
In his arguments, Ramaswamy went further, saying, “I find it offensive that we have professional politicians on this stage that will make a pilgrimage to Kyiv to their pope Zelenskyy without doing the same thing for people in Maui or the south side of Chicago…”
Such sentiments are far from a one-off when it comes to Ramaswamy’s ridiculous politics. He has repeatedly asserted that supporting Ukraine will lead Russia further into China’s arms, creating a stronger and more dangerous alliance between the two totalitarian regimes.
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The alternative, he argues, is to allow some Ukrainian territory to remain in Russian hands despite said annexations being illegal under international law. More specifically, Ramaswamy has admitted that he would leave sections of the Donbas region under Russian occupation.
When pressed by Brian Kilmeade on the issue, he argued that he would force Putin to comply with their agreement through “hard conditions.” What those conditions would be is a bit sparsely stated, save for a claim that he would prioritize a visit to Moscow within the first term of his presidency.
Sparse and faulty planning aside, Vivek’s politics on Ukraine aren’t just shortsighted, as fellow presidential hopeful Nikki Haley pointed out, but it is also ignorant and amoral.
From the beginning of his argument, there is an underlying assumption of overwhelming military and economic support for Ukraine that comes at the expense of the American people. This assumption, which Ramaswamy hit on in his “Pope Zelenskyy” comments, is at best misleading and, at worst, an outright lie.
As a total of global aid, the United States is by far the largest provider of aid to the Ukrainian war effort. A July 10th analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations showed that between January 24th, 2022, and May 31st of this year, an estimated $76.8 billion in aid.
Screenshot of an image provided by CFR’s Johnathan Masters and Will Merrow
By contrast, the next comparable institution or state power, the EU, has provided just under $30 billion in aid within that same period, with an estimated $27.8 billion coming in financial aid compared to the U.S. military aid of $46.6 billion.
Screenshot of an image provided by CFR’s Johnathan Masters and Will Meyer
However, that tells us very little about the significance of the aid relative to the American economy and the other countries that are providing aid. If someone were to only look at these graphics, they could easily come away with the understanding that the U.S. is providing extreme amounts of aid that it can’t afford.
That is false.
When looking at the aid as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product, the reality becomes a lot more complicated and flies in the face of Ramaswamy’s view of the aid issue.
Far from being the largest aid producer to Ukraine as a percentage of GPD, the United States is not even in the top ten countries providing aid within the aforementioned period. During the same period mentioned above, the percentage of American GPD sent to Ukraine was just under .4 percent, compared to Estonia’s 1.2 percent.
By and large, Eastern European countries such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland are giving much more money in terms of their GPD than the United States. Western countries, such as the United Kingdom, also give slightly more than the United States.
As a matter of the national defense budget, it is also comparatively small. A United States Senate Committee on Armed Services report found that the Defense spending in 2023 for the Department of Defense alone was an estimated $816.7 billion. The Defense topline spending totaled around $857.9 billion.
Screenshot from Summary of the Fiscal Year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act
In context, the amount of aid provided to Ukraine accounts for .094 percent of the Department of Defense’s budget. Of the National Defense Topline, the aid to Ukraine accounts for .089 percent. It is a tiny amount of our defense spending to help a Democratic government from the kleptocratic autocracy that is the Russian Federation.
We can afford to help the Ukrainians.
As for using military equipment along the southern border, I sincerely can’t think of anything more absurd and dangerous to relations with Mexico. Nor are the issues even remotely comparable.
The aid given to Ukraine is an attempt to help protect a nation suffering from an illegal war of aggression. It is helping to defend Ukrainians from a head of state who views their national identity as nonexistent and who currently has a warrant out for his arrest for the forcible deportation and kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children.
Not to mention the allegations of genocide that have been leveled against the Russian Federation after several mass graves were discovered in territories previously occupied by the Russian Federation, which I covered for the UIS Observer.
{CONTENT WARNING FOR UIS OBSERVER LINK: CORPSES ARE SHOWN}
Mexico, by contrast, has a corruption and drug problem that has contributed to the death of 107,622 drug deaths in 2021, with two-thirds of deaths coming from fentanyl. Not all of the said fentanyl has come from Mexico, though it is the main source of fentanyl confiscations. Simply put, the amount of death by fentanyl is extremely concerning, but it is not solely a border issue.
Fentanyl’s catastrophic surge came after the Drug Enforcement Administration cracked down on the excesses of the U.S. opioid industry. Millions of Americans who had become addicted to prescription pain pills suddenly found them difficult or impossible to get.
Mexicancartels stepped in to fill the vacuum. Traffickers, who relied for decades on plant-based drugs such as heroin, cocaine and marijuana, are now using chemicals in clandestine laboratories tomanufacture fentanyl powder and pills to meet the ever-increasing demand in the United States.
The original source of the problem of fentanyl was a failure by the DEA to adequately prepare for the vacuum that was created by the crackdown on the opioid industry as Americans, addicted thanks to the failure of the pharmaceutical industry, sought other sources to satiate their addictions. Military equipment will not address the root issue as it would in Ukraine.
Criminal activity by non-citizens at the border also doesn’t merit using military equipment, as Vivek would suggest. In 2022, the total amount of arrests of non-citizens with criminal convictions amounted to 12,028.
To put that into perspective, the amount of casualties in the Russo-Ukrainian war between 2022 and 2023 is rising to nearly half a million. Russian troops alone account for nearly 120,000 deaths and between 170,000 wounded, which is almost certainly an undercount. Ukraine, by contrast, has lost an estimated 70,000 troops and suffered an estimated 120,000 wounded.
Civilian casualties are also high, with an estimated 26,384 civilian casualties in the country. Broken down, this includes 9,444 killed and 16,940 injured since February 24th of last year.
Simply put, the suffering in Ukraine is some of the largest we have seen since World War 2, and reactionary appeals to border security will not change anything. It is one thing to be concerned about the suffering of Americans at home, but that does not excuse Ramaswamy’s willful ignorance about the Russo-Ukrainian war. Unless he wants to be seen as just another Chamberlain, he should change his tune quickly.
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After it was revealed that he allegedly emotionally abused his then-pregnant wife, Crowder’s reputation has come under fire as former employees out Crowder for his misconduct.
Conservative Commentator Steven Crowder is once again in a lot of trouble, with additional allegations of serious misconduct by Crowder popping up. This time from the perspective of former employees.
Earlier this month, politics news site Mediaite broke an exclusive story that alleged that Crowder had engaged in consistent sexual harassment against his staff, sending pictures of his genitals to them.
Mediaite spoke with five former show staffers and one source close to Crowder, under the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation, who described a workplace rife with bullying, alarming and unpredictable behavior, as well as lewd sexual workplace misconduct.
Earlier this month, after repeated suspensions, Louder With Crowder decamped from YouTube, where it commanded a mighty audience of 5.8 million subscribers, to Rumble, a less regulated but much smaller alternative. The show’s audience has dwindled on Rumble, to the point where his last five shows have averaged some 288,000 viewers – a far cry from the millions Crowder once saw per episode.
The show’s viewership troubles follow years of alleged misconduct behind the scenes.
One former Louder with Crowder employee told Mediaite that during his time on the show, he received unsolicited, sexually graphic texts that included photos of Crowder’s genitalia. Those texts and images were reviewed by Mediaite.
The reports, which seemingly confirm the allegations against Crowder through reviewed texts, come amid previous revelations showing Crowder verbally abusing his then-pregnant wife, Hilary Korzon.
Crowder also allegedly sought drugs such as cannabis gummies as well as Percocet. Such behavior, mixed with the fact that Crowder allegedly only exposed himself to other men, suggests a deeply unethical and uncomfortable environment around a man who is not only uncomfortable with his sexuality but also unwilling to respect other people’s boundaries.
One of the five staffers who Mediaite interviewed described the environment as “….so crazy, employees end up getting desensitized to the point where when things like that occur, it almost just seems normal. It’s not until you actually step away for a bit that you realize how wrong these types of things are.”
Others described the environment around Crowder as akin to “an abusive relationship….” and like “walking on eggshells…”
Crowder’s failure to seemingly control himself around his colleagues seems to have led to him seeking psychiatric assistance at Carrollton Springs, a facility in Texas dedicated to assisting people with addictions and psychiatric problems, per three of the interviewed employees.
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Despite this, Crowder has yet to suffer any serious consequences and has not suffered any serious consequences for his conduct and has seemingly avoided the issue entirely, something he has done before when faced with backlashes.
In one instance, Crowder posted a Twitter poll for the best Halloween costume in which one of the costumes was “slutty Greta Thunberg.” Thunberg was 16 at the time.
Inevitably Crowder deleted the Tweet, much to the chagrin of other users who wanted to hold him to account for the offensive post, suggesting that Crowder is not only willing to engage in unacceptable sexual commentary about children but also is unwilling to face the consequences of his actions.
Crowder’s cowardice and misconduct should not surprise anyone. Crowder has consistently demonstrated his disdain for responsibility and decency. Whether it is his comments towards figures like Thunberg, his homophobic harassment of Leftist YouTuber and former Vice Contributor Carlos Maza, or even the treatment of his now ex-wife, Crowder holds to a presumption of authority to disregard criticism and accountability.
If anything, the allegations against Crowder are illustrative of what people have known deep down for a long time: Steven Crowder is an abusive and dangerous person.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is at it again. This time, he falsely claimed that he had been denied security services that he was entitled to as a major candidate. The claims, which RJK Jr. made on Twitter, are just another example of his long-standing failures to stick to the truth.
In a post released Friday, July 28th, the anti-vaccine and conspiracy-minded Democratic candidate stated:
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Since the assassination of my father in 1968, candidates for president are provided Secret Service protection. But not me. Typical turn around time for pro forma protection requests from presidential candidates is 14-days. After 88 days of no response and after several follow-ups by our campaign, the Biden Administration just denied our request. Secretary Mayorkas: “I have determined that Secret Service protection for Robert F Kennedy Jr is not warranted at this time.” Our campaign’s request included a 67-page report from the world’s leading protection firm detailing unique and well-established security and safety risks aside from commonplace death threats.
While I can’t deny the veracity of Kennedy’s claims that he spoke with Secretary Mayorkas, much of the context surrounding the nature of secret service protection for presidential candidates is conveniently missing.
It is also worth noting that RJK Jr.’s reference to 14 and 88 days is almost certainly a reference to the Nazi phrase 1488, which references the racist phrase “heil Hitler.”
But more than just a racist appeal, the claim ignores the actual process for determining which candidates receive protection is laid out in 18 United States Code § 3056, which authorizes the secret service to protect presidential candidates and their families within 120 days of the general election. Needless to say, we are not even close to 120 days away from the general election.
To further add to this, the statute does not guarantee eligibility to any presidential candidate. Rather, the statute authorizes the protection of “major presidential and vice presidential candidates.”
As the Secret Service notes, that process is dictated by the Secretary of Homeland Security after consultation with an advisory committee. That committee includes leadership from both the House and Senate minority and majority leadership. It is a bipartisan entity.
Claims by RFK Jr. and others that there is some sort of attempt to deny his security that he is somehow entitled to are blatantly false. RJK Jr. is neither within the allotted period that the statute authorizes nor is he in any position to assert himself as a major candidate by the established criteria.
While RFK Jr. may be eligible for such protection later, he clearly not eligible now. It is absurd for any candidate to raise a fuss about a process that they clearly either don’t understand or are actively misrepresenting. I am not sure which one it is, but RJK Jr’s protests are just another reason why he should not be running for President.
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After attempting to overturn the election, the law has finally made its move
The law is not only coming for Trump, it seems, as several of his fraudulent electors have now been charged with felonies for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The news, reported Wednesday, July 19th, comes amid rumors of another pending indictment against the former president.
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On Tuesday, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced plans to charge 16 people for their involvement in the fake electors sent by Trump allies to the state capitol to cast ballots for Trump.
According to the Michigan AG, the goal was to ensure that Trump received all of the state’s electoral votes based on the false pretense that Trump won the state. Biden won Michigan by 154,188 votes, taking 50.6 percent of the vote.
Far from merely buying into a false view of the election, the Attorney General’s Office alleges that by signing bogus documents affirming that they were the actual electors, they engaged in multiple forms of forgery, including three 14-year felonies.
The significance of the charges is yet to be determined, as the Michigan Attorney General has also raised the prospect of federal involvement in response to what it sees as evidence of an interstate conspiracy.
Describing the issue at hand, Michigan AG Dana Nessel explained:
“Seemingly, there’s a conspiracy that occurred between multiple states. So if what your ultimate goal is, is not just to prosecute these 16 individuals, but to find out who put them up to this, is this part of a bigger conspiracy at play in order to undermine the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election, not just in Michigan but nationally? … It creates jurisdictional issues…”
The prospect of federal involvement is particularly stunning because the aforementioned faux documents were sent to multiple officials both in and outside the state. Including the office of then Vice President Mike Pence, the Michigan Secretary of State, the national archivist, and a Chief Judge. With several layers of jurisdiction, alleged wrongdoing, and forgery, the case presents a difficult situation for prosecutors and the public.
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Former president Trump was indicted on 37 counts related to his alleged withholding of classified documents in March of this year.1 Other figures are also facing difficulty in their legal affairs. Trump ally and former mayor of New York, Rudolph Guiliani, was recommended for disbarment by a Washington review panel earlier this month over false claims he helped former President Trump prop up after the 2020 election. In another incident, Trump Lawyer Jenna Ellis admitted that she misrepresented facts surrounding the 2020 election after facing challenges from bar officials in Colorado, accepting censure.
This is not to say that conviction is inevitable, but it is worth noting that many of the Trumpist inner circle have suffered or continue to suffer legal challenges that could not only upend their ability to influence the legal system in the future.
It is also tempting to focus on electoral impact, but as I argued before, it is far better to pursue legal avenues for the sake of maintaining public institutions and the rule of law than it is for the sake of electoral politics. 2
With increasing partisan distrust of the legal system and the law at large, it remains a necessity for all crimes to be prosecuted with care and all deliberative strength, especially when it comes to the blatantly false idea that the 2020 election was stolen.
Neither Aaron Ruppar nor Thor Bensen are of the opinion that partisanship should dictate legal proceedings. At the time, I objected to the focus on electoral politics over legal concerns. I stand by it and maintain that our legal system must be preserved.
He claims to care, but he has no problem destroying independent media.
To say this newsletter has gone through some difficulty over the last year would be an understatement. The combined frustration of moving from a website to Substack while trying to maintain an email list of interested readers is no easy task. No matter the newsletter. But those decisions are made all the more difficult by Elon Musk’s unending moral and intellectual bankruptcy.
For those unfamiliar with my frustrations with Musk, my problems with him began in October of last year when he purchased Twitter, unleashing a torrent of extremism and violent rhetoric.1 The increased vitriol that quickly polluted Twitter made my views of Musk already negative, but it became increasingly clear that Musk was unwilling to act neutrally with his blatant far-right partisanship.
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In November 2022, Musk, Twitter’s CEO and de facto ruler, publicly encouraged users to support Republicans in the Midterm Elections. That decision further established that Musk leaned towards the GOP and would not bother with a pretense of neutrality on a major social media platform.
Tweeting out to millions of followers, with the full recognition that Musk controls the platform, is a sign that the CEO is not only willing to use Twitter as his personal political weapon but also serves as a reminder about how dangerous unrestrained social media leadership can be.
Whereas previous social media debacles on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have called into question how serious social media companies are about moderating their platform, the destruction of those moderation teams is not a solution, as I noted before. We are witnessing a perfect example of grifting, faux libertarian advocacy, and an overt appeal to partisanship for the sake of Elon’s frothing fans. Such negligence on a site that houses millions of people’s viewpoints, perspectives, and in the case of freelance writers, careers is an affront to the dignity of every single person who has to endure it.2
Those overt appeals to the right Musk further galvanized the right to use Twitter as their plaything while pretending to be overtaking a censorious media that has no values, that the right would bring back freedom for all.
But Musk’s conduct, including smearing a former employee who criticized him as a pedophile, revealed another more feckless side to his faux persona.3
Rather than establishing an open platform for all people, Musk instead seeks to create a platform that he can use to profit from while simultaneously making it a reflection of his corrupt and reactionary politics, free from any serious challenges to his control.
This was on perfect display when Musk decided to restrict API usage through paywalls, putting companies like WordPress in a bind for some of the features they provided to their users. At the time, I was one of those users and depended upon that site to promote my newsletter, which I complained about as it seriously risked my work. 4
To be clear, I am not under any delusion that Musk targeted my work. I am a small fish in an ocean of content creators and writers, but what was frustrating to me and many others who were affected by the API usage is that it forced writers to make decisions about the best place to put their content while also risking significant losses.
While some can recover as they have already established newsletters and public records, I was not so lucky. By February of this year, I was forced to move my newsletter to Substack and brought some of my following with me.5
That move, I hoped, would allow me a chance to build something for cheap while also working on my graduate degree, saving me money and avoiding restrictions imposed by Musk. That was not the case.
By April, Musk decided to impose his wrath on Substack, restricting links to the site and preventing Substack writers from embedding tweets in their posts. He further put out an alert that listed Substack as unsafe, which was not true. 6 Eventually, the false alerts would be removed, but the threat was clear; Substack’s competition with Twitter was not being tolerated.
Even now, Substack writers still struggle to promote their articles and work, with even well-established writers raging against blatant censorship. Emily Atkins of the Climate-focused newsletter Heated noted that Musk was demonstrating just how little Musk actually cared about Climate Change activism.
Musk’s new policy will, of course, harm more than just climate-focused publications and readers. But its stifling effect on climate information is worth highlighting on its own, given the media’s love of portraying Musk as a climate champion. We tried to throw some cold water on that portrayal back in the early days of Musk’s Twitter takeover, noting that his public advocacy for a Republican government would undo any climate gains made by his electric vehicle and clean energy company, Tesla.
In the months since then, the climate case against Musk has only gotten stronger, as he’s continued to dismantle the site that researchers have demonstrated is an essential tool for studying, fighting, and responding in real time to climate change. For what it’s worth, Musk also recently mocked the Biden administration for daring to tweet about climate change during the Silicon Valley Bank meltdown. Multitasking: the horror!7
The restrictions, which largely remain on links, have hampered writers trying to build something of their own in a world of ravenous corporate media moguls.
And while this newsletter has seen some improvement, and I plan to continue working on it, the fact that Musk’s restrictions remain is just another example of how hypocritical and blatantly opportunistic he is. Musk, a self-styled free-speech warrior, is anything but interested in a diversified media environment.
His is a moderation of convenience. If he thinks he can appeal to the right to achieve a desired outcome for himself. If he thinks he can get away with suppressing a competitor’s site, even though the site is largely for writing newsletters, he will do that as well. What Elon Musk does is for Musk and Musk alone. He is not some principled visionary of freedom and independence. He’s just another haphazard billionaire with a God complex.
In a display of wasteful and absurd politics, Marjorie Taylor Greene has decided that America needs yet another reason to dislike her reactionary methods of governing, claiming that she will impeach President Biden. For what, you may ask? For not doing enough at the border.
Of course, the vote in the House will amount to nothing, as policy decisions, though political in nature and therefore within the grounds of impeachment, have to be made with some observable harm to the public.
The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.1
That said, the impeachment articles by Greene are less than adequate to remove Biden from office, much less demonstrate any serious wrong-doing by the current administration.
Despite the constant fear-mongering about the border, recent reports suggest that border crossings have declined since the end of Title 42, with border crossings dropping from an average of 10,000 a day to 4, 400 since the end of the Trump-era policy.2
In her speech, Greene argued that Biden allowed “approximately six million illegals from over 170 countries to invade our country…” 3
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Of course, claiming that Biden has permitted such things to happen is inaccurate. Before the end of Title 42, the Biden administration had begun plans to ramp up deportation flights, issuing a statement before the program expired, saying: “Our border is not open and will not be open after May 11…” 4
{Note: I don’t have to agree with the deportation response as a solution to immigration in order to note it is a part of the Biden administration’s political program. I am only noting it for context purposes.}
However, the waste of time that will come with this proceeding is more vexing. While most GOP members will rightfully understand that this procedure is foolhardy and will amount to nothing, some, likely Greene and Boebert, will use this as a pretext to bolster their own political capital.
To them, attention, no matter how ridiculous, is good. And to some extent, they are right. According to Open Secrets, Rep. Greene alone raised an estimated $12.5 million between 2021 and 2022. 5
But of course, plenty of other issues will be put on the back burner because of this process. Rather than enacting legislation that will reform the immigration system and make it easier for people to enter legally and safely, Rep. Greene has decided to draw the nation’s attention to a non-issue that will go nowhere.
If anything, her absurdity demonstrates how unfit she is to serve the American people.
