Denver, Colorado is reaching a breaking point as migrant arrivals continue to overwhelm the self-proclaimed sanctuary city.

As a result, Mayor Mike Johnston (D) suggested that the city may stop accepting more, while officials begin the process of booting them from overcrowded shelters.

“I think our city is very close to its breaking point now,” he told Fox & Friends last week. And we’ve been talking to leaders in D.C. around the country about why we need them to take action here. I think we have successfully welcomed almost 40,000 migrants in the last year and — and we know what it takes to do this successfully, we just need that help.”

Last year the city helped over 38,000 migrants. As of Friday night, 3,895 were staying in city shelters.

“That’s an incredible number of people to shelter, support, feed, help with transportation, deal with case management,” said Jon Ewing of Denver Human Services.

According to Johnston, more needs to be done to address the influx of migrants at the southern US border.

“And the things we need are — yes, we need federal dollars, but the most important thing is we need, you know, work authorization for folks when they arrive, and we need those resources at the border so you can add more security at the border and so you can help process those asylum claims so the folks that do arrive here can work,” he said.

Perhaps preventing them from entering the country in the first place is the way to go, Mike?

On Friday, Johnson told KOA news that the city is exploring options to pause taking in more people.

“We are considering it. We have to consider all options, particularly if there isn’t any help from the federal government,” he said.

Denver is clearing out migrant shelters

According to Fox31, Denver is clearing out shelters used by the migrants.

Starting on Monday, 150 migrants in city shelters will be discharged. Then that number will fluctuate between 50-100 every day until all 3,800 are out of the 10 shelters currently run by the city.

“The hope and goal is that we are able to connect the vast majority with housing, or at least as many of them as we possibly can,” Ewing said.

The number of migrants arriving in Denver is coming down — 48 arrived on Thursday and 64 on Friday, a significant drop from the beginning of January, when that number was 200-300 daily. –Fox31

“4,000 people when you have limited budget, when you have limited resources … very difficult to find enough housing as is, affordable housing as is, in the city of Denver — that’s going to be difficult,” said Ewing.

Denver is one of several Democratic strongholds across the United States which pledged maximum virtue by signaling themselves as sanctuary cities – only to be completely unprepared for the surge of migrants that followed the Biden administration’s open invitation to them on day one.

New York is facing a similar overload, as Mayor Eric Adams (D) has repeatedly called on the Biden administration to lend a hand in dealing with the migrants. The Big Apple has seen a surge of more than 160,000 asylum seekers since last year.

By Daniel Nuccio of The College Fix

The continued embrace of diversity, equity and inclusion in STEM combined with a broad decline in academic standards is producing a generation of scientists who are less capable than their predecessors, warned some scientists in recent interviews with The College Fix.

From easier math classes in high school to the elimination of standardized tests to extreme grade-inflation to DEI tropes that elevate lived experiences and ways of knowing over facts and data, the trend represents a pressing problem for science professors working to protect STEM and preserve its standards and meritocracy.

Alex Small, chair of the physics and astronomy department at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, said it starts early in a student’s education.

“The K-12 system is walking away from standards at all levels,” he told The College Fix in a recent phone interview.

For example, he said while most of his students took some sort of calculus class their senior year of high school, “at least a third of them test into a class that’s lower than calculus because what happens is the schools will push people through the pipeline.”

“Even if someone hasn’t mastered algebra, they’ll get some sort of generous grade in their prerequisite math classes and then be put into calculus their senior year,” he said.

Similar trends concerning the inability of college students to do high school math have been reported nationally post-COVID, with educators lamenting how incoming freshmen no longer can be expected to know how to add fractions or subtract a positive number from a negative number.

Yi-Zen Chu, an associate professor of physics at the National Central University in Taiwan, who was educated in the U.S. and has been a harsh critic of DEI, stated in a recent email to The Fix that he believes practices such as “grade inflation and lowering the bar” contribute to the lack of preparation exhibited by American college students.

The concern circles back to the “‘everyone gets a prize’ philosophy that has been around for quite a while now,” he said, referring to what’s sometimes called the “Participation Trophy” phenomenon.

Chu suggested one way to combat these practices at the college level “is to staunchly defend the use of standardized tests like the SAT.”

“Students have to compete on the same test to prove their ability relative to others,” he said. “This way, schools know that hyper-grade-inflation will only count against the integrity of the school in the medium/long run.”

Small said what these students need is supplemental instruction, time, extra problem solving sessions, and extra practice.

“There’s no such thing as too much practice, and that’s especially true when you haven’t yet had enough practice,” said Small.

However, although some educators and institutions have embraced remedial summer programs and additional tutoring services, others work toward ideological goals related to DEI that ultimately may prove detrimental to students, as well as the field of physics more broadly.

Lawrence Krauss, one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists, noted in a 2022 interview with The College Fix, “I have written many articles about the absolutely ludicrous ways in which DEI is … enforcing ridiculous notions about both keeping people out of physics who should be in, and trying to interfere with meritocracy and interfere [with] and take over the appointment process so that merit isn’t the crucial factor.”

Small, in a November 2023 article published by Heterodox STEM, discussed the column “Just Physics?” It appears in the physics education journal The Physics Teacher and regularly features discussions from different physics educators exploring alternative pedagogies and the place of DEI in physics education.

Highlighting one recent article, Small wrote in his critique that it “focused on the putative anti-Blackness of the physics community” but offered little in terms of what “changes can or should be implemented” beyond spending “more time in physics class discussing social issues.”

In December, The College Fix reached out to Deepak Iyer, one of the co-editors of “Just Physics?” for comment. Iyer replied he would need to get approval from his editor-in-chief before formally responding. On Jan. 24, Iyer notified The Fix he had still not received a response.

“Some sort of discussion of wider social issues…in moderate doses has its place,” Small told The Fix. “Oppenheimer got a lot of people asking questions again about one of the sort of pivotal moments of the American physics community.”

“If DEI is brought in just as an occasional discussion topic that doesn’t really crowd out the fundamentals, then I don’t have a fundamental objection to it,” he added.

However, Small said, when too much time is spent discussing social issues in physics classes, the fundamentals get crowded out, which, as he pointed out in his Heterodox STEM article, could “hurt students with weak prior preparation, as they need even more focus on fundamentals.”

Peter McCullough of the physics and astronomy department at Johns Hopkins argues there are times when discussions of DEI topics in STEM may be called for or even beneficial.

In the comments section of Small’s article, McCullough highlighted issues with fingertip pulse oximeters, describing the devices as “a technology that works better on lighter skin than darker skin.”

In an email to The College Fix, McCullough also noted claims that some facial recognition programs have difficulty in accurately identifying black faces or recognizing them as faces at all. According to McCullough, such examples might get students thinking about unintended effects of different technologies on society.

Yet, Small noted, a certain number of instructors spending too much time discussing DEI in physics class is not the biggest threat posed by DEI to physics education.

“Where DEI really comes into a lot of discussion among physics educators,” said Small, “is in discussions about standards.”

“It’s not really … so much a discussion of ‘Oh, should we talk about representation during class time’ and more about what can we reasonably expect and if a student can’t meet the standard, is it unfair of us to nonetheless insist on that standard,” he said. “And that’s a much more complicated and dangerous discussion, because … it just perpetuates under preparation.”

Authored by Stephen Anderson via The Mises Institute,

Bankruptcy is a developing twenty-first century theme in America. We see bankruptcy in federal government policy and spending, many corporate boardroom decisions, nonprofit and religious groups’ overspending and arrogance, individuals, some United States cities and counties, and the territory of Puerto Rico. The federal bankruptcy law consisting of Chapters 7, 9, 11, and 13 allow bankruptcy filings for local governments, individuals, nonprofit groups, and for-profit businesses, but it does not allow bankruptcy filings for states and the federal government.

A few states are facing the reality of defaulting on their issued bond debt obligation payments and loan payments to lenders. These states are seeing current and future tax revenues decreases, net population losses, fewer private businesses, increased progressive welfare spending, and long-term underfunded public pension systems. US states are not allowed by federal law to print money to finance spending.

States declaring bankruptcy are not without precedent. The Panic of 1837 lead to several states defaulting on canal and railway debt payments in 1841. Passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution under section 4 required some states to declare bankruptcy after the Civil War.

Arkansas defaulted on highway bond payments in 1933 in the fourth year of the Great Depression. Tax revenues plummeted. It ran out of cash and stopped payments on all its highway bonds. The state attempted to invoke its sovereign immunity and impose losses on bondholders against their will. The approach failed. This history, described in an October 2017 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland report, may serve as a historical benchmark for future state bankruptcies and bond payment defaults. It appears to be the only state default after Reconstruction ended in 1877.

Standard and Poor’s (S&P) listed its bond ratings of all fifty states from 2004 to 2017. Coronavirus state spending since 2020 has made the bond ratings of some states more tenuous. No state has a junk bond rating, though Illinois is the lowest rated at BBB−, followed by New Jersey at A−. S&P bond ratings go from AAA being the highest to D the lowest. S&P analysts add a plus or minus sign to the bond rating letter grade. A junk bond rating is the low probability of that state reliably meeting future bond payments, and it must sell the bond at a higher interest rate in order to attract an investor.

Illinois and New Jersey are examples of a future state bankruptcy or default on a future bond debt obligation payment. California budget deficits under Governor Gavin Newsom are proliferating as part of the spending trend. Financial press coverage of these states’ financial problems is available. New York, Connecticut, Michigan, and other states are heading to future defaults and possible bankruptcy unless budget and policy reform is enacted.

This article cannot predict how a state’s future bond debt default would play out. Payment default negotiations between that state’s revenue officials and bondholders could take place without federal bureaucrat oversight given bankruptcy silence in federal law. The bondholders and lenders will take a loss and place substantive requirements on that state to cut spending and reform its laws and policies as part of the default settlement.

The undisciplined state spending spree will be addressed through payment default or bankruptcy resulting from inescapable economic realities. This bottoming out could begin the healing process for that state’s citizens through realistic laws, policies, budgets, and tax revenue realities. This is uncharted territory, and we should not be surprised by past poor state political and budgeting choices.

One irony is that twelve US states have bond ratings from three private bond rating agencies higher than the federal government as of August 2023. Many of these states have balanced budget laws that prohibit deficit spending, and some states limit annual spending increases from a set of requirements. Stay tuned for the American twenty-first century bankruptcy shows to continue.

Ahead of the largest Nato exercise since the Cold War, the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth experienced an “issue” with a faulty propeller shaft during final checks this weekend. 

In a post on social media platform X, the Royal Navy said an issue with a coupling on HMS Queen Elizabeth’s starboard propeller shaft was identified and “will not sail on Sunday.” Instead, the sister ship HMS Prince of Wales (keep in mind, UK only has two carriers in service) will take her place on the Steadfast Defender drills off Norway’s Arctic coast in March. 

Routine pre-sailing checks yesterday identified an issue with a coupling on @HMSQNLZ starboard propeller shaft. As such, the ship will not sail on Sunday.@HMSPWLS will take her place on NATO duties and will set sail for Exercise Steadfast Defender as soon as possible. pic.twitter.com/ImAeTU80vi

— Royal Navy (@RoyalNavy) February 3, 2024

HMS Queen Elizabeth’s mechanical woes come after Armed Forces Minister James Heappey said a British aircraft could soon be sent to the Red Sea to combat Iran-backed Houthi rebels amid the worsening situation as the US and UK launch bombing raids across the Middle East. 

However, ministers were recently warned by the House of Commons Defence Committee that the military is not prepared for an all-out war due to stockpile shortages and recruitment crises. The committee also said the military is “consistently overstretched.” 

In recent weeks, the head of the British Army, General Patrick Sanders, called on leaders to “mobilize the nation” to prepare for war with Russia. 

Last month, we attended SHOT Show in Las Vegas (read: here & here). We had a lengthy conversation with a European tier 1 operator with DoD contracts to train Ukranians. He told us World War 3 started in 2014.

By Emily Sturge of CampusReform.org

A Feb. 9 Federal TRIO Programs Subcommittee meeting could push the Biden administration one step closer to extending $1.2 billion in college-preparatory programs to illegal immigrants.

A draft proposal released Jan. 12 by the Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education argued in favor of extending Federal TRIO programs to illegal immigrants. TRIO programs are a set of eight “outreach and student services” initiatives meant to prepare “low-income individuals, first-generation college students, and individuals with disabilities” for college, as seen on the program page. 

At the upcoming meeting, subcommittee members will discuss “participant eligibility” and then present their recommendations to an overhead committee, as stated by the Office of Postsecondary Education. Subcommittee members could continue to push the proposal to include illegal immigrants in TRIO programs.

Some services provided are “academic tutoring, personal counseling, mentoring,” and “financial guidance,” as well as “assistance in applying to college,” “workplace and college visits,” and “special instruction in reading, writing, study skills, and mathematics,” according to the Council for Opportunity in Education. 

TRIO programs receive roughly $1.2 billion in federal funding annually and currently serve over 800,000 low-income students. Illegal immigrant students have been prohibited from receiving TRIO benefits, as well as other federal benefits, since 1986.

Around 100,000 illegal immigrant students graduate from U.S. high schools annually, as stated on Higher Ed Immigration Portal. Those students could become eligible for TRIO.

Additionally, there are more than 600,000 K-12 illegal immigrant students enrolled in U.S. schools, according to FWD.us, which means hundreds of thousands of future high school graduates who could become eligible for TRIO initiatives.

“In California, I think this added language will be significantly beneficial for our programs. We are fortunate, California being a little bit more liberal . . . that our colleges do accept undocumented students,” said Emalyn Lapus, a member of the subcommittee, at the Jan. 12 meeting.

Campus Reform has previously reported on the Biden administration’s efforts to expand TRIO benefits to illegal immigrants. 

Former Trump administration official Mike Gill, 56, died on Saturday after being critically wounded this week in an 11-hour crime spree that spanned from  Downtown Washington DC to Maryland.

“It is with profound sadness that I wish to inform the community of the passing of my husband, Mike Gill,” said his wife, Kristina Gill, in a statement reported by Fox 5 DC. “His sudden departure has left a void in our lives that can never be filled.”

Gill, who served as Trump’s chief operating officer of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and a married father of three, was sitting in his Jeep Cherokee waiting to pick up his wife near Mount Vernon Square on the evening of Jan. 29, when the suspected gunman – identified as 28-year-old Artell Cunningham, got inside the car and shot him in the head around 5:45 p.m.

MPD Investigating Man’s Overnight Crime Spree, Leaving 1 Dead and 1 with Critical Injuries

Read more: https://t.co/kED6OfCpUG pic.twitter.com/FpzY9Wunx7

— DC Police Department (@DCPoliceDept) January 31, 2024

Cunningham then fled the scene on foot, attempted to carjack another individual unsuccessfully, and then approached a man and a woman, demanding their keys. Cunningham then allegedly shot the man, 45-year-old Albnerto Vasquez, Jr., who later died at a local hospital.

Cunningham was later killed by police.

According to Kristina Gill, her husband’s “heart was evident in everything he did.”

He coached his daughter’s soccer team, served at Holy Trinity Parish and “relished opening our home to friends and colleagues to bring people together. Friends of Mike’s knew they could always count on him to help solve a problem. He was in his element pouring a friend a drink and sharing a good story to give a laugh.” –NBC 4

“[He’s] the friendliest guy you’d ever met but nobody’s fool by any stretch. Underneath that soft exterior was a determined executive who could achieve really big things,” former CFTC Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo told the outlet earlier in the week, who showered praise on Gill.

“In our time at the Commission, if we achieved anything, 95% of the credit goes to Mike Gill, who’s a person that never sought credit, who never sought anything for himself.“

Authored by Adeline Von Drehle via RealClear Wire,

Four years ago, Generation Z, or those born from 1997-2012, broke the record for young voter turnout. Their champion? Then-77-year-old Joe Biden. Four years later, less than 50% of 18-29 year-olds “definitely” plan on voting, and only 33% of the age group approves of President Biden’s job performance.

The pressing question is why an overwhelmingly liberal generation – just 21% of Gen Z adults are registered GOP voters – is hesitant to support the Democratic Party incumbent, especially when their alternative option is the deeply controversial former President Donald Trump. Gen Z poses a question in response: Why would we be eager to participate in a system that isn’t working for or with us?

Zoe Romyn, a 24-year-old Wisconsin voter working as a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion coordinator, put it simply: “Nihilistic might be one of the words I would use to describe my sentiment towards the U.S. government.”

Gen Z (nicknamed the “Zoomer” generation) is largely disillusioned with the state of Washington politics today. About 61% of Zoomers say they do not trust their political leaders, compared to 32% of Baby Boomers. It is worth examining what exactly is going on inside the minds of the nation’s youngest voters.

Immediate gratification, short attention spans, political division, cultural and economic instability – these are said to be the defining factors of Gen Z. But they have their reasons. Zoomers were raised amid the 2008 financial crash and came of age during a global pandemic. Many set up their first social media account by junior high school, where they had unlimited access to footage of natural disasters and police brutality. This is the generation of school shooter drills and school assemblies on cyberbullying and suicide.

Understanding how these factors interact is crucial to our understanding of Zoomers’ political progressivism. There is a longing among these young voters for effective humanitarian-centered public policies.

“It is less about them, than it is about others,” said John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics and author of “Fight: How Gen Z is Channeling Their Fear and Passion to Save America.”

“Millions of young people vote every cycle, not just to protect and expand their rights and their vision of America,” Della Volpe said in an interview, “but to protect and expand the rights of those more vulnerable than themselves.”

This humanitarian bent means young voters are more likely to support initiatives such as gun control, climate change, nonviolence policies, equitable education, and universal healthcare, among others.

“I think Gen Z is definitely more focused on human rights as a whole,” said Henry Bradley, a 24-year-old from San Francisco. “Maybe that’s because of the social media culture, maybe sympathy does better algorithmically.”

To many of their elders, this sympathy can take disastrously wrong turns. Taught to graft concepts like “intersectionality” and “anti-colonialism” into global affairs, young Americans are less proud of their country and its foreign policy than any generation in U.S. history and, by their own accounting, are not very “patriotic.”

Zoomers shocked older generations – and sent shudders through the Democratic Party – by taking a pro-Palestine stance in the wake of the unprompted and violent attack perpetrated by the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas, in which 1,200 Israeli Jews were killed and 250 civilians were kidnapped. A critical mass of young Democrats has broken with the Biden administration for its funding of the Israeli government’s military response to the attack, which has resulted in the death of approximately 25,000 Palestinian civilians.

The culture of social media is affecting Gen Z in additional and unpredictable ways. Approximately 98% of Zoomers own a smartphone, and the age group averages over four hours per day online. People under the age of 25 are two times more likely to use apps such as TikTok, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) as their news source than they are to look at traditional news sources.

Emotionally evocative, fast-paced content thrives on social media. This might be like a 30-second rant about bombings in Gaza or a one-page infographic about the rapidly growing housing crisis. Often, content such as this will receive millions of views or be reposted thousands of times. Young people will post donation links, e-boycott large corporations, or virtually plan protests.

“When our attention is brought by the media to something like Ukraine or student loans, we commit a lot of civic engagement immediately,” said Romyn. “We anticipate seeing the changes that we want before the next subject matter comes up. And I don’t think that we’re wrong for wanting to see those kinds of changes. But it’s a bureaucracy and nothing moves fast.”

This is the major disconnect between Gen Z and Washington, D.C. It is no wonder that the same generation who grew up with next-day delivery would desire next-day policy implementation. Unfortunately for the instant gratification generation, Congress was designed to move at a glacial pace.

Are progressive Zoomers taking out their frustration with the government on Joe Biden? Or is there separate and passionate discontent with the president himself, too? It would seem that both are true.

During Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, “He made us feel heard and he made us feel seen,” said 23-year-old Chicagoan Jessica Rinaldi. “I feel like since then, it’s been radio silence.”

Many left-wing Gen Z voters feel that Biden has underdelivered on the issues most important to them, including their inability to meet economic milestones, gun control, abortion rights, the war in Gaza, mental health, climate change, and racial justice.

For instance, 72% of 18-29-year-old Americans say abortion should be legal in most or all cases. The fact that Roe v. Wade was overturned during Biden’s presidency and abortion law was returned to state choice left a stain many Zoomers haven’t been able to wash out.

“Biden definitely could have done something to help women and our rights,” said Amanda Koenigstein, a 21-year-old college senior. “Or, he tried, but he just didn’t do enough.”

Biden and Democrats in Congress pushed to codify the protections of Roe at the federal level in 2022, but partisan divides in the Senate made legislative efforts on that front impossible. Biden’s response was to urge voters to “elect more pro-choice senators this November and return a pro-choice majority to the House.” Democrats held on to the Senate and lost the House.

“Both in rhetoric and policy, Democrats have fallen pretty short on abortion,” said 25-year-old Nashville resident Chase Mueller. “There was a two-year span where we had an all-blue federal government, and they dropped the ball.”

In fact, Biden backed a rule change to the Senate filibuster, which would have allowed the codification of Roe (and other legislation) to pass by a simple majority instead of a 60-vote supermajority, but the change was blocked in a bipartisan vote.

Biden’s failures, not his efforts, went viral on the TikTok ‘For You’ page, and he is remembered as the Democratic president who let reproductive rights go by the wayside while tweeting about how women deserve the option to choose.

There are those Zoomers who recognize the limited power of the president. Romyn points out that she isn’t “discontented with the Biden administration, other than realizing that there’s not really a lot that he can do. There’s just so much that you have to play politics around.”

In 2020, Biden’s five decades of political experience was offered by the Democrats as a virtue – an antidote to the chaos of novice politician Donald Trump. Four years later, Biden’s politics-is-the-art-of-the-possible approach has left Zoomers dissatisfied with the president.

“If you have no faith in the political system, you’re not necessarily going to want a president who’s working through the system and trying to go negotiate and compromise and work with the other party,” Daniel Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute, said of Gen Z voters.

Even though frustration with Washington and the Biden administration abounds, many progressive Zoomers who spoke to RCP remain committed to casting a ballot. For some, it’ll be less of a vote for the Democrats and more of a vote against Donald Trump.

“I feel like right now, we have a criminal, and we have a disappointment,” Rinaldi said, referring to Trump’s 91 felony charges. “I’d rather vote for a disappointment than a criminal.”

Another facet of Rinaldi’s decision-making process harkens back to the humanitarian impulses of the Zoomer generation. Rinaldi told RCP that if she was voting solely for the impact the president would have on her, she wouldn’t vote at all.

“My biggest thing with voting is, sometimes it’s not about you. It’s about who’s gonna do best for the general population,” Rinaldi said, suggesting that another Biden administration would have a better impact on the American public than a second Trump term.

The Biden campaign and its Republican counterpart could stand to acknowledge the intricacies of those factors informing Gen Z tendencies, as well as the plain-and-simple, bureaucracy-transcending criticisms of young voters.

“Morally, I don’t think I could vote for either [Biden or Trump],” said Amanda Koenigstein. “I feel like we need someone younger, who understands where we’re at and what we’re going through. We can’t find jobs, the housing market is insane, cost of living is up. They aren’t helping enough.”

Adeline Von Drehle is a rising senior at the University of Missouri studying American history. She will spend the coming year as an Oxford fellow at Corpus Christi College.

Authored by Charlotte Allen via The Epoch Times,

Nearly half of America’s homeless population – some 42 percent – lives in nine Western states stretching from Alaska and Montana to Arizona and Hawaii. The vast majority of them – 30 percent of America’s homeless – live in California alone, even though California accounts for only 12 percent of the general population of the United States.

The reason isn’t simply the temperate climate of the West’s coastal cities that makes living on sidewalks amid trash, crime, rodents, and disease more tolerable—or the free meals and other benefits that the progressive governments of those cities typically offer. One major factor is that the nine states are under the thumb of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, most of whose judges are still famously liberal despite a short-lived influx of Donald Trump appointees.

The Ninth Circuit, alone among federal appeals courts, has made it nearly impossible for states and cities in the West to enforce their longstanding public nuisance laws that ban camping, sleeping, and lodging on public sidewalks and in public parks and buildings. The Ninth Circuit deems such enforcement “cruel and unusual punishment” that violates the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. That, in turn, makes it impossible for cities to clear their streets of the tent encampments that are not only unsightly and dangerous but are also public health hazards for the street people themselves.

Take the city of San Francisco, with one of the highest homelessness rates in the nation. More than 4,000 homeless people, many of them alcoholics, drug addicts, or mentally ill, live mostly outdoors in the city’s downtown and Tenderloin districts that have become so-called “doom loops” because businesses and residents are fleeing the filth and crime. San Francisco has been fighting a legal battle in federal court since 2022 over its efforts to get rid of homeless encampments in its central city. All to no avail. On Jan. 11, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit issued a 2–1 ruling upholding a federal district judge’s preliminary injunction that bars the enforcement of state and city anti-camping laws in San Francisco pending a full trial that has yet to take place.

Signing onto the Ninth Circuit’s opinion, in a lawsuit filed by the ultra-progressive Coalition on Homelessness, were Circuit Judges Lucy Koh and Roopali Desai, both appointed by President Joe Biden. The lone dissenter was Trump appointee Patrick J. Bumatay. Judge Bumatay pointed out that the Eighth Amendment had originally been designed to protect Americans against barbarous methods of punishment—whipping and torture, for example. It wasn’t supposed to be used to strike down criminal laws themselves, especially longstanding anti-vagrancy laws typically enforced by small fines and misdemeanor convictions. Otherwise, “we impermissibly usurp powers left to the States and crown ourselves czars over homeless policy,” Judge Bumatay wrote.

The ruling was no surprise. California and its neighboring states have been hamstrung by the Ninth Circuit since 2018—by a decision in a case titled Martin v. City of Boise that created a precedent for using the Eighth Amendment to strike down anti-camping laws—in this case, a Boise ordinance aimed at the tent encampment that had cropped up in the Idaho capital. The theory was Boise was actually punishing people simply for being homeless, because the homeless often have no other place to sleep besides public places.

“[S]o long as there is a greater number of homeless individuals in a jurisdiction than the number of available beds in shelters,” Boise couldn’t enforce its ordinance, the Ninth Circuit ruled.

The Martin decision had an electric effect. Homeless advocates launched federal lawsuits all over the West to try to get anti-camping ordinances invalidated, and they usually succeeded. Meanwhile, localities covered by the Ninth Circuit scrambled to change their laws to comply with Martin and still do something about the tent encampments.

One of those localities was Grants Pass, a town of 38,000 in southern Oregon. The Grants Pass ordinance was milder than Boise’s. It allowed only civil penalties, such as being barred from parks, not criminal fines or jail terms, for such offenses as putting down bedding in a public place. But the Ninth Circuit was even tougher on Grants Pass than it had been on Boise. In 2022, it issued a 2–1 ruling (amended slightly in 2023) that not only did localities have to make alternative shelter space available before they could enforce their anti-camping policies, but they also had to ensure there was a bed available for every single homeless person who happened to be in the locality at any given time. Beds provided by religious organizations such as gospel missions, which typically set behavioral standards, didn’t count.

Fortunately, on Jan. 12, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the Johnson v. Grants Pass decision. As well it should. Not a single other federal appeals court has accepted the Ninth Circuit’s Eighth Amendment line of reasoning. Two federal circuits, the Fifth and the Eleventh, covering mostly Southern states, have actively rejected it. So has the California Supreme Court, not otherwise known for conservative leanings. Dozens of Western states and cities, including progressive San Francisco and Los Angeles, had filed amicus briefs urging the Supreme Court to overturn Grants Pass and allow them to try to alleviate the crime, squalor, and human misery that tent camps foster.

Even California’s liberal Gov. Gavin Newsom had submitted an amicus brief arguing that the Ninth Circuit was essentially permitting “dangerous” homeless encampments to become permanent fixtures in his state’s cities and towns. San Francisco complained that it had spent $672 million on shelter beds for its homeless population but still hadn’t managed to comply with Grant Pass’s unworkable standards.

The Ninth Circuit seems to be administering its own form of cruel and unusual punishment—on localities that believe their public places should be available for all their citizens to enjoy. It’s time for the Supreme Court to put a stop to this travesty of Eighth Amendment interpretation.

On Sunday the Pentagon said its forces again struck an anti-ship cruise missile launch position in Yemen. A US Central Command (CENTCOM) statement said the operation was conducted in “self defense” against a Houthi cruise missile “prepared to launch against ships in the Red Sea” at 4 a.m. local time on Sunday.

This follows on the heels of a much bigger wave of strikes Saturday, which involved the US coalition attacking over 30 targets across 13 locations from air and ships, including using F/A-18 fighter jets.

A statement released from Operation Prosperity Guardian Saturday said, “Today’s strike specifically targeted sites associated with the Houthis’ deeply buried weapons storage facilities, missile systems and launchers, air defense systems, and radars.”

The statement was issued by the US, UK, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands and New Zealand, which make up the Western coalition trying to protect international commercial transit in the Red Sea.

The Associated Press has put the number of Saturday strikes alone at 36, meaning by Sunday the coalition has reached nearly 40 strikes in Yemen:

The United States and Britain struck 36 Houthi targets in Yemen on Saturday in a second wave of assaults meant to further disable Iran-backed groups that have relentlessly attacked American and international interests in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. But Washington once more did not directly target Iran as it tries to find a balance between a forceful response and intensifying the conflict.

The stepped-up Western campaign appears to have done little to deter the Houthi attacks, given launches are still being attempted. A fresh Houthi statement has warned, “We will meet escalation with escalation.”

UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps said Saturday that the anti-Houthi strikes are about protecting innocent lives:

“The Houthis’ attacks on commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea are illegal and unacceptable and it is our duty to protect innocent lives and preserve freedom of navigation,” Shapps said.

Who Are The Houthis, what are they fighting for? [2009 US Embassy Report] #Yemen #RedSea

Link to full document: https://t.co/gM7hvEzyeP

More Archive material on the Houthis available for research: https://t.co/9lpq3Gefvi pic.twitter.com/nUpMSIBOKe

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 4, 2024

* * *

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera has compiled a list of various companies and industries which have seen their shipping and supply chains significantly impacted by the Houthi raids in the Red Sea, as follows below…

Autos

• Geely: China’s second-largest automaker by sales said on December 22 that its electric vehicle (EV) sales would likely be impacted by a delay in deliveries.
• Michelin: Four factories in Spain owned by the French tyre maker halted output on January 20-21 due to raw materials delivery delays.
• Suzuki: The company’s Hungary production plant restarted manufacturing on January 22 as planned following a halt the previous week due to delays in the arrival of Japanese-made engines. It said shipping routes were changed to pass around Africa, which could affect pricing.
• Tesla: The US-based electric vehicle maker will suspend most car production at its factory near Berlin from January 29 to February 11 due to a lack of components caused by shifts in transport routes.
• Volvo: The Swedish automaker said on January 12 that it would halt production at its Belgian plant for three days due to delays.

• BP: The oil major on December 18 said it had temporarily paused all transits through the Red Sea.
• Equinor: The company said on December 18 that it had rerouted vessels that had been heading towards the Red Sea.
• Edison: The energy group’s CEO said on January 25 that it was starting to experience a slowdown in liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies from Qatar.
• Qatar Energy: The world’s second-largest exporter of LNG has stopped sending tankers via the Red Sea although production continues, a senior source with direct knowledge of the matter told the Reuters news agency on January 15.
• Shell: The British oil major suspended all shipments through the Red Sea indefinitely, the Wall Street Journal reported on January 16.
• Valero Energy: The US refiner said on January 25 that the Red Sea attacks have led to a rise in freight rates for crude oil.

Logistics

• DHL: The German logistics company, which does not operate ships but uses them to transport containers, on January 8 advised customers to take a close look at how they manage inventories.
• FedEx: The US parcel delivery giant said on January 14 that it hadn’t seen much of a shift to air freight due to disruptions in the Red Sea.

Retailers

• Adidas: CEO Bjorn Gulden said on February 1 that shipping disruptions in the Red Sea were negative for gross margins, adding that “exploding” freight rates were driving up costs and shipping delays were causing some delivery issues.
• Danone: The French food group said in December that most of its shipments had been diverted, increasing transit times. Should the situation last beyond 2-3 months, Danone will activate mitigation plans, including using alternate routes, its spokesperson said.
• Ikea: The furniture retailer is sticking to planned price cuts despite increased costs, and has sufficient stocks to absorb any supply chain shocks, it said on January 15.
• Marks & Spencer: The British retailer’s CEO said on January 11 that the company is expecting some slight delay in clothing and home deliveries due to the disruption to shipping.
• Next: The British clothing retailer’s CEO on January 4 said sales growth would likely be moderated if disruptions continued through 2024.
• Pepco: The Poundland owner warned on January 18 that its supply could be impacted in the coming months if the disruptions continue.
• Primark: Associated British Foods’ finance director said on January 23 that Primark is coping with disruptions by adjusting timings and stock flow.
• Sainsbury’s: “We’re making sure that we plan the sequencing of product from Asia Pacific so that we get products in the right order,” the company’s CEO said, adding that long-term contracts with shippers “mitigate any cost impact as far as possible”.
• Target: The US retailer is experiencing some disruptions of shipments from India and Pakistan, a source familiar with the matter said on January 12, calling the effect “minor” overall.
• Tractor Supply: Deliveries for the US retailer have been delayed anywhere from two to 20-plus days, the company’s chief supply chain operator said on January 12.
• Williams-Sonoma: The Pottery Barn owner is rerouting shipments and has been working on contingency plans, its CEO told CNBC on January 24.

Others

• BHP Group: The Australian mining giant on January 25 said the disruptions were forcing some of its freight service providers to take alternative routes, such as Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.
• Electrolux: The Swedish home appliance maker has set up a task force to find alternative routes or identify priority deliveries to try to avoid disruptions. On February 2, its CEO said that costs related to the developments in the Red Sea were manageable. “If the situation is prolonged, I am more worried about higher costs than about risk of having to pause production,” he added.
• Essity: The maker of brands such as Libresse and TENA said it was staying in contact with impacted suppliers to ensure the continued flow of goods. On January 25, its CEO said that it saw a negative impact on its freight costs, but he could not specify what that impact would amount to.
• Evonik: The speciality chemicals maker said it was being hit by “short notice routing changes and delays”, and was trying to mitigate the impact by ordering earlier and switching to air freight where possible.
• Gechem GmbH & Co KG: The German chemicals maker said it had lowered production of dishwasher and toilet tablets as a result of the delays.
• Kone: The Finnish elevator maker said the situation may in some cases delay shipments, but most of its customer deliveries should stay on schedule. Kone said it had prepared for the disruptions by seeking alternative delivery methods and routes.
• Levi Strauss & Co: The denim maker is experiencing delays of 10 to 14 days in transit times as a result of continued disruptions to Red Sea shipping. It has shifted some US shipments to the West Coast, avoiding the Red Sea and Suez Canal.
• Logitech: The computer peripheral maker’s CEO on January 23 said profit margins will be hit by higher transport costs due to the Red Sea crisis.

Authored by Austin Alonzo via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former President Donald Trump used more than $47 million in campaign funds to cover legal expenses in 2023, according to new disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission.

On Jan. 31, two groups associated with President Trump, Save America and Make America Great Again Inc., paid out more than 350 different transactions to more than 50 law firms, consultancies, and individuals for legal services and consulting.

In the first six months of the year, Save America paid about $25.7 million for various legal services. In the second six months, it paid $21.4 million.

Over the whole year, Make America Great Again Inc. paid out about $223,000.

MAGA Inc. is a super political action committee. It can solicit from and make unlimited contributions to individuals, corporations, labor unions, and other political committees, according to the FEC. It is unauthorized, meaning it cannot cooperate directly with the candidate.

Save America is a qualified leadership political action committee. That, according to the regulator, means it is “directly or indirectly established, financed, maintained or controlled by a candidate or an individual holding federal office, but is not an authorized committee of the candidate or officeholder and is not affiliated with an authorized committee of a candidate or officeholder.”

In its full-year filing with the FEC, Save America reported it raised about $52.3 million in total in 2023. Save America said that it had about $5.1 million in cash at the end of December 2023.

All told, legal expenses account for about 73 percent of the about $65.4 million in total disbursements Save America made in 2023.

MAGA Inc. is a key funder of Save America. In the second half of the year, according to its disclosure forms, it sent $35 million to Save America in what it called “contribution refunds.” In the first half of the year, it sent $12.25 million to Save America in similar transactions, according to its disclosure forms.

For its part, Save America transferred $11.75 million to MAGA Inc. in what it called transfers to an affiliated committee in 2023.

President Trump’s principal campaign committee, according to regulatory forms filed on Wednesday evening, raised more than $79.6 million in 2023. It spent about $93.3 million and reported to the FEC it held $33 million on hand.

President Trump faces numerous legal challenges in federal court as well as charges in New York, Georgia, and Florida. Most recently, a New York jury ordered him to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83 million in damages related to a defamation suit.

Despite his legal difficulties, which President Trump has repeatedly called politically motivated attacks, he is still the leading candidate to win the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

President Trump won the Republican Party of Iowa’s Caucus on Jan. 15 and New Hampshire’s Republican presidential primary on Jan. 23. He’s knocked out numerous rivals who have since gone on to endorse him or campaign with him.

The lone remaining primary challenger seeking the nomination, Nikki Haley, is planning on staying in the race through so-called Super Tuesday on March 5. According to her filings, the former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.’s fundraising bodies collected more than $100 million in 2023.

On Feb. 1, a PAC backing her bid for the White House, SFA Fund Inc., pounced on reports of President Trump’s continued use of campaign funds to pay legal bills.

A release from SFA said his regulatory filings are evidence of “mismanagement and wasteful spending.”

“Just as he added $8 trillion to our national debt as president, Trump’s decision to fund his ongoing court cases on the backs of blue-collar workers across America rather than using his own billions is just a reminder that his top priority will always be his own comfort,” Preya Samsundar, a spokesperson for SFA, said in a release.

SFA Fund is a hybrid PAC. It can solicit and accept unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations, labor unions, and other political committees, according to the FEC. It must maintain two bank accounts—one for independent spending on advertisements or voter drives and another for making direct contributions to federal candidates.

President Trump and Ms. Haley, who was governor of the Palmetto State from January 2011 to January 2017, will face off in the South Carolina Republican presidential primary on Feb. 24.