National Review

President Donald Trump’s job approval rating is now at 52 percent, according to today’s Morning Consult/POLITICO poll. The poll, conducted from March 9 to March 13, also found that 46 percent of Americans believe the country is heading in the right direction under the Trump administration.

When President Obama left office, gun sales nationwide were at an all-time high. FBI background checks, one of the strongest indicators of national gun sales, totaled 27.5 million in 2016, shattering the record of 23 million set in 2015.

Although the number of FBI checks remains high, the upward trend witnessed under Obama has changed course under President Trump.

“Without the continued national threat to gun rights from Obama and Clinton,” said Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb, “gun sales have backed off new record highs.” This seemed to be the case in February when FBI background checks totaled 2.2 million, a decrease of 400,000 background checks compared to that of February 2016.

Still, while the number of guns being purchased may have decreased since Trump was elected, the demographic makeup of those purchasing firearms has changed.

According to the Washington Post, “Gun clubs and shops that cater to black and LGBT clients say there has been an uptick in interest in firearms since November among those who fear that racial and ethnic-based violence could increase during Donald Trump’s presidency.”

More than 7,000 people, for example, became members of the National African Gun Association after Election Day. Meanwhile, pro-LGBT shooting organizations such as Pink Pistols have had a surge in membership because many people in the LGBT community are worried Trump will roll back gay rights. “Suddenly they’re buying guns,” said Gwendolyn Patton, the Pink Pistols’ first speaker. “The rhetoric has flipped.”

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In December 2004, the Mexican government distributed 1.5 million copies of a pamphlet titled “Guide for the Mexican Migrant,” unabashedly advising its citizens on ways to illegally migrate to the United States, one of its closest allies. The literature went as far as recommending what type of clothes to wear when crossing a river, and explaining how to stay hydrated when crossing a desert.

Now, Mexico’s ministry of foreign affairs has published “Recommendations in Case of Immigration Detention,” an infographic video advising illegal immigrants in the United States on ways to avoid deportation when approached by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the video, which is in Spanish, is divided into two sections: “How to prepare in case of immigration and detention,” and “How to act in case of immigration detention.”

If ICE agents come to an illegal immigrant’s home, for example, the ministry advises against opening the door. And, whether questioned by ICE agents at home or at a detention facility, it tells its citizens to not reveal their immigration status.

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One month has passed since U.S. district judge James Robart blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order that placed a temporary ban on refugees entering the country. Since then, the U.S. has accepted over 4,300 refugees, the majority of whom have resettled from countries inundated with militant Islam.

Trump’s executive order had imposed three bans: a 120-day ban on all refugees entering the U.S., an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees, and a 90-day ban on anyone entering the U.S. from the seven Muslim-majority countries Barack Obama deemed “countries of concern” (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen).

In total, 2,309 of the 4,355 refugees (53 percent) the U.S. accepted this past month are from these countries.

According to the Associated Press, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill sociologist professor Charles Kurzman found that “23 percent of Muslim Americans involved with extremist plots since Sept. 11 had family backgrounds from the seven countries.” With over 2,300 refugees resettling in the U.S., and without extreme vetting by the Department of Homeland Security, officials can’t be certain that ISIS isn’t radicalizing at least some of the refugee population.

For example, refugees from the Middle East and North Africa — including those from countries omitted from Trump’s list — are being recruited by ISIS as they head to Europe. Counter-extremism think tank Quilliam published a report last month that found that terrorist groups are paying smugglers’ fees to child refugees in an attempt to radicalize refugees.

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During last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, President Donald Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon espoused what he believes is the foundation of the Trump administration’s agenda: national security, economic nationalism, and the deconstruction of the administrative state. Elaborating on the third item, Bannon said, “The way the progressive left runs, is if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency.” This unnecessary expansion of the federal bureaucracy, he told the crowd, is what the Trump administration plans to deconstruct.

As David French noted last Friday,

[The REINS Act] is a simple but profoundly important bill. It prohibits any significant new agency regulation from taking effect unless it is ratified by each house of Congress. In other words, the Act will make Congress do its job. Congress will have to vote for the laws that have an impact on our lives for them to become law at all. The lawmaker will actually make law. The Founders would be pleased.

Signing into law the REINS Act would shift regulatory powers out of the bureaucracy and into the hands of elected officials, specifically when implementing regulations with major economic costs. A better way, however, would be to pass an amendment to the U.S. Constitution — the Regulation Freedom Amendment — that requires Congress to review all regulations.

The Madison Coalition, an organization that seeks to restore the proper balance between the states and federal government, is spearheading the movement to implement the Regulation Freedom Amendment.

“A Constitutional Amendment would bring a permanent end to ‘regulation without representation,’ no matter who controls Congress,” says the Madison Coalition’s director Roman Buhler. Ultimately, the amendment would require Congress to approve major federal regulations, and unlike the REINS Act, it would be difficult for pro-big government Congress’s to repeal in the future.

The proposed amendment has earned the endorsement of 21 state legislative chambers (seven states with bicameral legislatures), and if two-thirds of all state legislatures (34 states) pass resolutions in support the regulatory reform, Congress would be urged to — but not required to — propose and vote on the amendment. Last week, Arizona’s House became the latest legislative chamber to pass such a resolution.

Although earning support from two-thirds of the state legislatures seems to be a difficult task, it is certainly feasible. The Republican National Committee has already publicly endorsed the amendment, and if the 32 states with Republican control of both legislative chambers (plus Nebraska, a unicameral legislature with a Republican majority) pass resolutions in support of the Regulation Freedom Amendment, only one state would be missing.

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Adecade ago, Martha Stowe founded True Equine, an equine-services company, a few miles south of Nashville, Tenn., in Williamson County. After earning a certificate in equine myofascial release, a massage technique that releases tension and pain in a horse’s body, Martha soon acquired a large clientele. “For performance horses, this is important,” Stowe tells National Review. “You want them to have complete range of motion.”

Two years after Stowe’s business started to rake in profits, her husband, Kirk, was deployed to Iraq — and, since his return, Kirk has been out of the workforce. “I became the sole breadwinner,” Stowe says. Ultimately, it was Stowe’s decision to specialize in equine myofascial release that allowed her family of four to stay afloat during tough times.

In April 2016, however, Stowe’s well-established business was upended when she received a threatening letter from the Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners, a board within Tennessee’s Department of Health. Only licensed veterinarians are permitted to massage horses, the board’s attorney explained, and if Stowe continued to practice myofascial release, she could be fined up to $500 and receive a six-month jail sentence.

“I was terrified,” Stowe says. “I didn’t do any myofascial from the day I received the letter until about June, but then I realized there was no way we could pay our bills if I didn’t do it.” So, she resumed her occupation, aware that at any point she could be arrested.

Stowe wasn’t alone.

The board also sent the letter to fellow Williamson County resident Laurie Wheeler, a professional jazz musician and licensed massage therapist who, like Stowe, is certified in equine myofascial release. Wheeler had treated horses — on a volunteer basis — for years. She began doing so after witnessing the positive effect myofascial release had on her horse, Jazz. “I would see horses in need and I would treat them,” she says.

Upon receiving the veterinary board’s letter, Wheeler was stunned — after all, she was certified, and not only that, she had never even accepted money for her services. But, she says, the government threatened to “fine me and put me in jail for voluntarily working on animals.” For Wheeler, helping horses is more than a volunteer position or an occupation; it’s a call to duty.

Like Stowe, Wheeler stopped massaging horses once she received the board’s letter. But, a few months later, when she witnessed a horse in need after an impaction formed in his intestines, she felt she had to act, regardless of the potential consequences. “I didn’t care. I put my hands on [the horse’s] belly for a while, maybe three to four hours, and he passed his impaction that night,” she says. “If I’m needed, I go. Period.”

Both women disregarded the veterinary board’s warnings and subsequently looked to the Beacon Center of Tennessee, a free-market think tank, for legal representation. According to Braden Boucek, director of litigation for the Beacon Center, the board’s decision to allow only licensed veterinarians to massage horses is a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s equal-protection clause.

Moreover, because the Constitution protects private property, which in turn protects the right to acquire property and the right to earn a living, the board’s decision violates the 14th Amendment. The board is prohibiting Stowe from practicing the skills that she relies on to earn a living, says Boucek.

“The list of things you can do legally to animals without a veterinary degree,” Boucek says, “includes castration, dehorning, artificial insemination, and transplanting a frozen embryo.” Boucek argues that by allowing people who are not licensed veterinarians to perform these procedures but prohibiting them from massaging horses, the board is depriving them of equal protection under the law.

‘The real kicker is that veterinary schools aren’t required to teach animal massage as part of the curriculum.’ — Braden Boucek

“The real kicker,” he adds, “is that veterinary schools aren’t required to teach animal massage as part of the curriculum.” Which is to say that the board’s requirement that persons hold a veterinary degree in order to massage a horse is fundamentally silly — because students wouldn’t learn the skills in veterinary school that they would in an equine-myofascial-release certificate program.

What’s more, both Stowe and Wheeler have collaborated with veterinarians in Williamson County, and the veterinarians value their feedback. “I am an asset to them,” Stowe says, “because I have hands on the horses at least an hour at a time.”

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On February 16, “A Day Without Immigrants,” thousands of people across the country refused to work and spend money in an effort to protest the Trump administration’s stance on immigration. Many businesses closed for the day because of a shortage in staff, and the strike received national media attention.

The following day, however, over 100 strikers found themselves in a quandary, as their employers informed them that they would no longer be employed.

Take, for example, Bradley Coatings, a commercial painting company in Nolensville, Tenn. All employees were warned the day before the strike that those who failed to work the following day would be terminated, but 18 employees — some of whom reportedly held mid-level positions — joined the nationwide strike anyway.

“Regretfully, and consistent with its prior communication to all its employees,” the company’s attorney Robert Peal said in a statement, Bradley Coatings “had no choice but to terminate these individuals.”

Over in Lexington, S.C., 21 strikers were fired from Encore Boat Builders, a pontoon manufacturer, and in Catoosa, Okla., a dozen employees were fired from a local restaurant, I Don’t Care Bar and Grill. “Restaurant owner Bill McNally said that he has no tolerance for employees who don’t show up for work without notifying their employer,” NBC12 News reported.

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Heading into President’s Day weekend, New York’s John F. Kennedy international airport Twitter account alerted travelers that with the anticipated increase in passenger volume, they should “allow extra time for on-airport travel, check-in & security screening.” One would think that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) would have implemented additional security precautions heading into the holiday weekend, but that does not seem to have been the case.

Eleven people were able to board planes without undergoing TSA security screenings after TSA officials mistakenly left a security lane open and unattended. As the eleven people walked through the unattended security checkpoint, three of them set off the metal detector, which would normally lead to further screening.

Port Authority police spokesman Joe Pentangelo told NBC News that police officers had canvassed the terminal looking for the eleven passengers, but failed to find any of them. TSA officials didn’t alert the police until two hours after the breach in security had occurred.

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In 2002, Margarita Del Pilar Fitzpatrick uprooted her life as a Peruvian citizen and moved to the U.S. to study English. Subsequently, she became a green-card holder, earning employment in Illinois as a medical translator and then as a nurse.

Like thousands of green-card holders, Fitzpatrick applied for a driver’s license three years after living in the U.S. Presenting her green card and Peruvian passport at the Department of Motor Vehicles, the desk clerk proceeded to ask, in accordance with Illinois’s motor-voter laws, whether she was registering to vote. When Fitzpatrick questioned the clerk about voting with her Peruvian passport in hand, the clerk refused to give advice and retorted, “It’s up to you.”

Mistaking the clerk’s refusal to offer advice with his approval to register to vote, Fitzpatrick checked the box confirming that she is a U.S. citizen, a prerequisite to register to vote, and completed the paperwork.

Fitzpatrick voted twice in the 2006 federal elections, and in 2007 the Department of Homeland Security filed a deportation order as a result. (DHS discovered Fitzgerald’s voting history after she truthfully described it in her application for U.S. citizenship.) Since then, Fitzgerald has fought in court — and appealed — the DHS’s deportation order.

On February 13, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Fitzpatrick in her plea to remain in the U.S. Fitzpatrick’s attorney Richard Hanus argued that there was “no fraud” and contended that the mistake had “[arisen] out of confusion,” but the three-judge panel disagreed: “Fitzpatrick is well educated and understands English,” the Seventh Circuit concluded. “It is not too much to ask that she find out before voting whether an alien can cast a ballot in a federal election.”

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January 20, 2017, was the day the press rediscovered its profound interest in the deportation of illegal immigrants. Since Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States, media have rushed to craft a deceptive narrative of innocent “immigrants” being deported en masse by the Trump administration, all while failing to draw the crucial distinction between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants.

Take last week’s revelation that the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has begun targeting an increased number of illegal immigrants with criminal backgrounds. In Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Antonio, ICE officers arrested more than 680 individuals. “Of those arrested,” DHS secretary John Kelly said in a statement, “approximately 75 percent were criminal aliens, convicted of crimes including, but not limited to, homicide, aggravated sexual abuse, sexual assault of a minor, lewd and lascivious acts with a child, indecent liberties with a minor, drug trafficking, battery, assault, DUI and weapons charges.”

This policy should be uncontroversial, but apparently it’s not. As a result of the action, the Washington Post warned, “Immigrant community on high alert, fearing Trump’s ‘deportation force,’” while National Public Radio worried that “Immigration Raids Are Reported around the Country.” Most, if not all, of the press failed to use the more specific term “illegal immigrant” when describing the subjects of these ICE raids.

CNN published a feature piece last Friday titled “‘I did it for love,’ says mother deported in Arizona immigration case,” detailing the story of Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, an illegal immigrant who was recently deported to Mexico. After being convicted of a felony in 2008 for using a fake Social Security number, Garcia de Rayos was required to appear at immigration check-ins; it was at her eighth annual immigration check-in that she was deported. Her “immigration case underwent review at multiple levels of the immigration court system, including the Board of Immigration Appeals,” ICE said in a statement. “The judges held she did not have a legal basis to remain in the U.S.”

On Wednesday the New York Times published a similar feature to CNN’s, calling national attention to an illegal immigrant, Jeanette Vizguerra, who was also convicted of using fake documents. “Should she present herself to the immigration authorities Wednesday morning for a scheduled check-in, risking deportation?” the Times asked. “Or should she stay in the church, one of the few places federal agents do not go, almost surely resigning herself to months or years trapped inside?” Vizguerra chose the latter, and her lawyer soon informed her that her request for another “stay” was rejected. Now she and her three youngest children wait in a Denver, Colo., church, praying that ICE officers will abide by federal policy: that immigration officers won’t enter sensitive locations such as churches “unless they have advance approval from a supervisor or face ‘exigent circumstances’ that require immediate action,” the Times explained.

Reporting on such events, which have been a feature on the American landscape for decades, has just recently come back into fashion. On Fox News’s The O’Reilly Factor on Monday, syndicated columnist Ruben Navarrette Jr. expressed his frustration that journalists have only recently decided to prioritize reporting on the deportation of illegal immigrants. “I wrote about the 3 million deportations carried out by the Obama administration,” Navarrette said, “but I couldn’t get a lot of liberals in the media to join me on the front lines.”

In fact, according to ABC News, President Obama deported more illegal immigrants during his tenure than the sum of all deportations throughout the 20th century. (This statistic is based only on “removals,” or individuals deported from within the U.S., rather than “returns,” or individuals sent back to their native country at the U.S. border.)

In other words: Illegal immigrants in the United States have long dealt with the fear that ICE officers would be knocking at their door. In fiscal year 2012, for example, ICE removed over 400,000 illegal aliens, a number that was high enough to prompt frenzied anti-deportation rhetoric and, eventually, motivate the Obama administration to sign the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals order that the president had previously insisted was illegal. Where, it must be asked, was the press outcry then, back when the Obama administration conducted ICE raids that were nearly indistinguishable from last week’s? Where were the Valentine’s Day Twitter hashtags such as #ToImmigrantsWithLove that we see today?

Over the last half-decade, the press has routinely acquiesced to the demands of illegal immigrants and their supporters by conflating all immigrants when covering deportations.

Media bias notwithstanding, it is difficult to overstate just how successful activists have been in corrupting the language around immigration law. In January 2015, the Santa Barbara News-Press ran what seemed to be a non-controversial headline distinguishing between illegal immigrants and legal immigrants when reporting on the large lines at the local Department of Motor Vehicles: “Illegals Line Up for Driver’s Licenses.” The headline prompted protests and a red spray-painted message on the paper’s building — “the border is illegal not the people who cross it.” In response, the News-Press refused to back down. “We will not give in to the thugs who are attempting to use political correctness as a tool of censorship and a weapon to shut down this newspaper,” co-publisher Arthur von Wiesenberger said at the time.

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