Amid an unprecedented immigration crisis at the southern border, many conservative states across the country—Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, and Oklahoma—are taking border security matters into their own hands, proposing or passing legislation targeting illegal immigration.
Many of these proposals would criminalize illegal aliens entering or residing in these states.
One such bill in Texas, Senate Bill 4, makes it a state crime to enter Texas outside legal ports of entry.
The new law was set to go into effect in March, but has been blocked and is currently tied up in the courts.
A similar bill just passed by the Oklahoma legislature would require that anyone seeking to enter or live in the state to have entered the United States legally.
The bill passed the state House and Senate by wide margins and Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt is expected to sign it into law.
The legislature declared the issue a crisis in the state and stated in the bill: “Throughout the state, law enforcement comes into daily and increasingly frequent contact with foreign nationals who entered the country illegally or who remain here illegally.
“Often, these persons are involved with organized crime such as drug cartels, they have no regard for Oklahoma’s laws or public safety, and they produce or are involved with fentanyl distribution, sex trafficking, and labor trafficking.”
Those convicted on a first offense of “impermissible occupation” would be subject to a misdemeanor charge, with penalties of up to one year in county jail and a $500 fine. Subsequent offenses would be upgraded to felonies.
Iowa, under Gov. Kim Reynolds, has passed similar legislation.
Iowa Senate File 2340, which goes into effect July 1, makes it a misdemeanor to be in the state or attempt to enter the state after being deported, denied admission to the United States, or if an individual has an outstanding deportation order.
Being in the state illegally becomes a felony under certain circumstances such as the accused having two or more misdemeanor convictions involving drugs or crimes against a person.
“Those who come into our country illegally have broken the law, yet Biden refuses to deport them,” Reynolds stated in a news release.
A similar bill in Tennessee, also set to go into effect on July 1, would have local law enforcement cooperate with federal immigration officials in the process of identifying, catching, detaining, and deporting illegal aliens in the state.
A Georgia bill would require jailers to check the immigration status of inmates—part of an ongoing political response to the February slaying of nursing student Laken Riley on the University of Georgia campus, allegedly by an illegal immigrant from Venezuela.
Louisiana, Arizona, and New Hampshire legislatures have also passed, or are considering, legislation to respond to the surge of illegal aliens.
The laws come amid an intensifying standoff between conservative states and President Joe Biden’s administration over the enforcement of immigration law, as conservatives have grown increasingly frustrated with what they see as inaction by the administration.
—Darlene Sanchez and Joseph Lord
CONGRESS RETURNS
Lawmakers will return to Capitol Hill this week with most of their top legislative priorities already dealt with and addressed.
Funding for the government, a herculean task that took two speakers and six months after the deadline to accomplish, was authorized by the House of Representatives in a $1.2 trillion funding package passed at the end of March.
Prior to heading out on a weeklong recess, the House and Senate also voted to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—a controversial spying power—with minimal reforms on April 20.
Additionally, the Senate last Tuesday took up and passed a House-passed foreign aid funding bill for Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine with a top-line cost of $95 billion—a package which has fiercely divided Congress for months due to the controversial nature of Israel and Ukraine funding among elements of both parties.
With these legislative priorities already addressed, it will likely be months before Congress takes up any other similarly contested legislation.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) could also have to contend with the hanging threat of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) motion to vacate against him.
Though the measure has yet to be activated, Greene has indicated that she could bring it to the floor at any time. She’s backed in the bid by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.).
However, many other Republicans in the House have expressed frustration with the renewed threats, which led to a paralyzed Congress in October.
Some Democrats have also indicated that they would vote to protect Johnson in such a bid by Greene, indicating that the speaker’s job is probably safe after he worked with Democrats to pass foreign aid and government funding legislation.
Lawmakers this week will take up legislation to address ongoing protests at campuses across the U.S., including allegations of antisemitism toward Jewish students among protestors.
The issue has dominated headlines in the past week as protests in favor of a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine have intensified, prompting comparisons to the student protests that took place during the Vietnam War.
The House this week is expected to take up over two dozen bills, but most will be relatively low-profile and non-controversial.
The exception to that is Rep. Mike Lawler’s Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, a bill that would address ongoing threats against Jewish students by pro-Palestinian protestors at university campuses.
The legislation would expand Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1965—which prohibits entities that receive federal taxpayer dollars from discriminating on the basis of race, national origin, or color—to apply to Jews as well.
The legislation would allow for colleges and universities to lose federal funding if they fail to address, or insufficiently address, antisemitism on their campuses.
While the bill is all but certain to pass by a broad bipartisan margin, it will likely receive opposition and criticism from some members of the Democratic Party’s left flank.
—Joseph Lord and Jackson Richman
NEW YORK TIMES’ BIAS
Allegations of left-wing bias at the New York Times are nothing new—but its failures in covering the ongoing Israel–Palestine conflict have again raised questions about these alleged biases in its coverage.
The media giant found itself in a whirlwind of controversy following its coverage in October claiming that an Israeli missile had struck a hospital in Gaza, killing hundreds.
The Hamas terrorist group made those claims. Neither was true.
Western intelligence agencies over the next few days agreed with Israel that it was an off-course missile fired by Hamas or another terrorist group that exploded prematurely. The rocket hit a hospital parking lot where some people were gathered. And most reported the casualties as much lower than the “hundreds” reported by
The New York Times, regarded as the nation’s newspaper of record for nearly a century, backpedaled through numerous revisions and clarifications of the story over the following days and weeks. Those included an editor’s note about how they covered it and another editor’s note about the first editor’s note. But the newspaper never issued a clear retraction.
But those who have tracked the paper for some time say that these failures are unsurprising.
“What is the New York Times? It’s traditionally, of course, a liberal, left-of-center publication,” Alberto Fernandez, vice president of the Middle East Media Research Institute, told The Epoch Times.
The New York Times’ core audience “has a certain type of mindset. Kind of well-educated, university-educated, professional types or student types have been for a long time the New York Times demographic,” Fernandez said.
“There’s always this tension, of criticism of Israel, or Israel is always wrong. And that’s just the way it is, with the types of journalists that they hire and the type of audience that they have.”
Ricki Hollander, a senior media analyst with the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), agreed with Fernandez’s assessment, saying that the New York Times has long practiced skewed coverage of the complicated geopolitical issue.
In the mindset of the New York Times, Hollander told The Epoch Times, “the Arabs or Palestinians don’t have agency. They’re just victims. They don’t report on them as people who have agency, who can make decisions.”
Israeli intelligence analyst Yoram Ettinger agrees.
“What we have seen before October 7, since October 7, is detachment from Middle East reality, in the sense that they have decided to ignore completely the track record of the Palestinians,” he told The Epoch Times.
The New York Times didn’t return a request for comment on allegations of bias in its coverage of Israel.
—Dan Berger and Joseph Lord
BOOKMARKS
President Donald Trump has made his recommendation on who Utahans should choose to replace outgoing Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah). The Epoch Times’ Naveen Athrappully reported the former president gave his backing to Trent Staggs, the mayor of Riverton, Utah.
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is skeptical of the government’s arguments against presidential immunity in its case against Trump, The Epoch Times’ Tom Ozimek reported. During oral arguments in the high-profile case, Kavanaugh warned that a decision in the case has future implications for whether future presidents are shielded from vicious cycles of malicious prosecution that could effectively end the presidency as we know it.
Heading into the 2024 election season, Biden is facing dreadful approval numbers, The Epoch Times’ Naveen Athrappully reported. Biden’s job approval rating for the 13th quarter of his presidency is the lowest of his term and is the worst among the ten most recent chief executives, from President Richard Nixon to Biden.
Former Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.), one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump in 2021, has announced that he’s pulling out of the Republican primary race for a U.S. Senate seat in Michigan, The Epoch Times’ Tom Ozimek reported. With Meijer’s departure from the race, four Republicans and three Democrats remain vying to replace outgoing Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.).
A “number” of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s siblings asked Biden to authorize Secret Service protection for the independent presidential candidate recently, The Epoch Times’ Jeff Louderback reported. Kennedy has been consistently denied Secret Service protection by the Biden administration, despite polling at around 10 percent in the polls consistently and facing several credible threats to his life or person across the course of his independent bid for the White House.