Governors ask Joe Biden for ‘honest, accurate’ information on illegal immigration
(The Center Square) – Twenty-four Republican governors said illegal immigration burdens every state and asked President Joe Biden for “honest” and “accurate” information about the situation. A letter sent Tuesday blamed Biden’s policies for a surge in illegal crossings at the southern border. “States are on the front lines, working around-the-clock responding to the effects of this crisis: shelters are full, food pantries empty, law enforcement strained, and aid workers exhausted,” the letter said. “As governors, we call on you to provide honest, accurate, detailed information on where the migrants admitted at the southern border are being relocated in the United States, in addition to comprehensive data on asylum claim timelines and qualification rates, and successful deportations. We ask for this information immediately, but also regularly as the crisis at the southern border continues.” The influx of illegal immigrants places a financial burden on the states, the governors said. “Analysts estimate the annual net cost of illegal immigration for the United States at the federal, state, and local levels is at least $150.7 billion,” the letter said. “States are forced to provide financial, educational, and medical support to migrants entering our country illegally– support that is skyrocketing in cost due to record inflation and the unprecedented influx of migrants into our states.” The governors said more than 5.8 million have crossed the southern border illegally. The problem has also grown at the northern border, where illegal immigration has increased by 850% in some cases, according to the letter. The situation is now a public safety issue as 244 people who crossed the border were on the terror watchlist, they said. A contact within U.S. Customs and Border Protection has regularly provided The Center Square with unpublished data categorized as “gotaways,” or people who enter illegally but don’t’ file asylum or immigration-related claims. They are most often men of military age, according to the source, granted anonymity for fear of career reprisal. Of the 8.6 million estimated to have entered the U.S. illegally, 1.6 million are gotaways. “Absent transparency from your administration, though, we cannot know how many terrorists have evaded capture and are now freely moving about the country,” the letter said. “Your administration admitted under oath to Congress that cartels prioritize the southern border as a major corridor and exploit it daily for human and narcotics trafficking.” The illegal immigration issue affects their Democratic colleagues, too, the governors said. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey called illegal immigration a “federal crisis of inaction many years in the making” earlier this month when calling on the Department of Homeland Security to ease the work authorization process. New York City will house more than 2,000 migrants at a New York City airfield after an agreement was made last week with the Biden administration. Mayor Eric Adams describes the situation as a “financial tsunami” that will destroy the city if it doesn’t get more state or federal help. The letter is signed by the governors of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming. Republished with the permission of The Center Square.
Alabama AG asks review of his GOP group’s rally involvement
Alabama’s attorney general is calling for an investigation into who may have authorized a branch of the Republican Attorneys General Association to promote the pro-Donald Trump rally in Washington, D.C., that preceded a deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol. The investigation comes on the heels of a report in Documented, a liberal watchdog group, that said the RAGA’s policy arm authorized and paid for a robocall that called on “patriots” to march on the Capitol as Congress was voting to certify the Electoral College results that declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential race. “We are hoping patriots like you will join us to continue to fight to protect the integrity of our elections,” said the recording of the robocall obtained by The Associated Press. It closed by saying that the RAGA’s Rule of Law Defense Fund had paid for and authorized the call. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, who heads the fund, on Friday said he was asking for an internal review. “I was unaware of unauthorized decisions made by RLDF staff with regard to this week’s rally. Despite currently transitioning into my role as the newly elected chairman of RLDF, it is unacceptable that I was neither consulted about nor informed of those decisions,” Marshall said. “As I’ve previously stated, I condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the actions of those who attempted to storm the U.S. Capitol, a place where passionate but peaceful protestors had gathered and lawmakers debated inside,” Marshall said. RAGA chairman Chris Carr, who is also Georgia’s attorney general, said he didn’t have any knowledge of the decision to be involved and is trying to find out what happened. The Republican Attorneys General Association issued a statement saying it was not involved in the planning, sponsoring, or the organization of Wednesday’s event. “We strongly condemn and disavow the events which occurred. Wednesday was a dark day in American history and those involved in the violence and destruction of property must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and held accountable,” the statement said. The Democratic Attorney General’s Association accused top Republican law enforcement officials of enabling efforts to undermine the 2020 election results. “The continued peddling of conspiracy theories and pandering to President Trump’s dangerous lies by the Republican Attorneys General Association, the Rule of Law Defense Fund, and some current and former Republican Attorneys General has gone unchecked for too long,” said a statement by DAGA’s co-chairpersons, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford. “Current and former Republican AGs have been directly involved with efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election, and now the party of so-called ‘law and order’ played a role in recruiting the domestic terrorists who breached the U.S. Capitol to attack Vice President Mike Pence for doing his Constitutionally-mandated job to certify the Electoral College,” the statement said. The chairman of the Alabama Democratic Party on Saturday questioned Marshall’s statement. “Your organization called people and told them ‘we will march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal’ You’ve been in charge since Nov. 10. You really expect us to believe that you didn’t know anything about it?” Alabama Democratic Party Chairman Chris England tweeted. The Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center in a Saturday statement calling for an investigation. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Trump administration proposes car-mileage rollback; states sue in protest
Citing safety, the Trump administration on Thursday proposed rolling back car-mileage standards, backing away from years of government efforts to cut Americans’ trips to the gas station and reduce unhealthy, climate-changing tailpipe emissions. If the proposed rule becomes final, it could roil the auto industry as it prepares for new model years and weaken one of the federal government’s chief weapons against climate change — regulating emissions from cars and other vehicles. The result, opponents say, will be dirtier air and more pollution-related illness and death. The proposal itself estimates it could cost tens of thousands of jobs — auto workers who deal with making vehicles more fuel efficient. The administration also said it wants to revoke an authority granted to California under the half-century-old Clean Air Act to set its own, tougher mileage standards. California and 16 other states already have filed suit to block any change in the fuel efficiency rules. “The EPA has handed decision making over to the fossil fuel lobbyists…the flat-Earthers, the climate change deniers,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey. The proposal would freeze U.S. mileage standards at levels mandated by the Obama administration for 2020, when the new vehicle fleet will be required to hit an average of 30 miles per gallon in real-world driving. The proposed change, halting further improvement requirements, stakes its case on consumer choice and on highway safety claims challenged by many transportation experts. The administration says waiving requirements for greater fuel efficiency would make cars and light trucks somewhat more affordable. And that, it said, would get vehicles with the latest technology into the hands of consumers more quickly. It’s got “everything to do with just trying to turn over the fleet … and get more clean and safe cars on the road,” said Bill Wehrum, assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. The administration will now seek public comment on its proposal and a range of other options, including leaving the tighter, Obama fuel standards in place. Some Republican lawmakers supported the mileage freeze, but environmental groups and many states assailed it. “This has to be absolutely one of the most harmful and dumbest actions that the EPA has taken,” said Healey of Massachusetts, one of the attorneys general from 19 states and the District of Columbia objecting to the change. “It’s going to cost drivers here and across the country hundreds of millions of dollars more at the pump.” The EPA under President Barack Obama had proposed mileage standards that gradually would become tougher, rising to 36 miles per gallon in 2025, 10 mpg higher than the current requirement. California and the automakers agreed to the rules in 2012, setting a single national fuel economy standard. Soon after taking office, President Donald Trump called for a rollback, urging “common sense changes” if the mileage requirements threatened auto industry jobs. However, his administration’s report on Thursday projects that relaxing mileage standards would cost 60,000 auto jobs by 2030. Those losses would hit the estimated 200,000 U.S. jobs that deal with making vehicles more fuel efficient, said Simon Mui of the Natural Resources Defense Council. A Transportation Department spokesperson called the estimate of job losses “rough approximations.” Two former EPA mileage officials said the administration’s proposal departed from years of findings on fuel efficiency, car safety, exhaust emissions and costs. “They don’t offer any meaningful example of what has changed so dramatically” to warrant the reversal, said Jeff Alson, who until this spring was a senior engineer in the EPA’s transportation and air quality office. “In my opinion the only way they got there was, they knew what kind of results they were told to get and they cooked the books to get that result.” Chet France, an EPA senior executive until his retirement in 2012, called the administration’s contention that the mileage freeze would cause only a tiny increase in climate-changing exhaust emissions “bogus.” California Gov. Jerry Brown said his state “will fight this stupidity in every conceivable way possible.” The Obama administration had planned to keep toughening fuel requirements through 2026, saying those and other regulations on vehicles would save 40,000 lives annually through cleaner air. That argument remained on the EPA’s website Thursday. According to Trump administration estimates, the Obama fuel efficiency standards would raise the price of vehicles by an average of $2,340. That would price many buyers out of the new-vehicle market, forcing them to drive older, less-safe vehicles that pollute more, the administration says. Heidi King, deputy administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said the freeze would reduce highway deaths by 1,000 per year “by reducing these barriers that prevent consumers from getting into the newer, safer, cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars.” But private transportation experts say there are so many factors involved that the 1,000-lives figure is questionable. The affordability argument also ignores thousands of dollars of saving in fuel costs for each driver over the life of a car, opponents of the rollbacks said. Longstanding federal legislation has allowed California to set its own mileage standards given the choking smog that still sometimes blankets Los Angeles and other central and Southern California valley cities. More than a dozen states follow California’s standards, amounting to about 40 percent of the country’s new-vehicle market. A drawn-out legal battle over the standards could hurt the auto industry as it tries to plan for coming model years. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a main industry group, sought to stave off any dispute between California and the federal government that could split the U.S. car market: “We urge California and the federal government to find a common sense solution that sets continued increases in vehicle efficiency standards while also meeting the needs of American drivers.” In 2012, when the standards were first adopted, cars were about 50 percent of new-vehicle sales. Now they’re only about one-third, with less-efficient trucks and SUVS making up the rest. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
