Category: Guest Authors

Transformative Immigration Bill Hits Congress And It’s Bad

Transformative Immigration Bill Hits Congress And It’s Bad

By Joe Guzzardi

Now that analysts have had enough time to wade through the 353 pages that makes up the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 (USCA), the small print comes into focus. The USCA’s broad strokes have been widely publicized: the legislation proposes to grant amnesty to an estimated 14.5 million or more unlawfully present foreign nationals, increase annual legal immigration totals, issue more employment-based visas, and otherwise completely overhaul established immigration law.

Transformative Immigration Bill Hits Congress And It's Bad

Millions of new work permits would be granted. The 353 pages don’t contain a single provision that helps American citizens or recently arrived lawfully present residents who are struggling during the coronavirus pandemic to establish themselves. Also harmed and insulted are immigrants who waited years and paid significant fees to come to the U.S. through proper channels. U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and U.S. Representative Linda Sanchez, (D-Calif.) introduced the bill, and its cosponsors are long-time immigration expansionists.

From his first day as president, Biden urged Congress to draft and pass USCA. Menendez called the legislation “a moral and economic imperative.” And Sanchez said that the bill “is our moment to finally deliver big, bold, and inclusive immigration reform that our nation and its people deserve.” But the details prove otherwise.

For example, the bill allows every illegal alien that the Trump administration deported to return, and apply for amnesty. Under Biden’s concept, aliens who have gone through either expedited removal or been ordered deported by a Department of Justice immigration judge – a lengthy and thorough process – will be welcomed back to the U.S. and put on a path to citizenship. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that because of amnesty and other relaxed laws, 52 million more legal and illegal immigrants will eventually join the general population.

Another large chunk of the bill will retrain Customs and Border Protection agents about where and when they can enforce immigration laws. Although USCA doesn’t include the specific language, Capitol Hill insiders have learned that the Biden administration plans to, within 90 days, dismantle Immigration and Customs Enforcement by abolishing deportation officers’ jobs and removing only hardened criminals.

While USCA is winding its way through Congress, some Biden officials have promoted the idea of flying to the U.S., at taxpayer expense, Central American asylum seekers currently detained in Mexico as part of President Trump’s  “Remain in Mexico” program. A United Nation’s official relayed to the Reuters news agency the federal government’s interest in transporting the asylum-seekers by air into the U.S. where they’ll be given a date to appear before an immigration judge. Immediately after the U.N. created a website that allowed asylum seekers to register remotely for processing at the U.S.-Mexico border, hundreds of migrants signed up.

Biden’s radical immigration agenda is best reflected in his administration’s directionto the Department of Homeland Security to stop using the words “alien” and “illegal alien” in public communications or in intra-agency exchanges. The word “alien” is part of U.S. code, and is historically used to define “any person not a citizen ornational of the United States.”

In a memo from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to DHS, however, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services acting director Tracy Renaud wrote that the language changes must include using “noncitizen” instead of “alien,” and “undocumented noncitizen” or “undocumented individual” instead of “illegal alien.” Assimilation, most new immigrants’ decades-old goal, has also been deemed offensive, and must be replaced by “integration or civic integration.” The administration’s new rhetoric is, said officials, “more inclusive.”

The proposed immigration overhaul is so extreme that Democrats on the front lines – Texas and other border states – are alarmed about possibly losing control of the House of Representatives in 2022. Calling Biden’s plan a “catastrophe,” and a “recipe for disaster,” U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) cautioned him against “going off the rails,” the course he perceives that Biden is traveling.

Other Texas House members echoed Gonzalez’s fears. Border municipalities are in an uproar too. The mayor of Del Rio, Texas, has asked Biden to stop releasing untested illegal immigrants into his community. Mayor Bruno Lozano said the city doesn’t have the resources to help illegals, and he fears health risks to his citizens.

As currently written, USCA provides lots more immigration and lots less enforcement, and it has little public support. But the legislation could be parceled into smaller, standalone bills or snuck into major must-pass legislation. Either way, the Biden administration could remake 21st century immigration, and in the process permanently destroy millions of working Americans’ livelihoods and their children’s futures.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Transformative Immigration Bill Hits Congress And It’s Bad
Transformative Immigration Bill Hits Congress And It’s Bad

Problem Polls For Biden

Problem Polls For Biden

By Joe Guzzardi 


Presidential honeymoons have remarkably different lengths. President Barack Obama’s honeymoon, at least with the press, began the day he announced his candidacy, February 10, 2007, and the blissful union continues today. On the complete opposite end of the honeymoon spectrum is President Donald Trump, an impeachment target from before his inauguration in 2017 until February 2021, a month after he left office.

Problem Polls For Biden



Surprisingly, the polls show that President Joe Biden is, after only four weeks in the White House, having a rough go of it with the very Democrats that helped elect him. The Morning Consult poll, a partnership with the left-leaning journalism company Politico, found that several of Biden’s Executive Orders, especially those immigration-related, are among the most unpopular with voters.

Of the voters polled, only 45 percent support including illegal immigrants in the census, and only 46 percent approve halting the Trump administration’s Remain in Mexico policy which the Biden administration has undone. Effective February 19, the first of an eventual 25,000 migrants will begin entry into the United States. Others entered earlier and illegally were, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, caught and released with orders to appear in immigration court at a later date.

Biden’s lenient immigration policies have encouraged large migrant caravans to come north. As one of thousands of border-bound Hondurans told CNN, Biden is “going to help all of us” to become legal residents. When askedhow the administration could refute the widely held perception that the 100 percent surge increases meant that migrants interpreted that the borders were open, an opinion Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador shares, White House press secretary Jen Psaki avoided giving a straightforward answer.

The least popular among Biden’s Executive Orders is his goal to expand refugee admission to 125,000 from President Trump’s 15,000, a greater than 800 percent increase. Among those polled, 48 percent of voters somewhat or strongly oppose the president’s plan to increase refugee resettlement in the upcoming fiscal year, while 39 percent support it.

Summing up the February 5-7 survey among 1,986 registered voters, and accounting for a 2 percent error margin, Morning Consult’s Senior Editor Cameron Easley wrote that “Orders pertaining to immigration and immigrant rights constitute five of his seven least popular actions among voters, and are particularly animating for Republicans.” As a result, Easley concluded, “immigration will be tricky political territory for the president.”

The nationwide apprehension about Biden’s expansive immigration executive orders is easily understandable. At the border, COVID-untested migrants, their total as yet unknown, have been released into Texas, a development that State Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa (D-McAllen) called “very alarming.”

From Texas, many migrants enter other states’ general populations, and could put those residents at risk. An anonymous Customs and Border Protection official told local reporters that as per a longstanding practice, when long-term holding solutions become impossible, “some migrants will be processed for removal, provided a Notice to Appear, and released into the U.S. to await a future immigration hearing.” Without identifying catch and release, the anonymous CBP officer identified the process to a tee.

Biden’s proposed refugee intake increase has generated similar concernsabout Americans’ health and safety. Weaker screening and less vetting of international refugees could unnecessarily add to the domestic COVID crisis.

Americans are puzzled at what the thought process may be behind Biden’s Day One urgency to liberalize immigration laws when there’s no link to how his actions help the millions of economically distressed, employment-anxious citizens and lawfully present residents. Biden’s immigration actions will expand the labor pool – the Bureau of Labor Statistics employment-population ratio that measures the number of people employed against the total working-age population is a dismal 57.5 percent.

Biden is urging Congress to pass amnesty that would legalize and provide lifelong valid work permission to millions of aliens, a big gamble for the new president. With only a five-seat margin in the House of Representatives, the Senate tied at 50-50, and with history showing that the mid-term elections cost the majority party about 25 seats, Biden could be, as the Morning Consult poll editor warned, plunging into cold and murky water.


Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Problem Polls For Biden Problem Polls For Biden

American Workers Brace for Elitists’ Amnesty

American Workers Brace for Elitists’ Amnesty

By Joe Guzzardi


Congress has announced the details of President Biden’s major amnesty that will reward illegal aliens, the total population of which may be as low as 11 million or as high as 30 million. No one knows.

American Workers Brace for Elitists’ Amnesty

Among the benefits included in the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 are what Biden called “a reasonable path to citizenship” for illegal immigrants or in Biden’s preferred parlance, “noncitizens,” a greatly expanded refugee resettlement program, looser asylum regulations, an increase in illegal immigration and an end to President Trump’s public charge rule that prohibits public benefit-dependent immigrants from receiving Green Cards.

For Biden, passing amnesty will be a battle. At-risk 2022 Democrats, which GOP leadership estimates to be a total of 47 in the House and at least three in the Senate, may, to preserve their seats, cast “nay” votes. Who controls Congress in two years hence will also depend on the 2022 political climate that surrounds Biden.

For more than 35 years, major amnesties have failed because when recessing legislators take their constituents’ temperatures, they quickly learn how unpopular it is among their voters to reward illegal behavior. Voters consider amnesty a betrayal.

One of amnesty’s inexplicable ironies is the unanimous support from the Congressional Black Congress (CBC) for bills that give employment permission to foreign nationals who will compete head-to-head with low-income African-American workers in a shrinking labor pool, an inarguable fact. Amnesty also adversely effects other low-income, low-skilled residents – an estimated 17 million Americans are currently unemployed – but none are as gravely damaged as blacks.

In 2020, the African-American unemployment rate was 11.4 percent, 1.4 times as great as the 8.1 percent national average. During most of the last half century, black Americans have suffered through unemployment rates that were, had the entire population endured them, recessionary. Throughout those same 50 years, African-American unemployment has consistently been about twice that of white America.

While congressional elites are enamored of amnesty, grounded black analysts have a greater understanding of its perils. Peter Kirsanow, a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights serving his fourth consecutive six-year term, explained immigration and amnesty’s dire consequences on African-Americans, especially the low-skilled. With amnesty pending, in a co-authored 2013 letter to then-President Obama, Kirsanow wrote that granting legal status to illegal aliens will disproportionately and further harm lower-skilled African-Americans by making it more difficult for them to obtain employment and depressing their wages when they finally do become employed. Kirsanow concluded that, then as now, “the economy has a glut of low-skilled workers.”

Today, with Biden’s amnesty looming, true black leaders are reiterating Kirsanow’s irrefutable arguments. In a recent interview, U.S. Representative Burgess Owens (R-Utah) scorned what he labeled “black elitists” like CBC members who have “lived the American dream,” but “… hurt those that are trying to get their first ladder up to the middle class.” Owens added that all of Biden’s policies which include opening the borders to workers who will vie against black Americans defeats the quest of the nation’s underclasses “to live the American dream and get to the middle class.” Summing up, Owens said that regardless of their skin color, elitists are America’s biggest threats.

In 2019, Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY), an elitist CBC member and a U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 co-sponsor who during her eight-term career has voted for more immigration and against enforcement at least 120 times, proclaimed that immigration is a “black issue.” Clarke warned her opponents to “never forget” it. But Clarke and her like-minded Capitol Hill allies are wrong.

Immigration is an elitist cause that benefits cheap labor-addicted employers, the billionaire class, housing developers, consumer goods producers, immigration lawyers and open borders/immigration expansionist groups. But, at the same time, immigration harms down-on-their-luck Americans who need a break in the form of a tighter labor market, a helping hand they won’t get from the Biden administration.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

American Workers Brace for Elitists’ Amnesty

Pennsylvania Court Corruption Would Be Stifled By HB 38

Pennsylvania Court Corruption Would Be Stifled By HB 38

By Rep. Russ Diamond

Pennsylvania is known for its chocolate, its mountains — and its many opportunities for corruption.

In the days leading to my introduction of House Bill 38, I received the usual and expected rebuttals from mainstream journalists and Harrisburg lobbyists. I was accused of inserting gerrymandering into judicial elections and disenfranchising voters, while at the same time lectured about how “merit selection” (involving a 13-person panel) would somehow not disenfranchise them.

I can’t say I am surprised. As an outsider in Harrisburg, you can always expect pushback from special interests and the media who are always in their pocket.

Still, it makes you wonder why on earth every group of lawyers, journalists, and unions are against a bill that would seek to diversify the geographic makeup of our appellate courts. And then you remember the real problem you were seeking to solve in the first place before all of the “critics” descended: corruption.

My bill would not just diversify the gender, demographic, or geographic makeup of our appellate courts. It would also chop at the deep-seated subversion of justice in Pennsylvania.

Corruption is not something we should tolerate or ignore. It’s an embedded weed that has deep roots and has strangled other plant roots underground along the way.

For too long, Pennsylvanians have been given a raw deal by our judicial system and have been the butt of jokes about our public officials. From House speakers to trial court judges to traffic court judges, to Supreme Court judges, the commonwealth has had its fair share of judicial malpractice and public corruption.

The simple fact of the matter is that Philadelphia and Allegheny have been playing by their own rules while people like my constituents in Lebanon County suffer.

Of the most recent seven appellate court judges convicted or accused of serious crimes, four of them were from Allegheny or Philadelphia. Of the 19 judges on the Pennsylvania Superior Court, the court that decided that Speaker Bill DeWeese and Speaker John Perzel do not need to pay fines for their crimes, 12 of them are from Philadelphia or Allegheny.

You see, the current system of statewide elections for appellate court judges breeds a political class exempted from the rule of law.

Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, the major special interest group pushing against my bill, noted in its own April 2017 study that our commonwealth “has not been a stranger to judicial scandals.” The group perceived the ethics of our higher court judges to be of such concern it issued a report in 2011 on the state’s judicial disciplinary system.

But instead of proposing a decentralization of power that could help prevent such corruption from encompassing government, Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts is proposing to move power away from the voters into the hands of a politically savvy merit selection board.

Real reform gives Pennsylvanians a fair shake instead of rigging it for the politically connected.

That’s why every special interest, media outlet, and lawyer lobbyist is against my bill. Unfortunately for them, they won’t dissuade me and other honest legislators. We will fight to get this bill approved so it becomes a ballot question, giving you a voice and opportunity to end corruption in our judicial system.

Rep. Diamond, a Republican, represents the 102nd District in the Pennsylvania House.

Pennsylvania Court Corruption Would Be Stifled By HB 38

(Note: CAP CEO, Leo Knepper had an opportunity to speak with Rep. Diamond about the proposed amendment on February 1, 2021. The video of the interview can be seen below.)

Pennsylvania Court Corruption Would Be Stifled By HB 38

Wolf Income Tax Hike Would Reward The Corrupt

Wolf Income Tax Hike Would Reward The Corrupt

By Leo Knepper

Every year Pennsylvania’s Governor presents a “budget proposal” to the General Assembly. Governor Wolf’s budget addresses have typically included items that would be harmful to Pennsylvanians. For example, Wolf has requested a new extraction tax on natural gas producers every year. And every year, the General Assembly declines. They point to the impact fee that generates millions of dollars per year for the Treasury to justify their correct decision.

Wolf Income Tax Hike Would Reward The Corrupt
Worst governor? Tough competition but in the running.

Governor Wolf decided that simply recycling his standard bad ideas just wouldn’t cut it this year. Instead, he added a request for a massive personal income-tax increase. How large of a tax increase does he want? The Governor is asking the General Assembly to increase the personal income tax rate by 46 percent. He notes that Pennsylvania has a “structural deficit” and that his tax increase would increase education funding. (See, he’s doing it for the kids.)

Governor Wolf didn’t mention that the structural deficit was caused by chronic overspending by the General Assembly. Nor did he say that he made it worse due to his unilateral decision to shut down vast swaths of the Pennsylvania economy last year. It must have surprised him to learn that shuttered businesses wouldn’t provide the same level of tax payments as open ones. As a side note on educational funding, Pennsylvania spends over $20,000 per year per pupil and ranks ninth in the country for per-pupil spending.

The Governor also included a call for increasing Pennsylvania’s minimum wage to $15 per hour. We doubt that he has considered how many of the businesses who survived his shutdown can now afford higher labor costs.

It’s doubtful that the Republican-controlled General Assembly will go along with either proposal. It’s hard to rule it out entirely, though. Remember that Pennsylvania now has one of the country’s highest gasoline taxes thanks to a Republican Governor, Tom Corbett, and Republicans in the General Assembly. However, we don’t anticipate either the House or the Senate going along with much of Governor Wolf’s budget proposal. We’ll keep you informed as the budget process moves forward over the next few months.

For a more in-depth examination of the Governor’s budget proposal, watch the video below. CAP CEO Leo Knepper sat down with Carl Marrara, Vice President of Government Affairs for the Pennsylvania Manufacturer’s Association, to discuss the Governor’s budget address and its impact on the Commonwealth’s economy.

Mr. Knepper is executive director of Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania.

Wolf Income Tax Hike Would Reward The Corrupt

Disaster Powers Limited By Amendments On May Ballot

Disaster Powers Limited By Amendments On May Ballot

By Leo Knepper

Last week the House and Senate each passed versions of a joint resolution to amend the Pennsylvania constitution. The House is expected to pass the Senate version this week and that will be a first step toward taking back PA. The proposed amendments aim to ensure that Governor Wolf and future Governors cannot abuse emergency declarations and govern unilaterally. To understand the importance of the proposed amendments, we should look at the current law and what transpired during the COVID-19 shutdown.

According to the PA Emergency Services Management Code, the Governor can declare a disaster emergency. That declaration can last up to 90 days. If, after 90 days, the disaster still exists, the Governor can renew the declaration as often as s/he sees fit until the disaster is over. There is a provision in the law indicating that the General Assembly can end the declaration via a concurrent resolution, and the Governor “shall” terminate the declaration; here is where things broke down.

In June, the General Assembly passed the concurrent resolution to end the disaster declaration. Governor Wolf argued, and the Supreme Court agreed, that the Governor could veto the resolution and keep the disaster declaration in place. That decision dramatically shifted the balance of power in favor of the Governor. The amendments under consideration correct that imbalance.

If adopted, the amendments would do two things. First, the disaster declarations would be limited to 21 days and require the General Assembly’s approval if the Governor wants to extend it. The second proposed change would clarify that the Governor cannot veto resolutions ending a disaster declaration.

Voters will decide in May whether or not to adopt the constitutional amendments. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that the Governor and most Democrats are opposed to these changes. Governor Wolf and his allies will likely spend millions of dollars in the lead up to May’s vote to defeat the proposals.

We have an opportunity to ensure that no future Governor can indefinitely shut down the economy again.

Mr. Knepper is executive director of Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania. Visit here to donate to the CAP.

Disaster Powers Limited By Amendments On May Ballot
Disaster Powers Limited By Amendments On May Ballot

Pennsylvania Constitutional Amendments Considered

Pennsylvania Constitutional Amendments Considered — Leo Knepper of Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania sent us the below discussion of proposed state constitutional amendments. They are aimed at limiting the use of emergency declarations by the governor and replacing state-wide elections of judges to the Supreme, Commonwealth and Superior courts, with election by district. This would weaken the power the corrupt Philadelphia and Pittsburgh machines have over the judiciary.

They are desperately needed as the governor and the state courts behaved more like those of a banana republic in the last year rather than one that respects rights.

Frankly, the entire Constitution should be rewritten.

“Full time” legislators ought to be replaced by part-time ones compensated solely by per diem with a term of no more than 20 days. Legislative districts should no longer be allowed to include a partial county. More than one county, yes. Partial counties no.

Pennsylvania Constitutional Amendments Considered
Pennsylvania Constitutional Amendments Considered

Biden Border Blunders

Biden Border Blunders

By Joe Guzzardi

According to Capitol Hill insiders, Joe Biden’s first matter of business will be to pass immigration amnesty legislation. Biden promised to, as he described his intentions, “introduce” an immigration bill within his administration’s first 100 days. And without wasting a moment, the president-elect’s advisors met last week with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair Rep. Raul Ruiz, and other House amnesty proponents, to develop a strategy to move forward. In December, signaling their party’s intention for the 117th Congress, Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) and Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) introduced a bill with the short title of the “Seasonal Worker Solidarity Act of 2020.”

Biden Border Blunders

Biden’s staff is still ironing out further details, but if he’s is serious about his 100-day timeline, then a bill that legalizes deferred action for childhood arrivals, (DACAs) would be his path of least resistance. The DACA population is relatively small; the Migration Policy Institute puts the total as of June 2020 at about 650,000. And the Pew Research Center’s push-polling on DACAs found that 74 percent of Americans favor legalizing DREAMers, a 2012 program that President Obama initiated through an Executive Branch memorandum.

Strategically, moving forward on a full amnesty will be tricky for the new administration. First, workable guidelines must be developed. No one knows how many illegal immigrants currently reside in the U.S., with estimates ranging from 12 million to 30 million. Amnesty advocates and the legacy media use the smaller total. Others, including Arturo Sarukhan, the former ambassador to the U.S. from Mexico, cite 30 million as more accurate.

A related immigration puzzle pertains to the caravans gathered at the border overheard to be chanting “Biden, Biden.” Latest reports indicate that large numbers of Hondurans have already headed North, and anticipate arriving at the Southwest Border before January 20, Inauguration Day, and just in time, they hope, to cash in on amnesty.

Social media is instrumental in forming the caravans, and even if migrants are turned away initially, they invariably regroup to try once more. To date, the Biden team has shown little interest in border enforcement, and instead has outlined an expansive plan to increase immigration at all levels. Biden intends to “promptly undo” the asylum accords that President Trump has negotiated with Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, as well as to eventually end the Remain in Mexico policy which has been effective at curtailing amnesty fraud.

Other changes that President-elect Biden would like to implement include lifting the H-1B visa cap, which would serve well his Silicon Valley masters, and importing more low-skilled workers who would compete with American citizens with less than a college education for scarce jobs. About 25 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed.

Millions of Americans oppose amnesty, for understandable reasons. Amnesty means that the federal government will pardon illegal immigrants for breaking U.S. immigration laws and using false Social Security numbers or other fraudulently obtained state identification cards that enable them to gain employment and unlawfully remain in the country.

Biden’s immigration agenda is exceptionally aggressive, especially for an incoming president whose victory edge in key swing states was narrow. In Pennsylvania, Biden’s margin over President Trump was 50.0 percent to 48.8 percent; in Arizona, 49.4 percent to 49.0 percent; in Georgia, 49.5 percent to 49.3 percent, and in Nevada, 50.0 percent to 48.0 percent. And with the 2020 House of Representatives election a far-cry from the big blue, plus-20 seat wave that Democrats predicted – instead, the GOP gained about 12 seats – President-elect Biden may be well advised to start off slowly with his immigration agenda lest he begin his tenure with big border backfires.

On January 20, President Trump will be gone from office. But newly elected President Biden should remember that gone doesn’t mean forgotten, especially among those faithful 75 million voters who want to keep Trumpism.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Biden Border Blunders

The Enemies Trump Made, The Friends He Kept

The Enemies Trump Made, The Friends He Kept

By Joe Guzzardi

In 1924, Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster founded what is today America’s third largest publishing company. Simon & Schuster’s first foray into publishing was crossword puzzle books. Simon’s aunt was a crossword puzzle enthusiast, so the newly formed company wisely decided to fill the nation’s puzzle book void. Nearly a century later, Simon & Schuster made the curious, from a corporate perspective, woke decision to cancel Sen. Josh Hawley’s book, “The Tyranny of Big Tech,” for what the company described as “his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom.” Stated more precisely, Simon & Schuster objects to Hawley’s support of President Trump, and indirectly charged him with inciting the Washington, D.C. riots.

The Enemies Trump Made, The Friends He Kept

Hawley is one of 75 million Americans who have well-founded doubts about the November election’s validity, and his book’s topic – Silicon Valley’s censorship of other-than-woke opinions that now include President Trump permanently – troubles Americans. Simon & Schuster, apparently, would rather silence Hawley than publish a book that would appeal to a large chunk of 75 million potential book-buyers. Above all, Congress, the media, Silicon Valley and corporate America’s goal is to relentlessly malign the not-so-suddenly friendless President Trump who, in his eyes, has been abandoned by Vice President Mike Pence, his three Supreme Court appointees, congressional Republicans, his Attorney General and others.

For all the preaching that the incoming Biden administration spouts about moving on and uniting America, its actions belie its rhetoric. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to impeach or use the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office. The latter failed. If Congress’ impeachment also fails, the never-Trumpers’ wishful thinking goal then becomes to impeach the president after he leaves office, which the Constitution doesn’t permit, or perhaps to rely on the New York district attorney’s office to uncover financial crimes the Trump Organization committed.

In the meantime, President-elect Biden is ignoring the nation’s disaffected 75 million, a curious strategy for a candidate who won, perhaps fraudulently, key swing states by the narrowest margins. As for the reported 80 million that voted for the Biden-Harris ticket, most of them cast anti-Trump rather than pro-Biden ballots. With the mid-term 2022 election just 22 months away and with President Trump increasingly unlikely to make a Grover Cleveland-like bid to become the second president elected to nonconsecutive terms, a significant portion of the 80 million will have their eyes firmly focused on the incoming administration’s agenda.

Immediately facing the newly inaugurated President Biden will be his student debt and immigration pledges. During his campaign, Biden promised to cancel up to $10,000 in student debt, which exceeds $1.5 trillion outstanding, and to extend the COVID-related payment pause scheduled to expire this month. But Pelosi, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) want the debt forgiveness tab increased ‘‘with a pen” to $50,000, and thereby let taxpayers absorb the bill. Many Americans perceive waiving student loan obligations as abdicating individual responsibility and grossly unfair to students and parents who played by the rules and paid off their debt as it came due. A better solution: let the rolling-in-dough universities who encouraged student indebtedness take the hit.

On immigration, President-elect Biden already faces intense pressure to deliver on his vow to introduce an amnesty bill within his first 100 days in office. With Democrats controlling all three government branches, amnesty may look like a no-brainer, but history says differently. In 2008, President Obama had a Democratic-controlled Congress, but amnesty, toxic as always, went nowhere. And Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, DACA, was defeated legislatively countless times before President Obama issued an Executive Branch Memorandum to temporarily legalize the program. Passing any form of amnesty is a tough nut.

President Trump had many shortcomings, including his abrasive personality. Presidents Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama were smoother, but elitist. Voters wearied of the smooth talkers’ globalist agendas and – ergo – the Trump presidency. Democrats would love to remove President Trump so that he will be barred from a 2024 candidacy. If the Democrats have their way, President Trump will have no Cleveland-like second go-around!

Presidents Trump and Cleveland have character similarities; they’re both truculently honest. During his administration, President Cleveland was called “ugly-honest” and was admired for the enemies that he made, namely corrupt politicians. President Trump’s foes include career swamp dwellers, corporate America, Wall Street, Big Tech, China, America-last Democrats and RINOs. His friends, not in high places but 75 million strong, want to Make America Great Again. Evaluate President Trump by the enemies that he made, and the friends that he kept.


Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

The Enemies Trump Made, The Friends He Kept

Taking Back Pennsylvania For The Citizens

Taking Back Pennsylvania For The Citizens

By Lowman S. Henry

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government . . . ”

Those words proclaimed by the thirteen original colonies on July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia began the great experiment in self-government that became the United States of America. In 2020 the government of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania laid waste to the “unalienable Rights” enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. Being “destructive of these ends,” it is now time for We the People to exercise our right to alter that government.

Taking Back Pennsylvania For The Citizens

The transgressions of Governor Tom Wolf and his administration are too numerous to restate here, but suffice it to say he assumed extra-constitutional powers supposedly to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. His administration has refused to provide information justifying many of their draconian orders and instead has relied on an activist state Supreme Court to run roughshod over a legislature that tried valiantly to restore balance.

As a result, the time has come for Pennsylvanians to take back control of our state government – in fact, control of our lives – from a system of checks and balances that failed us during the COVID-19 pandemic. The good news is, if the legislature acts promptly and appropriately, we can do so in a matter of months. The vehicle for restoring both our rights and our state’s system of checks and balances are three proposed constitutional amendments designed to reign in a governor with dictatorial tendencies, and a rogue state Supreme Court.

Amending the Pennsylvania constitution is a two-step process. First, the proposed amendment must be approved by both houses of the General Assembly in two consecutive legislative sessions. Then, the amendment must be approved by voters in a statewide referendum.

The legislature approved the proposed constitutional amendments in the session that ended in November. The new session of the General Assembly has now commenced. With Republicans in firm control of both the House and the Senate approval of the amendments is likely to come within weeks. That would set up a May referendum for voters to give the amendments final approval.

Two of the amendments center on the exercise of emergency powers by the governor. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Wolf has abused that authority by claiming the power to sign or veto any legislation aimed at ending his emergency powers. Despite clear language in the law, the activist state Supreme Court sided with the governor, rendering the legislature powerless to end the emergency declaration.

One amendment would require legislative approval within 21 days of any invocation of emergency powers by the governor. The other eliminates the requirement for a termination resolution to be presented to the governor. Taken together, the amendments would solidify the legislative intent of the current emergency powers law by placing a legislative check on the governor’s authority.

Another proposed amendment would end the statewide election of appellate court judges and justices and instead have members of the Commonwealth, Superior, and state Supreme courts elected by region. This would accomplish two goals: first, it would dilute the power of special interests who expend large sums of money to influence statewide elections by concentrating on voters in heavily populated regions of the state.

Second, and more importantly, the regional election of appellate court judges would result in the election of jurists more closely reflective of the diverse regions that constitute the state. We currently elect members of the legislature – state House and Senate members – by district to ensure equal representation in that branch of government. To elect judges and justices the same way would be both consistent and fair.

As the May referendum on these proposed amendments approaches, look for entrenched special interests spearheaded by a governor who is loath to relinquish power to unleash attacks on the measures. The current system of checks and balances has failed because of their actions. The time has come for the people of Pennsylvania to dismiss their protests and to “institute a new government” protective of our rights. 

Lowman S. Henry is chairman & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly Lincoln Radio Journal and American Radio Journal

Taking Back Pennsylvania For The Citizens