Category: Joe Guzzardi

Hall Of Fame War Heroes Include Kiner and Greenberg

By Joe Guzzardi

Legendary Pittsburgh Pirates sluggers Ralph Kiner and Hank Greenberg shared more than Hall of Fame induction. They were World War II heroes whose Buccos power-hitting careers overlapped, and led to the construction of Forbes Field’s controversial Greenberg Gardens. Over the years, Kiner and Greenberg developed an enduring friendship.

The day after Pearl Harbor, Kiner enlisted in the U.S. Navy. Kiner flew Martin PBM Mariners from Kaneohe Bay Naval Air Station in Hawaii on submarine search patrols, and accumulated 1,200 flying hours. Unlike most other major league players stationed in the Pacific, Kiner played little baseball during his Navy service. As Kiner recalled, he played at the most six games during his two and a half Navy years. Kiner considered his pilot training and defending America more valuable than baseball.

When the war ended, the Pirates had Kiner penciled in to begin the 1946 season for the Pacific Coast League’s Hollywood Stars. But during Spring Training, Kiner tore the cover off the ball, and made the Pirates active roster. The Pirates chose wisely. Despite Forbes Field’s imposing dimensions for a right-handed hitter, 365’ down the left field line, 406’ in left center and 457’ in dead center, Kiner’s 23 home runs led the league in his rookie 1946 season, and he topped the league every year thereafter through 1952. Kiner’s home run title streak for seven consecutive years is an unbreakable record.

Enter Greenberg. In the 1946 off season, the Pirates bought American League home run king and two-time MVP Hank Greenberg, who was embroiled in a bitter salary dispute with the Detroit Tigers. Like Kiner, Greenberg served in World War II. Greenberg was drafted in 1941, and he was honorably discharged when Congress released servicemen age 28 years and older. After Pearl Harbor, Sergeant Greenberg volunteered to join the U.S. Army Air Corps. “We are in trouble,” Greenberg told The Sporting News, “and there is only one thing for me to do – return to the service.” Assigned to the first Boeing B-29 Superfortresses’ group to go overseas, Greenberg spent 1944 flying in the India-China-Burma theater. Greenberg served 47 months, the longest of any major league player.

When he joined the Pirates, Greenberg befriended Kiner, corrected his swing, which during the following season helped raised his anemic batting average from .247 to .313, and increased his home run output to 51. Pirates’ management, in turn, acted swiftly to help Greenberg hit more homers; they installed an inner fence that shortened left field’s distance by 30’. Society for American Baseball Research historian Ron Backer analyzed the controversial Greenberg Gardens’ consequences, and found that the new construction benefited Kiner more than Greenberg.

In his one year with the Pirates, 1947, Greenberg hit only 25 home runs. Of that total, 18 were hit at Forbes Field, of which nine landed in the Gardens. Of the 369 home runs that Kiner hit throughout his major league career, 71 landed in Greenberg Gardens, or about 20 percent. Eventually, Greenberg Gardens became known as “Kiner’s Korner.” Greenberg Gardens and the home run barrage launched from Kiner’s bat that it facilitated made Pirates ownership the biggest winner. In 1947, for the first time in Pirates’ history, more than 1 million fans showed up at Forbes Field, a milestone that, even though the Pirates were perennial cellar-dwellers, continued throughout most of Kiner’s Corsair days.

In June 1953, General Manager Branch Rickey abruptly traded Kiner to the Chicago Cubs. Since Rickey’s arrival, the relationship between the two had been acrimonious. The next day, Rickey ordered the fence torn down and said: “I don’t believe in building artificial barriers to suit any individual.” The league intervened, ruled that parks could not be reconfigured in mid-season. The gardens remained in left field until February 1954.

After their playing days ended, Greenberg and Kiner had prosperous careers. In 1948, Greenberg became the Cleveland Indians farm director and in November 1949 was promoted to general manager. Greenberg assembled the 1954 Indians squad, which set the then-American League record for most wins in a season, 111. In his eight years as GM, the Indians finished in first or second place six times.

In 1956, Greenberg became the first Jewish ballplayer inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Greenberg died from liver cancer on September 4, 1986. Greenberg, along with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx and Ted Williams, is one of only five players to hit over .300, have an on-base percentage over .400, and a slugging mark above .600. In 2013, Greenberg received the Bob Feller Act of Valor Award given to 37 Baseball Hall of Fame members to recognize the courage he displayed during his World War II Army Air Force service.

Kiner, injury-plagued, was traded from the Cubs to the Indians in 1955, but was unable to produce for his old friend Greenberg. After hitting only 18 homers, Kiner retired. During the late 1940s, Kiner dated Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Leigh and Ava Gardner before marrying tennis star Nancy Chafee in 1951. Greenberg was Kiner’s best man. Then in 1962, he joined the expansion New York Mets broadcast team. Kiner joked that he was chosen “because I had a lot of experience with losing.” Kiner broadcast through 2013, and is one of the longest tenured broadcasters with a single team in MLB history. In tribute to Greenberg Gardens, Kiner’s post-game television show on WOR was called Kiner’s Korner and aired for more than 30 years. Kiner died of natural causes in February 2014. Like Greenberg, Kiner received the Bob Feller Act of Valor Award given in honor of his heroic World War II Navy service.

Kiner and Greenberg played important roles in Pittsburgh’s history and are remembered for being bright lights in an otherwise bleak chapter in the Pirates’ early 1950s Forbes Field era.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research historian. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.

Hall Of Fame War Heroes Include Kiner and Greenberg

Biden Urgent Address Omits Border Crisis

By Joe Guzzardi

During his Oval Office address to the nation about Russia’s invasion into the Ukraine and Israel’s offensive against Gaza, President Biden quoted former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who had once called America “the indispensable nation.” The reference to the U.S. as indispensable struck many viewers as curious since the president, starting on the first day he entered the White House, has worked with such determination to destroy American sovereignty.

Since Biden assumed office, about 8.6 million foreign nationals have crossed the border and settled in the interior. Their personal histories, health statuses and intentions are mostly unknown. Worth noting is that Albright is one of a long line of secretaries of state who can turn a patriotic phrase but are, at heart, devoted globalists. The line, post-Albright, includes Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.

As expected, Biden pleaded for more money to fund the two wars and will send a $105 billion package to Congress where it will face an uphill battle. The bulk of the funding, $61.4 billion allocated for Ukraine at a time when Americans have grown tired of sending their tax dollars, without accountability, toward what appears to be an endless, distant conflict. Within the $61.4 billion is $481 million to support Ukrainians arriving in the U.S. through the “Uniting for Ukraine” program which provides a two-year parole that includes work permission and other affirmative benefits. In other words, more immigration – another Biden policy that Americans are weary of, especially as they watch thousands of migrants cross the U.S. border unchecked daily.

Israel’s share of the $105 billion pie is a mere 25 percent of Ukraine’s – $14.3 billion. Biden’s proposed national security package will provide Israel with $10.6 billion in assistance through the Defense Department, including air and missile defense support, industrial base investments and replenishment of U.S. military stocks that have been drawn down to support Israel.

The $105 billion total also allots $10 billion for humanitarian assistance. Tucked into the $10 billion is $850 million for what’s referred to as “migration and refugee assistance” at the U.S.-Mexico border. Again, more immigration and more facilitating of immigration which voters oppose.

Biden’s address flummoxed viewers. The president passionately made the case for the U.S. to aid in defending the Ukraine and Israel, and few dispute that both embattled nations need U.S. aid. But Biden has created a U.S. border crisis and then continuously ignored the calamities that an unprotected border spawned; among them, migrant deaths, drug smuggling, human trafficking, sex trafficking and environmental damage. Key administration officials like Vice President Kamala Harris and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have rubbed salt into concerned citizens’ wounds by, in defiance of ample evidence, insisting that the border is secure.

While Biden, imploring Congress and the Americans it represents, to act as the “agents of democracy,” he never in his 15-minute address mentioned the border and the terrorism threats that leaving it unprotected represents.

Maybe – but only maybe – the latest Customs and Border Protect report will awaken Biden, et al, to the homeland dangers percolating. Border officials arrested 18 people on the FBI’s terror watchlist in September, making fiscal year 2023 a record year for such encounters at the southern border. The watchlist, now officially called the Terrorist Screening Dataset, is the U.S. database that contains information on terrorist identities and includes not only known or suspected terrorists, but also affiliates of watch-listed individuals.

CBP statistics released Saturday showed that 169 people on the FBI terror watchlist were encountered between ports of entry at the Southern border in the past 12 months, a number that exceeds not only FY 22’s record-setting total, 98, but the last six fiscal years combined.

Including encounters between northern border entry ports, the total for FY 23 rose to 172. Thousands of “special interest aliens” from numerous countries, including the Middle East, have been arrested by Border Patrol agents while attempting to cross the U.S. southern border illegally over the last two years. Special interest aliens are people from countries the federal government identifies as having conditions that promote or protect terrorism or potentially pose some sort of national security threat. Iranians, Syrians, Pakistanis, Iraqis, Afghans, Egyptians, Chinese and other nationalities have been stopped.

If the administration wants to avert what looks like the inevitable – a major terrorist attack on the homeland – it will have to get immediately busy shutting the border and deporting illegally present aliens.

Biden Urgent Address Omits Border Crisis

Green Cards Given To Migrants From Terrorist Sponsoring Nations

By Joe Guzzardi

Speaking in San Diego on October 14 to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that, after the Islamic terrorist group Hamas attacked Israel, the U.S. needed to remain on high alert.

Wray said that the FBI has seen an increase in reported threats. He advised citizens “to be on the lookout,” especially from lone actors who may be inspired by the Middle East warfare to commit violence on their own initiative. Online anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim posts have increaseddramatically. New York, home to 1.3 million Jews – the largest Jewish population outside of Israel – has emerged as an epicenter for hate.

The following Sunday evening, during a “60 Minutes” interview, President Joe Biden concurred with Wray that the Hamas war against Israel precipitates a greater likelihood of a terrorist attack on the homeland. Biden said after conferring with Department of Homeland Security and FBI officials, he was confident that a major effort has been made to deter terrorists and to dismantle plots against America that they may have developed. For the Americans taken hostage, Biden vowed to find those still alive and free them.

Neither Wray nor Biden’s words comfort Americans. The threat to the homeland is real, and Biden’s three-year welcome-the-world agenda has put citizens directly in harm’s way. Since October’s first week, two Iranians were apprehended at the Southwest Border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection found they had terrorism ties. Both were on the Terrorist Screening Database. In fiscal 2023, 659 known or suspected terrorists (KSTs) were apprehended attempting to illegally enter the U.S., according to CBP data.

Even countries listed on the State Department’s “State Sponsors of Terrorism” are welcome. During fiscal year 2022, nationals from Iran, which has been accused of aiding Hamas in its recent attacks on Israel, and is listed on the State Department’s State Sponsors of Terrorism, secured 9,400 green cards. More than 1,600 arrived as chain migrants, and more than 980 arrived through the Diversity Visa Lottery (DV). Syria, also on the State Department’s list, is another recipient of Biden’s largess. Syrian nationals received 3,200 green cards. About 720 came to the U.S. as chain migrants, and more than 150 arrived through the DV.

In all, in FY 2022, the Biden administration invited about 63,000 legal immigrants from nations previously travel-banned from the U.S. and rewarded them with permanent residency green cards. About 7,300 arrived as chain migrants, while more than 4,300 arrived through the DV. Chain migration, which allows permanent residents to petition nuclear and nonnuclear family members to join them in the U.S., and the annual DV are heavily criticized immigration policies that their opponents claim serve no national interest. Other banned countries included Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Venezuela, North Korea, Nigeria, Myanmar, Eritrea, Sudan, Tanzania and Kyrgyzstan.

With the historically high number of KST encounters, the president and the FBI director warn, correctly, that the likelihood of a major terrorist act committed on U.S. soil is high. Nationwide, heightened security measures have been taken, including around the U.S. Capitol where metal barriers were installed.

Alarmed realists who have watched the border crisis devolve into a free-for-all aren’t surprised that panic is setting in. The Secretary of State during the Nixon administration, Henry Kissinger, 100, commented on rioting Palestinian supporters living in Germany cheering for Hamas’ assault on Israel. Kissinger: “It [mass immigration] was a grave mistake to let in so many people of totally different culture and religion and concepts.”

Kissinger’s words come too late to spare the U.S. from an inevitable assault. Too many legally present Middle Eastern immigrants, and too many unlawful border crossers, have already infiltrated the U.S. interior.

But Kissinger’s cautionary words shouldn’t be too late to fend off a congressional push to grant refugee status to Palestinians, a total that could reach 1 million. Since President Jimmy Carter’s Refugee Act of 1980, both sides of the political aisle have supported higher refugee admissions, and more than 140,000 Palestinians already live in the U.S. Although Republicans insist that no such plan to bring in Palestinians is afoot, don’t be surprised if it happens.

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US Depending On Luck To Avoid Terror Catastrophe

By Joe Guzzardi

The U.S. has been lucky since 9/11. Despite the nation’s open borders, the country has so far avoided another major attack on the homeland. The operative words are “so far.”

Look at the large number of unvetted people flooding into America, and the surprising reality is that the nation has, at least to date, avoided an attack. August numbers from the Department of Homeland Security are the latest publicly available monthly data and show an all-time record number of illegal alien border encounters. August encounters totaled 304,162, up from July’s 245,286. During fiscal year 2023, more than 2.9 million illegal aliens were encountered; most were processed and released into the interior.

In all, the number of known aliens who entered unlawfully and are still living in the U.S. under temporary or conditional status is a record 3.6 million. President Joe Biden’s administration, in violation of established immigration law, uses humanitarian parole as a major component of its lawless border abuse. Parole, which includes work authorization, is intended for emergency case-by-case bases, and not for collectively green-lighting thousands of illegal immigrants.

The 3.6 million paroled migrants is exclusive of gotaways which since January 2021 totaled nearly 1.6 million. Also excluded are the thousands who have arrived through the CBP One app, an entry-facilitating mechanism outside of immigration law, but nevertheless illegally implemented by the Biden White House.

In January, DHS promised that the newly created app would be limited to (unlawfully) admit 360,000 foreign nationals; in July, CBP announced that the program would be expanded to 522,000 admissions. The administration originally designed the app to minimize bad optics and the critical press that border overcrowding generated during the Haitian surge of 2021 at Del Rio, Texas. Because of technical malfunctions and user unfamiliarity, however, migrants often disregard the app in favor of illegal immigration’s traditional crossing method — they wade across the Rio Grande unimpeded.

No checklist of how aliens arrive is complete without mentioning the middle-of-the-night flights from the border into major hubs like New York City or to less populated cities like Scranton, Pa. Those destinations may or may not be jumping-off points to join relatives, also often illegal immigrants. At taxpayer expense, and using a transportation system described as a “breathtakingly complex network,” Boeing 737s flew as many as 240 passengers per journey under cover of darkness.

When analyzing the unprotected border, and the terrorism threat it represents, add “no one knows” to “so far.” Since the arriving aliens are unvetted — their past histories, their intentions and current locations unknown — “no one knows” sums up what the future may bring. The migrant-sending nations include countries that have unbending anti-American sentiments. Arrivals, mostly single adult males, originate in China, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Egypt, Pakistan, Mauritania, Uzbekistan, Venezuela and Turkey.

Terrorists determined to perpetrate death and destruction on U.S. soil play the long game, undeterred when their early efforts fail. After 9/11:

· On 5 November 2009, the Fort Hood, Texas, shooting: U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, who served as a psychiatrist at Fort Hood and was the son of Palestinian immigrants, opened fire on his fellow service members, leaving 13 dead and 29 wounded.

· On 15 April 2013, the Boston Marathon bombing: Dzhokhar, 19, and Tamerlan, 26, Tsarnaev planted two bombs near the Boston Marathon’s finish line. The explosion killed three and injured more than 180 people.

· On 2 December 2015, the San Bernardino Attack: Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and his wife Tashfeen Malik, 29, shot off more than 100 rounds during a holiday event. The Islamic-inspired terrorists killed 14 and wounded 22.

· On 31 October 2017, the NYC truck attack: ISIS-inspired Sayfullo Saipov, 29, used a rented Home Depot flatbed pickup truck to drive down a bike path which killed eight and injured 11.

As of July, Homeland Threat Assessment alarmingly reported that immigration officials encountered what they described as a “growing number of individuals” who appear on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist and were detained while trying to enter via the U.S. southern border. Compared to fiscal year 2022 when CBP apprehended 100 individuals whose identities matched those on the Terrorist Screening Dataset, as of 30 Sept. 2023, the total had increased to 160.

Given the sovereignty-breaking reality about alien arrivals, their numerical totals, their countries of origin and the always-welcoming Biden administration, the odds are increasingly high that, as long as the border remains unguarded, terrorism attacks against U.S. citizens are a near-certainty.

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US Depending On Luck To Avoid Terror Catastrophe

Defend Borders or Close West Point and Annapolis

By Joe Guzzardi

The troubling news that U.S. veterans hoping to see the Army-Navy game in Foxboro, Mass., had their hotel reservations canceled to provide illegal aliens shelter could be a blessing in disguise, assuming the vets vote in unison to preserve the country they’re sworn to defend.

Kicking vets out of their lodging to reward aliens with coveted hotel rooms represents the latest afront to Americans by open borders advocates. Open borders are a continuing, shameful offense and assault on U.S. sovereignty. Most offended are veterans. Data that the Department of Veterans Affairs released showed that the veteran population is 19 million.

Imagine the 19 million plus their spouses, children, siblings, friends and neighbors disgusted by the audacity of federal and state officials sanctioning the unceremonious booting of vets from their rooms, leaving them to fend for themselves to find alternate housing for an event that’s sold-out months in advance. Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Maura Healey claimed to be “distressed” when she learned that a New Jersey travel agent had displaced the vets to make rooms available to the migrants. Healey’s “distressed” claim cannot be taken at face value. Like most of Massachusetts, Healey is an immigration expansion advocate.

Massachusetts’ migrant crisis is so acute that Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll urged Bay State taxpayers to open their homes to illegal aliens. Reacting to Healey’s declaration that migration has put the state in emergency mode, Driscoll asked residents who might have “…an extra room or suite in your home, [to] please consider hosting a family. Safe housing and shelter is our most pressing need.” Driscoll said that Massachusetts is spending about $45 million monthly in taxpayer dollars on migrants’ shelter needs.

Some support Driscoll, and cited Massachusetts’ history as one of the first colonies founded by European migrants. The supporters have ample chance to back up their words with action. Massachusetts has 5,600 illegal alien homeless families that include infants and pregnant women, an 80 percent increase from the 3,100 families a year ago.

The governor could also step up to the plate. Healey has a four-bedroom, single family home in Arlington, Mass., that she shares with her partner. Healey’s living arrangement frees up three bedrooms, and would take some of the burden off the state she governs. Or, Healey could make sheltering aliens a condition of continued employment for the state’s 438,000 workers. As long as the northern and southern borders remain open, and unchecked migration continues, no solution that immigration advocates dream up is, in their view, asking too much. Remember Driscoll’s overview of the role residents should play in the state’s right- to-shelter crisis: “Everyone has something they can share.”

As long as the federal government welcomes millions of unvetted, impoverished aliens, including convicted criminals and FBI terrorist suspects, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis might as well shut their doors. The mission of the graduates of the institutions is to protect the homeland, a goal that the White House actively undermines. Under Biden, the homeland is wide open for the world to access. A House Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement report found that through March 2023, 99 percent of the arriving 2.1 million foreign nationals remain in the U.S. Only 6 percent have been thoroughly vetted, showing a complete disregard for citizens’ “safe housing” that Driscoll rhapsodized about.

In the Biden administration’s latest nonsolution to a state’s migration catastrophe, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will send a team to Boston to, in government-speak empty words, “assess the current migrant situation and identify ways to improve efficiencies and maximize our support for communities that are addressing the needs of migrants.” The feds have already sent $2.8 billion in taxpayer funds to help Massachusetts out of a problem that has no monetary resolution.

New West Point grads, new Annapolis grads and veterans, along with their relatives and friends, might total 50 million, a large enough bloc to swing the election toward a much-needed candidate committed to enforcing U.S. immigration laws.

In the 2024 presidential election, other simmering issues will be hotly debated – abortion, the economy, crime, war in the Ukraine and the Middle East – but nothing will be more important than restoring U.S. sovereignty.

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

Defend Borders or Close West Point and Annapolis

Feinstein Replacement Assures 2024 Chaos

By Joe Guzzardi

During much of Dianne Feinstein’s 20 years in the U.S. Senate, I lived in California and wrote political commentary for two San Joaquin Valley dailies. Regardless of my topic, out of professional curiosity, I asked my subjects’ off-the-record opinion about the California governor and their local congressional representatives. When I inquired about Feinstein, most replied with indifference. At no point did I sense voter enthusiasm about Feinstein, or detect the feeling that, in their minds, her re-election was paramount to California’s well-being.

Yet, after Republican Sen. Pete Wilson resigned in 1991 to run for governor, Feinstein won the 1992 special election, and was then re-elected five times – 1994, 2000, 2006, 2012 and 2018, a remarkable achievement. Prior to her Senate success, Feinstein came in third in the 1975 San Francisco mayoral election to winner George Moscone, and lost the 1990 gubernatorial general election to Wilson. As so often happens in politics, death, retirement and shifting winds played a major role in Feinstein’s ascendancy.

Elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969, Feinstein served as the board’s president in 1978, during which time Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated. Feinstein succeeded Moscone as mayor, and Wilson’s decision to give up his Senate seat opened up national office opportunities for Feinstein which she capitalized on. When fellow Democrat Alan Cranston retired in 1993, Feinstein became California’s senior senator.

Once an established incumbent, and even though California was not yet the solidly blue state it is today – Republican Wilson was, after all, just a few years removed from his governorship – Feinstein coasted. Feinstein’s uninspiring GOP challengers, Tom Campbell, Dick Mountjoy and Elizabeth Emken eased her path.

As Feinstein’s Senate seniority advanced, she got plum assignments, including with the Senate Rules Committee. Feinstein also chaired the Select Committee on Intelligence, an ironic appointment since, as later discovered, she was chauffeured by a Chinese operative that the FBI suspected of gathering government secrets before he absconded back to China.

Considered a moderate when she arrived in Washington, Feinstein quickly adopted the established Democratic positions especially on an issue that roiled Congress from her career’s inception to its end: immigration.

In the early 1990s, at a press conference on the California-Mexico border, Feinstein said that illegal immigration was too costly to allow it to continue. In California alone, Feinstein continued, taxpayers spent $2 billion annually on illegal immigration. Feinstein added that illegal immigration involved a battle for “space” between the aliens and citizens – space for jobs, for classroom seats and for housing. More immigration means less space for citizens, said Feinstein.

Thirty years later, however, Feinstein joined the Senate’s open borders faction. Over her three decades in the Upper Chamber, Feinstein’s immigration grade dropped from C to D.

Unbeknownst to the public, Feinstein also championed private immigration bills. She introduced more bills that protected illegal immigrants from deportation than any other legislator. Her singular attempts to circumvent immigration laws to provide for her special causes mostly involved tourist visa overstays. Some remained unlawfully present for as long as 17 years after their visas expired, hardly compelling circumstances that require Senate intervention.

On October 2, Gov. Gavin Newsom named EMILY’s List President Laphonza Butler to fill the remaining 15 months of Feinstein’s term. EMILY’s List works to elect female Democrats who support abortion rights. Per an August Federal Election Commission filing, Butler was a Maryland resident. Butler was then quickly sworn into office by Vice President Kamala Harris, for whom Butler had worked on Harris’ failed 2020 presidential campaign.

What happens next in the post-Feinstein era is uncertain. A special election involving Butler is probable, but no one knows whether the appointee or any of the other declared candidates for the full six-year term will run. Announced candidates Reps. Barbara Lee, Adam Schiff and Katie Porter are evaluating their decisions vis-à-vis the special election.

Despite California’s whopping $32 billion budget deficit, its affordable housing crisis, a soaring homeless population, endemic smash-and-grab crime and a collapsed education system, whoever permanently replaces Feinstein will vote straight “yea” on immigration expansion bills – as if more immigration is the solution to California’s monumental problems. Lee, Schiff and Porter have F- immigration grades from NumbersUSA.

Feinstein is gone, but her age, 90, and her vast $64 million wealth, exclusive of prime real estate holdings, raise questions about imposing term limits, and whether millionaires married to billionaires can fairly represent the average citizen. Feinstein commuted from San Francisco to D.C. on her private $6 million Gulfstream G650 jet. Term limits and personal wealth should but will never be considered as candidacy restrictions. Still, Feinstein’s congressional pro-immigration allies can take comfort that her replacement will carry on with the departed senator’s sovereignty-eroding immigration expansion legacy.

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

Feinstein Replacement Assures 2024 Chaos