Category: Guest Authors

Barney Ross Was Ring Champ And WWII Hero

By Joe Guzzardi

Born Dov-Ber Rasofsky on December 23, 1909, in New York City to Eastern European Jewish immigrant parents, Barney Ross would become a world champion in three different weight divisions and a decorated World War II hero. His journey from Jewish enclaves to boxing’s elite tells of his determination and toughness that transcended his three world championship titles—welterweight, light welterweight, and lightweight.

Ross was one of several Jewish boxers who anglicized their names to fend off antisemitism, gain wider acceptance, and sell more tickets to boxing matches. Benjamin Leiner, also known as Benny Leonard and considered one of the best lightweights ever, became a dominant champion in the 1910s and 1920s. Vincent Morris Scheer adopted an Irish-sounding name, Mushy Callahan, and won the junior welterweight title in the 1920s.

Known in boxing circles as “The Pride of the Ghetto,” Ross spurned his family’s religious lifestyle and instead, during his troubled teen years, ran with gangsters like fellow Jew Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald’s murderer. The pair of young hoodlums did Al Capone’s bidding. Ross’s father, Isidore “Itchik” Rosofsky, was a Talmudic scholar who had emigrated to America from his native Brest-Litovsk after barely surviving a pogrom. After the family moved from New York to Chicago, Isidore became a rabbi and owner of a small vegetable shop in Chicago’s Maxwell Street neighborhood, a Jewish ghetto like 1920s New York’s Lower East Side.

Ross’s life changed forever when his father was murdered while resisting a robbery at his small grocery. Grief-stricken, his mother Sarah suffered a nervous breakdown, and his younger siblings—Ida, Sam, and George—were placed in an orphanage or farmed out to other members of the extended family. At age 14, Dov was left to his own devices and turned to boxing.

In his 81-bout professional career, Ross won 74—22 by knockout—against four losses and three draws. Remarkably, Ross, famous for his relentless pace, sharp footwork, ring savvy, and ability to absorb punishment while dishing out precise combinations, was never knocked out.

Retired from the ring at 32, Ross enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he eventually fought in the Pacific Theater’s Battle of Guadalcanal. During one battle, he and three fellow Marines were trapped under enemy fire. All four were wounded; Ross was the only one able to fight. Ross gathered his comrades’ rifles and grenades and single-handedly fought nearly two dozen Japanese soldiers over an entire night, killing them all by morning. He survived 30 shots that ricocheted off his helmet. “The ring is kid’s play compared to the battle out here—this is a finish fight with no holds barred and no referee to break up the clinches,” Ross said. His heroism earned Sergeant Ross, the Silver Star, and a Presidential Citation, which Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered to him in the Rose Garden.

During his service in Guadalcanal, Ross began an enduring friendship with Catholic priest Frederic Gehring, a wartime chaplain. Gehring considered Ross a national treasure and the only soldier on Guadalcanal who could play the pipe organ. On Christmas Eve, before the Marines were about to go into battle, Gehring asked Ross to play “Silent Night” and other Christmas songs for the troops. After Ross played a Christmas carol medley, Gehring asked the champion for a Jewish song. Ross played “My Yiddishe Momme,” about a child’s love for his self-sacrificing mother. Many of the gathered Marines knew the song from Ross’s boxing days, when it came over the loudspeaker as he entered the ring. When the Marines heard Ross play the song, newspaper reports said that they all wept.

While recovering from malaria and his wounds suffered at Guadalcanal, Ross developed a dependency on morphine. Upon his return stateside, Ross replaced morphine with heroin, an addiction on which he spent $500 a day. Ross went to a recovery center and overcame his addiction. He gave lectures to high school students about the dangers of drug addiction. Ross’s struggle against morphine addiction, which he labeled his life’s toughest battle, is detailed in his autobiographical book, No Man Stands Alone.

In January 1967, after a long struggle with throat cancer, Ross passed away, a champion to Jews and Christians alike.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Congress Drops Bill to Cure TDS

By Joe Guzzardi

Within my immediate family, the Trump Derangement Syndrome team outnumbers the MAGAs by an 8–1 ratio. Some on the TDS squad resemble retiring U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi in their passionate anti-Trump rhetoric. After calling President Trump “a vile creature” and “the worst thing on the face of the Earth,” Pelosi told CNN host Anderson Cooper that she could have said “much worse.”

I can understand not liking Trump. He’s long-winded and pats himself on the back too often. On the other hand, Trump takes all the questions, even from the most hostile reporters who can barely hide their contempt for the president. Think fake news king and queen, Jim Acosta and Joy Reid. Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, held the fewest press conferences of any president in modern history. No denying that Trump is, to use politicians’ favorite word, more “transparent” than Biden. For the TDS gang, the elusive Biden never existed; they choose not to mention him — -ever!

Given my family’s mixed history with its Trump opinions, I was struck by the possible TDS solution that Congress introduced: H.R. 3432, the TDS Research Act of 2025 by Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH). The bill’s purpose is “to direct the Director of the National Institutes of Health to conduct or support research to advance the understanding of Trump Derangement Syndrome, and for other purposes.” The act defines TDS as “a behavioral or psychological phenomenon characterized by intense emotional or cognitive reactions to Donald J. Trump, his actions, or his public presence, as observed in individuals or groups.” Under the National Institutes of Health’s auspices, ongoing research will be conducted to advance the understanding of TDS, including its origins, manifestations, and long-term effects.

In his Wall Street Journal article, psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert wrote that about 75 percent his patients are afflicted with TDS. “Patients across the political spectrum have brought Donald Trump into therapy not to discuss policy but to process obsession, rage and dread. Their distress is symptomatic, not ideological.” Among the most common symptoms that Alpert encounters are persistent intrusive thoughts, emotional dysregulation, impaired functioning, sleepless nights, compulsive news checking and physical agitation. In summary, Alpert called TDS an “obsessive political preoccupation” that strains marriages and has fractured friendships, outcomes that, based on my own family’s experiences, I can attest to.

The public reaction to Alpert’s diagnosis proved his point. After the WSJ published Alpert’s op-ed, he expanded his theme on a Fox News appearance and on his social media accounts. Alpert received a barrage of vulgar messages and death threats. Portions of his essay were taken out of context; he was accused of protecting a fascist. Voice mails wished him dead. The frightening messages were not sent by the fringe but rather by individuals who described themselves as compassionate and dedicated to mitigating mental health issues.

If TDS were limited to the area in and around Capitol Hill, the condition might be more understandable. Trump arrived in 2016 as an outsider and immediately disrupted the establishment apple cart. He’s not a Clinton, a Bush, a Biden or an Obama acolyte. No matter how hard the Swamp tried to rid itself of Trump, he refused to go away. In 2024, Trump delivered the cruelest blow to the D.C. institution: He won the presidential election in a landslide.

The most effective way for TDSers to gain credibility and reach a larger audience is to find something — anything — about Trump’s administration that’s praiseworthy, hail it, then dispassionately and without expletives express reservations about the president. The border is Trump’s biggest and most inarguable success. With his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Trump immediately ended the illegal immigration invasion that admitted countless millions of unvetted foreign nationals including criminals and terrorists. America could not withstand four more years of the Biden/Harris open border agenda that overcrowded schools and hospitals, strained social services, drove housing prices ever higher and contributed to soaring inner-city crime.

Give Trump credit where he’s earned it. By acknowledging the good Trump has done, the TDS victims give their never-Trump agenda more credibility.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Nazi-Tatted Socialist May Win Maine Senate Seat

By Joe Guzzardi

Maine, a summertime vacationer’s paradise with its 3,500 miles of tidal shoreline that attracts sailors, sea kayakers, and windjammers, will hold important 2026 elections that will determine whether the state drifts further left or maintains its shaky status quo. Also at stake is the Senate majority.

An extreme-left state that embraces sanctuary status immigration policies, Maine doesn’t receive as much publicity for its radicalism as its Northeast neighbor Massachusetts, under Governor Maura Healy, or Boston under Mayor Michelle Wu. In 2026, the results of Maine’s elections for U.S. Senator and governor could help bring the state back from the political abyss. Looking at the candidates, however, a recovery seems unlikely. The best hope is to stem further decline toward progressivism.

Many gubernatorial candidates shed their Democratic affiliation to run on the Independent ticket as they vie to replace termed-out Governor Janet Mills, age 77. Instead of fading into the sunset, Mills will run for U.S. Senator against five-term Republican Susan Collins.

Less well known for her extremism than California’s Gavin Newsom or Illinois’s J.B. Pritzker, Mills was tyrannical during COVID-19, ordering and maintaining shelter-in-place orders. Mills declared a civil emergency a mere three days after the first COVID-19 case was discovered, following that through the end of March with stricter gathering limits, closing businesses deemed nonessential, and issuing a stay-at-home order with exceptions for work and essential shopping. Overkill, to say the least. Mills’ COVID-19 advisory board consisted almost exclusively of her siblings: Dora, M.D., who served as MaineHealth’s chief improvement officer, as well as her brothers Peter and Paul.

In eight years, a bad governor can do major harm, and Mills did. Mills led the state deep into debt — nearly $1 billion — which will require severe cuts in services and state jobs. Maine’s projected 2024–25 shortfall was around $408 million, but it has more than doubled to $949 million. Mills’ costly red-carpet welcome of illegal aliens is a major contributor to the budget shortfall. Mills, in office since 2019, proposed to add 75,000 more illegal aliens by 2029 — a population larger than Maine’s biggest city, Portland — and in the process throw citizens further under the bus.

The vehicle that Mills will rely on to provide for the unlawfully present aliens is her newly developed Office of New Americans (ONA), created through the governor’s executive order. Mills’ plan would work toward “making Maine a home of opportunity for all, by welcoming and supporting immigrants to strengthen Maine’s workforce, enhance the vibrancy of Maine’s communities, and build a strong and inclusive economy.” To Mills, the illegal aliens are “New Mainers,” whose total will reach 300,000 once a spouse and an average of two children for each recruit arrives.

Mills has been a fixture in Maine politics since 1980, when she was the District Attorney of Androscoggin, Franklin, and Oxford Counties. After 45 years, Mainers should be ready for a new face. Indeed, Mills may not survive her primary against her extremist challenger, Iraq veteran and oysterman Graham Platner. In various social media posts and random comments, Platner called himself a “communist,” called “all” police “bastards,” said rural white Americans “actually are” racist and stupid, minimized issues those in the military have in reporting sexual assault, and said those who are raped should “not get so f — -ed up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to.”

In his most aggressive rant yet, Platner called to abolish ICE and force agents to testify before Congress. His complete statement at a recent town hall:
“People need to go to prison. We need to have public hearings, public, frankly, probably trials down the road, because the American people deserve to know what the hell is going on right now, and how the people doing it can justify it to themselves. If I have my way, even if we can’t get anything to happen in the Justice Department immediately, I want to drag every single ICE agent that’s been wearing a mask in front of a Senate subcommittee, make them take their mask off, and explain to the American people what the hell they’ve been up to.”

As for Mainers who oppose Medicare-for-All, Platner recommends following them around in public, yelling at them with every step they take. “That’s real power,” Platner said.

In an earlier era, Platner’s blustering would automatically disqualify him from serious consideration, especially for the U.S. Senate. But politics are dramatically different today. Platner, Nazi tattoo and all, is campaigning as an everyday working man, a simple oysterman working on the people’s behalf to conquer the affordability crisis.

Early surveying shows that Platner’s message is resonating. Two newly released polls on Maine’s hotly contested 2026 U.S. Senate race returned very different outcomes: one shows Platner beating Mills in the Democratic primary and then besting Collins in a general election matchup. The second poll found that Platner would lose to Collins in a head-to-head race. No surprise, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) endorsed Platner as Maine’s future.

The Republican National Committee never imagined that it would get behind Collins, whom it generously refers to as a moderate. Collins’ Senate voting record is mixed and includes nay on Amy Coney Barrett but yea on Ketanji Brown Jackson, and yes to convict Trump on his second impeachment trial.

Mills? Platner? Collins? The votes cast in the Maine senators’ offices affect Americans in the other 49 states. In Maine, polling means nothing. In 2020, when Collins trailed her Democratic opponent Sara Gideon in every poll for the entire summer, when the votes were counted, Collins won going away. Democrats shouldn’t discount Collins, Maine’s comeback kid.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

End the H-1B—Count the Reasons Why

By Joe Guzzardi

Since President Donald Trump told Fox Network television host Laura Ingraham —and reiterated multiple times—that the United States needed “certain talent,” a reference to H-1B employment visas, thousands of outraged words have been published defending U.S. tech workers.

The America First commentaries rightly scorned Trump for his dismissive opinion of U.S. tech workers’ skills and how the visa displaces thousands of employed Americans and poses an insurmountable roadblock for recent university graduates with science, technology, engineering, and math degrees. To add insult to the painful injury of job displacement, tech employers shamelessly fire existing staff, then cry to Congress that, to stave off financial ruin, they urgently need the annual H-1B lottery, which will yield 65,000 of the world’s “best and brightest.” In truth, the foreign nationals are mostly average-skilled workers from China and India.

While the annual arrival of 65,000 international workers coming to usurp Americans’ white-collar jobs is disgraceful and most directly and dramatically affects tech employees, that represents only a fraction of the harm caused by continuing the practice of welcoming foreign-born workers via a random visa lottery.

The H-1B is a dual intent visa, meaning that the guest worker can either return to his native country or remain in the U.S. after his employment document expires. He thereby gets in line for permanent residency and eventual citizenship. Such misplaced generosity means more pressure on already-bankrupt Medicare and Social Security programs and a further collapse of the failed K-12 public schools.

Birthright citizenship and chain migration make a bad situation worse. Guest workers who start new families or expand existing families before entering permanent residency will still benefit from birthright citizenship, an anchor that makes the child’s parents more difficult to deport when they lose their legally present status.

Chain migration allows the foreign-born petitioners to select America’s future population, regardless of talent or education. Once approved, a legal immigrant can bring his or her nuclear family, consisting of a spouse and minor children. After that, the chain begins. When the original immigrants and his or her spouse become U.S. citizens, they can bring in their parents, adult sons and daughters along with their spouses and children, and their adult siblings, creating a potentially never-ending chain—all possible from one immigrant.

Immigration, mostly through chain migration, is population growth’s main driver. Consider Frisco, Texas, an IT hub that has hired a large H-1B workforce. In 1990, the year Congress passed the Immigration Act, Frisco’s population was 6,100. Fast forward to 2025, and the town’s population soared to 243,300. The Census Bureau projects that by 2029 Frisco will have 275,800 residents. The dramatic population growth has significantly altered the town’s demographic composition. The Frisco Independent School District, for example, has a 65,000 enrollment; 43 percent are Asian, mostly H-1B workers’ children. Again, using 1990 as the benchmark, FISD enrollment that year was 1,500. Today, to accommodate the non-English speakers, FISD offers two sections of English as a Second Language classes. Immigration and, more specifically, the H-1B visas have converted Frisco from a quiet little Texas town into an unrecognizable diverse community that natives neither approved of nor wanted.

No H-1B investigation is complete without a reference to its illegitimate child, the H-4 EAD for spouses. Historically, the H-4 excluded work permission, but in 2015, the Obama administration via executive order authorized spousal employment. Unlike the H-1B holder who is tied to his visa-sponsoring employer, the H-4 EAD holder, predominantly women, can work anywhere. The Supreme Court recently refused to take up the H-4 EAD’s legality, which means that only congressional action or a regulatory change can end the Executive Branch’s ability to issue work authorization to nonimmigrant categories that are not statutorily authorized to work in the U.S.

In summary, all three government branches—Legislative, Judicial, and Executive—have demonstrated indifference to the harm the H-1B has inflicted on U.S. tech workers and sovereign America.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org