Commitment Issues

Plus: Brooklyn communists, Shenzhen Costco, Chernobyl mythbusting, and more…

LIZ WOLFE

Biden still won the Democratic primary, and Donald Trump still beat former South Carolina Governor (and drop-out refusenik) Nikki Haley in the Republican one, as was to be expected. But the uncommitted results show that more people are choosing protest votes than in the last few races, perhaps reacting to historically unpopular candidates (“Biden vs. Trump: The 2024 race a historic number of Americans don’t want,” declares a recent CNN headline.)

Of course, in Michigan, there are other issues at play, too. With a massive Muslim-American population (more than 300,000 total), the uncommitted votes can also be read as a repudiation of Biden’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas following the massacre on October 7. In fact, there was a massive campaign—supported by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D–Mich.)—to mobilize Democrats to cast protest votes against Biden for his handling of the war in Gaza. (Other groups, like associations of Armenians pissed off by the administration’s support for Azerbaijan, also supported the effort.)

Amusingly, Biden chose not to acknowledge the uncommitteds in a statement he released following the Michigan win. If you simply pretend they aren’t there, maybe they’ll go away!

Speaking of ignoring major political issues: New polling from Gallup indicates that immigration is now top of mind for a majority of people when assessing who they want to vote for in 2024. It’s the “first time immigration has been the single most important problem since 2019,” writes Gallup’s Jeffrey M. Jones. And it’s changed rather quickly, too: “Significantly more Americans name immigration as the most important problem facing the U.S. (28%) than did a month ago (20%).”

Currently, the U.S. is dealing with an immigration court backlog of 3 million cases, more than 1 million of whom have filed for asylum already. “Only about 3 percent of the people who have submitted green card applications will receive permanent status in the United States in fiscal year (FY) 2024,” per a Cato report from earlier this month. “The U.S. Border Patrol had nearly 250,000 encounters with migrants crossing into the United States from Mexico in December 2023, according to government statistics,” reports the Pew Research Center, calling December 2023 the “highest monthly total on record, easily eclipsing the previous peak of about 224,000 encounters in May 2022.” The situation has not abated so far in the first two months of 2024.

The southern border is facing extraordinarily high crossing volumes coupled with total inefficiency at processing claims quickly while piling red tape on these migrants that disallows them from seeking gainful employment once here. And we wonder why places like New York—a fertile receiving ground for these migrants due to a “right-to-shelter” mandate put in place in the ’80s, which was supposed to guarantee overnight shelter to all who sought it but has in fact done nothing of the sort—is souring on its obligation and seeking to overturn it.

The system can only take so much. This new polling data lends credence to the idea that voters across the country are increasingly frustrated by the status quo, in which taxpayers in some places are denied services they were promised while migrants suffer on the streets or in ill-equipped shelters, with no clear path forward.

Scenes from New York:

QUICK HITS

• Tracking the “defund the police” backlash:

• “Germany, Britain and other European countries said on Tuesday they had no plans to send ground troops to Ukraine, after France hinted at the possibility, and the Kremlin warned that any such move would inevitably lead to conflict between Russia and NATO,” reports Reuters.
• “A homeless man entered the girls locker room at San Francisco’s Lowell High School and made a bed in a crawl space before his snoring alerted members of the girls softball team Saturday, according to students who encountered the scene,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle. “District spokesperson Laura Dudnick acknowledged in a statement Monday that an unhoused person was sleeping in the locker room and there was no sign of forced entry. The intruder was not arrested or cited, police said, adding ‘the investigation determined that no criminal action was committed or attempted,’ and that ‘elements of the crime (trespassing) were not met to develop probable cause for an arrest,’ said officer Paulina Henderson in an email.” I wonder what type of break-in would rise to the level of an arrest in San Francisco, if ones involving minor children don’t.
• Horrifying massacre of Catholics in Burkina Faso over the weekend, possibly by Islamist militants.
• A new Costco just opened up in Shenzhen, China, and Hongkongers are flocking to the mainland to partake in the joys of American big-box retail. Warms the heart of this capitalist!
• “Federal authorities have launched a wide-ranging investigation of the nonprofit organizations that collect organs for transplant in the United States, according to six people familiar with the inquiry, which seeks to determine whether any of the groups have been defrauding the government,” reports The Washington Post. 
• Obvious/important truths from Tim Urban:

• Chernobyl mythbusting:

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