Israeli Embassy Staffers Killed

Plus: Trump bill passes the House, Danish father of five detained in ICE custody in Louisiana, and more…

“This is the direct result of toxic antisemitic incitement against Israel and Jews around the world that has been going on since the Oct. 7 massacre,” said Gideon Saar, Israel’s foreign minister, in a press conference earlier today.

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” passes the House: “The Republican-led House passed President [Donald] Trump’s sprawling tax-and-spending bill early Thursday, after party leaders made a series of last-minute changes that united their warring wings,” reports The Wall Street Journal. It passed narrowly, 215–214, with one voting present, and now faces the Senate.

This bill will extend the 2017 tax cuts that were passed during the first Trump administration. But it doesn’t do enough to cut back deficit spending, argued Reps. Warren Davidson (R–Ohio) and Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), the only two GOPers who voted against it.

The old $30,000 cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions will be raised to $40,000 (a bit of a concession to Republican representatives and constituents from New York and New Jersey). Border states will get big chunks of change to offset extra immigration enforcement costs under the Biden administration (or so the framing goes). There’s some reduced Medicaid and food stamp spending, cutting federal funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by $267 billion over the next decade. The child tax credit will be expanded.

Real threat to the community over here: Kasper Eriksen, a Danish citizen, works as a welding foreman. He has four children with his wife, Savannah, with a fifth due in August.

Ten years ago, before having all their other kids, Kasper and Savannah suffered the loss of a stillbirth; in the days that followed, a distracted and grieving Kasper failed to fill out Form I-751 (a “Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence”) when the deadline passed in 2015. In the years since, immigration officers who helped him along his path to naturalization never told him that form was missing or could present problems, according to reporting by the Mississippi Free Press.

But his failure to file Form I-751 meant that, upon sitting down for his last immigration meeting before becoming a citizen last month, immigration authorities had—unbeknownst to him—issued a removal order; he’s now being held in Louisiana’s LaSalle Detention Center. It’s been over a month.

It’s not clear why immigration authorities who were managing his case didn’t simply alert him to the fact that the form needed to be filled out. It’s not clear why a removal order was issued instead of just allowing him to rectify the mistake. And it’s not clear how public safety is served by having this man locked up.

Eriksen should be precisely the type of immigrant that even the most die-hard MAGA types can get excited about. He’s gainfully employed (and his boss intends to pass the welding business down to him). He speaks English. He has never been charged with a crime. He has assimilated into an American community; he does not live in an ethnic enclave surrounded by only his own countrymen. His wife homeschools. They are practicing Christians (with “an army of prayer warriors fighting” on Eriksen’s behalf). They own land and pay taxes. They’re clearly helping the birth rate, and then some. His Facebook page is full of “I don’t care if you’ve had the vaccine” and “Vaccines optional.” He appears to have tried his absolute best to do everything the right way—and it still wasn’t good enough.

The common comeback is that, when you’re doing a big immigration sweep, of course, innocent or sympathetic people are going to get caught in the mix; you can’t have an error rate of zero. But at what point is the error rate too damn high? At what point are the agencies in charge actively refusing to correct their mistakes or show leniency because of guidance issued from on high that incentivizes maximum cruelty?

For a long time in both the English legal tradition and the American one, William Blackstone’s ratio has been a north star: “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer,” said the 18th-century jurist. Benjamin Franklin used 100, and Maimonides, who previewed this concept in the 12th century, used 1,000, but the sentiment holds: Our legal system ought to really, really care about not wrongly convicting or punishing the innocent. Under today’s immigration regime, it sure looks like that longstanding value has been thrown out.

New York has outdone itself with a rent control system so dysfunctional it manages to achieve the worst of all worlds. Not only does it suffer from the usual problems of reducing the supply of housing and dulling incentives for maintenance, but it has transformed over time from a safety net into a hereditary entitlement. Thanks to succession rights, what was meant to help the poor now functions as a kind of family heirloom—a subsidized apartment passed down like grandma’s china set.”

QUICK HITS

• A very good point:

• This article—about wearables like the Oura Ring that allows you to track your body temperature, heart rate, steps, and more—seems to be fixated on how these metrics exacerbate people’s anxiety. That seems like…a personal problem, not an issue really related to the technology. (I have one, and it helps me measure how much sleep I get, and track my workouts. Highly useful and motivating.)
• A look at how different large retailers are trying to handle the ever-changing tariff policies and make plans for the future, courtesy of Axios.
• God rest their souls, but also, seems like gerontocracy is a problem.

Associate Editor, Reason

Want to support this newsletter and my work? You can:

Contribute to Reason. This newsletter (and everything Reason produces) relies on the support of readers like you. Contributions help us spread commentary like this to more people.

Forward this newsletter. Know of someone who needs to read it? They can sign up for free at this link.