See also, by Peter Brimelow: A Long Farewell To Donald Trump, Immigration Patriot. And Thanks.

If the 2024 GOP presidential contest comes down to Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis, then immigration patriots do face a tough choice, particularly with Trump’s renewed red-meat pledge to end Birthright Citizenship. DeSantis looks good on paper. But VDARE.com’s respected Washington Watcher II suspects he’ll duck into the bushes when the Treason Lobby wages war over border security in particular and immigration in general. My response: DeSantis is less likely to betray us than Trump—as his Administration’s largely failed immigration efforts showed.

During that time, I wrote repeatedly about Trump’s flip-flops and general incoherence on immigration. One day a policy would be announced and then the next day modified or withdrawn at the slightest criticism. At first, I blamed former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. But add the foolish appointments to most positions in the Department of Homeland Security, and Trump’s tolerating deliberate sabotage by his own officials, big and small. Example: He was on both sides of the H1-B visa issue during his campaign, to say nothing of the contretemps among advisers when he was president [Donald Trump flip-flops, then flips and flops more on H-1B visas, by Michele Ye Hee Lee, Washington Post, March 21, 2016].

Also questionable: Trump’s competence. Candidate Trump famously said he wanted a “Deportation Force” but apparently didn’t know that the country has a deportation force that is supposed to identify, arrest and deport illegal aliens. It’s called Immigration and Customs Enforcement [Donald Trump’s ‘Deportation Force,’ by Lawrence Downes, New York Times, November 11, 2015].

I believe DeSantis knows about it and will use it.

As to his immigration policies, POTUS Trump often

Earlier (February 2021) by Steve Sailer: BLM Rakes In $90 Million In 2020

That the tiny VDARE Foundation is being harassed (without being charged) by New York Attorney General Letitia James is just another example of America’s increasingly notorious two-tiered justice system, e.g., America Has a Two-Tiered Justice System and the FBI Just Proved It, by Margot Cleveland, Daily Signal, August 10, 2022. Contrast it with the kid-glove treatment of the Ruling Class’s favorite cause: the St. George Floyd beneficiary organization Black Lives Matter.

On May 23, 2023, in a piece of real journalism, Andrew Kerr of the Washington Free Beacon permanently destroyed his chances of winning a Pulitzer Prize by posting Black Lives Matter Hemorrhaged Cash in 2022, Tax Documents Show.

Black Lives Matter bled cash and suffered blistering investment losses in 2022, according to a copy of its tax return.

The group ran an $8.5 million deficit and saw the value of its investment accounts plummet by nearly $10 million.

Via @AndrewKerrNC https://t.co/HShQ2MfLBM

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) May 23, 2023

Kerr, clearly a man to be watched, had had the enterprise to catch the filing of the Black Lives Matters Foundation Federal 990 statement [PDF.]

Subsequent articles on this matter broke down into two types:

• The Regime Media, with predictable unanimity, took a “Nothing To See Here” line as exemplified in AP’s story New Black Lives Matter Tax Documents Show Foundation Is Tightening Its Belt, Has $30M in Assets, May 26, 2023.
• Dissident Media focused on BLM’s dramatic financial decline: Black Lives Matter Risks Going Bankrupt, by Khaleda Rahman, Newsweek, May 24, 2023. (Newsweek is not your father’s Newsweek!)

Black Lives Matter risks going bankrupt after running an $8.5 million deficit last year, financial disclosures indicate.

Donations amounted to about $9.3 million for the period between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022, while net assets stood at about $30 million. By comparison, for the period between July 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021, the organization reported donations of nearly $77 million, while net assets amounted to $42 million, suggesting a sizeable drop in both categories.

Subsequently the Regime Media has (of course) lost interest in the story. But the Dissident Media have begun to consider the more important question: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MONEY?

Of these stories, the New York Post distinguished itself by powerful graphics

Donald Trump made Birthright Citizenship a top issue in the 2024 presidential campaign this week, and indeed might have made it the issue. His promise to eliminate it invited a spasm of hysteria on Twitter and in the leftist Main Stream Media. But the noise didn’t matter. What mattered was Trump’s injecting this critical issue back into the political discourse. All by itself, ending Birthright Citizenship would checkmate the Democrats’ drive to Elect A New People through mass illegal immigration: babies born to illegals would not be American citizens and would hence be ineligible to vote. GOP elected officials have ignored this for far too long, even as millions of illegal aliens have invaded the country and threatened to permanently Replace the Historic American Nation. Now, Republicans must take a stand, and the ones who want to be the nominee will share Trump’s view.

Typically, the debate over Birthright Citizenship faded from public view when Trump left office. He had campaigned on eliminating it in 2016 and brought up scrapping it by Executive Order right before the 2018 midterms, reportedly at the suggestion of former White House staffer Michael Anton. Staffers apparently scuttled the idea, claiming Trump didn’t have the legal authority to issue the order. The idea was revived in Trump’s last days in office, but nothing came of it. Calling for the end of Birthright Citizenship was commendable, but his failure to issue the order or push for legislation (or even a Constitutional Amendment, a 1996 GOP platform plank notoriously Disavowed by candidate Bob Dole) can’t be overlooked. It was one of his most significant failures [Dole Rejects a Party Plank, by Frank Bruni, NYT, August 24, 1996].

But at least Trump has made Birthright Citizenship an issue again. Almost no Republican has even mentioned it since

Puzzling for Western Civ.     May was a deeply unproductive month. I didn’t travel anywhere, didn’t get much reading done, fell behind on home repairs. What did I do? A jigsaw puzzle.

Actually I need the present continuous tense there: I’m still doing the durn thing.

It’s the second of two puzzles that were gifted to me at Christmas by a friend. The first was a mere 1,000-piecer; I knocked it off between breakfast and lunch one morning. (Wel …)

This second one is more of a challenge: 3,000 pieces and artfully difficult. ”Skill level: Intermediate” says the Amazon page. I dunno; ceteris paribus it should be only one-third as difficult as the 9,000-piecers I’ve done, but it seems harder than that, especially when Mimi’s on the prowl.

Gotta see it through, though. This puzzle is made in Turkey. It’s the end of May as I write, and some of us haven’t forgotten Terrible Tuesday. And then, Gallipoli. There are old scores to be settled here.

[Permalink]

The seasons of AI.     In a segment on Artificial Intelligence in my Diary last month I mentioned an article I wrote for a student magazine back in my college years, the mid-1960s.

I can’t remember the subject of that article. With one exception, I remember nothing of what I wrote. I seriously doubt there was anything much worth remembering. I was introverted, unworldly, and not terrifically smart—certainly no Frank Ramsey.

The one tiny thing I can remember is that I predicted AI+, the form of intelligence that doesn’t just mimic the human variety but goes beyond it to superintelligence. I wrote something like: ”In the near future, perhaps before the end of this century, we shall be sharing our planet with beings more intelligent than ourselves.”

I went on to lament that I had lost the article long since, and that the only sign it might have survived the decades was a suggestive reference in the online catalog of Harvard Divinity School Library, a reference that did not get me

Text adapted from VDARE.com video below—headline adapted from Dead White Male William Shakespeare’s King Lear ACT III, SCENE IV

VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow: VDARE.com is facing an absolutely mortal threat—and we need your help to stave it off. We’ve been attacked by a black Soros prosecutor—Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York State—and she’s trying to beat us to death with endless subpoenas for documentation without actually making any allegation of wrongdoing that we can refute.

How I got myself in this mess?  Obviously, I’m from England originally, so I’m an immigrant doing a dirty job that Americans won’t do—namely write about the post-1965 immigration disaster. I was a long-time financial journalist in New York, and I worked for Fortune and Forbes and Barron’s and at one point, incredibly, for the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page. But in 1992 I wrote a cover story called ”Time to Rethink Immigration” for National Review, which is sometimes credited with restarting the modern immigration debate. I turned that into a 1995 book called Alien Nation, which was kind of a cult hit. However, in 1997 Bill Buckley was prevailed upon by the donors and the Congressional Republican Party to purge immigration patriots from National Review. Fortunately for me, the internet came along, and we were able to launch VDARE.co, on Christmas Eve of 1999. And we’ve been at it ever since.

VDARE.com Publisher Lydia Brimelow: The role of VDARE.com in this environment is to inform the fight to keep America American. And what we mean by that is constantly, every day, posting multiple blogs and articles and videos that are aimed at the general public, but also at people who are in politics, or in a position of influence, to understand what is at stake in losing America to mass immigration, both legal and illegal. That it’s a serious risk that, we’re on the verge of having that happen and what a loss it would be. To lose VDARE.com would be to lose the voice of the Historic American Nation.

Peter: The lawyers say that “the process is the punishment.” What has happened here is that New York State Attorney General James launched a massive subpoena attack on us. There are things that she’s asking for that are completely irrelevant to any conceivable oversight. They’re just inflicting as much punishment on us as possible.

It’s quite obvious what Letitia James’ motives are. As in the Trump case, it’s nakedly political. And as with the NRA: she ran for Attorney General saying that she was going to prosecute Trump and the NRA. even though at that point she had no grounds for doing so. She had to dive into the documents and do thousands of pages of discovery, just like she’s doing with us, to try and find an excuse to prosecute him. It’s just a raw exercise of Totalitarian power.

Lydia: VDARE.com has not been accused of anything. Our lawyers have repeatedly, over and over, asked what it is they’re looking for, what it is that they’re concerned about, what it is that they’re investigating. And their response is: as the Charities Bureau of the State of New York, we have broad authority to investigate you for whatever we want.

 At one point, they implied that there was some problem with the way that we did the paperwork on the purchase of this Castle venue, where we hope to have conferences and meetings. So our lawyers preemptively said: ”Okay, we’re going to turn over that production first. We’re going to turn over all the paperwork that has to do with that.”

But they never acknowledged that we turned over