Group items tagged

Sheriff Appelhans, 39, is inheriting a troubled department plagued by the kinds of problems that have been documented in sheriff’s offices across the region.

A Colorado native, Sheriff Appelhans carries little of the stiff formality often associated with sheriffs’ offices.

Sheriff Appelhans said he has unilateral authority over hiring decisions at the department and is actively seeking applicants, adding that he intends to recruit more Black, Latino and female officers.

In Wyoming, sheriffs are elected to four-year terms with no limits; many hold office for decades.

“I think what he brings to the sheriff’s office is a calmness: He’s soft-spoken, but it doesn’t mean he’s a pushover,” said Linda Devine, a defense lawyer in Laramie who is a proponent of overhauling criminal justice.

In the meantime, he plans to embark on an aggressive approach to bringing cultural change in the sheriff’s office. He is leading an effort to coordinate police response with resources like shelters, mental health professionals and support groups.

Sheriff Appelhans’s approach is a stark departure for a Wyoming sheriff, a storied, sometimes archaic institution central to the lore of a disappearing American West.

Sheriffs’ offices in Wyoming have a long history of racial bias, advocates say. The issue confronted Sheriff Appelhans early in his tenure: On his second day in office, a Wyoming state representative, Cyrus Western, tweeted a racist gif from the movie “Blazing Saddles” in reference to Sheriff Appelhans’s appointmen

But Cheney has become the No. 1 target of the former president because she had the audacity to vote for his impeachment following his incitement of a riot that led to an armed insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6

In an interview with Punchbowl News on Tuesday – before the fist-bump – Cheney was both pragmatic and optimistic about her political future. She acknowledged that she is likely to face a “challenging primary” following her vote against Trump, but quickly added: “Anybody who wants to get in that race and who wants to do it on the basis of debating me about whether or not President Trump should have been impeached, I’ll have that debate every day of the week.”

“Liz Cheney is polling sooo low in Wyoming, and has sooo little support, even from the Wyoming Republican Party, that she is looking for a way out of her Congressional race,” said Trump in a statement released Tuesday. “Based on all polling, there is no way she can win.” (Sidebar: Yes, he really wrote “sooo,” not once but twice.)

If you don’t think a moment – caught on tape – matters, just ask former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) about his decision to embrace former President Barack Obama during a presidential visit in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.

Anthony Bouchard, a Wyoming state senator who is also running against Cheney, said he's been "flooded" with messages encouraging a primary run.

"It's time to have a change at the top. It's time to have people that are going to start representing the people -- not their own agendas, not their own nonsense, but their constituency," he said. "And since the people of Wyoming are clearly not thrilled w

"I wouldn't be surprised to see a number of them not even run again, depending on how their districts shake out" after redistricting, Walsh said.

It's also too early to tell how willing Trump and his family members will be to insert themselves in intra-party battles -- especially after social media bans limited Trump's ability to reach wide audiences easily -- and whether Trump's ire will be focused narrowly on Republicans he believes wronged him, such as Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who rebuffed Trump's efforts to overturn the state's election result, or if he will cast a wider net. The New York Times reported that Trump is most focused on ousting Kemp, potentially through a primary challenge by former Rep. Doug Collins, and that Cheney is the former President's next focus.

"Each and every one of those 10, when they made that vote, they knew in their heads and in their hearts it was probably a political death sentence. They knew that," said former Rep. Joe Walsh, the conservative Illinois Republican whose 2020 primary against Trump did not gain traction.

th Liz Cheney, let's find someone who can replace her and actually do that job well."

In Washington, the state's Republican Central Committee passed a resolution condemning Trump's impeachment "without question or exception" and expressing disappointment at Reps. Dan Newhouse and Jaime Herrera Beutler, two of the 10 Republicans who voted in favor of impeachment.

"We will do everything in our power as the largest Republican Women's organization in Washington state to recruit and elect a conservative candidate who will represent our values," the group said in the January 13 letter.

Gene Koprowski -- who launched a primary bid against Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of the GOP's most outspoken Trump critics -- named the campaign committee he created on January 14 "Impeach Adam Kinzinger 2022."

"President Trump has fought in our behalf to protect our conservative republican values. It is unbelievable that congressman David Valadao would for the impeachment of President Donald Trump. I will do everything to restore our conservative values as a conservative republican."

"I didn't know that Tom was going to shoot himself in the foot. But he's done that," Richardson said. "To say I'm getting calls would be an understatement."

"But the county that we live in right now -- 71% of the people voted for Donald Trump. And if you're the congressman for this area, you've got to understand, that's not Tom Rice's seat and it's not Ken Richardson's seat. That seat belongs to the people," Richardson said. Those considering primary runs said they have already heard from major Republican donors -- and are convinced that GOP primary voters' anger toward those who voted to impeach Trump will ease before the 2022 primaries.

the economists are saying, “the cure” doesn’t come at a cost at all when factoring in the economic value of the lives saved.

What these academics are doing — and what Trump’s tweet is getting at — is measuring how the extreme efforts to avoid covid-19 deaths compare to the devastating economic fallout.

They do this by putting a price tag on the deaths avoided. It’s something the federal government does all the time

Value of a Statistical Life or VSL — is the amount people are willing to spend to cut risk enough to save one life.

The VSL at most federal agencies, developed over several decades, is about $10 million. If a new regulation is estimated to avoid one death a year, it can cost up to $10 million and still make economic sense.

a cost-benefit analysis using VSL, while far from perfect, would force policymakers to confront the reality of their decisions in a much more precise way. Without it, they are left to gut feelings, educated guesses or political arguments.

“It’s missing from the discussion,” said Linda Thunstrom, an economist at the University of Wyoming, “so instead you have such loud voices on both sides — advocating that all lives should be saved or that, no, we need to open the economy. But there are trade-offs. It’s hard. But we should be talking about them.”

The economist’s answer is to ask people and observe their behavior.”

Economists use public opinion surveys on mortality risk. They look at how much more dangerous jobs pay. They study what people are willing to spend for safety devices, such as bike helmets. The information is then used to calculate VSL.

“Now we’re just trying to figure out how to balance two difficult things — lives lost and incomes lost.”

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget said it wasn’t doing a pandemic cost-benefit analysis, either

the CDC is not doing any cost-benefit analysis of the pandemic’s social distancing measures, agency spokesman Tom Skinner said.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers, through spokeswoman Rachael Slobodien, declined to comment on whether it has looked into the issue.

The Wyoming economists sent a copy of their cost-benefit study to the White House

The study estimated the U.S. economy would shrink less from an uncontrolled pandemic (GDP declines by $6.49 trillion) than a pandemic curtailed by social distancing (GDP declines by $13.7 trillion)

But social distancing would slash the peak infection rate in half, resulting in 1.2 million fewer deaths — leading to a VSL of $12 trillion

So the value of social distancing would work out to a net benefit of $5.16 trillion, the study estimated.

So far, the number of deaths has been lower than the study projected, Thunstrom said, “so social distancing has done more than what we assumed.

The Wyoming study also noted potential costs from the lack of cost-benefit analysis: The public health savings might not be well understood, so the public focuses solely on job losses and declining GDP, potentially eroding voluntary compliance with valuable social distancing measures.

It could be the pandemic’s VSL should be even higher than the traditional government number of $10 million — and thus the efforts to avoid covid-19 even more valuable.

The virus is dreaded, and studies have shown people are willing to pay more to avoid the risk of dying from cancer than an auto acciden

And it’s contagious. VSL doesn’t capture what people would pay to avoid a disease that could kill someone else.

The government’s VSL also doesn’t reflect willingness to avoid injury, such as the strokes or breathing problems associated with covid-19 cases.

The Chicago study examined this point, using a VSL that declines with age — finding that even though about 90 percent of the benefit would go to saving the lives of people at least 50 years old, social distancing still makes economic sense for the nation as a whole.

the most controversial aspect is whether older people should be assigned the same VSL as younger people. The Environmental Protection Agency in 2002 suggested a clean air rule would offer less of a benefit to senior citizens. Some academics agreed with the agency’s reasoning. But when critics decried it as a “senior discount,” it proved politically untenable.

Doris knew nothing about raising children, nor much cared. The witheringly wry, worldly heiress was among the most celebrated women of her day, a six-foot glamour queen hounded by paparazzi, who brushed elbows with every midcentury icon from Jackie Kennedy to Elvis Presley, pronouncing Greta Garbo "boring" and, after dating Errol Flynn, theorizing that bisexual men made the best lovers: "I should know," she declared. "I've done exhausting research on the subject." As a child – and sole inheritor of her father Buck's $100 million fortune – she'd become famous as "the richest little girl in the world." She'd been raised by nannies in a chilly, silent Fifth Avenue mansion, with her parents taking little part in her upbringing; family lore holds that her father, on his deathbed in 1925, told 12-year-old Doris, "Trust no one." Now saddled with her pesky nephew Walker, watching him toss ketchup-covered tampons into her pool, Doris Duke regarded him with pity. He was desperate for love and attention, much like herself as a child. But Doris had her own fabulous life to live, and so she shipped Walker off to boarding school. "We were all too self-centered to be bothered with a problem child," she would later tell her cousin Angier St. George Biddle "Pony" Duke.

His grandmother's will had stipulated that if Walker left no heirs, upon his death his trust would be funneled into the Duke Endowment, a $2.8 billion foundation established by Buck Duke that nourishes, among other institutions, Duke University. The idea repulsed Walker: The very name that had given him such unearned bounty also stood for everything he felt he'd been deprived. "He despised Duke!" says longtime friend Mike Todd. "Duke University, Duke Foundation – everything Duke, he hated."

At school the twins had trouble connecting with classmates, few of whom were allowed over to the Inmans' mansion a second time after gaping at the guns, the explicit art and sometimes an eyeful of Walker, who preferred to be nude. Other kids went to summer camp, but the Inmans went to Abu Dhabi to bid millions at auctions; to Japan, where their father introduced them to friends who were supposedly yakuza; to Fiji, where Dad praised them as they dined on poisonous puffer fish. There were getaways aboard the Devine Decadence, which was docked in New Zealand. One day toward the end of second grade, when their father had yanked them out of school without warning, they told themselves it was for the best.

The past three years have been a struggle for the twins as they've grappled with their past. Before they were able to live with Daisha, they were sent to the Wyoming Behavioral Institute. The twins were suicidal, uncooperative and dangerously underweight. Therapist Jennifer Greenup had never seen such extreme emotional deprivation before. "If even a quarter of what they said happened to them happened, they are severely traumatized children," says Greenup, adding, "Their symptoms are real. Whether it's paranoia, lack of trust or hostility." Eventually the kids were able to move in with Daisha and began bonding, a triumph unto itself. But although they've taken positive steps, Greenup says the scale of their trauma is so great that she can't gauge their progress: "I can't say they're progressing well, because there's nothing to compare it to," she admits.

As for the kids' own plans, Patterson seems to hope for a quiet life. "I hope I don't have to live alone. But I actually don't mind. I'll just sit at Greenfield, fishing by my dad's little tomb, just talking about life," he says. "You can't trust anyone," he adds mournfully, repeating the words he learned from his father, which Walker learned from his aunt Doris, which she learned from her father, Buck Duke.

While officials in Delaware, Wyoming and Nevada talk about their corporate “traditions,” I am unimpressed. Business incorporation fees have accounted for as much as a quarter of Delaware’s general revenues. It’s no surprise that officials in Dover and Wilmington want to protect their state’s status as a corporate registry, but if that means facilitating criminal activity, their stance is a form of willful blindness

The multibillion-dollar plan from ConocoPhillips to drill in part of the National Petroleum Reserve would produce more than 100,000 barrels of oil a day until 2050. It is being challenged by environmental groups who said the Trump administration failed to consider the impact that drilling would have on fragile wildlife and that burning the oil would have on global warming.

Senator Dan Sullivan, Republican of Alaska, said in an interview that he, Ms. Murkowski and Representative Don Young of Alaska had all met with Ms. Haaland “ad nauseam” about Alaska issues, including the Willow project. Mr. Sullivan said he had repeatedly made the case that Willow’s projected 2,000 jobs and $1.2 billion in revenues should be seen as part of the Biden administration’s focus on environmental equity, as it would directly benefit local and Alaska Native communities in the North Slope.

The decision on the Willow project was made as the Biden administration is trying to win Republican support for its infrastructure package and other policies, said Gerald Torres, a professor of law and environmental justice at Yale University. “He is going to need Murkowski’s vote for some things,” he said. “These are political calculations.”

Earlier this month, lawyers for the Biden administration also opposed in court shutting down the Dakota Access pipeline, which is carrying about 550,000 barrels of oil daily from North Dakota to Illinois. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe and other activists have fought it for more than five years, contending the pipeline threatens water supplies and sacred sites.

A few days later, the Biden administration defended 440 oil and gas leases issued by the Trump administration on federal land in Wyoming that is also the critical habitat of the sage grouse, mule deer and pronghorn. Environmentalists successfully sued the government to stop the leases, arguing that they violated a 2015 agreement that protected that land. But in federal appeals court, the Biden administration defended the decision to allow oil and gas drilling.

Environmental activists, who campaigned to elect Mr. Biden, said this week that they were “baffled” and “disappointed” by the decisions but avoided criticizing the president.

Still, some said they were running out of patience with the distance between Mr. Biden’s climate policies and his actions at a time when scientists say countries need to quickly and sharply cut fossil fuel emissions or risk irreversible damage to the planet.

Still, some said they were running out of patience with the distance between Mr. Biden’s climate policies and his actions at a time when scientists say countries need to quickly and sharply cut fossil fuel emissions or risk irreversible damage to the planet.

This month the world’s leading energy agency warned that governments around the globe must stop approving fossil fuel projects now if they want to keep the increase in average global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels. That’s the threshold beyond which scientists say the Earth will experience irreversible damage.

'll say to anybody that thinks my vote was for politics, they don't know me. And I would say now they don't know politics because, you know, you have to get through a primary,"

"There is no doubt in my mind that the President of the United States broke his oath of office and incited this insurrection. He used his position in the Executive to attack the Legislative."

Concerns over his future within the party aren't without merit. Several House Republicans have hammered Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the party's third-ranking House leader, calling for her to step down from her leadership position over her vote to impeach Trump. She's also facing a primary challenge from a prominent conservative state legislator.

"I'm more passionate about this country than I think I was January 5, even," he continued. "I know my passion is the restoration of the Republican Party. I know I may go down fighting like that."

"I think this is one of those votes that that transcends any kind of political implication of the moment," Kinzinger said at the time. "This is one of those that you're going to look back on when you're 80 and this will be the one you talk about."

Kinzinger also said at the time that he didn't feel pressure from the party but that his constituents were all over the place

Cheney defended her vote to impeach. "I won't apologize for the vote," she told the House Republican conference, a source with knowledge of the process told CNN.

Cheney told CNN on Wednesday evening that she does not regret her impeachment vote. "Absolutely not," she said when asked.

House Republicans are at a major crossroads as tensions simmer over Cheney and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and the conference faces pressure to chart a path forward in the aftermath of the Trump presidency.

Cheney also fielded several contentious questions and comments from Trump loyalists, a person in the room said, including Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who bluntly said she "aided and comforted the enemy."

Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who had also voted in favor of impeachment, voiced criticism of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, during the meeting.

Cheney issued a scathing statement ahead of the House impeachment vote condemning Trump's conduct, saying that he "summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,"

She also told members that she wanted a vote to be called on her leadership status, which was interpreted by some in the room as an act of confidence in her standing with a broader cross-section of Republicans, the majority of which did not air their grievances toward her.

Shortly before the meeting began, McCarthy released a statement, in which he condemned Greene's comments, but did not include any new repercussions for Greene and spent more time criticizing Democrats than the Georgia congresswoman's past comments that have created the backlash.

"The House should do what the House chooses to do," freshman Sen. Cynthia Lummis told reporters, refusing to offer any support to fellow Wyoming Republican Cheney.

John Barrasso, the other Wyoming GOP senator, backs Cheney.

Almost all of the unbound delegates from North Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Minnesota, and Louisiana seem unlikely to back Trump

But as Scott Rasmussen points out in this video, Indiana and California still appear to be the two most important states still left to vote in the GOP race.

The findings lend support to an emerging hypothesis that the Clovis technology, named for the town in New Mexico where the first specimens were discovered, actually arose in what is now the Southeastern United States and moved west to the Plains and the Southwest. The Western Stemmed technology began, perhaps earlier, in the West. Most artifacts of that kind have been found on the West Coast and in Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. “We seem to have two different traditions coexisting in the United States that did not blend for a period of hundreds of years,” Dr. Jenkins said.

Coleman and his team are completing a major revision of the SAT to be unveiled in January 2014 and launched in the spring of 2015. He wants the test to “propel” students toward deeper learning of real things

That means fewer abstruse vocabulary words (like “abstruse”) and essays that are based on documents so human graders can evaluate the correctness of their writers’ arguments, not just their style.

The U.S. rode to economic supremacy with the world’s highest share of young college grads, but now its percentage of graduates at the typical age of graduation is behind those of Australia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Sweden, and the U.K., the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says.

The message: Real life is messy. You’re not given five answers to choose from. And America shouldn’t depend on something resembling an IQ test to rake geniuses from the rubbish.

The SAT and its rival, the ACT, are part of the problem. Designed to ferret out hidden talent, the tests have become, for some students at least, barriers to higher education. Scores are highly correlated with family income; Harvard law professor Lani Guinier calls the SAT a “wealth test.”

Since the earliest days of the republic, there have been two schools of thought about the merits of sorting students, as recounted in Nicholas Lemann’s 1999 book The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy. Thomas Jefferson, who believed in a “natural aristocracy,” said that in Virginia all w

New Englander Henry Adams was less disdainful of the rubbish. He said Jefferson’s natural aristocracy was no better than regular old aristocracy: “I would trust one as soon as the other with unlimited power.”

The SAT was launched in 1926 as a variant of an intelligence test used in World War I to place soldiers and sailors. Harvard adopted it in 1934.

The University of California long resisted using standardized tests but in 1968—swamped by more qualified applications than it could handle—began requiring applicants to submit SAT scores as a way to screen out lower achievers.

Admissions officers at about 850 four-year colleges now make standardized tests optional for some or all of their applicants

To be less cynical, the tests do stigmatize low scorers and distract people “from what they really need to do, which is mastering academic subjects in their high school,” says Wake Forest University sociologist Joseph Soares, whose school went SAT-optional in 2008.

Bloomberg has acknowledged previously that high taxes have driven few of his fellow billionaires from New York. The study suggests that wealthier New York City residents, like other movers, weigh job opportunities, housing and family considerations when deciding whether to move.“I can only tell you, among my friends, I’ve never heard one person say, ‘I’m going to move out of the city because of the taxes,’ ” he said.

Never ones to let a serious crisis go to waste, leading Republicans seized the ensuing constitutional crisis as an opportunity to remake the nation’s political economy and geography. In the summer of 1862, as Lincoln mulled over the Emancipation Proclamation’s details, officials in his administration created the Department of Agriculture, while Congress passed the Morrill Land Grant Act, the Pacific Railroad Act and the Homestead Act.

s a result, federal authorities could offer citizens a deal: Enlist to fight for Lincoln and liberty, and receive, as fair recompense for their patriotic sacrifices, higher education and Western land connected by rail to markets. It seemed possible that liberty and empire might advance in lock step.

the project of continental expansion fostered sectional reconciliation. Northerners and Southerners agreed on little at the time except that the Army should pacify Western tribes. Even as they fought over the proper role for the federal government, the rights of the states, and the prerogatives of citizenship, many Americans found rare common ground on the subject of Manifest Destiny.

many American soldiers, whether they had fought for the Union or the Confederacy, redeployed to the frontier. They became shock troops of empire. The federal project of demilitarization, paradoxically, accelerated the conquest and colonization of the West.

The Indian wars of the Reconstruction era devastated not just Native American nations but also the United States.

For a moment, it seemed that the federal government could accomplish great things. But in the West, Native Americans would not simply vanish

Red Cloud’s War, then, undermined a utopian moment and blurred the Republican Party’s vision for expansion

at least the Grant administration had a plan. After he took office in 1869, President Grant promised that he would pursue a “peace policy” to put an end to violence in the West, opening the region to settlers. By feeding rather than fighting Indians, federal authorities would avoid further bloodshed with the nation’s indigenous peoples. The process of civilizing and acculturating Native nations into the United States could begin.

President Grant’s Peace Policy perished in the Modoc War. The horror of that conflict, and the Indian wars more broadly, coupled with an endless array of political scandals and violence in the states of the former Confederacy – including the brutal murder, on Easter Sunday 1873 in Colfax, La., of at least 60 African-Americans – diminished support for the Grant administration’s initiatives in the South and the West.

One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, collective memory casts that conflict as a war of liberation, entirely distinct from the Indian wars.

though Reconstruction is typically recalled in the popular imagination as both more convoluted and contested – whether thwarted by intransigent Southerners, doomed to fail by incompetent and overweening federal officials, or perhaps some combination of the two – it was well intended nevertheless, an effort to make good on the nation’s commitment to freedom and equality.

But this is only part of the story. The Civil War emerged out of struggles between the North and South over how best to settle the West – struggles, in short, over who would shape an emerging American empire. Reconstruction in the West then devolved into a series of conflicts with Native Americans

so, while the Civil War and its aftermath boasted moments of redemption and days of jubilee, the era also featured episodes of subjugation and dispossession, patterns that would repeat themselves in the coming years.

When Chief Joseph surrendered, the United States secured its empire in the West. The Indian wars were over, but an era of American imperialism was just beginning.

the main lesson of the analysis is a sobering one. The rise of inequality over the last four decades has created two very different Americas, and life is a lot harder in one of them.

Income has stagnated in working-class communities, which helps explain why “selling avon” and “social security checks” correlate with the hardest places from our index. Inequality in health and life expectancy has grown over the same time. And searches on diabetes, lupus, blood pressure, 1,500-calorie diets and “ssi disability” – a reference to the federal benefits program for workers with health problems – also make the list. Guns, meanwhile, are in part a cultural preference, but they are also a health risk.

In the places on the other end of the spectrum, the picture is much brighter. People have disposable income to buy new technology and take faraway vacations. Their time spent prostrate on a foam roller or out running with the baby in a jogging stroller is more than enough to make up the occasional cupcake. And of course they are intent on passing down their way of life to the next generation, via Baby Bjorns and early access to technology.

While there were similarities between the lynchings of blacks and Mexicans, there were also clear differences. One was that local authorities and deputized citizens played particularly conspicuous roles in mob violence against Mexicans.

Between 1915 and 1918, vigilantes, local law officers and Texas Rangers executed, without due process, unknown thousands of Mexicans for their alleged role in a revolutionary uprising known as the Plan de San Diego.

White fears of Mexican revolutionary violence exploded in July and August 1915, after Mexican raiders committed a series of assaults on the economic infrastructure of the Lower Rio Grande Valley in resistance to white dominance. The raids unleashed a bloody wave of retaliatory action amid a climate of intense paranoia.

While there are certainly instances in the history of the American South where law officers colluded in mob action, the level of engagement by local and state authorities in the reaction to the Plan de San Diego was remarkable

Historians have often ascribed to the South a distinctiveness that has set it apart from the rest of the United States. In so doing, they have created the impression of a peculiarly benighted region plagued by unparalleled levels of racial violence. The story of mob violence against Mexicans in the Southwest compels us to rethink the history of lynching

Carrying concealed weapons on college campuses is now banned in 41 states by law or university policy.

In Colorado, North Dakota and Wyoming, legislators are working to allow adults to carry firearms in schools, starting in kindergarten.

As the debate goes forward, legislators would be wise to resort to some facts and consider a new study, based on federal data, by the Violence Policy Center. It strongly suggests that states with weak gun-safety laws and high rates of gun ownership lead the nation in gun deaths.

One other small thing to note: More than a fifth of Americans, according to this survey, now speak a language other than English at home. In Nevada and Florida, nearly a third of residents don’t speak English at home.

very few previous waves of immigrants have been so homogeneous for as long as the Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico and Central America currently are; their numbers are higher than any other previous wave; and few have been so thoroughly dispersed.

the sheer scale of the cultural transformation of the last couple of decades — the CDC predicts that close to a quarter of Americans will be Hispanic by 2035 — is undeniable.

If you ignore that, or insist that worrying about too fast a pace of cultural change is inherently racist, it’s relatively easy to insist that there is no immigration crisis

if you believe that nations require some continuity and cultural unity to cohere and endure, then the picture is somewhat different. There is a reason this issue has become so prominent in this country. And it isn’t entirely bigotry.

I spoke with Mark Squillace, a law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and former assistant to Bruce Babbitt, the interior secretary under President Bill Clinton, about the unprecedented territory the Trump administration has entered into—and the history behind a significant presidential power. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.