Always remember...

 Follow the money:

The money that individuals working abroad send to their families in Mexico fell for a third month this year.

And some fear further, possibly catastrophic declines in this vital source of income for the Mexican economy if the U.S. Senate approves the 3.5 percent tax on remittances the House green-lit in its version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Bank of Mexico (Banxico) data released this week shows Mexican families received $4.76 billion in wire transfers, checks, money orders and cash from abroad in April. That’s more than a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar decline from the $5.14 billion received in March, Banxico reports.

It also represents a 12.1 percent year-over-year decline – the biggest dip since September 2012. Mexico last year received $64.7 billion in remittances representing 4 percent of its gross domestic product.

Yeah, you'd fight too if that kinda money was involved. What you really wonder is what the Donks are getting out of the deal. Everyone assumes it's votes and political power because of the way the Census counts people, but I wonder.

De minimis

My portside social media posse is deliriously happy because the 9th Circuit backstopped one its judges on Trump's executive order. I don't think it will matter very much. Trump has multiple options:

• He can let the parallel case in Boston work its way through and the matter will need to be adjudicated at the Supreme Court, where he will have an excellent chance to prevail; or
• He can alter the order slightly and ram it home again; or
• He can change course.

He won't take the latter approach, but either of the first two will work. As John Hinderaker points out, the relevant statute makes it clear that Trump has the power to take action:

Remarkably, the Ninth Circuit decision fails ever to mention the relevant portion of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. §1182(f), which provides:

(f) Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

That's about as categorical as it gets. Unless the plaintiffs in this case are prepared to argue that the Immgration and Nationality Act is unconstitutional, which they have not, Trump will eventually prevail. I'm betting Trump will pick the second option.

I don't know. Really, I don't.

One of the advantages of being an unpaid pundit is being able to say "I don't know" when confronted with a question. And when it comes to the policy changes President Trump announced recently concerning entering the country, "I don't know" is the proper answer.

One of the maps that I've seen is quite tendentious:

Bidness

The implication is that Trump only bans people from countries where his organization doesn't do business. Lemme ask you a question -- if you were a businessman, would you be investing in any of those countries? Lemme ask you another question -- many of Trump's overseas business holdings are resorts and vacation properties. Are you, or anyone you know, planning to take a holiday in Sudan or Yemen? Thought so. Are there tourist attractions worth seeing in Egypt? I can think of a few. It's possible there are some in Yemen, or Libya, but can you name any without consulting Google? Here's a hint -- businesses do not invest in places where they aren't likely to make money. I have to assume the Khartoum Visitor's Bureau isn't a very good gig these days, although if you'd like to go, here are the details.

So does a ban on people entering the country from Yemen make sense? I don't know. How about Iraq? Depends on who it is. Same thing would go for most of these countries, which share one characteristic -- they are failed states. The exception is Iran, which has been sponsoring terrorists for nearly 40 years.

We need to have a conversation about these things, but shrieking at the airport isn't a conversation. I'd really like to understand the benefits of the anti-Trump position, along with how we would adequately serve additional refugee populations when the countries surrounding these states won't take the refugees, either. Help us understand the right approach. Or just keep shouting hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go. That'll be easy enough to ignore.

So now you'd better stop, and rebuild all your ruins

The Donald gave his big immigration speech yesterday. Read the transcript here. A few thoughts:

• The wall isn't going to be built. It just won't be. Let it go.
• He's planning to hire a lot of federal employees to make his policy work. Oh, goody.
• Most of the other proposals make sense.

The best thing you can do is read the transcript. Judge for yourself if you think what he's proposing will work. But do think about the number of federal employees he wants to hire.

Keeping up appearances

It turns out that some of Germany's newest residents have some odd ideas about deportment around women, but that's not the problem, apparently. The problem is the reaction:

Ralf Jaeger, interior minister for North Rhine-Westphalia, said police had to “adjust” to the fact that groups of men had attacked women en masse.[ . . . ]

Mr Jaeger also warned that anti-immigrant groups were trying to use the attacks to stir up hatred against refugees.

“What happens on the right-wing platforms and in chatrooms is at least as awful as the acts of those assaulting the women,” he said. “This is poisoning the climate of our society.”

The invaluable Walter Russell Mead makes the salient observation:

So in the wake of a high-profile, mass attack on women by refugees, an independent Mayor, a SPD regional minister, and a CDU Chancellor have all come out in ways that seem to be at least as concerned—at least—with protecting liberal pieties as addressing popular concerns. It’s the backlash, not the actual attacks, that seems to most worry some of these centrist politicians.

And this is precisely the recipe for getting people to look to Orban-style populism. After all, if even terrorist attacks such as Paris and incidents against women, committed on a large scale, in Cologne cannot get the centrists to focus on popular concerns about immigration, a German voter might wonder, what ever will? Whereas the populists, whatever else might be said about them, do. Which means the choice may indeed come down to Orbanism or Merkelism. And in this environment, that’s not one the elites can necessarily count on winning.

Orban, in case you don't know, is Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, who has responded to the wave of migrants by building walls on his border. From what I know of Orban, he's a bad dude. I'm certain Angela Merkel is much nicer.

I'm wary of populists of all stripes, because they tend to be demagogues. I fully expect populists to continue to rise, however, because the elites don't believe in much other than themselves.

Fantastic

You may have heard about the case of Francisco Sanchez, who apparently shot and killed a woman at random in San Francisco last week. Sanchez was in the country illegally (or was "undocumented," if you prefer). Apparently the weapon he used had an, ahem, interesting provenance:

Authorities are investigating whether a gun associated with a Bureau of Land Management employee was used in the fatal shooting of a young woman on a tourist-heavy San Francisco pier, an agency spokesperson said.

"The matter is under investigation, and law enforcement is working to confirm the origin of the weapon," the spokesperson said in a statement.

Sources familiar with the investigation say the gun belonged to a federal agent and may have been stolen recently. It is unclear whether the firearm was a government-issued service weapon or a personally owned gun.

For his part, Sanchez claims it was all an accident:

Earlier this week, Sanchez told ABC station KGO-TV in a jailhouse interview that he started wandering on Pier 14 Wednesday, July 1 after taking sleeping pills he found in a dumpster. He said he then picked up a gun that he found and it went off.

I believe that. Happens all the time. Just the other day I was talking to a few of my neighbors and they were sharing their tales of found pharmacology. In fact, one guy found a rocket propelled grenade launcher and a stash of Valium in a dumpster just down the road from here. Wait, you don't believe that? It's at least as plausible as the story Sanchez is offering.

So, let's total up the questions:

• Sanchez was in San Francisco, it appears, because it's a "sanctuary city" where our undocumented neighbors can live without fear of dealing with Immigration. Good idea?
• Why would a Bureau of Land Management employee need a government-issued service weapon?
• Sanchez had been deported five times before. The linked story reports that Sanchez had been turned over to the San Francisco Police Department on an outstanding drug warrant, but once that case was adjudicated Sanchez was turned loose, even though ICE had specifically requested that they be notified when the case was over. Is that a wise policy?