Latest news with #HeatherMacDonald
Fox News
20-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Immigration expert sounds alarm on how Biden's border crisis paved way for Los Angeles riots
California has become the epicenter of the immigration debate under the Trump administration, which is leading to questions about what cultivated the protests and riots that happened in the area in June and continue to pop up around the country. Heather Mac Donald, a Manhattan Institute fellow and author of "When Race Trumps Merit," said she believes that the border crisis under the Biden administration paved the way for civil unrest. "It shows that lawlessness in one area breeds lawlessness in another. We've had an absolutely lawless situation going on with regards to the border. We've had California and Los Angeles tolerate criminal lawlessness, and so it's not surprising that activists and protesters and immigrant rights activists felt that they were entitled to wreak absolute chaos and havoc in the streets," Mac Donald said in the wake of riots in Los Angeles last month. Mac Donald added that the large amount of immigration could lead to cultural assimilation woes. "This is nothing new, but Americans have turned their eyes away and have bought into the narrative that the more diversity, the better, the more demographic change, the better," she said. Mac Donald added that a cap on the number of people allowed to come into the United States could be beneficial in the long term. "Well, for assimilation, a cap would definitely be necessary. We saw that with the long decades after maximal immigration at the turn of the century, when we did halt immigration. And that allowed the assimilation to go on, that it did. With nonstop immigration coming in, you're running a losing race to assimilate. So that would absolutely be ideal." "We should reform the agriculture sector. You know, we have temporary worker programs for that, and whether we want to carve out any exceptions to a moratorium for very, very high-skilled workers, that is definitely worth considering. But certainly for chain migration, the bringing in of remote family members, that should be ended now until we are confident that we are creating Americans and not people who will get out in riots and wave flags of non-American countries," Mac Donald continued. When it comes to the overall stance of the American population on immigration, she explained that mass deportations, which the Trump administration has said they are working toward while highlighting those with criminal convictions and charges, could be the best path forward in the short-term aftermath of the border crisis. "We should not make the distinction between criminal illegal aliens, who are legitimately deported and those who have committed lawbreaking on entry and by staying here but have not got a criminal record. The received wisdom is it's OK to deport the first, but the second, we shouldn't even make them fearful of deportation, that that's cruel," she said. "I think they're all legitimately eligible for deportation. Nevertheless, I'm not sure that the American people have a stomach for that degree of immigration enforcement." In addition to ICE and Border Patrol arrests and busts, the Department of Homeland Security has encouraged self-deportation through the CBP Home app, which was swapped from the CBP One app people used to request asylum under President Joe Biden. DHS is offering $1,000, travel out of the U.S., as well as scrapping fees and a chance to return to the country legally as part of the deal. In Los Angeles, Democratic Mayor Karen Bass has been a significant voice of opposition to federal immigration sweeps, at one point saying ICE should "go home." "We are a proud city of immigrants, and with the Trump Administration signaling that they will ratchet up their chaotic approach, I'm making sure we deploy every resource and tool available within the City to ensure that we are supporting immigrant communities," Bass said recently, according to a news release. When it comes to potential civil unrest in other cities, Mac Donald says it could happen. "I think there will be civil unrest in other cities, because it was justified, it was trivialized by our elected leaders as, 'Oh, we've got the situation under control,'" she said.
Wall Street Journal
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
Notable & Quotable: ‘Colonialist Paintings'
From Heather Mac Donald's speech at the New Criterion's April 24 gala: Consider a recent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The show featured the Met's extraordinary collection of paintings from the Dutch Golden Age, that explosion of creativity that produced Rembrandt, Vermeer, Frans Hals, Gerard ter Borch and other masters. Were we to see beauty in those cloud-laden horizons, those serene compositions of domestic order, those haunting portraits of age and vulnerability? No, we were to see what was not there: 'colonialism, slavery, and war,' which, the Met curators reminded us, were major themes in seventeenth-century Dutch history, but which were 'barely visible' in the Met's Dutch collections. Or take the still lifes, a new genre that marked Northern Europe's epoch-changing attention to empirical detail. What was a viewer to make of the dragonfly iridescence of ripe grapes, the delicate play of light on cut glass, the puckered skin of a lemon peel? Do not be taken in! The Met advised us. Dutch still-life paintings omitted the 'human cost of colonial warfare and slavery' that underlay the bounty these canvases documented, the wall labels warned. Of course, by definition, a still life features inanimate objects, not human subjects, so any still life would be hard-pressed to portray colonial warfare and slavery. But never mind. . . .
New York Post
11-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Trump's defending civilization, beware US drone vulnerabilities and other commentary
From the right: Trump's Defending Civilization President Trump's order mobilizing the National Guard in Los Angeles, cheers City Journal's Heather Mac Donald, 'was clarifying and precise: 'To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion' ' against the US government. Trump is delivering on his campaign vow to end 'the era of enabling endemic immigration lawlessness,' enflaming Democrats with 'rage.' 'Apologists for the chaos' claim Trump's response caused the violence, but the 'violence preceded the mobilization.' And 'standing by during violence only allows it to spread.' Violence meant to 'inhibit the execution of the laws' is 'a death knell for civilization.' The prez's 'unapologetic defense of the law this weekend represented liberation from a poisonous set of lies.' Defense beat: Beware US Drone Vulnerabilities Advertisement 'Drones have completely upended the economics of air warfare,' but most US 'defenses remain focused on traditional threats like ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and hostile aircraft,' warns Jon Gruen at The Wall Street Journal. 'Today's most immediate threats fly much lower. The skies above our stadiums, airports and substations are essentially undefended at ground level.' And 'federal law would slow our response' to such an attack, as 'local law enforcement is largely powerless to act against a known drone threat' — a problem 'bipartisan legislation in Congress' is looking to address. Yet 'even if we solve the authority problem, we face a second vulnerability: the lack of industrial capacity to make these drones.' Beware: 'We're unprepared for the next war, and the next war won't wait until we're ready.' Media watch: In the Tank for Hamas The IDF last month 'struck the tunnel under the European Hospital in an attempt to eliminate Muhammad Sinwar, the leader of Hamas,' notes Commentary's Seth Mandel. But 'news agencies insisted Israel was lying about the presence of Hamas leadership or an underground bunker.' And when Israel's account proved 100% true, 'journalists complained that Israel was keeping journalists out of the war zone, a kind of veiled justification for why they keep making up stories. Israel responded by giving journalists a tour of the underground bunker itself.' Sigh. That produced a tendentious New York Times story — 'The Tunnel That Leads Underneath a Hospital in Southern Gaza: To Israelis, the location of an underground passageway highlights Hamas's abuse of civilians. To Palestinians, Israel's decision to target it highlights Israel's own disregard for civilian life.' Advertisement Eye on Connecticut: Pension 'Spiking' Abuse 'Some public sector union abuses' in Connecticut are 'more egregious than ever,' grumbles Red Jahncke at The Hill. 'State employees are retiring with pension benefits higher than their last salary,' thanks to the practice as 'spiking,' where they 'work enormous hours of overtime just before retirement' to boost their benefits. A study of the state Department of Correction ID'd workers 'with the highest overtime pay' the last five years; those who've retired scored pensions paying 138% of their final salary. A 'wage freeze' and overtime reform would help. Gov. Ned Lamont (D) needs to 'face down the unions' and 'actually manage the workforce and clamp down on overtime spiking.' Libertarian: A Dubious Case for AI Regulation Advertisement 'Skepticism is warranted whenever the head of an incumbent firm calls for more regulation,' and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's case against the House-proposed 10-year moratorium on state AI regulation 'is no different,' argues Reason's Jack Nicastro. In a New York Times op-ed, Amodei argued for state-level regulation by raising 'tangible concerns,' such as AI being used to help people carry out cyberattacks or to produce biological weapons. 'But there's nothing new about that,' since both organic and artificial intelligence 'can be used to cause problems as well as to solve them.' The regulations Amodei wants would 'be burdensome' and could make AI models worse. 'Beware of calls for AI regulation that will . . . protect incumbent firms' profits from being bid away by competitors.' — Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
New York Post
06-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Why Pres. Trump will win his battle against elite higher education
President Trump escalated his war on Harvard, Columbia and illiberal academia this week by suspending foreign student visas at Harvard and challenging Columbia University's accreditation for consistently failing to protect Jews from hate crimes on campus. The president has already cut off Harvard's grants and contracts, while threatening the university's tax-exempt status. 8 Columbia University in New York City is at the center of Pres. Trump's attack on higher education. This past week the university was threatened with the revocation of their formalized academic accreditation. Getty Images/iStockphoto Predictably, heads exploded within the progressive elites, its lawfare commentariat, and the legacy media. They claim the president's actions are unconstitutional and retributive. Even some of the most powerful critics of the DEI, such as Heather Mac Donald, have criticized the administration's actions for overreach. 8 Pres. Trump possesses both the moral and legal authority to demand a higher-education revolution. AP But the meta story that critics miss is that Trump is fighting a major decay within the university and public education system that is producing abysmal results academically and inculcating anti-Western ideologies that could do our civilization lasting harm. 8 Author Coleman Hughes has question the necessity of race-based preference programs such as DEI. Public trust in universities is declining rapidly, and the continuing acts of racial discrimination across campuses, on which much of Trump's critique rests, stand on thin ice with the US Supreme Court. While the courts may chip away at Trump's offensive, the president has multiple funding spigots over which he has near plenary discretion. Harvard, Columbia and others have few pressure points other than the courts which have already, in the case of Harvard, slapped down some of its discriminatory programs. Accordingly, they should, and likely will, soon come to the table. China's Chairman Mao ushered in the brutal 'cultural revolution' in the 1960s by first capturing the epicenter of culture: universities. His Red Guard tortured and killed dissident professors, students and others who challenged his orthodoxies. A softer form of Maoism soon found a warm bath for academics in the West. 8 Harvard has seen billions of federal funding stripped by Trump. AFP via Getty Images Along with Frantz Fanon and Edward Said, Herbert Marcuse was the lion on the anti-Western academic left in the 1960s. 'Liberating tolerance,' he argued, 'would mean intolerance against movements from the right and toleration of movements from the left.' Marcuse's ideas presaged a new era of progressive illiberalism on campuses. Harvard has created an 'oppressively intolerant monocultural intellectual microclimate,' says writer Gerald Baker. Students and professors and professors regularly report an environment that punishes contrarianism. Only 3% of faculty identify as conservative. 'When your liberal ideas on campus are not challenged, your education is mediocre,' says noted Harvard professor Arthur Brooks. 8 During the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, Chairman Mao began his assault in intellectualism by first targeting universities. AP For years, Harvard had discriminated against some of the most talented Americans on the basis of skin color in service of what writer Coleman Hughes calls a neo-racist DEI theology that patronizes favored racial groups with substantially lower admissions standards under the perverse idea that they can't hack a level playing field. Many believe the University is still defying the Supreme Court's rebuke of these practices, in both admissions and hiring. Universities across the country have also bathed the climate of hate. 'Harvard is an Islamist outpost,' says one of its more esteemed professors, Ruth Wisse. The university's own report on antisemitism concedes that the school turned a blind eye to threats and acts of violence against its own Jewish students — acts that it would never tolerate against blacks or other minorities. At least $60 billion in foreign funds have flowed to American universities in recent decades, including from adversaries like China and Qatar. All the while, academic standards seem to have plummeted. 8 Heather Mac Donald is one of many notable thinkers who've made the case for closing the education achievement gap as the primary objective of academic researchers. 'The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books,' thundered an Atlantic magazine headline. And we were all gob smacked by reports that Harvard would teach remedial math. The ideologizing is also rampant K-12 public schools. Two-thirds of public school students lack reading and math proficiency. In the name of 'social justice,' teachers unions and an ever-bloated public school administrative bureaucracy try to eliminate excellence programs like AP courses and magnet schools. In their place, they seek to impose 'grading for equity' curricula that dumbs down testing, homework and other performance measures. 8 The University of Chicago has opted to not take positions on political issues. Getty Images Instead of illiberal leftism, universities should follow the University of Chicago model and refrain from taking institutional positions on politics. Together with banning menacing encampments, this would help stop the adolescent, narcissistic, performative protests that are embarrassingly uninformed on basic historical facts. In turn, that could actually encourage informed debate. Universities should also draw a clear line against any kind of discrimination in hiring and admissions consistent with the Supreme Court's affirmative action ruling. Instead, they could work with K-12 public schools to refocus on remedying the yawning racial achievement gap in primary and secondary education, as Professor John McWhorter and Heather Mac Donald have persuasively argued. 8 One of the many pro-Palestinian protests that have rocked American campuses — and become the ire of Pres. Trump. AFP via Getty Images And following Arthur Brooks' admonition, they should seek greater ideological balance with faculty conservatives, not because the government demands it but because critical thinking does. Merit must be education's north star. So far, it's worked out for us pretty well. I would like to see the education industry return to fundamentals and depart from the Marcusian ideological poison without the heavy hand of government. And if the elite universities and public schools want to stop the destructive path toward anti-Western self-immolation it should take these steps on its own without the heavy prod of the federal government.
