Authored by Newt Gingrich via RealClear Wire,

Speaker Mike Johnson just sent out an email which captures exactly what is going on in the U.S. Senate today.

He wrote:

“They want you to believe that the deal they’re offering to the American people is a ‘compromise.’ 

“[Sen. Chuck] Schumer wants you to sign off on:

“150,000 illegal immigrants entering the country uninhibited per month. (That’s nearly the population of my hometown in Louisiana)

“Work permits for EVERY illegal alien who’s been released into the country.

And they want YOU to pay for their legal fees.

“My answer is NO. Absolutely not.”

As I mentioned on my podcast this week, I am proud of Speaker Johnson’s firm position, but he is going to need a lot of grassroots support to convince Senate Republicans not to go along with this border sell out.

Americans want a clean, simple bill that controls the border and stops illegal immigrants from entering the United States.

Americans strongly favor legal immigration, but they are worried about the enormous flood of illegal immigrants from more than 160 countries – including people on the terrorist watch list and criminals from dangerous cartels.

Closing Brooklyn’s James Madison High School so American students had to learn from home while illegal immigrants stayed in the school became a symbol of misplaced values and destructive Biden administration policies.

In fact, the American people strongly support another bill, the Secure the Border Act of 2023 – which House Republicans passed last year. At America’s New Majority Project, we found enormous support for key provisions in that bill which address the amnesty and parole systems that are currently being abused.

The American people are increasingly concerned about Joe Biden’s illegal immigration crisis. The issue was the No. 1 concern for Republican caucus goers in Iowa – surpassing even the economy.

Further, in a brand-new poll by America’s New Majority Project, we found 77 percent of Americans reject non-citizens voting. In fact, 60 percent strongly oppose non-citizens voting.

The voting issue is a real election game changer. A Republican who is against non-citizens voting defeats a Democrat who favors non-citizens voting 56 percent to 29 percent (15 percent were undecided).

Finally, Americans do not want to open up the welfare system to illegal immigrants. In yet another America’s New Majority Project poll, we found only 29 percent support letting illegal immigrants receive “Medicaid, food stamps, and other help meant for people with low incomes.” Sixty-four percent oppose this (and 47 percent oppose it strongly).

These most recent findings by America’s New Majority Project reaffirm the results of other polls on immigration and border security.

Consider that according to Scott Rasmussen 73 percent of Americans believe illegal immigration is bad for America (similarly, 71 percent believe legal immigration is good for our country).

In a poll by the Trafalger Group, only 14 percent favor amnesty and citizenship for people who entered the country illegally or are seeking asylum (among Hispanics that drops to 3 percent).

The confusion among Senate Republicans is painful.

Many Senate Republicans start out seeking an agreement with Schumer and the Democrats. Such an agreement will be opposed by the vast majority of Americans.

Both President Biden and the congressional Democrats are committed to accepting illegal immigrants, finding a way to give them work permits, and ultimately letting them vote – even if they are not citizens. Some Democratic controlled cities are already doing this.

The Democrats’ goal is to make the admission of illegal immigrants a routine event. That will require paying their big city allies billions of dollars for taking care of the millions of Biden’s illegal immigrants coming to their neighborhoods. Then they will need extra money to provide health care for illegal immigrants (as California Gov. Gavin Newsom has already promised to do). Then they will have to provide work permits because otherwise we will have millions of people entering an underground economy with no legal means of earning a living. Finally, we will have to pay to educate millions of young people who have no knowledge of American culture.

The Democrat plan is designed to make illegality routine in an effort to get political power. But it will ultimately extend the reach of dangerous cartels, expand drug distribution, and increase local crime.

The American people want illegal immigration stopped – not made routine. They want the border controlled – not opened.

The left ultimately wants no borders, with no requirements for citizenship or expectations of work (note the disastrous proposal Congress is working on to reduce work requirements for the child tax credit).

It is impossible for House Republicans to compromise in good faith with values and goals that are directly opposed to the wishes of the American people.

Let Speaker Johnson and House Republicans know that you stand with them in opposing a phony border bill.

Let Republican Senators know that the details matter, and a bill that regularizes illegal immigration is unacceptable.

This could be a decisive turning point in the crisis at the border – and the crises in our cities.

The question is who will win – the American people or the politicians.

You can help win this fight.

For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com.

Chevron is warning the state of California that its climate policies have consequences: namely, that the price of gas is going to continue to rise. 

Calling the state’s policies a “dangerous game”, it was reported by Bloomberg this week that Chevron is warning the state of potential gasoline price spikes and shortages as a result of policies that discourage petrol production. 

In the last quarter of 2023, drivers in California faced an average gasoline price of $4.94 per gallon, surpassing the national average by approximately $1.72, marking the highest recorded quarterly difference, as per Bloomberg’s compiled data.

Head of Chevron’s U.S. refining, Andy Walz, said this week that the spike is partly attributed to California’s stringent low-carbon fuel regulations, which prompt refineries to shift from petroleum to renewable diesel production. This transition is curbing gasoline availability and causing prices to rise, he told Bloomberg. 

“They knew it was going to happen when they wrote the legislation. The problem is the consumer is starting to realize it. It’s becoming painful. The way politicians dealt with it was ‘let’s blame the oil companies,” Walz said. 

But – as expected – Governor Gavin Newsom’s office responded with a vague statement blaming oil producers that was barely one brain cell above throwing paint on the Mona Lisa: “Big Oil has been ripping off consumers for decades and lying to protect their profits.”

And so, the adversarial tone naturally drives producers from the state: “If they cap the upside when conditions are good it’s going to make it really challenging to want to put our money there. I cannot compete internally for big capital investments. It doesn’t stack up. I’d rather spend money at our refinery in Mississippi,” Walz said. 

As the report notes, Chevron’s relationship with California has become increasingly strained, with stringent regulations leading to a $4 billion asset write-down, mostly in the state.

While Governor Newsom accuses the oil industry of price gouging and climate change misinformation, leading to investigations and legal actions, Chevron simply says it is responding to demand and shouldn’t be penalized.

A new proposal to cap refining margins in California further complicates things for the refiner Chevron’s, with its two refineries representing 30% of the state’s capacity. 

The policies are forcing refiners to spots where they “are making decisions that are kind of putting us on a pathway where there could be a reliability problem,” Walz said. “You may not have the supply of gasoline if things don’t turn out the way the government wants them to. It’s a dangerous game.”

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

Donald Trump in furor stormed out of a New York courtroom for a while, in the defamation suit brought by author and dating/boyfriend/sex-advice columnist E. Jean Carroll.

It was just settled against Trump for $83.3 million!

The Carroll suit was largely subsidized by Reid Hoffman the billionaire capitalist, and mega-donor to the Democratic Party and leftwing causes.

The subtext of Trump’s rage, aside from the outrageous monetary size of the defamation ruling, is that he was facing—and angered – a leftwing claimant, a quite hostile leftwing judge, and a leftwing New York jury.

The civil suit serves as a mere preview of four additional leftwing criminal prosecutions, leftwing judges, and leftwing juries to come – all on charges that would never had been filed if Trump either had not run for president or been a liberal progressive.

Yet here we are.

The E. Jean Carroll case is the most baffling of all five.

She, the alleged victim, did not remember even the year in which the purported sexual assault took place, nearly three decades ago. Observers have pointed out dozens of inconsistencies in her story.

It was never clear what were the preliminaries that supposedly (Trump denies meeting her) led both, allegedly, willingly to retreat together to a department store dressing room, where during normal business hours the alleged violence took place.

Moreover, the sexual assault complaint came forward decades post facto—and only after Trump was running for and then president.

Carroll eventually sued him for battery, but well after the statute of limitations had expired and thus the case seemed defunct.

Her claims of defamation injuries arise from being fired from her advice column job at ELLE magazine.

She claimed that Trump’s sharp denials and ad hominem retorts led to her career ruin. But the loss for anyone of a column at 76 does not seem such a rare occurrence, and the absence of a salaried job in one’s late seventies for four years does not seem to equate to a $83 million hit.

And note the allegation that her dispute with Trump led to her firing was strongly denied by the very magazine that cut her loose.

But then another strange thing happened. In 2022, a new law (“The Adult Survivors Act”) was passed in the New York legislature. It also post facto established a twelve-month window (beginning six months from the signing of bill) that permitted survivors of long ago alleged sexual assaults suddenly to sue the accused long-ago perpetrator—regardless of the previous statute of limitations.

That unexpected opening suddenly gave Carroll’s prior unsuccessful efforts a rebirth. And she quickly refiled with the help of arch-Trump hating billionaire Hoffman.

Yet the bill may have been introduced with Trump particularly in mind—given the legislator who introduced it, Brad Hoylman-Siga, was known as another Trump antagonist.

More interestingly, he had earlier introduced and had passed another Trump-targeted bill. That “TRUST” act had empowered particular federal Congressional committees to have access to the New York State once sealed tax returns of high-ranking government officials—such as Trump.

That bill’s generally agreed subtext was a green light for anti-Trump members of Congress to obtain legal access to Donald J. Trump’s tax returns.

So there is an eerie feeling that the New York legislature may have abruptly passed legislation that was aimed at the past conduct of Donald Trump but only after he entered the political arena.

While these are not quite bills of attainder, there is something unsettling if they are post facto laws aimed at targeting the most famous and controversial man in America and the leading candidate for the presidency.

In essence they were targeted statutes designed to make Trump’s prior legally unactionable behavior suddenly quite legally actionable.

Trump will be subject to such special treatment all summer and fall.

Prosecutors Bragg, James, Smith, and Willis will synchronize their court business for maximum effect.

Trump again will face leftwing prosecutors, judges, and juries on charges that are politically driven, involving alleged behavior that is either usually not criminalized or not to the same degree as Trump’s case. (Do we remember the nearly $375,000 federal fine belatedly leveled at an exempt Obama but only five years after his 2008 illegal garnering of, and not reporting, foreign campaign contributions?)

The stakes are higher each day as Trump closes in on the nomination and thus becomes the hope of half the country to end the Biden madness.

Somehow Trump will have to stay calm, give no opening to his legion of hostile prosecutors, while conducting a nonstop campaign against Biden (and for a while Hayley), and while fighting to keep his name on various state ballots.

So what we are witnessing is not even the extralegal efforts of Steele/Fusion GPS, Perkins Coie/DNC/Hillary Clinton in 2016, or the 2020 “Russian disinformation” ruse/change the voting laws/infuse half a billion dollars to absorb the work of the registrar machinations against Trump.

We are way beyond all that.

The legal system itself, hand-in-glove with leftwing politicos (compare campaign boasts of James and Willis, or prosecutorial visits to the January 6 committee and the White House) is turning the process of balloting and elections into an embarrassing farce.

Still, Trump will have to soldier on. He must stay controlled amid the tsunamis, not play into the hands of his accusers, and remember that he may soon be the only eleventh-hour hope to stop this mockery of American law, customs and traditions.