Politics

Jo Freeman writes: When Unite the Right announced it would hold another rally on the anniversary of the one it held in Charlottesville in 2017, it caused a great amount of consternation. They received a permit to hold it in Washington, D.C., at Lafayette Square across from the White House, raising specters of carnage in the nation’s capital. Violence had permeated the 2017 event, resulting in the death of a counter-protestor. In their effort to avoid a crisis, DC police spent weeks in planning. The officers turned out in such great numbers that the scene almost resembled a uniform convention. There was only one arrest in DC. more »

"CBP and U.S. Border Patrol developed a methodology for prioritizing future barrier deployments along the entire southwest border, which included input from Border Patrol officials, data on illegal entry traffic, and analysis of operational and engineering feasibility for each potential location. However, the strategy did not include analysis of the costs associated with deploying barriers in each location or segment, which can vary depending on topography, land ownership, and other factors. Without assessing costs, consistent with leading practices for capital decision making, CBP does not have complete information for prioritizing locations to use its resources in the most cost-effective manner."  more »

Austin, Texas recently took a new tack in the ongoing war between “sanctuary cities" and federal immigration authorities. Declaring itself a “freedom city,” the Texas capital instructed its police officers to arrest fewer people for minor crimes — to prevent their fingerprints from going to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and to inform people that they may refuse a request to present their immigration papers. Though novel, Austin’s gambit fits into a broader pattern: As the Trump administration this year ratcheted up its efforts to curb illegal immigration, cities and states experimented with new ways to resist — or assist — the crackdown. more »

"A 2017 study in the Journal of Economic Perspectives examined the consumption of false news in the US during the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election. In a survey of 1,208 U.S. adults, 15 percent said they remembered seeing false news stories, and 8 percent acknowledged seeing one of these stories and believing it. The study’s authors — Hunt Allcott, an associate economics professor at New York University, and Matthew Gentzkow, an economics professor at Stanford University — estimated that US adults, on average, 'read and remembered on the order of one or perhaps several fake news articles during the election period.'" more »