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November 23, 2024
T. Keith Gurnee

T. Keith Gurnee

OPINION by T. KEITH GURNEE

After Donald trump’s stunning victory, California Democrats have come unhinged.

Consider the optics of the Democrats in announcing their resistance against Trump’s vow to undo our nation’s sanctuary policies. California appears to be doubling down in defending those policies in the face of criminal illegal immigrants who have been raping and murdering innocent girls and women across our country.

Events and Optics

Just this week, the Venezuelan immigrant who raped and murdered 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley on the campus of the University of Georgia was found guilty by a judge of all 10 charges against him and was sentenced to life in prison. With immigrant crime exploding throughout the nation due to Joe Biden’s open border and Gavin Newsom’s sanctuary policies, California continues to welcome illegal immigrants into our state. Biden is nothing less than complicit in the demise of Laken Riley and the many other women and girls who have become victims of illegal immigrant violence.

Remarkably, that same day, the LA Times reported that the LA City Council voted unanimously to adopt an ordinance endorsing its status as a sanctuary city. Mayor Karen Bass robotically vowed to sign it into law. Does this city really want to roll out the welcome mat to deaths like Laken Riley’s? Does it really want to double down in inviting immigrant criminal activity, sex trafficking, sexual assaults, murder, and the importation of deadly fentanyl into their fair city? It appears so.

The contrasting optics of both of these events happening at the same time are deeply disturbing. After four years of Biden’s open borders. It compels us to fundamentally reexamine what we should be doing with sanctuary policies and their consequences.

What’s Next?

Interestingly enough, another LA Times article appeared addressing  “Golden State Democrats Take Hard Looks in the Mirror.” After the failures of a number of ballot measures supported by Democrats and the defeats of Dist. Atty. George Gascon and other local liberal officials in California, the Times felt that Democrats should focus on reevaluating their positions.

But Gov. Gavin Newsom isn’t “looking in the mirror.” Almost immediately after the election, Newsom announced that he would take on the mantle of “leading the resistance against Trumpism,” before he rushed off to Washington DC to insert himself into the debate over the future of Democratic leadership and the presidential elections in 2028. Gavin, your ambition is showing!

If Newsom is looking in the mirror, it’s only to make sure his hair is perfectly coiffed. After all, Newsom was the father of the sanctuary city movement in California when he declared San Francisco as one. Shortly thereafter in 2015, an illegal five-time deportee shot and killed Kate Steinle, a graduate of Cal Poly, on Pier 14 on the San Francisco Embarcadero. He’s not about to let go of the movement that has metastasized throughout the nation.

What Should be the Doing With Sanctuary Policies?

Donald Trump has made it clear that he is going to take on sanctuary states and cities when he is sworn in as President. Despite the abject resistance of California, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Colorado and that of such sanctuary cities like San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, and New York City, how is he going to do it?

As sanctuary cities gird their loins for their legal and political fight with the federal government, Trump needs to make a paradigm shift to get around those attacks. With DOGE, he just might have the solution.

By forming the DOGE, the new Department of Government Efficiency headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, he has done just that. Creating such an agency run by such high-quality leaders, Trump could develop the tools that he needs. In seeking to reorganize the federal government and to eliminate government waste, DOGE using the federal purse strings could hold the key in addressing the elimination of sanctuary states and cities.

How? By withholding federal funds and subventions from those states and cities that persist in keeping their sanctuary policies. Cutting or eliminating the outflow of federal funds to states like California would be huge. Withholding federal funding for California’s high-speed rail (the bullet train to nowhere), other transportation projects, or federal grants for housing or just about everything for California’s cities who insist on maintaining their sanctuary status would surely get their attention while saving the federal government billions, if not trillions, of dollars.

Taking action against those cities and states should focus upon the priority of deporting those immigrants with criminal records, the massive numbers of got-aways, and those who have crossed our borders illegally who have no intent of becoming naturalized citizens.

When it comes to California, withholding federal funding from this cash-strapped state and our cities until they repeal their sanctuary status would provide a powerful incentive to disengage from the sanctuary city movement and its negative impacts on the lives of Californians.

Let’s see what happens after Donald Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20, 2025 as the 47th President of the United States.

 


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THIS IS HAPPENING, people. I am reading a whole lot of denial and minimization in these comments, from both sides, but THIS IS HAPPENING.


4

Nothing now. Full immunity on the Lolita Express.


5

I actually care what others think, unlike many on here who are just entertaining themselves trying to make points against “the other side”, like this was some kind of video game. So, I am always rather disappointed when nobody else seems to get it that there is only one “side”, what is best for our county. Also, everyone, especially those who didn’t enjoy studying history, seem to miss the point of who our “enemy within” actually happens to be.


That enemy heavily influences nearly everyone and every decision in politics: BIG MONEY “DONORS” and perks gifted to those they install in places of power. Why do you think that individuals who are hoarding HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars and still pay no taxes, whilst our essential programs go unfunded, veterans are living in cardboard in the streets, teachers are paying out of pocket for school supplies, we suffer from sub-standard healthcare, and our crumbling infrastructure has not been addressed until the current administration?


Both sides are under the control of CORPORATE MONEY. This is nothing new, but it escalated beyond imagination when “Citizens United” was passed. It gave anyone with the capital to do so control of not only Congress, but the Presidency as well and therefore, the courts. This situation is anything but rule “Of the People, By the People, and For the People. This is why corporations are showing record profits, whilst they are continuing to raise prices on their consumers, especially on essentials like food, fuel, and other essentials.


To her credit, Kamala began her campaign stating she would go after those who were gouging the public. That didn’t last long, before her party nixed such wild ideas that flew in the face of their benefactors. She even hinted a better policy on arms to Israel, but military/industrial profits being what they are, that got removed pretty quick as well.


If she had kept to those ideals, she could have won, IMHO. Her numbers went south right around the time that her platform was purged of corporate accountability.


You should FACT CHECK ME on this, but our country was founded on the exclusion of corporate power. The corporations of England were the major reason we wanted independence from the Crown, which was the military arm of corporate enforcement. Sadly, over time, accelerating around the end of the Civil War, corporations have become more and more powerful. They now decide everything. If you want that to change, we have to work together to get the MONEY OUT of government. I really only fully trust those politicians with a track record of progressive voting and that are taking only small, private citizen donations. Otherwise, it is their donors who control them, and that is not us.


Sounds like work, I know. But you have all heard the saying, “Freedom is not Free”. Unless we get together on this, we continue to enable those who have us working and thinking against ourselves to their benefit alone. The only “Citizens United” should be the entire American People. E Pluribus Unum. Out of Many, ONE.


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Well, in this most recent election one of those equally guilty sides would have preserved your right to continue to fight for E Pluribus Unum. You might not have had much luck but it would have been there. The opposing side has unabashed designs on autocratic oligarchy so I’m not sure where you are drawing the balance between the two from. You know, it’s okay to assign different weights and criteria between two things, depending on the situation and circumstances.


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I was making a point that you missed altogether. The massive amount of corporate money they were taking controlled the narrative and cost the Dems the election. So, still stuck with the autocratic oligarchy because they both take so much money. And as for how we got here, neolibs like Clinton (deregulated the media, which put it into corporate hands and Obama handed over our money to the banks, to bail them out after they caused the crash and then allowed them to take millions of people’s homes. Had he given our money back to The People, they could have given it to the banks and kept their homes. I could go on. We need to confront the real enemy – greed.


2

I got your point – it’s been an important point for a long time in politics but when a fascist or authoritarianism movement is threatening to dismantle your democracy, ALL great points like that must be swept aside for future elections, should we survive to have future elections.


0

And if people’s suffering could just be ignored and forever given “lesser evil” decisions, perhaps that approach would have worked. This same game has been in play my whole life. Maybe you are younger. Most people are too young to remember when this country had the best healthcare instead of the worst and no one had hundreds of billions and their own space program. They think the crap happening now is somehow “normal”. They sense the need to change the system, but, obviously, lack the political experience to know how. So, they voted to blow it up.


Sadly, they will not get the cheaper gas or the cheaper groceries or maybe won’t even get to vote again. More people will suffer. A lot more. But they will get change…


0

I laugh every time I hear someone rant against the Citizens United v. FEC decision. They clearly haven’t been exposed to the truth about the case and the SCOTUS decision, and don’t understand the very overt, unabashed threat to Free Speech represented in that case. They also seem to fail to understand that it not only applies to for-profit corporations, but also to non-profit organizations as well as LABOR UNIONS. The plaintiffs unabashedly argued for speech abridgement and censorship, particularly as it pertains to elections. Read the transcript of the arguements presented in the case and the opinions/decision of the court. The sane justices were left with no other option than to come down on the side of the First Amendment….for EVERYONE. Of course, Leftists have not been deterred and have since pursued other avenues of usurping basic human rights, freedom of thought and Free Speech as they seek to be the arbiters of misinformation, disinformation, and permitted speech in a number of mediums and settings.


As far as corporations gouging consumers with price increases, I guess that’s just a relatively new devious scheme invented by evil capitalists, right? Apparently, it had never occurred to them until Joe Biden got into office. Very strange and curious timing, isn’t it?!?


13

Price gauging is hardly new. It is called “disaster capitalism”. You should study some history, it comes up quite a lot. And no matter how you spin it, MONEY IS NOT SPEACH.


-1

I don’t need to make ‘points against the other side’ to be entertained. Just reading all these ludicrous comments is entertaining enough. This election and post election has been the most fun ever. LOL!!


0

It was not long ago, a very short time ago, that the Hillary Clinton’s of America were speaking about how important a “secure border and the danger of illegal immigrants” was to America. A short time later the Democratic Party realized illegals could be “utilized” to further their agenda. Democrats only love illegals because they can be “utilized”. That is the dark truth. That is why Gavin Newsom made it against the law to insist on ID’s to vote. Another dark truth. That is why California is effectively a One Party State, another dark truth.


42

Got any real data to back up these dark truths or are they just coming from a dark mind? How do you know who people love and who they don’t and why?


-15

Californians have been voting without showing an ID at the polls for 174 years. Is there ANY evidence of voter fraud out there, because I’ve never seen any. I believe that U.S elections are the most legitimate in the world. The fact that Trump won and we are now hearing zero claims about voter fraud speaks volumes, in my opinion.


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