Digging Deeper Into CHNV

I'm surprised that I hadn't even heard of the CHNV program before I learned just the other day that the Trump administration had discontinued it. According to Wikipedia, which appears to be the most complete account:

Humanitarian Parole for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans was a program under which citizens of these four countries, and their immediate family members, could be paroled into the United States for a period of up to two years if a person in the US agreed to financially support them. The program allowed a combined total of 30,000 people per month from the four countries to enter the US. The program was implemented in 2022 (Venezuela) to 2023 (Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua) in response to high numbers of migrants and asylum seekers from these countries crossing into the US at the southwest border with Mexico.

. . . The CHNV Program is credited with greatly reducing numbers of people of these nationalities crossing into the US at the southwest border. After the implementation of Humanitarian Parole for Venezuelans, the number of Venezuelans encountered each week by the US Department of Homeland Security fell by over 90%. The US government promised to deport any person from these four countries who arrived to the US not through the program.

It simply isn't clear whether the Haitians who've concentrated in localities like Springfield, OH or Charleroi, PA, or the Venezuelans who've concentrated in places like Aurora, CO or El Paso, TX came in via the CHNV program, although it's possible to infer that their concentrated housing arrangements arise from sponsorship organizations that place them in certain facilities. The entry continues,

. . . Beneficiaries of the CHNV program are typically not eligible for refugee benefits or services. Beneficiaries from Nicaragua and Venezuela are typically not eligible for any mainstream government benefits, such as healthcare (Medicaid), food assistance (SNAP), and cash assistance (TANF). Beneficiaries may apply for asylum, family-based immigration, or another immigration pathway if they are eligible. Some beneficiaries from Venezuela may be eligible for Temporary Protected Status if they arrived before July 31, 2023. . . However, for many migrants, there is no pathway to stay in the US after the two-year parole period.

So wait a moment. I thought the Springfield and Charleroi Haitians were in fact here under TPS, and the media seems to have thought it, too:

Springfield residents are bracing for a shift after the Trump administration announced it will end protected status for Haitian immigrants in August.

City leaders in Springfield, a central Ohio city of 60,000, said they've seen an influx of 15,000 to 20,000 Haitian residents in recent years. Many of the Haitian immigrants are in the city with temporary protected status, a federal designation for immigrants from countries with dangerous conditions, such as a natural disaster or armed conflict.

The Biden administration had previously extended the status for Haiti to February 2026 due to concerns about natural disasters and gang violence. The status has been in place for Haitians since the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti in 2010.

So it appears that Haitians have been coming in under more than one program, and CHNV is just one possibility. I get the impression that only a few people at Homeland Security understand the whole picture here, if anyone does at all. But this is just one part of the rabbit hole.

What about CHNV sponsors? Who in fact sre they? I tried doing a web search and found mostly government sites saying good things in general about CHNV sponsors, but only one NGO actually came out and identified itself as a sponsor, Church World Service (CWS). This is intriguing, because as we see, CHNV beneficiaries aren't eligible for ordinary government aid -- it appears that the sponsors are paying for their food, housing, medical care, and so forth. CWS says on its site,

The U.S. government established Uniting for Ukraine (U4U) and Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV) to provide a safe, legal pathway for these populations to come to the United States. Program beneficiaries receive humanitarian parole status, which is a legal, temporary status for a duration of two years. Ukrainians, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans must have US-based sponsors in order to receive authorization to travel to the US.

Groups wishing to sponsor through U4U or CHNV can choose to partner with CWS as a CWS Private Sponsor Group (PSG). As a CWS PSG, a group will be able to utilize the expertise of resettlement agency staff via remote technical assistance and support. CWS recruits, trains, and supports sponsor groups throughout the first 3-6 months of the sponsorship period so that they can help these displaced populations achieve stability in the U.S.

So as best I can determine, CWS is an NGO that serves as an umbrella for local NGOs that actually sponsor, and apparently fund, the migrants, and as we'll see, this is over 75% of their budget. These particular migrants aren't eligible for most benefits, and they're here not on TPS, but something called humanitarian parole status, which lasts only two years. What then? Who knows?

Where does the money to support the CHNV migrants come from? The implication on the CWS site is that CWS provides only technical and training support to the local NGOs, although it says it "supports sponsor groups throughout the first 3-6 months of the sponsorship period". Is some of this support financial? It doesn't say.

Wikipedia says:

Church World Service (CWS) was founded in 1946 and is a cooperative ministry of 37 [Protestant and Orthodox] Christian denominations and communions, providing sustainable self-help, development, disaster relief, and refugee assistance around the world. The CWS mission is to eradicate hunger and poverty and to promote peace and justice at the national and international level through collaboration with partners abroad and in the US.

Although the Wikipedia entry stresses disaster relief, the CWS response to the 2024 Hurricane Helene devastation in North Carolina appears to have been minimal:

CWS is on the ground, working closely with partners to assist those in need. Already, we’ve distributed over 3,286 Emergency Cleanup Buckets and 4,360 Hygiene Kits to help families begin cleaning up the devastation. But with our inventory of CWS Buckets now critically low—down to just 833—the need for more is urgent.

Based on their website, their main focus is on refugee resettlement under the CHNV program, now canceled. Their most recent annual report indicates that their income was $220,437,580, of which $186,438,785, or 84.6%, came from the US government. Of this, $170,998,164, or 78.1%, went to "Services for Displaced People". Only $6,834,006, or 3.1% , went to "Emergency Response", including the cleanup buckets and hygiene kits for Hurricane Helene.

CWS appears actually to be more transparent over its funding than other faith-based NGOs, including Catholic Charities. Catholic Charities appears to have no national site equivalent to CWS that gives any sort of picture of its relationship to government-sponsored immigration funding, but the Catholic Charities Office of Maine Refugee Services has equivalent wording on its site:

The U.S Department of State's Bureau for Population Refugees and Migration has created several pathways to refugee resettlement into the United States. People coming into the United States through the following pathways qualify for refugee benefits through ORR refugee programs. The Office of Maine Refugee Services at Catholic Charities administers the federal refugee programs as the replacement designee for the State.

. . . Other current US sponsorship programs include Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan (CHNV) Program and the Uniting for Ukraine Program. Please contact OMRS to discuss these programs further or to find out if sponsored individuals are eligible for refugee services upon arrival.

So, at least up to very recently, Catholic Charities of Maine served as a government-authorized NGO that in fact administered government refugee resettlement programs. I think it can reasonably be assumed that other Catholic Charities activities in other states operate (or operated) on an equivalent basis. But as I pointed out yesterday, the CHNV program didn't actually "resettle refugees"; it recruited people from their home countries and flew them in to bypass border immigration procedures, in the process declaring them "legal".

The CHNV policy allows eligible Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans with American sponsors to fly to the U.S., where they can apply for temporary work permits under the immigration parole law, which allows presidents to welcome foreigners on humanitarian or public interest grounds.

The Biden administration has argued the policy is justified on humanitarian grounds due to the economic crises and political turmoil in the four countries. It has also argued the program archives [sic] a public interest objective by reducing illegal immigration by migrants from these countries by offering them a legal alternative to come to the U.S.

But the actual operation of this program, supported by faith-based NGOs passing through government money (deducting a skim, of course), was to place the migrants in exploitive employment and housing conditions, while destabilizing the communities in which they were resettled. In addition, up to now, it's hard to avoid thinking the immigration and resettlement policies have been a thinly-disguised repopulation program intended basically to reconstruct US society on a racial basis.

Musk Has A Point

The goal of the Biden administration was to strategically place illegals in swing states and make their status legal, thereby turning swing states Democrat.

The net result would have been permanent one-party rule of the USA, just like what they did in California. https://t.co/n9iOL6QP7P

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 22, 2025

Whatever Elon Musk may be, one thing he certainly isn't is a Biblical scholar. But there's scriptural support for his position in the post above, and it's something the USCCB, among whom there must certainly be some Biblical scholars, omit in their web page outlining the Church's teaching on migration:

Both the Old and New Testaments tell compelling stories of refugees forced to flee because of oppression. Exodus tells the story of the Chosen People, Israel, who were victims of bitter slavery in Egypt. They were utterly helpless by themselves, but with God's powerful intervention they were able to escape and take refuge in the desert. For forty years they lived as wanderers with no homeland of their own. Finally, God fulfilled his ancient promise and settled them on the land that they could finally call home.

The Israelites' experience of living as homeless aliens was so painful and frightening that God ordered his people for all time to have special care for the alien: "You shall treat the alien who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you; have the same love for him as for yourself; for you too were once aliens in the land of Egypt" (Lv 19:33-34).

But another major theme in the Old Testament echoed in the New (cf the Woman at the Well, John 4:4–42) is the dilution of the faith among the northern tribes of Israel. Although this certainly had its start with King Solomon himself and his foreign wives and concubines, the Assyrians were able to exploit this opening, as outlined in 2 Kings 17:

24 The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and settled them in the cities of Samaria in place of the Israelites. They took possession of Samaria and dwelt in its cities.

. . . 33 They were both venerating the LORD and serving their own gods. They followed the custom of the nations from among whom they had been deported.

34 To this very day they continue to act according to their former customs, not venerating the LORD nor observing the statutes and regulations, the law and commandment, that the LORD enjoined on the descendants of Jacob, whom he had named Israel.

This strategy was found convenient through the 20th century; Stalin found mass deportations useful for various purposes:

From 1930 to 1952, the government of the Soviet Union, on the orders of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and under the direction of the NKVD official Lavrentiy Beria, forcibly transferred populations of various groups. These actions may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of "anti-Soviet" categories of population (often classified as "enemies of the people"), deportations of entire nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite directions to fill ethnically cleansed territories.

In other words, mass transfers of population for political ends is something as old as empires. There's an ongoing debate as to whether this practice constitutes "genocide". At the link:

Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent who initiated the Genocide Convention and coined the term genocide himself, assumed that genocide was perpetrated in the context of the mass deportation of the Chechens, Ingush, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks and Karachay. Professor Lyman H. Legters argued that the Soviet penal system, combined with its resettlement policies, should count as genocidal since the sentences were borne most heavily specifically on certain ethnic groups, and that a relocation of these ethnic groups, whose survival depended on ties to their particular homeland, "had a genocidal effect remediable only by restoration of the group to its homeland".

What Musk is suggesting in his post, or at least what we might infer from it, is that the Biden administration strategy of mass population transfer from particular areas amounted to a form of deportation for political ends. Musk links a tweet that includes this chart in his own post that reinforces this (click on the image for a more readable view):

Estimates of how many people from the designated countries, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, vary, as do the particular features of the program. As of 2023, the Biden administration itself said,

On January 5, 2023, the Biden administration announced its intent to provide “safe and orderly pathways to the United States” for up to 30,000 nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela [per month]. The new program, formally known as the Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV), allows certain people from these four countries who have a sponsor in the U.S. and who pass a background check to come to the U.S. for a period of two years to live and work lawfully, using a legal mechanism known as “humanitarian parole.”

On one hand, the actual numbers admitted, according to the chart above, are far greater, and few actually received background checks:

The Trump administration is revoking the legal status of more than 500,000 migrants who entered the United States through a Biden administration parole program.

CBS News reported that 532,000 migrants from countries such as Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, who entered the country through a program called CHNV, will have their “work permits and deportation protections” terminated in April.

. . . In August 2024, Fox News reported that DHS under the Biden administration had decided to halt the “issuing of advance travel authorization” for the CHNV Parole Program, “out of an abundance of caution.”

The freeze of the program at the time came “after an internal report” found there were “large amounts of fraud in applications for” people wanting to sponsor migrants in the program, according to the outlet.

This raises the question of who the "sponsors" of these people were. Immigratiomn documents suggest that they provide transportation to the US and "initial" housing:

Maintain flexibility in your welcoming plans. Once your I-134A application is approved, your beneficiary will have 90 days to travel to the U.S., during which you can focus on travel arrangements or securing initial housing.

Again, it appears that the "sponsors" are often the same organizations that provide a "package" of sweatshop employment, slumlord housing, transportation -- which may even include purchasing cars for the migrants, but not assisting them in getting driver education, licenses, or insurance -- and other highly specilized services in places like Springfield, OH and Charleroi, PA. This raises for me the question of whether Catholic Charities is, or was, involved in this "sponsorship" racket.

So I'm left with some lingering questions. The Catholic bishops compare the "migrant" wave to the Hebrews fleeing Egypt, but in subsequent centuries, the Hebrews themselves were subject to forced deportation and repopulation programs that were specifically meant to weaken their faith and cohesiveness. The bishops don't mention this scriptural parallel, but the numbers involved in the current migrant wave of the past few decades are at the same order of magnitude as the Stalinist repopulations of the 1930s and 1940s, and appear to be implemented for the same reasons of centralized social engineering.

But eved more disturbing is the sense I get that in particular via Catholic Charities, the bishops are financially enabling government policies that arguably verge on genocide. At minimum, these aren't random, or even organized, works of corporal mercy -- they amount to mass deportations on an Assyrian or Stalinist scale that are meant to achieve political ends. And are the migrants "voluntary"? Not if they're being offered plane tickets, jobs, housing, and stay-out-of-jail cards. Who would turn that down?

Catholic Charities Starting To Show Effects Of Trump Cutbacks

Now and then, I've mentioned here the role Catholic Charities has played in enabling settlement of quasi-legal migrants in places like Springfield, OH and Charleroi, PA, to the extent that the large numbers of those resettled have badly strained community resources and driven up housing and insurance costs. I've also questioned the apparent lowball estimates of how much money the US bishops receive from the federal government.

This story gives an indication of the effect Trump administration cutbacks have had on Catholic Charities, at least in Columbia, MO:

The Central and Northern Missouri chapter of Catholic Charities will end its resettlement program March 31.

In an email to supporters, Executive Director Litz Main said the nonprofit had to end the program due to the lack of federal funding.

“We deeply appreciate your partnership and shared commitment to serving those in need,” Main said in the email. “As we navigate this transition, we welcome opportunities to collaborate in new ways to continue supporting refugee families in our region.”

The cuts come from a federal level, after President Donald Trump suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and halted all funding for agencies that support refugees. Although the executive order was blocked by a federal judge in February, local resettlement programs still face a lack of federal funds. There is no indication when the program will resume, and the case is expected to face an appeal from the Trump administration.

Media coverage of this Missouri issue appears to be limited to simply repeating the wording of a press release from Catholic Charities, which oddly makes no mention of any specific amount Catholic Charities will lose from the discountinued federal funding. The question I've aksed in my earlier post linked above is why the specific amounts given to individual Catholic Charities refugee programs in cities like Fort Worth and Louisville alone are in the hundreds of millions, when "official" estimates of total federal grants to the US Bishops are only about $100 million.

The Missouri Catholic Charities press release repeated without any question by local media concludes,

City of Refuge, a refugee-focused nonprofit in Columbia, said in an email to its supporters Tuesday that one of the largest federal grants it receives will no longer be given to nonprofits. The funding will end Sept. 30. City of Refuge was not available for comment.

However, City of Refuge sent an e-amil to supporters that said,

Meanwhile, I received communication over the weekend that one of our largest federal grants can no longer be allocated to non-profit organizations (you can read the policy letter here). The good news is that we have a little bit of time – we aren’t losing the funding today. The bad news is that the deficit amounts to that $50,000/month I forewarned you about.

$50,000 a month amounts to $600,000 a year. How this relates to any total amount of funding from the federal government to the Central and Northern Missouri chapter of Catholic Charities is impossible to say, but $600,000 a year alone is probably eaten up by salaries and administrative costs of staff. Whatever crisis the interrulption of federal funds to Catholic Charities is causing, it seems to me that the bishops need to be more transparent and accountable on how this money has been spent.

In addition, the USCCB page on Catholic Social Teaching on Immigration and the Movement of Peoples makes the point:

Because there seems to be no end to poverty, war, and misery in the world, developed nations will continue to experience pressure from many peoples who desire to resettle in their lands. Catholic social teaching is realistic: While people have the right to move, no country has the duty to receive so many immigrants that its social and economic life are jeopardized.

For this reason, Catholics should not view the work of the federal government and its immigration control as negative or evil. Those who work to enforce our nation's immigration laws often do so out of a sense of loyalty to the common good and compassion for poor people seeking a better life. In an ideal world, there would be no need for immigration control. The Church recognizes that this ideal world has not yet been achieved.

There can be little question that the social and economic lives of many Western countries, including the US, have been jeapordized by the current waves of migration. The 2024 US presidential election was decided n large part on this particular question. A difficulty I see is that up to now, Catholic Charities has enabled levels of resettlement in relatively small communities like Springfield, OH and Charleroi, PA that seriously impact their social and economic life.

In addition, the USCCB page on Catholic social teaching says, "Undocumented persons are particularly vulnerable to exploitation by employers, and they are not able to complain because of the fear of discovery and deportation." Yet numerous examples of Catholic Charities resettlement programs show that these enable sweatshop employers and slumlords by promoting an overall resettlement "package" that includes exploitive working conditions and substandard housing.

Leaving aside the fear of discovery and deportation, the migrants are also kept in such conditions by the fact that they don't speak English, aren't familiar with US life, are unemployable without detailed translation and transportation services, and can't easily leave their enclaves to seek out other opportunities. Isn't Catholic Charities enabling this situation by cooperating with the slumlords by paying the migrants' rent and the sweatshop employers by effectively endorsing the labor contractors and, at least in some cases, subsidizing the sweatshop wages?

In fact, it's hard to avoid thinking that Catholic Charities has found a highly profitable niche enabling programs that promote levels of migration that are unsustainable because they in fact jeapodize US economic and social life, while at the same time tacitly endorsing the explolitation of these same migrants. At some point, the US bishops are going to have to confront this and deal with it.

Somebody Finally Noticed

DOJ charges 3 suspects in separate Molotov attacks on Tesla properties—each facing up to 20 YEARS in prison.

- Elias Marquez – Salem, OR
- Jordan Weller – Loveland, CO
- Darnell Brooks – Charleston, SC pic.twitter.com/aXKHCrW8zC

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 20, 2025

David Strom at Hot Air posted Trans Violence Is a Real Thing, and It Is Out of Control this morning, and he embedded the post above that lists three trans-identifying people who've been charged by the Department of Justice for arson against Tesla dealerships.

Transgender people make up a TINY fraction of the population, even with the explosion in self-identity and trans propaganda. Several of the recent school shooters have been trans, for instance, and more relevantly to today's issues the Tesla terrorism includes a large number of trans activists for some reason.

Actually, the three charged by the DOJ aren't the only ones. An instagram post from February 26 discusses a Colorado man identifying as a woman, Lucy Grace Nelson, whom police say repeatedly vandalized and set fire to a Tesla dealership. I found this when I did a web search on "trans arsonist", but that was just one instance among others. In 2023,

An arson attack that destroyed a 117-year-old church in downtown Portland, Oregon, this week has become a symbol of disorder in the city.

Cameron David Storer, a trans woman also known as “Nicolette Fait,” was arrested following an investigation by the Portland Fire & Rescue Fire Investigations Unit. The 27-year-old is charged with two counts of first-degree arson, one count of second-degree arson, and two counts of second-degree burglary — all felonies.

According to prosecutors, Storer walked into the Multnomah County Detention Center and confessed to setting the church on fire using a lighter.

“Storer stated that they heard voices in their head saying they would ‘mutilate’ Storer if they did not burn the church down and that they had planned it up to one day in advance,” said the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office in a press release. Storer allegedly told investigators she was taking oxycodone and had a history of mental illness.

In a 2019 episode,

A transgender man and gay rights activist in Michigan once named “Citizen of the Year” by a local newspaper is now accused of intentionally burning down his house two years ago, killing his two dogs and three cats.

Nikki Joly, 54, was named by the Jackson City Patriot last year as the conservative town’s top citizen after organizing its first gay community center and gay pride festival. He also helped pass an ordinance that prohibits discrimination against homosexuals in employment, housing and public facilities after nearly two decades of failed attempts, the Detroit News reports.

. . . Two people who worked with Joly at St. Johns United Church of Christ told police that he had been frustrated that the Jackson Pride Parade and Festival didn’t attract more protests or generate more attention for gay rights.

. . . The case has drawn comparisons to the case of actor Jussie Smollett, who has been charged with disorderly conduct for falsely reporting a racist attack in Chicago. Still, some of Joly’s supporters said they will never believe he set the blaze.

“There’s no path for me to believe it could ever be true,” said Elody Samuelson, a bisexual woman who raised money for Joly after the blaze. “There’s no way he did it — not a bit, not a chance.”

It's hard to avoid thinking there are mental issues in play here, but it seems as though the mental health establishment will be the last to acknowledge this could be the case:

An Oregon mental health advisory board includes a member who identifies as turtle.

JD Holt, who goes by the name JD Terrapin on Facebook, advises Oregon’s Health Authority Council (OHA) on best practices and policies in mental health.

Holt allegedly identifies as a terrapin and uses “they, them and turtle” for her pronouns.

Despite this glaring defect, Holt is one of roughly two dozen consumer experts on the OHA panel, where she helps advise the state on mental health services.

Then there's the case of Jorden Matthew Dykes, AKA Yarden Silveira. His aunt

described Yarden as both loving and quick to anger, with a tendency to speak or act impulsively. He struggled socially, seldom making friends. He preferred instead to absorb himself in “special interests,” a behavior typical of children on the autism spectrum. At 13, he came out as gay on Facebook, triggering conflict with paternal relatives who had conservative religious views. His mother’s side, however, embraced him.

Two years later, at 15, Yarden told his mother that he was transgender. He believed that he had a “female brain”—the still-prevalent but scientifically flawed notion that transgender-identifying individuals’ brains resemble those of the opposite sex.

By 16, Yarden had socially transitioned. He began using the name Emily, adopted female pronouns, grew out his hair, and wore feminine attire. It was 2014—the year of the “transgender tipping point.” Public awareness of trans issues was surging, and the number of children identifying as transgender spiked.

. . . At 18, Yarden was preparing for the next step in his transition: a penile-inversion vaginoplasty, in which an otherwise healthy penis is surgically dissected, with its tissue rearranged to construct a facsimile of a vagina. He underwent the procedure shortly after his nineteenth birthday, in early 2017, at Align Surgical Associates in San Francisco.

The surgery marked the beginning of a downward spiral. Soon afterward, he was back in the hospital with severe complications, including excessive blood loss that required a transfusion. According to medical records, Yarden developed necrosis of the “vaginal” tissue. Over 2017, he was hospitalized repeatedly to undergo corrective surgeries, including stomach-tissue grafts, in which sections of tissue from his abdomen were transplanted to replace the lost tissue.

. . . Between the ages of 19 and 21, Yarden also underwent breast augmentation and facial feminization surgery—both, like his genital surgery, deemed “medically necessary” and covered by Medi-Cal, California’s publicly funded insurance program. He pinned his hopes on each successive procedure, hoping it would bring him the happiness that had eluded him. “[I]f this one surgery is a massive success,” he wrote in 2019, “then I wouldn’t have wasted so many years of my life for nothing.”

Ultimately, he decided to detransition.

“It isn’t possible to biologically transition from one sex to another, which really smacked me in the face when that reality became clear to me,” he wrote. He felt that he had been “lied to” from the start.

Yarden seemed to recognize that his autism may have influenced his decision to transition. “Maybe if I didn’t have autism, maybe if my brain wasn’t so defective, I would have caught on before it was too late,” he wrote.

Autism is increasingly prevalent among those who identify as transgender. Research links autism to higher rates of same-sex attraction and gender nonconformity—to behaviors, preferences, and traits atypical for one’s sex.

The problem here is that "autism" as it's generally understood is a meaningless term. Whether one disagrees with President Trump or Secretary Kennedy on the increase in autism diagnosis, medical professionals themselves seem unable to discuss the issue with any rigor:

[Dr. Jeremy] Veenstra-VanderWeele[, division director in child and adolescent psychiatry at Columbia University,] said the change in the criteria is another reason why the number of those diagnosed with autism rose. He likened it to changing the definition of what it means to be tall.

"To just use a crude example, if you would define somebody as tall if they were over six-foot-six, and then 30 years later, say that somebody is tall if they're over five-foot-10, you'd get very, very different numbers, and that's part of what's happened here," he said.

But what you've also done is made the word "tall" meaningless.

There can be little question that Jorden Matthew Dykes, whatever his condition, should never have been considered for transition. Whether or not he had autism, he was just plain unstable. As it happened,

On May 20, 2021, Yarden died in New York. The medical examiner listed “unknown circumstances” on his death certificate.

. . . [His] mother believes that he ended his own life. He had been open about suicidal thoughts. She also acknowledges that complications from his surgical issues might have played a role. Yarden described his worsening condition in graphic detail—a significant blockage caused by scar tissue and an exposed colon, which he feared could be life-threatening. Either way, his physical and mental suffering were inextricably bound together.

We need to start a serious discussion about gender transition and mental healtb, although clearly this is only part of a much bigger discussion that needs to take place. Maybe Secretary Kennedy can have some sort of positive influence here.

Amtrak CEO Abruptly Resigns

Via CNN:

Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner is stepping down from his position to “to ensure that Amtrak continues to enjoy the full faith and confidence of this administration,” he announced in a statement.

The decision comes as Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk said he believes the US Postal Service and Amtrak need to be privatized.

There's little other information on the circumstances, except that most outlets quote from Elon Musk's recent remarks:

Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology Media & Telecom conference, Musk said it was “kind of embarrassing” that other countries, such as China, have superior passenger rail.

“Amtrak is a sad situation,” Musk said, according to CNN Business, which first reported his remarks.

“It’s like, if you’re coming from another country, please don’t use our national rail. It can leave you with a very bad impression of America,” Musk said.

This is actually quite true, alth0ough I'm not sure where Musk learned this -- it couldn't have been from first-hand experience, because he flies by private jet. But there's a sort of sub-sub genre on YouTube where the presenters get on an Amtrak train and liveblog their journeys. Their economic model is naturally to maximize their viewership, and that means putting Amtrak in the best light possible and making their train rides look like desirable experiences.

The problem is that as often as not, they get on the train, and a bunch of things happen -- the train is stopped in the middle of nowhere, federal agents get on, and the train stays there for several hours as they hunt for a fugitive. The train hits a car at a crossing, and it stays there for several hours pending medical attention, police investigation, and mechanical inspection. The train stops and stays there for several hours, reason never explained.

Any number of things can happen that make the train nine to 12 hours late, with the result that the YouTuber expected to be at his destination at 2 PM, but the train finally pulls in at 2 AM, having long since run out of food in the dining car, toilets jammed up, heat off, and so forth. The YouTuber understands that if this is all people see of Amtrak, they won't want to watch his liveblogged train trips, much less actually ride on an Amtrak train, and he struggles like crazy to make the whole debacle seem like a positive experience.

The video embedded at the top of this post is an example of this dilemma. A charming couple, Allie and Rob, somehow have made a career out of riding long-distance Amtrak trains and going on cruises, and they somehow finance this lifestyle by posting YouTube videos liveblogging their trips and cruises. They have to walk a fine line between accurately portraying the Amtrak experience while making the Amtrak lifestyle seem attractive enough that people will want to watch their videos. They start,

ALLIE: Alright, guys, you know that we travel a lot on Amtrak trains, we have a lot of experience under our belts, and you know, it isn't all rainbows and unicorns, is it?

ROB: No, there are some issues that we run into from time to time, sometimes every time, so we want to break those down for you today so you'll have a better underwstanding of exactly what you'll be facing as you ride on Amtrak.

First, as they put it, "other passengers on the train". This has to do in part with Amtrak's dual business model. In coach, it competes with Greyhound for the lowest-tier travel market, with the complication that while Greyhound doesn't have snack bars that sell liquor on its buses, Amtrak has snack bars that sell liquor on its trains, with inevitable results. On the other hand, the sleeping car market is largely retirees on leisure travel, a whole different group with its own issues.

Trains can stop for hours in the middle of nowhere to put off a drunk or drug-addled passenger, or they can stop for hours in the middle of nowhere to transfer a retiree with a medical emergency to an ambulance. And as Rob and Allie point out, you simply don't know the criminal history of anyone on a train, and that can be a definite issue. In an episode of On Patrol: Live, the Fullerton, CA police department was called to help remove a disruptive passenger from an Amtrak train, but in the following week's show, it turned out that the guy had elected to stay around town after being thrown off the train, and they had to deal with him again.

Another point Rob and Allie raise is that you can't ever count on any train being on time, and they aren't talking about 20 or 30 minutes, they're talking about many hours. They frequently warn Amtrak novices not to book plane tickets that depart the same day as their arrival date on Amtrak, because the train will almost certainly arrive too late for them to make it to the airport in time for their flight -- always book a hotel to stay overnight before flying out, but even that may not be enough.

Another point is that the equipment is old, dirty, and poorly maintained. The sleeping cars are sold for leisure travel where the passengers want to see the scenery, but the windows aren't washed. They make the point that this is where the Greyhound market runs up against the leisure travel market, and the leisure travel market suffers.

Another point is the wild discrepancies among staff attitudes -- there are highly motivated servers and car attendants, while others simply don't want to be there. Somehow, training and supervision are missing. And finally, the food has gotten worse.

I'm with Musk. I have a sense that nobody at Amtrak ever bothers to watch the YouTubers who express their frustrations and often make constructive suggestions. I don't know if Mr Gardner was pressured to leave, or if, as in an episode Rob and Allie recount, he simply quit and got off the train in the middle of Nebraska like a dining car server on one of their trips -- I kinda think it was the latter. Firing the CEO won't help a thing. They need to rethink the whole business and start over, or maybe just concede the market to Greyhound. But Musk sees the problem, and that's a good start.

UPDATE: From Reuters:

A White House official told Reuters Gardner had been asked to step down. An Amtrak spokesperson declined to comment on whether he had been asked to leave.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement that Amtrak needs to address safety concerns at Washington's Union Station.

"It’s time for Amtrak leadership to clean up Union Station," he said. "It’s time to rid our nation's treasures of homelessness and crime. Commuters and travelers need to feel safe in our capital."

It sounds as though nobody in the White House would ride an Amtrak long-distance train, but apparently just looking at Union Station, a few blocks away, told them what they needed to know.

51st State?

Although Trump consistently refers to Canadian annexation in terms of making the whole country a "51st state", it seems to me that there are obstacles nobody has mentioned in swallowing Canada whole. There are major differences in national policies on hot-button issues like gun control, universal medical care, and medically assisted suicide, as well as questions over the status of the French language -- if annexing Canada would create special circumstances for French in the US, wouldn't fairness demand the same treatment for Spanish?

As a practical matter, the US would also have to offer Canadians some major enticement that would overcome the reluctance or distaste of many individual Canadians to vote for annexation. One such would be to offer some form of dollar equity, equivalent to what the German Federal Republic offered the German Democratic Republic at the time of reunification:

The Deutsche Mark played an important role in the reunification of Germany. It was introduced as the official currency of East Germany in July 1990, replacing the East German mark (Mark der DDR), in preparation for unification on 3 October 1990. East German marks were exchanged for Deutsche Marks at a rate of 1:1 for the first M 4,000 and 2:1 for larger amounts.

Lately, one Canadian dollar has been worth about US$0.70. Offering dollar equity to Canadians has been mentioned as one inducement, possibly a necessary one, for annexation. No discussion so far has seriously mentioned the potential cost of this, much less ventured any specific draft proposal.

In the event of annexation, which medical and retirement system would prevail in Canada?

The American and Canadian governments provide many of the same types of services for people who have reached retirement age. However, Canada has a more generous retirement system.

The poverty rate for Canadians over age 65 was 4.7%, according to Canada’s latest census. That’s lower than any other age group in the country and half the poverty rate for U.S. citizens of the same age.

A major benefit for Canadians is the publicly funded universal healthcare system, which provides them with essential medical services throughout their lives, as well as in retirement. It has no co-pays or deductibles.

In contrast, Americans have no single-payer insurance unless they’re disabled or extremely low-income until they reach age 65, when they can qualify for Medicare.

Medicare doesn’t cover most vision, dental, or hearing care costs. About one in five Medicare recipients reported paying more than $2,000 in out-of-pocket expenses, according to a Commonwealth Fund study.

On the other hand, according to a 2024 Canadian poll,

[M]any are willing to journey southward in pursuit of timely health care, even if it means paying out of pocket.

The Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News found that 42 per cent of respondents would go to the United States and personally pay for more routine health care if needed. That is up 10 percentage points compared with January 2023.

And 38 per cent of respondents said they would travel to the U.S. and personally pay for emergency care (up nine points from a year ago).

. . . The Ipsos polling comes as provinces continue to struggle with shortages of family physicians, escalating wait times for surgeries and escalation of emergency room backlogs.

But leaving those issues aside, how coulld the US annex Canada consitutionally (at least on the US side), legally, and diplomatically?

Treaties are the tools the U.S. uses to take “nothing by conquest” after the Senate ratifies those treaties by a two-thirds majority.

In 1848, President Zachary Taylor proposed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to Congress to annex Mexican lands. Even though some wanted to take all of Mexico, Congress ratified the treaty.

In 1898, Congress passed House Joint Resolution 259. It ratified President William McKinley’s treaty of the annexation of Hawaii. Due to protest, petition and dissent, it took 60 years for Hawaii to become an official state in 1957.

. . . Trump’s calls for Canada to join the U.S. could only happen by drafting a treaty demonstrating that a process of cession, purchase or occupation is legal. Only then could Congress approve it, and only with a two-thirds majority of the Senate. Trump does not have two-thirds of the Senate.

With whom would such a treaty annexing Canada be made? A Canadian nation-state about to disappear? The British Commonwealth?

It's been suggested that it might be easier to annex individual provinces, in particular Alberta, although the extent of actual support there for either separation or joining the US is unclear.

A May 2020 poll by Northwest Research for the Western Standard found that 41% of respondents would support independence in a referendum, 50% would be opposed, and 9% weren't sure. Removing undecideds, 45% would support and 55% would be opposed. Respondents were also asked if they would support a referendum if "the federal government is unwilling to negotiate with Alberta on a new constitutional arrangement", 48% said yes, while 52% said no. Support for independence was higher outside of Alberta's two biggest cities, with Edmonton being the most opposed.

Based on the business-school analysis of Trump's negotiating style I looked at last week, we know that Trump tends to ask for the absolute maximum he might be able to get, but may be willing to settle for less -- for inistance, Alberta alone if he can't get the whole country.

But there would have to be circumstances far more exigent than we currently have to convince enough Albertans, much less Canadians as a whole, to go along with annexation, and there are major issues that nobody in either country has been willing to address seriously so far.

What's Going On In Canada?

I've continued to follow up on Justin Trudeau's March 4 remarks about Trump's "dumb" tariff threat, in large part because there's been so little long-form written analysis:

Speaking to reporters at a news conference on Parliament Hill, Trudeau said Trump is trying to prompt "a total collapse of the Canadian economy" because he thinks that will "make it easier to annex us," something the U.S. president has repeatedly said he wants to do.

But Trudeau said that will never happen because "when it comes to defending our great nation, there is no price we all aren't willing to pay."

Trudeau said Canada will not back down from a fight in the face of "completely bogus and completely unjustified" trade action that has the potential to ruin bilateral relations and prompt job losses, economic devastation and higher inflation on both sides of the border.

This stemmed from earlier exchanges between the two:

According to The New York Times, Trump told “Trudeau that he did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between the two countries was valid and that he wants to revise the boundary.” He also mentioned revisiting long-standing treaties between the U.S. and Canada regarding the sharing of lakes and rivers.

. . . Publicly, Trump wouldn’t let the matter die. In an interview broadcast before the Super Bowl, on February 9, Trump told Fox News’ Bret Baier his plans to annex Canada were a “real thing.” And to magnify Canada’s economic vulnerability, Trump told reporters that Canada was “not viable as a country” without U.S. trade.

The problem for Canada is that Trump isn’t wrong on this front. Canada is so dependent on cross-border trade that if the U.S. were to turn the screws on The Great White North it could crater Canada’s economy.

There seems to be general agreement on this point, but again, there's almost no long-form written analysis -- just YouTubers posting opinions. A piece from a few days ago at the Council on Foreign Relations gives the establishment view with little insight:

[B]eneath Trump’s unconventional way of presenting his perspective lie nuggets of truth. The grievances with Canada that the president has articulated are hardly unprecedented or unfounded. During my tenure as U.S. trade representative in the Obama administration, I saw firsthand the many persistent trade irritants in the U.S.-Canada relationship, from Canada’s subsidization of softwood lumber to its protectionist dairy policies to other policies that target large U.S. firms.

. . . Being liked isn’t everything, and Canadians are condemned by geography to be forever tied to the United States, whether they like it or not. But it certainly seems like we should be able to solve our outstanding issues with the Canadians, of all people.

A couple thousand words in between, and that's what it concludes? We really oughta work things out? Sundance at Conservative Treehouse goes a little farther into causes, but I quote him only because there's so little else available:

Trudeau said if President Trump was to make the Canadian government pay reciprocal tariffs, open the USMCA trade agreements to force reciprocity, and/or balance economic relations on non-tariff issues, then Canada would collapse and cease to exist.

In essence, Canada cannot survive as a free and independent north American nation, without receiving all the one-way benefits from the U.S. economy. To wit, President Trump then said, if Canada cannot survive in a balanced rules environment, including putting together their own military and defenses (which it cannot), then Canada should become the 51st U.S state.

. . . The only way for Canada to be a sovereign nation unattached to the United States, is if they drop all of their climate-change initiatives, drop their liberal economic rules and regulations, begin a system of heavy industry production again and get back to using cheap energy production as the fuel to drive it.

Canada would then need to discontinue most social welfare programs and instead divert that money to their military budget.

This morning, he gamed out the impact of the tariff war:

Here’s how it will happen. CAD = Canadian Dollar, USD = U.S Dollar

President Trump hits Canada with an approximately 50% tariff. Let’s say an import widget from Canada costs the purchaser/importer $100 CAD + 50% tariff, now $150 CAD.

$1 CAD = 0.70¢ USD

Without U.S. tariff, it costs $70 USD to purchase the $100 CAD widget.

With the U.S tariff it would take $105 USD to purchase $150 Canadian widget

However, due to economic policy, Canada’s dependence on the USA market and the tariff battle, the Canadian currency drops around 30%. $1 CAD now equals 0.50¢ USD

With currency drop it now costs $50 USD to purchase the original $100 Canadian widget. $75 USD with tariff.

BEFORE: $70 USD without U.S. tariff, or AFTER: $75 USD with 50% U.S. tariff. A net change of $5.

But wait, back to Mark Carney’s plan. As stated in his tariff policy, the prime minister will take income from the Canadian side of the tariff equation (countervailing duties) to subsidize the impacted export sector. . . . All of this is done to retain access to USA consumers.

The final outcome, the U.S. purchaser is back to the original price of $70, only now that same outcome is evident with an invisible $50 tariff.

This is what Canada is now planning to do to retain access to the U.S. market while they look for alternatives.

What are the alternatives?

Prime Minister Carney outlined yesterday how he will increase the industrial carbon tax in order to align with U.K and EU trade partners on the issue of climate change. Taxing carbon, he says, is the key to unlocking excellent trade agreements with other ‘global trade partners’ who can then fill the void created by disconnecting Canada from the USA economy.

This is in line with Chrystia Freeland's idea of building a separate alliance with the UK and France as nuclear powers to balance the US. This is all nothing more than grandiose fantasy that solves nothing -- Canada, France, and the UK together would be litte more effective than Canada alone against the US, especially as none would seriously increase its military budget.

Maybe Trump has a point. But it's so strange that there's so little long-form analysis of these issues. If the only practical solution to the Canada question is to absorb it into the US, peope need to start seriously thinking about how this would be done.