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Ellis Island sharp contrast to recent border crossings

National Columnists

Between 1892 and 1954, approximately 12 million immigrants arrived at the now-iconic Ellis Island to enter the U.S. — or nearly 200,000 legal entries per year. All were registered, documented, and given rudimentary health exams. They arrived as rich and poor, white and non-white, and, without exception, legally. With the gradual decline of such great influxes, Ellis Island finally ceased operating roughly 71 years ago. Yet Ellis Island’s successful tenure offers a sharp contrast to the failures of our recent open-border catastrophes. Americans will never know how many ...

Affordability issues continue to dominate

National Columnists

The Nov. 4 election results are a reality check for the Trump administration. Democrats didn’t just run up the score in deep-blue enclaves. With power prices soaring, they flipped two Georgia utility-regulator seats in rare statewide victories. In New York City, more than half of voters told exit pollsters that their top worry is the cost of living. Seven in 10 Americans say their grocery bills have gone up this past year. Six in 10 say their utility costs have increased. So, yes, the affordability issues that dominated the 2024 election remain central. But President Donald Trump ...

Don’t Be Cruel: Administration Ignores Elvis’ Plea

National Columnists

The rock musical “Hair,” a huge hit in the ‘60s, is scarcely remembered today. Still, the first line of the play’s showstopper song, “Easy to Be Hard,” keeps running through my head: “How can people be so heartless?” Each day that’s what I ask myself. The Democrats never had a chance in the congressional standoff over the budget. Violating precedent and judicial orders, the Trump administration cut off the food aid provided to about 42 million Americans by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. A senior White House official promised, “We’re going to ...

We must address the affordability issue

National Columnists

Affordability. It’s the word on everybody’s lips. Ever since self-described socialist Zohran Mamdani became the frontrunner in the New York City mayoral election by saying the word “affordability” with talismanic regularity, we have been told that the key to modern politics is that word’s repetition. Say “affordability,” and watch your polls rise. And yet the world becomes ever more unaffordable. Why? Because there is, in the end, only one way to make things more affordable: to reduce prices. And there are only two ways to reduce prices: to reduce demand, or to ...

Shutdown reinforces need for nest egg

Letters to the Editor

Kevin Nelson, Minot My grandfather was born in 1883 and homesteaded near Makoti in 1912. In that era, farmers saved seed from the crop in order to plant the next year’s crop. Grandpa said that he always saved an extra bin so he could plant again if he had a crop failure.This may not have been a common practice, but having a “nest egg” to cover unforeseen events is a good idea. We never know when something unforeseen, and expensive, may occur and having something set aside to avoid having to borrow, or do without, is a good idea. The concept of a nest egg seems to be ...

Both parties failed us on shutdown

National Columnists

The longest federal government shutdown is over. The question the pundits are now asking is: Who won and who lost? For starters I believe that both the GOP and Democrats have punked Americans. They used the American people much like pimps use women or like Jeffrey Epstein and his associates abused underage women, all for their own personal satisfaction. Our founding fathers, trust me, never in their wildest imagination, thought that elected officials from across the country would repeatedly “use” the American people for their political gamesmanship. Our politicians in Washington ...