Tangle - Martha's Vineyard migrants.

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

The Martha's Vineyard story. Plus, a question about where migrants cross the border.You can read today's podcast here, today’s “Under the Radar” story here, and today’s “Have a nice day” story here.Today’s clickables: Quick hits (00:58), Today’s story (02:02), Right’s take (09:53), Left’s take (05:35), Isaac’s take (14:25), Listener question (19:02), Under the Radar (21:55), Numbers (22:33), Have a nice day (23:05)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and I hope you had a great weekend. Today we are going to be covering Martha's Vineyard and the arrival of some migrants there that is part of a new trend, I guess, in the political theater world. Before we jump in, though, as always, I want to start off with some quick hits. First up, in a 60 Minutes appearance last night,

President Biden pledged that U.S. forces would defend Taiwan in the event of an attack from China, he declared the pandemic over and said he has not made a firm decision about running again in 2024. Number two, Hurricane Fiona made landfall in Puerto Rico as a Category 1 storm, knocking out power across the island. The storm is now moving across the Dominican Republic. The storm is now moving across the Dominican Republic. Number three, Taiwan was hit with 6.9 and 6.5 magnitude earthquakes in a span of just 18 hours over the weekend. So far, no fatalities have been reported. Number four, the Justice Department is asking a federal appeals court to lift a ruling that

is keeping it from reviewing the files seized at Mar-a-Lago. Number five, the European Union has recommended suspending $7.5 billion of funding for Hungary, saying it has undermined democracy and may mismanage the money. The White House is again blasting Republican governors who are transporting asylum seekers to Democratic led cities. Today, dozens of migrants who were flown to Martha's Vineyard by Florida's Republican governor were on the move again. We have some Venezuelan refugees who have they arrived on Martha's Vineyard. No one knew they were coming. They arrived on Martha's Vineyard. No one knew they were coming.

And so there has been a massive community effort to provide them with housing and care and any legal advice that we can give them. Last week, about 50 migrants unexpectedly landed in Martha's Vineyard by plane, part of a campaign by Republican governors to shift the burden of housing and caring for migrants to Democratic areas. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took credit for sending the two plane loads of migrants to the wealthy liberal enclave in Massachusetts, with his communications director describing it as part of the state's relocation program. Martha's Vineyard residents should be thrilled about this, Christina Puchaw, DeSantis' spokesperson, said on Twitter. They vote for sanctuary cities. They get a sanctuary city of their own. And illegal aliens will increase the town's diversity, which is a strength, right? Migrants from border states like Texas and Arizona have been bused to New York City, Washington, D.C., and Chicago in recent weeks,

which we covered two weeks ago in our edition on the border. Those cities are considered sanctuary cities because they do not comply with federal immigration policies typically protecting undocumented immigrants from deportation. Unlike those cities, though, Martha's Vineyard is much smaller, with a year-round population of about 20,000 people. Massachusetts State Representative Dylan Fernandez said that the immigrants had arrived without warning. Currently, immigrants are being dropped off on Martha's Vineyard by chartered flights from Texas. Many don't know where they are. They say they were told they would be given housing and jobs.

Islanders were given no notice but are coming together as a community to support them, he said on Twitter. It is illegal for states to compel migrants to move, so they must consent to be transported out of state. While some accepted the transportation in hopes of getting closer to their final destinations, local representatives reported that others said they did not know where they were being sent. Upon the migrants' arrival in Martha's Vineyard, a large local effort to support them broke out. On Friday morning, they were transferred to Joint Base Cape Cod, where the state said it had the facilities to provide shelter and humanitarian support. Today, we're going to look at some reactions from the left

and the right to this move, and then my take. First up, we'll start with what the left is saying. The left is critical of DeSantis, saying it is a political stunt whose real point is cruelty and arguing that lives are being put at risk. Some say it is representative of how low GOP politics have gone. Others point out that the residents of Martha's Vineyard backed up their talk with an outpouring of compassion and support. In the Los Angeles Times, Bob Drogon, who lives in Martha's Vineyard, said the stunt fell flat. Using Florida taxpayers' money, he charted two planes to fly a few dozen people, including at least 10 children, thousands of miles, on flights originating in San

Antonio to a rural Massachusetts island that sees its population ebb and flow by tens of thousands every summer. A tourist bus or two won't make much difference here, Drogon said. If DeSantis had hoped to spur anti-immigrant sentiment on the vineyard, he failed. The island has welcomed immigrants for years. More than 12% of the 17,000 full-time residents are foreign-born, according to the 2020 census. And for all the breathless reporting that calls the vineyard a playground of the rich, it's also an increasingly diverse community. Some 22% of residents are non-white. In any case, Islanders more than met the DeSantis challenge, Jorgen said. St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Edgartown quickly rounded up

50 cots and mattresses and housed the migrants. An emergency room doctor came down from Boston while lawyers offered up pro bono services. Five restaurants donated far more food than the group could possibly eat. High school students studying Spanish came to translate. The Islanders' talk page on Facebook exploded with offers to help, and donations poured into a community services fund. So many volunteers rushed the church with toys, clothes, bedding, and other supplies that the police finally pleaded for a stop to keep traffic flowing. In the New Republic, Alex Shepard said Ron DeSantis is doing everything he can to emulate Trump. There is no actual point to DeSantis' actions beyond weaponizing his own petulance

and the fervent hope that somewhere, even if it's just online, some libs will be triggered, he said. It's a policy that accomplishes nothing beyond doing a grave indecency to some needful human beings for the sake of a live-action troll job. Its only point is to garner some attention from the Fox News set by portraying people who are merely seeking safety and economic security as violent criminals and traffickers. The 50-some migrants who were spirited away are just pawns in a political stunt aimed at raising DeSantis' profile as presidential primary season nears. And it was a classic Trump move. Pointless, cruel, designed only to provoke. Trump's border wall, his signature policy,

remains the quintessential policy position of the contemporary Republican Party, Shepard said. It is, first and foremost, a troll. It does little, if nothing, to reduce undocumented immigration. It is a metaphor more than a policy, flaunting what purports to be the simple solution to an incredibly complex issue. If only the politicians in D.C. had common sense and weren't cowed by political correctness, they would just do what was necessary. It is, of course, not a real solution but a scam, and one to which various grifters have attached their own cons. In the New York Times, Maureen Dowd asked, how low can they go? It can be amusing to mock elites, Dowd said, but there's something

exceedingly creepy and blatantly opportunistic about DeSantis chartering two planes to send some 50 migrants, mostly Venezuelan, from San Antonio to Martha's Vineyard. The lawyers for some migrants said they were deceived about their destination, and Martha's Vineyard officials said they had no notice. Abbott sent two busloads of migrants to Vice President Kamala Harris' home in the Naval Observatory. home in the Naval Observatory. It was reported that a woman who said her name was Perla offered the migrants in Texas three months of rent and work in Boston, but then they ended up, as one put it, on this little island. This caper to expose the hypocrisy of Democratic elites ended up being compared to human trafficking, Dowd wrote. The Republicans are exploiting people's misery for a political gain. The migrants simply want to work, which a bunch of Americans don't want to do anymore. With their pre-midterm publicity stunts, as with their draconian push to outlaw abortion, the Republicans are increasingly letting politics take precedence over people. Alright, that is what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying.

Republicans mostly praised the move, saying the border crisis needs to be brought to Democrats' front door. Some compared the crisis in Martha's Vineyard to southern border towns. Others noted how the migrants were quickly removed to a new location from Martha's Vineyard. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said migrants are becoming props amid the failure of U.S. immigration policy. New York Mayor Eric Adams, who presides over 8 million residents, said Wednesday that his city is nearing its breaking point after receiving about 10,000 migrants since May. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker declared a state of emergency Wednesday and authorized National Guard troops to help out after a mere 500 migrants made it to Chicago.

Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has also declared an emergency, the board said. Contrast those numbers with the more than 250,000 migrants who have arrived this year around Yuma, Arizona, a city of about 100,000. Migrant apprehensions at the border are already at 1.9 million this fiscal year and will probably hit a record this month. These migrants descend on border states first, and cities like Del Rio, Uvalde, and El Paso bear too much of the burden, the board wrote. Members of the Biden administration, including Ms. Harris and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, have ignored this surge and declared the border closed. They claim little more can be done until Congress enacts immigration reform, which they are doing nothing to help pass. Meanwhile,

the border is essentially open, which is an invitation to more migrants to make the trek. The omnibus spending bill that President Biden signed in March granted Customs and Border Protection 3% less than in the previous year, despite boosting overall spending by 7%. Border Patrol officers say they are shorthanded and often vilified. In The Federalist, Tristan Justice noted that the migrants were deported in about 24 hours, as local residents claimed they didn't have enough housing for them. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown.

When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. Federalist editor Ellie Purnell, however, outlined a dozen stunning vacation homes available to house the few dozen arrivals who inaugurated diversity on the majority white island, Justice said.

While options run between $1,600 and $20,000 a night, New York City Democrat Mayor Eric Adams plans to spend up to $300 million to house the more than 6,000 migrants who've arrived in the Big Apple courtesy of Texas Governor Greg Abbott over the next year. Poor Texas border towns, meanwhile, routinely see more than 7,000 new migrant arrivals on a daily basis. Reaction to the Florida governor's introduction of diversity to the wealthy white liberal enclave featured left-wing policymakers who accused DeSantis of trafficking, Justice said. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also accused DeSantis of culpability in literally human trafficking on MSNBC.

President Joe Biden, on the other hand, faced no such charges of human trafficking over secret flights of illegal underage migrants in the middle of the night uncovered by the New York Post. In the meantime, Biden's open border policies, which continue to flood communities with illegal migrants, foster a severe humanitarian crisis complete with an actual human trafficking industry. In Fox News, Carol Markowitz said DeSantis was right to send the migrants to Martha's Vineyard because Democrats need to confront the border crisis. When migrants follow a process to enter the United States, they normally have a sponsor

of some sort, a family member, an employer, sometimes a house of worship. Upon getting permission to enter, they head toward their sponsor's locale, whether to stay with them or to be provided lodging by that sponsor, Markowitz said. My own family were refugees from the Soviet Union. We were allowed passage to Italy, where we then waited on permission to enter. The equivalent of that would be the migrants waiting in Mexico for the United States to allow them in. This was a policy of the Donald Trump administration and has been abandoned by the Biden administration. When people cross our borders with no process, the towns and cities at that border are expected to simply handle them, and they simply can't. It was untenable for a long time, but with the extreme influx of migrants at our border during the Biden administration, around 200,000 a month, the situation grew dire. But the political class,

in particular on the left, refused to do anything about it. The Democrats are in control of the presidency, the House, and the Senate, and yet they have failed to act in any way whatsoever to stem the flow of migrants at the border. Our border towns are in deep trouble and have been for a long time. The people who make the policies need to see the effects of those policies. All right, that is it for the left and the right's take, which brings us to my take. So look, I'm not sure how much new territory there is to scratch here

after writing about this over the last couple of weeks. In our initial coverage of the border crisis, we wrote about how this was happening, how Governor Greg Abbott in Texas was doing this. And then a reader asked me to kind of clarify my position, which I answered in a newsletter last week about why I thought it was cruel to bus migrants to cities across the US. So I guess to quickly recap that, I actually don't mind the policy of busing migrants across the country from border states. It doesn't make sense that those states have to bear the brunt of migrant flows alone because this is federal policy and there's just a few states on the border. In fact, the Biden administration has been seen, or caught, I guess I should say, sending migrants north, however quiet it has tried to keep

that. The uncomfortable reality of the situation is that many Americans in New York, Chicago, D.C., and Martha's Vineyard, and elsewhere, truly don't understand what is going on at the southern border, and Democrats have not made addressing it a policy priority. I think it's totally fair of Republican governors in border states to say, look, it's easy to talk about being accepting of migrants when you don't have to regularly deal with those migrants crossing the border into your backyard every day. Obviously, many liberal cities are enclaves of huge, unauthorized immigrant populations, but, you know, they kind of have a point that this is them on the front lines, quote unquote, of dealing with this, and it is a real humanitarian crisis on the border. It's not sustainable to have thousands of people crossing the border every day,

claiming asylum, and then needing to be housed or being let go into the U.S. with a faraway court date. The chaos of a couple of planes landing in Martha's Vineyard pales in comparison to the reality on the ground in South Texas or Arizona or California. It is also rather absurd that 50 migrants on Martha's Vineyard, or 10,000 in New York City over an entire summer, draw cries of quote-unquote humanitarian crisis when some 8,500 migrants cross into the U.S. southern border every day. In Eagle Pass, Texas, weeks have gone where they've seen an average of 2,000 migrant crossings every day in one small town of 29,000 people, which is about the population of Martha's Vineyard. What I said about Abbott and other governors doing this is that it's the way they are doing it that bothers me. Sending migrants unannounced and

in some cases misleading them about where they're going creates chaos for the towns receiving them. DeSantis, for his part, is the governor of Florida and is spending his state's money shuttling migrants from Texas to Massachusetts. It's an obvious ploy for national media attention and it's almost annoying how well it's working. This isn't about him serving his own state's interests or governing effectively or trying to help the situation. It's about making a political statement to win over conservatives, almost certainly because he's planning to run for president in 2024. Again, if you want to organize and normalize the process of moving migrants from Texas, Arizona, and California to other states, I'm all for it. We should expand existing programs that already do that and work together as a country to share the responsibility of asylum seekers and migrants

who are crossing the southern border. What we shouldn't do is ignore it completely, freak out when we're forced to take that responsibility, or intentionally create chaos using live humans to make political statements. Many migrants seem to have misunderstood what exactly they signed up for or were misled about the pros and cons. Some town representatives and immigration lawyers noted that a few of the migrants had immigration hearings this week, thousands of miles away from Martha's Vineyard back in Texas

or elsewhere across the country, meaning they'd have to immediately get back on a plane or a bus if they wanted to comply with the law. That's the kind of counterproductive, disorganized, and unfair situation that comes up when you intentionally make things a mess. What our country doesn't need is a Florida or Texas governor trying to create an intentional crisis to get people talking about the border. What we do need is members of the U.S. House and Senate to work together with the Biden administration on an actual immigration reform bill, one that continues to increase the number

of lawyers and judges at the border, resolves questions of legal status for the millions of unauthorized immigrants who are here, continues to enhance the security on the southern border, and beefs up our capacity to take in work-seeking migrants legally who are ready, willing, and able to take jobs many Americans don't want. As plenty of others have already pointed out, we are currently in a labor shortage, one that would benefit greatly from an influx of interested laborers. Instead, we get the infuriating circus we have now, with everyone trying to out-cruel and out-virtue signal each other, all without doing anything to solve the actual problem. Alright, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered.

This one is from Bill in Wayne, New Jersey. Bill said, As a coastal liberal, I admit I may be ignorant to aspects of the southern border crisis. That said, I don't understand why Texas seems to be the only state struggling to the point of taking drastic measures. I get that they make up half the border alone, but you would think that California, Arizona, and New Mexico would be collectively freaking out as well if it was actually unmanageable. Are they truly seeing an outsized portion of the problem due to geographical factors, or does it really come down to cynicism and political preferences as it appears to from the outside? So it's definitely not the only state. New Mexico deals with migrant crossings and drug smuggling regularly. Arizona has some of the

biggest crossing hotbeds anywhere on the border. It represents about 370 miles of the 2,000 mile long border with Mexico and some 400,000 of the 2 million arrests this year happened in Arizona. One important thing to understand though, crossings vary widely, not just across states, but within states. For instance, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection divides Arizona into two sectors, Yuma and Tucson. In Tucson, many of the crossers are young men who blitz and climb over border walls at the same time in different sections to stretch Border Patrol thin. In Yuma, old and young migrants are coming from all over the world in families or in huge groups of 60 to 100 people and often cross in the middle

of the night and then give themselves up. In Texas, the state is divided into five sectors, El Paso, Big Bend, Del Rio, Laredo, and Rio Grande Valley. Rio Grande Valley, a relatively tiny sliver of land in the southeastern part of the state, gets the highest number of encounters, over 400,000 just this fiscal year. Meanwhile, Big Ben, where I have a lot of family and spend time each year, is the lowest. In Big Ben, where border towns are more sparsely populated and natural barriers like mountains, the Rio Grande, and unpopulated stretches of desert make crossing much more treacherous, many fewer migrants come through, just 29,000 this fiscal year. There's a graphic in today's newsletter from CBP that illustrates it

well, but I'll just explain to you what you're looking at. In Rio Grande and Del Rio and Laredo, there are 413,000 border apprehensions, 376,000 border apprehensions, and 94,000 border apprehensions just in these three sections of Texas. That's not including Big Bend and El Paso. The gist of it is yes, Texas takes the vast majority of these migrant crossings in, but it's a huge deal in Arizona too, especially, and in parts of New Mexico and Southern California. All right, that is it for our reader question today. Don't forget, if you want to ask a question yourself, you can write in to dangle, Isaac, I-S-A-A-C, at readtangle.com. All right, next up is our under the radar section. The Pentagon says it is ordering a sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare after several major social media companies identified and removed fake accounts they suspect are being run by the U.S. military.

Twitter and Facebook said they've removed more than 150 bogus personas and media sites created in the U.S., and the U.S. Central Command is among those whose activities are facing scrutiny. It is against Twitter and Facebook's rules to run such accounts, though both companies have declined to comment. The Washington Post has the story, and there's a link in today's episode description. Next up is our numbers section. The percentage of Americans who want immigration to the U.S. decreased is now 38%, according to an August Gallup poll. The percentage of Americans who want immigration to the U.S. to stay the same is now 31%. The percentage of Americans who want immigration to the U.S. increased is 27 percent. The percentage of Republicans who say they want immigration to the U.S. to be decreased is 66

percent. The percentage of Democrats who want immigration to the U.S. to be decreased is now 17 percent. And last but not least, our have a nice day section. A Palestinian farmer was planting a new olive tree when his shovel hit a hard object. He had apparently stumbled onto an archaeological treasure. The man, who carefully dug out the area for three months, discovered an ornate Byzantine-era mosaic that experts say is one of the greatest archaeological treasures ever found in Gaza. The floor boasts 17 iconographies of beasts and birds and is very well preserved. These are the most beautiful mosaic floors ever discovered in Gaza, both in

terms of the quality of the graphic representation and the complexity of the geometry, Rene Elter, an archaeologist from the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem, told the Associated Press. The mosaic is believed to be from a time between the 5th and 7th centuries. AP News has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please give us a five-star rating or just share the podcast with friends. We'll be right back here, same time tomorrow. Peace. and our social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who designed our logo. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our website at www.readtangle.com. We'll see you next time. of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed.