James Madison High School was closed so that migrants could sleep in the school gym during a winter storm.
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we look at Democrats’ lasting ignorance on the border crisis, review the dangers of the passive voice, and cover more media misses.
Democrat Denialism on the Border Crisis
When administrators at a Brooklyn high school allowed the school’s campus to be used to shelter migrants last week, forcing students into a day of remote learning, they apparently didn’t think there would be any parent backlash.
James Madison High School turned into a shelter for nearly 2,000 migrants who had been housed in a tent shelter at Floyd Bennett Field. The move was made in anticipation of incoming storms that were expected to bring high winds.
The City reported that the school was “Baffled by Media Frenzy Over Migrant Families’ One-Night Stay.” The school apparently could not understand why parents would be upset at their children missing in-person instruction after the Covid pandemic left students out of school for months and revealed the practice’s limitations and detrimental consequences.
The school ultimately did not even offer live instruction on the day of remote instruction, according to the Washington Free Beacon. Instead, teachers were made available via Zoom for students who had made prior requests.
The school also postponed a winter dance to make room for the migrants.
Still, principal Jodie Cohen went so far as to chastise parents during a Zoom call last week for their criticism of the situation. “How dare someone say that I don’t care about kids. I don’t understand how people who never come on a Zoom like this could take an opportunity like this evening to throw mud,” Cohen said, adding that the situation was an emergency for one night only.
The New York Times, meanwhile, chose to frame the story as the latest example of Republicans pouncing: “James Madison High School Shelters Migrants, and Prompts Right-Leaning Protests.”
The incident is one of countless signs that the city is unable to accommodate thousands of migrants arriving from the southern border each week.
New York City mayor Eric Adams famously declared in 2019 (before he was mayor), “To anyone in the world fleeing hatred and oppression, the ultimate city of immigrants wants you to remember: you’re ALWAYS welcome here.”
Now, Adams claims the Big Apple’s sanctuary-city status has not contributed to the crisis.
His most recent defense of the city came after Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley suggested in a primary debate that New York City shouldn’t be a sanctuary city if Adams is upset about the influx of migrants into the city.
“That’s why we have to defund sanctuary cities,” Haley said. “Now Governor Abbott finally did to them what’s been happening to Texas for so long. We’ve got to put an end to this.”
In response, Adams claimed during an appearance on Good Morning America that “this has nothing to do with sanctuary cities.”
“Migrants and asylum seekers are paroled into the country, they are here legally. And so when you have a national leader talking about ‘sanctuary cities are the reason we’re having this,’ it is telling me she’s not knowledgeable on the real topic,” Adams said.
He added: “The problem is, when you parole someone into a country, you should have a decompression strategy on a national level to spread it throughout the country and not target just certain cities.”
He went on to say the “fix” is that “cities shouldn’t be handling a national crisis of this magnitude.”
Adams said New York City is seeing anywhere from 2,500 to 4,000 illegal immigrants arrive in the city each week. “And you have to find housing, food, shelter, clothing, educate the children, health care, that’s not sustainable. It’s a $12 billion hole in the budget of our economy.”
A similar scenario is playing out in another sanctuary city, Chicago.
The city struggled to safely house migrants ahead of a dangerous cold snap last week, placing 300 migrants onto warming buses with hundreds more waiting for placements around the city. Chicago’s shelters are housing nearly 15,000 migrants.
But despite blue-city mayors finally caving under the pressure of the migrant crisis, Representative Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) claimed last week that the Biden administration has actually been too “heavy-handed” in responding to the border crisis.
“There is so much fearmongering going on that it is difficult to know exactly where to start,” she said during a recent House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on illegal immigration.
“The Biden administration is enforcing immigration laws,” she added. “In fact, the administration has been so heavy-handed in recent months that I have serious concerns about how they are conducting border enforcement.”
She noted there are nearly 38,000 people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, “which, by the way, is what the Trump Administration averaged in fiscal year, 2018.”
Jayapal added: “The Biden administration has also significantly increased removals in a way that I worry violates migrants’ due process rights and their ability to lawfully seek asylum. Since the end of Title 42 last year, the Biden Administration has removed or return to Mexico over 400,000 individuals, including over 65,000 individual members of family units, including children. This total is nearly equivalent to the number of people removed in all of fiscal year 2019 under Donald Trump, so the idea that the administration is not enforcing the law is ridiculous.”
However, migrant encounters hit an all-time high of 300,000 last month, Customs and Border Protection sources told Fox News.
For its part, the White House has tried to shift some of the blame onto House Republicans, claiming they voted last May to eliminate 2,000 Border Patrol agents. Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler gave the claims three “Pinocchios.”
The number is “not based on an actual vote on the Homeland Security budget,” Kessler explains. “Instead, it’s a White House estimate on the impact of a bill the House passed in 2023 as an opening bid in budget talks with the Biden administration. When it came to an actual vote for border security, the House in September passed an appropriations bill that funded an additional 1,795 Border Patrol agents. That was four times the increase (350 agents) that President Biden had requested in his own 2024 budget proposal.”
Meanwhile, House Republicans ripped the administration this week after it allowed CBS Face the Nation to film at a border facility, despite preventing lawmakers from taking photos or video at that same facility last week.
“Even as CBP refused to allow Members of Congress to take photographs, House Republicans learned that CBP later gave CBS’s Face the Nation access to the same Eagle Pass facility,” a group of Republicans wrote to Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Face the Nation was also permitted to take photographs and record video while on the premises. This is a clear double standard designed to hide the truth of the crisis you have created at the southern border.”
Headline Fail of the Week
Readers of a recent headline from the Washington, D.C., NBC affiliate may have been left with the impression that a car went for a quick grocery trip on its own: “A car went inside the Whole Foods in Bethesda, Maryland, on Sunday, damaging the produce section and disrupting grocery shopping.”
JUST IN: A car went inside the Whole Foods in Bethesda, Maryland, on Sunday, damaging the produce section and disrupting grocery shopping. https://t.co/YAHvcK60cV
— NBC4 Washington (@nbcwashington) January 14, 2024
“At least two people suffered minor injuries Sunday when a vehicle went inside the Whole Foods in Bethesda, Maryland, authorities say. The car damaged the produce section and disrupted grocery shopping,” the story reads.
“The car went past the front door and stopped in the back of the produce department of the Whole Foods at 5269 River Road just before noon, according to a Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service spokesperson,” it adds.
Finally, in the third paragraph, the story explains that a driver had lost control of the car “for reasons that are still under investigation.”
Media Misses
• NBC News reporters got an overdue history lesson last week after they accused Florida governor Ron DeSantis of making a sexist remark against Nikki Haley, when in fact he was quoting Ronald Reagan.
“We need to fly a flag of bold colors. Carrying the banner putting the American people first — not the pale pastels of the warmed-over corporatism of people like Nikki Haley,” DeSantis said, quoting Reagan’s 1976 GOP convention speech in which he said the GOP platform would stand with “bold, unmistakable colors.”
But NBC reporters seemed to miss the reference. “A color scheme, ‘pale pastel’ or otherwise, is not the way you attack a presidential candidate,” Ali Vitali wrote on X, believing the Florida governor was making a comment on Haley’s outfit. “None of the men who’ve been on these debate stages have had their clothes used to criticize their policies.”
“At a certain point, the ‘pale pastels’ commentary could start to ring a little sexist. None of the male candidates are being taken to task for their bright red ties’ somehow being akin to their policy stances,” she added on the outlet’s live blog. NBC reporter Alec Hernández responded on the liveblog, “DeSantis’ ‘pale pastels’ reference is a line pulled from his stump speech. He often says that Republicans need to lead with ‘core convictions’ and govern with ‘bold colors, not pale pastels.’ That said, saying it out of context here standing next to Haley does come off differently.”
• Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz is once again making everything about Covid alarmism, this time with a bit of conspiracy theory sprinkled in:
Apparently Covid variants were cooked up in the United States and sent to Gaza…
Obviously insane, but not inconsistent with the standards for Washington Post “journalists”. pic.twitter.com/8e0SbjC39F
— AG (@AGHamilton29) January 13, 2024
• The View co-host Sunny Hostin recently dismissed women who support Nikki Haley, failing to grasp that anyone might support her for her policy ideas rather than solely in female solidarity. “I don’t understand why everyone is backing Nikki Haley, especially women. I remember when Hillary Clinton was running, there was a lot of talk about ‘I don’t vote for someone just because she has a vagina.’ Well, last I checked Nikki Haley has one too,” Hostin said.