Examining the media reaction to the Martha’s Vineyard migrant relocation.
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact-Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we call out liberal hypocrisy on Martha’s Vineyard, take issue with the Atlantic’s false premise on gender, and hit more media misses.
The ‘Humanitarian Crisis’ That Wasn’t
When Florida governor Ron DeSantis sent just 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard last week, liberal turmoil ensued.
The Chamber of Commerce of Martha’s Vineyard said the island was facing a “humanitarian crisis” after the migrants arrived.
Massachusetts state representative Dylan Fernandes, whose district includes Martha’s Vineyard, called the move “morally criminal” and suggested there are “legal implications around fraud, kidnapping, deprivation of liberty, and human trafficking.” He called on the Department of Justice to investigate DeSantis.
We are requesting that the Department of Justice open an investigation to hold DeSantis & others accountable for these inhumane acts. Not only is it morally criminal, there are legal implications around fraud, kidnapping, deprivation of liberty, and human trafficking.
— Dylan Fernandes (@RepDylan) September 18, 2022
Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker, a moderate Republican, on Friday announced plans to deploy up to 125 National Guard members in response to the migrants’ arrival.
Yet compare the burden to the island off the Atlantic coast to that faced by Del Rio, Texas, on the U.S.–Mexico border. The Del Rio area had more than 49,500 migrant encounters in July alone — more than the city’s entire population of just over 34,500 people. By contrast, the year-round population of Martha’s Vineyard is 17,000 people, and the island received just 50 migrants when the “humanitarian crisis” was triggered.
To bring the migrant-to-resident ratio on Martha’s Vineyard into rough parity with that of Del Rio, more than 24,000 migrants would need to arrive on the island over the course of the next month.
House Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee tweeted Friday: “If there is a humanitarian crisis in Martha’s Vineyard, wouldn’t it stand to reason there is a drastically more significant humanitarian crisis at the Southwest border?”
Meanwhile, roughly 24 hours after their arrival from San Antonio, Texas, the group of Venezuelans were transported on buses from St. Andrews Church in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard to Joint Base Cape Cod.
While the move provided a blue state with just an infinitesimal taste of the chaos at the southern border, the media went into a frenzy.
The New Yorker wrote, “DeSantis’s Heartless Migrant Stunt Provides a Preview of 2024.” The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols called it a “sadistic immigration stunt,” of which “even border security hawks should be horrified.”
“I am against illegal immigration,” Nichols wrote. “But I am against the intentional tormenting of other human beings—especially children—even more.”
CNN published a (tone-deaf) headline: “‘They enriched us.’ Migrants’ 44-hour visit leaves indelible mark on Martha’s Vineyard,” quoting a volunteer who worked with the migrants.
Democratic strategist Lis Smith tweeted the cover of the New York Post, which read: “So much for ‘sanctuary’: Liberals deport migrants. Hypocritical rich Dems of Martha’s Vineyard ship them off by ferry.” Smith commented, “Trap laid, bait taken, right wing gets their headline.”
Trap laid, bait taken, right wing gets their headline. pic.twitter.com/luYnzHkSpC
— Lis Smith (@Lis_Smith) September 17, 2022
NBC News deleted a tweet over the weekend that included a quote suggesting that for DeSantis to send the migrants to Martha’s Vineyard was “like me taking my trash out and just driving to different areas where I live and just throwing my trash there.” The quote comes from Max Lefeld, a founding member of the Casa Venezuela Dallas foundation, which helps recent refugees, and is still included in the story.
Elie Mystal, an MSNBC contributor and reporter for the Nation, said during an appearance on MSNBC that sending the migrants to Martha’s Vineyard is akin to luring teenagers into a van with candy. He said DeSantis and others involved in the decision should be charged with “kidnapping” and suggested that people would be more outraged if the migrants “were white.”
Mystal went on to say: “You know who stops us from having a national immigration plan? Republicans. Republicans are the ones who force us to do this in a state-by-state way. And now particular Republicans — particularly fascist Republicans — are trying to ship migrants around the country to make them suffer.”
The president and vice president also jumped into the fray.
Kamala Harris accused DeSantis and other Republican governors who have bused migrants to other states, including Governor Greg Abbott of Texas and Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona, of “playing games.”
“These are political stunts with real human beings who are fleeing harm,” she said.
She added: “The height of irresponsibility . . . frankly a dereliction of duty when you are an elected leader to play those kind of games with human life and human beings, if you think there is a problem be part of the solution.”
In an exclusive sit-down with VICE News, @elizlanders talks with @VP Kamala Harris about the GOP’s dehumanization of migrants “fleeing harm” as they pull “political stunts” by sending them to blue states—and even outside Harris’ home. pic.twitter.com/3yzTxJ7ILx
— VICE News (@VICENews) September 17, 2022
President Biden blasted Republicans in a speech he delivered at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual gala: “Instead of working with us on solutions, Republicans are playing politics with human beings, using them as props. What they’re doing is simply wrong, it’s un-American, it’s reckless.”
Meanwhile, DeSantis spokeswoman Taryn Fenske said the migrant flights were “part of the state’s relocation program to transport illegal immigrants to sanctuary destinations.”
“States like Massachusetts, New York and California will better facilitate the care of these individuals who they have invited into our country by incentivizing illegal immigration through their designation as ‘sanctuary states’ and support for the Biden administration’s open border policies,” Fenske said.
Some of the migrants seem to concur. One Venezuelan man who was bused to Washington, D.C., on the Texas taxpayer dime told the New York Times he was grateful that he was given free transportation to a city rife with opportunity.
“I feel fortunate the governor put me on a bus to Washington,” Lever Alejos, 29, said. “It opened up doors for me.”
Headline Fail of the Week
This week’s dishonor goes to the Atlantic, which argues “Separating Sports by Sex Doesn’t Make Sense.”
The piece says that many people “still view sports as a perfectly reasonable venue in which to enforce exclusion on the basis of sex.”
School sports are typically sex-segregated, and in America some of them have even come to be seen as either traditionally for boys or traditionally for girls: Think football, wrestling, field hockey, volleyball. However, it’s becoming more common for these lines to blur, especially as Gen Zers are more likely than members of previous generations to reject a strict gender binary altogether. Maintaining this binary in youth sports reinforces the idea that boys are inherently bigger, faster, and stronger than girls in a competitive setting—a notion that’s been challenged by scientists for years.
The article goes on to quote Michela Musto, an assistant sociology professor at the University of British Columbia who has “studied the effect of the gender binary on students and young athletes.”
“Part of the reason why we have this belief that boys are inherently stronger than girls, and even the fact that we believe that gender is a binary, is because of sport itself, not the other way around,” Musto claims.
The article’s author, Maggie Mertens, seems to contradict her own argument: “And though sex differences in sports show advantages for men, researchers today still don’t know how much of this to attribute to biological difference versus the lack of support provided to women athletes to reach their highest potential.”
Media Misses
• Tristan Snell, a CNN and MSNBC contributor, falsely suggested a crowd at a rally for Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano was doing a “Nazi salute,” when in fact the crowd was praying together with their hands in the air.
Yes, this is a Nazi salute, at a Doug Mastriano campaign event in Pennsylvania. In 2022.
Democracy is literally on the ballot in November.
— Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) September 18, 2022
• 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley failed to press President Biden about his son Hunter Biden’s many controversies during an interview that aired Sunday. Pelley asked only a softball question on the issue: “Mr. President, if you run again Republicans are most likely to go after your son Hunter once again, and I wonder what you would like to say about your son and whether any of his troubles have caused conflicts for you or for the United States?”
“There’s not a single thing that I’ve observed at all that would affect me or the United States relative to my son Hunter,” President Biden tells 60 Minutes about his son Hunter Biden. https://t.co/7SixTElqbt pic.twitter.com/6E6FlxhzYp
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) September 19, 2022