Cagle World

On Opening Day, the luckiest baseball fans have a ticket to Yankee Stadium.

The 27-time World Series champs have baseball’s most impressive history – Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, Reggie Jackson, Derek Jeter, and countless others whose names are permanently etched in fans’ memories.

Those Hall of Fame greats, as well as the managers who piloted them, are memorialized in the stadium’s Monument Park, 461 feet from home plate. Legend has it when a single to center slipped past Mantle and rattled around the monuments, manager Casey Stengel yelled out, “Ruth, Gehrig, Huggins, somebody get that ball back to the infield!”

Opening Day on April 15, 1976 marked the Yankees’ return to the Bronx. The stadium had undergone a two-year, $100 million renovation, during which time the Yankees shared Shea Stadium with the Mets. The Yankees played their first four games on the road, but once back home the festive pre-game ceremonies delighted the 56,213 fans in attendance, the largest turnout for an opener since 1947.

Emceed eloquently by Bob Sheppard, the Yankees public address announcer, the event was an ode to the history of Yankee Stadium. Sheppard announced more than 4,600 games that included 13 World Series championships during his 56 years in the booth. Yankee heroes and pro and college football stars who played at the Stadium were honored. The wives of Ruth and Gehrig were also present. Bob Shawkey, the starting and winning pitcher in the first game ever in the stadium, 1923, threw out the ceremonial first pitch while Whitey Witt, the Yankees’ leadoff hitter in the same game, stood in the batter’s box. Robert Merrill sang the National Anthem, former Yankee Bobby Richardson, the 1960 World Series Most Valuable Player, delivered the invocation, and Cardinal Terence Cooke gave a blessing.

The 1976 season marked the first full year of the contentious and often explosive relationship between manager Billy Martin and owner George Steinbrenner. After the Texas Rangers fired Martin in the tail end of 1975 and at the same time the Yankees removed Bill Virdon, the ill-fated Martin-Steinbrenner union was consummated. During the final 56 games of the 1975 season, with Martin at the helm, the Yankees went 30–26; the team ended the season in third place, where it had been when he took over.

Between 1975 and 1988, Steinbrenner hired and fired Martin five times. At the time of Martin’s Christmas Day 1989, he was assembling a coaching staff, certain that a sixth opportunity to pilot the Yankees was imminent.

As for that 1976 Opening Gay game, the Yankees fell behind 4-0 by the third inning but battled back to sew up a comfortable 11-4 victory. The hitting star was recently acquired Oscar Gamble, who hit two doubles and a triple.

Post-game, first baseman Chris Chambliss told New York Daily News reporters Phil Pepe that, “It’s certainly a different feeling here than at Shea. At Shea, it seemed people were against us, and every time we looked into the stands, there was a fight going on. Now, at least for today, it helped having all those people pulling for you.”

Returning to the Bronx put life back into the Yankees. They won the American League East by 10-1/2 games over the Baltimore Orioles and edged out the Kansas City Royals to wrap up the American League pennant. Chambliss smacked the dramatic bottom of the ninth home run that sewed up the fifth and final game.

Unfortunately, the Yankees had no magic left for the World Series; the Cincinnati Reds’ Big Red Machine swept the Bronx Bombers 4-0. The following year, 1977, Martin led the Yankees to a 100-game winning season and won his only World Series title when the Yankees beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 4-2.

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Copyright 2026 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at [email protected].

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Last week, the New York Times published Daryl Hannah’s op-ed “How Can ‘Love Story’ Get Away with This?”

Hannah was referring to the FX made-for-television series that focused on the whirlwind love affair and marriage between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, then a Calvin Klein employee. The couple and Bessette’s sister, Lauren, died in July 1999 when a small plane that Kennedy piloted crashed off Martha Vineyard’s coast.

Hannah correctly complained “Love Story” producers maliciously and for profit misrepresented her five-year romance with Kennedy, Jr. In the process of churning out salacious content, FX also slanderously misrepresented her character.

“The character Daryl Hannah portrayed in the series is not even a remotely accurate representation of my life, my conduct or my relationship with John,” Hannah wrote. “The actions and behaviors attributed to me are untrue… It’s appalling to me that I even have to defend myself against a television show. These are not creative embellishments of personality. They are assertions about conduct — and they are false.”

How does the media get away with gross misrepresentation which it presents as hard fact? Immigration enforcement advocates have been asking the same question for years.

Comparing Hannah’s disgust with the media’s mischaracterization of her to the lies surrounding immigration may seem like a stretch to some. But only to those not engaged in the fray.

Around 2000, NumbersUSA assigned me to head its newly formed Media Standards Project. The task was straightforward – everyday I would read immigration stories and evaluate them against the fairness and balance standards the Society for Professional Journalists set for reporters. SPJ has a code of ethics that emphasizes the importance of seeking truth and reporting it, respecting all individuals, of considering the potential effect of their reporting on subjects and engaging in open dialogue about their practices. By adhering to those principles, journalists can foster credibility and integrity in their work.

Over the three-year period that I analyzed immigration stories – I read about 1,500 – only a small handful of reporters admitted their stories could have been more balanced. Even considering the blatant one-sidedness like a San Francisco Chronicle page one homage to illegal immigration – eight quoted as pro; zero opposed – reporters would not back down, claiming that to include the enforcement perspective would be “another story” and not the one they wanted to tell.

Reporters told lies of omission, like portraying congressional enforcement heroes like Senator Jeff Sessions and U.S. Representatives Tom Tancredo and Steve King as racists. The list also included the failure to write about how illegal immigration, asylum fraud, refugee resettlement overwhelms schools, hospitals and communities. Out of 1,500 stories, the odds would favor that some stories would include the downside to open borders. The stories defied the odds; I never found true 50-50 balance.

During the 25 years since I concluded the project, fairness and balance in the failing, fading legacy media immigration stories is still non-existent. In an indirect victory for enforcement advocates, the public’s trust in the media is at an all-time low, 28%.

In other words, the media is still cranking out dishonest stories, but fewer and fewer readers believe them.

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Copyright 2026 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

On conservative media outlets like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove is omnipresent. George W. Bush’s former senior advisor and deputy chief of staff can hardly be called conservative, at least when it comes to President Donald Trump. Rove more likely belongs in the never-Trump category.

In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Rove repeated his age-old theme that Trump’s polling is disastrously low and that America has a bad case of “Trump fatigue” created by the president’s “frenzied pace and lack of focus leave many voters worried and confused.”

That any story, whether published in the WSJ or less well-known publication, could run a story that is centered on polling results explains, in part, why the media is held is such low regard. Pollsters, especially Rove, have been inaccurate for two decades. Coming off their colossally off-target 2024 presidential election prediction – the nation would be awake all night waiting to see if Kamala Harris would be the first female president – pollsters should run away and hide.

Many polls about Trump’s popularity have been taken, and while the questions in each of them are broad, the important one is never asked: Compared to Joe Biden’s administration, is the country under Trump in better or worse shape?

Even the most virulent never-Trumper, if honest, would admit Biden was an unmitigated disaster, and Trump’s America First agenda, still unfolding, is a much-needed step forward. Voters were tired of being the world’s pushovers, thanks to Biden and his predecessor Barack Obama, laying down for the Mexican cartels, the Venezuelan tyrants, the Iranian mullahs, and the Chinese dictators.

The 2024 election results also reflected voters were fed up with the Democrats painful, tax and spend policies that led to record inflation. They also hated Biden’s open border, which allowed criminals easy entry into the interior, the murderous consequences of which are on display in major cities across the country – New York, Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Boston.

Those cities and others adhere to illegal, unconstitutional sanctuary city guidelines that prevent local police from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If states cooperated with ICE, the ugly scenes that are playing out in Minneapolis and were rampant in Los Angeles this summer would not have occurred. Trump promised to, effective February 1, withhold federal funding to sanctuary cities, certain to be challenged, but an indication that the president understands the risk that sanctuaries pose.

Side bar: What happened to the Supreme Court’s ruling that lower courts cannot issue national injunctions?

Down on the border, Trump shut it down tight. In reference to shutting the border, Biden would say, “Give me the power,” a reference to a congressional amnesty that would have had the reverse effect. But without congressional intervention, Trump sealed the border down tight. Encounters are at a historic low. Trump II quickly ended parole programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans and the CBP One interview scheme, both illegal.

The key takeaway from Trump’s campaign to rid the nation of illegal aliens: Roughly two-thirds of the aliens ICE arrested and currently detained have criminal histories, and a similar percentage of the aliens the agency has deported from its custody under Trump II, do too.

Domestically, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that Biden during his four-year term, approved $4.7 trillion in new ten-year debt that includes $1.2 trillion in Executive Actions including forgiving student loans which the Supreme Court ruled he did not have the authority to do.

Rove must not be paying attention to the business news. Under Trump, wages are up and inflation is easing. And while gas prices are rising temporarily, they’re still well below the nearly $5 per gallon they hit under Biden.

Congressional mid-term candidates should welcome a debate about affordability. If they can’t make hay out of Trump’s economic and border success they should find another line of employment. A bombastic but America First president beats a sleepy, auto-pen president who welcomed a foreign invasion and spent the country into steep inflation.

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Copyright 2026 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

Thanks to questionable programs like birthright citizenship, and chain migration, as many as 1.5 million Chinese may be eligible to vote by 2030.

The startling number, revealed in Peter Schweizer’s new best selling book, “The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon,” is likely only surprising to people who haven’t paid attention to how immigration has radically altered the nation during the last half of a century.

Immigration advocates, members of Congress, the legacy media, and religious institutions have all relentlessly pressed for and, by and large, successfully gained higher levels of new permanent lawful residents, refugees, asylees, and temporary visa holders. “Auto-Pen” Joe Biden delivered the nearly fatal blow to enforcement advocates when he opened the border wide and admitted all comers including Venezuelan criminals, escaped mental patients, Tren de Aragua gangbangers, and Middle Eastern terrorists.

Nowhere, however, has the U.S. laid down more passively on immigration than it has to China, our nation’s most powerful and determined adversary. Several administrations have allowed China to buy up precious commercial real estate and farmland – adjacent to military compounds, no less – and build bio-labs right under our nose. Except for Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton’s common-sense suggestion Chinese F-1 student visa holders be admitted to U.S. universities only under the condition they study the Constitution and the Founding Fathers, there’s been little pushback.

Thomas Jefferson, yes. STEM, no.

Even when U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell’s (D-Calif.) affair with infamous Chinese spy Fang Fang was made public, he only got a slap on the wrist. No one knows what secrets Fang Fang might have extracted from Swalwell during their pillow talk. A Chinese national chauffeured former Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) for two decades. When the FBI exposed the scandal, the chauffeur disappeared back to China and Feinstein lamely said she was as surprised as anyone a spy was driving her around town and functioning as her gofer. Keep in mind, Feinstein was chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time.

Nowhere has the U.S. laid down so completely than on the in-your-face birth hotel scam. Starting about two decades ago, hundreds of Chinese mothers traveled to the U. S. while they were pregnant to give birth on American soil so their kids became automatic citizens. When such children turn 21, they can also apply for resident status for both their parents. Of course, illegal aliens from China continue to cross the southern border as they have for years. A pregnant illegal alien comes across the border, has a baby, and suddenly not only that baby but the entire family comes to the country to stay. Since 2018, birth tourism has created anywhere from 150,000 to 250,000 U.S. citizens.

The Department of Homeland Security is passive on birth citizenship hotels, low hanging fruit it could easily end. On a specific day, enforcement officers could target specific hotels in major cities like Los Angeles, and New York and demand to see the registered guests’ visas, which will quickly be identified as fraudulent. The foreign nationals are not, as they declared, tourists but women in advanced pregnancy, present to give birth.

Visa fraud is a federal felony, punishable by, in part, deportation. If a medical doctor declares the expectant scamsters medically eligible to travel, deport them. If their pregnancy is too advanced to risk travel, confine them under DHS supervision, and post-partum, deport them. Once the word gets out that DHS is cracking down on the birth hotel rip-off, business will soon dry up – -bad news for the hotel operators found guilty in previous raids of sex trafficking and money laundering.

The criminals immediately absconded.

During Trump’s first term, the federal government tried to limit birth tourism. The Department of State announced in January 2020, “[T]he Department is amending its B nonimmigrant visa regulation to address birth tourism. Under this amended regulation, U.S. consular officers overseas will deny any B visa application from an applicant whom the consular officer has reason to believe is traveling for the primary purpose of giving birth in the United States to obtain U.S. citizenship for their child.”

This lame effort went nowhere, and now Trump is trying to eliminate birthright citizenship through a Supreme Court ruling, which is moving at glacier speed to avoid hearing the sovereignty determining issue.

Without immediate America first action, Schweizer’s grim prediction that Chinese nationals will determine the 2030’s election fate will come true.

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Copyright 2026 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

I’ve been around long enough to have seen the Super Bowl games since the first one kicked off in 1967.

“Seen” is too strong a word. Early on, I watched every play, glued to the television. But for the last several years, the game has been on but just in the background while I do a crossword puzzle. There is an inverse relationship between how seriously I pay attention and the ever-increasing hoopla surrounding the game.

Now that the Super Bowl is quasi-national holiday with sports networks speculating for two weeks about the possible outcomes, I find myself less interested in the outcome.

Back in 1967, things were different. The big game was called the American Football League versus the National Football League Championship. The Vince Lombardi-coached Green Bay Packers faced Hank Stram’s Kansas City Chiefs. The AFL was considered secondary to the NFL’s mighty Packers and the result, an easy 35-10 Green Bay win, confirmed the skeptics’ opinion. Green Bay dominated again the next year, too, beating the Oakland Raiders, 33-14.

By 1969, the Super Bowl became the game’s official title. In one of the most memorable of all Super Bowls, the underdog New York Jets handily throttled the Baltimore Colts, 16-7. The result stupefied football fans: Baltimore had a 13-1 record and so-called experts considered the team invincible. Johnny Unitas, substituting for starter Earl Morrall, led the Colts to their only touchdown, in the game’s final minutes.

Super Bowl III was the year Jets quarterback Joe “Willie” Namath guaranteed a win. Namath’s prediction infuriated his coach, Weeb Ewbank. Namath recalled Ewbank summoned him the next day, “You know what you’ve done? You know what you’ve done?” He was really upset, “I said, ‘Well, Coach, we’re going to win, aren’t we? You’re the one that’s giving us confidence. You’re the one that made me feel that way. Shucks. I’m just telling them what you told us.’ He said, ‘Get out of here.’ He chased me off, but the guys felt good.”

The Jets upset sticks in my mind particularly because, in 1969, I lived in New York and was like most other young male New Yorkers, fascinated by Namath and his girlfriends, his apartment with the mirrored ceiling, his two mink coats, his fancy sports cars, his time spent hanging out with Frank Sinatra at Toots Shor’s and his substantial income. Broadway Joe Namath dined at the 21 Club and famously did a commercial wearing Hanes Beautymist pantyhose.

Namath also appeared in television advertisements both during and after his playing career, most notably for Ovaltine milk flavoring, Noxzema shaving cream in which he was shaved by a then-unknown Farrah Fawcett. Namath and I were about the same age so I could not help but compare our social statuses—his lofty and mine, inconsequential.

Not everyone loved Namath, however. President Richard Nixon put Namath on his “Enemies List.”

Today, Namath is a family man who still loves football. He watches the Alabama Crimson Tide, where he stared as an undergraduate, and the Jets most fall weekends. He picks up his grandkids from school and hangs their drawings on the refrigerator. His walls are not covered with mementos of himself; he reserves that space his loved ones.

He thinks about his South Florida restaurant, his Long Island golf outings for the Joe Namath Charitable Foundation or his next soft contact workout to protect his replaced knees and one replaced shoulder. Namath practices transcendental meditation and has adopted a collie/shepherd, Zoie, from a local rescue shelter.

The NFL and team owners owe Namath an eternal debt of gratitude for putting the Super Bowl on the map. Before the Jets’ shocking upset, the championship game was a mere curiosity. Super Bowl III had a viewership of 41.6 million, with a 30-second TV advertisement costing $55,000. For Super Bowl LIX last February, a record 127.7 million people tuned in while a 30-second spot cost an average of $8 million.

Thank Joe Namath.

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Copyright 2026 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at [email protected].

One of the most determined and dedicated fraud fighters in the U.S. is the under-appreciated, unsung Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, a constitutional law expert and free speech advocate.

Dhillon succeeds the controversial Kristen Clarke. The greatest controversy that swirled around Clarke focused on her attempt to cover up her arrest record during her Senate confirmation process that led to charges that she lied to Congress, a federal offense.

Dhillon has turned her office’s attention to ending voter fraud, a nationwide hoax that has tipped the scales in many municipal, state and federal elections. In December, just before Christmas, Fulton County, Georgia, admitted approximately 315,000 early votes from the 2020 election were certified without poll worker signatures and included in the election’s final tabulation. In the nation’s closest statewide presidential race, Biden narrowly won Georgia by a 49.47% plurality over Trump’s 49.24% vote share, a margin of just 11,779 votes.

In Michigan, state lawmakers raised alarms over what they describe as large-scale voter registration irregularities including tens of thousands of new registrations flagged with phony Social Security numbers and a voter roll that reportedly exceeds the state’s adult population by roughly half a million names. In 2024, roughly 100,000 people registered to vote in Michigan last year, and about 36,000 applicants (or 36%) submitted invalid four-digit Social Security number matches, yet were still allowed to complete registration and vote.

Continuing her mission to restore election integrity, Dhillon recently confirmed over 260,000 dead people and thousands of noncitizens are registered to vote in U.S. elections. After a review of thirty states that worked voluntarily with the DOJ to clean their voter rolls, the agency invalidated the fraudulent registrations before the 2026 midterm elections.

In a December social media post, Dhillon updated the nation on her progress with the states to help them comply with the Help America vote act voter rolls with us so that we can help them comply with the Help America Vote Act, which requires states to maintain clean voter rolls. While four states complied voluntarily, in September Dhillon’s civil right division filed federal lawsuits against six states for failure to produce their statewide voter registration lists upon request: California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. California got sued twice.

Two months later, DOJ filed federal lawsuits against six additional states — Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

California, predictably, is the most egregious offender. In May 2020, during his statewide COVID shutdown, Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order forcing every voter in the November general election to vote by mail. And then, the following year, he made his order permanent, claiming moral authority: “[S]tates across our country continue to enact undemocratic voter suppression laws,” Newsom said.

Newsom also signed Assembly Bill 37 sponsored by Assemblyman Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park), permanently requiring a vote-by-mail ballot be mailed to every active registered voter in the state. The bill also gave California 30 days to prepare a certified statement of the results of the election – plenty of time to cook the books.

Today’s voting system is set up to facilitate if not encourage cheating. Returning to normal, honest elections is a multi-step process. End absentee voting.

At least 36 states provide “no-excuse” absentee ballots to anyone who requests one. Follow the examples that Belgium, Mexico, Panama, Sweden, Italy, France, Jamica, the Dominican Republic set years ago by returning to paper ballots cast only on one election day, with voter ID and proof of citizenship, established during the voter registration process. Mail-in voting would be permissible only to citizens temporarily living abroad.

Only people determined to cheat are against rigid steps to protect voter integrity.

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Copyright 2026 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

Within my immediate family, the Trump Derangement Syndrome team outnumbers the MAGAs by an 8-1 ratio.

Some on the Trump Derangement Syndrome squad resemble retiring Rep. Nancy Pelosi in their passionate anti-Trump rhetoric. After calling President Trump “a vile creature” and “the worst thing on the face of the Earth,” Pelosi told CNN host Anderson Cooper she could have said “much worse.”

I can understand not liking Trump. He’s long-winded and pats himself on the back too often. On the other hand, Trump takes all the questions, even from the most hostile reporters who can barely hide their contempt.

Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, held the fewest press conferences of any president in modern history. No denying that Trump is, to use politicians’ favorite word, more “transparent” than Biden. For the Trump Derangement Syndrome gang, the elusive Biden never existed. They choose not to mention him – ever!

Given my family’s mixed history with its Trump opinions, I was struck by a possible solution Congress introduced: H.R. 3432, the TDS Research Act of 2025 by Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH). The bill’s purpose is “to direct the Director of the National Institutes of Health to conduct or support research to advance the understanding of Trump Derangement Syndrome, and for other purposes.” The act defines the syndrome as “a behavioral or psychological phenomenon characterized by intense emotional or cognitive reactions to Donald J. Trump, his actions, or his public presence, as observed in individuals or groups.” Under the National Institutes of Health’s auspices, ongoing research will be conducted to advance the understanding of Trump Derangement Syndrome, including its origins, manifestations, and long-term effects.

In his Wall Street Journal article, psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert wrote that about 75% his patients are afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome. “Patients across the political spectrum have brought Donald Trump into therapy not to discuss policy but to process obsession, rage and dread. Their distress is symptomatic, not ideological.”

Among the most common symptoms that Alpert encounters are persistent intrusive thoughts, emotional dysregulation, impaired functioning, sleepless nights, compulsive news checking and physical agitation. In summary, Alpert called Trump Derangement Syndrome an “obsessive political preoccupation” that strains marriages and has fractured friendships, outcomes that, based on my own family’s experiences, I can attest to.

The public reaction to Alpert’s diagnosis proved his point. After publishing his op-ed, Alpert expanded his theme on a Fox News appearance and on his social media accounts. Alpert received a barrage of vulgar messages and death threats. Portions of his essay were taken out of context; he was accused of protecting a fascist. Voice mails wished him dead. The frightening messages were not sent by the fringe but rather by individuals who described themselves as compassionate and dedicated to mitigating mental health issues.

If Trump Derangement Syndrome were limited to the area in and around Capitol Hill, the condition might be more understandable. Trump arrived in 2016 as an outsider and immediately disrupted the establishment apple cart. He’s not a Clinton, a Bush, a Biden or an Obama acolyte. No matter how hard the Swamp tried to rid itself of Trump, he refused to go away. In 2024, Trump delivered the cruelest blow to the D.C. institution – he won the presidential election in a landslide.

The most effective way for TDSers to gain credibility and reach a larger audience is to find something — anything — about Trump’s administration that’s praiseworthy, hail it, then dispassionately and without expletives express reservations about the president.

The border is Trump’s biggest and most inarguable success. With his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Trump immediately ended the illegal immigration invasion that admitted countless millions of unvetted foreign nationals including criminals and terrorists. America could not withstand four more years of the Biden/Harris open border agenda that overcrowded schools and hospitals, strained social services, drove housing prices ever higher and contributed to soaring inner-city crime.

Give Trump credit where he’s earned it. By acknowledging the good Trump has done, the Trump Derangement Syndrome victims give their never-Trump agenda more credibility.

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Copyright 2025 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

As then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan said with a smile to incumbent Jimmy Carter in their 1980 debate, “There you go again.”

The simple sentence that helped Reagan win 44 states and 499 electoral votes came to mind when President Donald Trump insisted to Fox News host Laura Ingraham that the United States needs “to bring in more talent.” That’s a reference to H-1B visa holders, a classification allowing employers in the U.S. to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations.

To the disappointment of his MAGA base, Trump has too-often indicated he favors an H-1B expansion. The unfair, anti-U.S. tech worker H-1B is a serious national problem and does not deserve a smile, like Reagan’s in response to Carter’s propaganda.

“H-1B visa thing won’t be a big priority for you? If you wanna raise wages for Americans, you can’t flood the country with thousands of foreign workers,” Ingraham asked. Trump replied, “You have to bring in talent.”

Ingraham pushed back and correctly noted America’s universities and colleges have graduated plenty of skilled IT workers, all eagerly looking for jobs. Every year, MIT, Georgia Tech, Cal, and myriad other universities turn out top-notch talent. Trump is wrong to promote, on national television, more foreign-born Indians and Chinese to displace Americans from their well-paid, white-collar jobs.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in his unsuccessful attempt to help Trump out, later said what the president meant was Indian engineers would travel to the U.S., train Americans, and then return home. Ironically, the existing H-1B program means Americans train the arriving overseas workers and then head to the unemployment line.

When Trump’s ill-advised H-1B advocacy spread throughout the internet, his MAGA base was understandably shocked and outraged.

Trump’s position on illegal immigration since his 2016 campaign has been clear. The president adamantly opposes illegal immigration in all its forms and has proven his opposition by immediately closing the border after his 2024 election. He also ended Biden’s parole programs that included illegally granting employment authorization for unvetted aliens and put into motion the removal of Temporary Protected Status recipients when their 18-month valid periods expired.

But Trump’s thoughts about legal immigration, especially regarding the H-1B visa scam, have always been muddled. A few weeks before his 2025 inauguration, Trump supported Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk’s thinking that more H-1B visas were essential to keep the economy humming along. At the time, Trump said, “I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them.”

Ramaswamy left to campaign for Ohio’s gubernatorial office and Musk feuded with and then divorced the president, so nothing came of the DOGE duo’s influence.

Since the Immigration Act of 1990 created the H-1B, the visa has given license to employers to import cheap labor to displace Americans and at the same time discourage qualified American tech students from applying — a pointless exercise when corporate America has predetermined that job openings will be filled with Indians or Chinese. Essentially defined, the H-1B and other employment-based visas mean that a job will go to a foreign-born worker.

If Trump wants to make a big splash before the 2026 midterm campaigning begins in earnest, he should follow the advice of Center for Immigration Studies fellow, lawyer, and author John Miano, who wrote the best H-1B solution is to end it. Killing the H-1B would also mark the end of the media gaslighting that has helped keep it afloat.

Statistics support the argument to end the H-1B. In 2023, there were 4,804,840 people working in U.S. computer occupations. By 2024, 4,786,660 people worked in the field. Over that year, the United States lost 18,180 computer jobs. Yet in FY 2025, the U.S. imported 77,000 computer workers on H-1B visas alone.

The math proves that the H-1B is not filling shortages, as Trump and other immigration expansionists argue. Instead, the H-1B functions to displace Americans and satisfy tech mogul donors — exactly as Congress designed it.

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Copyright 2025 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

During the last year, I’ve written thousands of words predicting California Gov. Gavin Newsom would not only fail in his lustful quest for the White House, but would not even be nominated.

Newsom was too slick, had made too many missteps — from the French Laundry fiasco to his shameful muddling of the devastating Palisades fires — to advance in the primaries. Lying with impunity was not the path forward.

Now I’ve changed my mind. For Newsom, lying may be the most expeditious route to the United States presidency.

Dishonesty is a Newsom specialty. The Election Day wipeout in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and California, where Newsom’s Proposition 50 redistricting bill won handily, provided insights into the winners’ weak political résumés. These failings in years past might have automatically removed flawed candidates from the race.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is the most glaring example. Although New York has long been a bastion of liberalism, Rudy Giuliani’s two terms as Republican mayor (1994 to 2001) are within living memory and light-years away from the socialist, Uganda-born Mamdani, who campaigned on the impossible-to-deliver platform of free or cheaper goods and services.

Mamdani is an obvious example of deceitful campaigning. But New Jersey provides another good example of what happens when voters fail to do their due diligence.

Mikie Sherrill, now New Jersey’s newly elected Democratic governor, overcame multiple layers of alleged scandal regarding a Naval Academy testing debacle, campaign finance violations, and insider trading breaches that violated Federal Election Commission standards. A New Jersey legislator accused Sherrill of breaking provisions of the federal STOCK Act, which requires members of Congress to promptly disclose stock trades and prohibit the use of nonpublic information for personal financial gain. Since she entered Congress, Sherrill’s trades increased her net worth by more than $7 million. On immigration, an important national concern, Sherrill voted against internal and border enforcement 100% of the time.

On to Virginia, where former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger’s credentials are also awful. Before she resigned her U.S. House seat, Spanberger was an analyst for the disgraced Central Intelligence Agency. She voted straight down the line with President Joe Biden, including against immigration enforcement, and thereby apparently satisfied Virginians’ craving for a Biden redo. In the “Old Dominion” state, Democrat Jay Jones handily beat incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares, despite the October 3 revelation of Jones’s email, in which he said he’d like to murder a Republican opponent and see his children die in their mother’s arms. Spanberger refused to repudiate Jones, implicitly endorsing a candidate who fantasized about murdering children.

Since surviving a 2021 recall against Larry Elder and cruising to reelection a year later, Newsom has transformed his governorship into a national platform. He has sparred publicly and often with President Donald Trump, debated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Fox News, appeared on a podcast with Charlie Kirk, and used his Campaign for Democracy PAC to boost Democratic candidates and causes across the country.

Momentum, aided by a media that refuses to ask tough questions, is propelling Newsom toward the top of the Democrats’ heap. Newsom promotes himself as a Trump-slayer whose Prop. 50, assuming the Supreme Court approves it, will put Congress back in Democrats’ control.

In this era where superficiality wins elections, even if the media exposed the true Newsom to the nation’s 2028 presidential voters, it may not matter. Still, for the curious, a sampling:

California has a $20 billion budget deficit created in part by Newsom’s ill-advised decision to extend Medi-Cal benefits to all illegal immigrants regardless of age. In May, Newsom announced he would, effective 2026, drastically reverse the costly program—cuts that would save the state billions.

Only two states had wider income gaps than California. Families at the top of the income distribution earned more than 11 times those in lower brackets — $336,000 vs. $30,000.

Newsom’s bullet train to nowhere is historically American politics’ biggest boondoggle. Originally estimated to cost $33 billion in 2008, with a San Francisco to Los Angeles line set to open by 2028, the California high-speed rail system has since ballooned to $135 billion, with an estimated partial completion being set somewhere in the 2030s. Last year in March, the California High Speed Rail Authority confirmed that the system still needed an additional $100 billion to link up San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Several independent investigations found that the $100 million raised during the FireAid benefit concerts held in January 2025 has not gone to fire victims as promised but rather to nonprofits that often use the funds to support illegal aliens and their advocates.

In early January, the Eaton and Palisades wildfires raged across parts of Los Angeles. By the time they were fully extinguished in late January, 31 people died, over 18,000 structures were destroyed, and tens of thousands of residents were displaced with destroyed or damaged homes. Total property and home losses have been estimated to be between $76 billion and $131 billion. Yet, as of June, only 68 rebuild permits have been issued.

Any of these failures should dampen pro-Newsom voters’ enthusiasm. But given the aversion voters have toward weighing hard facts, the presidential election may hinge on the popularity of Newsom’s heavily gelled hairstyle.

Like it or not, substance has taken a back seat to style.

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Copyright 2025 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

Hugh Mulcahy, a right-handed pitcher who started regularly for the dismal 1940s-era Philadelphia Phillies, was the first MLB regular drafted to serve in World War II.

Inducted on March 8, 1941 — nine months before Pearl Harbor — Mulcahy lost five potentially productive MLB seasons.

Before the 27-year-old left in 1941 for Camp Edwards on Cape Cod, Mulcahy was full of vim and vigor. He predicted that a year away from professional baseball should not hamper his career. “I won’t be 28 until September,” explained the 6-foot-2-inch fireballer, “and they say that a pitcher’s prime comes between the ages of 28 and 31. So, by the time I come out of the army, I should be just about reaching my peak.”

A Career Built on Losses

Mulcahy’s optimism was, on the surface, hard to fathom. By the time 1941 rolled around, he had put in six seasons with the Phillies and won 43 games, but lost 82, including the four years that preceded his induction when his record was 8-18, 10-20, 9-16, and 13-22. The young righty absorbed losses so frequently that he became known as Hugh “Losing Pitcher” Mulcahy, or “LP” for short.

What does not show up in Mulcahy’s won-lost records is the dismal performance of the Phillies. In 1937, Mulcahy was the ace of the Phillies staff, led the league with 56 appearances, and tied the great Christy Mathewson with 216 innings pitched for most National League appearances. His 8-18 won-loss record was compiled for the seventh-place Phillies, who finished 34½ games behind the pennant-winning New York Giants — the Phillies’ only finish out of the basement during Mulcahy’s four principal years with the club.

More of the same followed in 1938 and 1939, though Boston Bees. Manager Wilson rebuked reporters who referred to Mulcahy as “LP” and suggested his proper nickname should be “Iron Man.”

Mulcahy’s 1940 season — 13-22 but with 21 complete games — was notable for his selection to the National League All-Star game. But as always, the hapless Phillies let the “Iron Man” down. The Phillies hit a league-worst .238, managed just 50 wins, and finished 50 games behind the pennant-winning Cincinnati Reds.

After the War

After his discharge, Mulcahy had nothing left. GM Herb Pennock said, “We’d like nothing better than to see Hugh get in there and pitch the way he did before the war.” Pennock’s hopes were dashed as Mulcahy remained on the Phillies roster for two more seasons before finishing up in 1947 with another perennial loser, the Pittsburgh Pirates. For those three seasons, Mulcahy’s record was 3-7.

Looking back, Mulcahy held no grudges about his early Army induction or his misfortune pitching for the punchless Phillies. He noted, “A lot of guys went to the war and didn’t come back. I came back and had a long career in baseball. I feel I was fortunate, not cheated.”

Mulcahy served 53 months, including a year in New Guinea and the Philippines, before receiving his honorable discharge on August 5, 1945. He earned a Bronze Star and three campaign ribbons.

The “Iron Man” succumbed to cancer in October 2001 at age 88.

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Copyright 2025 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at [email protected].