The Way It Iz

Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned from her post in the Trump cabinet. To say that her tenure was controversial is putting it mildly. However, for some reason, any time there is any news surrounding the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Patrol, or ICE, a national discussion about immigration reform automatically ensues. Regardless of how you personally feel about the former secretary and her policies, you probably believe that our current immigration system is broken and needs a tremendous overhaul.

Last week, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed close to 400 individual cases of measles in 2019. CNN reported that this is the second-largest number of reported cases since 2000, when the disease was declared to be eradicated. Here, in the Jewish community, we often hear about cases in our communities of individuals traveling to Israel and unfortunately bringing back the virus with them. However, these cases are not restricted to the Jewish community. The CDC reports that in addition to New York and New Jersey, measles outbreaks (defined as three or more cases) are ongoing in California and Washington State. Individual cases have also sprouted in 10 other states across the country.

In December of last year I wrote a column outlining what I think would happen if the Mueller report came up with no evidence of collusion with Russia. Here is an unedited excerpt of that column: “If the report comes back with no proof that Donald Trump was involved in collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign, the left will still believe he is guilty and the right will be convinced he’s innocent. In these days of ‘making the data say what you want it to say,’ it’s much easier to manipulate a narrative than numbers. Since we already do it with numbers, it shouldn’t be so difficult to do it with the Mueller report. The report will undoubtedly show many wrongdoings by the Trump campaign, and even if there is nothing in the report showing collusion, Democrats will still have the opinions of ‘well, he didn’t collude, but I knew he did something.’”