Joe Biden’s bad open border policy, vote-buying bonanza and other commentary

Conservative: Biden’s Bad Open Border Policy

Today’s “surge of illegal immigration is the direct and predictable result of changes in regulation and administrative practice by the Biden administration,” grumbles the Washington Examiner’s Michael Barone. Notably: Unlike past immigration surges, today’s isn’t “in response to the labor market’s low supply of low-skill workers due to reduced workforce participation by low-skill black and white Americans.” The prez doesn’t need new laws; he can “undo by executive order the policies he put in place by executive order.” Indeed, his advisers agree he can issue “an executive order that would dramatically stanch the record flow of migrants.” Clearly, “Republicans’ skepticism about whether Biden would use enhanced border control authority is obviously justified by Biden’s refusal to use the authority he currently has.”

From the right: Joe’s Vote-Buying Bonanza

That “President Biden believes that his fiscal priority ought to be shoveling money to people with the privilege of a college education is incredible,” fume National Review’s editors. This week, he “announced that 153,000 more borrowers will have their student loans ‘canceled’ — which, in practice, means paid by the people who didn’t take them out and spend them — at a cost of $1.2 billion.” More: “By the time he is finished, Penn Wharton records, the president will have spent $475 billion on the program.” This, after the Supreme Court last year ruled “that Biden’s effort to ‘cancel’ up to $20,000 for every borrower in the United States was illegal.” “Never, in the history of buying votes, have so many been so fleeced for so few.”

Defense beat: Trump Didn’t ‘Rebuild the Military’

One of Donald “Trump’s stock applause lines is that he ‘rebuilt the military’ while in the White House,” observe The Wall Street Journal’s editors. But while he “ran in 2016 on building a 350-ship Navy and expanding the Army to 540,000 soldiers,” he didn’t deliver for a US military “reeling from years of budget cuts under Barack Obama that had savaged readiness.” The defense hike he did manage “was a blip. U.S. defense spending under Mr. Trump topped out at 3.4% of the economy in 2020, up from 3.1% in 2017, even though America devoted 4.6% to military spending as recently as 2011.” And now some Trump “budget advisers want to reduce defense spending in the name of fiscal restraint.” In a word, he “shares blame for the fact that the U.S. military is overstretched by the world’s demands.”

Media watch: CBS Cracks Down on Free Inquiry

After laying off veteran reporter Catherine Herridge, CBS launched what is widely seen as “an attack on free press principles,” thunders Jonathan Turley at The Hill. The network seized “her files, computers and records, including information on privileged sources.” Why? Herridge followed stories “unwelcomed by the Biden White House and many Democratic powerhouses,” so “the heavy-handed approach to the files left many wondering if it was the result of the past reported tension over stories.” “Famed CBS anchor Walter Cronkite once said ‘our job is only to hold up the mirror — to tell and show the public what has happened.’ ” Now “CBS itself will have to look into that mirror and answer some questions of what happened to the confidential records of Catherine Herridge.”

Eye on the economy: Liz Warren Hates Jobs

“Following opposition from Senator Elizabeth Warren,” notes Beth Lindstrom at The Boston Globe, “the proposed merger between Amazon and Massachusetts’ homegrown innovator and Roomba-maker iRobot was abandoned. Soon after, iRobot announced that it would be laying off 350 workers” — 31% of its staff. “Warren’s advocacy led to mass layoffs right in her backyard.” Her “ideological playbook that views success through a lens of suspicion” is “not just misguided, it’s dangerous.” It “has cost a lot of people their jobs” and “further erodes US leadership in innovation and technology.” “When a handful of politicians can’t be talked off the ideological ledge, it’s crucial for lawmakers to work across party lines to guide the FTC back to its fundamental purpose.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board