What Percent Of U.S. Households Headed By Illegal Immigrants Receive Welfare Benefits?

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  • As you are probably aware, in most circumstances and for most categories of handouts, illegal immigrants in the United States do not qualify for welfare benefits.

  • As I’m using it here, the term “welfare” does not include Social Security or Medicare, which are not restricted by income status; but the term “welfare” does include all of the large number of what are called “means-tested” programs, which in the aggregate consume nearly $1 trillion annually of federal spending (and well over $1 trillion if state contributions are included). The biggest of the “means tested” programs are Medicaid, SNAP (“food stamps”), and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, otherwise known as classic welfare); and there are dozens more. Illegal immigrants are specifically excluded from participating in those three big federal welfare programs, and from most (but not all) of the others.

  • And yet there was the New York Times, in its Sunday (May 31) print edition, with a lead front page headline that may set a new record (if that is possible) for anti-Trump spin: “Trump Cuts Off Life Necessities for Immigrants.”‍ ‍

  • When I saw that, my first reaction was, how can Trump “cut off” illegal immigrants from government benefits (whether or not the benefits are “life necessities”) when they are not eligible for those benefits in the first place?

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Climate And Energy Provisions In New York's FY 2027 Budget: Making The Coming Crash Worse

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  • New York State’s fiscal year runs from April 1 to March 31, and thus there is a mandate that the budget for each year must be approved before April Fool’s Day. This year they blew right by that deadline. But today, 8+ weeks late, it appears that a new budget has been enacted for what they call “fiscal year” 2027, that is, April 1, 2026 to March 31, 2027.

  • Among several contentious issues that held up enactment of this year’s budget, probably the most contentious involved the provisions relating to energy and “climate.”

  • Our climate law, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 (CLCPA) had imposed absurd deadlines for eliminating fossil fuels from the energy system. Seven years in, Kathy Hochul, our lightweight Governor, had finally mustered just enough brain cells to recognize that disaster was approaching. But she faces big legislative majorities of her own Democratic Party committed to “climate action.” And of the members constituting those majorities, most are not moderates open to pragmatism, but rather progressive activists committed to total climate purity.

  • How to get out of this trap?

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Ocean "Acidification" -- Another Fake Scare That Won't Go Away

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Ocean "Acidification" -- Another Fake Scare That Won't Go Away

  • Ocean “acidification” is a somewhat unique branch of the overarching climate scare. It differs from other branches of the big scare in that it does not depend on atmospheric heating as the driver of the supposed scary consequences. Instead, with ocean “acidification,” the idea is that increased CO2 in the atmosphere (from the burning of fossil fuels) leads to increased CO2 dissolved in the oceans, which leads to lower pH of ocean water, which then becomes the driver of the alleged scary consequences.

  • Thus, ocean “acidification” can theoretically work as a scare even if the atmosphere fails to heat with increasing CO2 content to the extent predicted by advocates’ climate models.

  • But the ocean “acidification” claim has its own frailties. For advocates of apocalyse, it is a problem that the ocean is (somewhat) alkaline, rather than acidic, and that the change in ocean pH from even large increases in CO2 in the atmosphere is small. Some might even call the change in ocean pH “slight.” And the pH change, even in worst-case scenarios, is not nearly enough to bring it down to the level of neutrality, let alone acidity. The last point is the reason that I have been putting the term “acidification” in quotes.

  • So, how can advocates make ocean “acidification” into something sufficiently scary to motivate lots of people to hate or fear fossil fuels?

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Driving Behind A Tesla

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Driving Behind A Tesla

  • Today I had the experience of driving for an extended period behind a Tesla. One of my daughters was with me. We were in a rural area of upstate New York, on a two-lane road with enough curves and oncoming traffic that there were few opportunities to pass. So we were behind this car for about 20 miles.

  • We took the opportunity to observe some things about how the new world works.

  • Living in Manhattan, we don’t go out for extended drives in the country all that often. Maybe most readers here drive much more than I do and have had experiences like the one I am about to describe. But this was new to me.

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Driving Up The Cost Of Energy While Claiming To Promote "Affordability"

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  • A fair criticism of politicians is that they all lie, at least to the extent of engaging in extreme levels of spin and/or exaggeration to put the best face on their proposals and programs. But some political lies are worse than others, in that they go far beyond mere spin or exaggeration and get into the blatantly counter-factual. In that category are the claims of many of the governors of the Northeastern states that they are promoting energy “affordability.” These lies are particularly consequential in that they involve very large economic effects and vast waste of resources.

  • In late 2025, the talking point of energy “affordability” became a major theme of the successful candidacies of Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill for the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey, respectively.

  • Elsewhere in the region, the governors’ offices were not up for election in the off year, but the sitting governors have equally been talking up their energy “affordability” agendas. See for example, Governor Maura Healey of Massachusetts here on March 16 (“Governor Maura Healey today is setting strong new targets for bringing more energy into Massachusetts and lowering energy bills.”); and Governor Kathy Hochul of New York here on May 7 (“[Governor Hochul] Tackles Energy Costs With Sweeping Affordability Package.”).

  • And yet somehow, it’s hard not to notice that the electricity rates in the Northeastern states are among the highest in the country.

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"Sue And Settle": Two Can Play This Game

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  • As you may be aware, early this year President Trump commenced a personal litigation against the federal government, seeking compensation for various alleged wrongs committed against him during the Biden presidency, and even during his own first term. According to this New York Times piece from yesterday, the wrongs that Trump has alleged against the government include “leak of his tax returns during his first term, as well as the investigations into his handling of classified documents after he left office and into his 2016 campaign’s potential ties to Russia.” The amount of damages Trump seeks has been reported as $10 billion.

  • And then two days ago (May 14) there comes news that there is a tentative settlement in the case. ABC News appears to have been the first with the story. Excerpt:

  • President Donald Trump is expected to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.  

  • So how do you feel about that?

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