Cactus and surrounding Moore County have bounced back from the raid, and the plant today is once more thriving, shipping steaks to Walmart and hamburger meat to Burger King. But finding workers remains a perpetual struggle. JBS USA, a Brazilian conglomerate that now owns the plant, has raised starting wages nearly 25 percent in recent years, but like other meat processors across the country, it survived by finding a different set of foreigners to do jobs that used to be filled by illegal workers: refugees.
..There are Burmese meat cutters a few years removed from refugee camps in Thailand and Malaysia. “Chuckers” from Sudan, tall and strong, who specialize in separating the spinal cord from a side of beef swinging on a moving chain. Somalis who showed up in such numbers that Moore County at one point had the fifth-highest per capita Muslim population in the United States, according to religion survey data, though many of those workers have moved to join a larger community of their compatriots in Minnesota... Because refugees have a reputation for lower levels of drug use, they remain attractive job recruits.
What does it take for Fox News stars to turn on Trump? We are finding out.
“Imagine if Barack Obama had said that,” said Tucker Carlson on Thursday night on his eponymous Fox News program. The host was referring to Trump’s remark in a Wednesday meeting with lawmakers regarding gun policy. “Take the guns first, go through due process second,” said Trump. Many were astonished, though they shouldn’t have been: Trump has no core convictions, just core whims.
.. “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited,” decreed the Supreme Court in the landmark 2008 case District of Columbia, et al. v. Heller. “From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
.. Carlson is gradually adjusting a year-long MO of deflecting negative stories about the president. Time and again, the quick-witted host found creative and entertaining ways of hammering liberals for this-or-that offense while Trump and his charges were stacking up scandalous headlines.
.. The pattern also unfolded in January, when Trump declared that he’d pretty much accept whatever immigration policies Congress promulgated.
.. “And yet, today, in a remarkable twist, the president held a televised meeting with the very swamp creatures he once denounced. He told them he trusted them to craft immigration policy without his input.”
.. How much outrage, how much pettiness, how many policy betrayals will conservatives stomach before reaching some very obvious conclusions about our president? Broken rudders on immigration and gun rights appear to be Carlson’s bridge-too-far betrayals.
.. Sean Hannity didn’t have the courage or the principle to face his viewers a la Carlson. Following Trump’s meeting with lawmakers, he gaslighted his audience by skipping over Trump’s embrace of gun restrictions and hammering “Democrats” for embracing them.
.. this was a wild thing. It was not cool for a lot of people who believe in the Second Amendment.”
.. Trump’s trampling of truth and decency didn’t much offend the prime-timers at Fox News. But stray from conservative orthodoxy on immigration and guns? That’s trouble.
This Snake Can’t Shed His Skin
“Oh, shut up, silly woman,” said the serpent with a grin. “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.”
The woman was aghast. “You promised you could be classy enough in the Oval Office to impress socialites from Palm Beach. But instead, you are surrounded by porn stars and Playboy bunnies — just a tacky leech.”
.. “It is just like when you promised a ‘bill of love’ to save the Dreamers. But you let that collapse in Congress because of Stephen Miller and the other alt-right schemers.”
.. The woman winced at the metallic taste in her mouth and rasped: “You could have gotten your crazy wall but insisted on ending chain migration, even when you took advantage of it to bring in Melania’s Slovenian parents. What an abomination!
The unending campaign of Donald Trump
If there was any doubt that his presidency is an unending campaign
.. Addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference, the president read “The Snake,” a parable about a tenderhearted woman who takes in an ailing snake and gives it milk, honey and a silk blanket, only to be killed by the revived creature’s poisonous bite.
Trump explained the metaphor: “You have to think of this in terms of immigration.”
.. On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump frequently told the tale of the snake. The crowds at his rallies loved it. Other Americans were appalled and found it racist.
.. A day earlier, Vice President Pence stood on the same stage at CPAC and sounded a call for unity.
.. His boss had a different idea, however.
- Trump mocked Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), a war hero and Republican elder statesman with a terminal form of brain cancer, for his health-care vote.
- He vowed to “fight” a current Democratic foe, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.). And he
- revived his row with a previous one, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, by encouraging chants of “lock her up” and sounding off about her alleged “atrocities.”
.. He is at his most comfortable on the campaign trail, as a political brawler feeding off the passions of his fans and speaking off the cuff.
.. “You don’t mind if I go off script a little bit?” Trump said during his Friday speech, referring to the teleprompters loaded with words his aides wanted him to read. “Because it’s sort of boring
.. “I try like hell to hide that bald spot, folks,” Trump said. “I work hard at it. Doesn’t look bad. Hey, we’re hanging in. We’re hanging in.”
.. he derides as “chain migration,” with “a merit system.” Never mind that this week, a lawyer representing Trump’s Slovenian-born wife, Melania, and her family told The Washington Post that the first lady’s parents, Viktor and Amalija Knavs