Vance Picks a Fight With the Bishops

Plus: Israel's ceasefire(s), Chinese AI arms race, Waymo vandalism, and more...

Vance spars with Catholic bishops: Vice President J.D. Vance, who is Catholic, said in a Sunday interview with CBS that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has "not been a good partner in common-sense immigration enforcement."

"I think that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops needs to actually look in the mirror a little bit and recognize that when they receive over $100 million to help resettle illegal immigrants, are they worried about humanitarian concerns?" Vance said. "Or are they actually worried about their bottom line?"

This follows several statements by the USCCB that condemn President Donald Trump's immigration-related executive orders, including the Department of Homeland Security guidance—instructing immigration enforcement to avoid "sensitive places" such as churches and schools—that was recently scrapped.

"We recognize the need for just immigration enforcement and affirm the government's obligation to carry it out in a targeted, proportional, and humane way," declared the bishops in a statement (titled "Human Dignity is Not Dependent on a Person's Citizenship or Immigration Status") last week. "However, non-emergency immigration enforcement in schools, places of worship, social service agencies, healthcare facilities, or other sensitive settings where people receive essential services would be contrary to the common good. With the mere rescission of the protected areas guidance, we are already witnessing reticence among immigrants to engage in daily life, including sending children to school and attending religious services. All people have a right to fulfill their duty to God without fear. Turning places of care, healing, and solace into places of fear and uncertainty for those in need, while endangering the trust between pastors, providers, educators and the people they serve, will not make our communities safer."

Along with his cynical take that the bishops are more concerned with money than with fulfilling their Catholic duties, Vance asserted at one point that Trump's suspension of the refugee program, which has resettled some 3 million people in need since its start in 1980, made sense because not "all of these refugees" had been "properly vetted." That is a wild claim, since refugees probably qualify as one of the most vetted groups allowed to enter the country: Potential refugees register with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which does an initial screening and refers those who qualify to U.S. State Department Resettlement Support Centers, which then interview applicants, verify their data, and submit background checks to a whole consortium of national security agencies, which then cross-check things like fingerprints with databases around the globe. It's a roughly two-year process, and the USCCB has historically been a huge partner in resettling refugees, assisting with about 18 percent of cases.

The interview—transcript here—was frankly frustrating to watch, because Vance appeared to be shifting back and forth between talking about refugees and immigrants more broadly; the actual refugee program has a higher standard of vetting, something he doesn't acknowledge in this interview (or in several prior ones).

"Our prayer is one of hope that, as a Nation blessed with many gifts, our actions demonstrate a genuine care for our most vulnerable sisters and brothers, including the unborn, the poor, the elderly and infirm, and migrants and refugees," wrote the USCCB. "The just Judge expects nothing less."

Huge developments in Gaza over the weekend: The fragile truce between Israel and Palestine appears, somehow, to be holding. On Saturday, the terrorist group Hamas released four female Israel Defense Forces soldiers who had been imprisoned in the strip since October 7. Israel, in turn, returned 200 prisoners to Gaza.

But that does not mean everything has been going smoothly. "Israel said it would delay the return of displaced people to northern Gaza, as required by the cease-fire agreement, partly because Hamas had reneged on a plan to release Arbel Yehud, a female Israeli civilian who was seized during the Hamas-led assault on Israel in October 2023," reports The New York Times. "After hours of tense negotiations, the two sides reached a new agreement late Sunday under which Hamas would hand over Ms. Yehud, along with other hostages, by the end of the week. In exchange, Israeli forces began allowing displaced Palestinians to move north on Monday morning, opening the coastal road to people on foot and a second, interior road to vehicles, which were subject to inspection." Now Gazans are returning to the north, vast swaths of which amount to nothing more than rubble.

Meanwhile in Lebanon: The Times also reports that "Israeli forces opened fire toward residents of southern Lebanon for a second straight day on Monday as people pressed on with attempts to return to their homes along the border, a day after at least two dozen people were killed and scores injured in Israeli attacks, Lebanese officials said." Over the weekend, the truce between Israel and Hezbollah was extended to February 18, with the 60-day withdrawal agreement—in which both Israel and Hezbollah must leave southern Lebanon, allowing space for both U.N. forces and the Lebanese Army to enter—extended further; it had expired on Sunday, but it's not clear why exactly Israel is not honoring the agreement, or what type of ramifications may result. The Israeli military has signaled that they consider violence necessary to continue to expel Hezbollah from the region (and secure the Lebanese Army presence), and they have told the Lebanese people attempting to reenter the area that they need to wait for approval. That's an awful lot of bloodshed for a ceasefire.

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Scenes from New York: Vandals targeted the Israeli restaurant Miriam, in Park Slope, over the weekend. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty tired of the property destruction that activists think will somehow influence public sentiment about Israel/Palestine.

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QUICK HITS

• "US stocks were set for a steep selloff Monday morning after a surprise advancement from a Chinese artificial intelligence company, DeepSeek, threatened the aura of invincibility surrounding America's technology industry," reports CNN. "DeepSeek, a one-year-old startup, last week showed off a stunning capability: It presented a ChatGPT-like AI model called R1, which has all the familiar abilities, operating at a fraction of the cost of OpenAI's, Google's or Meta's popular AI models. The company said it had spent just $5.6 million training its newest AI model, compared with the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars US companies spend on their AI technologies."
• True:

A good time to remember that vandalizing Waymos demonstrates the incredible trust we all have in big tech companies: Waymo is studded with cameras and are owned by a parent company with access to your email and detailed knowledge of your porn consumption habits. https://t.co/TFExypc6yt

— Byrne Hobart (@ByrneHobart) January 27, 2025

And yet, everybody knows that even though Google has life-ruining kompromat about everyone on earth, we don't think for a second that they'd abuse that privilege, even if we do hundreds of thousands of dollars of property damage for dumb reasons.

— Byrne Hobart (@ByrneHobart) January 27, 2025

• Today I learned one of the teachers union contracts allows employees to be suspended for three days—but not fired—if a teacher is caught selling drugs. Also, they can be drunk at school up to four times before being fired on their fifth offense. Forgive me for thinking the standard should be a tad higher:

For those who don't think unions have too much power, here is an active union contract in Michigan.

Teachers can be drunk at school five times before they are fired. They can be high three times before losing their job. And they can MAKE AND SELL DRUGS and keep their job. pic.twitter.com/kXNOZkZvze

— Mackinac Center (@MackinacCenter) January 24, 2025