Israeli Embassy Staffers Killed
Plus: Trump bill passes the House, Danish father of five detained in ICE custody in Louisiana, and more...
Two Israeli embassy staffers shot: Last night, outside an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., two Israeli embassy staffers were shot and killed by a gunman who yelled "Free, free Palestine" after being taken into custody. The deceased—Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26—were set to get engaged to one another; Lischinsky was planning to propose next week in Jerusalem.
"This is the direct result of toxic antisemitic incitement against Israel and Jews around the world that has been going on since the Oct. 7 massacre," said Gideon Saar, Israel's foreign minister, in a press conference earlier today.
Get your morning news roundup from Liz Wolfe and Reason.
The shooter had been pacing in front of the museum before shooting the two staffers at close range as they came out. He then entered the building before being stopped by security guards. The event was a "Young Diplomats Reception," which aimed to bring together Jewish young professionals, aged 22 to 45, and people in the diplomatic community.
Trump's "big, beautiful bill" passes the House: "The Republican-led House passed President [Donald] Trump's sprawling tax-and-spending bill early Thursday, after party leaders made a series of last-minute changes that united their warring wings," reports The Wall Street Journal. It passed narrowly, 215–214, with one voting present, and now faces the Senate.
This bill will extend the 2017 tax cuts that were passed during the first Trump administration. But it doesn't do enough to cut back deficit spending, argued Reps. Warren Davidson (R–Ohio) and Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), the only two GOPers who voted against it.
The old $30,000 cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions will be raised to $40,000 (a bit of a concession to Republican representatives and constituents from New York and New Jersey). Border states will get big chunks of change to offset extra immigration enforcement costs under the Biden administration (or so the framing goes). There's some reduced Medicaid and food stamp spending, cutting federal funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by $267 billion over the next decade. The child tax credit will be expanded.
Real threat to the community over here: Kasper Eriksen, a Danish citizen, works as a welding foreman. He has four children with his wife, Savannah, with a fifth due in August.
Ten years ago, before having all their other kids, Kasper and Savannah suffered the loss of a stillbirth; in the days that followed, a distracted and grieving Kasper failed to fill out Form I-751 (a "Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence") when the deadline passed in 2015. In the years since, immigration officers who helped him along his path to naturalization never told him that form was missing or could present problems, according to reporting by the Mississippi Free Press.
But his failure to file Form I-751 meant that, upon sitting down for his last immigration meeting before becoming a citizen last month, immigration authorities had—unbeknownst to him—issued a removal order; he's now being held in Louisiana's LaSalle Detention Center. It's been over a month.
It's not clear why immigration authorities who were managing his case didn't simply alert him to the fact that the form needed to be filled out. It's not clear why a removal order was issued instead of just allowing him to rectify the mistake. And it's not clear how public safety is served by having this man locked up.
Eriksen should be precisely the type of immigrant that even the most die-hard MAGA types can get excited about. He's gainfully employed (and his boss intends to pass the welding business down to him). He speaks English. He has never been charged with a crime. He has assimilated into an American community; he does not live in an ethnic enclave surrounded by only his own countrymen. His wife homeschools. They are practicing Christians (with "an army of prayer warriors fighting" on Eriksen's behalf). They own land and pay taxes. They're clearly helping the birth rate, and then some. His Facebook page is full of "I don't care if you've had the vaccine" and "Vaccines optional." He appears to have tried his absolute best to do everything the right way—and it still wasn't good enough.
The common comeback is that, when you're doing a big immigration sweep, of course, innocent or sympathetic people are going to get caught in the mix; you can't have an error rate of zero. But at what point is the error rate too damn high? At what point are the agencies in charge actively refusing to correct their mistakes or show leniency because of guidance issued from on high that incentivizes maximum cruelty?
For a long time in both the English legal tradition and the American one, William Blackstone's ratio has been a north star: "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer," said the 18th-century jurist. Benjamin Franklin used 100, and Maimonides, who previewed this concept in the 12th century, used 1,000, but the sentiment holds: Our legal system ought to really, really care about not wrongly convicting or punishing the innocent. Under today's immigration regime, it sure looks like that longstanding value has been thrown out.
Scenes from New York: "Amazing story in the Gothamist about a family that has occupied the same rent-controlled apartment for four generations and the last generation is not eager to give up the benefits," writes Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution. But there's a twist: "You might think you understand this story. The landlord wants to kick out the current tenant to raise the rent to the new tenant, right? No. Landlords are no longer allowed to raise the rents to new tenants (!!!). Unless the new tenant is themselves getting rental assistance!"
"The city's rental subsidy programs (like Section 8 and CityFHEPS) will pay more than three times what the current tenant does—creating a surreal incentive where landlords prefer subsidized low-income tenants over potentially middle-class legacy-tenants. Note that whether [Gabrielle] Vines gets the apartment at the rent-controlled rate has nothing to do with her income. Vines could be middle-class or a multi-millionaire and still be entitled to inherit the apartment at the rent-controlled rate, assuming her claims of having lived in the apartment hold up.
New York has outdone itself with a rent control system so dysfunctional it manages to achieve the worst of all worlds. Not only does it suffer from the usual problems of reducing the supply of housing and dulling incentives for maintenance, but it has transformed over time from a safety net into a hereditary entitlement. Thanks to succession rights, what was meant to help the poor now functions as a kind of family heirloom—a subsidized apartment passed down like grandma's china set."
It's very frustrating to me that you hear, over and over again, from mayoral candidates that, yes, the city needs to build more housing but that, really, public spending to subsidize the creation of more affordable housing is what's needed. They never say they'll abolish rent stabilization and rent control.
QUICK HITS
- A very good point:
It seems to me the administration's treatment of Abrego Garcia has prompted some justices to treat AEA cases like capital cases in that alleged TdA members face maximal irreparable harm because admin denies ability to undo their rendition to foreign prisons. 1/
— Jonathan H. Adler (@jadler1969) May 21, 2025
- This article—about wearables like the Oura Ring that allows you to track your body temperature, heart rate, steps, and more—seems to be fixated on how these metrics exacerbate people's anxiety. That seems like…a personal problem, not an issue really related to the technology. (I have one, and it helps me measure how much sleep I get, and track my workouts. Highly useful and motivating.)
- A look at how different large retailers are trying to handle the ever-changing tariff policies and make plans for the future, courtesy of Axios.
- God rest their souls, but also, seems like gerontocracy is a problem.
Six House Democrats have died in office in the past 13 months https://t.co/rAiSh4qY3J pic.twitter.com/aoKf7GrCiD
— Christopher Ingraham???? (@_cingraham) May 21, 2025
