There is no question that the country, when the issues are presented fairly, wants nothing to do with a policy of unlimited access for anyone who wishes to enter and remain in the United States, and is offended by the apparent view in much of Latin America that everyone in the hemisphere has a right to enter the United States and remain permanently — without even giving their name at the border, but with a full civic right to U.S. education and welfare benefits thereafter. The majority of Americans is appalled by the influx of violent criminal gang members and the shocking quantities of the most dangerous drugs that flow in across the southern border. The country wants a million legal immigrants a year, it wants merit-based immigration, and it wants secure borders and adequate court and detention center facilities and personnel to prevent these floods of unauthorized intruders and to prevent distressing humanitarian dramas. The last thing the country wants is the abolition of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Nor does the American public, when the question is posed properly, approve of “sanctuary cities” whose mayors and city councils instruct the police not to honor federal immigration laws. When the time is ripe, those responsible for this outright insurrection will have to be slapped down. Unfortunately, it is too late to hang this impudence on Rahm Emmanuel, the failed ex-mayor of Chicago, who, having declared his city a Trump-free zone, fled on foot from Chicago City Hall, that greatest of all Democratic sinecures. (This year marks 90 consecutive years that the Democratic party has had its front feet in the trough in Chicago and Cook County.)

On Tuesday night Pelosi and Schumer, in their ludicrous talking duet — one glared purposefully while the other spoke vapidly — took the plunge: an interruption in the pay of 800,000 federal workers is more important than an oceanic flood of Central American farmers and families, or an influx of drug traffickers carrying with them the hard drugs that kill many thousands of Americans every year. And once the federal employees are back at work, the congressional Democratic party that has opposed and sabotaged every measure to deal with the greatest problem that has faced the nation since World War II will go back to talking about it (and doing nothing).