Free Republic

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, introduced a bill this week to transfer migrant detention facilities from border towns to ritzy areas where “Democrat elites host their cocktail parties,” such as Martha’s Vineyard. “President Biden and Democrats need to step up to defend our southern border and support our heroic Customs and Border Protection officials,” he said. The bill, dubbed the Stop the Surge of Unsafe Rio Grande Encampments (SURGE) Act, would help the federal government get control of the southern border after President Joe Biden “willingly surrendered” it to “dangerous criminal cartels” without any “thought given to the South Texas border...

Governors Island stood as a military sentinel in New York Harbor for more than two centuries. But with its enviable location just off the southern tip of Manhattan, it has long attracted the attention of urban planners, who argued it was better suited as a public park or airport. Perhaps it was unsurprising, then, that after the U.S. Coast Guard announced in 1996 it was giving up the island, a fierce struggle ensued between planners and the state and city politicians who would have to find the money for any major development. As they bickered, a remarkable collection of historic...

SEVEN minutes out of lower Manhattan, and I've landed in the downtown Twilight Zone. The clocks still run on Governors Island. The buildings appear recently painted. A schedule still adorns a bus kiosk, announcing regular pickups and drop-offs. Signs announce the hours of a barber, a movie theater, a restaurant. A swing set looks as if a child has just run inside for lunch. But there's no one alive here on this creepy and magnificent spit of land smack dab in the middle of New York Harbor's Upper Bay. Not if you don't count the Canadian geese who have full...

But Could Tiger Drive the Statue of Liberty? By JOHN ATWOOD Now that the federal government has finally turned over Governors Island to New York State, it's time to get serious about what we're going to do with it. The leading proposal, a City University of New York campus, is nobly intended, but in this era of fiscal collapse we need to be careful about the size of the next hole we dig. The city estimates that simply keeping up the island to support a new college or museum would cost $20 million to $40 million a year, which would...