Jan. 7, 2026 6 AM PT <\/p>\n
To the editor: Before revealing his political wish list for 2026, contributing writer Josh Hammer lauds President Trump\u2019s \u201cinnovative use of the National Guard\u201d (\u201cWe saw progress and peril in 2025. There\u2019s hope for Trump\u2019s next year,\u201d<\/a> Jan. 1). The U.S. Supreme Court, as conservative and executive-branch-favoring as the majority of its justices are, disagrees with this sycophantic characterization in a recent 6-3 ruling<\/a>, finding that Trump did not have the constitutional authority to order such deployment in Chicago.<\/p>\n On the actual wish list, Hammer hopes for a \u201cvictory on birthright citizenship.\u201d Right-wing political rhetoric that ties the 14th Amendment to human trafficking is unsupported by any evidence, with trafficking being widely driven by coercion, fraud, demand for forced labor and sex trafficking. Moreover, there is no evidence that undocumented immigrants come to the U.S. just to give birth. Descriptions of birthright citizenship as \u201cruinous\u201d or an \u201cincentive for illegal immigration\u201d are unsupported by any vetted facts.<\/p>\n In regard to Russia\u2019s \u201clegitimate\u201d interests in invading Ukraine: There are none, according to the U.N. General Assembly<\/a>, the international community and legal experts<\/a>. Hammer, being neither Russian nor Ukranian, finds it easy to claim splitting the baby is perfectly fine. Republicans used to be bulwarks against the \u201cRussian Bear.\u201d No longer.<\/p>\n Neal Rosenthal, Woodland Hills<\/p>\n ..<\/p>\n To the editor: Hammer accuses the previous administration (I infer that\u2019s what he means by \u201cleftist elite-driven chaos\u201d) of engaging in \u201chyper-vindictive lawfare,\u201d claiming we have now reverted to \u201claw and order.\u201d The arrest, incarceration and deportation of people without due process? Brazen defiance of court orders? Frivolous lawsuits against former FBI Director James Comey, New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James and others? The wholesale pardoning of criminals who attacked the capital? Shameless extortion of law firms, universities and media companies? This is Hammer\u2019s idea of law and order? Give us a break.<\/p>\n J.B. White, Ojai<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan. 7, 2026 6 AM PT To the editor: Before revealing his political wish list for 2026, contributing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[47642,9533,55616,2072,4744,8410,48,52,51,721,47,50,49,2806,9355,592,64755,64756,2214,1519,4746],"class_list":["post-123915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-birthright-citizenship","tag-deportation","tag-due-process","tag-editor","tag-evidence","tag-hammer","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-law","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-national-guard","tag-order","tag-people","tag-political-wish-list","tag-shameless-extortion","tag-supreme-court","tag-trump","tag-use"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}