I’m sure you’ve heard this old joke: How can you tell if a politician is lying? His lips are moving.

Well, a lot of Democrats went on the Sunday talk shows and claimed that the crisis at the southern border was caused by Donald Trump. That’s breathtaking in its dishonesty.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi led the charge, claiming that the Biden administration “inherited a broken system at the border” and is working “to correct that.” Pelosi added that the current crisis is “a transition from what was wrong before to what is right.”

What Biden “inherited” thanks to Donald Trump was a border largely under control. Trump built hundreds of miles of new wall. He deployed troops to help secure the border. He got tough with Mexico. He clearly discouraged migrants from walking into our country for free healthcare, education, and jobs.

Biden reversed all of that. The first thing Joe Biden did when he took office was sign a slew of executive orders undoing everything Donald Trump did to secure the border. Construction on the border wall was stopped, and now there are many gaps in the wall.

How do we know that this is Biden’s crisis and not Trump’s fault? Illegal aliens are pouring into the country wearing Biden T-shirts, not Trump T-shirts.

At the White House recently, a Biden official said in English that the border is closed. But she then said in Spanish that the border is open. Guess which sentence was heard in Latin America?

Meanwhile, illegal immigration is at its highest level in 15 years, and many migrants arriving at the border seem to believe that Joe Biden “promised” to let them in.

Last month, nearly 9,500 unaccompanied children crossed our southern border. Each of those children will become the responsibility of the American taxpayer. Each of those children, and who knows how many more on the way, will cost at least $10,000 a year to educate.

That’s not even getting into healthcare costs. And we know that many of the illegal immigrants crossing the border are testing positive for COVID at twice the national average. Meanwhile, one Texas border facility is operating in excess of 700% capacity.

The Biden administration continues to insist that this is not a crisis or an emergency. But it just asked FEMA — the Federal Emergency Management Agency — for help. I wish I could report that FEMA was helping to secure the border. Instead, it is babysitting unaccompanied children.

Fighting Back

I am pleased to report that Republican officials in states heavily impacted by illegal immigration are fighting back.

As we noted before, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton immediately went into federal court seeking to block Joe Biden’s ban on deportations. He won a nationwide injunction from federal Judge Drew Tipton.

Paxton’s efforts are also being supported by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich and Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, who blasted the deportation freeze as a threat to public safety.

In addition, nearly a dozen state attorneys general are seeking to block Biden’s attempt to end enforcement of the “public charge” rule that prevents immigrants from becoming financial burdens on U.S. taxpayers. The rule has been part of U.S. immigration policy since 1882, but has largely been overlooked until the Trump administration decided to enforce it again.

If Biden succeeds in effectively repealing the rule, taxpayers will be on the hook for billions of dollars of additional welfare and social safety net expenses.

The Pentagon vs. The Pundit

I must admit that I am worried about the U.S. military. Not the brave young men and women who serve in uniform. But just like every other institution in America, the Pentagon leadership seems to be increasingly “woke” and more interested in satisfying the left than anything else.

Remember how much resistance Donald Trump got when he wanted to send the military to help secure the border? Well, the Pentagon now seems to be happy about protecting Nancy Pelosi and other politicians at the Capitol.

Last month, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered a 60-day “stand down” to address extremism in the military. We’ll see how that goes.

But given that the Pentagon had been using material from the radical left Southern Poverty Law Center, which considers Christian pro-family groups like American Values and the Family Research Council to be hate groups, I suspect this will be just another opportunity for left-wing indoctrination. The SPLC actually defends antifa!

For the better part of a decade, we have partnered with allied organizations to defend religious liberty in the ranks from growing militant secularism. While we had an ally in the previous administration, the current administration is likely to reinstate many Obama-era policies that undermined religious liberty.

Meanwhile, Pentagon leaders got their knickers in a knot last week after Tucker Carlson questioned whether the top brass was sufficiently focused on confronting the threat from communist China.

“While China’s military becomes more masculine as it assembles the world’s largest Navy,” our military leaders apparently think the U.S. Armed Forces need “to become more feminine, whatever feminine means anymore because men and women no longer exist,” Carlson said in his Tuesday monologue.

But the Pentagon’s over-the-top reactions and repeated attacks on Carlson strongly suggest that he’s on to something. While Carlson’s focus was China, our military leaders prattled on and on about diversity.

There are restrictions against the military getting involved in civilian public policy debates for good reasons. And Senator Ted Cruz is demanding to know why the Pentagon focused so much fire recently on a TV talk show host.

In a letter to Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger, Cruz wrote, “The last week has witnessed the Pentagon mobilize systematic, public attacks against television host Tucker Carlson that in substance, tone, and political resonance are inexplicably inappropriate.”