Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1026

Anti-Abortion Advocates May Be Behind the Blind Chinese Activist's War on NYU

The story of 41-year-old blind Chinese dissident and human rights activist Chen Guangcheng, currently a visiting scholar at NYU, took an all-too-familiar turn on Monday afternoon: According to the The Wall Street Journal, Chen has fallen in deep with a group of strident religious conservatives who have, among other things, persuaded him to speak out against NYU for imaginary slights — including, as first reported by the New York Post last week, a secret agreement with "Chinese bureaucrats" to arrange Chen's early eviction from the university. The Journal's story closely parallels numerous reports that anti-abortion activists, often animated by religious conservatism, hope to leverage Chen's campaign against China's eugenics program, in particular forced abortion, to restrict access to elective abortion in the United States. The unnamed members of Chen's newfound influencers, meanwhile, "are keen for him to become a more outspoken critic of China's government," even if that means alienating the American university that currently pays for his office, apartment, and health care.

This revelation surfaced one day after Chen issued a multi-part statement repeating the Post's allegations: "As early as August and September, the Chinese Communists had already begun to apply great, unrelenting pressure on New York University, so much so that after [my family] had been in the United States just three to four months, NYU was already starting to discuss our departure with us." Hours later, NYU vehemently denied Chen's claims, stating that its initial agreement with Chen, who arrived in New York after escaping Chinese authorities in May 2012, explicitly stated that the school could only support him for one year, after which he would have to find his own housing and income.

To be sure, Chen's charges are not completely removed from the realm of possibility. As Quartz's Jake Maxwell Watts noted on Sunday, NYU enjoys a particularly close relationship with the Chinese government, on account of its expansion in Shanghai and the steady flow of Chinese students paying full freight to study in New York. But according to NYU professor Jerome Cohen, a close friend of Chen's who helped negotiate the activist's appointment at NYU, none of Chen's claims really add up. Cohen told the Journal: "Mr. Chen seems to be taking advice from a group that thrives on accusation, rumor, suspicion, gossip and malice. So far not a single fact has been adduced to support their allegations."

The thrust of Chen's accusations is, indeed, a bit unclear. In his full statement, he thanks NYU for hosting him at the height of his personal vulnerability — he had been holed up in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing after escaping his home, where he had been placed under house arrest following a five-year prison term for charges that were never substantiated — but criticized NYU President John Sexton for never bothering to meet Chen in person. And it's not as if Chen or his family (he has a wife and a son) is in danger of being instantly deported or rendered destitute. Shortly after arriving in New York last year, Chen signed a high-profile book deal, and is already in talks with several institutions in the tri-state area, including Fordham University in New York and the Witherspoon Institute, a conservative think tank in New Jersey, to fund his studies and activism.

Where Chen lands next is likely to attract its own controversy. Cohen, the NYU professor and friend, expressed concern in early June with the Witherspoon Institute's recruitment of Chen, citing the think tank's views toward abortion policy. (Unlike leaders at Witherspoon, Cohen told the Financial Times, Chen believes believes in both access to abortion and protecting women against forced abortions.) Meanwhile, Chen's other leading choice, Fordham University, has a 15-year relationship with the state-sponsored Peking University in Beijing, and is home to the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers, which exists "to promote the rule of law in China." Chen's recent attacks on NYU could narrow his choices, though: An acquaintance of Chen's told the Journal that Chen's insinuation that NYU cooperated with China to remove him from campus "might compromise offers from other schools and push him toward the Witherspoon Institute."

       

This Chinese Cargo Loader Does Not Care About Your Fragile Things

We realize there's only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cellphone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

"Oh man, let's take care of this package. Someone might have gotten something very expensive," said this cargo loader at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport never in his life.

Meanwhile, in a different corner of the Internet, we have this amazing hero:

When we achieve our dreams and open The Atlantic Wire Tiki Bar, we will employ monkey bartenders... this is an exclusive first look:

And finally, our buddies across the loft here at Quartz have started their summer ritual of onion-dicing and bringing in their long-haired cats. And it just so happened that all that ruckus coincided with us watching this Google+ video — and it's totally because of those onions and cats that we're a little teary-eyed and not this ad:

       

Obama's New 3-Point Plan to Defend the NSA Is Full of the Same Old Excuses

President Obama "goes further than he has before" in explaining "the balance between security and freedom," the Charlie Rose Show tweeted to hype its 45-minute interview with Obama that airs Monday night. And while Obama does go into further detail than he has before, we've already heard most of these defenses. They are: 1) the programs only collect metadata — no wiretaps! 2) the programs are overseen by an independent "transparent" court and Congress, and 3) there haven't been abuses, because abuses are against the law.

According to a partial transcript of the president's PBS interview posted by BuzzFeed, Obama said the NSA's program of grabbing all phone call metadata amounted to looking at "call pairs." It was an echo of his "no one is listening to your phone calls" statement from two Fridays ago, when he first spoke out about a series of leaks. In today's words, that's: "You have my telephone number connecting with your telephone number. There are no names. There is no content in that database." But as we've pointed out, with metadata, which includes geolocation, you don't need content. The NSA can pinpoint stories in a building. That means if your friend calls you for 10 seconds from the street in front of your apartment, the NSA can conclude your buzzer is broken and you had to let her in. Obama conceded, but implied there hadn't been abuses of that awesome big data power, because they're against the law:

...What you’ll hear is people say, “Okay, we have no evidence that it has been abused so far.” And they say, “Let’s even grant that Obama’s not abusing it, that all these processes — DOJ is examining it. It’s being renewed periodically, et cetera — the very fact that there is all this data in bulk, it has the enormous potential for abuse,” because they’ll say, you know, “You can — when you start looking at metadata, even if you don’t know the names, you can match it up, if there’s a call to an oncologist, and there’s a call to a lawyer, and — you can pair that up and figure out maybe this person’s dying, and they’re writing their will, and you can yield all this information.” All of that is true. Except for the fact that for the government, under the program right now, to do that, it would be illegal. We would not be allowed to do that.

The executive branch has abused its surveillance power. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has ruled, on at least one occasion, that the information the government collected violated the Fourth Amendment. The non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation tried to find out what that violation was. But as The Atlantic Wire's Philip Bump explained in May, the Justice Department claimed the secret court's rules prevented that info from becoming public, while the court said the info was subject to a Freedom of Information Act request. In other words, "The judicial branch (FISC) says to ask the executive branch (DOJ). The executive branch says to ask the judicial." When defending the agency, former NSA director Michael Hayden told The Daily Beast "he remembered a collector who was fired for trying to snoop on his ex-wife overseas."

Further, Obama tells Rose, "...on this telephone program, you've got a federal court with independent federal judges overseeing the entire program. And you've got Congress overseeing the program." But the FISC, which Obama called "transparent," is a secret court. And Congress hasn't been so great at providing oversight. Many in Congress claim not to know the things the NSA said it briefed them on. Only 47 senators showed up for an NSA briefing last week. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, who wrote the Patriot Act, called the phone program an "abuse" even though such abuse appears to have been going on for about a decade.

As for the NSA's collection of emails, Obama said that's "called the 702 program. And what that does is that does not apply to any U.S. person. Has to be a foreign entity... Those — and the process has all been approved by the courts — you can send to providers — the Yahoos or the Googles, what have you." Don't worry — it doesn't apply to you! But in a question-and-answer session with readers of The Guardian on Monday, NSA leaker Edward Snowden was not very enthusiastic about those warrants approved by courts:

NSA likes to use "domestic" as a weasel word here for a number of reasons. The reality is that due to the FISA Amendments Act and its section 702 authorities, Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant. They excuse this as "incidental" collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications. Even in the event of "warranted" intercept, it's important to understand the intelligence community doesn't always deal with what you would consider a "real" warrant like a Police department would have to, the "warrant" is more of a templated form they fill out and send to a reliable judge with a rubber stamp.

Obama denied that he was Dick Cheney Part II — "some people say, 'Well, you know, Obama was this raving liberal before. Now he's, you know, Dick Cheney'" — because the secret court is transparent. "I continue to believe is that we don't have to sacrifice our freedom in order to achieve security. That's a false choice," Obama said. "That doesn't mean that there are not tradeoffs involved in any given program, in any given action that we take." How do we know we're getting a balanced deal if we don't know what's on each side of the scale? Obama says he's asking the intelligence agencies "much of this we can declassify without further compromising the program."

The president goes on to tell Rose that he wants "to set up and structure a national conversation, not only about these two programs, but also the general problem of data, big data sets, because this is not going to be restricted to government entities." Both the government and big business have these massive data sets. But only Silicon Valley, it seems, can talk about it publicly — Congress cannot. Too bad the federal government is the side with police power.

       

Dan Harmon Officially Hated Harmon-Less 'Community'

Community's new/old showrunner Dan Harmon has finally weighed in with the review of the show's fourth season that the thousands of fans of NBC's cult favorite have been waiting for. On the most recent episode of his "Harmontown" podcast, the notoriously difficult writer first said the Harmon-less season wasn't his "cup of tea" before getting a little too rape-y with his description. Indeed, Harmon's inveighing upon Community under the stewardship of two replacement showrunners, Moses Port and David Guarascio — well, let's just say Harmon got more and more graphic as the podcast continued. He said watching the show last season was like "flipping through Instagram just watching your girlfriend blow a million other guys," and then, later, he may have crossed a line: Harmon was describing how he felt after he learned the show got Josh Brolin to play Jeff Winger's dad. You see, he had always wanted Bill Murray to play the father of Joel McHale's protagonist — he allegedly named Jeff after Bill Murray's character in Stripes — but once Brolin was cast by his replacements, Harmon's dream was done. And then: 

"I just always thought Jeff Winger's dad would be Bill Murray. But there's something awesome about having all of those preconceived notions ripped away from you. It's exciting. There's something exciting about being held down and watching your family get raped on a beach. It's liberating. It makes you focus on what's important."

So... this is a change of tune. Harmon previously said he wasn't "going to be a jerk about" season four because there were "some great writers working on that show who bled with me for seasons one, two and three…the worst thing I can do is fart in their direction at all." And, well, this is Harmon being a jerk about it. 

So does this mean Harmon is going to go full Keyzer Soze on all the character development from season four and just do whatever he wants? The third season ended with an "it was all a dream" reveal that angered critics and viewers alike. But it was contained within the episode, unlike Dallas's notoriously dreamed-up full season. On the other hand, Harmon did say he called Bill Murray about appearing on Community as he was watching the Josh Brolin episode. So he's got that going for him, which is nice.

       

Let's Get Reasonable About Unplugging

When looking for a way to digital detox most of us — besides the likes of Woody Allen — aren't going to pay people to do our Internetting for us. The 25 days disconnected from the Internet that "performer, writer, CEO, youngest child" Baratunde Thurston chronicles over at Fast Company would not have been possible without the help of his "chief of staff" Julia Lynton Boelte, who he had check his email every few days. The other option, just disconnecting completely and living without the Internet by yourself, as Paul Miller did for a year for The Verge doesn't sound very pleasant. There should be something in between. Since most of us don't have personal assistants to keep up with out digital lives while we disengage, is there a way for normal people to detach?  The answer is to make tech work for us, not work for our tech — especially if you can't make people work for you. But, how? The Atlantic Wire has some ideas.

Turn off the noise: Thurston didn't just rely on his "chief of staff" to deal with inbound digital traffic; he made sure that there were fewer digital distractions flying his way.  If you feel like you need a break from it all, consider turning off phone notifications for the least important apps. "There was no rule that I had to restore Shazam’s rights of interruption on my lock screen. There was no law forcing me to be notified of each Twitter mention," he writes. No wonder Thurston felt overwhelmed with technology — he had Shazam push notifications enabled. For why? Is there an important song recognition message Thurston has to get? Obviously not. 

Get a better email system: Email is impossible to escape — not even Thurston could really get away from his electronic messages. For those of you who can't pay someone to check Gmail, but also feel overwhelmed with messages, consider an e-mail solution, like Mailbox. The techies love it, including king of the chilled-out tech people, Brian Lam of The Wirecutter. For those who can't handle the idea of setting up a whole new app, Gmail's new tab system filters out a lot of the crap. Note how I have a new (garbage) message under the promotions tab, but it doesn't show up in that dreaded inbox number. 

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Disconnect for just a weekend: Or a day, or a half day, or a meal — whatever works for you. 25 days is extreme. So extreme that only someone with a lot of resources at their disposal like Thurston can really do it. But a day, or an hour, without email access shouldn't result in any missed emergencies. If an email goes unanswered for a weekend, generally nothing too terrible results. While some people get real value out of this sort of thing, if the idea of not answering emails stresses you out more than the idea of a detox, maybe pick a different, less valuable, technology to detach from, like Facebook or Twitter or Instagram.

None of these life hacks require paying someone a salary and everyone can do them — there are likely other, better ways to detox in this hyper-connected world than our suggestions. These little moments of clarity might not bring you the same amount of enlightenment as Thurston found after his experiment, but there are ways to find harmony in a connected world that don't involve outsourcing our tech. 

       

A Map of All 15 Places People Have Said Jimmy Hoffa Is Buried, Including Today

FBI agents searched a field outside of Detroit Monday afternoon in an effort to find the body of former Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa, missing for nearly 40 years. Seems promising, right, coming off a tip from a former mobster? This is at least the 15th such tip since Hoffa vanished — including seven in and around Detroit. There have been six searches in the last ten years.

We took a quick look at the history of attempts to find Hoffa, mapping them below.

Some highlights (links to stories are on the map):

Shortly after Hoffa went missing in 1975, searches focused near Detroit, including a local restaurant (where he was reportedly put into a trash compactor) and a nearby horse farm. The next most-promising region was New Jersey, home to one or two mobsters. There's the Giants Stadium rumor, of course, as well as a late-'70s search of a Jersey City landfill. One report suggested that Hoffa was cut into pieces and dumped in a swamp in the Everglades. Another said that he was put into junk car, compacted, and shipped overseas as scrap metal. One of the most distant reports had Hoffa somehow being taken to Gardena, California, as a hostage.

None of those searches were borne out, of course.

Maybe this time will be different. In January, when the tipster's claims were first introduced, NBC affiliates around the country showed the following image of the field the FBI's investigating.

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Looks like as good a place to start digging as any.

In related news, authorities in New York are searching a home in Queens for a missing thug. The home was once owned by one of the mobsters portrayed in Goodfellas, making it more interesting than it might otherwise be. But they'll probably have no luck either. We have it on good authority that the guy they're looking for was buried underneath the grass at Ford Field.

Photo: An FBI team searches a Michigan farm for Hoffa in 2006.

       

Kids, Chuck Schumer Is Coming for Your Adderall

Are you a student in New York using prescription performance enhancing drugs like Adderall or Ritalin to finish your work in a timely manner? Well, let's hope you've got a rock solid diagnosis because Sen. Chuck Schumer wants to crack down on "academic doping." Schumer is worried about the 35 percent of college kids who use drugs like Aderall without a proper prescription. More and more kids are turning to drugs like Adderall to help them focus and complete their papers. But Schumer thinks students should focus on using classic study aides that he used when he was in school. "There are better ways to pull an all-nighter and stay up. There's coffee, there's things like NoDoz," Schumer told CBS New York.

The New York Senator wants schools to make kids more aware about the negative side effects the drugs can have when they aren't helping you bang out that late English paper on a Sunday night. Schumer wants new, strict regulations in place when classes resume in the fall at New York's colleges to make sure the kids who are receiving the drugs aren't giving them away to their friends: 

For students diagnosed at a campus health clinic: Require formal contracts and follow-up diagnostics for that student; and require detailed medical, educational, and psychological history.

For students diagnosed outside of campus health clinic, and seeking to refill prescription: Require mental health evaluations with qualified health practitioner to verify diagnoses; and require parent, guardian verification of diagnoses

So it's safe to assume Schumer isn't on board with the "give Adderall to everyone to make super students" plan, huh? 

For now Schumer is putting the onus of responsibility on schools to adopt new restrictions. There are no signs he plans on adopting some kind of legislation that would make these ideas mandatory. So, for now, it appears you're PED use is legal. Remember when baseball was the same way with steroids? The reckoning is coming, children. Graduate while you still can. 

       

The NSA Spied on Dmitry Medvedev, Too

It can generally be assumed that Russia and the U.S. are spying on each other at all times. Spies get busted on each side with some regularity. But the latest leak from Edward Snowden shows the National Security Agency once snooped former President Dmitry Medvedev's meta-data during a summit of world leaders. The Guardian reports the NSA office in Menwith Hill tracked Medvedev's communication signals back to the Russian embassy during the G20 summit in London in 2009, according to documents leaked by former government contractor Edward Snowden. The report doesn't reveal much beyond "a change in the way Russian leadership signals have been normally transmitted." The reports major details, per the Guardian: 

The report says: "This is an analysis of signal activity in support of President Dmitry Medvedev's visit to London. The report details a change in the way Russian leadership signals have been normally transmitted. The signal activity was found to be emanating from the Russian embassy in London and the communications are believed to be in support of the Russian president."

But this is easily the highest profile snooping revealed by Snowden so far. While his other leaks have revealed wider operations on a very macro spying level, the Medvedev reveal shows very specific targeting of a top government official from one of the country's most uneasy allies. 

Russia and the U.S. spy on each other all the time. Russia recently expelled an American they said was a CIA spy who wore a funny wig. And who can forget the ring of Russian spies busted in the U.S. a few years ago who were allegedly building a network of spy children? But this reveal ahead of the scheduled G8 meetings that Obama and current Russian president Vladimir Putin will be attending my make things a little awkward. There's also that (disputed) matter of the stolen Super Bowl ring setting the table for a very strange conversation between the two world leaders. 

       

'Man of Steel' Flies High

Welcome to the Box Office Report, where Superman can leap over buildings in a single bound and melt glaciers with his gaze, but he still has to call Batman to open this darn pickle jar.

1. Man of Steel (Warner): $113.1 million in 4,207 million

Hey, so, a whole lot of people sat through this two and a half hour bad movie. Man of Steel's very successful opening weekend in the wake of a week of bad press for being not good and also kind of soulless was definitely a surprise. This was the second best opening of the summer. The only movie to have a better opening weekend was Iron Man 3. It's just another example of D.C. falling behind Marvel at the movie theater. But, who cares? This thing already has a sequel planned and will make a jillion dollars globally. Then, in three years, we'll get an equally bad and soulless sequel and the same thing will happen because people won't remember how bad this one is. The movies are just magical. 

2. This Is The End (Sony): $20.5 million in 3,055 theaters

There's apparently a real funny movie out this summer, unlike The Hangover 3, which was a fake funny movie. This one will actually make you laugh so hard you get a pain in your side and leave the theater with a smile on your face. It will probably also get three or four sequels. They can just ignore the whole world ending bit. It's not that big of a deal.

3. Now You See Me (Lionsgate): $10.3 million in 3,082 theaters [Week 3]

Is Now You See Me's sustained success because of Jesse Eisenburg's adorable boy-next-door good looks or people gravitating towards Morgan Freeman's general greatness? It's neither! People jsut really like magic. 

4. Fast & Furious 6 (Universal): $9.4 million in 3,375 theaters [Week 4]

I don't expect another movie audience to break out in spontaneous applause as much as the audience for Fast 6 did. That says a lot about the quality of the film and also the people in the audience at a Fast 6 showing. 

5. The Purge (Universal): $8.2 million in 2,591 theaters [Week 2]

Welp, that lasted long. The Purge suffered a 76 percent plunge within a week. Maybe that sequel was a little hasty. All sequels are hasty, but, really, that one seems like a bad idea in retrospect. A whole week in theaters can really illuminate things. If there's a lesson in this week's Box Office Report, it's that sequels are the worst. 

       

Rubio Wants Changes to Immigration Bill; Jeb's Parents Split on White House Run

Sen. Marco Rubio said the Senate's bipartisan immigration bill is ready to go as written, for the most part, except for a few minor changes that are needed during an interview on ABC's This Week. "It's an excellent starting point. And I think 95, 96 percent of the bill is in perfect shape and ready to go," Rubio said. "But there are elements that need to be improved." Rubio conceded some Republican criticisms about the bill's border security issues are valid and that there are "reasonable ways" to fix those problems. But Rubio wouldn't say whether he would vote for the bill if those fixes don't happen. "I don't really want to get involved in these hypotheticals and ultimatums about what I want," he said. Rubio wouldn't accept a reality where those border security changes don't make it into the bill. "The bottom line is a bill that does not have increased border security, which everyone now I think has conceded needs to happen -- I think the debate now is about what that border security provision looks like," he said. "And if we do that, this bill will have strong bipartisan support." Rubio went on to imply the bill would die if there are no border security changes made to the immigration bill. "If we fail, we're going to keep trying, because at the end of the day, the only way we're going to pass an immigration reform law out of the House and Senate so the president can sign it is, that it has real border security measures within it."

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Sometimes parents don't see eye-to-eye. That's the case with Jeb Bush's presidential aspirations, he disclosed during an interview on ABC's This Week. It seems papa Bush thinks former Florida governor Jeb Bush should run while mama Bush thinks Jeb should spend 2016 on the sidelines. "I think we’ve got a split ballot amongst the Bush senior family. Pretty sure that’s the case," Bush said Sunday morning. Earlier this year, Barbara Bush said there have been "enough Bushes" in the White House. (See: the two Georges.) So this would seem to indicate daddy wants Jeb to follow in his footsteps. But Jeb wasn't ready to say whether or not he's made up his mind about running just yet. Instead, Jeb talked about his dad because, well, it's Father's Day. That's what you do. "He’s a humble guy," he said, before expressing his admiration for his father's ability to transfer to civilian life after leaving the White House. "I think my dad’s post-presidency, he didn’t miss a beat," Jeb said. "He didn’t get into any kind of ‘woe is me.’ He dusted himself off and led an incredible life since 1993."

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Rep. Mike Rogers thinks Americans will come around on the NSA's surveillance program when they get a better understanding of how it works and learn about the "dozens" of terrorist attacks the program stopped. "As people get a better feeling that this is a lockbox with only phone numbers, no names, no addresses in it, we’ve used it sparingly, it is absolutely overseen by the legislature, the judicial branch and the executive branch, has lots of protections built in, if you can see just the number of cases where we’ve actually stopped the plot, I think Americans will come to a different conclusion than all the misleading rhetoric I’ve heard over the last few weeks," Rogers told Candy Crowley on CNN's State of the Union. The House Intelligence Committee chairman said he's working to declassify information on those attacks and that he may have new information as early as this week. "The reason they’re being careful is we want each of the instance that will be provided, hopefully early this next week, to be accurate as we can and not disclose a source or a method of how disrupted the attack exactly. We don’t want to draw a roadmap for the folks who are trying to kill Americans at home," Rogers said.

White House chief of staff Denis McDonough promised the President will expand his defense of the NSA surveillance program within the next few days during an appearance on CBS's Face the Nation. In the meantime, McDonough said the Presdient "does not" believe the NSA's gathering of phone meta-data violates people's privacy. "The president is not saying 'trust me,' the president is saying 'I want every member of Congress, on whose authority we are running this program, to be briefed on it,' to come to the administration with questions and to also be accountable for it," McDonough said. The chief of staff also said he has "no idea" where Snowden is and that the NSA whistleblower "surely" overstated the access NSA analysts have. 

Sen. Lindsey Graham thinks the immigration reform bill must pass if the Republicans want to contend in 2016. "If we don’t pass immigration reform, if we don’t get it off the table in a reasonable practical way, it doesn’t matter who you run in 2016," Graham said on NBC's Meet the Press. "We’re in a demographic death spiral as a party, and the only way we can get back in good graces with the Hispanic community, in my view, is pass comprehensive immigration reform." But Graham isn't worried because he's extremely optimistic the bill will pass. "I think we’re going to have a political breakthrough that Congress is going to pass immigration reform. I think we’re going to get plus-70 votes, I’ve never been more optimistic about it,” the South Carolina Republican said. 

Sen. Robert Menendez said Republicans need immigration reform to pass if they hope to ever get elected again on CNN's State of the Union. Menendez, one of the Gang of Eight responsible for drafting the bill, said Republicans may need to give up efforts to bolster the bill's border security measures if the bill is to pass. "What I cannot support, and what I believe the community cannot support at the end of the day is that we’re going to have triggers that can never be achieved in terms of border security as an impediment to the pathway to legalization and citizenship," Menendez said. The Democrat said demographic shifts in the last election and polls showing broad public support for reform should show Republicans they really have no choice in the matter. "I would tell my Republican colleagues, both in the House and the Senate, that the road to the White House comes through a road with a pathway to legalization. Without it, there will never be a road to the White House for the Republican Party," Menendez said. The Senator was also very confidant the bill will make it through both the Senate and the House fairly easily. "When we hit 60 votes, which we will, I have no doubt that other people will want to be on the right side of history, and that will send a very strong message to the House," he said.