“The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN)
is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”
Donald Trump, February 17, 2017
A discussion of the most interesting, useful and entertaining recent articles and observations on Trump, the Republicans, and politics generally from the enemies of the American People:
Republican voters remain a national embarrassment and problem. A new CBS News poll provides the grim numbers: 84% of Republicans approve of Trump’s performance. 64% of Republicans believe there was no Russian interference in the last election at all, but 74% of Republicans believe that the U.S. government wire tapped Trump during the same election. 59% of Republicans believe there is no need for the FBI to investigate any connections between Russia and Trump’s associates.
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Not enough is made of Trump’s rank incompetence. We hear a lot (deservedly) about Trump’s lying and erratic behavior, but I believe there has been an unforgivable omission in calling out, reporting and lampooning Trump’s rank ignorance and incompetence. We have another Sarah Palin — in office — but it seems that America’s religion of worshipping wealth has prevented a general acknowledgment that Trump is embarrassingly uninformed and incompetent. (One notable exception to this is Alec Baldwin’s SNL portrayal of Trump.) Much earlier than now, people were appropriately embarrassed to support Sarah Palin (or Dan Quayle, or (less so) George W.), but Trump is not generally mocked in a similar, deserved way.
But the problem here is serious. Consider this reporting by Roger Cohen (via Kevin Drum) about Trump’s meeting with Angela Merkel:
Roger Cohen writes about the Trump-Merkel meeting a couple of weeks ago:
When Donald Trump met Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany earlier this month, he put on one of his most truculent and ignorant performances. He wanted money—piles of it—for Germany's defense, raged about the financial killing China was making from last year's Paris climate accord and kept "frequently and brutally changing the subject when not interested, which was the case with the European Union."
…Trump's preparedness was roughly that of a fourth grader…Trump knew nothing of the proposed European-American deal known as the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, little about Russian aggression in Ukraine or the Minsk agreements, and was so scatterbrained that German officials concluded that the president's daughter Ivanka, who had no formal reason to be there, was the more prepared and helpful.
Merkel is not one to fuss. But Trump's behavior appalled her entourage and reinforced a conclusion already reached about this presidency in several European capitals: It is possible to do business with Trump's national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, with Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, and with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, but these officials are flying blind because above them at the White House rages a whirlwind of incompetence and ignorance.
Wow. That description should be front page, character defining news. And other evidence of Trump’s ignorance and incompetence abounds from his failed healthcare bill to his botched immigration orders to absurd cabinet nominations to his teenage Twitter wars to his basic inability to grasp policies and governing structures.
Remember: Trump is a Kardashian, not some great “deal maker.” We would all be better off if we finally killed
the ridiculous notion that Trump is, or ever was, some sort of talented “deal maker.” He is a B-list celebrity oddball who made his money through inheritance, licensing deals, reality TV shows, and sketchy-to-illegal scams. The national press would not treat a Pres. Sarah Palin, or Pres. Kim Kardashian, seriously or deferentially - and rightly so. There is no excuse to treat Trump differently simply because he is a man and he escaped losing his inherited wealth (through probable crime, fraud and tax evasion). It is time to acknowledge what other world leaders already know — and to use Trump’s manifest incompetence as the deadly effective electoral weapon that it should be.
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Must we rely on the hirsute only? I had a college history professor — as bald as they come — who desperately wanted to be elected to high office but would rant that since JFK the U.S. no longer will elect a bald man. Look at the recent presidents: Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, George W., Obama — and some of the ticket runner-ups: Dukakis, Kemp, Kerry, Gore, Romney, Ryan. A good number of them are practically Chia Pets. Now Donald Trump, with his fantastical, meta-hairdo, has only confirmed this theory. It is sobering though. If Trump had not discovered Propecia, and other dark arts, and looked more like the photo on the right, his entire crazy candidacy would have been dead in the water and the planet would be safer today. That’s all it would have taken. And I know someone else who finds this bald bigotry unacceptable:
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The State Department continues to fall apart. And, apparently intentionally so. Read the latest, disturbing WashPo article: “Most of his [SOS Tillerson] interactions are with an insular circle of political aides who are new to the State Department. Many career diplomats say they still have not met him, and some have been instructed not to speak to him directly -- or even make eye contact.” WTF?
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Filibuster reform seems obvious. As George Will points out, go back to requiring actual filibusters for legislation where an overriding policy and physical commitment to the issue is required:
In 1975, imposing cloture was made easier by requiring a vote of three-fifths of the entire Senate, a change the importance of which derived from what Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.) did in 1970: He created the “two-track” system whereby the Senate, by unanimous consent or the consent of the minority leader, can set aside a filibustered bill and move on to other matters. Hitherto, filibustering senators had to hold the floor, testing their stamina and inconveniencing everyone else to encourage the majority to compromise. In the 52 years after 1917, there were only 58 cloture motions filed; in the 47 years since 1970, there have been 1,716.
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Quotables.
- The word ”oversight” has contradictory definitions: “He’s already rich. He’s very rich. I don’t think that [Trump] ran for this office to line his pockets even more. I just don’t see it like that.” — House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) (explaining his failure to investigate Trump corruption charges)
- Pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to admit this: “Sometimes you’re playing Fantasy Football and sometimes you’re in the real game. We knew the president [Obama], if we could get a repeal bill to his desk, would almost certainly veto it. This time we knew if it got to the president’s desk, it would be signed.” — Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX)
- Dems win the Gold: "In comparison to Republican efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare in 2017, the year leading up to the passage of the Affordable Care Act seems like the gold standard of thoughtful and considered governance." — Republican healthcare expert Avik Roy
- What you see is what you get: “Of all the national politicians I’ve met over the decades, Trump may be the one least interested in government or policy; he’s absorbed simply with himself. And what we’re seeing more clearly now is that he has crafted an administration in his own image: vain, narcissistic and dangerous.” — Nicholas Kristof
- Ignorance is . . . a problem: “President Trump seems to have no awareness whatsoever of what he does and does not know. He is ignorant of his own ignorance.” — Steven Nadler (Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison)
- Trump is a Beta? “If the Trump administration has a grand strategy, it can be boiled down to “the alpha males are back.” Alpha males don’t believe in any preexisting policy consensus, they believe in denigrating out-of-touch elites! And action!! Label the threat as “radical Islamic terrorism” and the problem is already almost solved! Macho statements of resolve are supposed to intimidate America’s adversaries into submission.
Sometimes tough talk works. But it works a whole lot better when the speaker can follow through on their tough talk. And so far, on Iran, North Korea, and China, this administration has done the opposite of that.” — Daniel Drezner
- The Decider: “That was some weird shit.” — fmr. Pres. George W. Bush (leaving the dais after Trump’s inauguration)
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White House or Kremlin? The Washington Post further reports on another corrosive tactic introduced by Trump — a “shadow government of political appointees“ who are “embedded” in every Cabinet agency to spy upon and enforce loyalty to the WH:
This shadow government of political appointees with the title of senior White House adviser is embedded at every Cabinet agency, with offices in or just outside the secretary’s suite. The White House has installed at least 16 of the advisers at departments including Energy and Health and Human Services and at some smaller agencies such as NASA, according to records first obtained by ProPublica through a Freedom of Information Act request.
These aides report not to the secretary, but to the Office of Cabinet Affairs, which is overseen by Rick Dearborn, a White House deputy chief of staff, according to administration officials. A top Dearborn aide, John Mashburn, leads a weekly conference call with the advisers, who are in constant contact with the White House.
. . . . The arrangement is unusual. It wasn’t used by presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush or Bill Clinton. And it’s also different from the traditional liaisons who shepherd the White House’s political appointees to the various agencies. Critics say the competing chains of command eventually will breed mistrust, chaos and inefficiency — especially as new department heads build their staffs.
In the opposite direction, the NYT reports grave concerns that the Trump administration is failing to fill the scores of science and technology positions left vacant after the change in administrations:
On the fourth floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the staff of the White House chief technology officer has been virtually deleted, down from 24 members before the election to, by Friday, only one.
Scores of departures by scientists and Silicon Valley technology experts who advised Mr. Trump’s predecessor have all but wiped out the larger White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
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The Trump-Russia inquiry keeps growing in seriousness and intrigue. Sarah Posner reports that the very first day of the Senate’s investigation into Russian efforts to tamper with the last election contained two blockbuster moments. First, “[i]n a remarkable moment, one key witness, Clinton Watts, a senior fellow at the George Washington Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, bluntly informed Sen. Marco Rubio, who serves on the Intelligence Committee, that as one of Trump’s presidential primary opponents, Rubio ‘suffered from’ Russian disinformation efforts.” That is something. For all the Republicans’ dithering or obstruction on this issue, the Senate’s panel has a former presidential candidate and victim of Russian sabotage efforts.
Second, Mr. Watts cut to the point:
In a moment that stunned the hearing room, Watts flatly stated that the president himself has become a cog in such Russian measures. When asked by Oklahoma Republican James Lankford, who appeared visibly dismayed, why, if Russians have long used these methods, they finally worked in this election cycle, Watts’ answer was extraordinary.
“I think this answer is very simple and is one no one is really saying in this room,” he said. Part of the reason, he went on, “is the commander in chief has used Russian active measures at times against his opponents.”
To buttress the claim that Trump (unwittingly or not) aided Russian disinformation efforts, Watts cited several instances. Among them: Trump’s citation of an apparently false Sputnik story at an October 2016 campaign appearance; his ongoing denial before and after the campaign of U.S. intelligence of Russian interference in the election; his claims of voter fraud and election rigging, which Watts said was pushed by RT and Sputnik; and Trump’s questioning of the citizenship of former President Barack Obama and even his primary rival Ted Cruz.
Watts added that one of the reasons such tactics are working is that Trump and/or his surrogates have repeated some of the claims, further spreading them through social media accounts that are owned both by real people and bots. Thus, the disinformation is kept alive and gradually becomes more real and plausible. “Part of the reason active measures work is because they parrot the same lines,” Watts said.
Republicans on the committee today seemed to be grappling with the enormity of what this could mean — and, crucially, that this threat should not be seen through a partisan prism.
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Gorsuch filibuster and correcting the historical record. As it appears very likely that Democrats will filibuster the Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch, and that Republicans will “nuke” the filibuster for such appointments in return, it remains important to correct the historical record on the underlying argument that triggered all of this — in ignoring the Garland nomination outright, Republicans argued that no Supreme Court nominee has been appointed during a presidential election year.
Like most Republican arguments, this has no truth whatsoever. Indeed, it is glaringly dishonest. Here are the facts (largely courtesy of the NYT and the WashPo):
- One-third of all U.S. Presidents(!) have appointed a Supreme Court justice during a presidential election year. (Sum: 14 presidents have appointed 21 justices during presidential election years.)
- A half-dozen lame duck presidents filled Supreme Court seats even though their successors already had been elected.
- The Supreme Court vacancy itself has occurred 13 times during a presidential election year, and the Senate took action on the sitting president’s nomination 11 out of 13 times.
- Justice Kennedy was confirmed in Reagan’s last year in office, by a Democratic Senate and while that Senate was considering whether to impeach Reagan over the Iran-Contra scandal.
- The relevant historical precedent may be that the Republican party has no institutional experience in actually confirming Democratic nominations. The last time a Republican Senate confirmed a Democratic President’s nominee was in 1895(!) (Yes, 122 years ago.)
This dispute was never complicated. The current Supreme Court appointment dysfunction is a product solely of current Republican bad faith. Democrats and the press, in that order, have to step up their game and rebut these sort of easily disprovable Republican lies. (See also “Worried Democratic Senators Completely Misunderstand the Supreme Court Filibuster Issue.”)
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Make Trump the face of the Anti-Global Warming movement. I wrote that draft headline last Monday. It seemed like an obvious case of turning “lemons-into-lemonade.” Looks like someone much more important than me had the same idea:
Yet, The New Republic (via Steve Bennen) warns:
The New Republic published a deeply discouraging piece on the Republicans on the House Science Committee holding “a three-hour hearing on the merits of climate change science” yesterday, and the hearing featured “a cavalcade of falsehoods so relentless and seemingly rational that one might well need psychiatric counseling after having watched it.”
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Drift . . . The NYT has this troubling piece: “U.S. War Footprint Grows in Middle East, With No Endgame in Sight”:
The United States launched more airstrikes in Yemen this month than during all of last year. In Syria, it has airlifted local forces to front-line positions and has been accused of killing civilians in airstrikes. In Iraq, American troops and aircraft are central in supporting an urban offensive in Mosul, where airstrikes killed scores of people on March 17.
Two months after the inauguration of President Trump, indications are mounting that the United States military is deepening its involvement in a string of complex wars in the Middle East that lack clear endgames.
With respect to Yemen, Micah Zenko reflects:
On a personal note, in the nearly 20 years of having had the privilege of working and interacting with U.S. national security officials and staffers, I have never followed an issue that virtually nobody can justify or defend. Military officers who have watched or played a role in the Saudi-led bombing campaign are especially sickened by the brutality and strategic pointlessness of the airstrikes.
Daniel Larison also argues that it is too late — and counterproductive — to now seek Congressional approval of these military adventures; the problem is much larger:
No president has the authority to do what the Obama administration did and the Trump administration is now doing in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, and that is the real constitutional problem here. The danger isn’t the absence of Congress’ ritual approval of a foreign war long after it began, but the president’s essentially unchecked ability to initiate wars whenever and wherever he wants. Endorsing the war over thirty months after its start isn’t going to keep this or any future president from starting new illegal wars, and it will simply give legal cover to the current open-ended, unnecessary war that the U.S. is fighting in at least three countries.
Nothing reflects the disturbing rot of American politics during my lifetime more than this current slide into perpetual, unremarked upon, war in multiple theaters. I remember when major wars roughly organized the study of U.S. history, and served to define entire generations (Grandpa was in WWII, Uncle Ray fought in Korea, Dad served in Vietnam, etc.) Hell, I remember when it was headline-consuming news when Reagan invaded the tiny island of Grenada. Today, we can be at war in multiple foreign fronts, and not have the topic meaningfully come up in presidential elections.
Much of this stems from our elimination of a military draft, and subsequent privatization of war. Whatever the explanation, it has been a criminally irresponsible path to . . . Commander-in-Chief Donald J. Trump.
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Paul Ryan is also an empty-suit, fraud. As with Trump, we must also absorb what Paul Krugman - repeatedly - explains:
Enter Mr. Ryan, who isn’t actually a serious, honest policy expert, but plays one on TV. He rolls up his sleeves! He uses PowerPoint! He must be the real deal! So that became the media’s narrative. And media adulation, more than anything else, propelled him to his current position.
. . . . There’s an important lesson here, and it’s not just about health care or Mr. Ryan; it’s about the destructive effects of false symmetry in reporting at a time of vast asymmetry in reality.
This false symmetry — downplaying the awfulness of some candidates, vastly exaggerating the flaws of their opponents — isn’t the only reason America is in the mess it’s in. But it’s an important part of the story. And now we’re all about to pay the price.
Krugman is spot on that our present crisis is figuring out how these obvious crooks and charlatans have amassed such power, and the first step begins with recognizing the malpractice and complicity of the press in not just allowing it, but many times cheerleading for it.
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Right Wing Corner. Going forward, I’d like to add some discussion of stuff that the “other side” is reading and believing. As an opening entry, I give you the very famous, pro-Trump, long piece, which we now know was anonymously authored by current WH staffer Michael Anton and is titled “The Flight 93 Election.” As a start, you either get the problem with these opening paras or . . . I can’t help you:
2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees.
Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.
Umm, Lighten up Francis. I’ve read that this essay was galvanizing to Republicans. To me, it was mostly empty and meandering. But I did notice — as it built to its conclusion — a certain recurrent “theme”:
[T]he ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle . . . .
This is insane. This is the mark of a party, a society, a country, a people, a civilization that wants to die. Trump, alone among candidates for high office in this or in the last seven (at least) cycles, has stood up to say: I want to live. I want my party to live. I want my country to live. I want my people to live. I want to end the insanity.
I rarely find any Republican policies, political talk, campaigns, etc. that do not boil down in the end to that last paragraph above . . to racism, to White paranoia, to ignorance . . . to FEAR most of all. I know the demographics are on our side, but I equally worry about the generational thing. Who knows how much White people today can hand down their trademark hate and paranoia to the next generations? (History would suggest: “a lot”) Will my grandkids also be dreaming about “storming a cockpit” in a suicide mission to save White civilization? If so, we are all deeply fucked.
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Right Wing Corner II. David Frum argues that Republicans need to accept that Democrats won the argument for some form of universal health insurance, and instead should move on to consider the remaining questions from a conservative perspective:
How generous should health coverage be? What should be done to control costs? Who should pay, and on what terms? To what extent should citizens be free to impose the cost of their unhealthy choices upon others? Conservative-minded people will converge on one set of intuitions; progressives on another. It’s possible to imagine a Republican health-care politics that rejects the ultra-redistributionary approach of the ACA and instead argues that since all benefit from health coverage, all must contribute to its costs via some kind of broad-based tax. It’s possible to imagine a Republican health-care politics that emphasizes cost control over benefit provision. It’s possible to imagine a Republican health-care politics that incentivizes providers and insurers to achieve better outcomes at lower prices. It’s possible to imagine a Republican health-care politics that resists socializing the burden of addiction, obesity, and other unhealthy behaviors. It’s possible to imagine a Republican Party that cares about the details of health policy and is not satisfied with poorly informed hand waves toward outworn party shibboleths. It won’t happen soon, perhaps—but the sooner the better.
I suppose we need Republicans like Frum, who doesn’t appear to be bat-shit crazy. But, reading the above, no matter how well intentioned, what I hear in the end is an invitation for Republicans to treat healthcare insurance with all the juvenility and meanness associated with any “welfare spending.” Just take a look at how hog-wild Republicans have gone with ludicrous posturing on food stamps, or urine-testing for unemployment benefits. Although there is a veneer of policy wonk in Frum’s comments above, the outcome is endless wedge issues about “unhealthy choices,” “obesity and other unhealthy behaviors,” “redistribution,” “providers,” “takers,” “socialism,” etc. I can’t wait until we simply see Medicare-for-all.
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What are Republicans up to with health insurance? There is a lot of talk that House Republicans still haven’t given up on repealing Obamacare. I don't think that is true legislatively. I think Republicans are done in that venue, and are instead retreating back to their fantasy world of talking about repealing Obamacare, and talking about a replacement at some later date. They don't want to give that up, nor give up the associated fundraising appeal. And its the easiest talking point to save face when confronted with their last embarrassing failure. But I do believe that Republicans will move to sabotaging and deeply damaging Obamacare through existing lawsuits, de-funding, regulations, executive orders and/or random smaller legislation. Republicans can do some very serious damage through these routes, and HHS Secretary Tom Price essentially admitted under oath that this is the plan. The interesting counterbalance may come from Red States increasingly moving to accept the Medicaid expansion. Short answer: this fight is far from over (but it is going our way so far).
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Chait suitably skewers Krauthammer. Charles Krauthammer picked up the latest Republican talking-point that the ACA should be repealed because it mandates maternity coverage, juvenilely snarking: “I don’t know about you, but I don’t need lactation services.” Providing the desperately needed correction, Jonathan Chait exposes Krauthammer’s rank hypocrisy and B.S.:
Krauthammer himself has been a paraplegic since the age of 22. That’s an expensive medical condition. Probably he has group insurance through the Washington Post or another institution with which he’s affiliated, allowing him to spread the cost of his expensive medical care onto a risk pool that includes healthier, cheaper-to-cover people. Or perhaps he has a different arrangement. I do not for one moment resent that my insurance helps cover either childbirth or mechanized wheelchairs, even though I personally need neither service, and nothing Krauthammer says would make me reconsider.
It is callous enough that Republicans apply their every-man-for-himself logic to health care, and land on the belief that those fortunate enough to be blessed with good health should not be burdened with the cost of paying for the medical needs of others. But when the advocate of this argument himself has expensive medical needs, the callousness rises to a level of solipsistic barbarism. A paraplegic man resents having to pay for women who need help breastfeeding their babies. Why should those women have to buy insurance that covers wheelchairs?
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More on the startling lead-crime theory. Dispatches originally covered this story here. Kevin Drum is back with another invaluable piece in “Lead Update: White Folks and Alabama Prisoners”:
If you have a good memory, you may also recall a post I wrote four years ago explaining that lead poisoning affected blacks and Hispanics more than whites because they were more likely to grow up in dense urban environments with a lot of auto exhaust. Because of this, during the great crime wave of the 60s and 70s, their crime rates went up faster than white crime rates. The flip side of this is that with lead mostly gone, their crime rates are dropping faster than they are for whites. We can see this in the declining share of the jail population made up by blacks and Hispanics. Keith Humphreys shows us the mirror image of this, the rising share of the jail population made up by whites.
I highly recommend that folks follow this story. I have never seen an emerging sociological/public health theory with such large ramifications be proven over so many varied scenarios, in so many different countries. It is also a crucial reminder of what we are toying with by having the Trump administration gut scientific agencies like the EPA.
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The war on immigrants begins. This week Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced plans to cut off certain federal funding to so-called “sanctuary cities,” arguing that they make our nation “less safe” by failing to adequately enforce immigration laws. Back in the reality-based world:
Tom K. Wong, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego, came to the exact opposite conclusion in a study published by the Center for American Progress in January:
Crime is statistically significantly lower in sanctuary counties compared to nonsanctuary counties. Moreover, economies are stronger in sanctuary counties—from higher median household income, less poverty, and less reliance on public assistance to higher labor force participation, higher employment-to-population ratios, and lower unemployment.
Moreover, Wong points out, “local law enforcement officials have argued against assisting federal immigration enforcement agencies such as ICE. Assisting in federal immigration enforcement efforts can drive a wedge between local law enforcement officials and the communities they serve, which undermines public safety.”
David Leopold (Boston Globe) also argues that “Jeff Sessions is wrong on immigration law, and he knows it”:
[Sessions] cited a legally flawed 2016 memorandum from the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General that speculated that several cities and counties across the United States may be in violation of a Section 1373 — a very narrow provision of the immigration law that prohibits state and local governments from limiting communication with ICE about “the immigration or citizenship status” of individuals. Sessions conveniently failed to mention that the sketchy memo did not find any state or local jurisdiction had actually violated the law. Nor did it recommend that public safety funds be withheld. In fact, there is nothing in the federal immigration law that requires state and local law enforcement to collaborate with immigration agents in rounding up noncitizens for deportation. To the contrary, the 10th Amendment of the Constitution prohibits the federal government from coercing states into becoming immigration enforcement agents.
But Jamelle Bouie warns that Trump is winning his war on immigrants:
[I]n one now-infamous example, ICE agents waited outside of a church to arrest undocumented immigrants coming from a shelter in Alexandria, Virginia.
In another, a 22-year-old undocumented immigrant previously eligible for a deportation reprieve under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was arrested and scheduled for deportation after speaking to media. Irvin González was arrested and faces deportation after ICE agents in El Paso, Texas, staked out the courthouse where she was seeking a protective order against an allegedly abusive boyfriend. Immigration rights advocates have attested to incidents where agents are targeting people on their way to work or detaining parents leaving schools. Cities like Austin, Texas, and Savannah, Georgia, have seen a surge of ICE activity with indiscriminate enforcement that has pushed undocumented families back into the shadows.
While opponents of Trump have their hands full on multiple fronts, we cannot forget that rank xenophobia was Trump’s core electoral appeal and — particularly as his domestic agenda and polling numbers fail — millions of undocumented, non-White immigrants can expect a horrific and increasing reign of terror.
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And finally: The Trump — Russia controversy explained. Courtesy of ThinkProgress:
See you next Saturday. For those who missed it, last Saturday’s Dispatches can be found here.
[NOTE: Going forward, if anyone has written or read a particularly good Kos diary that you feel “slid off” the front page too quickly to gain appropriate notice, please Kos-mail a link to me for possible inclusion in a subsequent Dispatches.]