Have you been stressed and distressed about the family separations? Good. That means you are a kind, decent human being who is refusing the pull to fascism. Congratulations.
And you are one of millions and millions out there fighting for the right thing.
Although there is no good news in the heartless and awful separation of families, there is amazing news in America’s response to it.
It is easy to look at who is running this country and think of us as the minority. After all, the Republicans are in charge of the WH and both houses of congress.
But don’t forget for one minute that we are the majority.
More of them voted for her than for him.
More Americans hate Trump than like him (even on his best polling days).
We have made a difference before (the Muslim ban, the ACA repeal) and we are making one now with the families at the border.
We are all a part of an amazing force. We are a part of millions and millions of people fighting against hatred, inhumanity, and the steady creep of authoritarianism.
This isn’t a fun battle to be in, but it is an important one. It is one of which we can be proud.
They are pushing this hateful message about immigrants because hatred is their only game. They have no real ideas of platform to run on.
And yes, it is awful to see hatred and fear of immigrants parroted on FoxNews, but you know what? ***It isn’t working*** A historic number of Americans see immigration as positive. More than ever before. One couple has raised over 18,000,000 dollars for the separated families. And that is just one fundraiser of many. There are over 300 separate marches scheduled for next Saturday. And that is just one day of protests.
WE ARE THE MAJORITY.
With a lot of hard work, we will take our country back from Trump and his cronies.
AND despite the tough week, there is a LOT of good news. So grab a beverage, settle in, and recharge your batteries!
Russia Russia Russia
A controversial peace plan for Ukraine and Russia that has drawn headlines and scrutiny from Special Counsel Robert Mueller was initially devised in early 2016
This ‘peace plan’ was so blatantly pro-Putin that when news of it surfaced, the Ukrainian government began investigating Artemenko for treason. This is the same plan that was hand delivered to Trump NSA, Michael Flynn in February of 2017.
There is now evidence that Trump and the Russians were working on their quid pro quos long before the actual election.
No collusion — riiiiiiiiight.
remember how freaked out trump was when Cohen’s office was raided? And all the articles about how this could be the end of trump? Well, it is looking more and more like Michael Cohen is going to bring a world of hurt to Trump:
Trump's personal attorney is 'willing to give info' about the President
Donald Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen has signaled to friends that he is "willing to give" investigators information on the President if that's what they are looking for, and is planning on hiring a new lawyer to handle a possible indictment from federal prosecutors.
"He knows a lot of things about the President and he's not averse to talking in the right situation," one of Cohen's New York friends who is in touch with him told CNN. "If they want information on Trump, he's willing to give it."
Cohen is planning to hire Guy Petrillo, a former chief of the criminal division of the US attorney's office in Manhattan and an experienced trial lawyer, a source familiar confirmed. The source said all the paperwork and retainer may not have been finalized just yet.
When the raid happened, The Post reported that the president “stewed all afternoon about the warrant to seize Cohen’s records, at times raising his voice.”
Nevertheless, if there’s any legally damaging information to be revealed about Trump’s business dealings, Cohen likely knows as much about it as anyone whose last name isn’t Trump. He could well provide prosecutors with evidence they could use to go after the Trump Organization.
Judge to Michael Cohen: Only Eight Communications Are Protected by Attorney-Client Privilege
Manhattan Federal Court Judge Kimba Wood issued an order on Friday determining that only eight items of communication, out of some 292,226 seized by the FBI from Michael Cohen’s office and home, were protected by attorney-client privilege. Last week, Barbara Jones, a retired federal judge who was appointed as the special master to oversee the documents, determined that only 162 items were privileged. Only eight of those, according to Wood, involved direct consultation between Cohen and one of his clients. Cohen, a longtime attorney and friend of President Trump’s, is being investigated for possible wire fraud, bank fraud and potential violations of campaign finance law.
And things are also looking pretty bad for Manafort:
A federal judge on Thursday declined a request by President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort to suppress evidence seized from a storage unit by investigators for Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
A federal judge has rejected former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's attempt to toss out a money laundering charge stemming from his use of offshore bank accounts funded by a lobbying campaign he masterminded on behalf of political interests in Ukraine.
flip flip flip!
And the public is (mostly) onto trump and his lies:
There is a truly remarkable number in the most recent CNN poll, conducted by SSRS and out this morning.
In it, 42% of Americans say President Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office.
What makes it remarkable is that he's on par with President Richard Nixon, who 43% of Americans said should be impeached and removed from office in a March 1974 Harris poll. That was after the scale of Watergate came to light, but months before the House started to move against Nixon, who would go on to resign in August 1974 rather than be impeached.
The 43% supporting Nixon's impeachment in that Harris poll, by the way, is much higher than the 29% who supported impeachment for President Bill Clinton in 1998. Or, for that matter, the similar number who wanted Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush impeached. As CNN's Grace Sparks writes, there's basically "a baseline of pro-impeachment sentiment for a modern president" and Trump far eclipses it.
Poll: Large majority thinks Trump self-pardon would be unacceptable
A large majority of Americans say that presidents should not have the power to pardon themselves, and the results cross political affiliations.
According to a new Associated Press-NORC poll, 85 percent of Americans say that it would be unacceptable for presidents to issue themselves a pardon, and 76 percent said that Congress should impeach any president who did.
So keep in mind that, although all this is taking FOREVER to come out, there are a LOT of paths in this to take down trump and it is getting more and more likely that one will be successful.
In the meantime, our eyes need to continue to be on the November elections, were there is more good news:
Great Election News
George freakin’ Will Says → Vote against the GOP this November
The principle: The congressional Republican caucuses must be substantially reduced. So substantially that their remnants, reduced to minorities, will be stripped of the Constitution’s Article I powers that they have been too invertebrate to use against the current wielder of Article II powers. They will then have leisure time to wonder why they worked so hard to achieve membership in a legislature whose unexercised muscles have atrophied because of people like them.
Ryan and many other Republicans have become the president’s poodles, not because James Madison’s system has failed but because today’s abject careerists have failed to be worthy of it. As explained in Federalist 51: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.” Congressional Republicans (congressional Democrats are equally supine toward Democratic presidents) have no higher ambition than to placate this president. By leaving dormant the powers inherent in their institution, they vitiate the Constitution’s vital principle: the separation of powers.
In today’s GOP, which is the president’s plaything, he is the mainstream. So, to vote against his party’s cowering congressional caucuses is to affirm the nation’s honor while quarantining him.
Trump is the GOP's midterm Katrina
Hurricane Katrina involved a mismanaged disaster in 2005 that saturated American television and paved the way for the Democratic landslide victory in the 2006 midterm elections. That election led to Democratic control of the House, the Senate and a majority of governorships.
There is now a significant prospect of a similar change of power in the 2018 midterm elections. The difference between 2006 and 2018 is that this year, it is the presidency of Donald Trump itself that creates the ongoing Katrina events that pose huge danger to the GOP.
The Katrina-like pattern of events today create a plethora of mismanaged scandals, crises and events that build a gathering storm of widespread public opposition and an intense passion to vote among the majority of voters who disapprove of Trump and the Republican Congress.
Trump changed the electoral map; new polling shows it’s changing back
The Midwest doesn’t like Trump anymore
Donald Trump changed the electoral map in 2016, but state-by-state polling from Morning Consult suggests that it’s changing back rather quickly.
Trump is underwater not just in the three critical swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin but also in Iowa and Ohio — two states Obama won that weren’t even remotely close in 2016.
Why the GOP’s Politics of Fear Will Fail
Corey Lewandowski and Stephen Miller promise a fall full of immigrant-bashing and fear-mongering. Here’s why it won’t work.
It’s an audacious, and bad, strategy. As Lewandowski summarized it for The New York Times, “people don’t turn out to say thank you… if you want to get people motivated, you’ve got to give them a reason to vote.” He’s right about that. It’s just that the reasons he wants to give voters are the wrong ones.
That’s the ultimate explanation that proves the administration is losing here, and that while Lewandowski is right about needing to give people a reason to vote for Republicans in 2018, immigration enforcement that leads to photo spreads that look like the 21st-century version of Japanese-American internment camps probably isn’t it.
For starters, stoking fear as opposed to making promises on, say, kitchen table issues isn’t exactly a surefire bet for winning votes. It worked for Republicans when the thing to be feared was al Qaeda and the legitimately evil villain in question was Osama bin Laden. But abhorrent and evil as it is, MS-13 is not the bin Laden gang, and neither are Guatemalan fruit-pickers, housecleaners, or McDonald’s workers.
It’s 2018, and recent election results—most prominently Virginia’s 2017 gubernatorial election, which should have been winnable for the MS-13 fear-stoking Republican—indicate that ginning up fear over unlawful immigration isn’t a workable strategy, by and large. And that’s setting aside that going after MS-13 is a heck of a lot more popular than, say, splitting toddlers away from their mothers.
Percentage of Americans saying immigration is positive reaches record high
A record percentage of Americans in a new survey says immigration is positive for the country.
According to the Gallup poll, published Thursday, 75 percent said immigration is good for the nation, while 19 percent said it is bad.
Gallup noted that the percentage of Americans who said immigration is positive rose 4 points from 2017.
Majority against border wall, favors pathway to citizenship for Dreamers: poll
The majority of Americans in a new poll say they do not support constructing additional barriers on the U.S. southern border.
According to a Gallup poll released Wednesday, 57 percent of respondents said they either oppose or strongly oppose "significantly expanding the construction of walls along the U.S.-Mexico border," while 41 percent said they either favor or strongly favor that policy.
Respondents on both sides of the political aisle overwhelmingly support a pathway to citizenship for "Dreamers," with 83 percent of those surveyed saying they approve of allowing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipients to have an avenue to become citizens.
Trump is the target of historic voter backlash ahead of the 2018 midterms
New data shows Trump is a bigger election drag on his party than Obama ever was.
A higher share of voters say Trump will be a factor — either positive or negative — in their vote in 2018 than any previous president in any election dating back to 1982, according to new data from the Pew Research Center. Most of those, 34 percent, said their vote will be decidedly against President Trump.
Republicans have a millennial women problem
Nearly 70 percent of young women say they are leaning toward Democratic candidates in the midterms.
If Democrats retake control of Congress in November, it will be in part due to their strength with young women.
Democrat leads in deep-red W.Va. House district
Democratic state Sen. Richard Ojeda is leading the race for West Virginia's open 3rd Congressional District, a poll released Thursday shows, despite the fact that President Trump won the district by more than 50 points in 2016.
Democrats Are Amazing
It is tough for Dems to get their message out with the 24 hours trump show, but they continue to work hard for us:
Dem lawmaker shut down after playing recording from detention center on House floor
A Democratic lawmaker was shut down on the floor of the House on Friday after playing an audio recording of crying children who were separated from their families at the southern border.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) said the American people should hear the recording, which was obtained by ProPublica.
Top Democrat tells detained boys that we are fighting for them
Velázquez was among more than a dozen House Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi; Congresswoman Judy Chu, chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), to visit immigration detention facilities along the U.S./Mexico border near San Diego Monday, including a facility for migrant children in El Cajon.
“’I want you to know that you are not alone,’” she says she told a classroom of boys. “’I want you to know that we’re going to be out there fighting for you and protecting your rights.’ Every one of the kids were applauding. And that was the only moment where you saw them smiling and a sense of comfort that we didn’t see before.”
Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are calling on Trump to "immediately take all steps necessary" to reunite the migrant children who have already been separated from their parents.
Republicans can’t get along with one another (and thus often can’t get their awful agenda done)
Republican House member unloads on Paul Ryan in explosive floor exchange
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, a conservative Republican from North Carolina, erupted at House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin
over their agreement involving two major immigration bills, saying several times, "I'm done," while pointing in an animated fashion at the top House Republican and raising his voice as their colleagues watched.
The explosion drew widespread attention from inside the chamber and out -- and surfaced once again the long-simmering tension between House Republican leadership and the conservative bloc of lawmakers that has, at times, wreaked havoc on Ryan and his leadership team's best-laid plans on topics ranging from government spending and health care
to the farm bill and -- repeatedly -- immigration.
Senate rejects billions in Trump spending cuts as two Republicans vote ‘no’
The Senate on Wednesday rejected billions in spending cuts proposed by the Trump administration as two Republicans joined all Democrats in voting no.
The 48-50 vote rebuffed a White House plan to claw back some $15 billion in spending previously approved by Congress — a show of fiscal responsibility that was encouraged by conservative lawmakers outraged over a $1.3 trillion spending bill in March.
In 1 week, Trump has tied himself into an impossible immigration knot
President Donald Trump has taken almost every possible Republican position on immigration in the span of a week as he's tried to deal with the crisis he created of separating thousands of children from their parents at the border.
He's changed policies, made declarations, said his hands were tied, united them to sign an executive order that
may or may not accomplish anything, blamed Democrats, blamed his predecessors, demanded Congress act, tried to force Congress to act, refused to endorse a specific congressional bill, promised a sweeping immigration reform was possible and, most recently, said Congress should just give up for a while.
The tangle of statements coming from the President's mouth, his Twitter feed, and secondhand reports of what he told Republicans during a trip to Capitol Hill are more confusing than his wife's decision to wear an "I really don't care. Do U?" jacket on a surprise trip to see detained kids at the border.
For weeks, House Republican leaders have been working behind closed doors to thread the needle on an immigration bill that could secure the support of the bulk on their conference.
On Friday morning, President Donald Trump ended all that with a tweet.
"Republicans should stop wasting their time on Immigration until after we elect more Senators and Congressmen/women in November,"
Trump tweeted. "Dems are just playing games, have no intention of doing anything to solves this decades old problem. We can pass great legislation after the Red Wave!"
The Republican tax law is becoming less popular, not more
it’s been six months since President Donald Trump signed into law the Republican tax cuts. During that time, the measure appears to have become less popular — not more. The GOP’s big 2018 midterms sales pitch isn’t working out exactly how party leaders thought it would.
According to a Monmouth University poll released this week, just 34 percent of Americans said they approve of the Republican tax reform package, compared to 41 percent who disapprove. That’s down from April, when 40 percent of Americans said they approved of the law and 44 percent did not. In January, respondents were evenly split, with 44 percent saying they approved and another 44 percent voicing disapproval of the plan.
Public opinion on the tax law has “never been positive,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, in a statement accompanying the results, “but potentially growing uncertainty about how American taxpayers will be affected does not seem to be helping the GOP’s prospects in November.”
They really suck at being anything more than the party of “we hate obama and hillary!” Their incompetence is the best thing about them.
The Arc Bends Towards Justice
Elementary school named after Confederate general renames itself after Obama
A Richmond, Va., elementary school named after a Confederate general voted on Monday night to rename itself after former President Obama.
According to local CBS News affiliate WTVR, J.E.B. Stuart Elementary will now be named Barack Obama Elementary School.
Corey Lewandowski dropped by speakers bureau after 'womp womp' comment
Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski has been dropped by his speakers bureau after dismissing the story of a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome who was reportedly separated from her mother after crossing the border illegally, CNN has learned.
Republican Rep calls for Stephen Miller to be Fired
At least one major advertiser drops Fox News’ Ingraham over migrant comments
At least one major advertiser has dropped Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show in the wake of her comments on Monday about immigrant children separated from their parents. With advertising time on the conservative daily talk show down since Monday night, it’s possible that other companies have also bailed on “The Ingraham Angle.”
The media and internet company IAC will no longer be running ads for HomeAdvisor or Angie’s List on the show, an IAC spokesperson confirmed on Thursday. The day after Ingraham’s statements, David Hogg, a survivor of the high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, called on advertisers, including IAC, to boycott Ingraham, a reprise of the highly successful boycott campaign he launched against her in April, after she insulted him on Twitter.
Other Good News
Trump's trade wars could inadvertently benefit the environment
Environmentalists and steady-state economists (i.e., those who study the physical constraints on economic growth) might secretly want to cheer. Why? More global economic activity translates to more natural resource extraction and greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, and vice versa. If you want to lower GHG emissions, tanking the economy is one way to do so.
Mattis: Legislation needed to create 'space force'
Defense Secretary James Mattis on Wednesday said President’s Trump’s recent direction to establish a “space force” will require work with Congress that has not yet started.
“This as you know is going to require legislation and a lot of detailed planning and we’ve not yet begun,” Mattis told reporters outside the Pentagon prior to meeting with his German counterpart.
“We’ve clearly got to start the process,” Mattis added, noting that it is among the issues Pentagon leaders will bring up bring up on Friday morning when they meet with National Security Advisor John Bolton.
Prosecution of some migrant parents stops despite 'zero-tolerance' policy
Confusion reigned in the legal system Thursday as criminal cases against migrants with children did not proceed in two federal courts despite President Donald Trump's vow to continue prosecuting everyone arrested for illegal entry.
at the federal courthouse in El Paso, the proceedings showed that some parents were being treated differently than migrants who entered without children.
Before an afternoon hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Shane Wagmen told four defense attorneys, "We already dismissed all the ones with children."
"My understanding is the ones with children have been dismissed," Wagmen continued. "If someone in here has children, please let me know."
GOP lawmaker says Ginsburg, Kennedy may want to outlast Trump
Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), who’s running to be the next Judiciary Committee chairman, said Friday that some justices on the Supreme Court may be trying to stave off retirement until President Trump leaves office.
Chabot indicated he has no inside knowledge of the thinking of Justices Anthony Kennedy or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who are frequent subjects of speculation about retirements. But he said it's a subject of discussion.
“The speculation is that some of these people are holding on because they don’t necessarily want this particular president to appoint their successor,” Chabot said in an interview with Hill.TV's "Rising."
Supreme Court rules that warrant is needed to access cell tower records
The Supreme Court on Friday put new restraints on law enforcement’s access to the ever-increasing amount of private information about Americans available in the digital age.
In the specific case before the court, the justices ruled that authorities generally must obtain a warrant to gain access to cell-tower records that can provide a virtual timeline and map of a person’s whereabouts.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote the 5 to 4 decision, in which he was joined by the court’s liberal members.
The four times Trump signed tax returns for his foundation that contained incorrect information
It is a felony to knowingly file a false tax return, with potential penalties of up to $100,000 in fines and up to three years in prison. In rare cases — where prosecutors could prove the falsehood to be deliberate — people have been convicted of signing false tax returns.
If federal officials do not pursue a criminal case against Trump, legal experts said, the tax agency could face its own quandary. Why should other taxpayers be punished for violating the same rules that the president has now been accused of breaking?
“The IRS depends on citizens not lying on their tax returns,” said Marc S. Owens, the former head of the IRS’s nonprofits division. If the IRS does not take visible action on Trump’s false statements, he said, “it kind of calls into question, ‘If they don’t prosecute him, does everybody get a pass?’ ”
23andme donating DNA kits to help reunite migrant families
The CEO of the popular DNA-testing company 23andMe has agreed to provide DNA kits to help reunite the hundreds of migrant families separated at the border in recent weeks, after Congresswoman Jackie Speier approached the Mountain View-based company with the idea.
“They have committed to providing all the tests necessary to test the parents and the children,” Speier told this news organization.
That is it for today (a lot, right!?)
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Donate here : https://www.blackvotersmatterfund.org/donate
As always, I am so proud and so lucky to be in this with all of you. ❤️ ✊ ❤️