SUPER STOOGE: Sen. John N. Kennedy (R-LA) Doubles Down On Putin’s False Ukraine Narrative On “Meet The Press” — Chuck Todd Incredulous At Trump Sycophant Senator’s Pressing Debunked Claim!

Felicia Sonmez
Felicia Sonmez
National Political Reporter
WAshington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sen-kennedy-says-both-ukraine-and-russia-interfered-in-2016-election-despite-intelligence-communitys-assessment/2019/12/01/09652dd8-1459-11ea-9110-3b34ce1d92b1_story.html

By Felicia Sonmez @ WashPost:

Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) said Sunday that both Russia and Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election, despite the intelligence community’s assessment that only Russia did so.

The comments mark Kennedy’s latest attempt to shift the focus away from the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia worked to help elect President Trump, following a Fox News Channel interview last week from which he later backtracked.

They also come as Democrats press forward with their impeachment inquiry into Trump, with the House Intelligence Committee expected to meet Tuesday to approve the release of a report on its findings on Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.

pastedGraphic.png

Meet the Press

@MeetThePress

WATCH: @ChuckTodd asks @SenJohnKennedy if he is “at all concerned that he has been duped” into believing that former Ukraine president worked for the Clinton campaign in 2016 #MTP #IfItsSunday@SenJohnKennedy: “No, just read the articles.”

pastedGraphic_1.png

838

9:50 AM – Dec 1, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

1,395 people are talking about this

Asked about conservative columnist Michael Gerson’s criticism of his incorrect claim to Fox that Ukraine, not Russia, might have been behind the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails in 2016, Kennedy said he disagrees with the suggestion that he’s turning a blind eye to the truth.

“I think both Russia and Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election,” Kennedy told host Chuck Todd on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

Todd pressed Kennedy on whether he was concerned that he had been “duped” by Russian propaganda, noting reports that U.S. intelligence officials recently briefed senators that “this is a Russian intelligence propaganda campaign in order to get people like you to say these things about Ukraine.”

Kennedy responded that he had received no such warning.

“I wasn’t briefed. Dr. Hill is entitled to her opinion,” Kennedy said, referring to former National Security Council Russia adviser Fiona Hill, who testified in the impeachment inquiry last month.

In her public testimony, Hill warned that several Trump allies had spread unfounded allegations that Ukraine, rather than Russia, had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services,” she said.

Kennedy argued Sunday that Ukraine’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 campaign have been “very well-documented,” citing reporting by the Economist, the Financial Times, the Washington Examiner and others.

“Does that mean that Ukrainian, the Ukrainian leaders were more aggressive than Russia? No. Russia was very aggressive and they’re much more sophisticated. But the fact that Russia was so aggressive does not exclude the fact that President Poroshenko actively worked for Secretary Clinton,” Kennedy said, referring to former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.

Despite Kennedy’s claim, there is no evidence that the Ukrainian government engaged in a large-scale effort to aid Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Todd responded to the Louisiana Republican’s remarks with disbelief.

“I mean, my goodness, wait a minute, Senator Kennedy,” he said. “You now have the president of Ukraine saying he actively worked for the Democratic nominee for president. I mean, now come on.”

Todd then displayed a photo of Russian President Vladi­mir Putin and the text of remarks Putin made at a “Russia Calling!” economic forum in Moscow on Nov. 20. At the event, Putin expressed pleasure that talk of interference in the 2016 U.S. election has shifted away from Russia and to Ukraine during the impeachment hearings.

“Thank God,” Putin said. “No one is accusing us of interfering in the United States elections anymore. Now they’re accusing Ukraine. We’ll let them deal with that themselves.”

Todd then pressed Kennedy: “You realize the only other person selling this argument outside the United States is this man, Vladimir Putin. … You have done exactly what the Russian operation is trying to get American politicians to do. Are you at all concerned that you’ve been duped?”

“No, because you — just read the articles,” Kennedy replied.

********************************

This article illustrates a continuing problem: you can’t have a real discussion or dialogue about impeachment with any Republican because they just keep repeating the Putin/Trump “party line” of demonstrable lies.  

One of the reports cited by Kennedy, a 2017 Politico article, has since been largely debunked:

After the Politico report came out, other media outlets went to work examining the allegations and found there wasn’t anything to them. The Washington Post reported in July 2017:

“While the Politico story does detail apparent willingness among embassy staffers to help Chalupa and also more broadly documents ways in which Ukrainian officials appeared to prefer Clinton’s candidacy, what’s missing is evidence of a concerted effort driven by Kiev.

U.S. intelligence agencies believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally directed his intelligence agencies to hack into and release private information from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. That effort included hackers from two different intelligence agencies which spent months inside the DNC network before releasing thousands of pages of documents to the public.

…“

By contrast, Politico’s report details the work of one person who was researching Manafort with help from inside the Ukrainian Embassy and who, at some undetermined point, provided info to the Clinton campaign, though she worked for the DNC as a consultant until shortly before the party conventions. That, coupled with the Manafort ledger revelation, is the full scope of the Ukrainian plot that’s been revealed. A weak link to the Ukrainians and a weaker link to the Clinton campaign.

On the July 17, 2017, edition of CNN’s New Day, David Stern, co-author of the original Politico article, said the questions about the involvement of some Ukrainian elements were not equivalent to the many stories about Russian government actions in 2016.

From the July 17, 2017, edition of CNN’s New Day:

“But when you dig down into the details, they’re very, very different,” Stern said, “and it’s important to note the difference there. Now, we said in our article … that we don’t have, as far as we can see, the type of top-down and wide, broad attack on the American election that was being alleged.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/trump-impeachment-inquiry/right-wing-media-wrongly-cite-politico-revive-trumps-ukraine-conspiracy

So, between the credible testimony of Dr. Fiona Hill, supported by the U.S. intelligence community, and a debunked report from Politico and others, Kennedy chooses to believe the latter over the former. Go figure! No doubt Putin is thinking “useful idiot” whenever he sees Kennedy peddle his Kremlin propaganda on TV.

There was a time long ago when the GOP would have been all over any politician helping Russia undermine America’s electoral process and national security. No longer. Now the GOP is the “Party of Putin,” actively working to destroy our nation.

In that respect, you should check out this article today from Post “Fact-Checker” Glenn Kessler: “Not enough Pinocchios for Trump’s CrowdStrike obsession” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/12/02/not-enough-pinocchios-trumps-crowdstrike-obsession/.

Once, folks would have been aghast at an American President spreading Putin’s false narratives. Now, it “just another day in the Oval Office.” Just one of the many ways in which Trump has demeaned our nation and our political processes. And, it doesn’t even “move the needle” among Trump’s supporters who have abandoned our country and our national interests. 

PWS

12-02-19                 

IT’S NEVER BEEN ABOUT “LEGAL V. ILLEGAL,” “BORDER SECURITY,” “JOBS,” OR “GETTING IN (NON-EXISTENT) LINES” — The Trump Regime Has Always Been About A White Nationalist Immigration Agenda Of Hate!

Catherine Rampell
Catherine Rampell
Opinion Columnist
Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/theres-no-other-way-to-explain-trumps-immigration-policy-its-just-bigotry/2019/11/25/348b38f4-0fcc-11ea-9cd7-a1becbc82f5e_story.html

 

Catherine Rampell in the WashPost:

 

November 25, 2019 at 7:58 p.m. EST

It was never about protecting the border, rule of law or the U.S. economy. And it was never about “illegal” immigration, for that matter.

Trump’s anti-immigrant bigotry was always just anti-immigrant bigotry.

There’s no other way to explain the Trump administration’s latest onslaught against foreigners of all kinds, regardless of their potential economic contributions, our own international commitments or any given immigrant’s propensity to follow the law. Trump’s rhetoric may focus on “illegals,” but recent data releases suggest this administration has been blocking off every available avenue for legal immigration, too.

Last month, the number of refugees admitted to the United States hit zero. That’s the first month on record this has ever happened, according to data going back nearly three decades from both the State Department and World Relief, a faith-based resettlement organization.

 

So what happened?

The problem wasn’t that the 26-million-strong global refugee population lacked a single person who met America’s strict screening requirements. No, our admissions flatlined because Trump announced and then delayed signing a new refugee ceiling for the 2020 fiscal year. This delay led to a complete moratorium on admissions.

Hundreds of flights were canceled for approved refugees who had waited years or decades to come — once again, legally — to our shining city on a hill. As the moratorium dragged on, some refugees’ eligibility expired. At least four were minors who have now turned 18. This means they’ve aged out of the resettlement program they were accepted under and now must get back in line, perhaps indefinitely, to reapply under a different system as adults.

By the way, when Trump finally did sign off on that new fiscal 2020 refugee ceiling, it was for a mere 18,000 admissions. That too is an all-time low. The Trump administration has also thrown up other roadblocks for refugees, such as allowing states and localities to veto any resettlements within their borders. (This policy is being challenged in court.)

Trump supporters might argue that, whatever our moral obligations to the world’s destitute and desperate, the president is merely keeping immigrants out to protect our economy.

They are wrong.

The Trump administration’s own research — which it attempted to suppress — found that refugees are a net positive for the U.S. economy and government budgets. That is, over the course of a decade, refugees pay more in taxes than they receive in public benefits.

The Trump administration is also turning away categories of legal would-be immigrants who are historically admitted because they are economically valuable.

Last week, for instance, we learned that enrollment of new international students has fallen more than 10 percent over the past three years, according to the Institute of International Education.

This is a shame. Higher education has been one of our most successful industries, adding $45 billion to the U.S. economy last year alone. International students spend money in the local economies where they study — on lodging, food, books, entertainment. They are also more likely to pay full freight in tuition. This means they cross-subsidize American students, especially in states where public education funding has fallen.

International students are also more likely to major in high-demand STEM fields, providing U.S. employers with a pipeline of talent that supports the jobs of native-born Americans.

New international student enrollment is declining for a number of reasons, including high tuition and fear of campus gun violence. But the barrier most frequently cited by universities lately is problems with the visa-application process. Meanwhile, other developed countries, such as Canada and Australia, are poaching students who might otherwise have contributed their talents here.

These are hardly the only signs we’re discouraging or denying legions of desirable and legal would-be immigrants.

Denial rates for H-1B visas — awarded to high-skilled workers — have more than doubled since Trump took office, according to tabulations from National Foundation for American Policy. Processing delays for citizenship applications have doubled. Naturalization and visa fees have skyrocketed.

Meanwhile, when families apply for their legal right to asylum at the border, we tell them to await processing in Mexico, in a region so dangerous that Americans are instructed not to visit. (“Violent crime, such as murder, armed robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, extortion, and sexual assault, is common,” the State Department website advises.)

There, asylum seekers live outdoors, in filthy, flooded, freezing tents. Agonized parents send sick and frostbitten toddlers to cross into the U.S. alone, because they fear they’ll die waiting in Mexico.

And if these desperate families don’t like living in squalor, we tell them they should just return home, get in line and apply through another legal route into the United States. Perhaps as refugees, students or workers.

As though there were still such routes to be found.

 

*************************************************************

It’s institutionalized hate, racism, sexism, lawlessness, and cruelty.

 

One of the worst things is that’s it’s basically enabled by Federal Appellate Courts who see the same problems as many U.S. District Judge do, but “go along to get along” by “normalizing” Trump’s disgraceful racist behavior and “deferring” to pretextual Executive actions that are merely facades for a dishonest, illegal, and unconstitutional White Nationalist agenda. Sort of reminds me of the bogus “separate but equal” doctrine of judicial cowardice.

 

Apparently, too many life-tenured Article IIIs in the ivory tower think that they and their privileged circles will escape the gratuitous harm being inflicted on our nation and on vulnerable individuals by a scofflaw executive. Certainly, not unlike the enabling white male judges and Supreme Court Justices who “looked the other way” and thereby enabled Jim Crow regimes to corruptly use our legal system to disenfranchise, murder, oppress, and otherwise abuse African American citizens.

 

Where has judicial courage among the higher levels of our Federal Judiciary gone?

 

PWS

 

11-26-19

 

 

TRUMP PLANS TO KICK OFF NEW YEAR WITH MORE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — Removals Of Asylum Seekers To Dangerous Honduras Just Latest Example Of Congressional & Judicial Complicity In White Nationalist Regime’s Grotesque Perversions Of Law & Truth!

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/asylum-seekers-deportation-honduras-trump

Hamed Aleaziz
Hamed Aleaziz
Immigration Reporter
BuzzFeed News

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

The White House has directed the Department of Homeland Security to implement a deal to send asylum-seekers to Honduras by January, the second in a series of controversial agreements made with Central American countries to deport immigrants seeking protection at the southern border, according to a government document obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Implementing the agreement has been met with a series of issues that appear to be complicating the January deadline. The deal with Honduras was initially signed in September — at the time, agency officials did not provide many specific details about its implementation — and is part of the Trump administration’s strategy to deter asylum-seekers from coming to the US border.

Critics say the Trump administration is forcing people who are fleeing violence and poverty to go back to countries in what’s known as the Northern Triangle that have weak asylum systems and are unable to protect their own people, let alone immigrants.

Last week, DHS officials implemented a similar agreement to send adult asylum-seekers picked up in the El Paso area who are from Honduras and El Salvador to Guatemala.

In October, DHS officials traveled to Honduras to discuss details about implementing the unprecedented plan, called the Asylum Cooperative Agreement (ACA), according to briefing materials drawn up for acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The discussions in Honduras appear to have hit a few roadblocks. First, Honduran officials requested that no one convicted or accused of a felony crime be sent to their country, a proposal that was seen by DHS officials as “operationally unfeasible given the expedited nature of the removals.”

They also wanted asylum-seekers to “manifest their conformity,” or express their agreement, to being transferred — something DHS officials recommended rejecting or clarifying because it was “not legally or operationally feasible.”

And third, Honduras wanted transfers to start only once both countries “provided notification that they have complied with the legal and institutional conditions necessary for proper implementation of this agreement.” But privately, DHS officials viewed that request as an attempt to get out of the deal if they wanted to.

“This reads as GOH’s escape-hatch not to implement the ACA given its lack of ‘institutional conditions’ or as the hook to demand more assistance” from the US or non-governmental organizations, the officials wrote.

The Central American country also wanted a definition of what would constitute a “public interest” exemption to deporting someone to Honduras. The vague exemption is also being used in the plan to deport asylum-seekers from El Salvador and Honduras to Guatemala.

But in their recommendation to Wolf, DHS officials said the request should be rejected since “it gives the US government more operational flexibility not to define what we consider the ‘public interest exemption’ for when we chose not to remove an alien pursuant to the ACA.’”

DHS officials have previously said that more than 71% of those apprehended at the southern border in the 2019 fiscal year were from Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador.

Honduras had a homicide rate of 40 per 100,000 people in 2017, while Guatemala’s was 22.4 per 100,000 inhabitants, among the highest in the Western Hemisphere, according to InSight Crime.

The “third country”-like agreements with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, paired with policies that force asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico for the duration of their cases in the US and a rule that bars asylum for people who cross through Mexico to get to the southern border, would nearly close off the US to people fleeing persecution in Central America.

**************************************************

The functional end of U.S. refugee and asylum laws without any participation from Congress which had enshrined them in statute will go down as one of the most disgraceful and cowardly acts of a disintegrating republic now ruled by a White Nationalist regime.

PWS

11-26-19

 

WHITE NATIONALIST ADMINISTRATION, CORRUPT BUREAUCRATS, FECKLESS FEDERAL JUDGES COMBINE TO COMMIT “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” AGAINST LEGAL ASYLUM APPLICANTS UNDER “LET ‘EM DIE IN MEXICO” PROGRAM — “[R]eturning home would be suicide.”

Kevin Sieff
Kevin Sieff
Latin America Correspondent
Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/in-squalid-mexico-tent-city-asylum-seekers-are-growing-so-desperate-theyre-sending-their-children-over-the-border-alone/2019/11/22/9e5044ec-0c92-11ea-8054-289aef6e38a3_story.html

Kevin. Sieff reports for the WashPost:

November 22, 2019 at 3:43 p.m. EST

MATAMOROS, Mexico — In the middle of the largest refugee camp on the U.S. border — close enough to Texas that migrants can see an American flag hovering across the Rio Grande — Marili’s children had fallen ill.

Josue was 5. Madeline was 3. The small family was huddled together in a nylon camping tent with two blankets last week when the temperature sank to 37 degrees. The children started coughing, Marili said. Then their fingers and toes turned bright red. The camp’s doctor had begun to see cases of frostbite.

Like most of the roughly 1,600 asylum seekers at the informal camp, Marili and her children had crossed the border into the United States this summer only to be sent back to Mexico to await their asylum cases — part of a year-old U.S. policy called the Migrant Protection Protocols.

In recent weeks, dozens of parents have watched as their children, sleeping outside in the cold, have become sick or despondent. Many decided to get them help the only way they knew how — sending them across the border alone. As Josue and Madeline grew sicker, it was Marili’s turn to make a decision.

USAID helped set up microfinance in Guatemala. Now it’s funding illegal migration.

These cases illustrate the human toll of the Trump administration’s policy and suggest the United States, Mexico and the United Nations were unprepared to handle many of the unforeseen consequences.

Marili, fleeing gang violence in Honduras, knew that unaccompanied children were admitted into the United States without enduring the MPP bureaucracy and the months-long wait. The 29-year-old mother — who, like others here, asked not to be identified by her last name, for fear it could affect her asylum case — believed that returning home would be suicide. So she bundled up her children in all of their donated winter clothes and scrawled a letter to U.S. immigration officials on a torn piece of paper.

“My children are very sick and exposed to many risks in Mexico,” she wrote. “I don’t have any other way to get them to safety.”

She pressed the letter into Josue’s hand, she said, and pointed the children to three U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in the middle of the Gateway International Bridge, the span across the Rio Grande that connects Matamoros to Brownsville, Tex.

“Josue told me, ‘Please don’t send us,’ ” Marili said, crying at the memory. “But as a mother, I knew it was the best decision for them.”

Then she sprinted to the bottom of the bridge and watched through the fence as her children turned themselves in, weeping and wondering when she would see them again, hoping they would find their way to her husband. He had entered the United States and applied for asylum before MPP was implemented. He was allowed to stay.

When they filed their asylum claim, they were told to wait in Mexico. There, they say, they were kidnapped.

In the past three weeks, migrants and aid workers say, at least 50 children have made the same crossing. The Washington Post interviewed the parents of 20 of them. On Tuesday morning, three more children were sent over. On Wednesday, another three. From tent to tent, families now talk openly about whether and when they will send their children.

More than 47,000 migrants have been sent back to Mexico since MPP started in January. Through September, 9,974 cases had been completed; only 11 migrants, or 0.1 percent, had received asylum, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, a research center at Syracuse University.

“It’s becoming clear to us that this whole thing is a lie,” said Reyna, 38, who sent her 15-year-old daughter, Yoisie, across the border last week. “They tell us to wait and wait and wait, but no one here gets asylum.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not return calls seeking comment.

Asylum seekers began sleeping out in the wooded field here at the base of the international bridge in August. They receive no assistance from the United States or the United Nations. They rely instead on tents, clothing and food donated by a group of American retirees and medical attention from a nonprofit group whose one doctor sits under a blue tarp.

U.N. officials say they were told months ago that the migrants would be moved by the Mexican government to better conditions. It hasn’t happened.

“We started hearing about the situation, but we just didn’t have enough capacity to help,” said Dora Giusti, the head of child protection at UNICEF in Mexico. “And the Mexican government kept saying [the migrants] would be moved out of the state, so we were waiting to see if we could respond there.”

The U.N. refu­gee agency says border cities in Tamaulipas state, where Matamoros is located, “are among the most insecure and dangerous in the country, which has limited our actions on the ground.”

A 19-year-old Salvadoran woman wanted to reunite with her father in California. She was shot dead in Mexico.

The municipal government opened a shelter at an indoor basketball court last month. With a capacity of 300, it’s already full. It’s also miles from the bridge, making it more difficult for migrants to reach the border for their court dates, or to meet with pro-bono lawyers. Every day, the U.S. government sends dozens of migrants to Matamoros under MPP. They are taken directly to the encampment and often sleep outside until they find a tent.

The camp consists of hundreds of tents clustered together on a spit of sidewalk and a stretch of scrubland along the Rio Grande. There are only a few showers, so many people bathe and wash their clothes in the river. Once a dead cow floated by and became lodged next to the camp. Another time, the headless corpse of a man washed ashore.

A cold front settled here for three days last week. Immediately, children started getting sick.

Gabrielle, 15 — from San Pedro Sula, Honduras — started coughing. Sarai, 12 — also from Honduras, from Santa Rosa de Copan — was vomiting. Valeria, 5 — from the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa — developed a fever and became despondent.

Global Response Management, the Florida-based nonprofit that runs the small medical clinic under the blue tarp, saw a surge in patients, most of them children. The most common cases were respiratory illnesses, said Megan Algeo, the doctor on call at the time. In one case, Algeo said, she persuaded U.S. immigration agents to admit a child for emergency care.

Elderly Mexicans are visiting their undocumented children in Mexico — with the help of the State Department

Parents in different parts of the camp decided it wasn’t fair to keep their children here. Some joined a Facebook group called Mothers in Search of Asylum to discuss their options and what would happen if their children crossed the border alone.

“I kept thinking, my daughter is going to die here,” said Blanca, Valeria’s mother.

They all had relatives in the United States. Their idea was to send their children to live with spouses, siblings, cousins while they waited in Matamoros to complete the asylum process. They worried about another cold front, or another flood (there was one in September), or cartel-sponsored kidnappings.

Gabrielle walked across the bridge alone, carrying a plastic bag with her asylum papers. Sarai went with a friend. Valeria and her sister, Anahi, 7, crossed together, holding hands.

All are now in shelters in different parts of the United States. Under U.S. policy, children who enter the country unaccompanied are taken into government custody until authorities can connect them with relatives to whom they can be released.

Glady Cañas, who runs Helping Them Triumph, one of the few humanitarian organizations at the camp, tries to persuade parents not to send their children alone.

“Why did you send your child?” she demanded of Israel, Gabrielle’s father.

Israel, 40, stared at the ground. They were standing in front of his blue tent.

“She was sick,” he said. “We were desperate. A child can’t wait here for a year like this.”

Cañas hugged him.

“I personally don’t agree with what they are doing,” she said later. “A child needs their parents. But when you look around here, you understand the desperation.”

Falling coffee prices drive Guatemalan migration to the United States

For many families here, the children — and the threats against them — were the reason they fled their countries in the first place.

Victor, 28, left El Salvador with his daughter, Arleth, now 10, after she was sexually assaulted by a man affiliated with a local gang. Victor pressed charges. He carries court documents and hospital records that substantiate the case in alarming detail. The man was sentenced to 12 years in prison for “sexual aggression of a minor,” one court transcript says.

As soon as he was sentenced, Victor said, gang members came after the family. In August, they fled.

Victor and Arleth were sent back to Matamoros on Aug. 28, before tents were available. They spent 15 days sleeping outside. Eventually, he found a job in a Chinese restaurant earning $7 per day. He saved up and bought a camping tent.

But after two months, Arleth was sick, vomiting all the time. Their tent had flooded twice in the rain. After her assault, she struggled to remain calm in large groups of people, and she hated walking across the camp to use one of the portable toilets.

Victor took her several times to the Doctors Without Borders nurse who came to the camp twice a week. But she never improved.

Their ancestors fled U.S. slavery for Mexico. Now they’re looking north again.

In late September, on Arleth’s 10th birthday, Victor bought her a cake and five candles. He asked someone in a neighboring tent to take a picture of them smiling.

When her health did not improve, Victor asked her what she thought of crossing alone.

“She told me: ‘Dad, I just want to be out of this place. I want to be in the United States,’ ” he said.

Lawyers working in the camp have recently become aware of the many parents choosing to send their children alone.

“These parents have been forced to consider an unthinkable choice — to save their children by sending them into the U.S. alone or to keep them in northern Mexico, where they will be exposed to severe illness, kidnapping, torture and rape,” said Rochelle Garza of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

During the last week of October, Victor walked Arleth to the edge of the international bridge and watched her shuffle toward U.S. immigration agents.

“We had never been apart,” he said later, crying. “Her entire life, we had always been together. . . .

“People might hear what I did and think I’m a bad parent. But it’s the opposite. I did this for my daughter because we had no other choice to save her.”

For a week he didn’t hear from her. Then she called his mother back in El Salvador. She was at a government shelter somewhere in Texas. The details were hazy.

His mother recorded a message from daughter to father.

“Don’t worry, Dad. I’m okay,” she said. “I hope that soon you’ll be with me.”

He played the message over and over and cried.

“The truth is I don’t have much confidence that my case is going to work out,” he said. “I’m fighting it for her. But I don’t know.”

*******************************************

The Trump Administration response: Expand the “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico Program” to additional locations near Tucson, Arizona.

It’s a national disgrace unfolding before our eyes, getting worse every day!

PWS

11-23-19

TRUMP REGIME ORDERS OFFICERS TO IGNORE EVIDENCE, VIOLATE HUMAN RIGHTS OF ASYLUM SEEKERS — “‘We are being asked to violate human rights,’” the asylum officer told BuzzFeed News.”

Hamed Aleaziz
Hamed Aleaziz
Immigration Reporter
BuzzFeed News

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/asylum-officers-guatemala-deport-central-guidance

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

US immigration officers implementing a Trump administration plan to deport asylum-seekers from Central America to Guatemala were provided materials this week detailing the dangers faced by those in the country, including gangs, violence, and killings with “high levels of impunity.”

The “resource guide” on Guatemala was given to asylum officers as part of materials to implement a controversial policy to deport adult asylum-seekers from El Salvador and Honduras to Guatemala. The guide, which was obtained by BuzzFeed News, relies primarily on public sources: academic publications, research from Human Rights Watch and other organizations, and news reports.

A Human Rights Watch report from 2018 that was included in the guide for asylum officers, said “Violence and extortion by powerful criminal organizations remain serious problems in Guatemala. Gang-related violence is an important factor prompting people, including unaccompanied youth, to leave the country.”

The research provided to the officers confirmed some of their worst fears about sending people to the country.

“Being told to send asylum-seekers to Guatemala without even a screening on their claim while also being given research explaining, in detail, the incredible danger that exists throughout the country is extensively frustrating,” said one asylum officer, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. “This agreement feels like a pretext to get rid of as many asylum claims as possible.”

pastedGraphic.png

Emilio Espejel / AP

Central American migrants wait at the El Chaparral border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico.

The Trump administration began this week carrying out its controversial new policy of deporting to Guatemala adults from El Salvador and Honduras who have sought asylum at the southern US border. DHS officials confirmed an initial flight to Guatemala in a Thursday press briefing.

The Trump administration says the plan is a key element in its strategy to deter migration at the border and another method to restrict asylum-seekers from entering the US. Advocates and asylum officers previously told BuzzFeed News that the unprecedented plan lacks legality and organization, and will lead immigrants to be placed in dangerous circumstances.

“Data from Guatemala’s Attorney General’s Office shows that nearly 8,400 extortion complaints were filed in 2017, but less than 700 convictions made,” reads one research paper linked in the guide to asylum officers on extortion issues in the country. “Amid such high levels of impunity, fear of reprisals for not paying extortion demands is a huge concern among victims.” A link to a Guardian article titled “Guatemala in grip of ‘mafia coalition,’ says UN body in scathing corruption report,” is also included, among other stories detailing major safety issues in the country.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services officials included the guidance in an email to asylum officers across the country Wednesday morning in a notice that implementation of the policy would begin, according to a copy of the email provided to BuzzFeed News.

Under the policy, border officials in the El Paso, Texas, area will refer a small number of adult asylum-seekers from El Salvador and Honduras who have recently arrived at the border to asylum officers for interviews, according to two sources with knowledge of the process.

BuzzFeed News recently revealed that, up until late last week, Department of Homeland Security officials were still scrambling to resolve critical details about the Guatemala plan. “There is uncertainty as to who will provide orientation services for migrants as well as who will provide shelter, food, transportation, and other care,” read a DHS brief drafted for Acting Secretary Chad Wolf in the run-up to a meeting Friday with Guatemala Interior Minister Enrique Degenhart.

Guatemala is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere and has the sixth-highest rate of malnutrition in the world. Nearly half of the country suffers from chronic malnutrition, with the prevalence reaching about 70% in some indigenous areas, according to a 2018 report from USAID.

The country has struggled with violence but has seen a drop in murders in recent years, with a homicide rate of 22.4 per 100,000 people. By comparison, the US had a homicide rate of 5.3 per 100,000.

“We are being asked to violate human rights,” the asylum officer told BuzzFeed News.

******************************

Summary: Government officials routinely and openly violate human rights of asylum seekers and other migrants with impunity.

Sounds like something out of the Country Reports for some of the repressive states that I used to deal with in deciding asylum cases as an Immigration Judge. 

Now, it describes the United States.

Even before Trump, the U.S. had a rather poor record of holding human rights violators accountable. The folks who mapped out the clearly illegal “torture program” during the Bush II Administration were never held accountable. Indeed, several of them were actually rewarded despite their involvement in immoral and illegal actions.

PWS

11-22-19

GABE GUTIERREZ @ NBC NEWS: Here’s What “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico” Looks Like — The Systemic Failure Of The Supremes & The 9th Circuit To Hold Trump Administration Accountable For Dishonesty & Violating Statutory & Constitutional Rights Of Asylum Seekers In Multiple Contexts Has Human Consequences! — Encouraged By Feckless Appellate Judges, Corrupt DHS Officials Tout Benefits Of Endangering Lives Of Asylum Seekers As A “Deterrent!”

Gabe Gutierrez
Gabe Gutierrez
NBC News Correspondent
Atlanta, GA

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/asylum-seekers-wait-mexico-trump-admin-touts-drop-border-apprehensions-n1086291

MATAMOROS, Mexico — The stench is overpowering. During the day, it seems to bake on the squalid concrete. At dawn, it seeps into the cool air — a suffocating mix of human waste and campfires.

Just steps from Brownsville, Texas, a makeshift tent city is growing next to the international bridge. More than 1,200 migrants — many from Mexico and Central America, others from Cuba — are waiting.

This year, the Trump administration enacted what it calls Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP. Also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, it requires U.S. asylum-seekers to stay in that country while their claims are processed. Before MPP, families would be allowed to wait for their court hearings in the United States.

More than 55,000 migrants have been returned to Mexico under this policy, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said — and it’s become a bottleneck at the border.

“This is 100 percent a humanitarian crisis,” Jodi Goodwin, a Texas immigration attorney, said. “These policies are not implemented in a vacuum and there are very real human consequences.”

Carlos, from Honduras was among the migrants who spoke with NBC News and asked not to have his last name used for fear of reprisals. The 27-year-old said he’d been at the makeshift camp for four months with his 2-year-old epileptic son — and he’s struggled to find medical care.

“The most difficult part is when my son has convulsions and I’m alone in the tent,” he said. “It’s happened twice at night and I can’t do anything.”

“We’re sending a message”

According to CBP, apprehensions at the Southwest border have plummeted from 144,116 in May to 45,250 in October. That’s a 68 percent drop.

“Migrants can no longer expect to be allowed into the interior of the United States based on fraudulent asylum claims,” Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner of CBP, said at a White House briefing last week. “We’re sending a message to their criminal organizations to stop exploiting these migrants.”

The Trump administration has argued the change is working because in essence, the Remain in Mexico policy has served as a deterrent for migrants as well as human smugglers.

But immigrants advocates argue that claim is dubious and has merely increased desperation and fear on the Mexican side of the border.

In Matamoros, the Mexican government recently opened a shelter about a 30 minute walk from the international bridge in response to the influx of migrants. But many of the families refuse to stay there because they fear a growing threat from the cartels.

One man, Josué, told NBC News his two young daughters were sexually assaulted by a man he believes was a cartel operative. The girls had been washing themselves in the Rio Grande when he touched them, Josué said. He showed NBC News a police report he’d filed.

“Matamoros is controlled by the cartels and the bad people,” he said. “When I got here, I was really scared.”

So volunteers are taking action. Every day, a group called “Team Brownsville” is among those who bring food and supplies across the border.

As the sun begins to set, migrant families line up for a meal.

“It breaks my heart to see the need here,” said Mary Vanderhoof, a volunteer from New Jersey. “There’s no reason that people should be living like this.”

Sergio Córdova, one of Team Brownsville’s organizers, said he’s been coming here since the summer of 2018. What started as just a few migrants with donated cots has exploded into a full-blown tent city.

“How can you look away?” he asked. “Are we going to be a country that says ‘We looked away?’ Or did we do something?”

Follow NBC Latino on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

pastedGraphic.png

Gabe Gutierrez

Gabe Gutierrez is an NBC News Correspondent based in Atlanta, Georgia. He reports for all platforms of NBC News, including “TODAY,” “NBC Nightly News,” MSNBC and NBCNews.com.

****************************************

Check out the video at the above link.

“How can you look away?” he asked. “Are we going to be a country that says ‘We looked away?’ Or did we do something?”

Sergio Cordova “gets it!” How come John Roberts and his tone-deaf “conservatives” who looked the other way at gross legal, Constitutional, and human rights abuses in East Side Sanctuary Covenant and the irresponsible judges on the Ninth Circuit panel that “greenlighted” these specific “designed to kill and abuse procedures” in Innovation Law Labs don’t?

How would anybody subjected to this type of cruel and inhuman treatment possibly be able to present their asylum case? Many, in fact, don’t even receive proper notice or timely access to their hearings, a fact patently obvious but ignored by the Ninth Circuit panel. Others shouldn’t even be in the program or receive knowingly “fake hearing notices” from a lawless DHS unleashed by feckless Federal Appellate Judges who won’t do their jobs.

Several U.S. Immigration Judges and a whole bunch of Asylum Officers have put their careers on the line to “just say no” to these outrages! What’s the excuse for the cowardly performance from those given the privilege of life tenure?

The grotesque derelictions of duty by the Supremes and the Ninth Circuit not only enable individual human rights abuses like these every day, but also their failure to require adherence to the Constitution, the Refugee Act, and our international obligations has emboldened the Administration to enter into totally fraudulent “Safe Third Country” agreements that will “orbit” asylum seekers to some of the most UNSAFE countries in the world, without credible asylum systems and without any procedures in place to guarantee their safety and fair treatment.

Due Process Forever! Complicit Federal Courts Never! Remember my “5Cs” — Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change! Make those who are trying to “look away” confront the legal mess and human carnage stemming every day from their irresponsibility and failure to stand up for justice for the most vulnerable among us.

PWS

11-20-20

JUDICIAL MALFEASANCE AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS: FECKLESS FEDERAL COURTS STAND BY & WATCH WHILE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ORBITS ASYLUM SEEKERS INTO THE VOID — Apparently Both The Law & Human Lives Have Ceased To Have Meaning For Those Blessed With Lifetime Tenure & No Accountability For Human Rights Abuses!

Hamed Aleaziz
Hamed Aleaziz
Immigration Reporter
BuzzFeed News

https://apple.news/AijtlVW8iRqm87hLGuQq7uA

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

Trump Is Sending Asylum-Seekers To Guatemala. His Administration Privately Admitted It Had No Idea What Would Happen To Them Next.

BuzzFeed News Reporter

A group of Guatemalan migrants deported from the US arrive at the Air Force base in Guatemala City on Sept. 5.

In the final days before launching a controversial plan to send asylum-seekers arriving at the US border to Guatemala, Department of Homeland Security officials were still scrambling to figure out critical details, including how those seeking protection would obtain shelter, food, and access to orientation services, according to government briefing materials obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Despite the questions, the documents indicate that DHS planned to send 12 asylum-seekers on the first flight to Guatemala, a Central American country that has struggled with violent crime, and was tentatively scheduled to depart on Tuesday.

The materials, drawn up last week for newly appointed acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf, suggest that department officials were trying to finalize key details regarding the implementation of a complicated proposal to send asylum-seekers arriving at the US border to Guatemala as part of a deal similar to a safe third country agreement.

The plan has been highlighted by the Trump administration as a key element in its strategy to deter migration at the border and another method to restrict asylum-seekers from entering the US.

“There is uncertainty as to who will provide orientation services for migrants as well as who will provide shelter, food, transportation, and other care,” read the DHS brief, drafted for Wolf in the run-up to a meeting Friday with Guatemala’s Interior Minister Enrique Degenhart. The implementation plan spelled out that Guatemala would provide the services but recently there had been “confusion” as to whether that would happen, according to the materials.

Wolf was urged to raise the issues with Degenhart in their meeting and clarify the outstanding issues.

“The U.S. needs confirmation from the [Government of Guatemala] that they will provide shelter, transportation, and food,” the briefing materials read. “If not, the U.S. and [Government of Guatemala] need to brainstorm other avenues of assistance.”

It is unclear if the planned flight is still scheduled to take off.

Trump administration officials have said that partnering with countries in Central America ultimately benefits the US by cutting down on the number of asylum-seekers attempting to make the journey to the US. Advocates counter that such agreements place vulnerable populations in countries that lack systems for adequate asylum processing and have high murder rates and rampant crime.

Guatemala is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere and has the sixth-highest rate of malnutrition in the world. Nearly half of the country suffers from chronic malnutrition, with the prevalence reaching about 70% in some indigenous areas of Guatemala, according to a 2018 report from USAID.

The country has struggled with violence but has seen a drop in murders in recent years, with a homicide rate of 22.4 per 100,000 people. By comparison, the US had a homicide rate of 5.3 per 100,000.

A recent United Nations report also found that about 98% of crimes in Guatemala went unpunished in 2018.

The government posted regulations on Monday that clear the way for asylum officers to begin screening asylum-seekers under the plan. The interim final rule, which takes effect Tuesday, creates a process for asylum-officers to screen migrants thrust into the plan. In short, unless an asylum-seeker can prove it is “more likely than not” that they will be persecuted or tortured in Guatemala, they will be removed to the country to obtain protections there.

Administration officials have previously told congressional staffers that more than 200 individuals had applied for asylum in Guatemala, but only 18 had been processed.

While DHS officials have in the past heralded the involvement of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in helping build up Guatemala’s nascent asylum system, the briefing materials suggest that those efforts have been rocky, at best.

“It is our understanding that for some time now there has been friction between the [Government of Guatemala] and UNHCR regarding UNHCR’s role in the implementation” of the plan, according to the briefs. The UN has told US government officials it would provide orientation services for asylum-seekers who have been sent back to Guatemala.

But Guatemalan officials have told the US that UNHCR would not have access to their “reception centers and asylum programs.”

On Saturday, Reuters reported that US officials said asylum-seekers forced into the plan would not be flown to remote areas of Guatemala, an option the Central American country had proposed.

“All airports are being analyzed,” Degenhart told Reuters. “There are some that’ll qualify but others that won’t.”

The agreement could be one way for the Trump administration to attempt to safeguard a potential court overturn of its policy banning asylum for those who cross through a third country.

While the Supreme Court allowed for the policy to continue while the case continues in a federal appeals court challenge, it’s unclear whether the justices or the federal appellate court will ultimately side with the Trump administration.

******************************************

So, the Supremes and the 9th Circuit are “ruminating” about these issues while folks are dying or being sent off to oblivion by an Administration notorious for its operational incompetence and its bad faith approach to immigration and asylum laws. How is that a “Safe Third Country” or a “right to apply for asylum regardless of status?” How is that performing the judicial duties for which they supposedly are being paid?

Meanwhile, corrupt immoral Administration officials are out there touting these programs as “deterrents” — not a means of fair adjudication or actual protection under our laws and international Conventions. So, why are Federal Appellate Judges and Supreme Court Justices so oblivious to truth? 

Hopefully, law schools are bringing up a new generation of lawyers that pay more attention to ethics, take the time to understand the human side of the law, and who will be courageous enough to stand up for individuals’ human rights against Government overreach. Obviously, too many of the preceding generations of “lawyers turned appellate judges” flunked on all counts.

Maybe a period of time representing migrants pro bono should be an absolute requirement for future Federal Judicial appointments. No matter how you look at it, we’re experiencing an institutional meltdown in the Federal Appellate Judiciary that, when combined with a lawless authoritarian Administration run wild, is endangering both our country and humanity.

PWS

11-19-19

TRUMP’S KIDDIE GULAG HITS NEW MILESTONE IN “RACE TO THE BOTTOM” —  U.S. Now Leads The World In Rate Of Child Imprisonment – We Spend Billions Abusing Kids, Eschew Leadership In Solving Humanitarian Problems!

Stephanie Nebehay
Stephanie Nebehay
Reporter
Reuters

 

https://apple.news/Ai5Np-WWSR6KvhWeSfkMlGw

 

By Stephanie Nebehay | GENEVA

 

U.S. has world’s highest rate of children in detention: U.N. study

The United States has the world’s highest rate of children in detention, including more than 100,000 in immigration-related custody that violates international law, the author of a United Nations study said on Monday.

Worldwide more than 7 million people under age 18 are held in jails and police custody, including 330,000 in immigration detention centres, independent expert Manfred Nowak said.

Children should only be detained as a measure of last resort and for the shortest time possible, according to the United Nations Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty.

“The United States is one of the countries with the highest numbers – we still have more than 100,000 children in migration-related detention in the (U.S.),” Nowak told a news briefing.

“Of course separating children, as was done by the Trump administration, from their parents and even small children at the Mexican-U.S. border is absolutely prohibited by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. I would call it inhuman treatment for both the parents and the children.”

There was no immediate reaction from U.S. authorities. Novak said U.S. officials had not replied to his questionnaire sent to all countries.

He said the United States had ratified major international treaties such as those guaranteeing civil and political rights and banning torture, but was the only country not to have ratified the pact on the rights of children.

“The way they were separating infants from families only in order to deter irregular migration from Central America to the United States to me constitutes inhuman treatment, and that is absolutely prohibited by the two treaties,” said Nowak, a professor of international law at the University of Vienna.

The United States detains an average of 60 out of every 100,000 children in its justice system or immigration-related custody, Nowak said, the world’s highest rate, followed by countries such as Bolivia, Botswana and Sri Lanka.

Mexico, where many Central American migrants have been turned back at the U.S. border, also has high numbers, with 18,000 children in immigration-related detention and 7,000 in prisons, he said.

The U.S. rate compared with an average of five per 100,000 in Western Europe and 14-15 in Canada, he said.

At least 29,000 children, mainly linked to Islamic State fighters, are held in northern Syria and in Iraq – with French citizens among the biggest group of foreigners, Nowak added.

Even if some of these children had been child soldiers, he said, they should be mainly treated as victims, not perpetrators, so that they could be rehabilitated and reintegrated in society.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

***************************************************

Why is Trump not being held accountable for leading the “race to the bottom” while littering the track with illegalities and trampling on our Constitution?

This is how we will be remembered by future generations!

Contrary to the rants of dangerous subversive Billy Barr, “The Resistance” may be the only thing that can save American and our national values.

And, let’s “lose” all the GOP/Fox News BS about “reversing election results.” Not only is impeachment an authorized Constitutional process, but, in fact, removal of Trump would result in his replacement by his hand-picked GOP stalwart successor VP Mike Pence. Hardly a “reversal” of results.

As I’ve said before, in some ways Pence could be worse than Trump, because he’s much more competent and knowledgeable on how Government actually works. Where Trump often trips over his own two feet (or, perhaps, “tweet”), Pence might be able to get things done even where they aren’t in the national interest. Nevertheless, that shouldn’t stop anyone from voting to remove Trump, because it’s the right thing to do. Unlikely to happen, though, given the blind commitment of the GOP to Trumpism and its ugly messages of cruelty, intellectual dishonesty, and dehumanization.

 

PWS

11-19-19

 

 

FOR DECADES HE HID HIS RADICALLY SUBVERSIVE  MESSAGE OF INTOLERANCE, INJUSTICE, & FASCIST DEVOTION TO AUTHORITY BEHIND DARK SUITS AND CONSERVATIVE TIES IN THE WORLD OF BIG LAW AND CORPORATE BOARDROOMS — Then Billy Barr Unleashed His Anti-Americanism & Contempt For Our Constitution & Humanity On Our Republic & Those Courageously Defending It Against A Lawless Executive!

These articles say it all about Barr’s unprincipled attacks on American democracy and his bizarre, yet frightening, rewrite of American history.

Heather Cox Richardson
Heather Cox Richardson
Historian
Professor, Boston College

First, from American historian and Professor at Boston College Heather Cox Richardson:

November 16, 2019

7 hr Public post 49

Today’s biggest story set the scene for news that continues to develop about the Ukraine scandal.

The big story, in terms of its ability to frame the crazy events coming at us at top speed, happened last night, when Attorney General William Barr gave a speech to the Federalist Society, a group of conservative and libertarian lawyers who argue for an originalist interpretation of the Constitution. The conviction of members of the Federalist Society that courts should not do anything that is not listed in the original Constitution makes them great friends to business and to white men, since they focus on the protection of property and deny that laws can regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, or protect minority or women’s rights. The Federalist Society organized in 1982 to push back against what its members felt was an activist court system that tried to reorganize society from the bench. It has been extraordinarily successful in taking over the courts: currently five members of the nine-member Supreme Court are current or past Federalist Society members: Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh.

In his speech, Attorney General William Barr claimed he was going truly to be an originalist, and explained by taking American history back to its roots. In contrast to every single American historian in, well, American history, Barr argued that Americans had rebelled not against King George III in 1776, but rather against Parliament. What the Founders feared, he said, was not a strong executive, but rather a strong Parliament. (You can tell where this is going, right?) Barr was setting up the idea that Congress has grown far too strong lately (in fact, virtually every scholar will tell you that it is the Executive that has grown terribly strong since 1981) and that it is badly hampering the president’s ability to do his job. The president should be able to act on his own initiative, and not be checked by either congressional or judicial oversight, Barr insisted, in a theory known as that of the “unitary executive.”

Barr did not stop there, though. He went on to blame “The Resistance” for sabotaging the Trump administration, and claimed that its members were “engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government.” More, he claimed “the Left” is “engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law.” Conservatives, he said, were at a disadvantage against progressive’s “holy war” because they “have more scruple over their political tactics” especially when facing “a hyper-partisan media.” (You might want to reread those last two sentences.)

Richard Painter, who was George W. Bush’s ethics lawyer, called this a “lunatic authoritarian speech.” Attorneys General are supposed to be non-partisan, and Barr lumped all opposition to Trump as the dangerous far left. The “Left,” in America, generally refers to those few people who advocate for communism—a system in which the government owns and controls all industries and businesses– or anarchy, a system in which there is no central authority at all. It’s actually a pretty small group. But Barr, and other recent Republicans, have included in “the Left” everyone who believes that the government has any role to play in regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, and promoting infrastructure, all those things the Federalist Society opposes. In fact, most of us, regardless of whether we vote Republican or Democratic, want some basic regulations, social welfare programs, and infrastructure development.

But now the Attorney General, who is charged with overseeing our justice system, has declared that anyone standing in the way of Trump is not just a member of “the Left” but also is waging war against America. Painter is quite right: this is the language that enables a leader to imprison people he considers his enemies.

Barr is not saying all this in a vacuum. More news dropped today about the Ukraine scandal, filling in the lines we already suspected. Congress released transcripts today from Tim Morrison and Jennifer Williams, both of whom were deeply involved in the Ukraine mess and were on the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky. A long-time career official in the State Department, Morrison replaced Fiona Hill as the Senior Director for Russia and Europe in July 2019. Williams is another long-standing career officer in the State Department. Since April 2019, she has been the Special Adviser for Europe and Russia for Vice President Mike Pence. Morrison said that Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland made it clear that aid was being withheld until there was an announcement about an investigation into Burisma, the company on whose board Hunter Biden sat.

This jibed with the opening statement of David Holmes, the political counselor at the Embassy in Kyiv, who testified for seven hours yesterday behind closed doors. Holmes was an eye-witness to the efforts of Trump, his lawyer Rudy Giuiliani, and Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, to pressure the new Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing an investigation into Burisma, the company on whose board Hunter Biden sat. Holmes’s opening statement was explosive. It was not only first hand, but also it tied Trump directly into the efforts, and it made very clear that the administration was demanding the announcement of an investigation before it would release the money Congress had appropriated for Ukraine’s fight against Russian incursions. Holmes also said that he had reported what he had heard to John Eisenberg, Legal Advisor to the National Security Council, the same man to whom Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman had reported the July 25 call, and, once again, Eisenberg had done nothing. (Eisenberg is refusing to honor a subpoena to testify.)

Then, CNN dropped the story that at last year’s White House Hanukkah party Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman met privately with Trump and Giuiliani. After the meeting, Parnas told two people that the president had given him a secret mission to pressure the Ukraine government to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. The Wall Street Journal reports that in February, Parnas and Fruman met with the Ukraine President at the time, Petro Poroshenko, and his Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, offering to invite Poroshenko to a White House State dinner if he publicly announced an investigation. As I wrote here two days ago, this would have boosted both Poroshenko’s and Trump’s reelection campaigns. In March, Lutsenko smeared U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to an American reporter and Sean Hannity ran with the story on his show, but the scheme fell apart when voters elected Zelensky instead of reelecting the corrupt oligarch Poroshenko. Then they had to scramble to come up with a new plan, and the whole ham fisted Ukraine scandal took off.

The Ukraine scandal is fleshing out, and it is truly astonishing that there is not more evidence that can be read in Trump’s favor. This increasingly just looks like a shakedown that weakened national security to help Trump rig the 2020 election. Meanwhile, in northern Syria, where Turkish and Russian troops moved in when we moved out, the Russians boasted yesterday that they have now occupied a former U.S. air base.

Trump spent several hours today at Walter Reed hospital. The visit was unexpected and unannounced, but the White House said he had decided to have portions of his annual physical done three months early.

**************************************

Samantha Michaels
Samantha Michaels
Reporter
Mother Jones

Here’s Samantha Michaels @ Mother Jones:

https://apple.news/AIHrb7Qk7R5yRbYg7kHgTwg

Attorney General Bill Barr Is Getting Roasted for His Outrageous Speech Blasting Progressives

As the impeachment hearings continued, Attorney General Bill Barr on Friday trash-talked Democrats for attempting to “drown the executive branch with oversight demands,” saying they were working for political gain without thinking of the consequences.

“In waging a scorched-earth, no-holds-barred war against this administration, it is the left that is engaged in shredding norms and undermining the rule of law,” Barr told a room of attorneys at the annual gathering of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group that has been influential in determining President Donald Trump’s nominees for federal judges.

The remarks about Democrats ignoring the rule of law were especially ironic because they came a mere hours after Roger Stone, one of Trump’s previous advisers, was convicted on all counts for lying to Congress during its probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The attorney general’s speech also came on the second day of presidential impeachment hearings examining allegations that Trump attempted to interfere in the 2020 elections by asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Barr criticized Democrats for launching a “holy war” and using “any means necessary to gain momentary advantage,” while he said conservatives “tend to have more scruple over their political tactics and rarely feel that the ends justify the means.” 

. . . .

Barr reportedly received a standing ovation, but outside the halls of the Federalist Society, his remarks sparked outrage and intensified calls from the left to impeach not only the president, but the attorney general himself. Others were quick to roast Barr for his statements. “Bill Barr is the type of bare knuckles lawyer the Church would have hired thirty years ago to cover up sex abuse cases,” Richard Painter, a former White House ethics counsel, tweeted.

. . . .

“Yesterday AG Barr addressed a radical political group and gave one of the most vicious partisan screeds ever uttered by a US cabinet officer,” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) tweeted Saturday morning. “Barr says trump should have king-like powers. Barr is a liar and a fanatic and should be impeached and stripped of his law licenses.”

. . . .

*********************************

Read Samantha’s complete article which includes the full the two of a number of tweets at the link.

Amy Russo
Amy Russo
Reporter
HuffPost

And here’s Amy Russo @ HuffPost:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/attorney-general-william-barr-federalist-society-speech_n_5dd03689e4b01f982f02dd62

Hours after a new witness testified in the House’s latest impeachment hearing on Friday, Attorney General William Barr railed against Democrats for declaring a “war of resistance against this administration.”

In a speech before the conservative Federalist Society, Barr rebuked lawmakers for probing President Donald Trump’s potential power abuses, suggesting their efforts are illegitimate.

“The sheer volume of what we see today ― the pursuit of scores of parallel investigations through an avalanche of subpoenas ― is plainly designed to incapacitate the executive branch, and indeed is touted as such,” Barr said. “The costs of this constant harassment are real.”

Barr’s portrayal of oversight as harassment echoes Trump’s repeated claims that he is the victim of a partisan “witch hunt” rather than the subject of a justified inquiry into his dealings with Ukraine, which remain at the heart of Democratic-led impeachment proceedings.

“The fact of the matter is that, in waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of resistance against this administration, it is the left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and undermining the rule of law,” Barr added. “This highlights a basic disadvantage that conservatives have had in contesting the political issues of the day.”

***********************

Max Boot
Max Boot
Columnist
Washington Post

Here’s Max Boot in the WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/17/william-barrs-chilling-defense-virtually-unlimited-presidential-power/

President Trump is convinced he has the “absolute right” to do anything from asking other countries to investigate his political opponents to pardoning himself. But he couldn’t possibly tell you why — aside from his innate conviction that “when you’re a star, they let you do it” — you can get away with anything. Enter Attorney General William P. Barr to put a pseudo-intellectual gloss on Trump’s authoritarian instincts. In a Friday night speech to the Federalist Society, Barr gave a chilling defense of virtually unlimited executive authority.

Barr’s wrongheaded assumption was that “over the past several decades, we have seen steady encroachment on presidential authority by the other branches of government.” His view faithfully reflects the conservative consensus of the 1970s when he was a CIA analyst and a law student. Few serious analysts share that view today at a time when the president claims the authority to kill suspected terrorists anywhere in the world without any judicial oversight. In fact, conservatives decried President Barack Obama’s tendency to rule by fiat — for example, in protecting “dreamers” from deportation or reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran that wasn’t submitted for Senate ratification.

Trump has now taken rule-by-executive-order to the next level by declaring a “state of emergency” to spend money on his border wall that Congress refused to appropriate. Trump has also misused his authority in myriad other ways, including obstructing justice (as outlined in a special counsel report that Barr deliberately mischaracterized) and soliciting a bribe from Ukraine to release congressionally appropriated military aid.

Yet, to hear Barr tell it, Trump is somehow denied power by the nefarious “Resistance.” Barr decried Trump critics who do not view “themselves as the ‘loyal opposition,’” but rather “see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government.”

Earth to Barr: Trump does not treat his critics as “the loyal opposition.” He calls them “human scum,” “traitors” and “the enemy of the people,” using the language of dictators. And it is Trump and his toadies — not his opponents — who are “willing to use any means necessary to gain momentary advantage.”

Barr went on to blame the “Resistance” for Trump’s failure to get more nominees confirmed. The real problem is Trump’s incompetence and his preference for “acting” appointees to dodge the constitutional requirement to seek the Senate’s “advice and consent.” (Trump has not nominated anyone for nearly 20 percent of the top federal jobs.) If Barr wants to find a real abuse of the confirmation process, he should talk to Merrick Garland.

As devoid of self-awareness as his master, Barr whines about “the pursuit of scores of parallel ‘investigations’ through an avalanche of subpoenas.” He conveniently forgets that Republicans tried to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying about sex and spent years probing the Benghazi, Libya, attack in a failed attempt to blame Hillary Clinton. Trump is stonewalling congressional subpoenas at an unprecedented rate, forcing Congress to seek judicial assistance to enforce legitimate requests for documents and witnesses. But Barr denies that the courts have any right to “resolve … disputes” between the executive and legislative branches — effectively allowing the president to act like a king.

The attorney general went on to rail against judicial review of administration actions such as “the travel ban.” This was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court after the administration rewrote the initial versions, which constituted clear discrimination on religious grounds. Yet Barr is still aggrieved that the courts dared “to inquire into the subjective motivation behind governmental action” — i.e., to look at Trump’s own words about banning Muslims rather than accept the administration’s disingenuous explanations.

Barr blamed the courts and the president’s critics for the fact that so many administration actions have been challenged in court. The truth is Trump has nobody but himself to blame. Many of the lawsuits accuse the administration of violating the Administrative Procedure Act, which the executive branch can comply with simply by showing that its actions are not “arbitrary and capricious.” This is an incredibly low standard, which is why the normal “win rate” for the government in such cases is about 70 percent. According to the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, the Trump administration’s win rate is less than 7 percent.

Trump likes to blame such setbacks on “Obama judges,” but many of the judges ruling against him are Republican appointees. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., for example, wrote the 5-to-4 decision in June in which the Supreme Court blocked Trump’s attempt to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census.

“In this partisan age,” Barr sanctimoniously concluded, “we should take special care not to allow the passions of the moment to cause us to permanently disfigure the genius of our Constitutional structure.” He is right, but not in the way he intended. The real threat to “our Constitutional structure” emanates not from administration critics who struggle to uphold the rule of law but from a lawless president who is aided and abetted in his reckless actions by unscrupulous and unprincipled partisans — including the attorney general of the United States.

********************************

Mary Papenfuss
Mary Papenfuss
Contributor
HuffPost

Finally, let’s hear from Mary Papenfuss, also at HuffPost:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/william-barr-impeachment-federalist-society-speech_n_5dd0775fe4b0294748185c6c

Attorney General William Barr’s latest extreme defense of Donald Trump has triggered a wave of calls for his impeachment — and disbarment.

Richard Painter, the former chief White House ethics attorney in the George W. Bush administration, tweeted that Barr’s remarks Friday before the conservative Federalist Society were “another lunatic authoritarian speech” amid an impeachment investigation into the president. He claimed that Barr — a member of the conservative Catholic society Opus Dei — is “the type of bare knuckles lawyer the Church would have hired thirty years ago to cover up sex abuse cases.”

. . . .

*****************************

Read the rest of Mary’s article at the link.

******************************

Somewhat “below the radar screen:” Barr’s repetition of Session’s blatantly unethical performance by acting as a “quasi-judicial decision maker” in Immigration Court cases where he clearly has both an actual and apparent bias in favor of a party, the DHS, and against another party, the individual migrant, particularly any asylum seeker. 

Obviously, viewed through Barr’s perverted historical lens, we’ve made some seriously wrong moves.  According to Barr’s interpretation, we should have allied ourselves with Hitler during World War II. Now, there’s a guy who understood the concept of the “Unitary Executive.” And, he sure knew how to deal with opposing legislators, “the resistance,” and others who were “enemies of the state” or of “inferior stock.” Why on earth would we have aligned ourselves with, and helped rebuild, the noxious parliamentary democracies of the West?

One of our allies, Stalin, did actually demonstrate the wonderful power of the “Unitary Executive” — talk about a guy who WAS the State and annihilated all opposition, real and imagined! He certainly would have known what to do with subversives who preached “impeachment” under the Constitution!

But, concededly, Stalin’s godless communism doesn’t fit in well with Barr’s Catholic Christian theocracy (minus, of course, the social justice teachings of Christ and the Catholic Church). Hitler’s pure Aryian Christian superiority was a much better fit with Barr’s historical outlook.

Of course, according to the Barr view, the seminal figure in Republicanism, Abe Lincoln, erred by not aligning himself with Jeff Davis and the Confederacy. Davis certainly knew how to operate without much legislative accountability. And the founders of the Confederacy also possessed Barr’s superior understanding of the relationship between the State and the Divine: “establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity — invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God.” 

Sure, easy to believe that God was always a big fan of enslavement, rape, brutality, white privilege, and theft of services from enslaved African Americans, who also happened to be believers in God. Fits right in with Barr’s dehumanization of Hispanic workers, trashing of LGBTQ Americans, denial of rights to asylum seekers, threats to political opponents, and war on Hispanic Americans who have the audacity of wanting to vote and live peacefully in their communities without being terrorized by DHS enforcement.

George Washington, who wrongly refused to install himself as either King or “President for Life” was, according to Barr’s historical perspective, a dangerous wimp who diminished the potential powers of the “Unitary Executive.”

Undoubtedly, our Founders had their flaws. After all, the Constitution not only enshrined the dehumanization of African Americans, who had actually made the success and prosperity of the American Republic possible, but also excluded the majority of inhabitants from political participation. 

But, unlike Barr and his fellow “originalists,” our Founders were largely persons of vision and good will who had enough self awareness and humility to see a better and more dynamic future. They would certainly be shocked and dismayed to find out that rather than viewing our Constitution rationally, as a blueprint to be built upon for a better, more inclusive, more tolerant future, two plus centuries later, individuals like Barr holding supposedly responsible positions under our Republic, would be mindlessly and immorally urging us never to escape the limitations and mistakes of our distant past.

Disturbingly unqualified as he is to serve as our Attorney General, Barr does illustrate the moral and legal bankruptcy of the “fake doctrine” of “originalism.” It’s actually an intellectually indefensible excuse for an empowered, largely White, predominantly male, minority to exclude the majority of America’s inhabitants and their hopes and dreams from full participation in our democracy. It’s as ugly and dishonest as Barr’s own tenure as Attorney General.

PWS

11-18-19

“CONSTITUTIONAL CASTRATION”– CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: HOW THE FECKLESS GOP CONGRESS IS SCREWING THE MOST VULNERABLE AMONG US BY LETTING THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TRASH THE IMMIGRATION LAWS AND END-RUN THE CONSTITUTION WITHOUT CONGRESSIONAL PARTICIPATION! – “The Trump administration keeps scolding desperate immigrants to shape up and “follow the law.” When will cowardly members of Congress insist that the president do the same?”

 

Catherine Rampell
Catherine Rampell
Opinion Columnist
Washington Post

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-has-bulldozed-over-congress-on-immigration-will-lawmakers-ever-act/2019/11/14/67401466-0722-11ea-8292-c46ee8cb3dce_story.html

 

Catherine writes @ WashPost:

 

By

Catherine Rampell

Columnist

November 14, 2019 at 7:09 p.m. EST

Republican lawmakers seem to be having self-esteem issues.

The legislature, after all, is an equal branch of government with constitutionally granted powers. Lately, nearly all of those powers have been siphoned off by the president and his team of unelected bureaucrats. Yet, again and again, GOP lawmakers meekly submit to this constitutional castration.

To wit: Congress’s power of the purse? Gone. Regardless of how much money Congress appropriates for, say, a border wall or military aid to Ukraine, President Trump has made clear that he’ll ignore the number and pencil in his own.

Congress’s power to regulate commerce with foreign nations? Hijacked by a president who cites bogus “national security” rationales to impose tariffs whenever he likes.

Congress’s duty to “advise and consent” on major appointments? Cabinet and other senior government posts that require Senate confirmation have been atypically littered with “acting” officials instead. In fact, while immigration is ostensibly the president’s signature issue, Trump hasn’t had a single Senate-confirmed director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement since he took office. And though Democratic lawmakers may complain, nothing will change as long as Republicans control the Senate.

Which brings me to the most significant power Trump has stripped from Congress: its lawmaking authority. This is best illustrated by the administration’s actions basically rewriting immigration law wholesale, with nary a peep from GOP legislators.

Sure, on some immigration matters, Congress has relinquished its responsibilities, effectively giving Trump the ability to contort immigration policy as he sees fit.

Consider the “dreamers,” the young immigrants brought here as children who know no other country than the United States. They have long been in a legal limbo. Congress could resolve that limbo swiftly and easily by granting the dreamers permanent legal status and a pathway to citizenship. This would have the support of majorities of voters from both parties, and the Democratic-controlled House has already passed such legislation.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in the GOP-controlled Senate wrung their hands and watched helplessly from the sidelines as Trump announced his decision to kill the Obama-era program that protects the dreamers from deportation. Based on a hearing this week, the Supreme Court appears poised to uphold the president’s decision. Yet, despite claiming to care about the issue, Republicans remain unwilling to act.

Similarly, Congress long ago gave the president authority to set the annual cap on refugee admissions. Not surprisingly, if disappointingly, the Trump administration has used that authority to ratchet the ceiling down to a record low of 18,000. For context, during President Barack Obama’s last year of office, the ceiling was 110,000.

But there are other areas of immigration law on which Congress has acted, definitively and clearly, with legislative language that leaves little room for maneuvering by the executive. The Trump administration has flouted these laws anyway.

Take asylum law.

“Refugees” and “asylum seekers” both refer to immigrants fleeing violence or persecution, but, technically, “refugees” apply for sanctuary while still abroad, and asylum seekers apply while in the country of their destination. Unlike with refugeeadmissions, there are no legal caps on the number of people who may qualify for and receive asylum. The law does not allow the executive branch to set them, either.

But the Trump administration has effectively set its own limits.

Last year, for instance, the Trump administration tried to ban people from applying for asylum if they crossed between ports of entry — as most asylum seekers are now forced to do, because the administration has severely throttled (or “metered”) the number of people who may apply through a given port of entry per day.

This “asylum ban” was blocked by the courts — because Congress has explicitly said asylum seekers can apply whether or not they entered the United States “at a designated port of arrival.”

“The law is crystal, crystal clear on this,” says Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council.

With virtually no pushback from Republicans in Congress, Trump administration then implemented a sort of asylum ban 2.0. This one disqualifies asylum seekers who passed through another country on their way to the United States without first applying for asylum there. A separate legal challenge — one among many — is now working its way through the courts.

A host of other changes designed to serve as a backdoor limit on asylee admissions have also been announced in recent weeks. Last week, the administration announced a new processing fee for asylum seekers, which would effectively disqualify families fleeing with nothing but the clothes on their backs. This week, it proposed a rule denying many asylum seekers authorization to work while their cases are being adjudicated, which can take years. This will force more immigrants into the shadows, contrary to Congress’s intentions.

The Trump administration keeps scolding desperate immigrants to shape up and “follow the law.” When will cowardly members of Congress insist that the president do the same?

 

********************************************

Catherine and some other reporters “get it” as to what Trump is doing to the law, our democratic institutions, and our Constitution. How come Federal Appellate Judges, Supreme Court Justices, and GOP legislators stick their collective heads in their sand and pretend not to understand the true long-term ramifications of what they are letting Trump do? Why aren’t they protecting our Constitutional and civil rights, not to mention human rights?

It’s all part of “Dred Scottification” – the degradation and dehumanization of individuals while stripping them of their rights combined with a constant barrage of outright lies and false narratives. And, contrary to the apparent belief of many “Trump Toadies” throughout our system and the electorate, once Trump turns on them, which he eventually will, the rights they counted on for protection will be long gone. The total lack of empathy, the ability to understand and appreciate the pain and suffering of others, is perhaps the worst aspect of the Trump kakistocracy.

Thanks, Catherine, for your courageous and insightful writing!

 

PWS

11-15-19

 

 

MICHAEL GERSON @ WASHPOST: THE “TRULY TRUMPIAN MEN” SYMBOLIZE THE GOP’S DESCENT INTO WHITE NATIONALISM AND DISHONESTY:  “Miller and Jordan are giving us a taste of the Truly Trumpian Man — guided by bigotry, seized by conspiracy theories, dismissive of facts and truth, indifferent to ethics, contemptuous of institutional norms and ruthlessly dedicated to the success of a demagogue.”

Michael Gerson
Michael Gerson
Columnist
Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/stephen-miller-and-jim-jordan-give-us-a-taste-of-the-truly-trumpian-man/2019/11/14/e187e8b8-0725-11ea-b17d-8b867891d39d_story.html

Across the years of a presidential administration, the churn of politics and policy brings certain men and women to the top of U.S. politics. The past few days have demonstrated the paths to preferment and influence in the Trump years.

First is the case of Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to President Trump and the administration’s unofficial liaison to the alt-right world.

Miller is best known as the prime mover behind the Muslim travel ban and the main opponent of any political compromise involving compassion for Dream Act “dreamers.” Now, with the release of a trove of emails sent to Breitbart writers and editors in 2015 and 2016 (soon before Miller became a Trump administration official), we get a glimpse of Miller’s inspirations and motivations. In response to the massacre of nine black churchgoers by a white nationalist in 2015, Miller was offended that Amazon removed merchandise featuring the Confederate flag and was concerned about the vandalization of Confederate monuments. Miller encouraged attention at Breitbart to a “white genocide”-themed novel, featuring sexualized violence by refugees. He focused on crime and terrorism by nonwhites as the basis for draconian immigration restrictions. He complained about the “ridiculous statue of liberty myth” and mocked the “national religion” of “diversity.” He recommended and forwarded stories from a range of alt-right sources.

All this is evidence of a man marinated in prejudice. In most presidential administrations, a person with such opinions would be shown the White House exit. But most of Miller’s views — tenderness for the Confederacy, the exaggerated fear of interracial crime, the targeting of refugees for calumny and contempt — have been embraced publicly by the president. Trump could not fire his alt-right alter ego without indicting himself. Miller is safe in the shelter of his boss’s bigotry.

Second, there is Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the tireless, tendentious, often bellowing chief defender of Trump during the impeachment hearings.

Jordan is not, of course, alone in his heroic sycophancy. GOP Reps. Devin Nunes (Calif.), Mark Meadows (N.C.) and others try to equal him. Together they update Alexander Pope: Fools rush in where Mick Mulvaney and Rudy Giuliani fear to tread.

But Jordan has mastered the art of talking utter rubbish in tones of utter conviction. His version of the events at the heart of the impeachment inquiry? Rather than committing corruption, Trump was fighting corruption. Military assistance was suspended, in Jordan’s telling, while the president was deciding whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “legit” in his determination to oppose corruption. When Trump found that Zelensky was the “real deal,” the aid was released.

This is a bold but flimsy lie, of the type Trump has made common. Why, in this scenario, would Trump try to secure specific commitments from Zelensky to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and to examine Trump’s conspiracy theory about Ukrainian influence in the 2016 election? Are we supposed to believe that Trump employed these as random, theoretical examples of corruption that a worthy, crime-fighting leader would root out? And was the release of U.S. aid just two days after Congress was notified about the whistleblower report a coincidence as well?

Jordan asks us not to accept additional facts but to live in a substitute reality. Almost everyone who participated in these events — both professional staff and political appointees — has affirmed that Trump was employing leverage to secure his political objectives. It is the plain meaning of the reconstructed transcript of Trump’s call to Zelensky.

But none of this matters to Jordan or his colleagues. Consistency and coherence are beside the point. Their objective is not to convince the country; it is to maintain and motivate the base, and thus avoid Trump’s conviction in the Senate. The purpose is not to offer and answer arguments but to give partisans an alternative narrative. And the measure of Jordan’s success is not even the political health of his party (which is suffering from its association with Trump); it is the demonstrated fidelity to a single man.

The elevation of Trump to the presidency has given prominence to a certain kind of follower and permission for a certain set of social values. Bolsheviks once talked of creating the New Socialist Man. Miller and Jordan are giving us a taste of the Truly Trumpian Man — guided by bigotry, seized by conspiracy theories, dismissive of facts and truth, indifferent to ethics, contemptuous of institutional norms and ruthlessly dedicated to the success of a demagogue.

Every day of Trump’s term continues the moral deconstruction of the Republican Party and brings the further debasement of American politics.

*******************************

Let’s hear that again:

Every day of Trump’s term continues the moral deconstruction of the Republican Party and brings the further debasement of American politics.

Yup!

This also confirms what we already knew about Miller’s “role model,” his former boss and White Nationalist nativist “mentor’ Jeff  “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions. He’s someone who should have been disowned by the GOP ages ago and who has demonstrated “beyond a reasonable doubt” his total unfitness too hold public office!

PWS

11-15-19

“LET ‘EM DIE IN MEXICO” — U.S. ASYLUM OFFICER EXPOSES TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S INTENTIONAL RACIST VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS, ENABLED BY A COMPLICIT 9th CIRCUIT! — “The MPP both discriminates and penalizes. Implementation of the MPP is clearly designed to further this administration’s racist agenda of keeping Hispanic and Latino populations from entering the United States. This is evident in the arbitrary nature of the order, in that it only applies to the southern border. It is also clear from the half-hazard implementation that appears to target populations from specific Central American countries even though a much broader range of international migrants cross the southern border.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/12/scathing-manifesto-an-asylum-officer-blasts-trumps-cruelty-migrants/

Greg Sargent
Greg Sargent
Opinion Writer
Washington Post

Greg Sargent writes in the WashPost: 

November 12, 2019 at 3:47 p.m. EST

President Trump’s requirement that asylum seekers remain in Mexico while they await hearings in the United States is creating a new humanitarian crisis. Yet it isn’t generating nearly the outrage and media scrutiny that his horrific family separations did.

But now a deeply dismayed asylum officer has authored a remarkable manifesto that was obtained by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), as part of an investigation Merkley is conducting of Trump’s asylum policies.

The manifesto indicts the “Remain in Mexico” program from the inside in sweeping and scalding terms, describing it as illegal under U.S. law, a violation of the United States’ international human rights obligations and arbitrarily implemented to deliberately punish people for seeking asylum here.

The policy is “clearly designed to further this administration’s racist agenda of keeping Hispanic and Latino populations from entering the United States,” the asylum officer writes in the manifesto.

The asylum officer recently left their job, and in the missive, the officer says he or she could not continue to implement it “after careful consideration and moral contemplation.”

The officer’s condemnations of the policy are among the key revelations in a forthcoming assessment of Trump’s asylum policies by Merkley’s office.

Those policies include everything from ongoing efforts to send asylum seekers back to Honduras, which is “one of the most violent and unstable nations in the world,” to a new proposal to charge asylum applicants a $50 fee.

Merkley’s report, portions of which I’ve seen, will conclude that the administration has undertaken “systemic efforts” to “effectively rewrite U.S. asylum laws, rules and procedures,” with the overarching goal of “gutting the asylum system” but “without congressional approval or involvement.”

Merkley’s report will also conclude that Trump’s policies have “intentionally inflicted trauma” on asylum seeking families.

The Remain in Mexico policy — which is also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) — requires migrants seeking asylum to wait in Mexico pending hearings in the United States, with the ostensible goal of preventing them from disappearing into the interior during that waiting period. About 50,000 migrants have been relocated there.

Numerous critics have said it’s deeply cruel to knowingly force migrants to wait in places where they’ll be subjected to serious risk, and journalistic exposés and studies alike have documented that the MPPs do does just that.

The officer, who has repeatedly been in touch with Merkley’s office as part of its investigation, will remain anonymous.

But the officer’s lawyer — Dana Gold, senior counsel at the Government Accountability Project — confirmed to me the authenticity of the manifesto and confirmed that it accurately depicts the person’s circumstances.

“In addition to this whistleblower, we are representing several other Department of Homeland Security whistleblowers who have raised serious concerns about immigration-related abuses,” Gold said. “That Congress is taking these issues seriously is essential to promoting accountability and protecting ethical civil servants committed to upholding their oaths of office.”

Tensions have been rising between asylum officers and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that oversees the asylum system. And the union for asylum officers has already issued a legal brief condemning MPP amid litigation over the program.

But this asylum officer’s personal indictment of the policy goes much further.

For one thing, he or she accuses the administration of implementing the policy in an “arbitrary” manner:

The MPP both discriminates and penalizes. Implementation of the MPP is clearly designed to further this administration’s racist agenda of keeping Hispanic and Latino populations from entering the United States. This is evident in the arbitrary nature of the order, in that it only applies to the southern border. It is also clear from the half-hazard implementation that appears to target populations from specific Central American countries even though a much broader range of international migrants cross the southern border.

For another, he or she alleges that internal processes are breaking down. Under MPP, if asylum seekers in U.S. territory declare in their initial interview a fear of being returned to Mexico, they’re supposed to get a second screening, conducted by a trained asylum officer who is supposed to determine whether that fear is credible.

But the asylum officer charges that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — which didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment — is mismanaging the system in a way that’s deliberately designed to be punitive and to make it harder for applicants to succeed:

The implementation is calculated to prevent individuals from receiving any type of protection or immigration benefits in the future. As such, it is a punitive measure intended to punish individuals who attempt to request protection in the United States. There is no clearly established policy and system for notifying applicants of changes to hearing dates and times, or for the applicants to provide change of addresses to the courts and Border Patrol. Without a highly functional notice system, the administration has ensured that a high number of applicants will miss their court dates.

And the asylum officer blasts the program as “ad hoc” and rigged against applicants:

The current process places on the applicants the highest burden of proof in civil proceedings in the lowest quality hearing available. This is a legal standard not previously implemented by the Asylum Office and reserved for an Immigration Judge in a full hearing. However, we are conducting the interviews telephonically, often with poor telephone connections, while at the same time denying applicants any time to rest, gather evidence, present witnesses, and, most egregious of all, denying them access to legal representation.

In a statement sent my way, Merkley vowed more revelations to come.

“This whistleblower reveals that in multiple ways, the Trump administration has asked them and other American asylum officers to take actions they believe break their oath of office and violate the law,” Merkley told me. “In the coming days, I will be releasing a report that details the full scope of this administration’s efforts to gut our legal asylum system.”

What this will confirm again is that for Trump, the goal is to make it as hard as possible for people to apply for asylum who actually would likely qualify for it — further eroding our commitment to the principle that desperate people have the right to appeal for refuge here and get a fair hearing without fear of being returned to face catastrophe.

**********************************

So, why are those supposedly sworn to uphold the law, given the privilege of life-tenure, participating in overtly transparent human rights, legal, and constitutional violations? 

Why do “ordinary civil servants” have more legal understanding and courage than the “robed ones in the ivory tower?”  

Why are Federal Judges permitting a corrupt, biased, and racist Administration to cut off access to courts and punish individuals for exercising their legal rights under our laws? 

Why is it OK to use the legal system as a “deterrent” to those seeking legal refuge under our laws?

Assuming that our republic survives, the question for the future is what can we do to insure appointment of Federal Judges, at all levels, with integrity who possess the courage to stand up for the most vulnerable among us in the face of unconstitutional racism and White Nationalism. 

PWS

11-13-19

NIKKI HALEY:  How Ambitious Daughter Of Immigrants Became A Shill For White Nationalist, Xenophobic, Misogynistic Regime & Its Corrupt Leader — “All she had to do was to ignore her conscience, betray her colleagues and injure her country. A small price to pay for such a brilliant political future.”

Michael Gerson
Michael Gerson
Columnist
Washington Post

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/if-officials-believe-trump-is-a-danger-to-the-country-they-have-a-duty-to-say-so/2019/11/11/0541dc64-04bf-11ea-ac12-3325d49eacaa_story.html

Michael Gerson writes in the WashPost:

Nikki Haley used to be known as the other member of President Trump’s Cabinet who left with an intact reputation (in addition to former defense secretary Jim Mattis). In an administration more influenced by Recep Tayyip Erdogan than Ronald Reagan, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations often provided a more traditional rhetorical take on American foreign policy. Haley seemed genuinely to care about human rights and democracy, and to somehow get away with displaying such caring in public. Her confidence in national principles marked her as such a freakish exception that some speculated she might be the rogue, anti-Trump Trump official who wrote an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times.

But Trump’s corruption still pulls at a distance. Clearly convinced that Trumpism is here to stay, Haley has publicly turned against other officials in the administration who saw the president as a dangerous fool. She recounts an hour-long meeting with then-Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who “confided in me that when they resisted the president, they weren’t being insubordinate, they were trying to save the country.” The conspirators (in Haley’s telling) considered it a life-and-death matter. “This was how high the stakes were, he and Kelly told me. We are doing the best we can do to save the country, they said. We need you to work with us and help us do it.”

Haley, by her own account, refused to help. “Instead of saying that to me, they should’ve been saying that to the president, not asking me to join them on their sidebar plan,” she now explains. “It should’ve been, ‘Go tell the president what your differences are, and quit if you don’t like what he’s doing.’ But to undermine a president is really a very dangerous thing.”

Here Haley is confusing two categories. If a Cabinet member has a policy objection of sufficient seriousness, he or she should take that concern to the president. If the president then chooses against their position — and if implementing the decision would amount to a violation of conscience — an official should resign. Staying in office to undermine, say, a law or war you disapprove of would be a disturbing arrogation of presidential authority.

But there is an equally important moral priority to consider: If you are a national security official working for a malignant, infantile, impulsive, authoritarian wannabe, you need to stay in your job as long as you can to mitigate whatever damage you can — before the mad king tires of your sanity and fires you.

This paradox is one tragic outcome of Trumpism. It is generally a bad and dangerous idea for appointed officials to put their judgment above an elected official’s. And yet it would have been irresponsible for Mattis, Kelly, Tillerson and others not to follow their own judgments in cases where an incompetent, delusional or corrupt president was threatening the national interest.

Consider the case of former White House counsel Donald McGahn. According to the Mueller report, McGahn complained to then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus that Trump was trying to get him to “do crazy s–t.” McGahn (thankfully) told investigators he ignored presidential orders he took to be illegal.

Or consider a negative illustration. When it came to pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, the only morally mature adults in the room (and on the phone) were quite junior in rank. They expressed their concerns upward. But those above them — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney — had learned the lesson about officials fired for an excess of conscience. They apparently looked the other way as a friendly country was squeezed for political reasons.

On the whole, I’m glad that responsible officials such as Kelly and Mattis stayed as long as they did to prevent damage to the country. But I also think they have a moral obligation to come out before the 2020 election and say what they know about Trump’s unfitness. If Biden is the nominee, they might even get together and endorse him. But, in any case, if they believe Trump is a danger to the national interest, they eventually have a duty to say something. Saving the country requires no less.

As for Haley, she has now signaled to Trump Republicans that she was not a part of the “deep state,” thus clearing away a barrier to ambition. All she had to do was to ignore her conscience, betray her colleagues and injure her country. A small price to pay for such a brilliant political future.

******************************

Haley’s ridiculously disingenuous performance on Today when grilled by Savannah Guthrie about the facts was worthy of her new role model, “Don the Con.”

Although you wouldn’t know it from the sycophantic Haley, political appointees, including Cabinet Members, actually take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the U.S., not the President. They are also first and foremost public servants paid by the People, not personal retainers of Trump as Haley, Barr, Pompeo, and others have functioned. I’d actually put Kelly and Tillerson in that category too; they certainly made a mess out of things at DHS and State, respectively, by putting the President’s xenophobic political policies before the law and the public interest. 

And, if they in fact thought the President was endangering the U.S., they have kept it a secret after leaving. Compare these tawdry performances with those of the career public servants who have spoken out about Trump’s misdeeds even at the likely cost of their careers. And, unlike the stream of political appointees who have left in various stages of disgrace, they probably don’t have lucrative private sector jobs and/or fat book contracts awaiting them.

Expect Haley to “repackage herself” as a “powerful woman” and eventually as a Presidential candidate. She should be met with the same contempt as Kirstjen Nielsen and the few other GOP women who penetrated the Trump GOP’s “White Men Only Club” only to choose pandering to its corrupt leader over the welfare of our nation and advancement of humanity.

PWS

11-12-19

THE HATER-IN-CHIEF: “Trump has attacked and scapegoated immigrants in ways that previous presidents never have — and in the process, he has spread more fear, resentment and hatred of immigrants than any American in history.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/trump-has-spread-more-hatred-of-immigrants-than-any-american-in-history/2019/11/07/7e253236-ff54-11e9-8bab-0fc209e065a8_story.html

Professor Tyler Anbinder
Tyler Anbinder
Professor of History
George Washington University

Professor Tyler Anbinder writes in WashPost:

November 7, 2019 at 10:03 a.m. EST

President Trump insists that he harbors no prejudice against immigrants. “I love immigrants,” he told Telemundo in June. Indeed, Trump has married two immigrants — Ivana Zelníčková (from what is now the Czech Republic) and Melanija Knavs (born in what is now Slovenia). He does occasionally say something positive about an immigrant group, such as when he wondered why the United States couldn’t get more immigrants from Norway. But for the most part, Trump portrays immigrants as a threat or a menace, and he calls the largest segment of America’s newcomers — Latinos — “animals” and invaders.

As a historian who specializes in the study of anti-immigrant sentiment, I know that Trump is not the first president to denigrate newcomers to the country. But Trump has attacked and scapegoated immigrants in ways that previous presidents never have — and in the process, he has spread more fear, resentment and hatred of immigrants than any American in history.

Trump’s nativism is especially striking for its comprehensiveness. Over the centuries, nativists have leveled 10 main charges against immigrants: They bring crime; they import poverty; they spread disease; they don’t assimilate; they corrupt our politics; they steal our jobs; they cause our taxes to increase; they’re a security risk; their religion is incompatible with American values; they can never be “true Americans.”

Trump has made every one of these charges. No American president before him has publicly embraced the entire nativist worldview. A commander in chief who is also the nativist in chief has the potential to alter immigrants’ role in American society now and for generations to come.

There have, of course, been upsurges of nativism in previous eras, but presidents have rarely been the ones stoking the flames. President John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which among other things nearly tripled the time immigrants had to wait before they could become citizens and vote, but his voluminous writings contain nary a word critical of immigrants.

Millard Fillmore, president at the height of the massive influx of Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine, remained silent during his administration on the social tensions these newcomers caused. Even in 1856, when the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant American Party (popularly called the Know Nothing Party) nominated Fillmore to return to the White House, he and his surrogates eschewed attacks on immigrants and rebranded the party as a moderating force between proslavery Democrats and anti-slavery Republicans.

Congress has typically been the source of the greatest nativist zeal in national politics — and presidents have generally tried to tamp down that zeal. Rutherford B. Hayes and Chester Arthur vetoed legislation barring the immigration of Chinese laborers in the 1870s and 1880s, though Arthur later agreed to sign a 10-year ban. In subsequent decades, Grover Cleveland, William H. Taft and Woodrow Wilson vetoed bills making the ability to read a prerequisite for adult men to immigrate. Congress eventually overrode Wilson’s veto to enact such a law in 1917.

By the 1920s, most Americans were convinced that further limits on immigration were necessary. “America must be kept American,” President Calvin Coolidge declared in December 1923, following the political winds, and by “American,” he meant white in race, Anglo-Saxon in ethnicity and Protestant in religion. Coolidge endorsed the severe limits Congress placed on the immigration of Slavs, Poles, Italians, Greeks and Eastern European Jews and accepted a ban on immigration from Asia and Africa, as well.

Those racist restrictions were rescinded in 1965. When Lyndon Johnson sat at the feet of the Statue of Liberty and signed legislation that ended the discriminatory quotas, he predicted that the federal government would “never again shadow the gate to the American nation with the twin barriers of prejudice and privilege.” But Johnson could not have imagined a president like Trump.

The only Americans who came even remotely close to rivaling Trump’s nativist influence were more narrowly focused than the president is. Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford were widely admired anti-Semites whose views reached millions, but their animus was focused on powerful Jews at home and abroad, not Jewish immigrants in general. Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest, had millions of loyal radio listeners in the 1930s, but he, too, was more an anti-Semite than a broad nativist. None of them commanded the devotion of nearly as large a share of the population as Trump does.

John Tanton, who died this year, was a driving force behind the modern anti-immigration movement, organizing and raising money for a variety of groups that have advocated a reduction in immigration. But those groups didn’t have influence until Trump began spreading their ideas and appointing their leaders and allies to positions in his administration.

Trump’s anti-immigrant efforts have featured several classic nativist tropes. He falsely associates immigrants with crime, as when he said during his campaign that Mexicans are “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” In truth, immigrants commit significantly less crime than the native-born do. He scapegoats entire immigrant religious groups for the actions of one or two criminals, calling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” after Syed Rizwan Farook (who was not even an immigrant) and his wife (who was foreign-born) killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif. He perpetuates the notion that immigrants pose a public health threat, as when he wondered in 2018 why we let “all these people from shithole countries come here.” One of his objections, reportedly, was that Haitians “all have AIDS,” though the White House denies he said that. He’s making it harder for low-income immigrants to come here in ways that would almost certainly reduce immigration from Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean, justifying his proposal on the grounds that he needs to “protect benefits for American citizens.” And he argues that even the U.S.-born children of recent immigrants — if they are part of ethnic, religious or racial minorities — are not real Americans, as he suggested when he tweeted that four congresswomen of color should “go back” to “the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

What makes Trump more influential than any previous American nativist is the size of his audience and the devotion of his supporters. Trump has more than 66 million Twitter followers and a powerful echo chamber in conservative media, allowing him to instantaneously convey his ideas to a quarter of the adult population. Other presidents had passionate followers (Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan come to mind), but none of them expressed much, if any, animus toward immigrants. Trump’s rhetoric has changed the way many Americans view immigrants: Nearly a quarter now call immigration a “problem,” more than double the percentage who characterized it that way in 2015, and the highest share since Gallup began asking that question a quarter-century ago.

Trump has made public expressions of nativism socially acceptable for the first time in generations. As he lambasted Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a Somali immigrant, at a July rally in Greenville, N.C., the crowd erupted with chants of “Send her back,” echoing Trump’s notorious tweet. “There was a filter,” a Latino resident of Greenville noted after the rally, that previously prevented Americans from expressing such hatred of immigrants, but “now the filter has been broken. My Hispanic friends are afraid to go to the store. They’re afraid to do anything. It’s scary.”

Trump’s spread of nativism has led to an upsurge in animosity directed at immigrants. Those who read or hear the president’s nativist views are more likely to write offensive things on social media about the groups he targets, one political science study found. One study using data compiled by the Anti-Defamation League found that counties that hosted Trump rallies in 2016 saw a 226 percent increase in hate crimes in the following months, primarily assaults or acts of vandalism, compared to counties that didn’t host rallies. ABC News identified at least 29 cases in which violence or threats of violence were carried out, and the perpetrators targeted immigrants or those perceived to be immigrants more than any other group.

The president’s rhetoric inspires not merely petty violence but occasionally full-fledged acts of terrorism as well. Throughout the fall of 2018, Trump relentlessly sowed fears that an “invasion” of Central American refugees was imminent via an immigrant “caravan” heading through Mexico toward the United States. Before a gunman killed 11 worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018, he apparently justified his actions on the grounds that the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which these days assists refugees from all over the world, “likes to bring in invaders that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered.”

Five months later, the man accused of killing more than 50 Muslims at two mosques in New Zealand hailed Trump as a symbol “of renewed white identity” in an online manifesto. In August, a man traveled to El Paso with the goal of killing as many Latinos as possible, authorities said, slaying 22 people at a Walmart. A manifesto linked to him echoed many of the president’s favorite talking points: It condemned “the Hispanic invasion of Texas,” charged that immigrants are taking jobs from natives and lauded Republicans for reducing “mass immigration and citizenship.” These accused shooters all seemingly found Trump’s nativist rhetoric inspirational.

While this upsurge in nativist violence is terrifying, history suggests that, over the long term, those who embrace immigrants will win out over those who fear them. The percentage of Americans who want to cut immigration has risen since Trump took office, but that figure is still down by almost half since the mid-1990s. Ironically, Trump’s nativist pronouncements and actions may have galvanized Americans who oppose him to look even more favorably at immigrants than they did before. Seventy-six percent of Americans now say that immigration is good for the country — an all-time high in Gallup’s poll — while the percentage who call it harmful, 19 percent, is at an all-time low.

Anti-immigrant attitudes have always been part of American culture. They have spiked periodically — in the 1850s, in the 1920s — but those nativist upswings have proved ephemeral. The one we are witnessing today can be traced primarily to the uniquely powerful influence of Trump, the most successful purveyor of anti-immigrant sentiment in American history. But the admiration that the vast majority of Americans hold for immigrants cannot be extinguished by any man or woman, no matter how influential.

After all, most Americans understand that immigrants make America great.

Twitter: @TylerAnbinder

*************************************

Beyond the vileness and lies of Trump’s White Nationalist, racist, xenophobia, Professor Anbinder’s article ends on an upbeat note:

Anti-immigrant attitudes have always been part of American culture. They have spiked periodically — in the 1850s, in the 1920s — but those nativist upswings have proved ephemeral. The one we are witnessing today can be traced primarily to the uniquely powerful influence of Trump, the most successful purveyor of anti-immigrant sentiment in American history. But the admiration that the vast majority of Americans hold for immigrants cannot be extinguished by any man or woman, no matter how influential.

After all, most Americans understand that immigrants make America great.

Unfortunately, the “upward arc of history” will be too late to save the many individual lives and futures daily destroyed by Trump’s White Nationalist hate campaign.

That’s why the “New Due Process Army” is fighting to save lives and protect the Constitutional, legal, and human rights of everyone.

PWS

11-11-19

THE RETAINER:  How Billy Barr Betrays America To Protect Trump!

Emily Bazelon
Emily Bazelon
Staff Writer
NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/26/opinion/william-barr-trump.html

By Emily Bazelon in the NYT:

William Barr had returned to private life after his first stint as attorney general when he sat down to write an article for The Catholic Lawyer. It was 1995, and Mr. Barr saw an urgent threat to religion generally and to Catholicism, his faith, specifically. The danger came from the rise of “moral relativism,” in Mr. Barr’s view. “There are no objective standards of right and wrong,” he wrote. “Everyone writes their own rule book.”

And so, at first, it seemed surprising that Mr. Barr, now 69, would return after 26 years to the job of attorney general, to serve Donald Trump, the moral relativist in chief, who writes and rewrites the rule book at whim.

But a close reading of his speeches and writings shows that, for decades, he has taken a maximalist, Trumpian view of presidential power that critics have called the “imperial executive.” He was a match, all along, for a president under siege. “He alone is the executive branch,” Mr. Barr wrote of whoever occupies the Oval Office, in a memo to the Justice Department in 2018, before he returned.

pastedGraphic.png

William Barr in Senator Mitch McConnell’s office in January before hearings on his nomination to be attorney general.

Erin Schaff for The New York Times

Now, with news reports that his review into the origins of the Russian investigation that so enraged Mr. Trump has turned into a full-blown criminal investigation, Mr. Barr is arousing fears that he is using the enormous power of the Justice Department to help the president politically, subverting the independence of the nation’s top law enforcement agency in the process.

Why is he giving the benefit of his reputation, earned over many years in Washington, to this president? His Catholic Lawyer article suggests an answer to that question. The threat of moral relativism he saw then came when “secularists used law as a weapon.” Mr. Barr cited rules that compel landlords to rent to unmarried couples or require universities to treat “homosexual activist groups like any other student group.” He reprised the theme in a speech at Notre Dame this month.

. . . .

*************************

Read the rest of Emily’s article at the link.

Like most bigoted theocrats, including his nominally Methodist predecessor Sessions, Barr “cherry picks” religious teachings. Barr’s White Nationalist cruelty and intolerance, particularly against migrants, the most vulnerable among us, flies directly in the face of Catholic social justice teachings.

Sessions planned to turn the DOJ into a “White Nationalist Law Firm,” targeting migrants, the LGBTQ community, African Americans, women, and lawyers, among others. Sure, he refused to violate ethics by quashing the investigation of Trump. But, that’s more a case of protecting himself than it is a courageous stand against Trump.

Barr has continued the assault on Due Process and the American justice system, while also adding the dimension of misrepresenting the Mueller investigation and ignoring ethics to protect Trump.

PWS

10-30-19