"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt and Dr. Alicia Triche, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
Critics were stunned Saturday after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas scolded Americans for not accepting controversial rulings — after his own wife battled against the results of a legitimate presidential election.
Thomas chided a distraught public in comments Friday at a judicial conference in Atlanta following the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would gut Roe v. Wade and a half-century of the right to an abortion.
He complained that Americans are “addicted” to results they want — while “not living with” rulings they oppose. He warned that the court will not be “bullied” in the face of protest. Declining respect for the law and institutions, Thomas warned, “bodes ill for a free society.”
Thomas detractors were agog. Not only has his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, refused to “live with” the presidential election, he was the sole Supreme Court justice to vote that former President Donald Trump should not have to release his White House documents to the House committee investigating last year’s insurrection.
Thomas has also repeatedly attempted to rip up legal precedence set by the court.
“The irony is so thick you wonder if it’s maybe a Clarence Thomas impersonator,” former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman said on MSNBC Saturday.
“Among other things, this is a guy who has spent a lifetime trying to take a battering ram to all the Supreme Court major precedents” of law, Litman added. “He’s now saying people don’t respect the law enough. That’s even leaving aside all the controversies he has engendered, as has his wife. It’s just … remarkable.”
. . . .
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Read the full article at the link.
There is no end to the hypocrisy and subversiveness of the Thomas Clan and the far-right.
Robert Reich Former US Secretary of Labor Professor of Public Policy CAL Berkeley Creative Commons License
Robert Reich writes in The Guardian:
House Republicans are blaming Democrats for the rise in Chipotle burrito prices.
America’s richest men pay $0 in income tax. This is wealth supremacy | Robert Reich
You heard me right. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) issued a statement on Wednesday claiming that Chipotle’s recent decision to raise prices on their burritos and other menu products by about 4% was caused by Democrats.
“Democrats’ socialist stimulus bill caused a labor shortage and now burrito lovers everywhere are footing the bill,” said an NRCC spokesman, Mike Berg.
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It seems Republicans have finally found an issue to run on in the 2022 midterm elections. Apparently Dr Seuss and Mr Potato Head weren’t gaining enough traction.
The GOP’s tortured logic is that the unemployment benefits in the American Rescue Plan have caused workers to stay home rather than seek employment, resulting in labor shortages that have forced employers like Chipotle to increase wages, which has required them to raise their prices.
Hence, Chipotle’s more expensive burrito.
This isn’t just loony economics. It’s dangerously loony economics because it might be believed, leading to all sorts of stupid public policies.
Start with the notion that $300 per week in federal unemployment benefits is keeping Americans from working.
Since fewer than 30% of jobless workers qualify for state unemployment benefits, the claim is that legions of workers have chosen to become couch potatoes and collect $15,000 a year rather than get a job.
Republicans have found an issue to run on. Apparently Dr Seuss and Mr Potato Head weren’t gaining enough traction
I challenge one Republican lawmaker to live on $15,000 a year.
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In fact, evidence suggests that workers who are holding back from re-entering the job market don’t have childcare or are still concerned about their health during the pandemic.
Besides, if employers want additional workers, they can do what they necessarily do for anything they want more of but can’t obtain at its current price – pay more.
It’s called capitalism. Republicans should bone up on it.
When Chipotle wanted to attract more workers, it raised its average wage to $15 an hour. That comes to around $30,000 a year per worker – still too little to live on but double the federal unemployment benefit.
Oh, and there’s no reason to suppose this wage hike forced Chipotle to raise the prices of its burrito. The company had other options.
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Chipotle’s executives are among the best paid in America. Its chief executive, Brian Niccol, raked in $38m last year – which happens to be 2,898 times more than the typical Chipotle employee. All Chipotle’s top executives got whopping pay increases.
So it would have been possible for Chipotle to avoid raising its burrito prices by – dare I say? – paying its executives less. But Chipotle decided otherwise.
I’m not going to second-guess Chipotle’s business decision – nor should the NRCC.
. . . .
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Read the full article at the link.As Reich cogently points out, the GOP’s false claim to be the “party of working people” is totally outrageous!
“Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers” EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)Gabe Gutierrez NBC News Correspondent Atlanta, GA
Reminds me of the essay I recently posted from my friend, Don Kerwin at CMS:
The number of unaccompanied children and asylum-seekers crossing the US-Mexico border in search of protection has increased in recent weeks. The former president, his acolytes, and both extremist and mainstream media have characterized this situation as a “border crisis,” a self-inflicted wound by the Biden administration, and even a failure of US asylum policy. It is none of these things. Rather, it is a response to compounding pressures, most prominently the previous administration’s evisceration of US asylum and anti-trafficking policies and procedures, and the failure to address the conditions that are displacing residents of the Northern Triangle states of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras), as well as Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, and other countries…
The real immigration crisis is not at the border, but in the failure to respond effectively to the conditions driving forced migration, to establish orderly and viable legal immigration policies, to legalize the increasingly long-tenured undocumented population, and to reform and invest sufficiently in the US asylum and immigration court systems.
Donald M. Kerwin Executive Director Center for Migration Studies
It also echoes the words of veteran journalist Marc Cooper, posted by my friend Dan Kowalski over on LexisNexis Immigration Community:
When I was in Mexico reporting on the exodus, I would talk with dozens of migrants who were just a an hour or two away from starting their trek and, to a person, not one of them said they paid any attention to new US laws and regs as they were determined to cross no matter what. And no matter the sacrifices.
Dan Kowalski Online Editor of the LexisNexis Immigration Law Community (ILC)
Even the WashPost editorial page writers “get” the reality of human migration in a way the nativist fear-mongers never will:
Yet despite fearmongering by Republicans, the current influx is neither a public health emergency nor a national security threat. The vast majority of those allowed to enter the country will join relatives here while their asylum claims plod along. That wait is too long — it can stretch to three years or more — and the administration insists it will shrink the backlog. It has also earmarked $4 billion in aid from the pandemic relief bill for Central America — with strings attached to prevent its misuse — to attack the conditions that make life miserable there and drive migrants to seek refuge in this country.
Dumping Asylum Seekers in Honduras Artist: Monte Wolverton Reproduced under license
Still, sadly, facts and reality seem largely irrelevant here.
Despite denials from Secretary Mayorkas, the Biden Administration appears to be believing Kevin McCarthy’s BS on some level.
Thursday, the Administration basically negotiated a “lite version” of Trump’s “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico” — essentially trading AstroZenica vaccine (which wasn’t approved for use in the U.S. anyway) for Mexico’s agreement to step up harsh enforcement measures against migrants crossing their Southern Border and to warehouse families arbitrarily rejected without due process by the U.S. under our bogus CDC directive. We already have seen how well that works out!
A girl peers out from an encampment at the U.S.-Mexico border where she and several hundred people waited to present themselves to U.S. immigration to seek asylum. / Photo by David Maung
Any way you cut it, the realities of human migration, the lives of the desperate individuals involved, the views of human rights experts and advocates, and our supposed commitment to international conventions, the rule of law, and Constitutional Due Process take a back seat when the “bogus border debate” shifts into high gear.
There is actually a very simple truth here: “Forced migration” is not “optional!” In fact, a number of forced migrants prefer “death in the attempt” to “death in place.”
Therefore, all the “deterrents,” “border militarization,” “Baby Jails,” and “stay home statements” won’t ultimately stop the inexorable flow (although they might temporarily divert, modulate, or vary it— usually just enough for the “powers that be” to declare “victory at sea” as a result of their failed policies while ignoring the human carnage and lost opportunities they leave behind).
Professor Philip G. Schrag Georgetown Law Co-Director, CALS Asylum Clinic, Author of “Baby Jails”
Sure, there is a timing factor. Weather, the “business plans” and propaganda of smugglers (Trump’s “enforcement only” policies have been a boon for them in more ways than one, not only boosting their fees, but diverting enforcement resources away from the “real” law enforcement problems at the border involving drugs and human exploitation), and Biden’s pledge to restore humanity and the rule of law to America all factor into the equation in some way.
But, they are not the the primary causes of forced migration, except to the extent that climatechange (ignored and worsened by Trump and the GOP) has aggravated the poverty and economic disorder in the Northern Triangle by destroying the livelihoods of many farmers and making their land essentially worthless.
Tone-deaf GOP politicos like McCarthy and Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) apparently think the solution is to continue to mock the rule of law, violate the Constitution, and simply declare the Southern Border closed forever, al a Stephen Miller. Let families and children “die in place” in their home countries, die on the journey at the hands of other governments, or rot forever in Mexico — “Out of sight, out of mind.” As long as it isn’t happening in our country and being covered by our news outlets, who cares about human lives? That was certainly the Trump approach!
That’s hardly a “solution,” except in neo-Nazi or Soviet-era terms. The harshest and most inhuman approaches will, as they have in the past and continue to do, fail to stop desperate humans who want to survive from doing what’s necessary to save their lives and preserve their families’ futures, even when that interferes with the GOP’s “whitewashed” version of “American greatness.”
The solution involves following Constitutional due process, re-establishing the rule of law (including a radical “reform and replace” of our dysfunctional Immigration Courts), and adhering to our international obligations, both in letter and spirit. It also requires an expanded, much more robust, legal immigration system that reflects the demands of our economy, the needs of migrants, and the realities of human migration, particularly from Latin America. Like it or not, there will be more immigration.
As I have said before: “There are many ways in which we can diminish our own humanity, but none of them will stop human migration.”
Will G. Reaper Become The Lasting Image of America’s 21st Century Human Rights & Racial Justice Failures In The Eyes Of The Rest Of Humanity & Future Generations? Image: Hernan Fednan, Creative Commons License
Contrary to the GOP blather, immigration, voluntary, forced, coerced, legal, extra-legal, white, non-white, Christian, non-Christian, is what the real America is all about, for better or worse. Overall, immigration is a positive force for America.
Here’s a great essay on the positive nature of immigration by Pedro Gerson on Slate. Pedro isthe director of the Immigration Law Clinic at the Louisiana State University Law Center, and a former immigration staff attorney at the Bronx Defenders. The latter organization has been home to a number of notable members of the NDPA.
Pedro Gerson Director, Immigration Law Clinic LSU Law Center SOURCE: Twitter
As Pedro says, human migration to America will continue notwithstanding GOP xenophobes. The only question is whether we will have the wisdom and courage to work with and take advantage of its power in constructive, creative, forward looking ways, rather than trying to “recreate Jim Crow!”
Or, will we continue, as GOP restrictionists urge, to squander resources, goodwill, and human potential on futile efforts to eradicate what is perhaps the oldest and most fundamental phenomenon of human existence?
🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever! Restore the rule of law! Fix The Disgraceful, Dysfunctional Immigration Courts, Judge Garland! End White Nationalist racism!
Donald M. Kerwin Executive Director Center for Migration Studies
In a new essay for the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS), CMS’s Executive Director Donald Kerwin writes:
The number of unaccompanied children and asylum-seekers crossing the US-Mexico border in search of protection has increased in recent weeks. The former president, his acolytes, and both extremist and mainstream media have characterized this situation as a “border crisis,” a self-inflicted wound by the Biden administration, and even a failure of US asylum policy. It is none of these things. Rather, it is a response to compounding pressures, most prominently the previous administration’s evisceration of US asylum and anti-trafficking policies and procedures, and the failure to address the conditions that are displacing residents of the Northern Triangle states of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras), as well as Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, and other countries…
The real immigration crisis is not at the border, but in the failure to respond effectively to the conditions driving forced migration, to establish orderly and viable legal immigration policies, to legalize the increasingly long-tenured undocumented population, and to reform and invest sufficiently in the US asylum and immigration court systems.
Thanks Don for speaking out against the scandalous GOP complete “border BS,” all too often parroted by the so-called “mainstream press.” Read the rest of Don’s essay at the link.
Don has spent his entire career solving migration and human rights problems. The Biden Administration and everyone who believes in American democracy should listen to “practical experts” like Don, rather than ignorant, racially-motivated GOP politicos and White Nationalist nativists spouting the “same old, same old” myths, fear-mongering, and unhelpful “non-solutions.”
If xenophobic rhetoric, cruelty, officially-sanctioned child abuse, evading our own legal and humanitarian responsibilities, and “enforcement only” were the “solutions,” the “problem at the Southern Border” — which has existed in one form or another for over a half century, would long ago have been solved. We can’t solve humanitarian situations that create forced migration with unilateral law enforcement gimmicks and cruelty toward the humans fighting for their lives. Human migration long pre-existed the formation of nation states and establishment of national boundaries.
Administration after administration, of both parties, have squandered time and taxpayer money on unsuccessful efforts to “enforce their way” out of forced migration situations. Contrary to GOP blather, Democratic Administrations have been almost as fixated as the GOP with unsuccessfully “detaining, deterring, and enforcing” their way out of human problems that demand more thoughtful human solutions.
All Administrations at some point prematurely claim that their efforts have “succeeded.” None actually have succeeded in addressing the causes of the migration. Therefore, none of these “false solutions” proves “durable.”
Significantly, Don is one of the few commentators to fully grasp the integral connection between the Trump regime’s complete destruction of the integrity of the Immigration Courts and its lawless, yet highly ineffective, border policies.
Real solutions don’t kill, harm, and maim refugees and forced migrants, encourage criminal cartels and corrupt foreign officials to prey on them, and stack up desperate humans in dangerous conditions just across the border because US Government officials were too biased and incompetent to operate under any semblance of the rule of law.
We can abide by our own laws, international norms, our Constitution, human decency, and common sense. It isn’t rocket science.
But, it does require a combination of expertise, courage, humanity, and practical problem solving that has been conspicuously absent from our governing structure since 2017, and severely undervalued before that.
Also, it’s certainly not that the Biden Administration has suddenly re-established due process and the rule of law at the border. Far from it!
The vast majority of those arriving at the border, even those who are applying at legal ports of entry, are unceremoniously and summarily removed without any process at all, let alone due process of law. This is all based on a largely bogus Trump-initiated exercise of authority by the CDC to use COVID-19 as a pretext to suspend the rule of law and constitutional due process at the border.
Moreover, we shouldn’t forget that even with the Biden Administration’s gradual efforts to re-establish a legal process for asylum seekers, unaccompanied children are still being held in Government detention for far longer than the 72-hours permitted under law. This problem won’t be solved, as some GOP nativists incredibly suggest, by dumping kids back across the Mexican Border, returning them to danger in their home countries without regard to their individual situations, or forcing them to turn to smugglers to make their way to relative safety in the interior of the U.S.
Nor will it be solved by long-term detention in disgraceful and inhumane “Baby Jails!” Ask my Georgetown Law colleague and author Professor Phil Schrag of the CALS Asylum Clinic about that!
Interestingly, some of the biggest complainers spreading the “open borders myth” are Greg Abbott and other Texas GOP politicos who have prematurely “reopened their state” in the middle of a pandemic in blatant contravention of best medical and public health advice. So, you can summarily dismiss their “crocodile tears” and bogus “hand wringing” about public health and safety.
That’s particularly true since the GOP is just coming off a massive example of how their incompetent mis-governance of Texascaused unnecessary misery and loss of life among Texas residents as a result of a highly predictable and long-foreseen “weather emergency.” Why does the mainstream media often continue to treat these “political hacks,” who couldn’t “govern” their way out of a paper bag, as credible spokespersons on anything, let alone human rights situations of which they have no expertise whatsoever?
🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever! Re-Establish The Rule Of Law, Including Full, Robust Humanitarian Protections At The Border& In Our Disgracefully Dysfunctional Immigration “Courts.”
Republicans are convinced that attacking President Biden’s border policies will win them the midterms. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has gleefully labeled the situation there “Biden’s border crisis.”
In this, Republicans are benefiting from a media debate that has gone off the rails.
There’s a huge hole in this GOP attack, but it’s rarely described clearly in news reports and commentary. You can read endless headlines warning of a “crisis.” But even if that’s so, a crisis relative to what, exactly ?
What’s missing is a serious comparison with the pre-Biden status quo. It’s as if the current situation exists in a vacuum: Before there was no crisis, and now there’s a crisis .
That’s absurd. The situation under former president Donald Trump was substantially worse from a humanitarian and a pragmatic governing perspective: worse for the migrants, worse for the rule of law and worse for our country.
Biden is cleaning up Trump’s mess
It’s true that child and teenage migrants are overwhelming our facilities.
Because they can’t get released alone, they must be held at Border Patrol facilities for 72 hours before getting transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which places them with relatives or guardians. The ORR facilities are jammed, backlogging border facilities.
This is a terrible situation. But it’s happening in large part because Biden is undoing a Trump policy that should be undone.
Due to covid-19, the previous administration turned away most asylum seekers — without hearings — under a legal provision allowing a temporary block on noncitizens from entering to protect public health.
Biden is no longer applying this provision to unaccompanied children and teenagers (while keeping it for adults), helping fuel child backlogs. But that’s a move in the right direction, both from a humanitarian and rule-of-law perspective.
Coronavirus will be tamed before long, and we have a legal obligation to allow migrants to exercise their right to seek asylum. And as David Bier notes, that provision is not for controlling migrant flows outside a genuine public health rationale. If anything, expelling adults abuses it.
So continuing to use this tool is not a tenable long-term solution to the humanitarian problem, and it’s not in keeping with the rule of law. That requires letting in the kids, and we will have to allow more adults to apply for asylum. The question is how we manage it.
. . . .
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Read Greg’s full op-ed at the link.
I understand why Fox News, Breitbart, and the rest of the “truth averse” right wing media shills promote the GOP’s racist, xenophobic “border crisis” myths.
What I don’t get is why the so-called “mainstream media” doesn’t do its homework on the real situation on the border and the Trump-created mess facing Biden in restoring some sense of order and lawful behavior to an intentionally broken and dysfunctional system.
A few journalists like Greg, his WashPost colleague Arelis Hernandez, Cindy Carcamo (LA Times), Nicole Narea (Vox News), and Priscilla Alvarez (CNN), to name some, have taken the time to get it right (or close to right). But, far too many reporters who should know better just repeat the Abbott, McCarthy, GOP disingenuous nonsense without critical analysis or pushback.
And, what’s sorely missing is the perspective of those at the heart of this situation: the kids and families faced with such a desperate situation in their home countries that they are willing to seek mercy and refuge in a country that proudly advertises its lack of respect for their humanity, our own laws, and international norms that are supposed to insure fair and humane treatment.
They aren’t numbers, stats, bar graphs, and trend lines — they are human beings. They assert rights to apply for refuge under international norms that the U.S. has written into laws –laws we have unilaterally decided not to follow.
The overwhelming majority seek not to “evade” authorities, but to turn themselves in to our legal system: A system that functionally no longer exists at our Southern Border thanks to Trump and, to some extent, the Supremes. This is neither a “law enforcement” nor a “national security” crisis — it’s a fundamental breakdown in our legal system and a betrayal of humane values.
That’s the real problem here. It originated long before the Biden Administration. To date, no GOP politico has offered any type of constructive solution. And, too few journalists have held the GOP nativists accountable for their racist-inspired lies, misrepresentations, myths, and lack of any semblance of constructive proposals for rational, lawful, governance — real solutions for problems aggravated by their own toxic, inhumane, and often illegal policies!
There, of course, are pressing humanitarian issues to address along the U.S./Mexico border. But to say that this issues are a result of “open border policies” is simply wrong. No major party political leader to my knowledge is calling for “open borders.” Rather, the “open borders” mantra is something that Republican politicians invoke to attack immigration policies that they do not like.
Democrats have another explanation for the current situation at the border. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told ABC News’ “This Week” that the policies of the Trump administration, which radically transformed immigration enforcement from 2017-21, are to blame for the recent increase in unaccompanied migrant children at the southern border,
“This is a humanitarian challenge to all of us,” Pelosi said. “What the administration has inherited is a broken system at the border and they are working to correct that in the children’s interests.”
Thanks, Kevin, for adding some reality and perspective to the discussion. You can read Abbott’s statement at the link. Notably, the Republicans have offered no constructive solutions to this humanitarian issue, either in or out of power, other than to engage in child abuse and continually violate the laws, both international and domestic.
The criticism from the likes of Abbott, who as “Governor” of Texas has presided over a power grid disaster that actually killed and threatened the health of Texas residents and who has thumbed his nose at public health recommendations that save lives, is particularly disingenuous. And, naturally, the dangerous and deadly results of Abbott’s and the GOP’s mis-governance of Texas have fallen disproportionately on Latinos and other communities of color. The Abbott/GOP response has been to attempt to disenfranchise citizens of color in Texas!
The same can be said of GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy whose main contribution to America’s safety and security has been to whitewash the deadly assault on our Capitol that his “supreme leader” orchestrated. Again, a person with no credibility.
Those seeking a more nuanced and accurate picture of what’s really happening at the Southern Border should read the lengthy report of Arelis Hernandez in the WashPost:
Migrants are not overrunning U.S. border towns, despite the political rhetoric
Leaders in Texas border towns say their economies are suffering because of pandemic restrictions on cross-border travel.
. . . .
City officials and nonprofit organizations can’t force families to stay in the hotels but Darling, the McAllen mayor, said so far no one they track has left isolation prematurely.
“We tell them if they want to leave on our buses, they need to follow our rules,” he said. The city has spent nearly $200,000 of taxpayer money it hopes will be reimbursed by the federal government, but Abbott’s rejection of Federal Emergency Management Agency funding from the Biden administration will complicate matters for localities.
Darling said his city is full of compassionate people, and they are doing the rest of the country a favor in taking care of migrant families on the front end of their journeys.
Along the border, faith organizations, local emergency managers and immigration advocates say they have learned from previous surges how best to coordinate. They are preparing to receive flights and buses full of asylum seekers, mostly recently released families with small children, to ease capacity issues that critics say the Department of Homeland Security officials should have anticipated.
Coronavirus restrictions have put capacity limits on shelters run by community organizations on the U.S. side of the border, but so far the numbers are not at 2019 levels, said Pastor Michael Smith of the Holding Institute in Laredo. Shelters and temporary detention facilities operated by the U.S. Health and Human Services’ contractors, however, are over capacity.
But without more orderly intervention, the numbers could overwhelm. The Biden administration plans to deploy FEMA to the border to help with the migration surge as the administration tries to quickly scale up space to temporarily hold and process migrants and unaccompanied children — many between the ages of 13 and 17.
“The failure to have an administrative process is causing a humanitarian crisis,” Smith said during a news conference organized by Laredo activists. “There are solutions to the issues, but they are not solutions that call for militarizing the border.”
“We need robust infrastructure at our ports of entry to handle people seeking asylum,” said Tannya Benavides, of the No Border Wall coalition. “We need more lawyers and judges, not more troops or technology.”
Arelis R. Hernandez Southern Border Reporter Washington Post
Great article by Arelis! I highly recommend it. My only caveat is that we need not just more lawyers and judges, certainly correct, but better Immigration Judges who are experts in asylum law, have experience representing asylum seekers, and can fairly, efficiently, and consistently identify those with valid claims to protection under the law before it was perverted by the Trump regime. Also, the Government could use more qualified Asylum Officers who could screen and finally adjudicate the grantable cases, under correct legal criteria set forth by better-qualified Immigration Judges and a completely new due-process-human rights-oriented BIA without even having to send the cases to court.
These are the bold steps necessary to get out of the cycle of “same old, same old” — which inevitably ends with harsh measures directed at asylum seeking families and children that do nothing to address the causes of forced migration. “Enforcement-only deterrent measures” never have solved, and never will solve, the long-term problem in a constructive manner. The cycle of failed, yet expensive and inhumane deterrents, just keeps repeating itself Administration after Administration.
I have already suggested tapping into retired Asylum Officers and other retired USCIS Adjudicators with the necessary asylum expertise. I’m betting that my retired Round Table colleague, and former Asylum Officer and UN Official, Judge Paul Grussendorf would be available to help lead such an effort.
To solve this problem, the Biden Administration must put some expertswho understand the practicalities of refugee and asylum situations in place and let them solve the problem. It should come as no shock that the current gangs at DHS and EOIR —largely holdovers who participated in the Trump regime’s cruel, failed, and illegal “enforcement only” policies at the border — are not going to be able to get the job done. At least they can’t without some effective “adult supervision” from those committed to humane, legal, and timely processing of asylees and other migrants in full compliance with due process and best practices.
The Trump regime eschewed any attempt to build a fair, effective, timely asylum adjudication system that complied with domestic and international law as well as due process. Instead, they concentrated on eradicating the entire U.S. refugee and protection system through regulations (many enjoined), Executive Orders (some enjoined), bogus administrative “precedents,” and stacking the Immigration Courts with overtly anti-asylum or “go along to get along” “judges.” Right now, the entire system is in shambles — the most obvious example being the totally dysfunctional mess at EOIR!
To “win the game,” the Biden Administration needs to get the right players on the field. While there has been some notable progress, that hasn’t happened to date. And, with politicos like Abbott and McCarthy stirring the pot daily, time is running to get the “A Team” in place to combat their lies, distortions, and nonsense.
Pennsylvania Lawmaker Played Key Role in Trump’s Plot to Oust Acting Attorney General
The congressman’s involvement underlined how far the former president was willing to go to overturn the election, and Democratic lawmakers are beginning to call for investigations into those efforts.
Representative Scott Perry first made President Donald J. Trump aware that a relatively obscure Justice Department official was sympathetic to Mr. Trump’s view that the election had been stolen.
WASHINGTON — When Representative Scott Perry joined his colleagues in a monthslong campaign to undermine the results of the presidential election, promoting “Stop the Steal” events and supporting an attempt to overturn millions of legally cast votes, he often took a back seat to higher-profile loyalists in President Donald J. Trump’s orbit.
But Mr. Perry, an outspoken Pennsylvania Republican, played a significant role in the crisis that played out at the top of the Justice Department this month, when Mr. Trump considered firing the acting attorney general and backed down only after top department officials threatened to resign en masse.
It was Mr. Perry, a member of the hard-line Freedom Caucus, who first made Mr. Trump aware that a relatively obscure Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, the acting chief of the civil division, was sympathetic to Mr. Trump’s view that the election had been stolen, according to former administration officials who spoke with Mr. Clark and Mr. Trump.
Mr. Perry introduced the president to Mr. Clark, whose openness to conspiracy theories about election fraud presented Mr. Trump with a welcome change from the acting attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, who stood by the results of the election and had repeatedly resisted the president’s efforts to undo them.
Mr. Perry’s previously unreported role, and the quiet discussions between Mr. Trump and Mr. Clark that followed, underlined how much the former president was willing to use the government to subvert the election, turning to more junior and relatively unknown figures for help as ranking Republicans and cabinet members rebuffed him.
It is unclear when Mr. Perry, who represents the Harrisburg area, met Mr. Clark, a Philadelphia native, or how well they knew each another before the introduction to Mr. Trump. Former Trump administration officials said that it was only in late December that Mr. Clark told Mr. Rosen about the introduction brokered by Mr. Perry, who was among the scores of people feeding Mr. Trump false hope that he had won the election.
But it is highly unlikely that Mr. Trump would have known Mr. Clark otherwise. Department officials were startled to learn that the president had called Mr. Clark directly on multiple occasions and that the two had met in person without alerting Mr. Rosen, those officials said. Justice Department policy stipulates that the president initially communicates with the attorney general or the deputy attorney general on all matters, and then a lower-level official if authorized.
As the date for Congress to affirm Mr. Biden’s victory neared, Mr. Perry and Mr. Clark discussed a plan to have the Justice Department send a letter to Georgia state lawmakers informing them of an investigation into voter fraud that could invalidate the state’s Electoral College results. Former officials who were briefed on the plan said that the department’s dozens of voter fraud investigations nationwide had not turned up enough instances of fraud to alter the outcome of the election.
Mr. Perry and Mr. Clark also discussed the plan with Mr. Trump, setting off a chain of events that nearly led to the ouster of Mr. Rosen, who had refused to send the letter.
After The New York Times disclosed the details of the scheme on Friday, the political fallout was swift. Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the incoming chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told the Justice Department in a letter on Saturday that he would investigate efforts by Mr. Trump and Mr. Clark to use the agency “to further Trump’s efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election.”
. . . .
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Uh, seems like criminal schemes to interfere with free and fair elections, manufacture false claims, pressure Government officials tofalsely endorse clearly baseless claims, file bogus suits before Supremes are acts of treason, even if eventually thwarted!
“The beginnings of a Congressional investigation by Dems” seems like a totally inadequate response! These are crimes, and all who participated, particularly Trump,Perry, and Clark belong behind bars. Action should also be taken against the officials who stopped them, but failed to disclose the plot to those who might have taken immediate action to remove the unhinged, patently unqualified to serve Traitor/President.
🇺🇸Due Process Forever! Treason & Insurrection, Never! No “Bogus Unity” With Insurrectionists!
By Matt Zapotosky, Devlin Barrett and Carol D. Leonnig
January 22 at 10:38 PM ET
Then-President Donald Trump in early January entertained a plan to replace the acting attorney general with a different Justice Department lawyer who was more amenable to pursuing his unfounded claims of voter fraud, nearly touching off a crisis at the country’s premier federal law enforcement institution, people familiar with the matter said.
The plan — if enacted — would have pushed out Jeffrey Rosen as the acting attorney general and installed in his place Jeffrey Clark, whom Trump had appointed to lead the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division and who later would come to lead the Civil Division. Clark, then, could have taken steps to wield the Justice Department’s power to help keep Trump in office. But the president was ultimately dissuaded from moving forward after a high-stakes meeting with those involved, the people said.
The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a politically sensitive matter. The move was first reported by the New York Times. Legal analysts said it amounted to a disastrous attack on the Justice Department’s independence, and perhaps something worse.
“Before the insurrectionist assault on the US Capitol, there was an attempted coup at the Justice Dept. — fomented by the President of the United States,” former Justice Department official David Laufman wrote on Twitter.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment, as did Rosen.
. . . .
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So, here’s the deal!
“Billy the Bigot” was pushed out because his thorough corruption and well-established toadiness did not extend as far as plotting treason against the nation. He was replaced by misogynist Jeffrey Rosen who used his brief time in office to dump on a courageous abused refugee woman from El Salvador who had already been screwed by racist, White Nationalist, misogynist and notorious child abuser Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions.
But, wait, there was an even more slimy and treasonous scumbag hiding in the halls of “Justice.” A dude named Jeff Clark, who apparently believed in the Q-Anon/Ted Cruz/Josh Hawley/Kevin McCarthy election conspiracy theories and wanted to make a name for himself by sucking up to the Big Orange Traitor, disenfranchising voters of color, and, oh yeah, incidentally, overthrowing the US Government.
Meanwhile, a few folks in the White House were desperately trying to talk the unhinged traitor out of his harebrained scheme for committing treason in public view.But, nobody thought this plot against our Constitution and our Government was important enough to blow the whistle, inform then Vice President Pence or the U.S. Congress, or join the call for invocation of the 25th Amendment!
Oh, and it gets worse! Insurrectionist Traitor and House Leader of the Party of Treason, Kevin McCarthy wants to assure you that YOU, that’s right YOU, caused the insurrection, not just Trump, his supporters, and those GOP crazies who actually planned, encouraged, and carried it out. And, of course, not Kevin the Traitor himself. “Accountability” and “honesty” just aren’t terms within the lexicon of modern day Republicanism! https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kevin-mccarthy-everybody-capitol-attack_n_600b9785c5b6f401aea48948
It’s not like some morning guys like McCarthy, Cruz, Hawley, Graham, et al are going to wake upand find they actually believe in American democracy, equal justice, and our Constitution.
The majority of us are going to have to learn to live with, beware of, and develop strategies to consistently overcome the “Party of Insurrection and Treason” and their followers. Otherwise, there will be no America for future generations!
Ever think it’s strange that the cowardly “Party of Jim Crow” that happily abridges the voting rights, civil rights, and due process rights of people of color and the most vulnerable among us falls all over itself with concerns about “full due process” for the Big Orange Traitor — who of course gets mondo due process — in the incoming impeachment trial?
Yeah, holding a former President accountable for inciting a treasonous, violent insurrection would be “divisive.” I guess lies, insurrection, and treason are the only real “unity” that the GOP will recognize! So far, President Biden’s calls for national unity have been met with more lies, threats of obstruction, and condescending BS from the GOP. We can’t “unify” with those who seek our nation’s destruction and steadfastly refuse to apologize, acknowledge truth, and comport themselves with simple human decency.
PRESIDENT BIDEN has served notice that his ambitious immigration plan is in the first rank of his priorities. Some of his program will be immediately implementable; some may get bogged down in Congress, where many Republicans will regard it as an occasion to brandish the word “amnesty,” red meat for their bases. No matter. Mr. Biden’s plan is in keeping with the United States’ best traditions. It responds to the challenge of population stagnation. It would reverse his predecessor’s extravagantly cruel policies. And it is now clear that when it comes to immigration, Mr. Biden is all in.
That courageous stance was not necessarily expected or politically expedient. Unity was the new president’s campaign theme and inaugural touchstone, yet few issues are as divisive as immigration. His evident readiness to tap his modest reserves of political capital for a slugfest on immigration is a signal that the United States has returned to its roots as a beacon for refugees and a humanitarian role model among nations.
The plan is also smart. The U.S. population growth rate in the just-ended decade was the lowest since the first national census in 1790, according to the Brookings Institution — lower even than during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The number of Americans below the age of 18 actually shrank in the 2010s, by more than 1 million.
That stagnation, the product of an aging population and historically low fertility rates, cannot be reversed by immigration alone. But it will certainly be exacerbated, and has been in the past four years, by a policy hostile to newcomers. In President Donald Trump’s penultimate year in office, annual net immigration fell below 600,000, the lowest level in decades; it was more than 1 million in the final years of the Obama presidency.
What’s more, by proposing an eight-year path to citizenship for most of the nation’s 11 million unauthorized migrants — the centerpiece of his plan — Mr. Biden is attempting to align law and reality. By 2029, when they would be eligible for citizenship, most will have been in the United States for more than a quarter-century. At least 4 million are essential workers in construction, food processing, groceries, restaurants, agriculture and transportation — doing jobs critical to practically every American.
Mr. Biden is moving quickly where he can — fully reinstating the Obama-era program providing work permits and deportation protection for “dreamers,” young migrants brought to this country by their parents; rescinding Mr. Trump’s 2017 travel ban from majority-Muslim countries; halting construction of the southern border wall; and reining in the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation policies. He has also signaled he will increase annual refugee admissions, which Mr. Trump poleaxed, and scrap a Trump administration rule that denies green cards to immigrants deemed likely to use public benefits such as food stamps.
Other measures will require congressional action. Under legislation Mr. Biden is sending to Congress, green cards conferring legal permanent residency would be granted to dreamers as well as to immigrants from strife- and disaster-wracked nations who have been here for years.
The president is also pushing tougher border security — in recognition that the new administration is not inviting a wave of new migrants, still less amid a pandemic — though not as a precondition for his immigration reforms. His more impactful, long-term strategy to dissuade new waves of illegal immigrants is a concerted aid effort to boost economies and contain crime in Central America.
Mr. Biden has laid out an immigration program that would genuinely put America first.
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The GOP White Nationalists/Nativists/White Supremacists are shaking in their cowardly boots. Why?
Because in a diverse meritocracy with equal justice for all and government in the true national interest they would lose their corrupt advantages and disproportionate power over the lives and the future of the majority of Americans who don’t share their repulsive, racist views and did not support their traitor insurrectionist Fuhrer in his attempt to undermine democracy, disenfranchise voters (targeting disproportionately legitimate voters of color for disenfranchisement, while shrugging off the actions, antics, and influence of “magamoron” Q-Anon crazies, conspiracy theorists, and other fringe haters that he and his party relied upon to maintain power), and take over our government by force!
Four things that the GOP fears above all else: 1) democracy, 2) accountability, 3) equality, 4) truth!
BIA Asylum Panel In Action Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons“She struggled madly in the torturing Ray” Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A Parting Shot At Women
As the Trump Administration comes to an end, let’s remember how it began. On the day following the inauguration, millions participated in Women’s Marches around the world. There is sadly no need to list the reasons why women in particular would feel the need to respond in such a way to a Trump presidency.
It was therefore no surprise that Trump’s first Attorney General issued a decision intended to strip protection under our asylum laws from women who are victims of domestic violence. That decision, Matter of A-B-, was so soundly rejected by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit relied on his reasoning to conclude that Sessions’s decision had been abrogated. The First and Ninth Circuits further rejected Sessions’s view that the particular social group relied upon in A-B- was legally unsound. The Eighth Circuit rejected Sessions’s description of the standard for proving a government’s inability or unwillingness to control an abusive spouse, for example, as requiring evidence that the government condones his actions, or is completely helpless to prevent them.
The administration tried to codify the views expressed in A-B- and in another case, Matter of L-E-A-, by issuing proposed regulation designed to completely rewrite our asylum laws, with the purpose of making it virtually impossible for domestic violence and gang violence victims to qualify for asylum protection. Those rules, which were rushed out with very little time for public comment, were blocked on January 8 by a U.S. District Court judge.
There are at least two important cases presently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit involving the issues raised in both A-B- and L-E-A-. Had these decisions been issued by, e.g., U.S. District Court judges, the Department of Justice would be representing the government (in the form of the Attorney General), but not the judge who issued the decision below. But as to A-B-, the government attorneys represent an Attorney General acting as judge, and a judge with extraordinary powers. As a result of those powers, the official presently filling the position on an acting basis (who had come to the job a few weeks earlier from the Department of Transportation with absolutely no background in immigration law) was able to unilaterally issue a new decision in the case, in an attempt to shore up issues of concern before the circuits.
So what does the new decision of the recent Deputy Transportation Secretary say? It addresses two issues: the “condone or complete helplessness” language used by Sessions, and the proper test for when persecution can be said to be “on account of” an asylum seeker’s gender, familial relationship, or other group membership.
As to the first issue, the Acting AG now states that Sessions did not change the preexisting legal standard for determining whether a government is unwilling or unable to provide protection. The Acting AG accomplishes this by explaining that “condone” doesn’t actually mean condone, and that “complete helplessness” doesn’t mean complete helplessness.
I’m not sure of the need for what follows on the topic. Perhaps there is an Attorney General Style Guide which advises to never be succinct when there are so many more exciting options available. Besides from sounding overly defensive in explaining why Sessions chose to use terms that sure sounded like they raised the standard in order to supposedly signal that he was doing no such thing, the decision also feels the need to remind us of what that preexisting standard is, in spite of the fact that no one other than perhaps a Deputy Transportation Secretary pretending to be an asylum law scholar is in need of such a recap. Yes, we understand there are no crime-free societies, and the failure to prevent every single crime from occurring is not “unwilling or unable.” No court has ever said that it was. Let’s move on.
The second part of this new A-B- decision addresses a conflict between the views of the Fourth Circuit and the BIA in regard to when a nexus is established. This issue arises in all asylum claims, but the BIA addressed it in a case, Matter of L-E-A-, in which an asylum applicant was threatened by a violent gang because it wished to sell drugs in a store owned by his father. The question was whether the asylum seeker’s fear of harm from the gang was “on account of” his familial relationship to his father.
Our laws recognize that persecution can arise for multiple reasons. A 2005 statute requires a showing that one of the five specific bases for a grant of asylum (i.e. race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion) must form “one central reason” for the harm. The BIA itself has defined this to mean that the reason was more than “incidental, tangential, superficial, or subordinate to another reason.”
In the context of family membership, the Fourth Circuit has repeatedly held that this “one central reason” test is satisfied where the family membership formed the reason why the asylum seeker, and not someone else, was targeted for harm. Using the L-E-A- example, the gang members were obviously motivated most of all by their desire for financial gain from the selling of the drugs in the store. But under the Fourth Circuit’s test, the family relationship would also be “one central reason” for the harm, because had the asylum seeker not been the son of the store owner, he wouldn’t have been the one targeted. This is known as a “but for” test, as in “but for” the familial relationship, the asylum seeker wouldn’t have been the one harmed
In L-E-A-, the BIA recognized the Fourth Circuit’s interpretation in a footnote, but added that the case it was deciding didn’t arise under that court’s jurisdiction. The BIA thus went on to create its own test, requiring evidence of an actual animus towards the family. The BIA provided as an example of its new test the assassination of the Romanov family in 1917 Russia, stating that while there were political reasons for the murders, it would be difficult to say that family membership was not one central reason for their persecution.
I’m going to create my own rule here: when you are proposing a particular legal standard, and the judge asks for an example, and all you can come up with is the Romanov family in 1917 Russia, you’re skating on thin ice. The other thing about legal standards is in order for judges to apply them and appeals courts to review them, they have to be understandable. I’m not a student of Russian history, but it would seem to me that (as the BIA acknowledged), the main motive in assassinating the Romanovs was political. I’m not sure what jumps out in that example as evidence of animus towards the family itself. How would one apply the Romanov test to anyone ever appearing in Immigration Court? By comparison, the Fourth Circuit’s test is a very clear one that is easy to apply and review on appeal.
Of course, this is just my humble opinion. The assistant Transportation czar feels differently. Drawing on his extensive minutes of experience in the complex field of asylum, he concluded: “I believe that the Fourth Circuit’s recent interpretation of ‘one central reason’ is not the best reading of the statutory language.”
I am guessing that by saying this in a precedent decision in the final days of this Administration, Transportation guy is hoping that the Fourth Circuit will feel compelled to accord his opinion Brand X deference. Legal scholar Geoffrey Hoffman has pointed out that no such deference is due, as the requirement that the statute be ambiguous is not satisfied. (Geoffrey’s excellent takedown of this same decision can be found here, and is well worth reading).
But the term in question, “on account of,” is also not one requiring agency expertise, which is of course a main justification for judicial deference. It is instead a legal standard not specific to asylum or immigration law.
For example, last June, the Supreme Court decided Bostock v. Clayton County, a case involving employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or identity. In a 6-3 decision authored by Justice Gorsuch, the Court explained that the statutory term in question, “because of,” carries the same legal meaning as “on account of,” the relevant phrase for asylum purposes. In determining nexus, the Court stated:
It doesn’t matter if other factors besides the plaintiff’s sex contributed to the decision. And it doesn’t matter if the employer treated women as a group the same when compared to men as a group. If the employer intentionally relies in part on an individual employee’s sex when deciding to discharge the employee—put differently, if changing the employee’s sex would have yielded a different choice by the employer—a statutory violation has occurred.
That last sentence – “if changing the employee’s sex would have yielded a different choice by the employer” – is essentially the same “but for” standard applied by the Fourth Circuit in the asylum context. What would give an Acting Attorney General the authority to hold otherwise?
A conservative commentator observed a difference between the discrimination required in Bostock and the persecution required in L-E-A-, stating that discrimination can involve favoring one group without necessarily hating the group being passed over, whereas persecuting someone requires an animus towards them.
However, the BIA recognized nearly 25 years ago that persecution can be found in harm resulting from actions intended to overcome a characteristic of the victim, and that no subjective punitive or malignant intent is required. The BIA acknowledged this in L-E-A-, noting that a punitive intent is not required.
Furthermore, the legislative history of the REAL ID Act (which created the requirement in question) shows that Congress amended the original proposed requirement that the protected ground be “the central motive” for the harm, to the final language requiring that it be “one central reason.”1 While animus would fall under “motive,” “reason” covers the type of causation central to the Fourth Circuit’s “but for” test. The history seems to undermine the former Transportation official’s claim that under the Fourth Circuit’s test, the “one central reason” language would be “mere surplusage.” This is untrue, as that additional language serves to clarify that the reason can be one of many (as opposed to “the” reason), and that the relevant issue is reason and not motive. Perhaps the author required more than three weeks at the Department of Justice to understand this.
I write this on the last full day of the Trump presidency. Let’s hope that all of the decisions issued by this administration will be vacated shortly; that the BIA will soon be comprised of fair and independent immigration law scholars (preferably as part of an independent Article I Immigration Court), and that future posts will document a much more enlightened era of asylum adjudication.
Note:
1. See Deborah Anker, The Law of Asylum in the United States (Thomson Reuters) at § 5:12.See also Ndayshimiye v. Att’y Gen. of U.S., 557 F.3d 124 (3d Cir. 2009) (recounting the legislative history and rejecting a dominance test for determining “one central reason”).
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase Jeffrey S. Chase Blog Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges
Copyright 2021 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.
Republished by permission.
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Judge Garland and his team must address systemic failures at the dysfunctional DOJ well beyond the festering, unconstitutional mess @ EOIR (“The Clown Show” 🤡) that requires an immediate “remove and replace.” The ethical failings, bad lawyering, dilatory litigating tactics, anti-American attitudes, racism, misogyny, intellectual dishonesty, coddling of authoritarianism, and complicity in the face of tyranny are in every corner of the disgraced Department.
Withdrawal of every bogus, biased, unconstitutional, racist- motivated “precedent” issued during the Trump regime and turning the proper development and fair interpretation of immigration and asylum laws over to a “new BIA” — consisting of real judges who are widely recognized and respected experts in immigration, human rights, and due process — must be a “day one” priority for Judge Garland and his team.
The Clown Show🤡🦹🏿♂️ that has made mincemeat out of American justice — not to mention legal ethics and human morality — must go! And, the problem goes far beyond the “Falls Church Circus!”🎪🤹
🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever! Institutionalized misogyny, 🤮☠️never! No more Jeffrey Rosens @ DOJ —ever!
And, firms like Kirkland & Ellis need to think twice about re-employing a sleazy “empty suit” like Rosen who represents everything that is wrong with American law in the 21st century! Public disgrace should not be mistaken for “public service.”
“Normalizing” political toadies, “senior executives,” government “lawyers,” and other “public officials” who carried the water and willingly (often, as in Rosen’s case, enthusiastically, gratuitously, and totally unnecessarily) advanced the objectives of a White Nationalist, anti-American regime whose disgraceful and toxic rule ended in a violent, unhinged, failed insurrection against our democracy encouraged by a Traitor-President, his supporters, and members of the GOP would be a HUGE, perhaps fatal, mistake!
Make no mistake about it! Brave, determined refugee women like Ms. A-B- and her lawyers (superstars like Professor Karen Musalo and Blaine Bookey of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies) are the true American heroes 🦸🏻 of the resistance to White Nationalist, racist, xenophobic policies of cruelty, hate, and disparaging of the rule of law. Toadies and traitors like Rosen are the eternal villains!🦹🏿♂️ Picking on refugees on the way out the door is an act of supreme cowardice that will live in infamy!🐓🤮
So, after their failed coup attempt, the “Party of Treason” 🏴☠️☠️is suddenly making bogus calls for “unity” and “healing.” Of course, there is nothing whatsoever stopping any Republican from denouncing Trump and his followers, announcing support for impeachment of the Traitor, and calling for all Americans to unify behind the Biden-Harris Administration. But, that’s not what’s happening.
Trump Regime
No, somehow the GOP treasonists outrageously believe it’s Joe Biden’s job to “call off the dogs of justice” and “heal” the country from the unmitigated disaster caused by GOP misrule ending in a failed coup. (Did I mention that due to the totally disgraceful, maliciously incompetent handling of the worst public health emergency in more than a century, one that the GOP consistently downplayed, mocked, and denied, the US has the world’s worst record and is now on the way to over a half a million COVID deaths with millions unemployed!) While admitting no wrongdoing on their part, “traitor twerps” like Graham now think that Biden should absolve them of any wrongdoing and move forward as if the GOP attack on our nation had never happened.
This election was over on November 7, when the major networks finally called it.
At that point, Biden had not only in insurmountable lead in the electoral college, but also a significant and growing lead in the popular vote. No candidate has ever overcome margins like that to win a Presidential election. All others similarly situated have conceded. Therefore, Trump should have conceded and the GOP congratulated the President Elect and his running mate.
Instead, the GOP lined behind Traitor Trump’s fascist fabricated election fraud claims! (Was it surprising that a “President” who told thousands of bald-faced lies starting from day one would continue to lie?). “Count all the votes” said the GOP treasonists, while actively trying to prevent state and local officials from doing just that.
Of course all the counts and recounts confirmed all of the Biden wins, some even adding a few votes to his margins. Then, the GOP “battle cry” became “Wait for the courts to rule.” This “process” (actually an outrageous abuse of legal process) resulted in an impressive streak of more than 50 consecutive losses for the Trump frivolous/obstructionist/unethical/conspiracy theory mongering “litigation team” of sleazy lawyers in courts at all levels from judges appointed by both Dems and the GOP, some by Trump himself.
Then it was “Wait for the states to certify” while again trying to interfere with that process. Once the states, including ones firmly controlled by the GOP, certified the results and Biden’s win, the bogus GOP party line became “Wait for the Electoral College.” Of course, that, in turn, voted for Biden exactly as the states had certified, despite Trump’s attempts to interfere.
But, still the GOP treasonists kept on with their knowingly false narratives. This time, it was “Wait for Congress to accept the results” a purely ceremonial process that has never resulted in a change of outcome.
Nevertheless, Trump invited, actually urged, his followers to come to D.C. and stage a violent insurrection at the Capitol in a vain attempt to prevent the Congressional process from being completed. He also urged Vice President Pence (usually a reliable, anti-democracy toady) to violate his constitutional oath by throwing the election to Trump. By this time, it was clear that Biden had won the popular vote by more than 7 million — which would have made a Trump “victory” the biggest anti-democracy “steal” and disenfranchisement in American history.
Nevertheless, Cruz, Hawley, McCarthy and a host of other GOP legislators continued to commit treason by pressing Trump’s baseless insurrectionist theories, and pressing to disenfranchise millions of Biden voters across the nation, even as the debris from their failed coup still littered the Capitol.
Now that their coup has failed, and there is at least a chance, however unlikely, that the Party of Treason 🏴☠️and some of its supporters 🦹🏿♂️ will be held accountable, these traitors have the absolute audacity to basically demand that Biden “bail them out” in the name of “national unity.”
I call BS! As Steve points out, history shows that failing to hold accountable those responsible for a failed coup merely insures that another coup will take place!
America will not be safe for the majority of us until the GOP is forever disempowered as a political force and Graham, Cruz, Hawley, McCarthy, and rest of the of the GOP traitors are held accountable for their treason.
It won’t be quick or easy. But, it will be absolutely necessary if American democracy is to survive!
🇺🇸⚖️Due Process Forever! GOP Treason, 🏴☠️☠️🤮Never!
How do you I know your country is in “deep dodo?” When Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jessie Ventura become the “voices of reason” and the “President” and his party are the “voices of treason.”
It’s likely that the movement to hold accountable and remove from Congress traitors like Cruz, Hawley, McCarthy, and the other Republicans who shamelessly and seditiously continued to support the anti-American lies, racist false narratives, and conspiracy theories that fueled Trump’s insurrection and domestic terrorism will die out over time. But, it shouldn’t!
As I write this, the GOP treasonists in the House are blocking what should be a unanimous resolution to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove this dangerous, unhinged, traitor/moron from the office he has abused and disgraced from Day One!
One reason why our democracy is on the ropes is that there hasn’t been any accountability whatsoever for Trump and his kakistocracy of thugs on the public payroll or for the GOP White Nationalist traitors and enablers in Congress who have furthered their grotesque abuses of humanity and our democratic institutions.
The lack of accountability is particularly glaring and disgusting for Trump’s lawyers, both in and out of Government, who have lied, misrepresented, and totally jettisoned ethics and “due diligence” in supporting and furthering Trump’s attacks on our democracy. Why is Rudy Giuliani, who led a coast to coast “conspiracy of lies and treason” in Federal and State Courts, before calling for armed rebellion against our Government, still walking free and “practicing” law? Why are Billy Barr, Gonzo Sessions, Don McGhan, Noel Francisco, and a host of others who lied, misrepresented, and abused their ethical obligations as well as their oaths of office happily ensconced in the private sector rather than being held accountable for their “crimes against humanity?”
Contrary to all the total BS 💩being spread by GOP Trump toadies, the unconstitutional, racist, illegal, violent, anti-democracy agenda of Trump, Miller, and the rest of of the Thugocracy/Kakistocracy was apparent from the “git go.”
And, Chief Justice Roberts and the other GOP Justices who helped roll out and encourage “Kristallnacht” by rubber-stamping the “Muslim ban,” “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico,” the “Bogus Wall of Misappropriated Funds,” stripping legal migrants of life-saving and health preserving benefits, helping fuel a DHS “reign of terror” directed at ethnic communities, and other neo-Nazi travesties should also tender their resignations to President Biden as of Jan 21, 2021! Intellectual dishonesty by judges and bad, righty biased (non)jurisprudence have real life consequences!
Trump and Miller told the Supremes precisely what their invidious racist, religiously biased, politically pandering intent was in all of these cases and the GOP Justices ignored it in favor of bogus, fabricated, right wing, authoritarian, racist driven, anti-democracy agendas thinly camouflaged by legal gobbledygook.
People die and lives are ruined forever when judges who are supposed to protect them instead “take a dive” for the forces of tyranny and cruelty! “Dred Scottification” (“dehumanization”) of Blacks, Latinos, Immigrants, and other People of Color by our highest Court is neither acceptable nor should it be “swept under the rug” as has happened all too often when the Supremes fail democracy and align themselves with anti-democracy racists and authoritarians.
For four years, the GOP Justices on the Supremes have treated due process, democratic institutions, and the lives of asylum seekers and other migrants (and to some extent their pro bono lawyers) as “jokes.” That’s because 1) neither they nor their families are rotting in Mexico or facing torture and death in El Salvador or some other failed state; and 2) this time, the right wing thugs they enable were across the street trashing our Capitol rather than storming the Supremes. Better Justices and Better Federal Judges for a Better America!
The idea that Germany lost the First World War in 1918 because of a Jewish “stab in the back” was 15 years old when Hitler came to power. How will Trump’s myth of victimhood function in American life 15 years from now? And to whose benefit?
On Jan. 7, Trump called for a peaceful transition of power, implicitly conceding that his putsch had failed. Even then, though, he repeated and even amplified his electoral fiction: It was now a sacred cause for which people had sacrificed. Trump’s imagined stab in the back will live on chiefly thanks to its endorsement by members of Congress. In November and December 2020, Republicans repeated it, giving it a life it would not otherwise have had. In retrospect, it now seems as though the last shaky compromise between the gamers and the breakers was the idea that Trump should have every chance to prove that wrong had been done to him. That position implicitly endorsed the big lie for Trump supporters who were inclined to believe it. It failed to restrain Trump, whose big lie only grew bigger.
The breakers and the gamers then saw a different world ahead, where the big lie was either a treasure to be had or a danger to be avoided. The breakers had no choice but to rush to be first to claim to believe in it. Because the breakers Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz must compete to claim the brimstone and bile, the gamers were forced to reveal their own hand, and the division within the Republican coalition became visible on Jan. 6. The invasion of the Capitol only reinforced this division. To be sure, a few senators withdrew their objections, but Cruz and Hawley moved forward anyway, along with six other senators. More than 100 representatives doubled down on the big lie. Some, like Matt Gaetz, even added their own flourishes, such as the claim that the mob was led not by Trump’s supporters but by his opponents.
Trump is, for now, the martyr in chief, the high priest of the big lie. He is the leader of the breakers, at least in the minds of his supporters. By now, the gamers do not want Trump around. Discredited in his last weeks, he is useless; shorn of the obligations of the presidency, he will become embarrassing again, much as he was in 2015. Unable to provide cover for their gamesmanship, he will be irrelevant to their daily purposes. But the breakers have an even stronger reason to see Trump disappear: It is impossible to inherit from someone who is still around. Seizing Trump’s big lie might appear to be a gesture of support. In fact it expresses a wish for his political death. Transforming the myth from one about Trump to one about the nation will be easier when he is out of the way.
As Cruz and Hawley may learn, to tell the big lie is to be owned by it. Just because you have sold your soul does not mean that you have driven a hard bargain. Hawley shies from no level of hypocrisy; the son of a banker, educated at Stanford University and Yale Law School, he denounces elites. Insofar as Cruz was thought to have a principle, it was that of states’ rights, which Trump’s calls to action brazenly violated. A joint statement Cruz issued about the senators’ challenge to the vote nicely captured the post-truth aspect of the whole: It never alleged that there was fraud, only that there were allegations of fraud. Allegations of allegations, allegations all the way down.
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The big lie requires commitment. When Republican gamers do not exhibit enough of that, Republican breakers call them “RINOs”: Republicans in name only. This term once suggested a lack of ideological commitment. It now means an unwillingness to throw away an election. The gamers, in response, close ranks around the Constitution and speak of principles and traditions. The breakers must all know (with the possible exception of the Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville) that they are participating in a sham, but they will have an audience of tens of millions who do not.
If Trump remains present in American political life, he will surely repeat his big lie incessantly. Hawley and Cruz and the other breakers share responsibility for where this leads. Cruz and Hawley seem to be running for president. Yet what does it mean to be a candidate for office and denounce voting? If you claim that the other side has cheated, and your supporters believe you, they will expect you to cheat yourself. By defending Trump’s big lie on Jan. 6, they set a precedent: A Republican presidential candidate who loses an election should be appointed anyway by Congress. Republicans in the future, at least breaker candidates for president, will presumably have a Plan A, to win and win, and a Plan B, to lose and win. No fraud is necessary; only allegations that there are allegations of fraud. Truth is to be replaced by spectacle, facts by faith.
Trump’s coup attempt of 2020-21, like other failed coup attempts, is a warning for those who care about the rule of law and a lesson for those who do not. His pre-fascism revealed a possibility for American politics. For a coup to work in 2024, the breakers will require something that Trump never quite had: an angry minority, organized for nationwide violence, ready to add intimidation to an election. Four years of amplifying a big lie just might get them this. To claim that the other side stole an election is to promise to steal one yourself. It is also to claim that the other side deserves to be punished.
Informed observers inside and outside government agree that right-wing white supremacism is the greatest terrorist threat to the United States. Gun sales in 2020 hit an astonishing high. History shows that political violence follows when prominent leaders of major political parties openly embrace paranoia.
Our big lie is typically American, wrapped in our odd electoral system, depending upon our particular traditions of racism. Yet our big lie is also structurally fascist, with its extreme mendacity, its conspiratorial thinking, its reversal of perpetrators and victims and its implication that the world is divided into us and them. To keep it going for four years courts terrorism and assassination.
When that violence comes, the breakers will have to react. If they embrace it, they become the fascist faction. The Republican Party will be divided, at least for a time. One can of course imagine a dismal reunification: A breaker candidate loses a narrow presidential election in November 2024 and cries fraud, the Republicans win both houses of Congress and rioters in the street, educated by four years of the big lie, demand what they see as justice. Would the gamers stand on principle if those were the circumstances of Jan. 6, 2025?
To be sure, this moment is also a chance. It is possible that a divided Republican Party might better serve American democracy; that the gamers, separated from the breakers, might start to think of policy as a way to win elections. It is very likely that the Biden-Harris administration will have an easier first few months than expected; perhaps obstructionism will give way, at least among a few Republicans and for a short time, to a moment of self-questioning. Politicians who want Trumpism to end have a simple way forward: Tell the truth about the election.
America will not survive the big lie just because a liar is separated from power. It will need a thoughtful repluralization of media and a commitment to facts as a public good. The racism structured into every aspect of the coup attempt is a call to heed our own history. Serious attention to the past helps us to see risks but also suggests future possibility. We cannot be a democratic republic if we tell lies about race, big or small. We cannot be a democratic republic if we tell lies about race, big or small. Democracy is not about minimizing the vote nor ignoring it, neither a matter of gaming nor of breaking a system, but of accepting the equality of others, heeding their voices and counting their votes.
Timothy Snyder is the Levin professor of history at Yale University and the author of histories of political atrocity including “Bloodlands” and “Black Earth,” as well as the book “On Tyranny,” on America’s turn toward authoritarianism. His most recent book is “Our Malady,” a memoir of his own near-fatal illness reflecting on the relationship between health and freedom. Ashley Gilbertson is an Australian photojournalist with the VII Photo Agency living in New York. Gilbertson has covered migration and conflict internationally for over 20 years.
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Read Professor Snyder’s entire, rather lengthy, analysis at the link.
Democracy is under attack from one of our two major parties. It will take a concerted effort, determination, and courage by the majority of us to preserve our nation in the face of GOP led and enabled treason and insurrection that is fueled by their web of lies, racism, selfishness, and false narratives,
Tour the Holocaust Museum for a glimpse of the future of our nation if the GOP prevails!
Also, remember that as all the GOP-induced distracting disorder of this week roil Washington, 4,000 plus Americans a day, disproportionately African Americans and Latinos, continue to die, many unnecessarily, as a result of the “malicious incompetence,” false narratives, and anti-science, anti-American lies actively promoted and endorsed by Trump and his GOP party of treason!
Professor Snyder’s last sentence encapsulates my own view of what 21st Century American Democracy should look and act like:
We cannot be a democratic republic if we tell lies about race, big or small. Democracy is not about minimizing the vote nor ignoring it, neither a matter of gaming nor of breaking a system, but of accepting the equality of others, heeding their voices and counting their votes.
I still hear GOP politicos falsely claim that “nobody could see this coming.” What total unadulterated BS! 💩 Trump planned and instigated this insurrection of thugs in public, even while his goons Cruz, Hawley, and McCarthy were actively promoting it in Congress and Moscow Mitch was more or less “in his shell” looking the other way. Many of us have been “calling out” GOP fascism for the last four years. A party that thrives on lies can’t survive truth!
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel was unanimously reelected on Friday for another term. Her message to the party: “I am mad and I’m not going to let socialism rule this country.”
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Newsflash: It wasn’t the radical left that stormed the doors of the Capitol on Wednesday. It wasn’t the radical left that told a group of known white nationalists to “stand by” during a nationally televised presidential debate. It wasn’t the radical left that addressed the soon-to-be rioters and declared to members of Congress that “we’re coming for you.” It wasn’t the radical left who on the eve of the Capitol siege announced their plans to walk the path to sedition.
The only “radical” elements America sees now are the words and actions of the Republican Party. Yet Republicans have forever gotten away with throwing around the label “radical” to characterize the Democratic Party.
How many times in political ads have Republicans used the words “radical” and “dangerous” to describe their Democratic challengers? How many Fox News segments have Sean Hannity and friends devoted to the Democrats’ “radical extreme socialist agenda”?
What happened on Wednesday was an inevitable culmination of years of extreme and alarmist rhetoric from the Republican Party and their propaganda platforms. Watching Republicans act shocked that the people they have relentlessly and unapologetically pandered to for years is appalling.
With every tweet, every soundbite, every campaign ad, Republicans have been signaling to their supporters that it’s time to take matters in their hands. When you label something as “radical” or “extreme” or “dangerous,” you are telling people they need to defend themselves against a threat. You are telling them they need to be ready to fight. You are telling them their impulse to resort to violence and destruction is justified and righteous.
There is absolutely nothing radical or extreme about protesting racial inequality, social injustice and a culture of police brutality in America. There is nothing radical or extreme about speaking out for gender equality and women’s rights. There is nothing radical or extreme about advocating for universal healthcare coverage. There is nothing radical or extreme about supporting action to address the growing threat of climate change. There is nothing radical or extreme about wanting corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. There is nothing radical or extreme about embracing the need for gun reform in the wake of mass shootings. There is nothing radical or extreme about wearing a mask and social distancing amid a global pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 365,000 Americans.
The extremists are the ones who egged on the insurrectionists with four years of lies. Republicans may be abandoning the sinking Trump ship, but don’t let this 11th-hour maneuver fool you. That even after Wednesday’s events Republicans in Congress and in the media are still clinging to the “radical socialist agenda” narrative shows they haven’t changed — though they are scurrying to launder their tattered reputations.
Don’t believe me?
Just watch how many of them will vote to support articles of impeachment if the Democrats bring those to the House floor next week.
Kurt Bardella is a senior advisor to The Lincoln Project. He is a former aide to California Republican Congressmen Darrell Issa and Brian Bilbray and was an aide in the California State Senate and Assembly. @KurtBardella
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Read the complete op-ed at the link.
The opposition to be sure! “Loyal” — no way! The “Party of Treason” — the GOP — is exactly what its lies, vile rhetoric, lack of values, and insurrectionist actions tell us it is — the gravest existential threat to our nation and our national security since the Confederacy of Traitors.
Beware and be prepared for their continuing assaults on our democracy, our nation, truth, and humanity!
I’m angry, too, Ronna, about your lies, false narratives, and scurrilous attacks on my country! I’ll do everything possible to insure that your party of cowardice, immorality, treason, disloyalty, studied stupidity, racism, and insurrection is removed from political power at every level of our democracy. Clearly, American democracy and equal justice under law are “radical” concepts to you, Cotton, and rest of your party of lying, cowardly Putinist puppets and traitors!
Democrat Jon Ossoff won his tight Senate race, with both Georgia Democrats defeating their Republican runoff opponents in historic victories for a stunning rebuke of President Donald Trump in a state that had been a Republican stronghold for years. With Ossoff joining Democrat Raphael Warnock in the Senate, their party will be able to take total control of Congress.
Warnock is the first Black person elected to represent Georgia in the Senate and will be one of only three Black people in the Senate once his term begins. Ossoff, 33, would be the youngest member of the Senate.
The results are a testament to the decades-long political organizing of Black women in Georgia who worked toward expanding the electorate and protecting voting rights in the state.
“It is with humility that I thank the people of Georgia for electing me to serve you in the United States Senate. Thank you for the trust that you have placed in me,” Ossoff said in a video streamed online on Wednesday morning. Hours before, the campaign of his opponent, Sen. David Perdue, said it “will require time and transparency to be certain the results are fair and accurate.”
It is a close race. Decision Desk HQ has projected Ossoff will win. The vote-counting firm currently has Ossoff leading Republican Perdue by about .4% of the vote — about 16,000 votes — which is within the .5% threshold that allows Perdue to call for a recount. Georgia officials will continue counting the few remaining votes today, which are expected in areas that lean Democrat.
Ossoff’s win would push the Senate into a 50-50 split, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris serving as a tie-breaking vote. The split would effectively give Democrats control of the Senate, removing the chamber from Sen. Mitch McConnell’s iron grip and dramatically expanding the possibilities for President-elect Joe Biden’s first years in office.
A litany of Black women-led voter registration groups like Stacey Abrams’s New Georgia Project and Black Voters Matter fanned out across the state in recent years to register new voters and to protect voters from being purged from rolls. In the weeks ahead of the runoff, Progressive grassroots groups organizing across the state made the shift toward door knocking and in-person canvassing after the party largely avoided the strategy during the general election because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump, on the other hand, spent the intervening two months claiming Georgia’s election was rigged against him — it was not, as the state’s Republican elected leaders frequently reminded him — attacking establishment Republicans in the state, and undermining the Republican base’s faith in the electoral process, and pushing lawsuits that largely focused on invalidating votes in majority Black cities. Perdue and Loeffler, then both serving in the Senate, often echoed Trump’s false claims about election fraud on the campaign trail and in the final days of the race they announced that they would support Senators who objected to certifying the electoral college results.
The runoff was defined by Trump’s meddling in the state’s election results after his loss in November and his failed last-ditch attempt to get more direct aid to people in the coronavirus relief package that passed Congress in December.
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Read the rest of the article at the link.
Congrats and deep appreciation to the amazing Stacey Abrams and her colleagues for bailing out America with their smarts, courage, hard work, and determination to stand up to the White Nationalists and beat them at the polls. Working harder and being smarter than the GOP!
The GOP has now “come out of the closet” and embraced (or empowered) its once-obscured “core beliefs” of treason, lies, racism, hate, selfishness, ignorance, incompetent governance, and destruction of our democracy. Even today, traitors Ted Cruz& Josh Hawley disingenuously try to play the “victim” in the face of calls to hold them responsible for their false and treasonous criminal conduct.
These guys knowingly promoted lies and White Nationalist conspiracy theories that helped stroke the totally unjustified “anger” of Trumpist GOP thugs who actually endangered the safety of Congressional members of both parties! How sick 🤮 is that! Talk about folks who deserve condemnation and removal from public office, if not jail sentences!
The majority of us who believe in democracy, diversity, humanity, truth, our Constitution, and social justice must redouble our efforts to insure that the anti-American cancer of GOP minority rule never infects our nation again!
The folks in Georgia have shown us that no matter how difficult or time consuming the fight might be, it can be won through democratic institutions; with effort, courage, and perseverance, our nation can be rescued from the GOP traitors who have “held us hostage” for the past four years!
The GOP has “hitched its wheelless and soulless wagon” to one of the vilest human beings and biggest losers in our national political history.We can’t let them off the hook!
Belatedly, Congressional toadies like Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham, and Cabinet toadies, like Mrs. Mitch and Betsy D, who happily enabled and furthered the violent, racist, White Nationalist agenda of Trump, Miller and the rest of the thugocracy/kakistocracy are trying to put some distance between themselves and their party’s treason and mis-governance. I heard mindless and dishonest Trump supporters on local TV try to disclaim the logical consequences of their supporting and voting for an immoral, dishonest, anti-American, insurrectionist scumbag!
Just think of the total disaster that would have ensued if the maliciously incompetent traitor they voted for had actually won, rather than being thrashed by more than 7 million popular votes and 74 electoral votes! These folks are threatening my country, our health and safety, and the world’s future with their ignorance, lies, and disloyalty. I’m tired of them and their vile White Nationalist nonsense that played out at my Capitol this week!
Don’t let them get away with this deadly, disingenuous, BS! Follow Stacey Abrams and others! Start working hard now to throw every elected GOP traitor out of office in 2022! Democracy and the modern GOP are incompatible! This is a battle for our country, the heart and soul of our nation, and humanity. We can’t afford to let the party of treason and racism win!
Yes, as Joe Biden says, America needs a legitimate, principled opposition party. Sadly, the GOP party doesn’t fit the bill and won’t unless it jettisons its White Nationalist racist agenda of lies, false narratives, and wacko conspiracy theories and moves into the 21st Century with the rest of us!
