"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
“I don’t care who you are, you bite your god damn tongue!”
By Alex Edelman/Getty Images.
The December 2017 passage of the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” was thrilling to a great many people, among them Donald Trump, corporate America, and the uber-rich, whom the legislation was structured to disproportionately benefit. But in truth, the day belonged to one man: CrossFit devoteeand Eddie Munster doppelgängerPaul Ryan, who had fantasized about redistributing wealth to those at the top since his boyhood days in Wisconsin, devoted his entire career to making it happen, and promptly announced his retirement when it became clear that his other lifelong dream—dismantling the social safety net and cutting off the lazy takers—wasn’t going to happen ’til at least 2021. So we imagine it must have really frosted Ryan’s cookies when, in the midst of many a late night and early morning on the Hill devoted to dragging this suckeracrossthe finish line, Reverend Patrick Conroy, the House chaplain since 2011, had the stones to include these outrageous lines in one of his prayers:
“God of the universe, we give You thanks for giving us another day. Bless the Members of this assembly as they set upon the work of these hours, of these days. . . . As legislation on taxes continues to be debated this week and next, may all Members be mindful that the institutions and structures of our great Nation guarantee the opportunities that have allowed some to achieve great success, while others continue to struggle. May their efforts these days guarantee that there are not winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by all Americans.”
Ryan, one assumes, had never heard such sacrilegious words from a man of the cloth and was probably of a mind to drag Conroy out of the room by his collar and throw him out on the Capitol steps then and there. But because he is a disciplined lawmaker whose Holy Grail was so close he could taste it, he stayed focused and decided to deal with the blasphemy at a later time. And apparently that time came earlier this month, per The Hill:
House Chaplain Patrick Conroy’s sudden resignation has sparked a furor on Capitol Hill, with sources in both parties saying he was pushed out by Speaker Paul Ryan. Conroy’s own resignation announcement stated that it was done at Ryan’s request.
“As you have requested, I hereby offer my resignation as the 60th Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives,” the April 15 letter to Ryan, obtained by The Hill, states.
While one source claimed that “some of the more conservative evangelical Republicans didn’t like that the Father had invited a Muslim person to give the opening prayer,” others offered a more compelling reason: Ryan “took issue with a prayer on the House floor that could have been perceived as being critical of the G.O.P. tax cut bill.” According to a Democratic aide, Conroy’s ouster was “largely driven by [the] speech on the tax bill that the speaker didn’t like.” The New York Times notes that a week after his sermon, a staffer from Ryan’s office told Conroy “We are upset with this prayer; you are getting too political,” and that the next time he saw the Reverend in person, Ryan told him “Padre, you just got to stay out of politics.” AshLee Strong, a spokesperson for the speaker, declined to explain the personnel decision, noting only Minority Leader Nancy Pelosiand her office “were fully read in and did not object.”
Now, could Ryan have forced the guy to resign for completely legitimate reasons? Sure! But it also seems entirely plausible that this is exactly the sort of thing that would constitute a bridge too far in his book. Stand up for neo-Nazis? Water off a duck’s back. But suggest that a $1.5 trillion tax cut should help all Americans and not just the already-rich? That’s obviously a (potentially!) fireable offense right there. And don’t bother saying sorry after the fact to Ryan, Reverend. Say sorry to God. As a major corporate shareholder and beneficiary of the legislation, you’re in the doghouse with him, too.
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Read the rest of the “Levin Report” at the link!
Obviously, it takes a very special type of pastor to provide spiritual counseling to a bunch of guys who have devoted their entire careers to taking from the underprivileged and giving to the over-privileged. It also takes a very special kind of theological scholarship, since almost all of Christian theology suggests that exactly the opposite is required and that greed, promoting inequality, and abusing the less fortunate are actually sins that could have serious repercussions in eternal life.
These dudes have to face the very real chance that they will pass into an another world where those whom they have dispossessed, mistreated, mocked, dumped on, and scorned in life will be the “honored ones” and the GOP lifetime grifters will be at their mercy. The day of reckoning for today’s GOP and their evangelical backers could get ugly — they almost have to hope that there is no God, or if there is, that She is not a “Just God” or they will have “Hell to Pay” so to speak! No wonder they are in need of serious spiritual help!
Ryan apparently had to act quickly to scotch the blasphemous rumors floating around the Hill: JESUS WASN’T REALLY A RICH WASP. HE WASN’T EVEN A CHRISTIAN, AND HE DIDN’T BELONG TO ANY CHURCH AT ALL. HE SUPPOSEDLY TURNED FISH INTO LOAVES OF BREAD AND DIDN’T EVEN DENY BREAD (let alone cake) TO THE LGBTQ GUYS IN THE CROWD!
Some misguided souls are even claiming that ”our very own” Jesus Christ actually was an indigent swarthy Palestinian disgruntled Jew who led a ragtag band of vagrants — some of whom had quit gainful employment and abandoned their families — around Palestine undermining legal authority, failing to respect THE LAW, and spreading seditious lies like “The meek shall inherit the earth,” “Blessed are the poor,” and “Fat Cats riding camels will never make it through the eye of a needle or pass through the gates of Heaven!” They were “takers” — non-self-supporting, non-contributors to the community, and lived on handouts and public charity!
Some apparently have the audacity to claim that Jesus spoke of a “spiritual kingdom” unrelated to material possessions and tax breaks where rich White Guys would be judged equally with everyone else. Shucks, what’s the purpose of being rich & White if it won’t even buy you preferential treatment? Heck, even a poor guy who wasn’t a lobbyist would have direct access to Mick Mulvaney under that scenario!
This obviously false Prophet reputedly was so poor that he couldn’t afford a lawyer for his trial, not even Rudy Guiliani. He tried to represent himself, and the result was pretty ugly.
False news, false news, false news! Gotta find a true minister who preaches the gospel according to Fox & Friends!
Here are Tal’s pictures. For whatever technical reason, you’ll have to go to the original article at the link to get the captions that go with them!
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Wow! As those of you who read “Courtside” on a regular basis know, I’m a HUGE FAN of Tal’s timely, incisive, concise, and highly accessible reporting. I feature it on a regular basis. I’ve also seen her do a great job on TV and video. But, until now, I didn’t know about her skills as a photojournalist. Tal can do it all!
Also, as my colleague Judge and Super-Blogger Jeffrey Chase pointed out in one of his recent comments on this blog, pictures play an essential role in understanding the immigration saga in America.
Been there, done that in my career. Takes me back to the long past days of riding three wheelers, helicopters, Patrol Cars, looking through infrared night scopes, and even accompanying foot patrol during my days in the “Legacy INS General Counsel’s Office.” (Most often on the border south of San Diego.) We actually took the Trial Attorneys and some of the Assistant U.S. Attorneys prosecuting our cases with us to show them what it was really like at the “ground level.”
Actually doesn’t look all that much different decades later. What is painfully clear is that walls, fences, helicopters, detectors, unrealistically harsh and restrictive laws, and more detention centers (the “New American Gulag”) will never, ever “seal” our borders as some immigration hard-liners insist is possible.
At best, we can control, channel, and regulate the flow of migrants, but not halt it entirely. Human migration was taking place long before the U.S. became a nation, and I daresay that it will continue as long as there are humans left on earth. To think that walls, troops, concentration camps, harsh laws, and prisons are going to halt it completely is a mixture of arrogance and ignorance.
So, rather than pouring more money down the drain on the same “strategies” that have been failing for decades, a “smart” border control policy would involve:
More realistic and generous interpretations of our refugee and asylum laws that should include most of those fleeing for their lives from the Northern Triangle;
A much larger and more “market based” legal immigration system for permanent and temporary migrants that would meet the legitimate needs of U.S. employers and our economy while making it attractive for most prospective workers and employers to use the legal visa system rather than the “black market” of undocumented entry;
A larger and more robust refugee processing program for Northern Triangle refugees so most would be screened and documented outside the U.S.;
Cooperation with the UNHCR and other stable countries in the Western Hemisphere to distribute the flow of long-term and temporary refugees in an equitable manner that will help both the refugees and the receiving countries;
Working with and investing in Mexico and Northern Triangle countries to address and correct the conditions that create migration flows to the Southern Border.
Providing lawyers for asylum applicants who present themselves at the Southern Border so that their claims for protection (which actually go beyond asylum and include protection under the Convention Against Torture) can be fairly, correctly, and efficiently determined in an orderly manner in accordance with Due Process.
No, it’s unlikely to happen in my lifetime. But, I hope that future generations, including the members of the “New Due Process Army,” will find themselves in a position to abandon past mistakes, and develop the smart, wise, generous, humane, realistic, and effective immigration and refugee policies that we need to keep our “nation of immigrants” viable and vitalized for centuries to come. Until then, we’re probably going to have to watch folks repeat variations of the same painful mistakes over and over.
The number of migrants trying to illegally cross into the US at the Mexico border spiked dramatically in March, according to numbers released Wednesday as President Donald Trump announced he was sending National Guard troops to the southern border.
It will take a few months to determine if the spike turns into a full-blown surge similar to a migrant crisis that occurred in 2014, but the increase marked a turn for the administration, which a year ago was touting historically low numbers as the “Trump effect” and is now using the statistics as the reason it needs aggressive new immigration enforcement authorities.
The number of people either caught trying to cross the southern border or rejected for admission increased 37% from February into March, a sudden rise in figures that had been holding relatively steady. The increase was driven especially by a jump in the number of people apprehended trying to cross illegally. The number of families and unaccompanied children trying to come into the US increased at a higher rate than the general population.
Last month’s numbers were three times those of March 2017, when crossings were at their lowest in two decades of records.
That year also defied the usual trend in March, when crossings historically increase as weather improves. In 2013 and 2014, a summer surge of migrants, and especially child migrants, caused a crisis of overcrowding at detention centers and humanitarian concerns. The March uptick lagged those years by several thousand, and numbers in April and May will be key to determining whether the increase marks a trend or a one-off development.
A senior administration official had told reporters on a call Wednesday announcing Trump’s move to send National Guard troops to the border that the numbers were up substantially, using them as a data point in what the President called a “crisis” at the southern border in his memo authorizing troops to be deployed. The monthly numbers were released that evening, slightly ahead of schedule.
Standing at the White House podium Wednesday afternoon, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen noted the historic drop in border crossings that happened in the first few months when Trump took office, calling it the “Trump effect” and touting the work the administration had done on immigration since.
But the numbers by fall had caught up with levels in the last several years under the Obama administration, and Nielsen cited the same statistics Wednesday that the department once cited as proof of its success as the reason more steps were necessary.
“When the President took office, the traffickers, smugglers, TCOs and the illegal aliens that serve as their currency paused to see what our border enforcement efforts would look like and if we could follow through on the deportation and removal,” Nielsen said. “While we have been apprehending aliens at the border with historic efficiency, these illicit smuggling groups saw that our ability to actually remove those who come here illegally did not keep pace. They saw that there were loopholes they could exploit.”
Illegal migration is driven by a number of elements, including what are known as push and pull factors. The administration has been aggressively targeting what it says are pull factors: perceptions that they argue attract immigrants to the US because they believe they will be able to stay. It has discussed the push factors less often, however: the violent and impoverished conditions in Central America that send migrants north out of desperation.
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Get the full story from the ever-amazing Tal at the above link.
Having stupidly turned down the obvious “Dreamers for Wall” deal that almost anyone else could and would have cut, Trump is desperate to show his base at least some “progress” (or more accurately “regress’) on the border.
The facts are:1) there’s no border crisis; 2) the only immigration crisis is that Trump, Sessions and the GOP restrictionists keep perpetuating failed immigration policies; 3) we’re effectively at full employment; 4) the current so-called “undocumented” population is overwhelmingly law-abiding; 5) immigration, both legal and undocumented, has been an essential driving force behold America’s continuing economic success; 6) the border is as well controlled as it ever has been or likely ever will be; 7) DHS Enforcement is so grossly overstaffed and the so-called “criminal alien” population is so small that ICE and CBP agents have little legitimate law enforcement work to do and consequently have turned to “busting” gardeners, maids, roofers, nannies, students, kids, and a wide range of other counterproductive activities to justify their continued existence.
We don’t need more immigration enforcement. What we do need is smarter immigration enforcement. But with biased xenophobes like Trump, Sessions, Miller, Nielsen, and Homan running the show we’re not going to get that without some much-needed “regime change.”
Wake up America! Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all! We can diminish ourselves as a nation, but that won’t stop human migration!
Emma Brown & Frances Stead Sellers report for WashPost:
Stormy Daniels said Saturday that her work in the porn industry has helped her prepare for the international attention she faces on the eve of a much-anticipated television interview about her alleged affair with Donald Trump and the hush money she says she received to keep it quiet.
“Being in the adult industry, I’ve developed a thick skin and maybe a little bit of a dark sense of humor,” she told The Washington Post. “But nothing could truly prepare someone for this.”
Daniels is scheduled to be the star attraction of the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes” on Sunday evening, a broadcast that caps a two-week media blitz by her attorney, Michael Avenatti. As Daniels’s image and story have become 24/7 fodder for cable news shows, Avenatti has hinted repeatedly that there are more details yet to come out — including in a tweet Friday suggesting that he has a DVD with new information.
In a brief interview Saturday evening, with Avenatti on the line, Daniels sounded upbeat, even as she acknowledged that the media circus she’s attracted has changed her day-to-day life as a wife, mother and adult-film director.
“Without a doubt it’s cutting into my horse show time,” said Daniels, who is an avid equestrian. “And time with friends.”
. . . .
Daniels told The Post on Saturday that she’s been the target of hatred on social media in recent weeks. But she said she also has been overwhelmed by an outpouring of support. When somebody recently accused her of being a liar on Twitter, she said, she received a flood of messages with hashtags like #Ibelieveyou and #teamstormy.
“I didn’t do this to get any sort of approval from anyone or recognition,” she said. “I simply wanted to tell my personal truth and defend myself.”
. . . .
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Go on over to WashPost at the above link for the complete article by Emma and Frances.
So far, the Stormster has outfoxed the Trumpster at ever turn. Which always brings me back to the same question: How did a smart, multi-talented, personable, on the ball individual like Daniels/Clifford get mixed up with a creep like Trump in the first place?
Tune in to “60 Minutes” tonight and maybe you’ll find out!
Melissa Bailey reports for Kaiser Health News in the Washing gton Post:
BOSTON — The two women have been together since 2011, a 96-year-old originally from Italy and a Haitian immigrant who has helped her remain in her home — giving her showers, changing her clothes, taking her to her favorite parks and discount grocery stores.
“Hello, bella,” Nirva greets Isolina Dicenso, using the Italian word for “beautiful.”
“Hi, baby,” Dicenso replies.
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But changes to federal immigration policy are putting both at risk. Haitian caregivers like Nirva, who got temporary permission to stay in the United States after the 2010 earthquake destroyed much of their homeland, now face a July 22, 2019 deadline for returning. If they and tens of thousands of other immigrants with similar jobs and tenuous legal status are forced to leave the country, Americans living with disabilities, serious illness or, like Dicenso, the frailties of old age could find themselves with few options besides nursing homes.
And many of those facilities could themselves be caught short of staff, at a time when more of the country’s aging baby boom generation could need care.
The situation reflects the crosscurrents that often roil immigration debates, with a central question being how many Americans are willing to fill the arduous, low-pay positions that immigrants often work. The expected fallout offers a glimpse into how such policy changes under President Trump will affect older Americans nationwide, especially those in large cities.
Some 59,000 Haitians live in the United States under temporary protected status (TPS), a humanitarian program that has given them permission to live and work in this country since the earthquake. Many are nursing assistants, home health aides and personal care attendants — the trio of jobs that often defines direct-care workers.
The Trump administration decided last November to curtail that protection, saying the island no longer faced the same adverse conditions and giving the immigrants until mid-2019 to leave or face deportation. In Boston, the city with the nation’s third-highest Haitian population, the action has prompted panic from TPS holders and pleas from health-care agencies that rely on their labor.
The decision “will have a devastating impact on the ability of skilled nursing facilities to provide quality care to frail and disabled residents,” Tara Gregorio, president of the Massachusetts Senior Care Association, warned in a letter published late last year in the Boston Globe. Nursing facilities in the state, which already are grappling with a shortage of several thousand workers, employ about 4,300 Haitians, according to Gregorio.
Nationwide, 1 in 4 direct-care workers are immigrants, said Robert Espinoza, vice president of policy at the New York-based Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute.
It’s not clear how many of those workers rely on the TPS program, but the Institute calculates that there are 34,600 who are non-U.S. citizens from Haiti, Nicaragua (for which TPS will end in January), El Salvador (in September 2019) and Honduras (in July, unless the Trump administration decides to renew protected status for individuals from this country). TPS decisions cannot legally take economic considerations into account, a Department of Homeland Security official said.
In addition, another 11,000 workers come from countries affected by Trump’s travel ban, primarily from Somalia and Iran, and about 69,800 are non-U.S. citizens from Mexico, according to the Institute.
Even immigrants with secure legal status may be affected when family members are deported, Espinoza noted: Under Trump, noncriminal immigration arrests have doubled. The “totality of the anti-immigrant climate” threatens the stability of the workforce — and “the ability of older people and people with disabilities to access home health care,” he said.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which supports more restrictive immigration policies, disputes such dire scenarios. Since three-quarters of direct-care workers are U.S. citizens, spokesman David Ray argues, then “these are clearly not ‘jobs that Americans won’t do.’ ” He does the math this way: The country has 6.7 million unemployed people, and if the health-care industry can’t find enough workers to replace those who lose TPS and other protected statuses, “then it needs to take a hard look at its recruiting practices and compensation packages.”
Yet nursing homes in Massachusetts are already losing immigrant workers who have left the country in fear, because of the White House’s immigration proposals and public remarks , according to Gregorio. Nationally, thousands of Haitians have fled to Canada.
“What people don’t seem to understand is that people from other countries really are the backbone of long-term care,” said Sister Jacquelyn McCarthy, chief executive of Bethany Health Care Center in Framingham, Mass., which runs a nursing home with 170 patients. She has eight Haitian and Salvadoran workers with TPS, mostly certified nursing assistants, who show up reliably for 4:30 a.m. shifts and never call out sick, she said. She already has six CNA vacancies and can’t afford to lose more, she said.
“There aren’t people to replace them if they should all be deported,” McCarthy said.
Nirva, who asked that she be identified only by her first name, works 70 hours a week taking care of senior citizens, sick and disabled patients. She started working as a CNA shortly after she arrived in Boston in March 2010 with her two sons.
She said she chose this work because of her harrowing experience in the earthquake, which destroyed her home and killed hundreds of thousands, including her cousin and nephew. After the disaster, she walked 15 miles with her sister, a nurse, to a Red Cross station to try to help survivors. When she got there, she recounted, the guards wouldn’t let her in because she wasn’t a nurse.
“So, when I came here — I feel, people’s life is very important,” she said. But at first, caring for elderly patients was difficult. “At the beginning, it was very tough for me,” she acknowledged, especially “when I have to clean their incontinence. . . . Some of them, they have dementia, they are fighting. They insult you. You have to be very compassionate to do this job.”
Nirva, 46, works with a soft voice, a bubbling laugh and disarming modesty. She says her faith in God — and a need to pay the bills to support her sons, now in high school and college — help her get through each week.
She started caring for Dicenso in her Boston home as the older woman recovered from surgery in 2011. With support from Nirva, another in-home aide and her daughter, Dicenso has been able to continue living alone. She now sees Nirva once a week for walks, lunch outings and shopping runs. The two have grown close, bonding in part over their Catholic faith. At home, Dicenso proudly displays a bedspread that Nirva gave her, emblazoned with the word LOVE.
Nirva also fills three shifts a week at a chiropractor’s office as a medical assistant. Five nights a week, she does an overnight shift at a Boston rehabilitation center.
The Trump administration’s immigration restrictions may exacerbate a serious shortage of direct-care workers, warns Paul Osterman, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. He forecasts a national shortfall of 151,000 workers by 2030 and of 355,000 workers by 2040. If immigrants lose their work permits, the gap would widen further.
“People aren’t going to be able to have quality care,” he said. “They’re not going to be able to stay at home.”
Angelina Di Pietro, Dicenso’s daughter, worries about who could help her mother if Nirva can’t. “There’s not a lot of people in this country who would take care of the elderly,” she said. “Taking care of the elderly is a hard job.”
“Nirva, pray to God they let you stay,” said Dicenso, sitting in her living-room armchair after a long walk and ravioli lunch. “What would I do without you?”
Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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Restrictionist myths:
Health care workers are unskilled;
At virtually 100% employment, there are other American workers to take these jobs;
There wasn’t a rational basis for continuing Haitian TPS;
There is a legal prohibition on taking humanitarian factors and US interests into account in making discretionary, unreviewable TPS determinations;
That legal requirements are a factor in the actions of the Trump Administration (the most lawless and dishonest Administration in US history).
What will happen when xenophobes like David Ray of FAIR need help in their old age? Will they will get the benefit of the qualified, compassionate care that they would deny the rest of us? Or, will they be cared for by “anybody off the street” as they propose for others?
WARNING: THESE ARTICLES DEAL WITH A SUPERSTAR OF THE SO-CALLED ADULT ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY AND A SLEAZY REALITY SHOW HAS BEEN/NEVER WAS NAMED DONALD TRUMP. THEY CONTAIN MATERIAL THAT MIGHT NOT BE SUITABLE FOR FAMILY READING AND/OR VIEWING!
More than 16 months ago, Stormy Daniels signed a confidentiality agreement that prohibited her from discussing her alleged affair with Donald Trump. Or his business. Or his children. Or his “alleged children.”
Under the agreement, Daniels couldn’t even keep a copy of the agreement. The penalty for defying these constraints? One million dollars each time.
That was then.
Now, the porn star is trying to rewrite the script. She hired an aggressive new lawyer, Michael Avenatti, who won a $454 million medical fraud verdict last year, the largest in the state of California in 2017. She took the president of the United States to court, declaring that the “hush agreement” under which she was paid $130,000 is void because it lacks Trump’s signature.
Adult film actress Stormy Daniels arrives for the 49th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Feb. 11, 2007. Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is suing President Trump and wants a California judge to invalidate a nondisclosure agreement she signed weeks before the 2016 presidential election. (Matt Sayles/AP)
Possibly in defiance of a secret gag order, Daniels on Thursday gave a yet-to-be-aired interview to CBS News’s “60 Minutes.” She spoke with a reporter for a story published by Rolling Stone on Friday under a headline calling her “the Hero America Needs.” She’s lately been sassy on Twitter, mocking critics and correcting their misspellings.
“Look how Stormy is controlling the narrative now,” said Karen Tynan, a lawyer based in the San Francisco area with clients in the porn industry. “The allegedly most powerful man in the world is dancing to the tune played by Stormy.”
Those who know Daniels, 38, say they aren’t surprised. She is viewed as ambitious and resilient in the porn industry, where she rose from actress to director of dozens of films. In 2016, she won industry awards for “Wanted,” a three-hour western that she wrote, directed and starred in.
“She did a lot of things that most porn stars don’t do,” said Kevin Blatt, a broker of celebrity sex tapes. “They don’t graduate to that point of directing and taking control of their own careers. They’re usually manipulated and exploited, chewed up and spit out.”
Daniels herself described her role in the porn world last week in a podcast hosted by erotic photographer Holly Randall. “I’ve written and directed all of my own movies for the last 10 years because I am a control freak,” Daniels said. “Or is it because, if you want something done right, you do it yourself? Or is it because I wanted to get paid double for the day? The correct answer is ‘D,’ all of the above.”
That assertiveness contrasts with the silence that was required of Daniels in the deal she was negotiating in late 2016 with Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen.
“She was kind of in a predicament,” said Slate editor Jacob Weisberg, who spoke with her during that time. “There was a deal being worked out in which she could get money, which she wanted, but it wasn’t working out as she expected, and she didn’t know who to trust or what to do.”
What she decided to do, days before the 2016 election, was take the deal.
Cohen said Friday that the funds for the $130,000 payment came from his own home equity line of credit, a claim first reported by ABC News. Mortgage records show Cohen opened a line of credit for up to $500,000 in February 2016 on his Manhattan condo.
The agreement names four people Daniels said she had told about the alleged affair: representative Gina Rodriguez, friend Keith Munyan, ex-husband Mike Mosney and porn actress Angel Ryan. Ryan, who goes by the stage name Jessica Drake, accused Trump before the election of forcibly kissing her and two friends a decade earlier, during the same Lake Tahoe golf tournament where he met Daniels.
Trump has denied misconduct with women, and his campaign called Drake’s allegations “totally false and ridiculous.”
The deal remained secret for more than a year. It leaked on Jan. 12, in a story published by the Wall Street Journal.
Soon, Daniels was speaking out, though coyly at first.
“You can’t say whether you have a nondisclosure agreement,” observed late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel during a Jan. 30 interview in which Daniels gave up little information. “But if you didn’t have a nondisclosure agreement, you most certainly could say, ‘I don’t have a nondisclosure agreement,’ yes?” he asked.
“You’re so smart, Jimmy!” Daniels responded.
The agreement calls for binding and confidential arbitration in the event of a dispute. (Despite its language, there has been no credible claim of Trump fathering children beyond the five he is known to have.)
On Feb. 27, Cohen enacted that provision. Within hours, the arbitrator issued a temporary restraining order barring Daniels from talking about the deal, catching her by surprise, Avenatti said.
On Tuesday, Daniels forced the matter fully into the public domain with the lawsuit she and Avenatti filed in Los Angeles Superior Court. Though she has never suggested her relationship with Trump was anything other than consensual, the lawsuit links Daniels to the parade of women who accused him of sexual misconduct in the weeks before the 2016 election, motivated to speak out by revelations that he once bragged about groping women.
“Mr. Cohen is proceeding in a private arbitration hidden from public view in an effort to further hide from the public the true circumstances of what happened,” Avenatti said in an interview.
Cohen said in January that Trump denied having had an affair with Daniels. He later acknowledged facilitating the payment. On Friday, citing language in the contract, he said Trump’s signature was not required.
“I believe Mr. Avenatti’s actions and behavior has been both reckless and imprudent as it opens Ms. Clifford to substantial monetary liability, which I intend to pursue,” Cohen said Friday, using Daniels’s given name. “I question whether Mr. Avenatti has weighed his desire for 15 minutes of fame versus his client’s welfare. Time will ultimately prove that I am right.”
Avenatti has become a brash spokesman for Daniels, slinging rapid-fire broadsides in a media blitz that entered its third day on Friday. His website touts his media savvy, saying “most lawyers falter and under-utilize” connections with the press.
The arguments he advances play into the new awareness, heightened by the #MeToo movement, of the ways powerful men have exploited women for decades. Increasingly, nondisclosure agreements and confidential arbitration have kept these matters private long after they are settled.
In the tense back-and-forth with Cohen before the election, Daniels was represented by Keith Davidson, a Los Angeles lawyer who built a business around celebrity news — often by brokering deals to keep it out of the public eye. He represented the ex-girlfriend of actor Verne Troyer, best known for playing Mini-Me in the Austin Powers movie series, in a lawsuit over a leaked sex tape. Another client was a woman who had been fired from the Betty Ford Clinic for disclosing confidential information about actress Lindsay Lohan.
In recent weeks, as scrutiny of her alleged relationship with Trump increased, Daniels hired Avenatti, a lawyer whose practice has included cases including wrongful death, negligence and complex class-action lawsuits.
“I retained Michael because I needed a top notch attorney with a proven track record who would listen and put my interests first; who is fearless, really smart, articulate and knows how to deal with the media,” Daniels said in a statement provided by Avenatti. “He has proven to be all of these things.”
It’s not the first time Avenatti has sued Trump: He was on the legal team that in 2005 represented Mark Bethea, who accused Trump and television producer Mark Burnett of stealing his idea for the reality show that became “The Apprentice.” The case was settled the following year on terms that were not disclosed.
Last year, Avenatti won the $454 million judgment against multinational paper company Kimberly-Clark and medical manufacturer Halyard Health over the companies’ claims that their surgical gowns were impermeable to serious diseases, such as Ebola and HIV.
“Michael is a very tenacious lawyer,” said Bruce Broillet, a Santa Monica-based lawyer who has worked closely with Avenatti, noting that he graduated first in his law school class at George Washington University.
The highly visible approach taken by Avenatti and Daniels has caused her popularity to surge.
Each time Daniels has been in the news for her alleged affair with Trump — when she appeared on Kimmel’s show, when Cohen admitted arranging the $130,000 payment, and most recently when she sued the president — searches for her name on Pornhub.com have spiked, according to an analysis by the site.
After the story about the payment broke, searches for her name skyrocketed from a daily average of 2,500 to more than 2 million searches in five days.
Her fee for appearing at a Las Vegas strip club called Little Darlings in late January was unusually high, said manager Ron Nady, though he would not disclose it. “She was the hottest thing on the planet,” he said.
Daniels is from Louisiana, where she once explored a run for U.S. Senate. She lives near Dallas with her husband and their 7-year-old daughter, who is aware her mother makes movies that are not for children.
Daniels is also a serious equestrian, said Packy McGaughan, a Maryland-based horse trainer who first met her at a 2016 equestrian event, one that included Olympic riders. The porn star’s presence can be a distraction when he is teaching children and their parents spot her, McGaughan acknowledged.
“The mothers ask, ‘Is that Stormy Daniels? Errr, um.’ ” he said. “And the fathers go, ‘Oooh.’ ”
McGaughan said he doesn’t think Daniels will shy away from controversy. “This is an extreme sport,” he said. “You have to be a risk taker in all aspect of your life. That’s her personality.”
Daniels’s determination has become a point of pride among sex workers and others in the industry who are tackling issues such as human trafficking and who have long felt marginalized.
“We’ve never had a run-in with the president,” said Brian Gross, a publicist who has clients in the porn industry. “Nothing like this.”
As recently as this past week, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dismissed the notion that Trump had approved a payment to Daniels. “None of these allegations are true,” she said.
In the recent podcast interview, Daniels said she was looking forward to sharing her story on her terms.
“Eventually, hopefully I’ll be able to tell my side,” she said. “Not for any sort of gain other than I want to be able to defend myself. That’s the worst part, is that at this moment I can’t defend myself.
“It’s incredibly frustrating,” she added, “especially for somebody like me, who has no problem usually defending herself.”
The host, Randall, interjected: “Yes, you aren’t somebody to keep your mouth shut.”
Daniels: “My name is Stormy for a reason!”
Alice Crites and Tom Hamburger contributed to this report.
Meanwhile, over at Rolling Stone, in an article cited by the “Post three” reporters, Denver Nicks writes:
. . . .
Needless to say, I was intrigued. She seemed funny and quick, but also thick-skinned and refreshingly playful in response to my light Internet derision. I asked if she’d be up for an interview, DM’d her my phone number. A few days later I got a call from “No Caller ID.”
“Hello?” I said, hesitantly.
“You shouldn’t answer calls from blocked numbers,” a female voice said. I stayed silent. “This is Stormy,” she said.
“Oh,” I said. “I thought you were my ex-girlfriend.”
“Not yet!” Daniels chirped.
We arranged to meet in Houston a few days later, when her tour passed through town.
. . . .
Watching Daniels that night in full command of the crowd, titillating strangers for cash and flirting with her fans like a pro, I think of how she’s portrayed as a dumb bimbo in the SNL parody, in which Cecily Strong says that in 2018 Stormy Daniels is the hero America deserves. Whether that’s true or not, in 2018 Stormy Daniels may be the hero America needs.
A decade and a half working in porn imbues a person with an unusual frankness, a kind of extreme authenticity. A successful porn star with a career like Daniels’ must be comfortable in her own skin and with other people’s bodies, including the weird-looking parts (penises and vaginas, anuses and perinea), and with the various kinds of discharge the human body produces – all things the rest of us would rather stop thinking about when the erotic moment has passed and we put our clothes back on. Porn stars also have to be comfortable dwelling in the contradictions of porn: in fans’ fantasies, but also in the mundane world of bills, groceries, hobbies and, in Daniels’ case, being a mom; in exposing the most intimate parts of themselves doing one of the most intimate things humans do, while maintaining a life as an authentic person who feels passion and love. Maybe what America needs most in 2018, as we stew in rage, simultaneously enthralled, bewildered and revolted by ourselves, is a porn star to help us take a long, uncompromising, compassionate look at our country and culture, gross parts and all.
. . .
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I’ve said all along that Daniels is smarter, shrewder, more decent, more down to earth, and just a better all-around person than our “Con-Man-In-Chief.” And, there’s certainly nothing in these two articles that would prove otherwise. Yeah, she’s a Republican. But, a kinder, gentler, more compassionate one than the Trumpster and his nasty followers. It also looks like Daniels might have more skill and judgement in hiring lawyers than Trump.
In September, when the Trump administration announced that it was winding down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that protected young unauthorized immigrants who came to the US as children from deportation, tens of thousands of immigrants were waiting to hear back about DACA applications they’d already submitted.
Many of them are still waiting.
According to new statistics from US Citizenship and Immigration Services, at least 20,000 immigrants who applied for the program before the September announcement are still awaiting approval for their applications.
That means that 20,000 or so immigrants have had to live in fear of deportation, and haven’t been able to get a job in the US legally, since September 5, 2017 — when the administration announced no new DACA applications would be accepted — even though they applied for DACA before the cutoff.
The precise number isn’t entirely clear. One USCIS report says there were “approximately” 21,950 initial DACA requests pending as of the end of January; another says there were 25,513. (USCIS was asked for comment Wednesday but was unable to provide it before publication.)
But what’s clear is that the overwhelming majority of those immigrants submitted their applications back when DACA was still in full effect — and have been waiting anxiously to hear back from the government as the program’s future has been called into doubt.
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Read Dara’s complete article at the link. USCIS has plenty of time to send out mindless requests for additional information on what used to be routine business visa petitions, but not enough time and resources to adjudicate these requests? Gimme a break! The “Administration of Scofflaws” does virtually nothing without a court order.
Thanks to Roxanne Lea Fantl of Richmond, VA for alerting me to this item!
Ruth Ellen Wasem The University of Texas at Austin
6 Journal on Migration and Human Security 97 (2018)
KEY QUOTE:
Even with fragmented governance and strained resources, the US immigration system has enjoyed successes. Each year, approximately one million foreign nationals legally become permanent residents in the United States. In FY 2015 and FY 2016, the Bureau of Consular Affairs issued over 10 million visas each year to foreign nationals coming to the United States as nonimmigrants (i.e., for a temporary purpose and a temporary period of time) and over half a million visas to LPRs (Bureau of Consular Affairs 2017). CBP admitted almost 77 million foreign nationals as nonimmigrant admissions to the United States in FY 2015 (Office of Immigration Statistics 2016). That year, DOL processed 711,820 employer applications for 1,580,778 positions for temporary and permanent labor certifications Immigration Governance for the Twenty-First Century 117 (Office of Foreign Labor Certification 2016). In FY 2015, there were 730,259 LPRs who became US citizens. That same year, the United States admitted 69,920 refugees, and USCIS approved 26,124 asylees. DHS apprehended 462,388 foreign nationals and deported 444,431 foreign nationals in FY 2015. Another 253,509 foreign nationals were denied entry, and 129,122 foreign nationals returned home without a formal order of removal (Office of Immigration Statistics 2016). In FY 2016, EOIR judges received 328,122 cases and completed 273,390, including those of 8,726 foreign nationals who were granted asylum (EOIR 2017). Considerable credit is due to the people carrying out immigration-related responsibilities across the federal government.
Immigration is not a program to be administered; rather, it is a phenomenon to be managed. While there are limits to how much one government can control migration, the building blocks in Figure 3 offer a reasonable set of priorities. Effective immigration governance, coupled with laws and policies that incorporate the national interests, is key to maintaining a robust sovereign nation.
Get the entire article, which I highly recommend, at this link:
Words of wisdom, to be sure. If only our policy makers had the same degree of understanding.
Today, we operate on an illusion that a few folks sitting in Washington, D.C. can “pull all the strings” to seal borders, override market forces, ignore international conditions and agreements, change behavior in foreign countries, and dominate forces of human migration that have been at work since before all of us were born and will continue long after we’re all gone. It’s a toxic mix of arrogance and ignorance that will leave immigration and refugee policy in tatters for years to come.
I can only hope that there are those out there in the upcoming generations who will bring to the immigration phenomenon practical scholarship, reason, humanity, fairness, and better ideas on management of our laws for the benefit of our country and humanity as a whole.
Casa de Maryland v. DHS, D. MD., 03-05-18, Judge Roger W. Titus
While the Administration and right-leaning media are touting this as a “smashing victory” here’s what District Judge Titus really said:
The original Obama Administration DACA program was an exercise of prosecutorial discretion on which reasonable minds can differ as to its legality.
The Trump Administration had discretion either to continue the DACA program or not as an exercise of prosecutorial discretion.
The decision by the Administration to phase out DACA was subject to judicial review and the plaintiffs had standing to challenge it.
The DHS’s decision to phase out DACA upon receiving an opinion from Attorney General Sessions that it might well be held illegal in a threatened court action was reasonable.
The sometimes ill-advised and inflammatory statements by President Trump were not relevant to the basis for termination of DACA.
Although Judge Titus personally would have chosen a different policy approach from that of the Administration, under Constitutional separation of powers that policy decision was vested in the Executive and Congress, not the Courts, and the Administration had acted reasonably in this case.
The DHS is estopped from using information gathered during the DACA application process against individuals in Removal Proceedings except if “the Government needs to make use of an individual Dreamer’s information for national security or some purpose implicating public safety or public interest, the Government may petition the Court for permission to do so on a case-by-case basis with in camera review.”
Judge Titus’s decision actually more or less undermines the Administration’s frequent claims that DACA was “illegal” and that the Administration had “no choice” but to terminate it. Rather, the court held that legitimate unresolved questions had been raised about the DACA program’s legality and that in the face of those questions the Administration’s choice to proceed with a phased termination rather than trying to defend DACA in court was reasonable.
Additionally, as I had predicted, the court was unwilling to allow DHS to use DACA information against the individuals in Removal Proceedings. While this aspect of the case was :”under the radar” in most reports, it could well be another major practical/legal roadblock to the Administration’s actually removing many DACA recipients even if the injunctions against DACA termination eventually are lifted.
Here’s a “KEY QUOTE” from Judge Titus’s decision:
“The result of this case is not one that this Court would choose if it were a member of a different branch of our government. An overwhelming percentage of Americans support protections for “Dreamers,” yet it is not the province of the judiciary to provide legislative or executive actions when those entrusted with those responsibilities fail to act. As Justice Gorsuch noted during his confirmation hearing, “a judge who likes every outcome he reaches is probably a pretty bad judge, stretching for the policy results he prefers rather than those the law compels.”
This Court does not like the outcome of this case, but is constrained by its constitutionally limited role to the result that it has reached. Hopefully, the Congress and the President will finally get their job done.”
In other words, the decision to rescind DACA was “dumb but legal.” Hardly the ringing endorsement that the Trumpsters claim. What this case actually did is to vindicate their right to make bad policy decisions. Ultimately, the remedy for that type of poor governance is at the ballot box.
Here’s the full decision in Casa de Maryland v. DHS so you can judge for yourself:
“For his entire adult life and, let’s be honest, probably a good portion of his teen years, Paul Ryan has fantasized about tax cuts the way some people fantasize about having sex with a porn star. Not just any old tax cuts, of course, but the kind that disproportionately benefit corporate America and the upper-echelons of the ultra rich, while handing average Americans an extra buck fifty a paycheck and expecting an outpouring of gratitude in return. We know this because 1) he’s openly and unabashedly obsessed with Ayn Rand, and 2) just a few short months ago, the House Speaker released a sizzle reel highlighting his many urgent calls for tax cuts spanning nearly 20 years in office. In Donald Trump, a man who has never demonstrated conviction in anything other than enriching himself and other people named Trump, Ryan saw an opportunity for his longtime dream to become a reality. That’s why, for more than a year now, Ryan has put up with everything from the president demanding loyalty from the head of the F.B.I. (“he’s new at this!”) to his decision to give Nazis a free pass (“he’s learning!”) to his refusal to release his tax returns, even though Wisconsin’s first son could compel to do so (“tee-hee!”). And in December, Ryan’s commitment to holding his nose and looking the other way paid off, big time.
This week, though, we learned that there are, in fact, limits to what Ryan will put up with, and they involve imperiling the legacy of his tax bill and upsetting his corporate sugar daddies. In the wake of the president’s decision to announce that he plans to effectively start a trade war, Ryan’s spokeswoman, AshLee Strong, said in a statement on Monday: “We are extremely worried about the consequences of a trade war and are urging the White House to not advance with this plan. The new tax-reform law has boosted the economy and we certainly don’t want to jeopardize those gains.” To be clear, most people outside of the G.O.P. already expect the long-term effects of the tax bill to be a deficit-busting mess. But with Trump’s call to slap steel and aluminum imports with 25% and 10% tariffs, more or less out of spite, the havoc wreaked on the economy could be even worse, with experts estimating 146,000 job losses, among other consequences. Presumably, Ryan was also inspired to find his voice on the issue—and to fire off at least one passive-aggressive tweet—on account of the fact that the Koch brothers, who donated half a million dollars to his fundraising committee after the bill passed, harshly condemned the tariffs. And as they teach lawmakers on their first day on Capitol Hill, one mustn’t upset one’s benefactors.
Trump, though, apparently could not care less about Ryan’s (or anyone else’s) concerns, telling reporters Monday “we’re not backing down” and that the tariffs are “100 percent” happening. The U.S., he said, has been “ripped off” by other countries for too long, and “we are going to take care of it.” Perhaps the one ray of hope in this otherwise terrifying situation? Because this whole thing was put together in such a half-assed, completely slipshod way, Trump’s advisers—the ones who support the tariffs—are already hedging their bets:
Peter Navarro, an adviser and the architect of many of Mr. Trump’s campaign-trade promises, confirmed on Sunday that the president would not exclude any country from the tariffs but said individual companies could apply for exemptions for certain products. . . . Navarro [also] left room for change in the timing of the tariffs, which the president said would be signed this week. “Toward the end of the week,” Mr. Navarro said in a separate appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, when asked when the tariffs would be announced. “At the latest, it would be the following week.”
Wilbur Ross, the secretary of commerce, also appeared to leave room for the president to change his mind. “Whatever his final decision is, is what will happen,” Mr. Ross said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “What he has said he has said. If he says something different, it’ll be something different.” “If he for some reason should change his mind, then it will change,” Mr. Ross added, noting that he had no reason to believe that the president would do so.
Or as a top Republican put it to Politico: “I’ve stopped worrying and reacting to the day-to-day because you get all stressed out about something, then you realize tomorrow morning by lunch that it’s never going to happen.”
Report: Trump’s personal lawyer couldn’t believe he wasn’t immediately reimbursed for $130,00 porn-star payment
The lawyer, Michael Cohen, wired the money to a lawyer for former actress Stephanie Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels, from an account at First Republic Bank. The money was received on Oct. 27, 2016, 12 days before the presidential election, another person familiar with the matter said…Mr. Cohen said he missed two deadlines earlier that month to make the $130,000 payment to Ms. Clifford because he couldn’t reach Mr. Trump in the hectic final days of the presidential campaign, the person said.
Ms. Clifford was owed the money in return for signing an agreement that bars her from discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump in 2006, people familiar with the matter said. After Mr. Trump’s victory, Mr. Cohen complained to friends that he had yet to be reimbursed for the payment to Ms. Clifford, the people said.
Honestly, finance departments should really provide expense-report templates for this kind of thing. (Asked for comment from the Wall Street Journal, Cohen responded: “Fake News.”)
In recent weeks, the Trump Organization has ordered the manufacture of new tee markers for golf courses that are emblazoned with the seal of the president of the United States. Under federal law, the seal’s use is permitted only for official government business. Misuse can be a crime.
Past administrations have policed usage vigilantly. In 2005 the Bush administration ordered the satirical news website The Onion to remove a replica of the seal. Grant M. Dixton, associate White House counsel, wrote in a letter to The Onion that the seal “is not to be used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way that suggests presidential support or endorsement.”
Area man demands media leave the Trumps alone!
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Now is is a great time to re-read Andy Borowitz’s (all too true) satire on “Spineless Paul” that I reprinted on Courtside in December 2017:
“WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a unique accord, the billionaire Koch brothers and the National Rifle Association have reached a timeshare agreement over the ownership of House Speaker Paul Ryan, representatives of both parties have confirmed.
Speaking on behalf of the Kochs, Charles Koch said that he contacted the N.R.A.’s executive director, Wayne LaPierre, with the timeshare proposal “so that we could all get the maximum enjoyment out of owning Paul.”
The arrangement is intended to minimize conflicts between the Kochs and the gun group that have arisen in the past when both co-owners have wanted to use Ryan at the same time, Koch said.
“I said to Wayne, ‘This is craziness,’ ” he said. “ ‘Let’s work something out where you get Paul half the year, and we’ll take him the other half.’ ”
Under the timeshare deal, the Kochs will have the exclusive use of Ryan during the months when tax cuts and environmental deregulation are put to a vote, while the N.R.A. will have him for the months when gun legislation is to be defeated.
Additionally, each co-owner is responsible for insuring that Ryan is well maintained and in good condition when the other’s period of using him commences.
Koch indicated that, if the timeshare agreement is a success, the two parties are likely to work out a similar deal for their longtime joint ownership of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.”
However, the deep corruption of the GOP and its leaders, from Trump on down, isn’t really something to laugh about. At some point, the “nickel and dime” income boost given to average Americans by the GOP’s totally bogus and unwarranted “tax cuts” for the rich will automatically expire (but, naturally, not for the rich) and the true bill for running up the deficit so the Koch Bros and others can get richer will come due. By that time, conveniently, Trump, Ryan, and hopefully McConnell will be out of office. But, the damage they are doing to our country will be left for others, likely the Democrats, to clean up. That’s what Kleptocracy is all about, folks. Steal what you can when you can and then get out of Dodge while the getting is good!
“A wise person once said, of working in the White House: “It’s worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns . . . I am in a constant state of shock and horror.” Whether or not that description can be attributed to Gary Cohn or is simply “representative” of his views, we may never know, but it’s obviously a good summation of what life is like inside the capsizing Carnival cruise ship that is the West Wing, particularly over the last 24 hours.
To recap, on Wednesday night, The Washington Post reported that Donald Trump was expected to announce major tariffs on aluminum and steel on Thursday, a development that apparently caught administration officials completely off guard. Though Trump has been itching to start a trade war since he announced his candidacy for president, virtually all of his advisers, outside the truly batshit insane ones, strongly advised against such punitive measures, as they could ultimately hurt many U.S. allies and provoke retaliation by U.S. trading partners, among other terrible consequences. During a June meeting with his Cabinet to discuss the issue, a whopping 22 people were said to be against Trump’s wishes, to the three who weren’t: Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, then-senior adviser Steve Bannon, and Trump himself. Unhappy that more people weren’t on his side, Trump reportedly screamed, “I want tariffs. And I want someone to bring me some tariffs!”
With Bannon’s departure, there was a thought that sheer numbers, if not sanity, would prevail. In addition to Cohn, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Secretary of Defense James Mattis have all strenuously argued against the tariffs, warning that they could hurt the global economy, damage key relationships, and threaten national security. That was obviously wishful thinking, though, given that 1) when Trump gets an idea in his head, no matter how dumb it is, he doesn’t let it go, and 2) the president has recently been taking the advice of Peter Navarro, a hard-line trade adviser who makes Bannon look like a “globalist cuck.” (For reference, Navarro wrote a book called Death by China, has encouraged Trump to go after freaking Canada, and thinks the North American Free Trade Agreement is responsible for an increase in spousal abuse, divorce, and infertility.) Considering Navarro’s growing influence in the White House, in retrospect it probably shouldn’t have come as a shock that this afternoon, this happened:
President Trump said on Thursday that he will impose stiff and sweeping tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum as he moved to fulfill a key campaign promise to get tough on foreign competitors.Mr. Trump said he would formally sign the trade measures next week and promised they would be in effect “for a long period of time.” The trade measures would impose tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum. It is unclear whether those would apply to all imports or be targeted toward specific countries, like China, which have been flooding the United States with cheap metals.
The announcement capped a frenetic and chaotic morning inside the White House as Mr. Trump summoned more than a dozen executives from the steel and aluminum industry to the White House, raising expectations that he would announce his long-promised tariffs. However, the legal review of the trade measure was not yet complete and, as of Thursday morning, White House advisers were still discussing various scenarios for tariff levels and which countries could be included, according to people familiar with the deliberations.
It’s hard to overstate how bad of an idea this is. In addition to going against the advice of nearly all of his advisers and most people on Capitol Hill, essentially flipping off the World Trade Organization, and likely alienating important allies, the “JOBS JOBS JOBS” president is putting countless “JOBS” at risk in sectors like the automotive industry that obviously rely on aluminum and steel to manufacture their products. (According Axios’s Jonathan Swan, a report put out by Wilbur “wake me when the meeting is over” Ross that recommended imposing tariffs enraged Cohn because it didn’t factor in such collateral damage. Cohn and other staffers were also reportedly irked by the fact that the report suggested Trump’s fantasy of a manufacturing Renaissance could come true, when everyone knows it’s never gonna happen.)
To give you an idea of how unpopular today’s announcement was, even the Brothers Koch have come out against it, calling the tariffs, via their Americans for Prosperity mouthpiece, “a misguided approach that will hurt American businesses and families by increasing costs and undermining the tax relief just delivered by Congress and President Trump.” Larry Kudlow, whose name as been floated as a possible replacement for Cohn, and who is a huge fan of Trump’s, slammed the move, too, saying “All that will happen with steel tariffs is you will raise prices for all import users and that includes businesses and of course consumers. You will wind up hurting millions of people to help 140,000 people in the steel industry.” But don’t take their word for it. Here’s how Trump’s favorite metric responded:
(For those of you who are not visual learners, what we’re saying is: the Dow plunged 550 points on the news, closing the day down more than 400 points. For a stock-market obsessed president, that’s gotta hurt.)
Scott Pruitt, risking his life, will fly coach
Earlier this month, Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruittcame under fire for routinely flying first or business class when coach would have sufficed. His excuse? That “we live in a very toxic environment politically, particularly around issues of the environment,” and one time someone went up to him in the airport and uttered completely factual statements to his face. From there on out, his security detail decided that flying at the back of the plane was too much of a risk, and that Pruitt’s safety could only be ensured in the part of the aircraft where the booze is on the house. Today, however, this hugely brave American announced that those days are over.
During an interview with CBS News, Pruitt said that he has told his security detail “to accommodate those security threats in alternate ways . . . up to and including, flying coach going forward.”
Perhaps showing why we have the Trump “Clownocracy” in the first place, some Dems actually enthusiastically endorsed Trump’s idiotic move. As the late great Casey Stengel might have said, “Can’t anyone here play this game?” Guys, we need steel and aluminum, and we import one heck of a lot more than we make. Even an “economic dummy” like me knows that. So, a trade war that hurts American consumers and manufacturers who use steel and aluminum is going to be a big loser for us. Countries like ours that are, and almost certainly always will be, net importers rather than exporters can’t afford trade wars (particularly with our, perhaps soon to be former, “friends” like Canada & the EU)!
Finally, a “too bizarre not to be true rumor” sweeping the “world of inside the Beltway punditry” is that “Don the Con Man” will fire “Mr. Magoo” (a/k/a “Gonzo Apolyptco,” a/k/a “Jeff Sessions”) and temporarily replace him with the ethically challenged Scott “First Class” Pruitt for long enough to completely dismantle the Justice Department and our system of justice just as he did with our environment and the EPA. Talk about the “GOP Wrecking Crew” and the not-so-smart minority of folks who voted them into power. Vladi must be laughing his tail off!
“Washington (CNN)The Supreme Court said on Monday that it will stay out of the dispute concerning the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for now, meaning the Trump administration may not be able to end the program March 5 as planned.
The move will also lessen pressure on Congress to act on a permanent solution for DACA and its roughly 700,000 participants — undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children.
Lawmakers had often cited the March 5 deadline as their own deadline for action. But the Senate failed to advance any bill during a debate earlier this month, and no bipartisan measure has emerged since.
Originally, the Trump administration had terminated DACA but allowed a six-month grace period for anyone with status expiring in that window to renew. After that date, March 5, any DACA recipient whose status expired would no longer be able to receive protections.
Monday’s action by the court, submitted without comment from the justices, is not a ruling on the merits of the DACA program or the Trump administration’s effort to end it.
At issue is a ruling by federal District Judge William Alsup of the US District Court for the Northern District of California, who blocked the plan to end DACA and held that the Trump administration must resume accepting renewal applications. The action means the case will continue going through the lower courts.
Alsup said a nationwide injunction was “appropriate” because “our country has a strong interest in the uniform application of immigration law and policy.”
“Plaintiffs have established injury that reaches beyond the geographical bounds of the Northern District of California. The problem affects every state and territory of the United States,” he wrote.
The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals has generally allowed nationwide injunctions against the Trump administration actions from lower court judges under this President to stand, meaning the DACA program could be spared a year or more until the Supreme Court could take up the case in next year’s term, given the likely realities of the calendar.
Justice Department spokesman Devin O’Malley said the administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court was an uphill climb, given it came before the 9th Circuit ruled.
“While we were hopeful for a different outcome, the Supreme Court very rarely grants certiorari before judgment, though in our view, it was warranted for the extraordinary injunction requiring the Department of Homeland Security to maintain DACA,” O’Malley said. “We will continue to defend DHS’s lawful authority to wind down DACA in an orderly manner.”
University of Texas professor law and CNN legal analyst Stephen Vladeck said justices normally don’t weigh in at this stage.
“The justices have not granted such a request since 2004, but the government claimed that the urgency of settling the legal status of DACA, and the potential for nationwide confusion, justified such an extraordinary measure,” Vladeck said.”
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Good news for America on a number of fronts:
DACA immigrants get to keep their status and work authorization for now. While the Administration claimed (disingenuously) that removal of DACA recipients would not be a “priority,” loss of DACA status would mean loss of work authorization (and therefore jobs) for many and loss of in-state tuition eligibility for college for others. Thus, they would have been driven “into the underground.” Honest employers who insisted on following work authorization laws would have been penalized by loss of important, talented workers. Meanwhile, unscrupulous employers willing to overlook lack of work authorization or pay “under the table” at substandard wages would have been empowered by the Administration’s bone-headed actions to exploit Dreamers and U.S. workers alike.
Supremes rebuffed the arrogant Trump/Sessions attitude of entitlement. Whatever their disingenuous explanations might be today, in attempting to circumvent the Courts of Appeals to the Supremes, the Administration basically was touting that the GOP had “bought and paid for” five seats on the Supremes and that they expected their “wholly-owned Justices,” including of course the recently appointed Justice Gorsuch, to deliver on their demand for unprecedented special treatment. By forcing the Administration to follow the rules like everyone else, at least for now, the Supremes maintained some degree of dignity and judicial independence in the context of an Administration that publicly holds itself above the law and states that the only acceptable role of Federal Judges (particularly GOP appointees) is to “rubber stamp” Administration positions.
Litigation in the Courts of Appeals will further expose the absurdity of Session’s “legal position” on DACA. In the DACA litigation, the DOJ is incredibly asking the Federal Courts to invalidate the Executive’s own legal authority to exercise prosecutorial discretion on a consistent and disciplined basis. While courts have acknowledged that there are likely ways in which the Administration could go about terminating DACA, claiming that it is “illegal” isn’t one of them. Session’s bogus claim that an Administration doesn’t have authority to exercise prosecutorial discretion on a widespread basis is both disingenuous and absurd on its face. Obviously, this Administration has already chosen to exercise lots of prosecutorial discretion not to enforce environmental, health care, civil rights, ethics, and other “laws on the books” when it suited their purposes.
If the lower court rulings stand, Trump will have difficulty coming up with a “rational reason” to terminate DACA “on the merits.” Trump himself, as well as other Administration officials and politicos from both parties have widely and publicly praised DACA youth and their contributions to the United States. There is neither a legal nor a rational basis for terminating DACA. While Trump & Sessions might well attempt to do so, those attempts are also likely to be tied up in the Federal Courts for a long time. DACA created “settled expectations” on the part of the recipients, their employers, their schools, and even their U.S. families of continuing ability to, at a minimum, remain, work, and study in the United States, assuming continued “good behavior.” In my long experience in Government, Federal Courts have more often than not been anxious to find ways to protect such “settled expectations.”
Congress was going to “punt” on DACA anyway. I detected little if any interest on the part of GOP “leadership” in the House and Senate to fix DACA on a temporary or permanent basis for now. It’s going to take “regime change” — eventually replacing recalcitrant GOP legislators with Democrats more interested in governing in the public interest, including solving the Dreamer issue on a long-term basis (without otherwise damaging our permanent immigration system or further enabling lawless behavior by DHS). That’s going to take time, just like the litigation. In this case, time is the Dreamer’s and the bulk of America’s friend.
“Arrests of immigrants, especially non-criminals, way up in Trump’s first year
By Tal Kopan, CNN
In his first year in office, President Donald Trump’s administration’s arrests of immigrants — especially those without criminal convictions — were up substantially, but actual deportations lagged behind his predecessor, according to statistics released Friday.
The jump corresponds to Trump’s central pledge to crack down on illegal immigration, at least in terms of casting a wide net to catch undocumented or deportable immigrants.
Days after being inaugurated, one of Trump’s first actions was to release immigration agents of specific prioritization of who to go after, giving them wide discretion to target almost any undocumented immigrant as a priority.
According to new data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, there was a 41% increase in the number of undocumented immigrants who were arrested by the agency in 2017 compared to 2016.
But the increase was driven by the agency arresting a significantly higher rate of immigrants without a criminal background. While the share of criminals arrested was up 17%, there was an increase 10 times that — of 171% — in the share of non-criminals arrested.
ICE had previously released fiscal year data, but on Friday released additional numbers from the last three months of 2017 as well, allowing for the year-to-year comparison.
In 2017, ICE made routine arrests of more than 155,000 immigrants, 30% of whom were not criminals. The final three months of the year, the rate of non-criminals arrested was even higher, at 35%.
That number was far lower, though, in 2016. That year the Obama administration arrested almost 110,000 immigrants, nearly 16% of whom were not criminals. In 2014, Obama’s Department of Homeland Security set priorities for ICE that focused first on serious criminals and national safety threats, followed by other public safety threats and immigrants who had recently had an order of deportation signed.
Unlike the increased arrests, at the end of 2017, deportations continued to lag behind the Obama administration’s pace, despite Trump’s repeated pledges to get undocumented immigrants “out” of the country.
In 2017, the administration deported nearly 215,000 immigrants, 13% fewer than the nearly 250,000 deported in 2016. The percentage of those individuals who were non-criminals was steady at just over 40%.
Deportations are a complex statistic to compare, however, because it can take many years to work an individual case through the immigration courts. The administration has also cited a decrease in the number of people apprehended at the border as part of the lagging numbers.”
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While “Gonzo” immigration enforcement is demonstrably bad for America, the good news here is that the pace at which it is proceeding insures its own ultimate failure. That’s great news for America and our future!
If Trump, Sessions & Co were actually able to remove all 11 million so-called “undocumented” Americans tomorrow, the American agriculture, hospitality, technology, construction, dairy, teaching, health care, child care, technology, restaurant, and sanitation industries, to name just a few, would cease to function, thus throwing our country into an economic and social tailspin from which we likely would never recover. When you are being governed by idiots, sometimes your only protection is in the idiocy and self-defeating nature of their own policies.
MAYWOOD, Ill. — Rosa Aramburo sailed into her final year of medical school with stellar test scores and high marks from professors. Her advisers predicted she’d easily land a spot in a coveted residency program.
Then President Trump announced the end of the Obama-era program that has issued work permits to Aramburo and nearly 700,000 other undocumented immigrants raised in the United States.
“Don’t be surprised if you get zero interviews,” an adviser told her.
She got 10, after sending 65 applications.
But as she prepared to rank her top three choices last week, Congress rejected bills that would have allowed her and other “dreamers” to remain in the United States, casting new doubt on a career path that seemed so certain a year ago.
Employers and universities that have embraced DACA recipients over the past six years are scrambling for a way to preserve the program. They are lobbying a deeply divided Congress, covering fees for employees and students to renew their permits, and searching for other legal options — perhaps a work visa or residency through spouses or relatives who are citizens. Some companies have considered sending employees abroad.
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They are also awaiting the outcome of a court challenge to the Trump administration’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has granted the young recipients a temporary reprieve and allowed them to continue renewing work permits for the time being. The Supreme Court could decide as soon as Friday whether to intervene in the case.
Nationwide, more than 160 DACA recipients are teaching in low-income schools through Teach For America. Thirty-nine work at Microsoft, 250 at Apple and 84 at Starbucks. To employers, the young immigrants are skilled workers who speak multiple languages and often are outsize achievers. Polls show strong American support for allowing them to stay.
Based in part on that data, many DACA recipients say they believe that the United States will continue to protect them, even as a senior White House official has indicated that Trump and key GOP lawmakers are ready to move on to other issues.
Human-resources experts warn that employers could be fined or go to jail if they knowingly keep workers on the payroll after their permits have expired. And while the White House has said that young immigrants who lose DACA protections would not become immediate targets for deportation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement says anyone here illegally can be detained and, possibly, deported.
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“I’ve gotten emails saying, ‘Oh, we loved you,’ ’’ Aramburo, 28, said one recent morning as she hurried to predawn rounds at a neurology intensive-care unit. “But in the back of my mind, I’m thinking, ‘What if I can’t finish?’ ”
Dreams and disbelief
Loyola University Chicago’s Stritch School of Medicine has 32 DACA recipients enrolled in its medical program. (Alyssa Schukar/for The Washington Post)
Cesar Montelongo is a third-year student in the school’s MD-PhD program. (Alyssa Schukar/for The Washington Post)
Nearly 100 DACA recipients are medical students enrolled at schools such as Harvard, Georgetown and the Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola University Chicago, which this May will graduate its first five dreamers, including Aramburo.
Loyola, a Catholic school, changed its admissions policies to allow DACA recipients to apply soon after President Barack Obama — frustrated by Congress’s failure to pass an immigration bill — declared in 2012 that he would issue the young immigrants work permits. Trump and other immigration hard-liners criticized the program as executive overreach.
Thirty-two students with DACA are enrolled at Stritch, the most of any medical school in the country, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. Most are from Mexico, but there are also students brought to the United States as children from 18 other countries, including Pakistan, India and South Korea.
The school helped the students obtain more than $200,000 apiece in loans to pay for their education. Some agreed to work in poor and rural areas with acute physician shortages to borrow the money without interest.
Mark G. Kuczewski, a professor of medical ethics at Loyola, said the school was inspired to launch the effort after hearing about Aramburo, a high school valedictorian who earned college degrees in biology and Spanish and yearned to study medicine but could find work only as a babysitter because she was undocumented.
He said it is unthinkable that Congress may derail the chance for her and the other DACA recipients at Loyola to become doctors and work legally throughout the United States.
“We just can’t believe that that will happen,” Kuczewski said. “Can something that irrational happen in America?”
2:52
This nurse found hope in DACA, now his life is in limbo
Jose Aguiluz is a 28-year-old registered nurse who may face deportation from the United States if Congress doesn’t come to an agreement on DACA recipients. (Jorge Ribas, Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post)
Teach For America said its lawyers have pored over immigration laws to find ways to sponsor workers who lose their DACA protections. But the process often requires workers to leave the United States and return legally, a risk many young teachers are unwilling to take. The organization also offered to relocate teachers close to their families in the United States.
“They’re desperate. They’re stressed,” said Viridiana Carrizales, managing director of DACA Corps Member Support at Teach For America. “They don’t know if they’re going to have a job in the next few months.”
A spokesman for a major tech company who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of political negotiations, said it asked DACA employees whether they would like to be transferred to another country where their work status would not be in jeopardy.
“It fell completely flat,” he said. “The employees were polled, and with virtual unanimity, the resounding answer was a ‘No, thank you.’ They considered it giving up.”
The Society for Human Resource Management said companies can defend workers and lobby Congress on behalf of DACA recipients. But the group, which has 240 member organizations, is also urging employers to consider what might happen if their employees’ work permits expire.
“The bottom line is, if people don’t have documents that allow them to work in the United States, they have to be taken off the payroll,” said Justin Storch, a federal liaison for the society.
Cesar Montelongo, a third-year medical student and a DACA recipient. (Alyssa Schukar/for The Washington Post)
‘Not just farmworkers or housekeepers’
On the snow-covered campus at Loyola University Chicago, medical students with DACA permits say they are continuing with their studies and renewing their work permits even as they keep one eye on Washington.
Cesar Montelongo, 28, a third-year medical student who attended the State of the Union address last month, spent part of one recent day examining bacteria in petri dishes in a school laboratory. His family fled a violent border city in Mexico when he was 10.
He is earning a medical degree and a PhD in microbiology, a high-level combination that could land him plenty of jobs in other countries. But he said he prefers the United States, one of “very few places in this planet you can actually achieve that kind of dream.”
Less than a mile away, Alejandra Duran, a 27-year-old second-year medical student who came to the United States from Mexico at 14, translated for patients at a local clinic for people with little or no insurance.
With help from teachers in Georgia, she graduated from high school with honors. She wants to return to the state as a doctor and work to help lower the rate of women dying in childbirth.
“A lot of things have been said about how illegal, how bad we are; that’s not the full story,” Duran said. “We’re not just farmworkers or housekeepers. We’re their doctors. We’re their nurses, their teachers, their paramedics.”
Alejandra Duran, a second-year student who intends to practice obstetrics and gynecology, translates for Dr. Matt Steinberger at the Access to Care clinic. (Alyssa Schukar/For The Washington Post)
Cesar Montelongo, a third-year medical student, examines Petri dishes in which he conducted an experiment looking at interactions of viruses with bacteria in the bladder. (Alyssa Schukar/For The Washington Post)
During rounds at the Loyola University Medical Center, Aramburo studied computer records, then examined stroke victims and patients with spinal and head injuries. Some may never regain consciousness, but she always speaks to them in the hope that they will wake up.
“That’s my dream: to make a difference in people’s lives,” she said. “I hope I can do it.”
In the glass-walled neurology intensive care unit, she and two physicians stood before a 45-year-old stroke victim who spoke only Spanish. The woman struggled to grasp what the two doctors were saying.
Aramburo stepped forward.
“You’ve had a small stroke,” she explained in Spanish, as the woman listened. “It could have been a lot worse. Now we’re going to figure out why.”
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Some of the WASHPOST comments on this article were predictably idiotic ands racist., Really, what’s happening to our country that folks have such perverted, ill informed, anti-social, and inhuman views?
These are American kids. Raised, educated, and residing in our country. They aren’t “taking places” from anyone, except, perhaps those of their classmates who are less talented or less ambitious. But, why would we want to reward mediocrity over merit just because someone was born here? Other American kids have the same opportunities that Dreamers have. If some chose not to take advantage of them, so be it!
When the Arlington Immigration Court was located in Ballston, Virginia, the kids from nearby Washington & Lee High would come over to the Mall for lunch. Undoubtedly, some of them were undocumented.
But, I couldn’t tell you who. They were just American kids. Even when they showed up in my courtroom, I couldn’t tell you who was the “respondent” and who was the “support group” until I called the case and the respondent came forward. Contrary to the White Nationalists, folks are pretty much the same.
As usual, Trump and his White Nationalist cronies have taken a win-win-win and created a lose-lose-lose! When Dreamers get screwed, they lose, US employers lose, and our country loses, big time! But, that’s what happens when policies and actions are based on bias, ignorance, and incompetence.
A compromise is possible. It does not have to be a choice between the current chain migration system and a purely merit-based system. The two systems can be merged with the use of a point system.
Visas currently allocated to extended family members can be transitioned to a merit-based point system that provides extra points for family ties to a citizen or LPR. The merit-based aspect of the point system would eliminate the main objection to chain migration, which is that it allocates visas to extended family members who do not have skills or experience that America needs.
Trump’s framework also would terminate the Diversity Visa Program. Those visas could be transitioned to the new point system too.
This would be a small price to pay for a legalization program that would provide lawful status for 1.8 million Dreamers.
Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an executive branch immigration law expert for three years; he subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years.“
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Go on over to The Hill at the link to read Nolan’s complete article.
I disagree with Nolan’s statement that extended family members don’t bring needed skills. As David J. Bier of the Cato Institute recently pointed out in the Washington Post, that argument is one of a number of “Myths” about so-called chain migration.
Bier writes:
“MYTH NO. 5
Chain immigrants lack skills to succeed.
In making his case for the president’s proposals last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said, “What good does it do to bring in somebody who is illiterate in their own country, has no skills and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful?” This description distorts the picture of immigrants who settle in the United States.
Nearly half of adults in the family-sponsored and diversity visa categories had a college degree, compared with less than a third of U.S. natives. America would lose nearly a quarter-million college graduates every year without the family-sponsored and diversity programs.
Even among the 11 percent who have little formal education, there is no evidence that they aren’t successful. By virtually every measure, the least-skilled immigrants prosper in America. Immigrant men without high school degrees are almost as likely as U.S.-born men with college degrees to look for a job and keep one.
Family-sponsored immigrants are the most upwardly mobile American workers. Whether high-skilled or not, chain or not, immigrants succeed in and contribute to this country.”
I highly recommend Bier’s article
All of my many years of first-hand observation of family immigration at every level supports Bier’s analysis.
Indeed, even if I were to assume that the majority of extended family were so-called “unskilled” (meaning largely that they have skills elite restrictionists don’t respect) that would hardly mean that they aren’t greatly benefitting the US. In many ways, immigrants who perform important so-called “unskilled jobs” essential to our economy but which most Americans neither will nor can do well, are just as important to societal success as more doctors, professors, computer geeks, and baseball players. Fact is, immigrants of all types from all types of countries consistently benefit the US.
That being said, why not try something along the lines that Nolan suggests by taking the Diversity visas and establishing a “pilot program” that combines skills and family ties in a numerical matrix? Then, track the results to see how they compare with existing employment-based and family-based immigration.
