"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.
Bill Barr Consigliere Artist: Pat Bagley Salt Lake Tribune Reproduced under license
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Says it all about Billy the Bigot. His “downward sprint to the finish” has rocketed him past “John the Con” Mitchell and Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions as the most corrupt AG in modern American history.
That’s, of course, not to minimize or trivialize the crimes committed by either of the other contenders. I suspect we’ll still be unpacking the full extent of Gonzo’s “crimes against humanity” decades from now, as the uglier and uglier truth about this “21st Century Jim Crow” dribbles out a bit at a time
Gee, even the “Afternoon Neighborhood Dog Walking Club” — comprised of neither lawyers nor hard core liberals, can’t understand why Barr, this walking, talking ethics cesspool is 1) still in office; 2) not in jail; and 3) still licensed to practice the law. Here’s hoping that all three of these unfathomable mysteries are resolved favorably to the public interest in the near future! In the meantime, Billy serves as a stark reminder of what’s wrong with legal ethics and our justice system at present.
With all the hard-working, talented, pro bono lawyers out there working overtime to save lives and our democracy, it’s simply a national disgrace and a travesty that unqualified, corrupt, unethical creeps like Billy and Gonzo have been “rewarded” with the an office that is supposed to function as “The People’s Lawyer.”
The Don’s felons and fellow conspirators against America get free passes; meanwhile, Americans of color can’t catch a break from a system loaded against them. Go figure!
Great work, Eddie (and, of course artist Scott Scheidly for the enduring image of our “Clown Prince” reproduced, with permission, above)! Many congrats! Can’t see why the RNC rejected this masterpiece!
Another four years of Trumpism threatens not only the livelihood of hard-working professional clowns, but also is guaranteed to bring unnecessary suffering, lasting harm, and otherwise avoidable death to many. Perhaps you, your family, or your loved ones will be among the kakistocracy’s victims!
Better get out the vote for Joe, Kamala, and their better, more humane, more unifying program for America!
This November, vote like your life depends on it. Because it does!
As he seeks a second term, [Trump has] also made it clear that he hasn’t finished. He still wants to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program once and for all, drive out the millions of unauthorized immigrants living in the US and curb their political power, enact what he calls “merit-based” immigration reform, and pursue a slew of restrictive immigration regulations.
The US has already seen the harms of Trump’s first-term immigration policies, which could cut deeper if he’s given another four years: Legal immigration is plummeting, stymying growth in the labor force and threatening the US’s ability to attract global talent and recover from the coronavirus-induced recession. The US has abdicated its role as a model for how a powerful country should support the world’s most vulnerable people. And the millions of immigrants already living in the US, regardless of their legal status, have been left uncertain of their fate in the country they have come to call home.
Other concerns — including the coronavirus, racial justice, and unemployment — have recently eclipsed immigration as a top motivating issue for voters. But for Trump, who currently lags former Vice President Joe Biden in the polls, restricting immigration proved a winning message in 2016, and he will likely try to replicate that strategy again.
“It’s the thing he keeps going back to,” Douglas Rivlin, director of communication at the immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice, said. “It is his comfort zone — to go after people of color and turn them into sort of the specter of scary, violent people as a political strategy.”
. . . .
Whether any version of that proposal will get traction would largely depend on the makeup of the next Congress and whether Democrats win a majority in the Senate. Most immigration policy experts aren’t convinced that Trump will see success in negotiating with Democrats, but the political calculus could change if Democrats control both chambers of Congress and need Trump to sign their legislation.
It also depends on Republicans acting as a unified front on immigration. So far, pro-business Republicans aren’t challenging the restrictions and travel bans Trump has imposed during the pandemic, and as the US continues to grapple with its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and more than a million Americans are out of work, they will likely continue to follow the president’s lead. But in the long term, they might find themselves at philosophical odds with the anti-immigrant wing of the party.
“I think the reality of the economics of immigration and the sort of more ideological agenda are going to come into conflict,” Rivlin said.
But if Trump can overcome those hurdles, the prize would be substantial: the ability the leave his mark on the immigration system beyond a series of executive actions that could be reversed by the next Democrat who assumes office.
“Merit-based immigration reform would be a legacy for him on immigration, more so than a border wall,” the Bipartisan Policy Institute’s Cardinal-Brown said. “That would have impacts on the future of immigration for decades.”
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Read the rest of Nicole’s gloomy yet (as always) well-written outlook at the link.
Don’t be fooled. In “Trumpspeak” the term “merit-based” means “race-based” (favoring, of course, White guys, preferably rich, English speaking, and prospective GOP toadies). Again, to state the obvious, a “kakistocracy” by definition lacks the ability to recognize and reward true “merit.” That’s why it’s a “kakistocracy,” not a “meritocracy!”
America is a nation of immigrants. To change that, Trump will have to destroy America, which, as this week’s “clown show of hate, fear, loathing, and complete nonsense” (a/k/a “The GOP Convention”) shows, he and his followers are perfectly willing to do.
This perverted “vision” of America also ties in well with the Trump/GOP approach to racism and social justice: Ignore injustice and double down on violence administered by the largely White power structure against communities of color. Kill, maim, blame, punish, jail, intimidate, disenfranchise, and dehumanize the victims rather than looking for cooperative ways to solve the problems. Sow fear, hate, and division to insure that institutionalized racism and White grievance will be indelibly ingrained in America! As these self-inflicted grievances play out, the Trump family and its cronies will use the ensuing chaos as a diversion to loot the Treasury and use what remains of “government” to further their own personal interests, without regard to the common welfare. Nice folks!
It’s doubtful that America as the majority of us have envisioned it can survive another four years of Trump’s corruption, racism, and malicious incompetence. Despite some liberal wishful thinking, our democratic institutions and apparently overrated “checks and balances” are crumbling before our eyes.
The “JR Five” on the Supremes and the GOP Senate already have reached “Penceian levels” (“Pence” rhymes with “incompetence”) of mindless sycophantic subservience to the “Clown Prince” and his entourage. None of them would be able to extract their collective heads from the more than ample Presidential rear to see any daylight during a second term. Trump’s re-election would inevitably convert the “City on The Hill” to a “wealthy universally despised third world kleptocracy.” That’s the real “vision” of Trump and the GOP. (I think that Nicole’s “hypothetical” of a Trump victory and a Dem Senate is the “least likely scenario.”)
This November, vote like your life and the world’s future depend on it! Because they do!
Equal Justice & A Diverse America For All! Trump’s Dark, Evil, Dishonest Vision Of America, Never!
This past weekend, the Republican National Committee caved to white supremacist and other hate groups by adopting a resolution titled Refuting the Legitimacy of the Southern Poverty Law Center to Identify Hate Groups.
The focus of the resolution is that “the SPLC is a radical organization” that harms conservative organizations and voices through our hate group designations.
This attack on our work is an attempt to excuse the Trump administration’s pattern and practice of working with individuals and organizations that malign entire groups of people — immigrants, Muslims and the LGBTQ community — while promoting policies that undermine their very existence. It comes from the same vein as Trump’s claim that there were “very fine people” on both sides of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
Simply put, it’s an audacious attempt by Trump and the GOP to paper over the bigotry and racism that has been allowed to infect their policies.
This resolution comes at a moment when Trump will argue at the Republican National Convention that he will combat hate and bigotry, despite welcoming the support of QAnon. It also comes days after the indictment of Stephen Bannon, reminding us that Bannon was once the White House chief strategist and senior counselor and CEO of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. And it comes just after our special investigation shined a light on One America News Network’s Jack Posobiec, a reporter at Trump’s favorite network who is aligned with white supremacy and has used his platform to further hate speech and propaganda.
Trump should sever these ties to hate groups and extremists instead of doubling down through this RNC resolution.
The Trump administration has filled its ranks and consulted with alumni and allies from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an anti-immigrant hate group that has ties to white supremacist groups and eugenicists. They include Julie Kirchner, Kris Kobach, Jeff Sessions and, most notably, Stephen Miller.
The Trump administration has worked with hate groups like the Family Research Council (FRC) to roll back LGBTQ rights. FRC was designated an anti-LGBTQ hate group for decades of demonizing LGBTQ people and spreading harmful pseudoscience about them. Over the years, the organization has published books, reports and brochures that have linked being LGBTQ to pedophilia, claimed that LGBTQ people are dangerous to children and claimed that LGBTQ people are promiscuous and violent.
Anti-Muslim groups have also been welcomed into the administration, including the Center for Security Policy (CSP). Fred Fleitz, a longtime staffer, was appointed the executive secretary and chief of staff of the National Security Council. For decades, CSP has peddled absurd accusations that shadowy Muslim Brotherhood operatives have infiltrated all levels of government.
These extremists are seeking a license to continue spreading their bigotry and will do anything to undermine those — like the SPLC, which tracks and monitors hate groups — who expose their extremist views and oppose their attacks on communities. With this resolution, Trump and members of the GOP have shown the extent to which they will carry their water.
This past weekend, the RNC also released a resolution titled Resolution to Conserve History and Combat Prejudice – Christopher Columbus. It’s a remarkably transparent statement that hate and bigotry stem from Black Lives Matter protesters. The RNC and Trump did not denounce organizations that promote antisemitism, Islamophobia, neo-Nazis, anti-LGBTQ sentiment or racism. It only criticized the SPLC for challenging those groups.
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400 Washington Avenue
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Pretty much says it all about today’s GOP and the Trump Administration.
· No platform
· No values
· No truth
· No humanity
· No decency
· No America
· No inclusion
· The party of “Dred Scottification,” Jim Crow, and White Supremacy
Sure “Sounds Like Hate” to me!
This November, vote like your life and the future of our world depend on it! Because they do!
Richard A. Clarke served on the National Security Council for Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
President Trump has, often intentionally, damaged essential federal departments and agencies, driving from their ranks thousands of career civil servants who are global experts and national treasures. The country is seeing the results play out at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but such damage has happened across the federal bureaucracy.
No national institution has been more damaged than the Department of Homeland Security. The youngest of the federal departments, the DHS is among the largest by employee count, ranking just below the Defense Department and Veterans Affairs. It was created in 2003 by smashing together 17 agencies from five departments in an ill-conceived response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Its divisions and agencies are now largely leaderless, because the White House refuses to nominate senior managers to replace those who have left. Quick, who is the secretary of homeland security?
You get my point.
Trump has done far more damage to the DHS, however, than leaving it leaderless. He has branded it as the department that cages children, swoops innocent citizens off U.S. streets, sends warriors dressed for the apocalypse to deal with protests, hunts down hard-working people doing “essential jobs” to forcibly deport them, and harasses foreign students at leading universities. The DHS has become synonymous with unsympathetic government overreach, malevolence and dysfunction.
For the patriotic, underpaid Americans working hard in the agencies of the DHS, what Trump has done to their reputations is a tragedy. The department, however, was doomed from the start. When such an agency was proposed before the Sept. 11 attacks, I was working in the White House, where I coordinated many “homeland” issues for almost a decade under President Bill Clinton and, later, President George W. Bush. Blocking the creation of the DHS was one of the few things on which Vice President Dick Cheney and I agreed. We thought that such a department would be too large, too diverse in function and too difficult to integrate into a well-functioning institution.
Congressional leaders, however, wanted to “do something” after 9/11, and it became impossible for the Bush administration to maintain its opposition to the idea of a homeland security agency. Instead, the Bush administration embraced it and quickly merged a raft of agencies ripped from their home departments. The new department never really came together.
For more than a decade, reports from the Government Accountability Office, think tanks and congressional committees have documented the failures of the DHS to coalesce into an effective entity. Its image steadily declined and was not helped by the popular television series “Homeland,” which despite its name depicted a dark world of CIA intrigue, portraying missions and functions that the DHS never actually had.. Contrary to popular belief, Homeland Security has never been the government’s lead counterterrorism entity. The FBI, part of the Justice Department, leads counterterrorism efforts within the United States.
The next administration would be well advised not to try to make the existing DHS structure work, for it will end up as another presidential administration that has failed in that task. Instead, the department should be reimagined — perhaps as part of a Reinventing Government effort, the first of which was led by then-Vice President Al Gore — with more manageable and mission-consistent entities. It should also shed its Orwellian name.
Federal departments and agencies develop personalities and images from their mission, and they attract people who identify with those personas. These identities are almost immutable, but new organizational designs and branding can reinvigorate and redirect agencies. Breaking up the DHS could have positive results.
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Read the rest of the article at the link.
You read it Courtside long ago: No mission, no leadership, no values, no discipline, no decency.DHS as currently constituted is a dysfunctional mess that America won’t miss.
Break it up, reassign the truly necessary functions, reduce the funding, and use the money saved by eliminating detention, grotesque mismanagement and maladministration, stupid walls, undisciplined and counterproductive, “civil” enforcement, and other demonstrably destructive functions for something more constructive. Yes, if you strip out the neo-Nazi wannabes, racists, and incompetents, there is some real talent there. Some of that talent passed through my courtroom in Arlington. Some of it is in the Asylum Office and at USCIS. There is some in the anti-smuggling and fraud detection programs. But, it’s totally wasted in the current corrupt dysfunctional configuration. Indeed, the totally toxic reputation of DHS under Trump actually hinders the useful functions.
This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!
Michelle Mendez Defending Vulnerable Populations Director Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (“CLINIC”)“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
Michelle Mendez responds for CLINIC to McHenry’s latest decision in an e-mail to Dan Kowalski at LexisNexis Immigration Community:
Subject: [immprof] RE: Matter of BAY AREA LEGAL SERVICES, INC., 28 I&N Dec. 16 (DIR 2020)
Dan, thank you for sharing this new decision from EOIR Director McHenry.
This second decision in Matter of BAY AREA LEGAL SERVICES, INC. from EOIR Director McHenry may seem to come out of nowhere so, since the decision is aimed at CLINIC, we would like to provide background.
CLINIC’s network is comprised of approximately 380 immigration legal services organizations many of which have successfully relied on Recognition and Accreditation program to expand their legal services capacity in serving low-income immigrant communities. In support of our network, CLINIC has specifically catered to the needs of Accredited Representatives by, as examples, designing trial skills and legal writing trainings just for them and supporting them on their accreditation applications to EOIR. Given our expertise and interest in the Recognition and Accreditation program, when EOIR Director McHenry issued a call for amicus briefs on Recognition and Accreditation issues, CLINIC submitted a brief and we later learned, via the (first) decision in Matter of BAY AREA LEGAL SERVICES, 27 I&N Dec. 837 (DIR 2020), that we were the sole org to appear as amicus.
Unfortunately, in Matter of BAY AREA LEGAL SERVICES, 27 I&N Dec. 837 (DIR 2020), EOIR Director McHenry’s discussion of the skills needed to attain full accreditations was vague, unclear, and therefore confusing. Footnotes 13 and 14 in the decision appear to fault the applicant for full accreditation status for not practicing before EOIR before being granted full accreditation. At worst, the decision could lead one to infer that accredited representatives had to engage in unauthorized practice of immigration law to get the skills needed for full accreditation. We brought this issue to EOIR Director McHenry’s attention and he entertained our feedback during a phone conversation while disagreeing with our concerns. While the phone call was ultimately unhelpful as to this issue, we were able to discern just how unfamiliar he is with the Recognition and Accreditation program. At one point he stated that it was “totally conceivable that [accredited representatives] have some litigation experience.” It is not totally conceivable and we informed him of this too. After our call we sent EOIR Director McHenry the attached letter. We followed up with EOIR Director McHenry on Tuesday. On Wednesday he responded that “a type of formal response is forthcoming.” On Thursday he issued this second, published decision in which he chastises us for challenging him when we, as mere amicus curiae, have “no authority” to do so. However, you will notice that he also took the opportunity to clarify the very points we told him were vague and problematic. Of course, EOIR Director McHenry did not have to go the published decision route to deal with our concerns, but he preferred to project his power above being collaborative. And we have some concerns that EOIR will use this decision to prevent amici from following up to clear errors in other decisions where the respondent was pro se or the decision addresses in absentia orders. While I am surprised that CLINIC seemingly made him feel threatened, as a respected retired IJ said, it is an “honor to be called out in something like this.”
I am not on the ICLINIC@LIST.MSU.EDU listserv so if someone could forward this email to them, I would be grateful. Thank you.
Michelle N. Mendez (she/her/ella/elle)
Director, Defending Vulnerable Populations Program
Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC)
Here’s a link to McHenry’s decision inBay Area II:
So, CLINIC, the sole Amicus, with much more experience in the Recognition & Accreditation Program than McHenry, offers McHenry some helpful suggestions for clarifying his decision. He should have thanked them and issued an amended decision on his own, as “real courts” sometimes do.
Instead, McHenry threw a hissy fit, imagining that his “authority” was being challenged. While making the suggested clarification, he took the occasion unnecessarily and inappropriately to publicly dump on the Amicus who helped him.
Clearly, the act of an arrogant, yet insecure, person who knows he’s “way over his head” in his job. Sound familiar? But, hardly anything we didn’t already know about the awful legal and management mess at EOIR. And, in many ways a microcosm of the multiple disasters and institutional breakdowns sweeping our nation in the Age of the (Not So) Great Imposter.
I was gratified yesterday to hear former Ambassador Susan Rice on Meet the Press“channel Courtside” by referring to Trump’s so-called intelligence advisors as a “Clown Show” 🤡 in connection with the “Putin’s bounty fiasco.” On the other hand, that our national intelligence is in the hands of sycophantic clowns advising the “Chief Clown” is a cause for grave concern.
Suffice it to say that McHenry’s performance is powerful evidence of the reasons why the Director of EOIR should be abolished, hopefully as part of Article I legislation, and replaced with an “Executive Director,” a purely administrative position with no judicial or “legal policy” functions, and subordinate to and reporting to the Chief Appellate Judgewho would replace the BIA Chair. The recent attempts to “reinsert” an improper adjudicative and “policy” role for the Director is yet another example of the gross legal, ethical, and management failures of EOIR under Trump’s DOJ kakistocracy.
THE WORLD CHANNELS “COURTSIDE” — A Shocked & Dismayed World Now Sees America Under The Trump Clown 🤡🤡 Kakistocracy For What It Is: A Rich, Arrogant, Willfully Ignorant, Dishonest, Dangerous “Failing State” To Be Pitied — Not To Be Trusted, Followed, Or Admired — “But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that the US is “leading the world” with its response to the pandemic, but it does not seem to be going in any direction the world wants to follow.
Across Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, views of the US handling of the coronavirus crisis are uniformly negative and range from horror through derision to sympathy. Donald Trump’s musings from the White House briefing room, particularly his thoughts on injecting disinfectant, have drawn the attention of the planet.
“Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger,” the columnist Fintan O’Toole wrote in the Irish Times. “But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”
The missing six weeks: how Trump failed the biggest test of his life
The US has emerged as a global hotspot for the pandemic, a giant petri dish for the Sars-CoV-2 virus. As the death toll rises, Trump’s claims to global leadership have became more far-fetched. He told Republicans last week that he had had a round of phone calls with Angela Merkel, Shinzo Abe and other unnamed world leaders and insisted “so many of them, almost all of them, I would say all of them” believe the US is leading the way.
None of the leaders he mentioned has said anything to suggest that was true. At each milestone of the crisis, European leaders have been taken aback by Trump’s lack of consultation with them – when he suspended travel to the US from Europe on 12 March without warning Brussels, for example. A week later, politicians in Berlin accused Trump of an “unfriendly act” for offering “large sums of money” to get a German company developing a vaccine to move its research wing to the US.
People gather to protest the stay-at-home orders outside the state capitol building in Sacramento, California, this month. Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images
The president’s abrupt decision to cut funding to the World Health Organization last month also came as a shock. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, a former Spanish foreign minister, wrote on Twitter: “There is no reason justifying this move at a moment when their efforts are needed more than ever to help contain & mitigate the coronavirus pandemic.”
A poll in France last week found Merkel to be far and away the most trusted world leader. Just 2% had confidence Trump was leading the world in the right direction. Only Boris Johnson and Xi Jinping inspired less faith.
A survey this week by the British Foreign Policy Group found 28% of Britons trusted the US to act responsibly on the world stage, a drop of 13 percentage points since January, with the biggest drop in confidence coming among Conservative voters.
Dacian Cioloș, a former prime minister of Romania who now leads the Renew Europe group in the European parliament, captured a general European view this week as the latest statistics on deaths in the US were reported.
“Post-truth communication techniques used by rightwing populism movements simply do not work to beat Covid-19,” he told the Guardian. “And we see that populism cost lives.”
Around the globe, the “America first” response pursued by the Trump administration has alienated close allies. In Canada, it was the White House order in April to halt shipments of critical N95 protective masks to Canadian hospitals that was the breaking point.
The Ontario premier, Doug Ford, who had previously spoken out in support of Trump on several occasions, said the decision was like letting a family member “starve” during a crisis.
‘It will disappear’: the disinformation Trump spread about the coronavirus – timeline
“When the cards are down, you see who your friends are,” said Ford. “And I think it’s been very clear over the last couple of days who our friends are.”
In countries known for chronic problems of governance, there has been a sense of wonder that the US appears to have joined their ranks.
. . . .
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Read the full article at the above link.
Are we still “to be feared,” even if no longer admired or respected?Good question!
Probably, insofar as our collapse would take down a chunk of the world’s economy with it, leave a leadership vacuum, and change the balance of power, perhaps in favor of China, Russia, South Korea, Canada, and India. We also still have a big military and lots of sophisticated weapons, although modern terrorism has shown that sophistication in expensive weaponry is not always the “be all and end all” either for winning wars or causing mass disorder, death, and mayhem.
Still, as our civil governance and international influence disintegrates, what happens with and to our military is a huge concern and a “big X factor.” Will the tradition of “civilian control over the military” also fall victim to the kakistocracy and the failure of civilian governing institutions? What’s happened to our intelligence community under the Trump kakistocracy is likely a bad omen.
Who would have thought that Trump could do so much permanent or at least long-term damage in such a short period of time? And who would have believed that our centuries-old constitutional and democratic institutions, meant to protect individual rights, enforce the rule of law, and check unrestrained abuses of power by a megalomaniac, yet highly incompetent, dishonest, dangerous, and evil Executive would have crumbled so quickly and performed so haplessly when confronted by a President and an unscrupulous, corrupt, authoritarian regime and party of toadies perfectly willing to press aggressively inane and illegal policies and false narratives to destroy the nation and everyone in it as a means of pillaging and enhancing their own power?
Yet, here we are! Much of the rest of the world appears to “get” it. Yet tens of millions of Americans who continue to support and enable the kakistocracy don’t, or they simply don’t care about our nation and the common good.
This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!
PRESIDENT TRUMP likens the struggle against the pandemic to a war that will yield a colossal toll in human lives, but refuses to urge states uniformly to issue stay-at-home orders. The president’s equivocations have produced an uncoordinated jumble of policy subverted by foot-dragging governors who treat the coronavirus less as a national emergency and more as a political annoyance. They are guilty of an abdication of leadership whose consequences will be measured in body bags.
Messaging is critical in this crisis. By telling people in the strongest terms to stay at home, even with certain exceptions, most governors have conveyed the gravity of the spreading threat; that is likely to save many lives. By failing to do that, and treating a plague as one interest to be balanced among many, other governors treat the peril with a nod and a wink. Their message, sotto voce, is: Let’s not all get our knickers in a twist.
[[Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]]
The nod-and-a-wink governors — in the Dakotas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Arkansas and elsewhere — pose as powerless to order a lockdown, or note they have already closed schools, restaurants, gyms and other establishments, but won’t order blanket edicts to individuals. They point at other states’ exceptions that allow people to carry on with essential work, or get groceries and pharmaceuticals. In Missouri, Gov. Mike Parson says staying at home is a matter of “individual responsibilities”; in Arkansas, Gov. Asa Hutchinson scoffs there is nothing “magical” about stay-at-home directives; in Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds protests that “I can’t lock everybody in their home.”
Those governors, all Republicans, have been enabled by Mr. Trump, who points to states that don’t yet “have the problem,” and remarks that it’s “awfully tough to say, ‘Close it down.’ ” He favors flexibility and is seconded by Vice President Pence, who says the federal government “will defer to state and local health authorities on any measures that they deem appropriate.”
As the White House leads from behind, the effect is to endorse and induce complacency. Faced with a stealthy pathogen that can spread from asymptomatic individuals, or incubate for weeks before a victim falls ill with fever, states are free to delude themselves into thinking the virus has passed them by — until, having bidden its time, it erupts inside their cities and towns. Governors of those states can entertain the illusion of alternative facts, imagining their borders are impermeable. They can, like Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, resist a stay-at-home order for weeks until discovering just this week — surprise! — that the virus is “transmitting before people see signs.”
[[The Opinions section is looking for stories of how the coronavirus has affected people of all walks of life. Write to us.]]
Their magical thinking endangers the nation. It gives people license to minimize the threat — a threat the White House says could kill up to 240,000 people even with effective social distancing. It allows state-to-state gaps in the firewall that will likely encourage a raging disease to erupt in a series of rolling blazes across the country. As many states get tough, even deploying the police to encourage people to stay indoors, their odds of impeding the pandemic’s path of destruction are undercut by their neighbors’ selfishness.
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Steps for survival:
Tune out Trump & his political hack/toadies (the GOP Govs listed in this editorial are prime examples);
Listen to and follow advice from our health professionals;
Stay home unless you are actually performing “essential functions;”
Vote Trump and the GOP out of office, on every level, in November (but you have to survive the Trump/GOP kakistocracy to get to November).
NOTE:Not all GOP Governors are in the “Trump Kakistocracy.” Larry Hogan (MD), Mike DeWine (OH), and Charlie Baker (MA) and others are among those who have heeded public health advice.
Vote Like You Life Depends On It In November! Because Four More Years Of Trump & His GOP Toadies Could Kill Us All!☠️⚰️☠️⚰️☠️⚰️☠️⚰️
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The National Incompetence Stockpiles, the federal reserves of inanity and ineptitude to be drawn upon in times of crisis, are at “full capacity,” the Government Accountability Office announced on Saturday.
According to the G.A.O., the Incompetence Stockpiles are so well stocked at the moment that they are in danger of overflowing.
“The sheer tonnage of failure and impotence that is being dumped into the stockpiles on a daily basis is straining their ability to contain it,” the G.A.O. statement read.
Davis Logsdon, a professor at the University of Minnesota who has written the definitive book about the National Incompetence Stockpiles, said that the nation’s futility reserves stand at their highest levels ever, eclipsing the record stockpiles established during the tenure of President George W. Bush.
“The Bush Administration tapped the National Incompetence Stockpiles when it invaded Iraq and responded to Hurricane Katrina,” Logsdon said. “At the time, it seemed as though the stockpiles would never be fully replenished, and that makes the Trump Administration’s achievement all the more striking.”
According to the statutes governing the National Incompetence Stockpiles, individual states may draw on the federal reserves of idiocy in times of emergency, but so far the governors of states like Georgia, Texas, and Florida have been able to rely on vast stockpiles of their own.
Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.
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I can hardly wait for Jared to get the “Medal of Freedom” from “Big Daddy!”🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡
Today’s biggest story set the scene for news that continues to develop about the Ukraine scandal.
The big story, in terms of its ability to frame the crazy events coming at us at top speed, happened last night, when Attorney General William Barr gave a speech to the Federalist Society, a group of conservative and libertarian lawyers who argue for an originalist interpretation of the Constitution. The conviction of members of the Federalist Society that courts should not do anything that is not listed in the original Constitution makes them great friends to business and to white men, since they focus on the protection of property and deny that laws can regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, or protect minority or women’s rights. The Federalist Society organized in 1982 to push back against what its members felt was an activist court system that tried to reorganize society from the bench. It has been extraordinarily successful in taking over the courts: currently five members of the nine-member Supreme Court are current or past Federalist Society members: Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh.
In his speech, Attorney General William Barr claimed he was going truly to be an originalist, and explained by taking American history back to its roots. In contrast to every single American historian in, well, American history, Barr argued that Americans had rebelled not against King George III in 1776, but rather against Parliament. What the Founders feared, he said, was not a strong executive, but rather a strong Parliament. (You can tell where this is going, right?) Barr was setting up the idea that Congress has grown far too strong lately (in fact, virtually every scholar will tell you that it is the Executive that has grown terribly strong since 1981) and that it is badly hampering the president’s ability to do his job. The president should be able to act on his own initiative, and not be checked by either congressional or judicial oversight, Barr insisted, in a theory known as that of the “unitary executive.”
Barr did not stop there, though. He went on to blame “The Resistance” for sabotaging the Trump administration, and claimed that its members were “engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government.” More, he claimed “the Left” is “engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law.” Conservatives, he said, were at a disadvantage against progressive’s “holy war” because they “have more scruple over their political tactics” especially when facing “a hyper-partisan media.” (You might want to reread those last two sentences.)
Richard Painter, who was George W. Bush’s ethics lawyer, called this a “lunatic authoritarian speech.” Attorneys General are supposed to be non-partisan, and Barr lumped all opposition to Trump as the dangerous far left. The “Left,” in America, generally refers to those few people who advocate for communism—a system in which the government owns and controls all industries and businesses– or anarchy, a system in which there is no central authority at all. It’s actually a pretty small group. But Barr, and other recent Republicans, have included in “the Left” everyone who believes that the government has any role to play in regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, and promoting infrastructure, all those things the Federalist Society opposes. In fact, most of us, regardless of whether we vote Republican or Democratic, want some basic regulations, social welfare programs, and infrastructure development.
But now the Attorney General, who is charged with overseeing our justice system, has declared that anyone standing in the way of Trump is not just a member of “the Left” but also is waging war against America. Painter is quite right: this is the language that enables a leader to imprison people he considers his enemies.
Barr is not saying all this in a vacuum. More news dropped today about the Ukraine scandal, filling in the lines we already suspected. Congress released transcripts today from Tim Morrison and Jennifer Williams, both of whom were deeply involved in the Ukraine mess and were on the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky. A long-time career official in the State Department, Morrison replaced Fiona Hill as the Senior Director for Russia and Europe in July 2019. Williams is another long-standing career officer in the State Department. Since April 2019, she has been the Special Adviser for Europe and Russia for Vice President Mike Pence. Morrison said that Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland made it clear that aid was being withheld until there was an announcement about an investigation into Burisma, the company on whose board Hunter Biden sat.
This jibed with the opening statement of David Holmes, the political counselor at the Embassy in Kyiv, who testified for seven hours yesterday behind closed doors. Holmes was an eye-witness to the efforts of Trump, his lawyer Rudy Giuiliani, and Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, to pressure the new Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing an investigation into Burisma, the company on whose board Hunter Biden sat. Holmes’s opening statement was explosive. It was not only first hand, but also it tied Trump directly into the efforts, and it made very clear that the administration was demanding the announcement of an investigation before it would release the money Congress had appropriated for Ukraine’s fight against Russian incursions. Holmes also said that he had reported what he had heard to John Eisenberg, Legal Advisor to the National Security Council, the same man to whom Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman had reported the July 25 call, and, once again, Eisenberg had done nothing. (Eisenberg is refusing to honor a subpoena to testify.)
Then, CNN dropped the story that at last year’s White House Hanukkah party Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman met privately with Trump and Giuiliani. After the meeting, Parnas told two people that the president had given him a secret mission to pressure the Ukraine government to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. The Wall Street Journal reports that in February, Parnas and Fruman met with the Ukraine President at the time, Petro Poroshenko, and his Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, offering to invite Poroshenko to a White House State dinner if he publicly announced an investigation. As I wrote here two days ago, this would have boosted both Poroshenko’s and Trump’s reelection campaigns. In March, Lutsenko smeared U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to an American reporter and Sean Hannity ran with the story on his show, but the scheme fell apart when voters elected Zelensky instead of reelecting the corrupt oligarch Poroshenko. Then they had to scramble to come up with a new plan, and the whole ham fisted Ukraine scandal took off.
The Ukraine scandal is fleshing out, and it is truly astonishing that there is not more evidence that can be read in Trump’s favor. This increasingly just looks like a shakedown that weakened national security to help Trump rig the 2020 election. Meanwhile, in northern Syria, where Turkish and Russian troops moved in when we moved out, the Russians boasted yesterday that they have now occupied a former U.S. air base.
Trump spent several hours today at Walter Reed hospital. The visit was unexpected and unannounced, but the White House said he had decided to have portions of his annual physical done three months early.
Attorney General Bill Barr Is Getting Roasted for His Outrageous Speech Blasting Progressives
As the impeachment hearings continued, Attorney General Bill Barr on Friday trash-talked Democrats for attempting to “drown the executive branch with oversight demands,” saying they were working for political gain without thinking of the consequences.
“In waging a scorched-earth, no-holds-barred war against this administration, it is the left that is engaged in shredding norms and undermining the rule of law,” Barr told a room of attorneys at the annual gathering of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group that has been influential in determining President Donald Trump’s nominees for federal judges.
The remarks about Democrats ignoring the rule of law were especially ironic because they came a mere hours after Roger Stone, one of Trump’s previous advisers, was convicted on all counts for lying to Congress during its probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The attorney general’s speech also came on the second day of presidential impeachment hearings examining allegations that Trump attempted to interfere in the 2020 elections by asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Barr criticized Democrats for launching a “holy war” and using “any means necessary to gain momentary advantage,” while he said conservatives “tend to have more scruple over their political tactics and rarely feel that the ends justify the means.”
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Barr reportedly received a standing ovation, but outside the halls of the Federalist Society, his remarks sparked outrage and intensified calls from the left to impeach not only the president, but the attorney general himself. Others were quick to roast Barr for his statements. “Bill Barr is the type of bare knuckles lawyer the Church would have hired thirty years ago to cover up sex abuse cases,” Richard Painter, a former White House ethics counsel, tweeted.
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“Yesterday AG Barr addressed a radical political group and gave one of the most vicious partisan screeds ever uttered by a US cabinet officer,” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) tweeted Saturday morning. “Barr says trump should have king-like powers. Barr is a liar and a fanatic and should be impeached and stripped of his law licenses.”
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Read Samantha’s complete article which includes the full the two of a number of tweets at the link.
Hours after a new witness testified in the House’s latest impeachment hearing on Friday, Attorney General William Barr railed against Democrats for declaring a “war of resistance against this administration.”
In a speech before the conservative Federalist Society, Barr rebuked lawmakers for probing President Donald Trump’s potential power abuses, suggesting their efforts are illegitimate.
“The sheer volume of what we see today ― the pursuit of scores of parallel investigations through an avalanche of subpoenas ― is plainly designed to incapacitate the executive branch, and indeed is touted as such,” Barr said. “The costs of this constant harassment are real.”
Barr’s portrayal of oversight as harassment echoes Trump’s repeated claims that he is the victim of a partisan “witch hunt” rather than the subject of a justified inquiry into his dealings with Ukraine, which remain at the heart of Democratic-led impeachment proceedings.
“The fact of the matter is that, in waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of resistance against this administration, it is the left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and undermining the rule of law,” Barr added. “This highlights a basic disadvantage that conservatives have had in contesting the political issues of the day.”
President Trump is convinced he has the “absolute right” to do anything from asking other countries to investigate his political opponents to pardoning himself. But he couldn’t possibly tell you why — aside from his innate conviction that “when you’re a star, they let you do it” — you can get away with anything. Enter Attorney General William P. Barr to put a pseudo-intellectual gloss on Trump’s authoritarian instincts. In a Friday night speech to the Federalist Society, Barr gave a chilling defense of virtually unlimited executive authority.
Barr’s wrongheaded assumption was that “over the past several decades, we have seen steady encroachment on presidential authority by the other branches of government.” His view faithfully reflects the conservative consensus of the 1970s when he was a CIA analyst and a law student. Few serious analysts share that view today at a time when the president claims the authority to kill suspected terrorists anywhere in the world without any judicial oversight. In fact, conservatives decried President Barack Obama’s tendency to rule by fiat — for example, in protecting “dreamers” from deportation or reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran that wasn’t submitted for Senate ratification.
Trump has now taken rule-by-executive-order to the next level by declaring a “state of emergency” to spend money on his border wall that Congress refused to appropriate. Trump has also misused his authority in myriad other ways, including obstructing justice (as outlined in a special counsel report that Barr deliberately mischaracterized) and soliciting a bribe from Ukraine to release congressionally appropriated military aid.
Yet, to hear Barr tell it, Trump is somehow denied power by the nefarious “Resistance.” Barr decried Trump critics who do not view “themselves as the ‘loyal opposition,’” but rather “see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government.”
Earth to Barr: Trump does not treat his critics as “the loyal opposition.” He calls them “human scum,” “traitors” and “the enemy of the people,” using the language of dictators. And it is Trump and his toadies — not his opponents — who are “willing to use any means necessary to gain momentary advantage.”
Barr went on to blame the “Resistance” for Trump’s failure to get more nominees confirmed. The real problem is Trump’s incompetence and his preference for “acting” appointees to dodge the constitutional requirement to seek the Senate’s “advice and consent.” (Trump has not nominated anyone for nearly 20 percent of the top federal jobs.) If Barr wants to find a real abuse of the confirmation process, he should talk to Merrick Garland.
As devoid of self-awareness as his master, Barr whines about “the pursuit of scores of parallel ‘investigations’ through an avalanche of subpoenas.” He conveniently forgets that Republicans tried to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying about sex and spent years probing the Benghazi, Libya, attack in a failed attempt to blame Hillary Clinton. Trump is stonewalling congressional subpoenas at an unprecedented rate, forcing Congress to seek judicial assistance to enforce legitimate requests for documents and witnesses. But Barr denies that the courts have any right to “resolve … disputes” between the executive and legislative branches — effectively allowing the president to act like a king.
The attorney general went on to rail against judicial review of administration actions such as “the travel ban.” This was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court after the administration rewrote the initial versions, which constituted clear discrimination on religious grounds. Yet Barr is still aggrieved that the courts dared “to inquire into the subjective motivation behind governmental action” — i.e., to look at Trump’s own words about banning Muslims rather than accept the administration’s disingenuous explanations.
Barr blamed the courts and the president’s critics for the fact that so many administration actions have been challenged in court. The truth is Trump has nobody but himself to blame. Many of the lawsuits accuse the administration of violating the Administrative Procedure Act, which the executive branch can comply with simply by showing that its actions are not “arbitrary and capricious.” This is an incredibly low standard, which is why the normal “win rate” for the government in such cases is about 70 percent. According to the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, the Trump administration’s win rate is less than 7 percent.
Trump likes to blame such setbacks on “Obama judges,” but many of the judges ruling against him are Republican appointees. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., for example, wrote the 5-to-4 decision in June in which the Supreme Court blocked Trump’s attempt to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census.
“In this partisan age,” Barr sanctimoniously concluded, “we should take special care not to allow the passions of the moment to cause us to permanently disfigure the genius of our Constitutional structure.” He is right, but not in the way he intended. The real threat to “our Constitutional structure” emanates not from administration critics who struggle to uphold the rule of law but from a lawless president who is aided and abetted in his reckless actions by unscrupulous and unprincipled partisans — including the attorney general of the United States.
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Mary Papenfuss Contributor HuffPost
Finally, let’s hear from Mary Papenfuss, also at HuffPost:
Attorney General William Barr’s latest extreme defense of Donald Trump has triggered a wave of calls for his impeachment — and disbarment.
Richard Painter, the former chief White House ethics attorney in the George W. Bush administration, tweeted that Barr’s remarks Friday before the conservative Federalist Society were “another lunatic authoritarian speech” amid an impeachment investigation into the president. He claimed that Barr — a member of the conservative Catholic society Opus Dei — is “the type of bare knuckles lawyer the Church would have hired thirty years ago to cover up sex abuse cases.”
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Read the rest of Mary’s article at the link.
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Somewhat “below the radar screen:” Barr’s repetition of Session’s blatantly unethical performance by acting as a “quasi-judicial decision maker” in Immigration Court cases where he clearly has both an actual and apparent bias in favor of a party, the DHS, and against another party, the individual migrant, particularly any asylum seeker.
Obviously, viewed through Barr’s perverted historical lens, we’ve made some seriously wrong moves.According to Barr’s interpretation, we should have allied ourselves with Hitler during World War II. Now, there’s a guy who understood the concept of the “Unitary Executive.” And, he sure knew how to deal with opposing legislators, “the resistance,” and others who were “enemies of the state” or of “inferior stock.” Why on earth would we have aligned ourselves with, and helped rebuild, the noxious parliamentary democracies of the West?
One of our allies, Stalin, did actually demonstrate the wonderful power of the “Unitary Executive” — talk about a guy who WAS the State and annihilated all opposition, real and imagined! He certainly would have known what to do with subversives who preached “impeachment” under the Constitution!
But, concededly, Stalin’s godless communism doesn’t fit in well with Barr’s Catholic Christian theocracy (minus, of course, the social justice teachings of Christ and the Catholic Church). Hitler’s pure Aryian Christian superiority was a much better fit with Barr’s historical outlook.
Of course, according to the Barr view, the seminal figure in Republicanism, Abe Lincoln, erred by not aligning himself with Jeff Davis and the Confederacy. Davis certainly knew how to operate without much legislative accountability. And the founders of the Confederacy also possessed Barr’s superior understanding of the relationship between the State and the Divine: “establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity — invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God.”
Sure, easy to believe that God was always a big fan of enslavement, rape, brutality, white privilege, and theft of services from enslaved African Americans, who also happened to be believers in God. Fits right in with Barr’s dehumanization of Hispanic workers, trashing of LGBTQ Americans, denial of rights to asylum seekers, threats to political opponents, and war on Hispanic Americans who have the audacity of wanting to vote and live peacefully in their communities without being terrorized by DHS enforcement.
George Washington, who wrongly refused to install himself as either King or “President for Life” was, according to Barr’s historical perspective, a dangerous wimp who diminished the potential powers of the “Unitary Executive.”
Undoubtedly, our Founders had their flaws. After all, the Constitution not only enshrined the dehumanization of African Americans, who had actually made the success and prosperity of the American Republic possible, but also excluded the majority of inhabitants from political participation.
But, unlike Barr and his fellow “originalists,” our Founders were largely persons of vision and good will who had enough self awareness and humility to see a better and more dynamic future. They would certainly be shocked and dismayed to find out that rather than viewing our Constitution rationally, as a blueprint to be built upon for a better, more inclusive, more tolerant future, two plus centuries later, individuals like Barr holding supposedly responsible positions under our Republic, would be mindlessly and immorally urging us never to escape the limitations and mistakes of our distant past.
Disturbingly unqualified as he is to serve as our Attorney General, Barr does illustrate the moral and legal bankruptcy of the “fake doctrine” of “originalism.” It’s actually an intellectually indefensible excuse for an empowered, largely White, predominantly male, minority to exclude the majority of America’s inhabitants and their hopes and dreams from full participation in our democracy. It’s as ugly and dishonest as Barr’s own tenure as Attorney General.
Here’s Trump’s brilliant plan. Allow notorious Turkish strongman Erdogan, who happened to show up at a Trump Hotel opening in Turkey, to annihilate our loyal allies against ISIS (and before that Saddam), the Kurds. Then, destroy the Turkish economy because they annihilated the Kurds like they said they would do. That way, we wipe out two of our dwindling number of allies in the Middle East and insure the re-emergence of ISIS. We also should be able to guarantee the death of many refugees in Syria and cruel and inhuman abuse of others. What could possibly go wrong?
As for GOP bottom-feeder Graham, Trump’s betrayal of American institutions, illegal attacks on his American political opponents, insult to the memory of John McCain, taunting of Congress, dehumanization of immigrants and asylum seekers, his overt racism, and his 10,000+ documented lies, “No problemo.”
But, betray an ally halfway around the world, that’s “crossing the line.”
LG’s learning the “downside” of enabling a kakistocracy led by a dangerous, deranged clown. But, I’m sure that won’t stop him from serving as Trump’s caddy on their next golf outing, while Kurds are being slaughtered by Turks.
Check it out at NBC News. Johnson obviously thinks the American people are even more stupid and dishonest than he is. The corrupt GOP is bringing down our country. Johnson is a coward, afraid to speak truth about a fraudulent President and his anti-American regime! Johnson’s attack on the press was also dishonest and totally out of line.
In a statement provided to CNN, a senior White House official said the move to place the transcript in the system came at the direction of National Security Council attorneys.
“NSC lawyers directed that the classified document be handled appropriately,” the senior White House official said.
White House officials say the transcript was already classified so it did nothing wrong by moving it to another system.
The admission lends further credibility to the whistleblower complaint description of how the July 25 transcript with the Ukrainian president, among others, were kept out of wider circulation by using a system for highly sensitive documents.
But the statement did not explain whether anyone else in the White House was part of the decision to put the the Ukraine transcript in the more restrictive system.
Nor did it delve into an accusation in the complaint that other phone call transcripts were handled in a similar fashion.
The suggestion that officials sought to conceal the content of the phone call — during which Trump suggested to his Ukrainian counterpart that he order an investigation into Joe Biden and his son — has led to accusations of a cover-up. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son.
The transcript of the Ukraine phone call — which the White House released publicly on Wednesday — did not contain information like intelligence secrets or military plans that might ordinarily merit moving it to a highly classified system.
Officials familiar with the matter say Trump and others at the White House sought to restrict access to phone calls with foreign leaders after embarrassing leaks early in the administration.
The White House’s statement on Friday indicates an effort to paint the practice as sanctioned by lawyers and overseen by the National Security Council, rather than a politically motivated attempt to keep Trump’s conversations from becoming public.
Trump himself lashed out against the whistleblower on Thursday for revealing information about his phone call to relevant authorities.
“I want to know who’s the person, who’s the person who gave the whistleblower the information? Because that’s close to a spy,” Trump said during a private event in New York. “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”
This is further proof of what I said yesterday. The facts here are actually much clearer than they are in any “normal” investigation of wrongdoing. Trump acted inappropriately, broke the law, endangered national security, lied about it, and the GOP is trying to help him “cover-up” (hard to do, since the damning facts are public) or “obfuscate” to maintain their minority political power. In other words, the “Trump Doctrine” of corruption, unbridled greed, and selfishness, driven to a large degree by racism, taken to its logical conclusion.
To me, it doesn‘t look like both the Trump Presidency and our nation can survive in the long run. Our next election will be about what we really want as a people: a Constitutional Republic committed to humane values and the rule of law; or a corrupt, selfish, cowardly racist charlatan who seeks to seeks to replace that republic with a “Cult of Personality.”
President Trump told a crowd of staff from the United States Mission to the United Nations on Thursday morning that he wants to know who provided information to a whistle-blowerabout his phone call with the president of Ukraine, saying that whoever did so was “close to a spy” and that “in the old days,” spies were dealt with differently.
The remark stunned people in the audience, according to a person briefed on what took place, who had notes of what the president said. Mr. Trump made the statement several minutes into his remarks before the group of about 50 mission employees and their families at the event intended to honor the mission. At the outset, he condemned the former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s role in Ukraine at a time when his son Hunter Biden was on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.
Mr. Trump repeatedly referred to the whistle-blower and condemned the news media reporting on the complaint as “crooked.” He then said the whistle-blower never heard the call in question.
“I want to know who’s the person who gave the whistle-blower the information because that’s close to a spy,” Mr. Trump said. “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies and treason, right? We used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”
“Over the past four months, more than half a dozen U.S. officials have informed me of various facts related to this effort,” the complaint stated. It described concerns that the president was using his phone call with the Ukrainian president for personal gain to fulfill a political vendetta.
Some in the crowd laughed, the person briefed on what took place said. The event was closed to reporters, and during his remarks, the president called the news media “scum” in addition to labeling them crooked.
The ambassador to the United Nations, Kelly Knight Craft, was in the room.
A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
An intelligence whistle-blower law protects intelligence officials from reprisal — like losing their security clearance or being demoted or fired — as long as they follow a certain process for bringing allegations of wrongdoing to the attention of oversight authorities.
The whistle-blower followed that process — filing a complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community. The Trump Justice Department later proclaimed that the information the whistle-blower put forward did not qualify under the intelligence whistle-blower law, raising the question of whether the official was still protected from reprisal. The acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has said he would not permit the official to suffer retaliation, but the inspector general has pointed out that this personal assurance is not a legal shield.
Moreover, whistle-blower laws are aimed at channeling complaints to certain officials with oversight responsibilities — Congress, supervisors or inspectors general — and do not protect officials who provide information to other people without authorization. For that reason, these laws almost certainly do not protect the officials who told the whistle-blower about the call in the first place.
Mr. Trump spoke as the director of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was testifying before Congress that the president had never asked for the identity of the whistle-blower, whose complaint was initially withheld from Congress by the Trump administration.
At a fund-raiser at Cipriani 42nd Street in Manhattan immediately after the United Nations event, Mr. Trump walked out before the crowd of several hundred donors clutching paper in one of his hands and said, “This is the call.” He then said it was “the greatest thing” to happen to the Republican Party because they had raised so much money off the controversy.
In a Twitter post later in the day, Mr. Trump referred again to the whistle-blower having “second hand information” and called the inquiry “Another Witch Hunt!”
Those of us who have been saying for some time now that Trump’s conduct makes him a “clear and present danger” to the continued existence of our nation have been proved right again. Not, of course, that it means that Trump, with lots of help from the GOP and complicit courts, won’t succeed in destroying American democracy. Democracy is “on the ropes” while Trump is still in office.
What would Thomas More, former Lord High Chancellor of England, say about Trump’s rhetoric? More was famously executed in 1535 for refusing to recognize Henry VIII as the head of the Church in England.
In a time where Trump, Barr, McAleenan, Mulvaney, Pence, Graham, McConnell, Pompeo, the majority of the Supremes, and many others illustrate the complete absence of integrity and ethics in Government, the “Whistleblower” reminds us that there still are are some persons of integrity left in our Government. Sadly, they appear to be an “endangered species.”
Voters have a chance to save our nation by throwing Trump and his GOP scoundrels out of office, at every level, in 2020. Whether they are “up to the task” or not remains to be seen.
WASHINGTON — The number of undocumented immigrant children in U.S. custody is reaching breaking-point levels again, months after the Trump administration had reduced the total in shelters in response to anger over policies that kept children there.
The recent increase is largely due to a surge in the number of children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border rather than an administration policy. Overall crossings this year have skyrocketed to decade-high levels.
As of Thursday, the number of undocumented immigrant children in U.S. custody had increased to more than 13,000, according to figures obtained by The Chronicle. The number is a near-record high, and puts the shelter network that the Department of Health and Human Services runs to keep such children in custody near maximum capacity.
Trump administration officials have asked Congress for nearly $3 billion more to increase shelter capacity. Without it, they say, Health and Human Services could run out of money for the system by June.
While the shelter network has come under increased attention in the aftermath of President Trump’s separation of families at the border last summer in order to prosecute the parents, the vast majority of children in the system come to the U.S. by themselves.
The 13,000 figure has been exceeded only once before. Last fall, the total surpassed 14,000 children in custody for the first time in history, topping out close to 15,000.
That was due mainly to an administration policy under which Immigration and Customs Enforcement rigorously screened adults who were applying to take the children out of custody. The change slowed the process and often deterred such sponsors, usually family members, from coming forward. ICE also arrested some for being undocumented immigrants.
The practice so infuriated members of Congress that in a government funding bill in February, they barred ICE from using the information it collected as part of the screenings to arrest immigrants.
The Trump administration instituted a policy in December to try to release undocumented children from its custody more quickly, rescinding its requirement to fingerprint every adult in the home where the child would be living. Only the adult sponsoring the child is fingerprinted now.
By January, that had brought the number of children in custody below 11,000, according to Health and Human Services, with thousands of beds available.
Always great to get Tal’s timely and highly readable reporting!
What’s the solution? Well, it’s notthe Trump Administration’s “preferred solution” of allowing the Border Patrol to mindlessly rocket vulnerable kids back to the Northern Triangle to be killed, tortured, exploited, abused, or forced to join gangs. It’s actually part of a worldwide trend that has seen more and more of the total refugee population comprised of children. So, this phenomenon shouldn’t have come as a surprise to a competent Administration focused on dealing with refugee situations humanely under the laws.
A rational solution would be to work closely and cooperatively with NGOs with expertise in child refugees (like, for example, Kids In Need Of Defense (“KIND”) or the Safe Passage Project), pro bono lawyers, and communities to figure out what is in the best interests of these children.
Then, pursue the right options: Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (”SIJS”) for some; expedited grants of asylum through the Asylum Office under the Wilberforce Act for others; TPS for others, recognizing the reality that there is an “ongoing state of armed conflict” in the Northern Triangle; an exercise of prosecutorial discretion (“PD”) for others; and humane and organized repatriation for others, where that is actually in the child’s best interests.
There are plenty of tools available under existing laws to deal with this issue. We just have an Administration that refuses to use them and prefers to create a “crisis” to justify “throwing children under the bus.” Mistreating children is cowardly and bodes ill for the future of any country that permits it to happen. What goes around comes around!
