🏴‍☠️☠️🤮THE UGLY TRUTH BEHIND TRUMP’S COVID-19 LIES: Immigrants Don’t Spread COVID-19, But ICE Spreads It Throughout The U.S. & The World, According To a New Report From The NY Times & The Marshall Project!

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮THE UGLY TRUTH BEHIND TRUMP’S COVID-19 LIES: Immigrants Don’t Spread COVID-19, But ICE Spreads It Throughout The U.S. & The World, According To a New Report From The NY Times & The Marshall Project!

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/07/10/how-ice-exported-the-coronavirus

By Emily Kassie & Barbara Marcolini

This video was produced in collaboration with The New York Times.

Admild, an undocumented immigrant from Haiti, was feeling sick as he approached the deportation plane that was going to take him back to the country he had fled in fear. Two weeks before that day in May, while being held at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Louisiana, he had tested positive for the coronavirus — and he was still showing symptoms.

He disclosed his condition to an ICE official at the airport, who sent him to a nurse.

“She just gave me Tylenol,” said Admild, who feared reprisals if his last name was published. Not long after, he was back on the plane before landing in Port-au-Prince, one of more than 40,000 immigrants deported from the United States since March, according to ICE records.

Even as lockdowns and other measures have been taken around the world to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, ICE has continued to detain people, move them from state to state and deport them.

An investigation by The New York Times in collaboration with The Marshall Project reveals how unsafe conditions and scattershot testing helped turn ICE into a domestic and global spreader of the virus — and how pressure from the Trump administration led countries to take in sick deportees.

We spoke to more than 30 immigrant detainees who described cramped and unsanitary detention centers where social distancing was near impossible and protective gear almost nonexistent. “It was like a time bomb,” said Yudanys, a Cuban immigrant held in Louisiana.

At least four deportees interviewed by The Times, from India, Haiti, Guatemala and El Salvador, tested positive for the virus shortly after arriving from the United States.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the introduction and view the video at the link.

There is no reliable evidence that migrants and asylum seekers are a significant source of COVID-19 spread, particularly if they are properly screened, tested, and quarantined when necessary. https://www.cato.org/blog/no-mr-president-immigration-not-correlated-covid-19-united-states

On the other hand, as this report as well as numerous Federal Court actions have shown, there is powerful evidence that the “maliciously incompetent” immigration policies of the Trump regime are spreading COVID-19 in the U.S. and the world.

Consequently, Trump’s COVID-19 based immigration and asylum restrictions are a bad faith pretext for a White Nationalist, racist, xenophobic agenda. It’s a cowardly coverup for the truth that the Trump Administration threatens America’s health, not migrants and asylum seekers.

Reality is actually pretty straightforward, even if some Federal Courts and most GOP legislators pretend otherwise.

PWS

07-13-20

🏴‍☠️THE PLAGUE STATES OF AMERICA: Where ☠️ Plague, Stupidity, & Inhumanity Rule, & Your U.S. Passport Is Largely Worthless (Except, If You Are A Person of Color To, Perhaps, Protect You From “Expedited Removal” By ICE & Trump’s Complicit Supremes)! — Welcome To The “Trump Hotel California!”🤮

Last thing I remember

I was running for the door

I had to find the passage back

To the place I was before

“Relax”, said the night man

“We are programmed to receive

You can check out any time you like

But you can never leave”

—— From “Hotel California” by The Eagles

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Glenn Lewis Frey / Don Felder / Donald Hugh Henley

Hotel California lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, BMG Rights Management

Full Lyrics & Music here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjZqsKZpcXqAhU0oXIEHaegAiQQwqsBMAp6BAgLEAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DvcmjDPDOk7c&usg=AOvVaw3ay3l2d6R_UlBVOg1k6Fnz

https://medium.com/@indica/the-plague-states-of-america-53b20678a80e?source=email-dafc55faa6fd-1594452458433-digest.reader——0-50——————1f52bfff_711d_4def_918f_7e9b8eddea74-1-1b0c1765_594d_4c73_8665_f93e3a786b9f—-&sectionName=top

American Passports Are Worthless Now (Map)

Oh the places you can’t go

Indi Samarajiva

Follow

America is not united anymore and it’s barely a state. They have crashed right through failed state into a plague state, unwelcome across the world. This has been predicted, including here. Now it has come to pass. Just look at the map.

Americans have gone from having access to most of the world to being banned from most of it. Today, Americans are only allowed in a few Caribbean islands and the Balkans. An American passport is now worthless. Worse than worthless, it’s a plague.

In the absence of a humane government, America is now ruled by COVID-19. Welcome to the Plague States of America.

It’s too late

<img alt=”Image for post” class=”s t u hk ai” src=”https://miro.medium.com/max/6800/1*EoSrvKpq71W0jTbJCKmBfw.png” width=”3400″ height=”2400″ srcSet=”https://miro.medium.com/max/552/1*EoSrvKpq71W0jTbJCKmBfw.png 276w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1104/1*EoSrvKpq71W0jTbJCKmBfw.png 552w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1280/1*EoSrvKpq71W0jTbJCKmBfw.png 640w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*EoSrvKpq71W0jTbJCKmBfw.png 700w” sizes=”700px”/>

Only America has self-inflicted a second wave

I think it is difficult for Americans to understand that they are, to use an epidemiological term, completely fucked. COVID-19 could have been managed in January, or February, or even now, but not a full year later, in January 2021. Given than you need a functioning government to manage this pandemic, that’s the soonest Americans can get one.

It’s far too late.

The most reliable projections are saying 200,000 dead and 50 million infected by election day in November. Even these projections struggle to account for completely irrational federal actions like denigrating masks, pushing to reopen early, and pushing students back into schools. This is not the absence of public health, this is its opposite.

It is, in effect, governance by COVID-19. Not a failed state. A plague state.

Even after election day, Donald Trump will still be in power for nearly 3 months, until January 20th. Besides impeaching a dead-duck President, there’s nothing America can do but wait, while COVID-19 grows ever stronger. Grows completely out of control. In a pandemic, days matter, hours matter. A year is entirely too late.

America will be lucky to exit this pandemic with less than a million dead and 100 million infected. The living will be lucky to exit their country within the next five years.

The worthless passport

<img alt=”Image for post” class=”s t u hk ai” src=”https://miro.medium.com/max/3200/1*dcgKqItSATd-t8a1R42Sbw.jpeg” width=”1600″ height=”1137″ srcSet=”https://miro.medium.com/max/552/1*dcgKqItSATd-t8a1R42Sbw.jpeg 276w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1104/1*dcgKqItSATd-t8a1R42Sbw.jpeg 552w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1280/1*dcgKqItSATd-t8a1R42Sbw.jpeg 640w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*dcgKqItSATd-t8a1R42Sbw.jpeg 700w” sizes=”700px”/>

Welcome to the club. Post-colonial bullshit and racism have made my Sri Lankan passport worthless for years. Now the American passport is worse. America has crashed straight through the third world into the fourth.

Here is a list, in total, of all the places Americans can go. Most of them are small Caribbean islands.

<img alt=”Image for post” class=”s t u hk ai” src=”https://miro.medium.com/max/3200/1*ddImUOx1j0smBVcsVeqbPg.png” width=”1600″ height=”1022″ srcSet=”https://miro.medium.com/max/552/1*ddImUOx1j0smBVcsVeqbPg.png 276w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1104/1*ddImUOx1j0smBVcsVeqbPg.png 552w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1280/1*ddImUOx1j0smBVcsVeqbPg.png 640w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*ddImUOx1j0smBVcsVeqbPg.png 700w” sizes=”700px”/>

ALL THE PLACES YOU CAN GO

1. Albania | 15. Lebanon

2. Antigua and Barbuda | 16. Maldives

3. Aruba | 17. Mexico

4. The Bahamas | 18. North Macedonia

5. Barbados | 19. St. Lucia

6. Belize | 20. St. Maarten

7. Bermuda | 21. St. Vincent &

8. Croatia | 22. Serbia

9. Dominican Republic | 23. Tanzania

10. Ecuador* | 24. Turkey

11. French Polynesia | 25. Turks &

12. Ireland* | 26. Ukraine

13. Jamaica | 27. UAE*

14. Kosovo | 28. UK*

*14 day quarantine required, not included in map.

American now have access to exactly two dozen states, four more (*) if they want to endure a 14-day quarantine on the end. Americans have gone from world power to getting the side-eye from Ecuador in a matter of months. Right now Americans are only really welcome on remote islands or at corralled resorts in Mexico, where they can be isolated from everyone else.

It’s not that other nations don’t want to welcome Americans, they just can’t. The point of a passport is that a sovereign power vouches for its bearer, but America can’t vouch for the health of their citizens at all. America’s public health regime is far less trustworthy than Liberia’s (which is actually quite good). Its sovereign is mad.

At the same time, you can’t trust Americans. Americans have poor hygiene (low masking rate) and at least 40% of the population can’t be trusted to even believe that COVID-19 exists, let alone to take it seriously. They’re likely to refuse testing, not report symptoms, break quarantine, and generally follow rules. Americans have a toxic combination of ignorance and arrogance that makes them unwelcome travelers.

They have a lot of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with them. Some of them, I assume, are good people, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a plague passport. Return to sender.

The Plague States

<img alt=”Image for post” class=”s t u hk ai” src=”https://miro.medium.com/max/4000/1*weJ8xV5Wt2kCaKGnLXj4Hg.png” width=”2000″ height=”1149″ srcSet=”https://miro.medium.com/max/552/1*weJ8xV5Wt2kCaKGnLXj4Hg.png 276w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1104/1*weJ8xV5Wt2kCaKGnLXj4Hg.png 552w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1280/1*weJ8xV5Wt2kCaKGnLXj4Hg.png 640w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*weJ8xV5Wt2kCaKGnLXj4Hg.png 700w” sizes=”700px”/>

That’s the near future of the United States. An epidemic that spreads largely unchecked until next year. A population to unprotected and ignorant to be allowed anywhere else. A world that largely suppresses the virus — from Mongolia to Ghana to Trinidad & Tobago — but which has to keep America in isolation.

In the end, Trump did what he said. He built a wall around America and made the world pay for it. He just never told Americans that they’d be stuck inside. Welcome to the Plague States of America. You can check out, but you can never leave.

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

Check out the map accompanying the original article at the above link.

This November, vote like your life depends on it. Because it does!

PWS

07-11-20

🏴‍☠️TRUMP “JUSTICE” — DHS DEATH CAMP ⚰️ IN VIRGINIA — Convicted Criminal Sleezeball Roger Stone Gets Out of Jail Free, But ICE Non-Criminal Prisoners @ Farmville Face COVID-19 Detain Until Dead ☠️ (“DUD”) Policy!🤮

NBC 4 Washington reports in this video:

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/covid-19-outbreak-at-ice-detention-center-in-virginia/2358116/

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

This is justice? Unhappily, it’s what passes for justice for people of color in the era of Trump.

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

07-11-20

🤮☠️🏴‍☠️ ⚰️As American Governance Crumbles, Desperate Neo-Nazi Regime Rolls Out Plans For More “Crimes Against Humanity” Targeting Helpless Refugees Legally Seeking Asylum — These Cowardly, Immoral, & Patently Unconstitutional Deeds Are Being Done in OUR Name While The Complicit Supremes Watch What They Have Enabled & Encouraged By Abandoning Humanity, Our Constitution, Intellectual Integrity, & American Values!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/trump-admin-plans-block-asylum-seekers-u-s-citing-public-n1233253

From NBC News:

July 8, 2020, 6:35 PM EDT

By Julia Ainsley and Adiel Kaplan

The Trump administration has proposed a new rule that would allow it to deny asylum to immigrants who are deemed a public health risk.

The soon-to-be published rule would let the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice to block immigrants from seeking asylum in the U.S. based on “potential international threats from the spread of pandemics,” according to a notice announcing it Wednesday.

The rule would apply to immigrants seeking asylum and those seeking “withholding of removal” — a protected immigration status for those who have shown they may well face danger if returned to their home countries.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

This outrageous, totally pretextual, racist proposal violates the Constitution, asylum laws, international agreements, morality, and human values. The factual basis is absurd since there has been no showing that asylum applicants are a source of COVID spread. To the contrary, unnecessarily detained asylum applicants have been victims of Trump’s failed policies. Moreover, if DHS actually were worried about COVID, they could easily test and quarantine to identify and deal constructively and humanely with the few applicants who might have been infected someplace other than DHS facilities.

This is White Nationalist racism at its worst.

We need better judges, and particularly better Justices on the Supremes, for a better America! Judges who will prevent, rather than encourage, racist-driven “crimes against humanity.” Standing up against such crimes, particularly when they are disgracefully directed by a racist Executive at our most vulnerable humans, should be a “no-brainer” for a unanimous Supremes with Justices qualified for the high offices they hold. For the “JR Five” a “no brainer” has too often been a “non-starter.” So, the regime’s gross abuses of migrants and people of color and the damage, societal disorder, wasted time, squandered resources, and the human misery they cause roll on.

“Dred Scottification” is wrong! Period! And Supreme Court Justices who enable it are wrong for America!

This November, vote like your life depends on it. Because it does!

PWS

07-09-20

🏴‍☠️KAKISTOCRACY COSTS: Trump Regime’s White Nationalist Attack on Foreign Students Threatens $40 Billion 💸 Hit on U.S. Economy!

🤡☠️👎🏻

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-uses-the-coronavirus-to-impede-immigration-his-aim-at-foreign-students-is-a-new-low/2020/07/07/ec3ca966-c06a-11ea-b178-bb7b05b94af1_story.html

From WashPost Editorial Board:

By Editorial Board

July 7 at 3:54 PM ET

THE TRUMP administration has used the novel coronavirus as license to indiscriminately kill off and impede every sort of immigration — legal and illegal, permanent and temporary, work- and family-based. On Monday, it took aim at the more than 1 million international students enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities, threatening them with deportation if their classes move online, as many already have.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement made the announcement as a growing number of colleges, facing a widening pandemic, have shifted entirely or largely to virtual learning for the fall. International students at those institutions, who represent a sizable cohort, will have to go home or transfer to another school that offers in-person classes.

ICE provided no rationale — unsurprising, given that it is unfair and irrational as a matter of policy. But within hours of its announcement, President Trump sought to make school closings into an election issue. Democrats, he claimed on Twitter, want schools closed “for political reasons, not health reasons,” to help them in the fall elections.

[[Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]]

That’s preposterous. Colleges and universities have scrambled to devise plans to operate safely in the fall, in some cases pivoting from one scenario to another as the virus has spread. Last week, the University of Southern California reversed course, scrapping a mix of in-person and online classes at its campus in pandemic-plagued Los Angeles and shifting to a mostly virtual schedule. Those decisions have nothing to do with partisan politics, nothing to do with the fall elections and nothing to do with Mr. Trump.

The new rule means colleges that depend critically on tuition revenue from international students — many from China, India and South Korea — will be under pressure to offer in-person classes even in places where covid-19 is a major threat. International students will face deportation even if their colleges, facing a fresh outbreak, shift mid-semester from in-person to online classes. International students with preexisting conditions will feel forced to attend in-person classes despite the risk to their lives.

Those students, who constitute 5.5 percent of overall higher education enrollment, contributed more than $40 billion to the U.S. economy in the 2019-2020 academic year. They provide a steady stream of energetic, talented youth, some of whom make key contributions to the U.S. economy and form lifelong ties with U.S. businesses and scientific and cultural institutions.

None of that matters to Mr. Trump, who has made it a personal and political crusade to rid the nation, to the extent possible, of foreigners. Last month, his administration suspended work visas for various non-immigrant categories and widened a ban on new green cards for applicants outside of this country. Under cover of the pandemic, asylum seekers have been effectively banned from the United States for the first time in modern history, and many U.S. embassies and consulates remain shut, closing off other avenues of legal entry for visitors, workers and immigrants alike.

The president’s goal is to turn America’s back on the world. Sadly, it is Americans, and institutions like U.S. universities, that will pay the price.

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

This could well put some colleges and universities out of business. Racism is not only stupid and immoral, it costs the U.S. big time, in “real dollars” as well as in goodwill and “moral capital.”

Vote ‘Em Out in November — at all levels! Let America and everyone in it realize their full potential! End racism in America by sending the racists packing!

PWS

07-08-20

😎🗽⚖️GOOD NEWS: 9th Cir. Deals Another Blow To Stephen Miller’s Illegal White Nationalist War On Asylum! Now, Will The Supremes’ Majority Stand For Equal Justice Under Law, Or Will They Again Side With A Racist Regime & Its “Crimes Against Humanity?”🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️👎

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca9-upholds-injunction-against-asylum-rule

Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:

Immigration Law

Daniel M. Kowalski

6 Jul 2020

asylum

CA9 Upholds Injunction Against Asylum Rule

East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Barr

“On July 16, 2019, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security published a joint interim final Rule without notice and comment, entitled “Asylum Eligibility and Procedural Modifications” (the “Rule”). With limited exceptions, the Rule categorically denies asylum to aliens arriving at our border with Mexico unless they have first applied for, and have been denied, asylum in Mexico or another country through which they have traveled. We describe the Rule in detail below. Plaintiffs are nonprofit organizations that represent asylum seekers. They brought suit in district court seeking an injunction against enforcement of the Rule, contending that the Rule is invalid on three grounds: first, the Rule is not “consistent with” Section 208 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1158; second, the Rule is arbitrary and capricious; third, the Rule was adopted without notice and comment. The district court found that plaintiffs had a likelihood of success on all three grounds and entered a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the Rule, with effect in the four states on our border with Mexico. We hold that plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success on the first and second grounds. We do not reach the third ground. We affirm.”

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

This isn’t rocket science. Neither the legal nor moral issues are particularly difficult in this case. Indeed, the Supremes should unanimously have tossed Solicitor General Noel Francisco out on his tail the last time he unethically requested their intervention. Instead, they rewarded him, thus enabling and encouraging further “crimes against humanity.”

Unfortunately, this Supremes’ majority has had a hard time seeing people of color, and particularly those seeking asylum and other legal protections under our laws, as human. Even though the lower Federal Courts have essentially made things easy by showing exactly why these racist-inspired policies are illegal, a Supremes majority has chosen to advance Stephen Miller’s White Nationalist agenda, sometimes hiding behind a smokescreen of nonsensical legal gobbledygook, while other times choosing to act without bothering to provide any rationale at all.

One thing is for certain. Someday, after the fall of Trump, and the banishment of Miller, the Justices who advanced their unconstitutional, illegal, racist immigration agenda will try to “save their legacies” by putting some distance between themselves and the neo-Nazi ramifications of their votes. It’s critically important for those of us who see exactly what’s happening to insure that the names of justices and judges who sided with Stephen Miller are inextricably linked for the rest of time with his disgraceful racist legacy of “crimes against humanity.”

There is only one side of history here! And, it’s certainly not with Stephen Miller and his enablers, be they judges, legislators, public officials, or voters.

Read today’s op-ed by Sister Norma Pimentel, of the Missionaries of Jesus, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville, Tex whose courage and dedication to human rights and the rule of law puts complicit judges to shame. Sister Pimentel lives and observes every day the grotesque, unforgivable “crimes against humanity” and disparagement of the human dignity of asylum seekers effected by Miller’s judicially-enabled campaign of hate, dehumanization, and abuse of power. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/covid-19-has-come-to-our-migrant-camp-it-makes-ending-the-mpp-policy-even-more-urgent/2020/07/03/455cacf8-bd41-11ea-8cf5-9c1b8d7f84c6_story.html

She writes, in part:

Meanwhile, the pandemic has made it more difficult to care for those who are arriving at the border each day. Since that lone covid-19 case was identified, Mexico’s National Immigration Institute has not allowed the camps to accept any new arrivals. So refugees are being turned away and have no place to go. Some are being placed in hotels or churches, and volunteers are desperately looking for other options.

Within the camp, we have had to limit the volunteers’ activities — there are 10 to 20 volunteers allowed to enter and help provide the people with food, water and basic health care. We have set up areas for washing hands, and try to provide hope and reassurance amid the uncertainty. All this makes it even harder to keep the camps safe from the cartels and gangsters who continue to prey on these largely defenseless asylum seekers.

That young woman who tested positive for the coronavirus has been transferred to a covid-19 center operated by Doctors Without Borders. We pray for her recovery, and we pray for all the families’ safety, for their protection and for a resolution to their untenable situation.

While I know many people in many places are dealing with so much, I urge you not to look away from the border in this moment. Do not ignore the suffering occurring here. It is time that we put an end to it, and to end the MPP policy. Until that happens, we will continue to help those who are defenseless, whose only real “crime” is trying to seek protection for themselves and their families.

In addition to highlighting inhumanity, Sister Pimentel shows the gross intellectual fraud and immorality in the Trump Regime’s bogus claim that asylum seekers present a significant threat of spreading COVID-19. If anything, it’s the exact opposite which is most often the case with the Trump regime’s endless racist false narratives and fake “horror stories” about immigration.

It also exposes yet again both the intellectual dishonesty and immorality of those who present “pretextual justifications” for illegal acts being perpetrated by our Government against the most vulnerable and the spineless performance of judges who claim to accept at face value that which any reasonable person knows to be a pretext for racism and inhumanity.

The intent behind these bogus regulation changes and programs like the “Migrant Protection Protocols” (or, more properly, “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico”) is very clear: dehumanize “the other” – in this case primarily brown skinned asylum seekers. But, in the process of letting this happen and tolerating legislators and judges without the decency to stand up for the rights of our fellow humans, WE are the ones who actually are dehumanized. We’re not allowed to look away from the horrors being perpetrated by the Trump regime in our name!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-06-20

☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️AMERICAN GOVERNANCE APPEARS TO BE IN A DEATH SPIRAL THANKS TO TRUMP KAKISTOCRACY & THE GOP — NOVEMBER COULD BE OUR LAST CHANCE TO AVOID THE FATAL CRASH!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/with-trump-leading-the-way-americas-coronavirus-failures-exposed-by-record-surge-in-new-infections/2020/06/27/bd15aea2-b7c4-11ea-a8da-693df3d7674a_story.html

From WashPost:

Politics

With Trump leading the way, America’s coronavirus failures exposed by record surge in new infections

By Toluse Olorunnipa, Josh Dawsey and Yasmeen Abutaleb

June 27 at 5:38 PM ET

. . . .

Later Friday, the United States recorded more than 40,000 new coronavirus cases — its largest one-day total.

It was the latest example of whiplash from the Trump administration, which has struggled to put forward a consistent message about the pandemic. While public health experts urge caution and preventive measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing, Trump, Pence and other top aides repeatedly flout their advice, leaving confused Americans struggling to determine who to believe.

“They’re creating a cognitive dissonance in the country,” one former senior administration official said. “It’s more than them being asleep at the wheel. They’re confusing people at this point when we need to be united.”

This portrait of a nation in crisis — and its failure to contain an epic pandemic — is based on interviews with 47 administration officials, lawmakers at the national and state level, congressional staff, federal and local health officials, public health experts and other current and former officials involved in the bungled and confused response.

America’s position as the world’s leader in coronavirus cases and deaths is in large part the result of human error, and the still-rising caseload stands as a stark reminder of the blunders that have characterized the national response. Trump’s actions, and his position in the Oval Office, make him a central figure in any assessment of the country’s handling of the outbreak.

. . . .

As local officials struggled to enforce stay-at-home orders and other restrictions, the virus continued to circulate throughout a country riven by partisan politics and devoid of a national public health strategy, said Max Skidmore, a political scientist at the University of Missouri at Kansas City and author of a book on presidential leadership during health crises.

“We’re the only country in the world that has politicized the approach to a pandemic,” he said.

Now, covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, is advancing at an accelerated pace in the United States, even as other countries reopen their economies after getting their outbreaks under control. European diplomats are poised to approve an agreement that will reopen the European Union to travel from many countries but not American tourists, because the coronavirus is still raging in the United States.

In contrast, states from Arizona to Florida are pausing or reversing their attempts to reopen their economies.

The new peak in cases — coming so quickly after the first and with just months to go before a presidential election and an impending flu season — has alarmed public health experts and the president’s political allies.

“These epidemics are going to be hard to get under control,” said Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and an informal adviser to the Trump administration. He said he expects deaths to soon climb to more than 1,000 per day again. “It’s going to continue to spread until you do something to intervene. I’m not sure we are taking enough forceful action to break the trend right now.”

The president has dramatically scaled back the number of coronavirus meetings on his schedule in recent weeks, instead holding long meetings on polling and endorsements, his reelection campaign, the planned Republican National Convention in Jacksonville, Fla., the economy and other topics, according to two advisers, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link.

There’re no “good” time for the insanity of a supposedly advanced nation putting an evil moron and his kakistocracy in charge. That’s particularly true when that evil, grotesque ignorance, and astounding dishonesty were well-advertised and documented in advance of the 2016 election.

How would you expect a jerk whose most famous line was “You’re fired” to perform in a leadership position requiring intelligence, integrity, compassion, vision, moral courage, and the ability to positively inspire others to perform? Duh!

It’s no mystery that a man without visible redeeming qualities will perform just as horribly, if not worse, than the majority of us predicted. But, next to a world war, a worldwide pandemic is probably the worst possible time to have “malicious incompetents” at the controls.

Got a healthcare crisis? Eliminating health insurance for 23 million Americans is the obvious solution!

This plane is going down folks. Better get a real pilot into the cockpit before it’s too late!

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it most certainly does!

PWS

06-28-20

ASIAN AMERICANS FEEL THE STING OF TRUMP’S RACISM — THEY ARE FIGHTING BACK AGAINST THE GOP’S CAMPAIGN OF HATE AND STUPIDITY — Once Targeted By The “Chinese Exclusion Act” & The “Asia-Pacific Barred Zone,” Later Dubbed The “Model Minority” By White Racists, Asian Americans Are Bonding With Other Targets Of Trump’s Program Of Dehumanization To Resist Racism in America: “The current protests have further confirmed my role and responsibility here in the U.S.: not to be a ‘model minority’ aspiring to be white-adjacent on a social spectrum carefully engineered to serve the white and privileged, but to be an active member of a distinct community that emerged from the tireless resistance of people of color who came before us.”

https://apple.news/AtFy-2-s8SviGlrVZK5m0ag

From Time:

‘I Will Not Stand Silent.’ 10 Asian Americans Reflect on Racism During the Pandemic and the Need for Equality

SANGSUK SYLVIA KANG

ANNA PURNA KAMBHAMPATY

Diseases and outbreaks have long been used to rationalize xenophobia: HIV was blamed on Haitian Americans, the 1918 influenza pandemic on German Americans, the swine flu in 2009 on Mexican Americans. The racist belief that Asians carry disease goes back centuries. In the 1800s, out of fear that Chinese workers were taking jobs that could be held by white workers, white labor unions argued for an immigration ban by claiming that “Chinese” disease strains were more harmful than those carried by white people.

Today, as the U.S. struggles to combat a global pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 120,000 Americans and put millions out of work, President Donald Trump, who has referred to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” and more recently the “kung flu,” has helped normalize anti-Asian xenophobia, stoking public hysteria and racist attacks. And now, as in the past, it’s not just Chinese Americans receiving the hatred. Racist aggressors don’t distinguish between different ethnic subgroups—anyone who is Asian or perceived to be Asian at all can be a victim. Even wearing a face mask, an act associated with Asians before it was recommended in the U.S., could be enough to provoke an attack.

Since mid-March, STOP AAPI HATE, an incident-reporting center founded by the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, has received more than 1,800 reports of pandemic-fueled harassment or violence in 45 states and Washington, D.C. “It’s not just the incidents themselves, but the inner turmoil they cause,” says Haruka Sakaguchi, a Brooklyn-based photographer who immigrated to the U.S. from Japan when she was 3 months old.

Since May, Sakaguchi has been photographing individuals in New York City who have faced this type of racist aggression. The resulting portraits, which were taken over FaceTime, have been lain atop the sites, also photographed by Sakaguchi, where the individuals were harassed or assaulted. “We are often highly, highly encouraged not to speak about these issues and try to look at the larger picture. Especially as immigrants and the children of immigrants, as long as we are able to build a livelihood of any kind, that’s considered a good existence,” says Sakaguchi, who hopes her images inspire people to at least acknowledge their experiences.

Amid the current Black Lives Matter protests, Asian Americans have been grappling with the -anti-Blackness in their own communities, how the racism they experience fits into the larger landscape and how they can be better allies for everyone.

“Cross-racial solidarity has long been woven into the fabric of resistance movements in the U.S.,” says Sakaguchi, referencing Frederick Douglass’ 1869 speech advocating for Chinese immigration and noting that the civil rights movement helped all people of color. “The current protests have further confirmed my role and responsibility here in the U.S.: not to be a ‘model minority’ aspiring to be white-adjacent on a social spectrum carefully engineered to serve the white and privileged, but to be an active member of a distinct community that emerged from the tireless resistance of people of color who came before us.”

Justin Tsui

“I didn’t think that if he shoved me into the tracks I’d have the physical energy to crawl back up,” says Tsui, a registered nurse pursuing a doctorate of nursing practice in psychiatric mental health at Columbia University. Tsui was transferring trains on his way home after picking up N95 masks when he was approached by a man on the platform.

The man asked, “You’re Chinese, right?” Tsui responded that he was Chinese American, and the man told Tsui he should go back to his country, citing the 2003 SARS outbreak as another example of “all these sicknesses” spread by “chinks.” The man kept coming closer and closer to Tsui, who was forced to step toward the edge of the platform.

“Leave him alone. Can’t you see he’s a nurse? That he’s wearing scrubs?” said a bystander, who Tsui says appeared to be Latino. After the bystander threatened to record the incident and call the police, the aggressor said that he should “go back to [his] country too.”

When the train finally arrived, the aggressor sat right across from Tsui and glared at him the entire ride, mouthing, “I’m watching you.” Throughout the ride, Tsui debated whether he should get off the train to escape but feared the man would follow him without anyone else to bear witness to what might happen.

Tsui says the current antiracism movements are important, but the U.S. has a long way to go to achieve true equality. “One thing’s for sure, it’s definitely not an overnight thing—I am skeptical that people can be suddenly woke after reading a few books off the recommended book lists,” he says.“Let’s be honest, before George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, there were many more. Black people have been calling out in pain and calling for help for a very long time.”

. . . .

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Read the other nine profiles and see Haruka Sakaguchi’s great photography at the link.

Racism, hate, cruelty, ignorance, dehumanization, inequality, and incompetence are the planks of Trump’s re-election “platform.”

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

06-28-20

IMBECILE ON THE LOOSE — 120,000 Americans Are Dead From COVID-19, & Many More Will Continue To Die As Infections Spike & The Gov. Response Falters — Trump Thinks It’s An Opportunity For A Racist Joke! — Asian Americans & Those Who Lost Loved Ones (Or Both) Might Not “Get” His “Humor”

Rebeccas Ratcliffe — Rebecca Ratcliffe
SE Asia Reporter
The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/21/global-report-trump-says-he-ordered-coronavirus-testing-to-slow-down?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Rebecca Ratcliffe reports for The Guardian:

Donald Trump told thousands of supporters on Saturday that he had asked US officials to slow down testing for Covid-19 because case numbers in the country were rising so rapidly.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the US president used racist language, referring to Covid-19 as “kung flu”, and described testing for the virus as a “double-edged sword” because it led to the identification of more cases.

The US had now tested 25 million people, far more than other countries, Trump said, adding: “When you do testing to that extent, you’re gonna find more people, you’re gonna find more cases. So I said to my people slow the testing down.”

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A White House official later told Reuters that Trump was joking.

Don’t call it a comeback: Trump’s Tulsa rally was just another sad farce | Richard Wolffe

Across the US, more than 119,654 people are confirmed to have been killed by Covid-19, according to Johns Hopkins University. It remains the country worst hit by coronavirus, followed by Brazil, which now has more than a million cases, and Russia, which has 576,162 infections.

Trump said the “radical fake news” media had not given him credit for doing what he called “a phenomenal job” of responding to the outbreak.

The campaign rally in Tulsa went ahead despite warnings from health officials that it risked fuelling a spike in coronavirus cases. The crowd was smaller than expected, with many empty sections in the 19,000-seat arena, but few attendees wore masks.

Globally, 8,753,853 coronavirus cases have now been recorded and 463,281 fatalities confirmed, according to Johns Hopkins University.

. . . .

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Read the rest of Rebecca’s global report at the link.

This from a dude who 1) has no sense of humor; and 2) lacks any trace of human decency.

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

06-21-20

🤡EYORE’S WORLD: AILA, Other NGOs Protest EOIR’s Unilateral COVID-19 Reopening Plan!

https://www.aila.org/advo-media/aila-correspondence/2020/letter-eoir-resumption-nondetained-docket

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

Fresh off third-party revelations of chronically unreliable data, poor record keeping, and mismanagement of interpreter funds, to name just a few management failures that have recently come to light, EOIR tries to jam an ill-advised reopening plan down the throats of stakeholders and their own employees without prior consultation. No wonder the backlog grows astronomically!

One way to get the backlog under control would be to solicit the input of the public, the Judges’ representative (NAIJ), court staff, and ICE counsel. These are the folks who know most about what’s on the docket and how best and most safely to get cases moving again. To state the obvious: Bureaucrats in EOIR headquarters and politicos at DOJ who don’t actually adjudicate local cases are in the worst position to make these decisions in a vacuum.

Competent court management and backlog reduction requires a plan developed with input from all interested parties. EOIR’s wacko “my way or the highway” approach to court management can only lead to more “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and even bigger backlogs.

The letter linked above offers EOIR lots of practical, common sense ideas for improving the courts and avoiding backlog creating and life threatening mistakes. EOIR must start paying attention to the experts rather than kowtowing to the politicos at DOJ.

PWS

06-12-20

MILLER, OTHER TRUMP WHITE NATIONALISTS SEEK TO FURTHER DISHONESTLY EXPLOIT THE PANDEMIC TO ENACT NATIVIST IMMIGRATION PROGRAM W/O CONGRESS – Counting On Supremes & Feckless Federal Courts To Go “Belly Up” On Regime’s Racist, Xenophobic Agenda!

https://apple.news/A4blmWGWoQ1GmZyfSpSkpUw

Priscilla Alvarez reports for CNN:

White House prepares new immigration limits, using coronavirus as cover

7:40 PM EDT June 9, 2020 Washington

The Trump administration is preparing to roll outanother set of restrictions on legal immigration, citing the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, even as it argues for the reopening of the US economy, according to sources familiar with the deliberations.

Despite a push from President Donald Trump to move past the pandemic, the administration is continuing to usher forward immigration measures, citing the outbreak and its toll on the economy.

One of the key figures behind the push to limit immigration is Stephen Miller, Trump’s lead immigration adviser and the architect of the President’s hardline immigration agenda. In April, Trump signed an executive order barring some immigration to the US after teasing an outright ban on immigration to the country. Trump argued that the order was needed to protect American jobs.

Against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, the administration has pressed forward with a series of immigration measures that, prior to coronavirus, had struggled to break through. Among those changes is the closure of the southern border to migrants, including those seeking asylum, unless certain conditions are met.

After the President’s April proclamation, Miller cast the move as a first step toward reducing the flow of immigrants coming into the United States. That proclamation set up deadlines for review, one of which is approaching this weekend, and left the possibility open for its extension or modification.

The economic argument is expected to be raised again in an anticipated expansion or new immigration executive order. While Trump has touted recent job numbers,unemployment numbers remain high — though businesses have said in a series of letters to the President that continued immigration is important for economic recovery.

Interest groups, businesses and experts are fighting any new restrictions, saying that visas allowing immigrants to temporarily work in the US are critical to the economy.

“Why would he want to cut off critical workforce that will help the economy recover?” said Greg Chen, director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“It’s not a rational or reasonable approach to the stated goals of what they’re trying to achieve, which only points to the underlying purpose of effectuating the President’s campaign goals of cutting off immigration,” Chen added.

Trump pledged the previous order would “ensure that unemployed Americans of all backgrounds will be first in line for jobs as our economy reopens.”

The White House did not immediately comment for this story.

CNN previously reported that Trump’s political advisers view the immigration steps as motivating for his base supporters at a moment when the President’s key election message — a strong economy — is badly weakened by the pandemic.

Legal immigration, which has already taken a hit during the outbreak, is again in focus in deliberations about an anticipated immigration executive order.

. . . .

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

Emboldened by the lack of judicial pushback and absence of legal and moral leadership from the Supremes on racial injustice, the regime is planning an all-out assault on non-white immigration with coronavirus as a cover. Blacks and Latinos have already been disproportionately affected by the Cornoavirus, which has been of little concern to Trump except as it relates to his reelection schemes. Now, sensing lack of support for racial justice from a Federal Judiciary already stacked with far rightists raced by Mitch through the Senate, Trump, Miller, Barr, Wolf, and their cronies see a chance to further their dehumanization and “Dred Scottification” of the other.

Sure, it’s despicable! But, when those whose responsibility it is to promote racial justice and resist Executive abuses go AWOL, that’s what tyrants do! Even incompetent tyrants can sense institutional weaknesses and lack of moral leadership in others.

PWS

06-10-20

ACLU SUES TO STOP REGIME’S BOGUS USE OF COVID-19 AS PRETEXT FOR ELIMINATING ASYLUM PROTECTIONS – Suit Tests Federal Courts’ Willingness To Stand Up to White Nationalist Regime’s Institutionalized Racism That Continually Invokes Pandemic As Transparently False Justification For Abrogation of Constitutional & Statutory Rights Disproportionately Affecting Those With Brown Skins!

Michelle Hackman reports for the WSJ:

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration, which has used the coronavirus health emergency to expel migrants at the border without allowing them to apply for asylum, faces its first court challenge over the practice in a lawsuit filed on behalf of a 16-year-old boy.

Since President Trump declared a public-health emergency in March, immigration agents have turned back nearly all migrants, including children, at the border without providing a chance to file asylum claims. The government invoked a 1944 public-health law allowing it to expel any noncitizen who poses a threat of spreading disease during an emergency. It extended that provision indefinitely in May.

The new process overrides immigration laws that allow any foreigner on American soil with a credible fear of persecution to apply for asylum, and laws prohibiting migrant children from being deported.

The lawsuit was filed in the district court in Washington by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a 16-year-old boy from Honduras, known only by his initials J.B.B.C. He crossed the border in early June to join his father, who is living in the U.S. and awaiting his own immigration case to be heard, after fleeing what the suit described as “severe persecution” in his home country.

Under the typical process, border agents would have turned over the child to the Department of Health and Human Services, which runs a network of migrant shelters for children across the country and seeks to find them suitable guardians. Instead, border agents detained the boy in El Paso, Texas, and plan to deport him imminently, in accordance with the public-health emergency process.

Late Tuesday evening, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan granted J.B.B.C. a temporary restraining order, ordering the government not to deport him through at least Wednesday at midnight.

The White House and the Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit’s supporters acknowledge that the suit is a gamble. If a federal judge rules that immigration laws can be bypassed during an emergency—a novel application of the public-health law—the government would gain broad new authority. But not suing, they say, could allow deportations without due process to continue.

“If the courts don’t step in, the Trump administration will continue to indefinitely strip refugees of the right to seek asylum,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council.

. . . .

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

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

The name of the use is J.B.B.C. v. Wolf.

So far, in showing no genuine concern for human rights, the rule of law, or overt racism in major non-legislative eradications of asylum, refugee, and immigration protections by a scofflaw Administration, which has made only cosmetic efforts to disguise its racist immigration agenda, a Supremes’ majority has sent a strong chilling signal to lower Federal Judges willing to stand up for racial justice, equal justice before the law, and Executive accountability. Will the Trump regime continue to literally “get away with attempted (or actual) murder” of children and other asylum applicants? How far does the Supremes’ majority’s resolve not to give Black and Brown lives and rights their deserved legal protections, and to fold in the face of Trump’s racist bullying, extend?

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts Never!

This November, vote like your life depends ons it! Because it does!

PWS

06-10-20

Ananya Bhattacharya @ QUARTZ: Yes, Trump’s B.S. White Nationalist Attack on Immigrants, Using COVID-19 as a Pretext, Will Harm U.S. Workers & the U.S. Economy, Says New Study by U.C. San Diego Profs!

https://apple.news/ATn0lgkBSTay-a1C2lMlh4A

Ananya writes in QUARTZ:

GOOD FOR YOU

A new study shows Trump’s anti-immigration policies will end up hurting the US

The Donald Trump administration’s planned measures to help American graduates find jobs during the Covid-19 pandemic may backfire in the long term.

Over the past couple of months, the US government has proposed several restrictions on foreign skilled workers, which it believes will open up opportunities for locals. However, a recent University of California San Diego immigrant rights study (pdf) has said immigrant rights enhance the lives and livelihoods of native workers in many ways such as improvement in incomes, sparking innovation, reducing crime and increasing tax revenues.

“We find there are several areas where strengthening migrant worker rights benefits native-born workers, outweighing any costs borne by them,” researchers Gaurav Khanna and Anna Brown found.

The research comes after Trump hit pause on immigration into the US via employment and family routes in April, affecting more than 20,000 people each month. A May 7 letter from a group of four Republican senators urged Trump to suspend the Optional Practical Training programme (OPT), which allows international students to work in the US for up to three years. Six days later, the New York Times reported Trump is considering barring the issuance of new visas in certain employment-based categories, including H-1B.

Here’s a break-down of how hurting immigrant sentiment is tied to the welfare of the US economy:

Entrepreneurship and innovation

Any change to immigrant laws could hurt the US’s long-term plans around innovation and new ventures because giving immigrants legal permanence and a sense of stability incentivises local investments.

“These new businesses may lead to an increase in jobs and a larger tax base,” the researchers said. “While much of the literature has focused on the potential of H-1B visa-holders to develop new patents and technologies, there is strong evidence suggesting that this relationship between immigration and innovation holds more broadly.”

Around 45% of Fortune 500 companies have been founded by immigrants or children of immigrants. These companies amass more than $6 trillion in revenue per year and include tech giants like Google-Alphabet, Microsoft, Tesla, and Apple. A previous study by Khanna revealed that hiring H-1B workers was strongly associated with firms introducing newer products.

Threat of reverse brain drain

The report also says America’s talent crunch could worsen if foreign professionals are not retained.

“When the US crisis abates, there may be a scarcity of high-skill professionals, which could stall a robust recovery,” Khanna, co-author and assistant professor of economics at the school of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS), said in a June 4 press release.

Silicon Valley’s gaping tech skills gap has long been plugged by foreign talent.

Back in 1994, the number of computer scientists in the US who were born abroad was less than one in 10. By 2012, the share was up to a quarter.

Most tech workers are employed under the H-1B programme, which is only renewable for up to six years. Workers who are not on track for a green card have to return home. “Such forces, set into motion by the six-year H-1B limit, have shifted production from the United States to India,” the research states. Extending the H-1B limit or making the green card process easier would allow employers to retain this high-skill talent.

And it’s not just about Silicon Valley. The IT sector has downstream effects on other industries that use software, such as banking and manufacturing.

Higher wages, more jobs for locals

The presence of immigrants had a more favourable effect on incomes, the researchers found. A study conducted by the US Department of Labor showed that granting legal status to migrant workers resulted in their wages rising by 15.1%.

Restrictions on the H-1B will have an outsize effect on Indians, who receive three-quarters of the visa, but they wouldn’t be the first group to fall prey. Historically, Chinese, European, and Mexican labour flow into the US has been limited or stopped altogether based on unsubstantiated evidence about these workers depressing wages.

“Often, such policies have been motivated by resentment against foreign workers; however, this fear may be based on false perceptions and lack of evidence,” the authors of the paper write. “This resentment may also be driven by racial prejudices and xenophobia.”

However, the reality is that protecting migrant workers from exploitation eventually levels the playing field between immigrants and non-immigrants. “Migrant workers, who are not legally protected, face much lower wages compared with their native counterparts,” according to Khanna. “This is detrimental to US-born workers, who are less likely to be hired. Ensuring migrant workers have substantial rights inadvertently helps US-born workers as well.”

A better tomorrow for America

Less crime: Trump has often tried to draw a link between immigrants and rising crime rates. But there is little truth in these claims. Between 1970 and 2010, increases in immigration in US metropolitan areas were correlated with decreases in both violent (homicides, assaults, etc) and property crimes (burglary, motor vehicle theft, etc), past research shows. Then, a 2007 studyfound that incarceration rates are lower for immigrants and far lower for newly arrived immigrants.

More taxes: Contrary to popular belief, undocumented migrant workers pay taxes, mostly income taxes, which are estimated to be at $11.7 billion. This number would rise by $2.2 billion if undocumented migrants were granted legal status. For a country with $804 billion in fiscal debt, every penny counts.

Future workforce: Children of currently undocumented individuals who are born in the US can join the country’s workforce, adding to productivity and expanding the tax base.

Quartz Daily Brief

Subscribe to the Daily Brief, our morning email with news and insights you need to understand our changing world.

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

I’ve featured this particular study in prior posts. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/06/06/debunking-the-trump-regimes-white-nationalist-myths%EF%B8%8F-furthering-protecting-immigrants-rights-benefits-society-bogus-covid-19-visa-rest/

But, Ananya’s summary is so highly relevant and beautifully written that it deserves its own post. One of her most important points: “[T]he reality is that protecting migrant workers from exploitation eventually levels the playing field between immigrants and non-immigrants.”

I’ve pointed out to my students that bigger investments by the Feds in Wage & Hour and OSHA enforcement, as an alternative to expensive, inhumane, wasteful, and often counterproductive civil immigration detention and enforcement, is something that a wiser and more intellectually honest Administration should consider in the future, in combination with a more robust and realistic legal immigration system.

PWS

06-09-20

AMERICA’S FLAILING & FAILING JUDICIARY: ACHIEVING “EQUAL JUSTICE FOR ALL” REQUIRES COURAGEOUS AND EMPATHETIC JUDICIAL LEADERSHIP — Don’t Expect It From A Supremes’ Majority Firmly Wedded to Promoting “Dred-Scottification” (De-Humanization) of “The Other!”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/04/opinion/sunday/supreme-court-religion-coronavirus.html

Linda Greenhouse writes in The NY Times:

The Supreme Court made the indisputably right call last week when it refused to block California from limiting attendance at religious services in an effort to control the spread of Covid-19.

A Southern California church, represented by a Chicago-based organization, the Thomas More Society, which most often defends anti-abortion activists, had sought the justices’ intervention with the argument that by limiting worshipers to the lesser of 25 percent of building capacity or 100 people, while setting a 50 percent occupancy cap on retail stores, California was discriminating against religion in violation of the Constitution’s Free Exercise Clause.

Given the obvious difference between walking through a store and sitting among fellow worshipers for an hour or more, as well as the documented spread of the virus through church attendance in such places as Sacramento (71 cases), Seattle (32 cases) and South Korea (over 5,000 cases traced to one person at a religious service), California’s limits are both sensitive and sensible, hardly the basis for constitutional outrage or judicial second-guessing.

So why did the court’s order, issued as midnight approached on Friday night, fill me with dread rather than relief?

It was because in a ruling that should have been unanimous, the vote was 5 to 4. And it was because of who the four dissenters were: the four most conservative justices, two of them appointed by the president who a couple of months ago was demanding that churches be allowed to open by Easter and who, even before the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, was openly encouraging protests in the capitals of states not reopening as quickly as he would like.

As an astonished country witnessed on Monday night, as he held a Bible in front of a church near the White House after demonstrators were violently cleared from his path, Donald Trump is using religion as a cultural wedge to deflect attention from the consequences of his own ineptitude. The recognition that four Supreme Court justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — would have invoked the court’s power to undermine fact-based public policy in the name of a misbegotten claim of religious discrimination was beyond depressing. It was terrifying.

Does that sound like an overstatement? Take a look at Justice Kavanaugh’s dissenting opinion. “California’s latest safety guidelines discriminate against places of worship and in favor of comparable secular businesses,” he wrote. “Such discrimination violates the First Amendment.”

It’s interesting that while Justices Gorsuch and Thomas signed Justice Kavanaugh’s opinion, Justice Alito did not. Perhaps he’s just too good a lawyer to subscribe to the flimsy analysis underlying this opinion. Fair enough, but he evidently couldn’t be bothered to explain his own dissenting vote. And no less than his fellow dissenters, he obviously inhaled the unfounded claim of religious discrimination that the president has injected into an atmosphere already saturated with polarizing rhetoric.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Linda’s op-ed at the above link.

This is just a symptom of an ongoing cancer at the Court. Cases like Hawaii v. Trump (“greenlighting” arbitrary and capricious punishment of refugees, Muslims, certain immigrants based on clearly pretextual “security grounds”), Wolf v. Innovation Law Lab (“Let ‘Em Die in Mexico!” Particularly when they are “only” Central American asylum seekers), and Wolf v. Cook County (final greenlighting of Stephen Miller’s racist scheme to deny health care and spread deadly fears in American Hispanic communities) should all have been 9-0 in favor of those opposing Trump’s racially-biased, illegal, unconstitutional policies.

Additionally, Trump Toady Solicitor General Noel Francisco should have been strongly cautioned against continuing to bend the ethical codes with largely fabricated “emergencies” intended to interfere with the normal functioning of the Federal Courts.

Instead, the Supremes’ majority gave the regime totally undeserved, immoral victories in all three cases. As a result, many innocent individuals were denied rights, forced into life-threatening conditions, and some even died. The Supremes’ inflicted damage on society at large. They assisted in trampling social justice and human rights. They grotesquely perverted and “turned on its head” the concept of “irreparable harm.” They indelibly and irreparably damaged their reputation and our system of justice.

In the meantime, the message to Francisco and the rest of his human rights denying scofflaw crowd over at the DOJ is clear: Justice is dead, courage has fled, you’re in charge.

Unhappily, by most accounts, the tone-deaf and disconnected Supremes’ majority might be on the cusp of throwing more gasoline on the fires of social justice, at the worst possible time for our nation. If, as expected, they endorse the regime’s intentionally cruel, illegal, dishonest, and racially charged scheme to,”shaft” Dreamers — some of our finest young people, many of whom are “essential workers” — it’s likely to spark more justified outrage and further protests!

So certain are the regime’s White Nationalists that they have the “J.R. Five” in their pocket that they reportedly already are planning to use these American youths as “hostages” to demand even further immigration restrictions as “ransom” from House Dems. The Dems are unlikely to bite, so Dreamers will be left to “twist in the wind” pending the results of the election.

The Supreme Court majority has been hand selected by the GOP to insure that a minority, anti-democratic ideology, often willfully devoid of humanity and historical awareness, will continue to exercise disproportionate influence over the U.S. legal system for years, perhaps decades, to come.

We can’t change the past. But, a better “appointing authority” will be a start of long overdue change and “pushback” from the forces and institutions of democracy, humanity, and racial justice to restore integrity to our highest Court that, in actuality, now functions more like the lowest denominator and an instigator of racial and institutional injustice in our hurting nation.

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

06-06-20

JAMELLE BOUIE @ NYT: The Police & Often The Misuse of a “Bogus Rule of Law” (when used to allow the empowered to run roughshod over the legal and human rights of “the other”) Are Long-Standing Roadblocks to a Fair & Just Society —“The simplest answer to the question ‘Why don’t the American police forces act as if they are accountable to black Americans?’ is that they were never intended to be.”

Jamelle writes in the NYT:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/opinion/police-riots.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

The Police Are Rioting. We Need to Talk About It.

It is an attack on civil society and democratic accountability.

By Jamelle BouieJune 5, 2020

If we’re going to speak of rioting protesters, then we need to speak of rioting police as well. No, they aren’t destroying property. But it is clear from news coverage, as well as countless videos taken by protesters and bystanders, that many officers are using often indiscriminate violence against people — against anyone, including the peaceful majority of demonstrators, who happens to be in the streets.

Rioting police have driven vehicles into crowds, reproducing the assault that killed Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. They have surrounded a car, smashed the windows, tazed the occupants and dragged them out onto the ground. Clad in paramilitary gear, they have attacked elderly bystanders, pepper-sprayed cooperative protesters and shot “nonlethal” rounds directly at reporters, causing serious injuries. In Austin, Texas, a 20-year-old man is in critical condition after being shot in the head with a “less-lethal” round. Across the country, rioting police are using tear gas in quantities that threaten the health and safety of demonstrators, especially in the midst of a respiratory disease pandemic.

None of this quells disorder. Everything from the militaristic posture to the attacks themselves does more to inflame and agitate protesters than it does to calm the situation and bring order to the streets. In effect, rioting police have done as much to stoke unrest and destabilize the situation as those responsible for damaged buildings and burning cars. But where rioting protesters can be held to account for destruction and violence, rioting police have the imprimatur of the state.

What we’ve seen from rioting police, in other words, is an assertion of power and impunity. In the face of mass anger over police brutality, they’ve effectively said So what? In the face of demands for change and reform — in short, in the face of accountability to the public they’re supposed to serve — they’ve bucked their more conciliatory colleagues with a firm No. In which case, if we want to understand the behavior of the past two weeks, we can’t just treat it as an explosion of wanton violence; we have to treat it as an attack on civil society and democratic accountability, one rooted in a dispute over who has the right to hold the police to account.

Jamelle Bouie’s Newsletter: Discover overlooked writing from around the internet, and get exclusive thoughts, photos and reading recommendations from Jamelle.

African-American observers have never had any illusions about who the police are meant to serve. The police, James Baldwin wrote in his 1960 essay on discontent and unrest in Harlem, “represent the force of the white world, and that world’s real intentions are simply for that world’s criminal profit and ease, to keep the black man corralled up here in his place.” This wasn’t because each individual officer was a bad person, but because he was fundamentally separate from the black community as a matter of history and culture. “None of the police commissioner’s men, even with the best will in the world, have any way of understanding the lives led by the people they swagger about in twos and threes controlling.”

Go back to the beginning of the 20th century, during America’s first age of progressive reform, as the historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad does in “The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America,” and you’ll find activists describing how “policemen had abdicated their responsibility to dispense color-blind service and protection, resulting in an object lesson for youth: the indiscriminate mass arrests of blacks being attacked by white mobs.”

The police were ubiquitous in the African-American neighborhoods of the urban North, but they weren’t there to protect black residents as much as they were there to enforce the racial order, even if it led to actual disorder in the streets. For example, in the aftermath of the Philadelphia “race riot” of 1918, one black leader complained, “In nearly every part of this city peaceable and law-abiding Negroes of the home-owning type have been set upon by irresponsible hoodlums, their property damaged and destroyed, while the police seem powerless to protect.”

If you are trying to understand the function of policing in American society, then even a cursory glance at the history of the institution would point you in the direction of social control. And blackness in particular, the historian Nikhil Pal Singh argues, was a state of being that required “permanent supervision and sometimes direct domination.”

The simplest answer to the question “Why don’t the American police forces act as if they are accountable to black Americans?” is that they were never intended to be. And to the extent that the police appear to be rejecting accountability outright, I think it reflects the extent to which the polity demanding it is now inclusive of those groups the police have historically been tasked to control. That polity and its leaders are simply rejected as legitimate wielders of authority over law enforcement, especially when they ask for restraint.

. . . .

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Read the rest of Jamelle’s op-ed at the above link.

Truth is, we have the legal tools to do things like prosecute police misconduct, honor the human and civil rights of African Americans, overcome the years of unfair and discriminatory treatment of African Americans in education, employment, and leadership, promote community cooperation to allow each individual to reach maximum levels of contribution and enjoyment, correct the due process and bias flaws in court systems, tax more rationally and equitably, grant asylum to refugees we are now unfairly and illegally turning away, end inhumane and counterproductive “civil” detention, stop putting disproportionate numbers of minority communities in jail and prison, and end “Dred Scottification” of the other.

What we lack is 1) the honest, courageous, humane, and wise public officials necessary to make the laws and existing tools work; 2) the political will to get those types of officials into the correct offices.

I don’t know how much it would cost. But, whatever it is, we need to invest in it. And some “ready funds” could be made available if we stop building unneeded walls, detention centers, prisons, separating kids, and wasting legal and judicial resources fighting against the institutional fascism and tyranny of the Trump regime.

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

06-07-20

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