🗽⚖️ “COURTSIDE” IN THE NEWS: BOTH NOLAN @ THE HILL & KEVIN @ IMMIGRATIONPROF BLOG HIGHLIGHT MY BLISTERING ANALYSIS OF BIDEN’S FIRST-YEAR IMMIGRATION POLICIES! — Garland’s Monumental EOIR Fail Writ Large Among “Underreported News” Of 2021 — Mishandling Of Immigration Courts Creates Key “Enthusiasm Gap” Among Progressives Heading Into 2022 Midterms!

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/587347-has-biden-kept-his-immigration-promises

Biden promised to establish a fair, orderly, and humane immigration system. Has he done it?

Paul Schmidt, a former chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals, doesn’t think so. He claims that Biden could have established due process and the rule of law at the border and expanded refugee programs in potential sending countries but he didn’t, “preferring instead to use modified versions of ‘proven to fail deterrence-only programs’ administered largely by Trump-era holdovers and other bureaucrats insensitive to the rights, needs, and multiple motivations of asylum seekers.”

Predictably, nobody is pleased.

The problems Schmidt describes are not limited to the border and the treatment of asylum seekers. They are reflected in many of Biden’s other immigration measures too.

. . . .

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

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2021/12/has-biden-kept-his-immigration-promises.html

Nolan Rappaport for the Hill reports that Paul Schmidt, former chair of the Board of Immigration Appeals who now blogs at Immigration Courtside, does not think that President Biden has done enough on immigration. Schmidt claims that Biden could have established due process and the rule of law at the border and expanded refugee programs in potential sending countries but he didn’t, “preferring instead to use modified versions of ‘proven to fail deterrence-only programs’ administered largely by Trump-era holdovers and other bureaucrats insensitive to the rights, needs, and multiple motivations of asylum seekers.”

KJ

December 27, 2021 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Thanks, guys! As I have told both of you, I really appreciate the huge contributions you have made to informing the public about this all-important, yet often misunderstood or “mythologized,” issue!

Following up on my last thought, I urge everyone to view this recent clip from “Face the Nation,” posted by Kevin on ImmigrationProf, in which reporter Ed O’Keefe succinctly and cogently explains how immigration is the “most underreported issue of 2021.” It’s fundamental to everything from COVID, to the economy, to voting rights, to racial justice, to climate change, to our position in the world.

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2021/12/the-most-neglected-story-of-2021-immigration.html

And, I say that the absolute dysfunctional mess that Garland has presided over in his broken and jaw-droppingly backlogged Immigration Courts is the most widely ignored, misunderstood, mishandled, and under-appreciated part of this under-reporting!

As an example of how even “mainstream liberal progressive pundits” get it wrong by not focusing on the spectacular adverse effects of Garland’s botched handling of the Immigration Courts, check out this article by Mark Joseph Stern over at Slate. https://apple.news/AvmEJc5V0RXa8hCgKICcTOA

Overlooking Garland’s disastrous mis-handling of his “wholly owned” U.S. Immigration Courts and the unparalleled “missed opportunity” to put more brilliant progressive judges on the Federal Bench is an all too common “blind spot” for progressive pundits. Mark Joseph Stern
Reporter, Slate

Stern does a “victory lap” over Biden’s 40 great Article III judicial appointments to the lower Federal Courts, closing with the astounding claim that: “Democrats are finally playing hardball with the courts.”

In truth, Dems are only belatedly starting to do what the GOP has been doing over four decades: Get your guys in the positions where they make a difference for better (Dems, in theory) or worse (GOP in practice).

Appointing a diverse, talented, progressive group of 40 out of 870 Article III Judges is an important, necessary, and long, long overdue start; but, it’s not going to make a cosmic difference overnight!

By contrast, there are about 550 Immigration Judges, the majority appointed by GOP restrictionist AGs, many with mediocre to totally inadequate credentials for the job. And, it shows in the consistently substandard performance and mistake-riddled, haphazard “jurisprudence” emanating from Garland’s EOIR.

The main qualifications for a number of these pedestrian to totally outrageous appointments appears to be willingness to carry out former GOP AGs’ restrictionist, nativist policies, or at least to adhere to the DOJ’s enforcement-oriented agenda, while ignoring, distinguishing, or downplaying the due process rights of migrants!

This is “complimented” by an appellate branch (the BIA) with about two dozen judges hand-selected or retained for notorious anti-immigrant records or willingness to “go along to get along” with the wishes of DHS Enforcement. The BIA turns out some truly horrible, almost invariably regressive, “precedents.” A number are so lacking in substance and coherent analysis that they are unceremoniously “stomped” by the Article IIIs despite limitations on judicial review and the travesty of so-called “Chevron deference” that serves as a grotesque example of Supremes-created “judicial task avoidance” by the Article IIIs.

From an informed Dem progressive perspective, it’s an infuriating, ongoing, unmitigated disaster! Only one BIA appellate judge, recently appointed “progressive practical scholar” Judge Andrea Saenz, would appear on any expert’s list of the “best and brightest” progressive legal minds in the field.

Unlike Article III Judges, who are life-tenured, EOIR Judges serve at the pleasure and discretion of the Attorney General and can be replaced and reassigned, including to non-quasi-judicial attorney positions, “at will.”

Starting with Attorney General John Ashcroft’s notorious “BIA Purge of ‘03,” GOP AGs haven’t hesitated to remove, transfer, “force out,” marginalize, demoralize, discourage from applying, or simply not select EOIR judges who stood for due process and immigrants’ rights in the face of nativist/restrictionist political agendas.

Yet, for eight years of the Obama Administration and now a year into the Biden Administration, Dem AGs have lacked the guts, awareness, and vision to fight back by “de-weaponizing” the regressive GOP-constructed Immigration Judiciary and recruiting replacements from among the “best and the brightest” among the “deep pool” of expert, intellectually fearless “progressive practical scholars.”

Not only that, but Dems have totally blown a unique opportunity to remake and establish the Immigration Judiciary not only as “America’s best judiciary” — a model for better Article IIIs — but also as a training ground for the diverse progressive judiciary of the future!

Even more significantly, tens of thousands of lives that should have been saved by an expert, due-process-oriented, racially sensitive judiciary have been, and continue to be, sacrificed on the alter of GOP nativism and Dem indifference to quality judging and human suffering in the Immigration Courts!

Compare the diverse, progressive backgrounds and qualifications of “Stern’s 40” with those on the totally underwhelming list of the most recent Garland “giveaways” of precious, life-determining Immigration Judge positions! See, e.g., https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1457171/download

Compare Garland’s regressive BIA with what could and should be if progressive practical scholars were “given their due:”https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/12/18/⚖%EF%B8%8F🗽🇺🇸courts-justice-courtside-proudly-announces-the-dream-bia-its-out-there-even-if-garland/

The progressive talent is definitely out there to change the trajectory of the Immigration Courts for the better! Garland’s failure to inspire, recruit, appoint, and tout the “best and brightest” in American law for his Immigration Courts is a horrible “whiff” with disturbing national and international implications!

Article III Federal Courts deal with the mundane as well as the profound. By contrast, lives and futures are on the line in every single Immigration Court case! Often effective judicial review of EOIR’s haphazard, widely inconsistent, unprincipled, and one-sided decisions is unavailable, either as a legal or practical matter. The exceptionally poor performance of the Immigration Courts that continues under Garland threatens the underpinnings of our entire justice system and American democracy!

Right now, Garland’s broken system has a largely self-created 1.5+ million case ever-expanding backlog! At a very conservative estimate of four family members, co-workers, employees, employers, students, co-religionists, neighbors, and community members whose lives are intertwined with each of those stuck in Garland’s hopelessly broken, biased, and deficient system, at least 6 million American lives hang in the balance — twisting in the wind among Garland’s “backlog on steroids!” Yet, amazingly, it’s “below the radar screen” of Stern and other leading progressive voices!

I doubt that any Federal Court in America, with the possible exception of the Supremes, holds as many human lives and futures in its hands. Not to mention that “dehumanization” and “Dred Scottification” of the other in Immigration Court drifts over into the Article III Courts on a regular basis. Once you start viewing one group of humans as “less than persons” under the Constitution, it’s easy to add others to the “de-personification” process.

Yet, Garland cavalierly treats the Immigration Courts as just another mundane piece of his reeling bureaucratic mess at the DOJ. The long overdue and completely justified “housecleaning” at Trump’s anti-democracy insurrectionist regime seems far from Garland’s serenely detached mind!

For Pete’s sake, even ICE Special Agents understand the need to “rebrand” themselves by escaping the inept and disreputable ICE bureaucracy left over from Trump:

They say their affiliation with ICE’s immigration enforcement role is endangering their personal safety, stifling their partnerships with other agencies and scaring away crime victims, according to a copy of the report provided to The Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/hsi-ice-split/2021/12/28/85dc6c66-61ad-11ec-8ce3-9454d0b46d42_story.html

But, Garland doesn’t understand the well-deserved toxic reputation of EOIR among legal experts? Gimme a break!

Garland also stands accountable for his spineless failure to insist on a dismantling of the bogus, illegal, immoral, and ultimately ineffectual Title 42 abomination at the Southern Border and an immediate return to the rule of law for asylum seekers.

Unless and until the Dems get serious about gutsy, radical progressive reforms of the Immigration Courts, the downward spiral of American justice will continue! Lives will be lost, and many of those who helped put Dems in power will be pissed off and “de-motivated” going into the midterms. That’s a really bad plan for Dems and for America’s future!

As Dems’ hopes of achieving meaningful Article III judicial reforms predictably are stymied, their inexcusable failure to reform and improve the Immigraton Courts that belong to them becomes a gargantuan, totally unnecessary “missed opportunity!” Talk about “unforced error!” See, e.g., https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/12/28/supreme-court-term-limits/

If Dems suffer an “enthusiasm gap” among their key progressive base going into the key 2022 midterms, they need look no further than Garland’s tone-deaf and inept failure to bring long overdue and readily achievable progressive personnel, procedural, management, and substantive reforms to his dysfunctional Immigration Courts. That — not a false sense of achievement — should have been the “headliner” for Stern and other progressive voices!

“Expedience over excellence, enforcement over equity, gimmicks over innovation is good enough for Government work!” — The “vision” for Garland’s EOIR! But, progressive experts aren’t buying his “tunnel vision.”
PHOTO: Thomas Hawk
Creative Commons
Amateur Night

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-29-21

☹️👎🏽🤡 TRAC: BUILD BACK BETTER MAY BE DOA, BUT “BUILD BACKLOG BIGGER (FASTER)” THRIVES @ GARLAND’S EOIR! — BACKLOG TOPS 1.5 MILLION WITH NO PLAN OR END IN SIGHT! — Backlog Building Rate Accelerates, As ADR Runs Amuck & Garland Shuns Expert Advice, Progressive Judicial Appointments, Creative Solutions! — Now On Pace To Break 2 Million Mark By End Of Summer 2022!

Michigan Stadium, America’s largest, holds 107,601. Garland has added almost that to his EOIR backlog in the first two months of FY 2022. It would take 15 Michigan Stadiums to hold all the folks waiting for hearings in Garland’s dysfunctional and backlogged Immigration Courts. And, that doesn’t include their families, communities, employers, co-workers and others affected by their fates!
Michigan Stadium Photo by Andrew Horne, Creative Commons License

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

Immigration Courts Now Face Backlog of Over 1.5 Million Cases

According to data updated today by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, the number of pending cases in Immigration Court has now reached 1,559,855 as of the end of November 2021. The high number of pending cases puts additional pressure on Immigration Judges who are tasked with deciding these cases.

The Transactional Research Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) a research organization at Syracuse University created ‘Quick Facts‘ tools to provide a user-friendly way to see the most updated data available on the Immigration Courts. The tools include easy-to-understand data in context and provide quotable descriptions. Many of TRAC’s Immigration Court data tools have also been updated and can be viewed by clicking here.

Additional key takeaways from today’s data release include the following:

Immigration Courts recorded receiving 143,803 new cases so far in FY 2022 as of November 2021. This compares with 43,156 cases that the court completed during this two-month period.

According to court records, only 0.51% of FY 2022 new cases sought deportation orders based on any alleged criminal activity of the immigrant, apart from possible illegal entry.

At the end of November 2021, 1,559,855 active cases were pending before the Immigration Court.

Harris County, TX, has the most residents with pending Immigration Court deportation cases (as of the end of November 2021).

So far this fiscal year (through November 2021), immigration judges have issued removal and voluntary departure orders in 24.0% of completed cases, totaling 10,357 deportation orders.

So far in FY 2022 (through November 2021), immigrants from Guatemala top list of nationalities with largest number ordered deported.

Only 20.7% of immigrants, including unaccompanied children, had an attorney to assist them in Immigration Court cases when a removal order was issued.

Immigration judges have held 4,193 bond hearings so far in FY 2022 (through November 2021). Of these 1,613 were granted bond.

For more information, see TRAC’s Quick Facts tools here or click here to learn more about TRAC’s entire suite of immigration tools.

If you want to be sure to receive a notification whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

https://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1

Follow us on Twitter at:

https://twitter.com/tracreports

or like us on Facebook:

https://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the US Federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
601 E. Genesee Street
Syracuse, NY 13202-3117
315-443-3563
trac@syr.edu
https://trac.syr.edu

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a nonpartisan joint research center of the Whitman School of Management (https://whitman.syr.edu) and the Newhouse School of Public Communications (https://newhouse.syr.edu) at Syracuse University. If you know someone who would like to sign up to receive occasional email announcements and press releases, they may go to https://trac.syr.edu and click on the E-mail Alerts link at the bottom of the page. If you do not wish to receive future email announcements and wish to be removed from our list, please send an email to trac@syr.edu with REMOVE as the subject.

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

Wow! Garland “jacked up” the backlog by over 100,000 cases in the first two months of of FY 2022! Most impressive! That’s on a torrid pace to exceed 600,000 additional “warehoused” cases annually! At that rate, the Immigration Courts will hit the 2 million mark by the end of August 2022!

That puts the previous “Backlog Kings” Gonzo Apocalypto Sessions and Billy the Bigot Barr to shame!

And, it’s being achieved with more than twice the number of Immigration Judges on board than at the end of the Obama Administration in 2017! After the indolent judicial recruitment and hiring of the Obama era (an incredible average of more than two years to fill a judicial vacancy), the Trump AGs were able to “pack” the Immigration Courts with many judges whose primary qualification appeared to be willingness to grind out removal orders without regard to much besides the DOJ’s virulent anti-immigrant policies, the need to cut corners, and the consistent elevation of expediency over due process and judicial excellence.

One logically might have expected Garland to focus on “unpacking” this mess with an aggressive outreach outreach and new merit-based hiring and recruitment program that sought and valued experience representing individuals in Immigration Court at least as much as government prosecutorial backgrounds. But, not so much.

In particular, the BIA remains “well-packed” with Trump-era appointees, a number of whose appellate judicial credentials were questioned and criticized by immigration and human rights experts! No matter to Garland!

Even “gimmicks” like “dedicated dockets,” phantom, defective “Notices to Appear” (Master @ 9 AM Christmas AM, anyone?) designed to frustrate lawyers and produce in absentia removals, and ramming 80% of unaccompanied minors and others receiving removal orders through the system without lawyers haven’t stemmed the tides of systemic failure!

Truth is, only a distinct minority of recently completed cases resulted in removal or voluntary departure orders (24%). That, combined with the minuscule number of “new filings” that appear to meet the Administration’s highest priorities, criminal activity (0.51%) strongly suggests that the vast majority of pending cases, perhaps as many as 1 million, could be administratively closed, referred to USCIS, “fast-tracked” for relief, or otherwise taken off the docket without adverse effects to either party.

But, meaningful backlog reduction won’t happen with the current leadership and judicial composition at Garland’s EOIR. Inexplicably, Garland has chosen to keep the progressive “practical scholars and experts” with the vision, skills, and guts to address the backlog “on the sidelines.” See, e.g., “The Chen-Moskowitz Plan for Backlog Reduction,” https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/02/04/its-not-rocket-science-%f0%9f%9a%80-greg-chen-professor-peter-markowitz-can-cut-the-immigration-court-backlog-in-half-immediately-with-no-additional-resources-and/

Instead, Garland has chosen the “institutionalized mediocrity” and chronic mismanagement promoted by his Trumpy predecessors.

Almost every day, I read articles from Democratic politicos and pundits about the dire need to reform the Federal Judiciary to counteract the corrosive effects of radical right judicial appointments engineered by McConnell and right-wing interest groups. See, e.g., this Ruth Marcus op-ed in WashPost, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/28/supreme-court-decisions-abortion-guns-religious-freedom-loom/

But, despite such pontification, the fact is that the Dems and Garland have completely failed to reform and improve the quality of the one major court system they entirely “own” — the U.S. Immigration Courts. That makes speculation and debate about what could be done to reform and save the credibility of the Article III Courts nothing but feckless idle chatter!

While the DOJ has often pushed the “myth” that backlogs “benefit” immigrants, the truth is quite different. Insurmountable backlogs in Immigration Court, intertwined with Aimless Docket Reshuffling, deny due process to individuals, demoralize and penalize lawyers representing migrants (often serving pro bono or low bono), and cripple our overall justice system.

That’s a national tragedy of epic proportions, unfolding and worsening under Garland and the Dems, the reverberations of which will shake the very foundations of American democracy!

The Trumpsters successfully weaponized the Immigration Courts, without regard to law, institutional integrity, or outside protests and criticism! The Dems appear too timid, disinterested, discombobulated, and lacking in imagination and initiative to fix them while they have a chance! That’s not a good sign for American democracy!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-20-21

HAMILTON NOLAN @ THE GUARDIAN: America Needs Help & Carrying Out Dem Platform (Including Fixing Immigration) Would Provide It — So Why Do Dems Get Sidetracked Fighting Asinine GOP Culture Wars They Can’t Win? — “Racism is a wonderfully effective political tool for Republicans, yet explicit racism is frowned upon in polite society now, so there is a constant flow of new issues to stand in for racism in political discourse.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/11/democrats-fake-culture-wars-crt-republicans?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I do not know if I can survive three more years of Democrats stumbling over themselves to disavow the Democratic platform in a doomed attempt to win bad-faith culture wars. It is too painful, like watching ruthless hunters herding panicked animals over the side of a cliff. The poor, dumb beasts inevitably go extinct if they are not able to outthink such a rudimentary strategy.

Message to Democrats: embrace economic bread-and-butter issues to win | Matthew Karp and Dustin Guastella

Walk around your town. Explore a major American city. Drive across the country. What are the most important problems you see? There is poverty. Homelessness. A lack of affordable housing. Vast and jaw-dropping economic and racial inequality. There is a lack of public transportation, a broken healthcare system, environmental degradation, and a climate crisis that threatens to upend our way of life. These are real problems. These are the things that we need our government to fix. These are what we need to hear politicians talk about. These are what we must debate and focus on, if we are really concerned about human rights and our children’s future and all the other big things we claim to value.

I guarantee you that neither “cancel culture” nor “critical race theory” nor, worse of all, “wokeness” will grab you as enormous problems after your exploration of America, unless that exploration ranges only from a college faculty lounge to a cable TV studio to the office of a rightwing thinktank. These are all words that mean nothing. To the extent that they are real at all, they are niche concerns that plague such a small subset of Americans that they deserve to be addressed only after we have solved the many other, realer problems.

All these terms function primarily as empty vessels into which bad-faith actors can pour racism, so that it may appear more palatable when it hits the public airwaves. Common sense tells us we should spend most of our time talking about the biggest problems, and less time on the lesser problems, and no time on the mythical problems. To engage in long and tortured debates over these slippery and indefinable culture war terms is to violate that rule, with awful consequences for everyone.

Republicans will push these culture wars as far as they can, but it takes Democrats to make the strategy work

Let’s not bullshit about this. Racism is a wonderfully effective political tool for Republicans, yet explicit racism is frowned upon in polite society now, so there is a constant flow of new issues to stand in for racism in political discourse. Lee Atwater, who invented Nixon’s “southern strategy”, explained this all decades ago, and it is still true. George Wallace could be outright racist, but subsequent generations of politicians have had to cloak it in “welfare reform” or being “tough on crime” or, now, opposition to “wokeness” and “critical race theory” – things which mean, by the way, “caring about racism”.

Three-quarters of a million Americans are dead from a pandemic. We have a Democratic president and a booming economy. So we will get culture wars, and more culture wars, all of which are built on stoking various forms of hate. This is a game that serious leaders should not play. Unfortunately, we don’t have too many serious leaders. We have the Democratic party.

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link. Nobody manipulated “stand in racism” more skillfully than incoming Virginia GOP Governor Glenn Younkin. So, we can expect a steady onslaught of these sleazy, yet highly effective, tactics over the next three years.

By now, a Dem Administration could have eliminated Title 42 restrictions, regularized asylum processing at the border, instituted a robust refugee program near the Northern Triangle to “incentivize” applications abroad, slashed the Immigration Court backlog to a manageable size, and replaced unsuitable Immigration Judges and Appellate Immigration Judges with competent ones who would do the right thing and issue the necessary positive guidance to end systemic abuses by both EOIR and DHS.

As an added bonus, unnecessary and expensive litigation in the Circuits resulting from EOIR‘s poor performance could be reduced. The savings on both sides could be “repurposed” into increasing Immigration Court representation.

Sure, Repubs would drum up racist myths and carry out an energetic campaign of hate and xenophobia to rally their base. They undoubtedly would make the outrageously false claim that complying with the Refugee Act of 1980, the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the Convention Against Torture amounts to “open borders.” But, in case the Dems haven’t noticed, that’s already happening!

The Biden Administration could shoot everyone approaching our border dead and the GOP would still say “open borders.” Honesty, reality, and human decency simply aren’t part of the GOP game plan. Yet, the Dems keep falling for the bait!

The Administration is basically carrying out a “Miller Lite” restrictionist immigration policy and demeaning themselves by violating statutory and constitutional requirements right and left. But, that hasn’t stopped the GOP from dishonestly claiming “open borders,” nor has it deterred the so-called “mainstream media” from repeating this BS.

What the Dems have done is “de-energized” an important segment of their own base as well as dis-served the nation by continuing illegal anti-immigrant policies at a time when we could and should be admitting more immigrants through a revived legal immigration system and much more honest and robust refugee and asylum programs. In other words, Dems have shot themselves in both feet!

Following the asylum and refugee laws and giving applicants due process isn’t actually a “policy option.” It’s the law!

Dem spinelessness and intransigence on immigration have created the worst of all worlds. Even with truth, logic, justice, and common sense potentially on their side, the Dems cluelessly are helping the GOP succeed on their toxic agenda of stupidity, dishonesty, hate, and “deconstruction of democracy.”

There is, of course, no guarantee that any particular actions will bring electoral victory in the future. But, rather than being the GOP’s foil, why not do the right thing? Even if they ultimately lose, the Dems would save some lives, improve the situation of millions of Americans, and, at the very worst, go down fighting for something worthwhile, rather than being “herded over the cliff” by the GOP racists.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-12-21

🤮POLITICS: REBECCA SOLNIT: DEMS NEED TO STOP “TRYING TO UNDERSTAND” THE NEO NAZI GOP RIGHT WING & FIGHT IT LIKE THE THREAT TO HUMAN DECENCY, TRUTH, & ETHICAL BEHAVIOR THAT IT IS! — “And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people. Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?”

https://lithub.com/rebecca-solnit-on-not-meeting-nazis-halfway/

From Literary Hub:

Rebecca Solnit: On Not Meeting

Nazis Halfway

Why Is It So Hard for Democrats to Act Like They Actually Won?

By Rebecca Solnit

November 19, 2020

When Trump won the 2016 election—while losing the popular vote—the New York Times seemed obsessed with running features about what Trump voters were feeling and thinking. These pieces treated them as both an exotic species and people it was our job to understand, understand being that word that means both to comprehend and to grant some sort of indulgence to. Now that Trump has lost the 2020 election, the Los Angeles Times has given their editorial page over to letters from Trump voters, who had exactly the sort of predictable things to say we have been hearing for far more than four years, thanks to the New York Times and what came to seem like about 11,000 other news outlets hanging on the every word of every white supremacist they could convince to go on the record.

The letters editor headed this section with, “In my decade editing this page, there has never been a period when quarreling readers have seemed so implacably at odds with each other, as if they get their facts and values from different universes. As one small attempt to bridge the divide, we are providing today a page full of letters from Trump supporters.” The implication is the usual one: we—urban multiethnic liberal-to-radical only-partly-Christian America—need to spend more time understanding MAGA America. The demands do not go the other way. Fox and Ted Cruz and the Federalist have not chastised their audiences, I feel pretty confident, with urgings to enter into discourse with, say, Black Lives Matter activists, rabbis, imams, abortion providers, undocumented valedictorians, or tenured lesbians. When only half the divide is being tasked with making the peace, there is no peace to be made, but there is a unilateral surrender on offer. We are told to consider this bipartisanship, but the very word means both sides abandon their partisanship, and Mitch McConnell and company have absolutely no interest in doing that.

Paul Waldman wrote a valuable column in the Washington Post a few years ago, in which he pointed out that this discord is valuable fuel to right-wing operatives: “The assumption is that if Democrats simply choose to deploy this powerful tool of respect, then minds will be changed and votes will follow. This belief, widespread though it may be, is stunningly naive.” He notes that the sense of being disrespected “doesn’t come from the policies advocated by the Democratic Party, and it doesn’t come from the things Democratic politicians say. Where does it come from? An entire industry that’s devoted to convincing white people that liberal elitists look down on them. The right has a gigantic media apparatus that is devoted to convincing people that liberals disrespect them, plus a political party whose leaders all understand that that idea is key to their political project and so join in the chorus at every opportunity.”

There’s also often a devil’s bargain buried in all this, that you flatter and, yeah, respect these white people who think this country is theirs by throwing other people under the bus—by disrespecting immigrants and queer people and feminists and their rights and views. And you reinforce that constituency’s sense that they matter more than other people when you pander like this, and pretty much all the problems we’ve faced over the past four years, to say nothing of the last five hundred, come from this sense of white people being more important than nonwhites, Christians than non-Christians, native-born than immigrant, male than female, straight than queer, cis-gender than trans.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito just complained that “you can’t say that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. Now it’s considered bigotry.” This is a standard complaint of the right: the real victim is the racist who has been called a racist, not the victim of his racism, the real oppression is to be impeded in your freedom to oppress. And of course Alito is disingenuous; you can say that stuff against marriage equality (and he did). Then other people can call you a bigot, because they get to have opinions too, but in his scheme such dissent is intolerable, which is fun coming from a member of the party whose devotees wore “fuck your feelings” shirts at its rallies and popularized the term “snowflake.”

Nevertheless, we get this hopelessly naïve version of centrism, of the idea that if we’re nicer to the other side there will be no other side, just one big happy family. This inanity is also applied to the questions of belief and fact and principle, with some muddled cocktail of moral relativism and therapists’ “everyone’s feelings are valid” applied to everything. But the truth is not some compromise halfway between the truth and the lie, the fact and the delusion, the scientists and the propagandists. And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people. Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?

I’ve spent much of my adult life watching politicians like Bill Clinton and, at times, Barack Obama sell out their own side to placate the other, with dismal results.

I think our side, if you’ll forgive my ongoing shorthand and binary logic, has something to offer everyone and we can and must win in the long run by offering it, and offering it via better stories and better means to make those stories reach everyone. We actually want to see everyone have a living wage, access to healthcare, and lives unburdened by medical, student, and housing debt. We want this to be a thriving planet when the babies born this year turn 80 in 2100. But the recommended compromise means abandoning and diluting our stories, not fortifying and improving them (and finding ways for them to actually reach the rest of America, rather than having them warped or shut out altogether). I’ve spent much of my adult life watching politicians like Bill Clinton and, at times, Barack Obama sell out their own side to placate the other, with dismal results, and I pray that times have changed enough that Joe Biden will not do it all over again.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

As Rebecca points out, “understanding,” “compromising,” and “engaging in productive dialogue” with the disingenuously disgruntled and “uber angry” far right turns out to be a “one way street” (surprised?). A “fools errand” if you will.

I dealt with transgender youth on a number of occasions during my career on the bench of the Arlington Immigration Court. All of they had suffered severe mental trauma and/or physical mistreatment from peers and adults who should have known better. Most had attempted suicide one or more times.

How is it acceptable for them and their fundamental identities to be “abused” and “dehumanized” by out of control, irresponsible “adults” and “parents” at school board meetings and other events? The GOP should be ashamed for giving in and seeking “political capital” from these reprehensible and cowardly attacks on students, teachers, and public officials trying to do the right thing on accommodating the needs of LBGTQ+ students and African American and other minority students and immigrants whose histories, humanity, and contributions for many generations continuing into the present have not been dealt with honestly, fairly, and humanely by our society. How will appeasing or meeting halfway those peddling lies and hate make things better for future generations?

Just how much “understanding,” “compassion,” “courtesy,” or “compromise” did George Floyd’s family, vulnerable transgender youth, or black students suffering from generations of systemic societal racism and anti gay laws, policies, and social institutions (and “false denial”) get from these folks on the right?

Stunning examples of Dems failures to stand up for their principles, and the disastrous consequences for humanity, are the continuation of Stephen Miller’s grotesque misuse of Title 42 at the border and AG Garland’s failure to clean house and institute common sense reforms at his dysfunctional, anti-immigrant, anti-asylum, anti-due process, intentionally dehumanizing Immigration Courts known as EOIR! His “tolerance” for gross abuses by so-called “courts” that he controls and for the dehumanization and mistreatment of asylum seekers and other migrants on a daily basis is not “compromise” or “understanding!” It’s an ongoing national disgrace!

Did Stephen Miller really win the last election? Garland & Mayorkas are acting like he did!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-09-21

🤮BIDEN/GARLAND APPEAR HEADED FOR “VICTORY” @ SUPREMES OVER LONG-TIME RESIDENTS SEEKING GREEN CARDS — Progressives, Immigration Advocates, Dems Rebuffed As Biden Administration Goes “Full Stephen Miller” On Couple With Two Decades’ Residence, USC Child! — Only Justice Sotomayor Speaks Up For “Better” Interpretation Of Statute, Immigrants Rights, Common Sense In The Law!

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-supreme-court-doubts-green-cards-some-protected-migrants-2021-04-19/

Andrew Chung reports for Reuters:

U.S. Supreme Court justices on Monday appeared reluctant to let people who have been allowed to stay in the United States on humanitarian grounds apply to become permanent residents if they entered the country illegally.

The justices heard arguments in an appeal by a married couple from El Salvador who were granted so-called Temporary Protected Status of a lower court ruling that barred their applications for permanent residency, also known as a green card, because of their unlawful entry.

The case could affect thousands of immigrants, many of whom have lived in the United States for years. President Joe Biden’s administration opposes the immigrants in the case. The dispute puts Biden, who has sought to reverse many of his Republican predecessor Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies, at odds with immigration advocacy groups and some of his fellow Democrats. read more

A federal law called the Immigration and Nationality Act generally requires that people seeking to become permanent residents have been “inspected and admitted” into the United States. At issue in the case is whether a grant of Temporary Protected Status, which gives the recipient “lawful status,” satisfies those requirements.

. . . .

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Justice Department lawyer Michael Huston, “If you’re asking us to find the better reading of the statute, we should go by its terms: Those people have been admitted.”

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link.

Garland helps Biden deliver “tough noogies, go pound sand, your lives don’t matter” message to immigrants like Jose and Sonia and their supporters who might have had the illusion that better times were on the horizon with Biden’s election! Progressives find that when push comes to shove, Biden & Garland can be just as cruel, dumb, and counterproductive as Trump & Miller!

Any hope that advocates might have had of help, sympathy, or understanding for their green-card-qualified clients with decades of residence and citizen family members goes down the tubes early in Dem Administration. Biden-Harris humane rhetoric and promises prove just another illusion for progressives in Administration’s first High Court test!

But for Justice Sotomayor, the thinness of the Justices’ understanding of both immigration law and the human issues involved was alarming, yet basically predictable. What do a bunch of highly privileged, above the fray, judges who have never personally dealt with the stupidity, arbitrariness, and trauma of our immigration system, and never represented clients in Immigration Court, care about shutting hard working American residents, people of color, like Jose and Sonia, out of our system and disenfranchising them for no particular reason. The worst, most racially discriminatory “interpretations” are “available” to those judges, so why not use them? For them, it’s a wooden academic exercise played out with human lives that don’t matter because they are “the other.” Except for Sotomayor, going for the best, most practical, humane interpretation evidently never crossed the minds of these Justices.

As Justice Sotomayor correctly said: “If you’re asking us to find the better reading of the statute, we should go by its terms: Those people have been admitted.”

It’s not rocket science. Just common sense, humanity, and a clear understanding of the effect of legal interpretations on human lives. At the Supreme Court level, most decisions represent a “choice” rather than a “mandate.” That’s where having Justices who neither care to understand nor have to live with the consequences of their decisions really hurts people of color, immigrants, asylum seekers, and others not in the “power structure!” Better judges for a better America!

Meanwhile, advocates and progressives should never underestimate the ability of Dem Administrations to screw up immigration policy.

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-20-21

⚖️🇺🇸FOR AMERICA’S SAKE, BIDEN NEEDS TO BREAK DEMS’ LOSING STREAK ON FEDERAL JUDGES — Think Young!👩🏾‍🤝‍👨🏿🧑🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️👩‍⚖️ — A Better Immigration Court Is Essential To A Better Federal Judiciary!

shttps://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/02/16/court-appointments-age-biden-trump-judges-age/

By Micah Schwartzman and David Fontana write in WashPost:

. . . .

Assuming federal appellate judges decide, on average (and conservatively), at least several hundred cases per year, Trump’s judges will decide tens of thousands more cases than their Obama-appointed counterparts. To put it bluntly: The age of judges matters.

But Democrats still aren’t getting the message. At a Brookings Institution event in January, former attorney general Eric Holder touted racial and ethnic diversity — and diversity of professional background — but also said judges should only be appointed if they are 50 years old or older.

It would be a serious mistake for President Biden to follow that last piece of advice, and he would be repeating an error that Obama made. The Obama administration made substantial progress in diversifying the bench, but took a misguided approach when it came to age.

In an attempt to depoliticize judicial nominations, Obama mostly appointed highly experienced sitting judges and federal prosecutors during his first term as president. Senate Republicans rejected the olive branch, and in fact escalated obstruction of his nominees. Biden also wants to lower the temperature of partisan conflict, but there is no reason to think choosing older judges will have that effect.

Nominating younger judges is also crucial for developing leaders on the federal bench, including future Supreme Court justices. When presidents look for nominees to elevate to the high court, they usually select judges from the federal appellate courts. For example, Neil M. Gorsuch was a mere 38 years old when nominated (by President George W. Bush) to become an appellate judge, Brett M. Kavanaugh was 41 (also Bush), and Amy Coney Barrett was 45 (Trump). When later elevated to the Supreme Court they were 49, 53 and 48, respectively (average age: 50). Meanwhile, because Obama selected older judges, Biden will find only three Democratically appointed judges across the entire federal courts of appeals who are at that age or younger.

Younger federal judges have more time to build up a jurisprudence — a body of legal values, principles and judgments — as well as a professional network of other judges, lawyers and clerks who can develop, share and amplify their legal views. Republicans have long understood this: Many of their most famous and influential appointees were put on the appellate bench at young ages, including Frank Easterbrook (nominated at age 36), Michael Luttig (36), Kenneth Starr (37), Samuel Alito (39), Douglas Ginsburg (40), Clarence Thomas (41), Richard Posner (42), Antonin Scalia (46) and John Roberts (47).

If Democrats hope to shape the law for the next generation, they, too, need younger judges who have both the energy and a sufficiently long tenure on the bench to leave lasting legacies. Consider the example of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was one of President Bill Clinton’s youngest appellate nominees, at age 43; she was 54 when Obama nominated her to the Supreme Court in 2009. Over the past two decades, she has developed a distinctive and powerful voice on the bench. It’s unlikely she would have done so had she been nominated to the appellate court in her early-to-mid 50s.

The Biden administration has made an admirable commitment to diversifying the bench — signaling his intention to depart from Trump’s example. Not a single one of Trump’s 54 appointments to the appellate courts was African American. But there is no trade-off between youth and diversity. If anything, there are more women and more members of minority groups represented in the legal profession now than at any time in the past. At least when it comes to putting judges on the bench, this president can have it all. He can diversify the bench while at the same time appointing people who will be influential for decades, narrowing the partisan age gap in the judicial branch.

Micah J. Schwartzman is the Hardy Cross Dillard professor of law at the University of Virginia.

David Fontana is Samuel Tyler Research Professor at the George Washington University Law School.

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

Read the rest of this article at the: above link.

Absolutely right!

And, nowhere did the Obama Administration do a worse job than with the U.S. Immigration Courts which were entirely under their control at the DOJ! Can’t blame Moscow Mitch and his GOP Senate cronies for this failure!

As one of my Round Table ⚔️🛡 colleagues accurately described it:

I continue to repeat that following the Bush Administration’s terrible record for appointments based on Republican credentials and loyalty, Holder merely shuffled the deck of long-time EOIR bureaucrats, appointing as Chief IJ and BIA Chair and Vice-Chair individuals whose idea of leadership was keeping their heads down and doing what had always been done before. There is presently a need for much more inspired appointments at the top.

Amen! I keep saying it: There needs to be an immediate “clean sweep” of EOIR so-called upper “management” and at the BIA. There are plenty of much better qualified folks out there who could “hit the ground running” on either a temporary or permanent basis.

Then, there must be a proper merit-based selection system with public participation and an active, positive recruitment effort that will attract a diverse group of “practical scholars” with actual experience representing asylum seekers and other migrants in Immigration Court. (“Posting” judicial vacancies on “USA Jobs” for a couple of weeks is both absurdly inadequate and “designed to fail” if your objective is to create a diverse expert judiciary of “the best, brightest, and most capable”).

Then, these merit-based criteria should be applied over time to “re-compete” all existing Immigration Judge jobs. These necessary steps will tie-in with the legislation to create an Article I Immigration Court. “Turn over” a top-flight “model judiciary” rather than the unmitigated disaster that now exists at EOIR.

An important consequence of the failure of Obama to build a better, progressive Immigration Judiciary is that it has deprived President Biden of a pool of younger progressive Immigration Judges with proven judicial credentials who, in turn, would have been prime candidates for filling Article III vacancies.

That’s not to say that some sitting Immigration Judges don’t have Article III credentials. Some undoubtedly have stood tall against the “Dred Scottification” of the Immigration Courts under Miller & Co. Not enough, but some.

However, had the Obama Administration acted with more wisdom, courage, and competence, the pool would be much larger — perhaps large enough to have put up a more concerted and higher profile resistance to the lawless, anti-immigrant, anti-due process agenda at all levels of EOIR over the past four years!

Using better Immigration Judges as a source of progressive Article III Judges would also solve another glaring problem that has undermined equal justice and racial justice within the Article III Judiciary: the lack of expertise in immigration and human rights laws (which currently make up a disproportionate part of the Article III civil docket) and the human empathy and practical problem solving ability that comes from representing asylum applicants and others in Immigration Court. Nowhere is the lack of scholarship, integrity, and human understanding more obvious than with the woodenly anti-due process, anti-Constitutional, anti-rule-of-law performance of the tone-deaf and totally out of touch GOP majority on the Supremes in immigration, human rights, and civil rights cases.

It’s no coincidence that the best-qualified of the current Supremes, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, has overtly “called out” her right wing colleagues’ inexcusable performance on cases affecting immigrants’ rights and human rights. It’s also no coincidence that in his new highly critical look at the failures of the Federal Judiciary in criminal justice, U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff “would also require prosecutors to periodically represent indigent defendants so they appreciate the ‘one-sided nature . . . of the plea bargaining process.’” https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/02/16/court-appointments-age-biden-trump-judges-age/

I guarantee that none of the current Supremes would put up with the outrageously unfair, biased, degrading, and dehumanizing practices intentionally and maliciously inflicted on vulnerable migrants and their attorneys on a daily basis at both the trial and appellate levels of our broken and dysfunctional Immigration Courts if they had personally experienced it. Nor should Judge Garland put up with the totally unacceptable status quo!

A better Immigration Court isn’t rocket science. It’s quite achievable on a realistic timeline. But, it will take both the will to act and putting the right “practical experts” (predominantly from outside the current Government) in place. Past Dem Administrations have failed on both counts, some worse than others.

The Biden Administration can’t afford to fail on Immigration Court reform! For the sake of the vulnerable individuals whose lives are at stake! For the sake of America whose future is at stake!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-21-21

🗽⚖️EUGENE ROBINSON @ WASHPOST “NAILS” THE REASONS WHY BIDEN IS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT ON IMMIGRATION REFORM & SMART TO MAKE IT A REAL PRIORITY! — “But the Biden administration has shown a refreshing insistence on negotiating with the opposition rather than with itself.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bidens-immigration-plan-is-ambitious-but-a-big-problem-demands-a-big-plan/2021/02/18/e341aa8e-7224-11eb-85fa-e0ccb3660358_story.html

. . . .

Donald Trump used anti-immigrant demagoguery to launch his presidential campaign, accusing the people who hoped to make their homes here of being “rapists” and “bad hombres” and calling — nonsensically — for all of them to be sent back to their home countries, where they would “go to the back of the line” for readmission to the United States. He used them as scapegoats whom the “Make America Great Again” crowd could blame for the nation’s ills. Republican senators who once believed in reality-based immigration reform, such as Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), stopped resisting the party’s xenophobia and came to embrace it.

Democrats sought political advantage by being seen as anti-anti-immigration, seeking support by opposing GOP initiatives such as Trump’s border wall. Yet they were disappointed to see Trump’s share of the Hispanic vote actually grow from 2016 to 2020 — demonstrating, in my view, that theatrical demonstrations of solidarity are no substitute for coming up with policies that voters believe would actually improve their lives.

Are we really going to continue like this indefinitely? Are we going to consign 11 million people to an extralegal existence because our politicians find it advantageous to argue about their fate?

Biden’s proposal would allow farmworkers, migrants brought here as children and those who have “temporary protected status” because of threats in their homelands to apply for citizenship in three years. The rest of the undocumented would have to wait eight years to apply to be citizens. All would have to pass background checks; and the amnesty — let’s call it what it is — would cover only those in the country before Jan. 1 of this year to prevent a new surge of people trying to cross the border.

Would Biden settle for legislation that normalized the status of only some of the undocumented, but not all of them? He has already said he doesn’t want to but might. Would he accept whatever scraps of reform that could be achieved through the Senate’s reconciliation process, which requires only 51 votes instead of 60? If it came to that, he wouldn’t have a choice.

But the Biden administration has shown a refreshing insistence on negotiating with the opposition rather than with itself. In seeking covid-19 relief, for example, Biden is asking for $1.9 trillion rather than some less eye-popping amount. When he lays out his plans for improving the nation’s infrastructure and making the transition to green energy, he is expected to request even more. Polls show that voters want bipartisanship and compromise — but the first crucial step in that process is defining the range of possibilities.

Biden is asking not for a few minimal immigration fixes but for a comprehensive solution. This is a president who wants more than a return to the old ways: He’s shooting for a truly new normal.

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

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

Well said, Eugene! “Negotiating with itself” is a good description of the Obama Administration’s ineffective approach to immigration. And, an Article I Immigration Court must also be part of the “think big — act boldly” immigration policy that America needs! “Reality-based immigration policy” — administered and staffed by experts and professionals — is exactly the right approach!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-21-21

POLITICS: AS GOP GOES “ALL IN” ON WHITE SUPREMACY, BIDEN MOVES FORWARD TO SOLVE AMERICA’S PRESSING PROBLEMS — “This political void is allowing Biden and the Democrats, who control the White House and both houses of Congress, to respond boldly to the largest social and economic crisis since the Great Depression,” says Robert Reich!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/14/trump-impeachment-biden-american-rescue-plan-robert-reich?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

While most of official Washington has been focused on the Senate impeachment trial, another part of Washington is preparing the most far-ranging changes in American social policy in a generation.

The Capitol attack film was brutal. That’s why it must be watched | Francine Prose

Congress is moving ahead with Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which expands healthcare and unemployment benefits and contains one of the most ambitious efforts to reduce child poverty since the New Deal. Right behind it is Biden’s plan for infrastructure and jobs.

The juxtaposition of Trump’s impeachment trial and Biden’s ambitious plans is no coincidence.

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Trump has left Republicans badly fractured and on the defensive. The party is imploding. Since the Capitol attack on 6 January, growing numbers of voters have deserted it. State and county committees are becoming wackier by the day. Big business no longer has a home in the crackpot GOP.

This political void is allowing Biden and the Democrats, who control the White House and both houses of Congress, to respond boldly to the largest social and economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Tens of millions are hurting. A record number of American children are impoverished

Importantly, they are now free to disregard conservative canards that have hobbled America’s ability to respond to public needs ever since Ronald Reagan convinced the nation big government was the problem.

The first is the supposed omnipresent danger of inflation and the accompanying worry that public spending can easily overheat the economy.

Rubbish. Inflation hasn’t reared its head in years, not even during the roaring job market of 2018 and 2019. “Overheating” may no longer even be a problem for globalized, high-tech economies whose goods and services are so easily replaceable.

Biden’s ambitious plans are worth the small risk, in any event. If you hadn’t noticed, the American economy is becoming more unequal by the day. Bringing it to a boil may be the only way to lift the wages of the bottom half. The hope is that record low interest rates and vast public spending generate enough demand that employers will need to raise wages to find the workers they need.

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A few Democratic economists who should know better are sounding the false alarm about inflation, but Biden is wisely ignoring them. So should Democrats in Congress.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link.

Seems like what Democrats need to do here is follow President Biden’s lead and “keep their eyes on the ball.”

The minority of “non-Trumpist” Republicans, on the other hand, are going to have to decide where they fit in a party without values that has effectively “disowned” them in its embrace of racism, violence, insurrection, conspiracy theories, and corruption.

PWS

02-14-21

🗽⚖️STACEY ABRAMS @ WASHPOST: The GOP Is Out To Gut Democracy! — Here’s What It Will Take To Save It! — “No thinking person can deny that the communities of color disproportionately suffering and dying from this pandemic are also the people whose votes — and ability to hold failed leaders accountable — have been continuously suppressed.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/07/stacey-abrams-democracy-test-future/

. . . .

Make no mistake: Democracy may have survived this year, but President Biden and Vice President Harris were elected despite, not thanks to, weakened electoral systems. Together with the Democratic Congress, they now have the opportunity to implement reforms that reaffirm our nation’s promises that our country represents and works for everyone. We as Democrats must act before it is too late.

Our democratic system faces extraordinary threats today because of sustained attacks from Republican leaders who throw up roadblocks to voting and, among the worst actors, stoke the flames of white supremacy and hyper-nationalism to cling to power. There can be no clearer example than the covid-19 pandemic. The deaths of more than 450,000 people in the richest country in the world are symptomatic of a democracy in crisis and a political system that rewards cronyism over competence. Despite strong public support for the Centers for Disease Control’s work, the Affordable Care Act, and other economic justice and safety-net policies that could save lives, millions nevertheless continue to contract the disease without adequate access to health care.

No thinking person can deny that the communities of color disproportionately suffering and dying from this pandemic are also the people whose votes — and ability to hold failed leaders accountable — have been continuously suppressed.

The pandemic has been a collision of tragedy and corroded institutions, and the challenge is in how we respond. We can either engage in collective amnesia about what we have just lived through, and leave an unaccountable government in place, or we can rise to meet this moment by fixing the broken social compact. Defeating Trump was not enough. Meaningful progress on health care, racial justice and the economy requires aggressive action on voting rights, partisan gerrymandering and campaign finance.

One of the first steps must be an overhaul of the Senate filibuster, which has long been wielded as a cudgel against the needs of millions who struggle. Today, the parliamentary trick creates a more sinister threat to our nation: the ability of a minority of senators, who represent 41.5 million fewer people than the Senate majority, to block progress favored by most Americans.

Democrats in Congress must fully embrace their mandate to fast-track democracy reforms that give voters a fair fight, rather than allowing undemocratic systems to be used as tools and excuses to perpetuate that same system. This is a moment of both historic imperative and, with unified Democratic control of the White House and Congress, historic opportunity.

The agenda to restore democracy also includes passing the For the People Act to protect and expand voting rights, fight gerrymandering and reduce the influence of money in politics; the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore the full protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act; and the Protecting Our Democracy Act to constrain the corruption of future presidents who deem themselves above the law. These landmark bills have broad-based support, and would have passed long ago were it not for obstructionist leaders who fear losing their own influence if the American people have more power of their own.

. . . .

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

The Trump GOP lies, insurrections, and blatantly false claims attempting to undermine the very clear Biden-Harris victory have been a smokescreen for the real voting problems — the unrelenting efforts of the GOP — “The Party of the New Jim Crow” — to suppress the votes of Americans of color. Read the rest of Abrams’s op-ed at the link.

And, as Abrams cogently points out, one reason for the denial, downplaying, and maliciously incompetent mishandling of the pandemic by the Trump regime was that so many of the victims were among communities of color — those they never cared about and whose humanity they continuously tried to deny and disparage. Death is a great way of disenfranchising minority voters. Not to mention a little fear and intimidation thrown in for a good measure.

There is a very clear connection between the dehumanization of asylum seekers and other migrants and the disenfranchisement of voters of color. It’s all part of “Dred Scottification” — a disgraceful practice sanctioned by none other than the GOP’s Supremes’ majority!

Our future as a nation depends on Judge Garland, Vanita Gupta, and their incoming team at DOJ “connecting the dots” — beginning with dismantling and replacing the White Nationalist nativist kakistocracy at EOIR. Immigrants’ rights are civil rights are human rights! The GOP actually “gets” that (in a purely negative way)! Will the Dems finally show that they do too!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-09-21

🇺🇸BLACK LIVES MATTER AT THE POLLS: African-American Voters’ Extraordinary Efforts In Georgia Key To Ending GOP’s Jim Crow Kakistocracy, Saving American Democracy! — A “Blueprint” For Voting The Party Of Racists, Grifters, & Domestic Terrorists Out Of Their Undeserved Political Power Across America?

https://apple.news/AEyxZl76nQ86rGOIEK0E5uA

Ryan Brooks reports for BuzzFeed:

Democrat Jon Ossoff won his tight Senate race, with both Georgia Democrats defeating their Republican runoff opponents in historic victories for a stunning rebuke of President Donald Trump in a state that had been a Republican stronghold for years. With Ossoff joining Democrat Raphael Warnock in the Senate, their party will be able to take total control of Congress.

Warnock is the first Black person elected to represent Georgia in the Senate and will be one of only three Black people in the Senate once his term begins. Ossoff, 33, would be the youngest member of the Senate.

The results are a testament to the decades-long political organizing of Black women in Georgia who worked toward expanding the electorate and protecting voting rights in the state.

“It is with humility that I thank the people of Georgia for electing me to serve you in the United States Senate. Thank you for the trust that you have placed in me,” Ossoff said in a video streamed online on Wednesday morning. Hours before, the campaign of his opponent, Sen. David Perdue, said it “will require time and transparency to be certain the results are fair and accurate.”

It is a close race. Decision Desk HQ has projected Ossoff will win. The vote-counting firm currently has Ossoff leading Republican Perdue by about .4% of the vote — about 16,000 votes — which is within the .5% threshold that allows Perdue to call for a recount. Georgia officials will continue counting the few remaining votes today, which are expected in areas that lean Democrat.

Ossoff’s win would push the Senate into a 50-50 split, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris serving as a tie-breaking vote. The split would effectively give Democrats control of the Senate, removing the chamber from Sen. Mitch McConnell’s iron grip and dramatically expanding the possibilities for President-elect Joe Biden’s first years in office.

A litany of Black women-led voter registration groups like Stacey Abrams’s New Georgia Project and Black Voters Matter fanned out across the state in recent years to register new voters and to protect voters from being purged from rolls. In the weeks ahead of the runoff, Progressive grassroots groups organizing across the state made the shift toward door knocking and in-person canvassing after the party largely avoided the strategy during the general election because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump, on the other hand, spent the intervening two months claiming Georgia’s election was rigged against him — it was not, as the state’s Republican elected leaders frequently reminded him — attacking establishment Republicans in the state, and undermining the Republican base’s faith in the electoral process, and pushing lawsuits that largely focused on invalidating votes in majority Black cities. Perdue and Loeffler, then both serving in the Senate, often echoed Trump’s false claims about election fraud on the campaign trail and in the final days of the race they announced that they would support Senators who objected to certifying the electoral college results.

The runoff was defined by Trump’s meddling in the state’s election results after his loss in November and his failed last-ditch attempt to get more direct aid to people in the coronavirus relief package that passed Congress in December.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

Congrats and deep appreciation to the amazing Stacey Abrams and her colleagues for bailing out America with their smarts, courage, hard work, and determination to stand up to the White Nationalists and beat them at the polls. Working harder and being smarter than the GOP!

The GOP has now “come out of the closet” and embraced (or empowered) its once-obscured “core beliefs” of treason, lies, racism, hate, selfishness, ignorance, incompetent governance, and destruction of our democracy. Even today, traitors Ted Cruz & Josh Hawley disingenuously try to play the “victim” in the face of calls to hold them responsible for their false and treasonous criminal conduct.

These guys knowingly promoted lies and White Nationalist conspiracy theories that helped stroke the totally unjustified “anger” of Trumpist GOP thugs who actually endangered the safety of Congressional members of both parties! How sick 🤮 is that! Talk about folks who deserve condemnation and removal from public office, if not jail sentences!

The majority of us who believe in democracy, diversity, humanity, truth, our Constitution, and social justice must redouble our efforts to insure that the anti-American cancer of GOP minority rule never infects our nation again!

The folks in Georgia have shown us that no matter how difficult or time consuming the fight might be, it can be won through democratic institutions; with effort, courage, and perseverance, our nation can be rescued from the GOP traitors who have “held us hostage” for the past four years!

The GOP has “hitched its wheelless and soulless wagon” to one of the vilest human beings and biggest losers in our national political history. We can’t let them off the hook!

Belatedly, Congressional toadies like Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham, and Cabinet toadies, like Mrs. Mitch and Betsy D, who happily enabled and furthered the violent, racist, White Nationalist agenda of Trump, Miller and the rest of the thugocracy/kakistocracy are trying to put some distance between themselves and their party’s treason and mis-governance. I heard mindless and dishonest Trump supporters on local TV try to disclaim the logical consequences of their supporting and voting for an immoral, dishonest, anti-American, insurrectionist scumbag!

Just think of the total disaster that would have ensued if the maliciously incompetent traitor they voted for had actually won, rather than being thrashed by more than 7 million popular votes and 74 electoral votes! These folks are threatening my country, our health and safety, and the world’s future with their ignorance, lies, and disloyalty. I’m tired of them and their vile White Nationalist nonsense that played out at my Capitol this week!

Don’t let them get away with this deadly, disingenuous, BS! Follow Stacey Abrams and others! Start working hard now to throw every elected GOP traitor out of office in 2022! Democracy and the modern GOP are incompatible! This is a battle for our country, the heart and soul of our nation, and humanity. We can’t afford to let the party of treason and racism win!

Yes, as Joe Biden says, America needs a legitimate, principled opposition party. Sadly, the GOP party doesn’t fit the bill and won’t unless it jettisons its White Nationalist racist agenda of lies, false narratives, and wacko conspiracy theories and moves into the 21st Century with the rest of us!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽👍🏼Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-08-21

🇺🇸🗽⚖️👍🏼😎ANALYSIS: 46TH PRESIDENT— IN CABINET SELECTIONS, LESTER HOLT INTERVIEW, BIDEN SHOWS WHAT REAL LEADERSHIP, GOOD GOVERNMENT, COMMON GOOD, & ASPIRATION TO MAKE OUR WORLD A BETTER PLACE ARE ALL ABOUT!

Following the “official” beginning of his transition, President-Elect Joe Biden showed why an impressive majority of Americans wisely called on him and his running mate Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris at this pivotal moment in history to preserve and rescue our nation, solve pressing problems, and return us to a positive leadership role in a world that needs and longs for it.

Biden praised the recent sincere cooperation from the outgoing Administration. He vowed to make his top priorities controlling the pandemic and getting the American economy and the now bleak jobs picture back on track to success. He promised to focus on the hardest hit communities — primarily minority communities who have disproportionately borne the brunt of COVID-19 while providing essential services to all Americans. In that respect, he has already been listening to the advice and input of state governors, mayors, and local officials of both parties. Helping hard pressed state and local governments will be high on his “to do” list.

The President-Elect vowed to push forward with sound immigration, environmental, and climate change policies in the early days of his Administration. To assist in the effort, he initially tapped a group of acknowledged Government experts and veteran public servants to help and advise him and Vice President Harris in their Cabinet. Professionalism, demonstrated excellence in public service, and expertise were the common qualities of the nominees.

So far, Biden’s Cabinet choices, apparently also reflecting Vice President-Elect Harris’s influence, look like the nation they will be serving. They come from a variety of backgrounds and embody the gender and racial diversity of America.

While some commentators have expressed concerns of an “Obama IIIl” look to the Cabinet, Biden scotched that idea. He correctly pointed out that America is a much different nation facing a much different world than when he left the Vice Presidency four years ago. We face a new range of problems that must be solved. He promised to provide the type of unifying, empirically based, empathetic, and forward-looking leadership that will allow us to surmount the current challenges and move forward together to greater heights!

Significantly, Biden told Holt he would eschew political vendettas and appeared determined to restore integrity, professionalism, and independence to a broken and dysfunctional Justice Department.

The proof will be in the governing and the actions, although Biden noted the important role played by a President’s rhetoric and universal leadership qualities. Undoubtedly, things will not be perfect. But, so far, Biden appears to be on the right track and setting the correct tone for what is likely to be the most important Presidency since Abraham Lincoln (and arguably, the most important in American history).

Come January 20, 2021, the circus will be pulling up stakes and leaving town. Let the governing begin!

PWS

11-25-20

COURTSIDE ELECTION SPECIAL🇺🇸🗽⚖️👍😎 — HARRIS, BIDEN, DEMOCRACY BIG WINNERS — THIS TIME AROUND, THE MAJORITY RULES, AS DEM DUO SWEEPS TO VICTORY IN BOTH POPULAR VOTE AND ELECTORAL COLLEGE!

Vice President Elect Kamala Harris
Official Senate Photo
Public Realm

🇺🇸🗽⚖️👍😎COURTSIDE ELECTION SPECIAL: HARRIS, BIDEN, DEMOCRACY BIG WINNERS — THIS TIME AROUND, THE MAJORITY RULES, AS DEM DUO SWEEPS TO VICTORY IN BOTH POPULAR VOTE AND ELECTORAL COLLEGE!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

Nov. 7, 2020. Vice President and soon to be President Elect Joe Biden’s 33-year long quest for the U.S. Presidency will come to fruition on January 20, 2021. His running mate and soon to be Vice President Elect Senator Kamala Harris will become the first woman and the first African American to hold the number two job.

Although the results of the Presidential contest were long in coming, they basically fulfilled pre-election predictions. Harris-Biden are on pace to win a clear majority of the popular vote by over four million votes, in the process compiling the highest vote total in U.S. election history.

Unlike 2016, this time the popular vote translates into an insurmountable 59 vote margin and a majority in the electoral college. Fittingly, Biden’s apparent victory in Pennsylvania put him over the top. But, with the Biden Harris team in the lead in the “undecided” states of Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia that electoral margin seems likely to widen when the final vote is tabulated. Only the remaining states of Alaska and North Carolina appear to be falling into the Trump column, which would still leave the soon-to-be former President woefully short of an electoral majority.

Indeed, he is now on pace to lose by the same electoral majority than he compiled in defeating Clinton notwithstanding losing the popular vote to her by millions. At that time, Trump characterized his electoral college victory as a “landslide,” notwithstanding his very clear defeat in the popular vote. While compiling a head-scratchingly large cult-like following of tens of millions that propelled him to victory on 2016 and helped prop up his bizarrely incompetent presidency, Trump was never popular with the majority of Americans, except in his own muddled mind.

In winning a convincing victory, if not the overwhelming one that Democrats hoped for and that many pundits and pollsters predicted, Biden/Harris appear to have held every state won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 while “flipping” Biden’s birth state of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin by narrow margins. If their narrow current leads in Arizona and Georgia hold, they will add “flips” of these traditional GOP strongholds to their list of election achievements.

Biden becomes only the third candidate since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 to unseat a sitting elected President, the others being President Ronald Reagan and President Bill Clinton. (President Jimmy Carter unseated President Gerald Ford in 1980, but Ford was never elected to either the Vice Presidency or the Presidency.) Biden also becomes the fourth Vice President in the past 70 years to later win a Presidential election.

Harris is a graduate of Howard University and Cal Hastings Law. Her win is a huge milestone for “historically black colleges” and their many talented graduates throughout our nation.

Biden is a graduate of the University of Delaware and Syracuse Law. The Harris-Biden tandem may be the first time that “non—Ivy” lawyers have held both of our top elected positions. That’s a tribute to the many fine law schools outside the Ivy League that produce the vast majority of the nation’s legal talent and fuel most of the “practical lawyering and usable scholarship” that keeps our legal system afloat.

Hopefully, our new leaders will keep that in mind when filling key positions in their upcoming Administration and particularly in making Federal Judicial appointments at all levels. That’s especially important considering the disturbing failure of many graduates of so-called “elite” law schools serving us as public officials and judges to effectively and courageously stand up to the all out assault on the rule of law, ethics, constitutionally required due process and equal protection, and human decency by the Trump regime.

Any surviving functionality and integrity in our courts and public institutions is largely the result of courageous and under-appreciated attorneys, many working pro bono, who have fought at the “retail level” of our justice system to preserve those human rights and fundamental values upon which our legal system rests. All too often, they suffered bullying and abuse from the cowardly Trump regime for their efforts, while life-tenured Federal Judges failed in their duty to intercede to protect officers of their courts and their clients whose rights were being trampled by a group of out of control White Nationalist bigots.

Thus, the Biden-Harris team will enter what is probably the most consequential Presidency in U.S. history at one of the most most difficult and contentious times. With an out of control pandemic, high unemployment, rapidly deteriorating environment, festering racism, looming healthcare, opioid, and educational crises, cratering international prestige, trade wars, a crippled and demoralized career civil service, a failing judicial system, dysfunctional immigration and refugee systems, lack of trust in Government, disquiet in the intelligence and military communities, lack of competent Executive leadership over the past four years, and about 70.3 million Americans essentially living “in a parallel universe” but still our fellow citizens and essential to our society, saving American democracy would be a daunting task for any leaders. Some would say “mission impossible.” But, I can’t think of anyone better suited than the Biden-Harris team to undertake that mission.

In a democracy, successful outcomes are never guaranteed. But, if our democracy turns out to be beyond reclamation, it almost certainly will be because “We the People” fail to give our new leaders the support they need and deserve.

As for Trump, ever the total boor and purveyor of hate, division, and lies, he sent a missive from his golf course saying that he wouldn’t concede and pledged to continue to pelt our already crumbling court system with yet more frivolous litigation. Thankfully, most news commentators chose to read only a few lines of his incoherent rant before returning to the real news surrounding Biden and Harris. How quickly even the most bombastic ones with the biggest egos become “yesterday’s news.”

So, unsurprisingly, Trump, who undoubtedly will go down as the worst, most corrupt, and least competent President in U.S. history, will exit with the same disturbing lack of class, honesty, and fundamental human decency that has characterized his four-year “nightmare reign.” Meanwhile, as he relaxes, pouts, and sulks on the links, the pandemic that he failed to take reasonable steps to address or control, and consistently and dishonestly tried to downplay, continues to rage unabated and ravish our nation.

One of the hardest hit areas: The Upper Midwest, particularly my native state of Wisconsin. That might explain why today Trump is playing golf and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are sharing center stage! For a change, its nice to have folks who represent some of the most admirable human qualities that America has produced getting their time in the spotlight.

The good news: After 12:01 PM on January 20, 2021, the majority of us won’t care about the antisocial antics of the biggest loser of this election!

🇺🇸ONE FINAL PUSH TO SAVE OUR DEMOCRACY ⚖️ — GET OUT EVERY SINGLE VOTE FOR JOE, KAMALA, AND ALL DEMS!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

Nov. 2, 2020. As all of us know who have spent our lives working in the fields of immigration and asylum law, there is perhaps nothing so precious to individuals, and perhaps all too rare worldwide, as the right to vote in free and fair elections. Most of us who are not members of minority groups have largely taken that right for granted. But, today in America, the right of universal suffrage has been put in jeopardy by none other than President and his political party.

Behind in the polls and the early voting, and with no ideas for America rather than a continued diet of racism, hate, anti-science, anti-environmentalism, corruption, xenophobia, and final destruction of our democratic norms, Trump and his followers have one final trick up their sleeves. Get a massive turnout on Election Day, declare victory before all the votes are counted, and then throw the final determinations into the GOP-controlled Federal Courts.

The antidote: Get out every last vote in every nook and cranny of America for Biden-Harris and other Dems. A “Blue Wave” on Election Day across the nation, and particularly in “battleground states,” is our best defense against destruction of democracy. Another four years of Trump and the GOP and there will be no democracy left to save!

🇺🇸🇺🇸ELECTION 2020: Work The Phone Banks Today? — Opportunity

🇺🇸

From: Gary Sampliner <gsampliner@gmail.com>

Date: Sun, Nov 1, 2020, 11:03 AM

Subject: Fwd: Something to do on a cold, rainy pre-election Sunday

To: gary sampliner <gsampliner@hotmail.com>

Hi folks — might you have nothing special that you need to do today and be looking to burn off some pre-election nervous energy? Here’s something you might want to consider that I tried last night: make some followup calls to recipients of Reclaim Our Vote postcards, mostly people of color in NC and other battleground states who haven’t voted recently for whatever reason. This is a non-partisan group, but it seems safe to assume that most of the people they reach are in the D column. And you’ll see that many of them (e.g. ex-convicts, confused seniors, people on Indian reservations who don’t know a nearby polling place) can use our help.

Some of you are probably working on other phone banks or text banks with groups you know, but in case you aren’t, I thought these people are particularly good ones to try to reach because they need to be nudged to vote. You’ll see, on the left side of the computer screen when you call them, how many times they’ve voted in the past three elections — and it’s often 0/3. Most people don’t answer, of course, so we leave a lot of voicemails, but a few do, and say they’ll come out.

If you’re free any time from 1:00-11:00 (calling to different time zones) today, you can go to https://www.votinginformation.org/callapalooza and give it a shot — pick the state you’re interested in calling. They’ll also have a Zoom conference that you can link into for a little entertainment and inspiration, and breakout rooms for anyone who needs help in getting linked up with the network or have voter questions that aren’t answered from the online resource guide they give you.

Best — Gary

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

Get put the vote! Thanks to Deb Sanders for sending this along!

PWS

11-01-20

🇺🇸ELECTION 2020: PROTECT THE VOTE!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For more information: Megan Matson

415-497-2320 matson@tablerockpartners.com

SeeSay2020.com

REPORT FOR PUBLICATION TO A LIVE, CROWDSOURCED MAP ALL VOTER STORIES OF SUPPRESSION, INTIMIDATION, & BALLOT COUNTING IRREGULARITIES

The Center for Common Ground http://centerforcommonground.org/ together with other supporting organizations launched a program called SeeSay2020.com to promote an honest and fair election in 2020.

Reported incidents are reviewed, approved and mapped. Press, legal teams and the public have open access to the voter stories and data as it is published, and incidents requiring action are escalated out to partner legal and press efforts.

In addition to publishing their stories to the SeeSay2020.com Map, voters are provided with the help hotline where they can call to get free support from the nation’s largest nonpartisan voter protection coalition at 866-OUR-VOTE or texting OUR VOTE to 97779.

With unprecedented levels of voter suppression, court battles over count deadlines, electioneering at the polls and ballot delay, Center for Common Ground’s live documentation processes making voters’ experience public are vital to fighting for and maintaining democracy.

We urge you to advertise how voters can report voting irregularities as well as sharing those incidents in your reporting. In fact, MSNBC will be hosting seesay2020.com in their war room on election day. We would be happy for you to do the same.

###

Laurie Grossman

(510) 482-1588

lauriegrossman88@gmail.com

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

Thanks to my good friend and fellow Round Table member Judge Carol King and her husband Allan for passing along this critical information!

Get out the vote! Make your vote for democracy count!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-01-20

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🇺🇸🗽⚖️👍😎COURTSIDE ELECTION SPECIAL: HARRIS, BIDEN, DEMOCRACY BIG WINNERS — THIS TIME AROUND, THE MAJORITY RULES, AS DEM DUO SWEEPS TO VICTORY IN BOTH POPULAR VOTE AND ELECTORAL COLLEGE!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

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