Jason Rezaian writes in WashPost:
In 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump pledged sweeping changes to immigration policy. As president, Trump has succeeded — despite a broad public outcry and many legal roadblocks — in implementing many of his proposed restrictions through a series of executive orders.
Now Congress is pushing back. On Wednesday the House passed the No Ban Act, legislation introduced last year by Sen Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.). The act aims to repeal Trump’s ban on arrivals from majority-Muslim countries and prevent future presidents from issuing discriminatory bans on foreign nationals or followers of specific religions.
“Throughout the history of the U.S., we’ve had a series of tragic nativist chapters in our history,” Coons told me this week. “Did I think we’d be facing another one? No. But when Donald Trump announced his candidacy, I remember thinking I am so glad I live in a country where a man like this couldn’t be president. I was wrong, and we’ve seen how damaging that has been.”
In recent months, the novel coronavirus pandemic, the associated economic downturn, and protests over police killings of African Americans have diverted public attention from Trump’s immigration policies. But they must not be forgotten.
Trump’s plans for an immigration ban have inspired widespread outrage. Some dismissed Trump’s words as empty threats, noting that they were probably unconstitutional. But Trump pressed ahead as soon as he took office.
The first iteration of what became known as the Muslim ban halted entry into the United States of citizens from seven countries, five of which are majority-Muslim.
Since then we’ve watched as immigration officials have separated kids from their parents in detention centers, with at least one of them dying in custody. The images of children in cages provoked an intense backlash and could end up costing Trump at the polls — to the extent that his policies have led his own voters, especially college-educated white Republican women, to question his xenophobic and racist policies.
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Read the rest of Jason’s op-ed at the above link.
Somewhat like Sen. Coons, I originally thought that there would be some institutional integrity and moral courage even among the more conservative members of our Judiciary, particularly among the Supremes. After all, there have been at least a few times in our history when judges across the ideological and political spectrum have stood together against the evils of racism, religious bigotry, and hate.
It’s not like Trump, Miller, Bannon, Sessions, Ross, and their hate-mongering cronies were ever particularly subtle about their invidious intent (although, to be fair, I was at the very beginning willing to give Sessions “the benefit of the doubt,” until I saw that his assurances to the Senate were lies under oath in the face of the deep moral corruption and bigotry that infected his whole being).
Boy was I wrong! Right from the git go, even with the advantage of clear evidence of invidious intent, ridiculously transparent and overtly dishonest “pretexts,” (some publicly contradicted by Trump in mid-stream) and the vast majority of lower Federal Court Judges pointing the way with cogent opinions standing up to the Trump charade and endless parade of hate, the Supremes majority tanked. Where the rights of “the other” particularly Muslims and persons color are concerned, they fully embraced Trump’s unconstitutional and tyrannical program of hate and bias thinly disguised as legitimate exercises of Executive Power. They became willing “Dred Scottifiers!”
Perhaps just as seriously, the Supremes’ “normalized” demonstrable lies, false narratives, and dishonesty as attributes that were to be expected and tolerated from our Chief Executive. What a crock! Ordinary persons are held to basic standards of honesty and candor when dealing with the Government and with Government tribunals. But the President is above it all. While, later on, the Supremes fecklessly claimed that “nobody is above the law,” their actions have shown a disturbing and intellectually dishonest unwillingness to require Trump and his regime to comply with the basics of the rule of law and to act with even a minimal level of candor and honesty.
We can’t vote the “JR Five” out of their lifetime sinecures. But, our democracy does enable us to take the actions necessary to insure that folks like the “JR Five” and other Federal Judges who embrace racism, bigotry, and political corruption over the “equal justice and real due process for all persons” required by our Constitution are not selected to serve in the future in positions requiring legal experiences and moral qualifications that they so obviously lack.
Better judges for a better America. This November, vote like the future of humanity depends on it. Because it does!
Due Process Forever!
PWS
07-23-20