“HAPPY EASTER” — Trump Mocks Christian Values — Trump’s Easter Message Full Of Hate, Vitriol, Racism, Lies, & Ignorance — Now Targeting Dreamers!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2018/04/01/deal-on-daca-no-more-trump-says/

Philip Rucker and David Weigel report for the Washington Post:

PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Trump spent his Easter morning here on an anti-immigrant tirade, declaring Sunday that there would be no deal to legalize the status of undocumented immigrants known as “dreamers” and threatening to exit the North American Free Trade Agreement unless Mexico increases border security.

Trump thrust the future of millions of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children into peril by promising “NO MORE DACA DEAL,” and he directed congressional Republicans to pass tough anti-immigration legislation.

An hour after he wished Americans a “HAPPY EASTER,” Trump fired off three tweets in which he vented, sometimes in all caps, about immigration laws he derided as “ridiculous” and “dumb” and about border enforcement he deemed dangerously lax.

In his first of the immigration-related tweets, Trump wrote, “Border Patrol Agents are not allowed to properly do their job at the Border because of ridiculous liberal (Democrat) laws like Catch & Release. Getting more dangerous. ‘Caravans’ coming. Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough laws NOW. NO MORE DACA DEAL!”

It was Trump who last fall canceled the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which was begun in the Obama administration to provide temporary protection to dreamers.

“A lot of people are coming in because they want to take advantage of DACA,” Trump told the traveling press pool. “They had a great chance. The Democrats blew it.”

The president added, “Mexico has got to help us at the border. . . . They flow right through Mexico; they send them into the United States. It can’t happen that way anymore.”

President Trump’s position on DACA has taken several twists and turns over the years.(Meg Kelly, Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post)

Trump in the past has promised to show “great heart” in dealing with DACA. In his comments Sunday, he appeared to be confused about the rules of the program. To qualify, immigrants must have lived in the United States since 2007, have arrived in the country before age 16 and have been younger than 31 on June 15, 2012. No one arriving in the country after that date is eligible.

After canceling DACA, Trump said he would like to reach a deal with Congress to protect dreamers from deportation in exchange for funding to build his long-promised wall at the U.S.-Mexico border. The president, however, went on to reject immigration proposals from congressional Democrats in recent months.

[ Immigration bills fail in Congress, leaving ‘dreamers’ in limbo ]

“Catch and release” is not a law, but shorthand for immigration officials freeing up detention center space by allowing immigrants to remain at large if they are not seen as security risks. The Trump administration has frequently claimed that the policy ended when the new president took office.

But detention centers have continued releasing low-risk immigrants, as the backlog of immigration court cases reaches the hundreds of thousands. On March 5, Attorney General Jeff Sessions informed immigration court judges that they could rule against asylum seekers without full hearings, which conservatives see as a way, in the long term, to open more space in detention centers.

Trump — who has spent his time in Palm Beach hanging out with family, playing golf with friends and watching television — may have tweeted in response to commentary on Fox News Channel, which he is known to view regularly.

“Fox & Friends” aired a segment earlier on Sunday morning about Central American migrants traveling through Mexico en route to the United States. It carried the headline: “CARAVAN OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS HEADED TO U.S.”

Trump’s Sunday comments may have been mere musings by an impassioned “Fox & Friends” viewer and may not signal a substantive shift in administration policies. Still, White House officials have long said Trump’s tweets are official presidential statements, and he has been known to use Twitter to preview formal policy pronouncements.

Trump sent his tweets on the fourth and final day of his vacation in Palm Beach, Fla., where he has been staying at his private Mar-a-Lago Club with a small coterie of aides. White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly did not travel with him, but senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, a proponent of hard-line immigration policies, has been with Trump.

The president also has been spotted spending time — both over dinner Friday at Mar-a-Lago and on Saturday at the nearby Trump International Golf Club — with Fox host Sean Hannity. An outspoken immigration hard-liner, Hannity is a Trump booster and informal presidential adviser, in addition to hosting a radio show and prime-time Fox show.

Trump’s tweets baffled some Democrats, who had seen the president distinguish between DACA recipients and other immigrants who are in the country illegally.

“Time and time again, the president has walked away from bipartisan proposals that are exactly what he asked for,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “When an agreement to protect the Dreamers is reached, it will be despite this president rather than with his leadership.”

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said on Twitter that Trump had once again revealed a racial animus behind his immigration policy. “The mask of deceptions and lies with which Trump has tried to gaslight the country for months just fell away: ‘no more DACA deal.’ ” Beyer tweeted. “His true position was always anti-immigrant.”

Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-Ill.), a leading advocate for a DACA deal in the House, tweeted that Trump had “demonstrated his complete ignorance” on immigration policy.

“Everyone who qualifies for DACA must show they lived in US almost 11 years ago,” he wrote. “Apparently every day is April Fool’s Day at White House.”

Conservative reaction to the tweets was relatively muted, and no Republican member of Congress had a comment or statement Sunday afternoon. At Breitbart, the tweets were reported as Trump refusing to “negotiate a deal between the GOP establishment and Democrats,” in “a return to his ‘America First’ immigration agenda.”

On Facebook, the conservative author Ann Coulter, who had condemned Trump for not securing border wall funding so far this year, urged the president to show and not tell.

“Try to get a message to the commander in chief for that wall,” she wrote.

But some Republicans joined the chorus of criticism. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a GOP primary opponent of Trump in 2016 and possibly again in 2020, tweeted in response: “A true leader preserves & offers hope, doesn’t take hope from innocent children who call America home. Remember, today is Easter Sunday. #DACA #Hope”

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), a supporter of immigration reform who represents Miami and is retiring this year, took a sarcastic approach: “Such a strong message of love and new beginnings from @realDonaldTrump on Easter Sunday.”

By calling for Republicans to use the “Nuclear Option” to pass tough immigration measures, Trump seemed to urge a parliamentary procedure by which Senate Republicans could pass legislation with a simple majority of 51 votes as opposed to the 60-vote majority required to end debate and bring a vote to the floor.

But in mid-February, just 36 of the Senate’s 51 Republicans backed an immigration bill that mirrored White House demands. Congressional negotiations on DACA stalled just weeks later, when the Supreme Court upheld a decision that prevented the Trump administration from denying new program renewals.

The court’s move effectively nixed a March 6 deadline that the administration had set for ending DACA. Before leaving for Easter recess, Congress passed an omnibus spending bill with no DACA fix, even though advocates saw that as the best must-pass vehicle for one.

Trump lashed out at Mexico in his second of the three tweets Sunday. He threatened to “stop” NAFTA unless Mexican authorities do more to secure the border with the United States.

Trump wrote: “Mexico is doing very little, if not NOTHING, at stopping people from flowing into Mexico through their Southern Border, and then into the U.S. They laugh at our dumb immigration laws. They must stop the big drug and people flows, or I will stop their cash cow, NAFTA. NEED WALL!”

And in the third tweet, the president wrote, “These big flows of people are all trying to take advantage of DACA. They want in on the act!”

Trump’s tweets come amid tense negotiations over NAFTA between his administration and that of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. A call between the two men in February became testy after Trump refused to publicly affirm Peña Nieto’s position that Mexico will not pay for the wall’s construction, leading the Mexican leader to cancel a planned visit to Washington.

[ After testy call with Trump over border wall, Mexican president shelves plan to visit White House ]

Weigel reported from Washington.

Philip Rucker is the White House bureau chief for The Washington Post. He previously has covered Congress, the Obama White House, and the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns. He joined The Post in 2005 as a local news reporter.

Follow @PhilipRucker

David Weigel is a national political correspondent covering Congress and grass-roots political movements. He is the author of “The Show That Never Ends,” a history of progressive rock music.

Follow @daveweigel

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Wow, hard to know where to start on this one.

DACA obviously has nothing to do with any “exodus” now on the way. Rather, those arriving appear to be mostly refugees from the Northern Triangle — primarily scared women and children. And, they are being driven north not by DACA, but by unrelenting persecution and violence by gangs fueled by the Trump Administration’s own wrongheaded and tone-deaf policies. Sometimes, folks reap what they sow!
Most of the new arrivals probably can establish a legal right to refuge under the law. That’s why Sessions is so anxious to manipulate and “game” the existing asylum system against them. But, that move is likely to be tied up in the Federal Courts, perhaps for decades and with a good chance of grinding the entire immigration enforcement system to a halt.
The “Con-Man-In -Chief” seems to have forgotten that his “enforcement overload legislative proposal” failed miserably in the Senate — garnering only 40 votes. Even if the Senate were to change the “60 vote rule” — something which neither party seems inclined to do — it’s virtually impossible that Trump would be able to round up the necessary 11 additional votes for his “mega enforcement only” program. His problem is that his proposals have offended enough members of the GOP that they are basically DOA in the Senate.
While “The Wall” likely would have little impact on either immigration or drugs, fact is that Trump could have gotten “His Wall” in exchange for relief for the Dreamers. He just was too biased or inept (or both) to close the deal.
Trump has already claimed to have eliminated the inaptly named “catch and release” program. If there is a problem now, it’s with his own policies. Moreover, to the extent that releasing aliens on bond is a function of their being determined to be neither dangers to the community nor flight risks, that appears to be constitutionally required. Trump and the GOP can fume all they want, but they can’t eliminate the US Constitution.
Trump now appears to be backing away of his premature claim that his “get tough rhetoric and policies on immigration enforcement” had single-handedly closed down exgtra-legal migration. Human migration is driven by forces far more powerful than Donald Trump.
Mexico has been known to use some methods that violate human rights to enforce migration restrictions. Encouraging them to do that puts Trump and his buddies squarely on the side of human rights violators. On a more practical note, even assuming that there were legal measures that Mexico could take to stem the flow of northward bound migrants, Trump’s disparaging and inflammatory rhetoric has done little to encourage such action on the part of the Mexican Government. And using NAFTA to threaten Mexico is hardly likely to increase Mexico’s inclination to help.
As a country that imports more than it exports, we need NAFTA more than Mexico does. If the US wants to “dis” one of its primary trading partners, I have little doubt that countries like China, the EU, Canada, and even India will be happy to step in and fill the void. I imagine that the Chinese would love to stick some factories just south of the Mexico-US border, for all sorts of reasons.
Trump’s mean-spirited and idiotic approach to immigration, as well as his inappropriate and unhinged tweets, are a continuing embarrassment to our country and create real questions as to both his intelligence and his mental stability.

Happy Easter indeed!

PWS

04-01-18

FEDERAL COURTS DELIVER ANOTHER BIG HIT TO ADMINISTRATION SCOFFLAWS ON IMMIGRATION: Attempt To Violate Detainee’s Constitutional Right To Abortion Thwarted!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/us-judge-orders-government-to-allow-abortion-access-to-detained-immigrant-teens/2018/03/30/19e9fcf8-3128-11e8-94fa-32d48460b955_story.html

Ann E. Marimow, Spencer S. Hsu and Maria Sacchetti report for the Washington Post:

A federal judge issued a nationwide order temporarily preventing the government from blocking access to abortion services and counseling for teens detained in immigration custody, saying current administration policy and practices probably are unconstitutional.

The order came in a case brought last fall on behalf of a Central American girl in a government-funded shelter that set off a national debate over the constitutional rights of such undocumented teens to terminate their pregnancies.

The late Friday ruling, by U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of Washington, allowed the case to proceed as a class action on behalf of any other teens who have crossed the border illegally and while in federal custody may want to seek abortion services. In filings, the U.S. government acknowledged there were at least 420 pregnant unaccompanied minors in custody in 2017, including 18 who requested abortions.

The Trump administration has refused to “facilitate” such procedures for pregnant teenagers traveling alone on the grounds that they had the option to voluntarily return to their home countries or to find private sponsors in the United States to assist them in obtaining procedures.

The policy position marked a departure from that of the Obama administration, whose Office of Refugee Resettlement did not block immigrants in U.S. custody from having abortions at their own expense, and paid for services for teens in cases of rape, incest or a threat to the woman’s life.

In her 28-page opinion, Chutkan, a 2014 Obama appointee, said the change in policy posed irreparable harm to pregnant teens, writing that “ORR’s absolute veto nullifies a UC’s right to make her own reproductive choices,” referring to unaccompanied children.

“The court concludes that ORR’s policies and practices infringe on female UC’s constitutional rights by effectively prohibiting them from ‘making the ultimate decision’ on whether or not to continue their pregnancy prior to viability — a quintessential undue burden,” the judge wrote.

A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately comment on the ruling.

The American Civil Liberties Union, representing the teens, expressed relief at the court action.

“The Trump administration’s cruel policy of blocking young immigrant women in federal custody from accessing abortion is a blatant abuse of power,” Brigitte Amiri, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a statement. “With today’s rulings, we are one step closer to ending this extreme policy once and for all and securing justice for all of these young women.”

[Trump official blocked a teen’s abortion, calling it ‘violence against an innocent life’]

In all, four pregnant teens in custody have asked Chutkan to force the administration to stop blocking access to abortion services. The initial case involving the teen in Texas is still pending in the Supreme Court after the Justice Department took the unusual step of asking the justices to consider disciplining the teen’s lawyers.

[Trump administration suggests possibility of disciplinary action against ACLU lawyers in abortion case]

Abortion rights advocates and some Democrats in Congress have called for the firing of E. Scott Lloyd, the head of the refugee resettlement office within the Department of Health and Human Services. Court records show that Lloyd has personally intervened to try to block abortion services.

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Read the full article at the above link.

Hard to figure out why guys like E. Scott Lloyd and Jeff Sessions shouldn’t be both 1) fired, and 2) held personally liable under Bivens for knowing and intentional violations of constitutional rights.

PWS

03-31-18

JOSHUA MATZ IN WASHPOST: The Litigating Strategy Of Unrelenting Animus – Will It Eventually Win For The Trumpsters, Even While Destroying Our Legal System?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/getting-deja-vu-on-trumps-transgender-ban-youre-not-alone/2018/03/27/4e78091e-312e-11e8-8bdd-cdb33a5eef83_story.html

By Joshua Matz March 27 at 7:14 PM

Joshua Matz is a constitutional lawyer based in the District. He is also the publisher of the legal analysis blog Take Care.

President Trump is hard at work making animus the law of the land. Justice Department lawyers revealed his latest effort Friday night, announcing a revised plan to exclude nearly all transgender soldiers from the armed forces.

As many commentators have observed, the reasoning offered to support Trump’s policy is riddled with empirical errors and anti-trans stereotypes. It comes nowhere close to disproving the comprehensive study in 2016 that recommended allowing transgender people to serve openly. Like so many other missives from this White House, it makes only a token effort to conceal the disdain and disgust that underlie it.

Trump’s original “transgender ban” was blocked by four federal courts. After two of those rulings were affirmed on appeal, the administration decided against seeking Supreme Court review. It’s therefore safe to assume that Trump’s latest order will not go into effect unless it survives constitutional challenges.

And in thinking about that litigation, it’s hard to escape a feeling of deja vu. A little more than 14 months into Trump’s presidency, a pattern has emerged in cases challenging some of his most despicable decisions.

. . . .

It remains to be seen when and where these arguments will succeed. As a logical matter, there must be some limits. Evidence that Trump originally acted with impermissible motives cannot (and should not) permanently preclude him from making policy.

But that isn’t the situation we confront. Trump has made no effort whatsoever to dispel or deny the aura of animus that envelops so many of his orders. To the contrary, he and his advisers have leaned into the hate. With each passing day, it spreads like a poison.

We thus live in a strange new world, where bigots serve openly and soldiers are forced into closets.

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Go on over to the WashPost at the link for the complete article.

The problem, as noted by Matz, is that our system isn’t designed to deal with unremitting hate and bias from it’s most active, and supposedly most responsible, litigant, the U.S. Government. Usually, after a few “warning shots across the bow,” the Executive gets the picture and changes strategies.

But, led by White Nationalists like Trump and Sessions, this Administration simply “doubles down” on thinly disguised hate and bias motivated policies. At some point, the Article III courts are likely to become both frustrated and exhausted. By continuing to “knock down” bias-based policies and actions, the Article IIIs become part of the political fray, which makes them uncomfortable. Perhaps at that point, they will just start giving Trump & Co. “free passes.” Indeed, some Federal Courts, including perhaps the Supremes, already appear prepared to “punt” on the daily dose of legally questionable and indecent legal positions spewed forth by this Administration.

PWS

03-29-18

THE “BIG NAME” CLIENT NO LAWYER WANTS!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-another-blow-to-trumps-efforts-to-combat-russia-probe-digenova-will-no-longer-join-legal-team/2018/03/25/8ac8c8d2-3038-11e8-94fa-32d48460b955_story.html

Josh Dawsey, Carol D. Leonnig and Rosalind S. Helderman report in WashPost:

President Trump’s legal team reversed course Sunday, announcing that a lawyer slated to join the attorneys handling the response to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation will not come on board after all, the latest sign of disarray for Trump’s legal strategy.

The development came three days after John Dowd, who had been Trump’s top attorney handling the Russia inquiry, resigned amid strategy disputes with the president.

Trump is now left, at least temporarily, without a traditional criminal defense attorney as Mueller’s team appears to be entering a critical phase in its investigation into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election and whether the president’s campaign cooperated with Russia in this effort.

Joseph diGenova, the lawyer Trump wanted to replace Dowd, has often stridently defended the president on Fox News Channel and cast the Mueller probe as a conspiracy against him. Trump enjoyed the TV appearances and wanted diGenova on his team even though he did not know him, officials say.

But in a statement on Sunday, a spokesman for Trump’s legal team said both diGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing, who is also a lawyer, would not be working on the Russia probe because clients they are representing in connection with the investigation posed conflicts of interest.

One of President Trump’s personal attorneys, John Dowd, resigned on March 22, amid a shake-up of the president’s legal team for the Russia investigation. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

“The President is disappointed that conflicts prevent Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing from joining his Special Counsel legal team,” Jay Sekulow, counsel to Trump, said in the statement. “However, those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the President in other legal matters. The President looks forward to working with them.”

[Trump has trouble finding attorneys as top Russia probe lawyer leaves legal team]

The unraveling of the president’s legal team has left his advisers concerned. People familiar with the situation said the president has been counseled by friends that he needs to find a new lawyer to quarterback his team, and efforts are underway by people close to Trump to hire a new lawyer.

Before his resignation Thursday, Dowd had been Trump’s main point of contact with Mueller’s office and had been helping to negotiate the terms for an interview between the president and the special counsel’s team as it examines whether Trump obstructed justice by allegedly seeking to shut down the investigation, which was being conducted by the FBI until Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey in May. Mueller was then appointed special counsel by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.

Trump’s legal effort is now led by Sekulow, a conservative attorney and radio host who has concentrated on constitutional issues, and assisted by Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer paid by taxpayers to represent the institution of the presidency rather than Trump personally. Cobb, too, has occasionally drawn the president’s ire, people familiar with the team have said.

A number of white-collar attorneys in Washington said the president has been unable to attract top-flight talent as he looks to overhaul his legal team, with major firms fearful that an affiliation with Trump and the Russia case could impact their ability to attract other clients and hire new lawyers.

Trump has recently been relying on Marc E. Kasowitz, who led his legal team until this summer and has represented Trump in several cases over the years. Kasowitz and Trump clashed over a number of issues, including Kasowitz’s belief that Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a top White House aide, needed to leave the administration because of the potential legal problems he faced due to the probe and the potential problems they could cause Trump. After Dowd’s hiring, Kasowitz took a diminished role in handling the case.

Ultimately, said one person close to Trump’s legal team, “He’s his own lawyer. Always has been and always will be.”

The person added: “You know what they say about a ‘lawyer’ who has himself as a client.”

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

Read the entire article at the link.

“A lawyer who represents him or herself has a fool for a client.”

PWS

03-26-18

THE TRUMP GOP “LATINO STRATEGY” – Combination Of White Nationalism, Racism, Lies, Cruelty, Insults, Taunts, Scapegoating, Demeaning, Abusing, Prosecuting, & Deporting, Along With a Big Dose Of “Gonzo Apocalypo” Will Make ‘Em Love Us! — Not So Much!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/03/24/trump-to-latinos-the-gop-supports-you-more-than-democrats-but-latinos-arent-so-sure/?utm_term=.fde5862826b7

Eugene Scott writes in the Washington Post:

“. . . .

But other political strategists aren’t sure that many Latino voters will be able to get past the messages they have heard from Trump and some GOP leaders related to DACA, misleading stats about MS-13-related gang violence and other issues.

“A whole generation of minority voters is essentially hearing the GOP tell them, ‘We don’t like you,’ ” Doug Heye, a former communications director for the Republican National Committee, previously told The Washington Post. “That might not have sunk the GOP against a flawed candidate like Hillary Clinton, but the demographics are moving into a direction where this will be political suicide.”

Unless things change significantly — as in the president and Congress proposing policies that Latino voters consider important — the GOP could continue to push voters away.”

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

Read the complete article at the link.

The Trump GOP’s program is doubly insulting. While the Dems undoubtedly have both under-appreciated Latino voters and grossly underperformed on their issues, there is a huge difference between ineffectiveness and race-based maliciousness which has become part of the “Trump/GOP Brand.” And, contrary to the Trumpsters’ blather, Latinos are more than smart enough to figure out the difference and where their real interests reside.

PWS

03-25-18

INSIDE THE GATHERING STORM: Making America Porny Again: Daniels Says Skill Set From Adult Entertainment Career Gives Her A Leg Up In Dealing With Trump!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-eve-of-60-minutes-interview-stormy-daniels-says-working-in-porn-helped-prepare-her-for-public-scrutiny/2018/03/24/b1555594-2ea6-11e8-8ad6-fbc50284fce8_story.html

Emma Brown & Frances Stead Sellers report for WashPost:

Stormy Daniels said Saturday that her work in the porn industry has helped her prepare for the international attention she faces on the eve of a much-anticipated television interview about her alleged affair with Donald Trump and the hush money she says she received to keep it quiet.

“Being in the adult industry, I’ve developed a thick skin and maybe a little bit of a dark sense of humor,” she told The Washington Post. “But nothing could truly prepare someone for this.”

Daniels is scheduled to be the star attraction of the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes” on Sunday evening, a broadcast that caps a two-week media blitz by her attorney, Michael Avenatti. As Daniels’s image and story have become 24/7 fodder for cable news shows, Avenatti has hinted repeatedly that there are more details yet to come out — including in a tweet Friday suggesting that he has a DVD with new information.

In a brief interview Saturday evening, with Avenatti on the line, Daniels sounded upbeat, even as she acknowledged that the media circus she’s attracted has changed her day-to-day life as a wife, mother and adult-film director.

“Without a doubt it’s cutting into my horse show time,” said Daniels, who is an avid equestrian. “And time with friends.”

. . . .

Daniels told The Post on Saturday that she’s been the target of hatred on social media in recent weeks. But she said she also has been overwhelmed by an outpouring of support. When somebody recently accused her of being a liar on Twitter, she said, she received a flood of messages with hashtags like #Ibelieveyou and #teamstormy.

“I didn’t do this to get any sort of approval from anyone or recognition,” she said. “I simply wanted to tell my personal truth and defend myself.”

. . . .

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Go on over to WashPost at the above link for the complete article by Emma and Frances.

So far, the Stormster has outfoxed the Trumpster at ever turn. Which always brings me back to the same question: How did a smart, multi-talented, personable, on the ball individual like Daniels/Clifford get mixed up with a creep like Trump in the first place?

Tune in to “60 Minutes” tonight and maybe you’ll find out!

PWS

03-25-18

TRUMPSTERS’ WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION POLICIES HURT SENIORS: No, There Was No Legal Requirement To Terminate TPS — It Was Just A Combination Of Disingenuousness, Stupidity, Racism, & Plain Cruelty!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/as-trump-targets-immigrants-elderly-and-others-brace-to-lose-caregivers/2018/03/24/72d5a0d0-2d3e-11e8-8ad6-fbc50284fce8_story.html

Melissa Bailey reports for Kaiser Health News in the Washing gton Post:

BOSTON — The two women have been together since 2011, a 96-year-old originally from Italy and a Haitian immigrant who has helped her remain in her home — giving her showers, changing her clothes, taking her to her favorite parks and discount grocery stores.

“Hello, bella,” Nirva greets Isolina Dicenso, using the Italian word for “beautiful.”

“Hi, baby,” Dicenso replies.

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But changes to federal immigration policy are putting both at risk. Haitian caregivers like Nirva, who got temporary permission to stay in the United States after the 2010 earthquake destroyed much of their homeland, now face a July 22, 2019 deadline for returning. If they and tens of thousands of other immigrants with similar jobs and tenuous legal status are forced to leave the country, Americans living with disabilities, serious illness or, like Dicenso, the frailties of old age could find themselves with few options besides nursing homes.

And many of those facilities could themselves be caught short of staff, at a time when more of the country’s aging baby boom generation could need care.

The situation reflects the crosscurrents that often roil immigration debates, with a central question being how many Americans are willing to fill the arduous, low-pay positions that immigrants often work. The expected fallout offers a glimpse into how such policy changes under President Trump will affect older Americans nationwide, especially those in large cities.

Some 59,000 Haitians live in the United States under temporary protected status (TPS), a humanitarian program that has given them permission to live and work in this country since the earthquake. Many are nursing assistants, home health aides and personal care attendants — the trio of jobs that often defines direct-care workers.

The Trump administration decided last November to curtail that protection, saying the island no longer faced the same adverse conditions and giving the immigrants until mid-2019 to leave or face deportation. In Boston, the city with the nation’s third-highest Haitian population, the action has prompted panic from TPS holders and pleas from health-care agencies that rely on their labor.

The decision “will have a devastating impact on the ability of skilled nursing facilities to provide quality care to frail and disabled residents,” Tara Gregorio, president of the Massachusetts Senior Care Association, warned in a letter published late last year in the Boston Globe. Nursing facilities in the state, which already are grappling with a shortage of several thousand workers, employ about 4,300 Haitians, according to Gregorio.

Nationwide, 1 in 4 direct-care workers are immigrants, said Robert Espinoza, vice president of policy at the New York-based Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute.

It’s not clear how many of those workers rely on the TPS program, but the Institute calculates that there are 34,600 who are non-U.S. citizens from Haiti, Nicaragua (for which TPS will end in January), El Salvador (in September 2019) and Honduras (in July, unless the Trump administration decides to renew protected status for individuals from this country). TPS decisions cannot legally take economic considerations into account, a Department of Homeland Security official said.

In addition, another 11,000 workers come from countries affected by Trump’s travel ban, primarily from Somalia and Iran, and about 69,800 are non-U.S. citizens from Mexico, according to the Institute.

Even immigrants with secure legal status may be affected when family members are deported, Espinoza noted: Under Trump, noncriminal immigration arrests have doubled. The “totality of the anti-immigrant climate” threatens the stability of the workforce — and “the ability of older people and people with disabilities to access home health care,” he said.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which supports more restrictive immigration policies, disputes such dire scenarios. Since three-quarters of direct-care workers are U.S. citizens, spokesman David Ray argues, then “these are clearly not ‘jobs that Americans won’t do.’ ” He does the math this way: The country has 6.7 million unemployed people, and if the health-care industry can’t find enough workers to replace those who lose TPS and other protected statuses, “then it needs to take a hard look at its recruiting practices and compensation packages.”

Yet nursing homes in Massachusetts are already losing immigrant workers who have left the country in fear, because of the White House’s immigration proposals and public remarks , according to Gregorio. Nationally, thousands of Haitians have fled to Canada.

“What people don’t seem to understand is that people from other countries really are the backbone of long-term care,” said Sister Jacquelyn McCarthy, chief executive of Bethany Health Care Center in Framingham, Mass., which runs a nursing home with 170 patients. She has eight Haitian and Salvadoran workers with TPS, mostly certified nursing assistants, who show up reliably for 4:30 a.m. shifts and never call out sick, she said. She already has six CNA vacancies and can’t afford to lose more, she said.

“There aren’t people to replace them if they should all be deported,” McCarthy said.

Nirva, who asked that she be identified only by her first name, works 70 hours a week taking care of senior citizens, sick and disabled patients. She started working as a CNA shortly after she arrived in Boston in March 2010 with her two sons.

She said she chose this work because of her harrowing experience in the earthquake, which destroyed her home and killed hundreds of thousands, including her cousin and nephew. After the disaster, she walked 15 miles with her sister, a nurse, to a Red Cross station to try to help survivors. When she got there, she recounted, the guards wouldn’t let her in because she wasn’t a nurse.

“So, when I came here — I feel, people’s life is very important,” she said. But at first, caring for elderly patients was difficult. “At the beginning, it was very tough for me,” she acknowledged, especially “when I have to clean their incontinence. . . . Some of them, they have dementia, they are fighting. They insult you. You have to be very compassionate to do this job.”

Nirva, 46, works with a soft voice, a bubbling laugh and disarming modesty. She says her faith in God — and a need to pay the bills to support her sons, now in high school and college — help her get through each week.

She started caring for Dicenso in her Boston home as the older woman recovered from surgery in 2011. With support from Nirva, another in-home aide and her daughter, Dicenso has been able to continue living alone. She now sees Nirva once a week for walks, lunch outings and shopping runs. The two have grown close, bonding in part over their Catholic faith. At home, Dicenso proudly displays a bedspread that Nirva gave her, emblazoned with the word LOVE.

Nirva also fills three shifts a week at a chiropractor’s office as a medical assistant. Five nights a week, she does an overnight shift at a Boston rehabilitation center.

The Trump administration’s immigration restrictions may exacerbate a serious shortage of direct-care workers, warns Paul Osterman, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. He forecasts a national shortfall of 151,000 workers by 2030 and of 355,000 workers by 2040. If immigrants lose their work permits, the gap would widen further.

“People aren’t going to be able to have quality care,” he said. “They’re not going to be able to stay at home.”

Angelina Di Pietro, Dicenso’s daughter, worries about who could help her mother if Nirva can’t. “There’s not a lot of people in this country who would take care of the elderly,” she said. “Taking care of the elderly is a hard job.”

“Nirva, pray to God they let you stay,” said Dicenso, sitting in her living-room armchair after a long walk and ravioli lunch. “What would I do without you?”

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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

Restrictionist myths:

Health care workers are unskilled;
At virtually 100% employment, there are other American workers to take these jobs;
There wasn’t a rational basis for continuing Haitian TPS;
There is a legal prohibition on taking humanitarian factors and US interests into account in making discretionary, unreviewable TPS determinations;
That legal requirements are a factor in the actions of the Trump Administration (the most lawless and dishonest Administration in US history).

What will happen when xenophobes like David Ray of FAIR need help in their old age? Will they will get the benefit of the qualified, compassionate care that they would deny the rest of us? Or, will they be cared for by “anybody off the street” as they propose for others?

PWS

03-24-18

ANOTHER WASHPOST LEAD EDITORIAL RIPS CRUEL, INHUMANE, ADMINISTRATION POLICIES ON SEPARATING CHILDREN – In Plain Terms, Our Government Is Engaging in Child Abuse!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dhs-keeps-separating-kids-from-their-parents–but-officials-wont-say-why-or-how-often/2018/03/20/0c7b3452-2bb4-11e8-8ad6-fbc50284fce8_story.html?utm_term=.8fe0d0d7b420

DHS keeps separating kids from their parents — but officials won’t say why or how often

Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters in Washington. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

By Editorial Board March 20 at 7:31 PM

LAST FRIDAY night, a 7-year-old Congolese girl was reunited with her mother in Chicago, four months after immigration agents of the Department of Homeland Security separated them for no defensible reason. When the little girl, known in court filings as S.S., was delivered by a case worker to her mom, the two collapsed to the floor, clutching each other and sobbing. According to the mother’s lawyer, who was in the room, S.S., overwhelmed, cried for the longest time.

That sounds like a happy ending to a horrific story. In fact, according to immigrant advocates, such separations are happening with increasingly frequency — with no credible justification.

In the case of S.S. and her mother, known in court filings as Ms. L., the trauma visited on a little girl — wrenched from her mother, who was detained in San Diego, and flown nearly 2,000 miles to Chicago — was gratuitous. A U.S. official who interviewed Ms. L. after she crossed the border into California determined she had a reasonable asylum claim based on fear for her life in her native Congo. Despite that, mother and daughter were torn apart on the say-so of an immigration agent, and without explanation.

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A DHS spokesman, Tyler Houlton , says separating children from their parents is justified when paternity or maternity is in doubt, or when it is in a child’s best interest. However, in court filings, officials present no cause for doubt about Ms. L.’s maternity, nor evidence that it was in S.S.’s “best interest” to be taken from her mother last November, when she was 6 years old.

Rather, in court filings, an official from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a DHS agency, lists some documentary discrepancies on Ms. L.’s part, in which officials in Angola, Panama and Colombia recorded different versions of her name. Never mind the translation problems she may have encountered in Latin America as a speaker of Lingala, a language spoken only in central Africa.

Even if Ms. L. fudged her identity, how would that justify taking away her child? And if there were doubts about Ms. L.’s maternity, why didn’t ICE request a DNA test at the outset, before sundering mother and child? When a DNA test was finally done — four months later — it immediately established Ms. L.’s maternity.

Immigrant advocates say DHS has separated children from immigrant parents scores of times in recent months, perhaps to deter other asylum seekers by trying to convince them the United States is even more cruel than their native countries. Officials at DHS have floated that idea publicly in the past year. They insist it is not their policy. However, they also have declined to provide statistics showing the frequency of separations.

Responding to a class-action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of parents separated from their children, ICE insists it has done nothing so outrageous that it “shocks the conscience” — a Supreme Court standard for measuring the denial of due-process rights.

Here’s a question for Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen: If it does not “shock the conscience” to traumatize a little girl by removing her from her mother for four months in a land where she knows no one and speaks no English, what does “shock the conscience”?

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

Stop the Trump Administration’s program of turning America into a reviled human rights abuser! What about “Gonzo Apocalyto’s” policies of turning our Immigration Courts into “enforcement deterrents” rather than protectors of fairness and Due Process?

Join the New Due Process Army now! Resist in the “real’ courts. Vote Trump, his abusers, and his enablers out of office!

Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all of us. Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-21-18

Michelle Brané in WASHPOST: “Separating refugee children from their parents is cruel”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/separating-refugee-children-from-their-parents-is-cruel/2018/03/18/d3e6b286-293f-11e8-a227-fd2b009466bc_story.html

March 18

I was glad to see the March 12 editorial “Torn asunder seeking asylum,” which called attention to the horrific practice of separating families seeking asylum. I can offer broader context to the issue of family separation. The Women’s Refugee Commission’s Migrant Rights and Justice Program has been monitoring this issue for many years.Primarily, the mother and child in the editorial should never have been separated. The increasingly common practice of separating asylum-seeker children from their parents is often done for no reason other than to deter the family from seeking protection. The Department of Homeland Security has publicly stated deterrence as the intended outcome, and its suggestion now that it is doing so to protect children is misleading and shameful.This is outrageous, as well as cruel, costly and illegal. What’s more, this practice is increasing. My organization is aware of hundreds of similar cases. We hope that Homeland Security’s decision to release the mother, and reunite her with her child, represents a move away from this practice and back toward respect for parents’ and children’s right to seek asylum.

Michelle Brané, Washington

The writer is director of the
Migrant Rights and Justice Program at the Women’s Refugee Commission

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

Well said, Michelle!

Compare the intelligence, humanity, and comprehensive knowledge of a “True American Hero” like Michelle with some of the ignorant, biased, immoral, and mean-spirited rantings of those who pass for “leaders” of our country these days. We have put the wrong people in power; but, there’s still time to correct the mistake before it’s too late!

PWS

03-21-18

WASHPOST: MICHAEL E. MILLER & JON GERBERG REPORT — Nation Of Shame — How The Trump Administration Stomps On The Human Rights Of The Most Vulnerable Refugees Every Day!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/wheres-mommy-a-family-fled-death-threats-only-to-face-separation-at-the-border/2018/03/18/94e227ea-2675-11e8-874b-d517e912f125_story.html

Miller & Gerberg report:

“HOUSTON— They had come so far together, almost 3,000 miles across three countries and three borders: a mother with three children, fleeing a gang in El Salvador that had tried to kill her teenage son.

But now, in a frigid Border Patrol facility in Arizona where they were seeking asylum, Silvana Bermudez was told she had to say goodbye.

Her kids were being taken from her.

She handed her sleeping preschooler to her oldest, a 16-year-old with a whisper of a mustache whose life had been baseball and anime until a gun was pointed at his head.

“My love, take care of your little brother,” she told him on Dec. 17.

“Bye, Mommy,” said her 11-year-old daughter, sobbing.

And then her children were gone.

Once a rarity, family separations at the border have soared under President Trump, according to advocacy groups and immigration lawyers.

The administration first put forth the idea a year ago, when John F. Kelly, then secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said he was considering separating parents from their children as a deterrent to illegal immigration.

Kelly, now the White House chief of staff, quickly walked back his comments after they triggered public outrage, and the controversy ebbed as illegal immigration plunged to historic lows.

But when border apprehensions began to rise again late last year, so, too, did reports of children being stripped from their parents by Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

“Separating children from their parents is unconscionable and contradicts the most basic of American family values,” 71 Democratic lawmakers said in a letter to DHS in February.

The separation of a Congolese mother from her 7-year-old daughter generated headlines and spurred a class-action lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union this month.

“We are hearing about hundreds of families,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.

“DHS does not currently have a policy of separating women and children,” according to an agency statement released this month, but retains the authority to do so in certain circumstances, “particularly to protect a child from potential smuggling and trafficking activities.”

“The truth is that whether they call it a policy or not, they are doing it,” Gelernt said.

For Silvana’s children, the separation was bewildering and frightening.

They had no idea where their mother was. Did their father, who had fled to the United States months earlier, know where they were? They were told they’d join their family in a few days, but days turned into weeks.

Surrounded by strangers in a strange place, they wondered: Would they ever see their parents again?

‘My soul left me’

The family’s crisis began a year ago, when Silvana’s husband, Yulio Bermudez, refused to help MS-13 members in San Salvador escape from police in his taxi. The gang beat him and threatened to kill him.

Silvana Bermudez weeps on March 16 as she watches a video of her children during their separation. (Michael Stravato/For The Washington Post)

Yulio fled north and crossed illegally into Texas, where the 34-year-old claimed asylum and eventually joined relatives.

Then one night in November, Silvana sent her oldest son — Yulio’s stepson — to a pupuseria down the block. As he was walking, the teenager saw a car pull up. A member of MS-13’s rival, the 18th Street gang, peppered the restaurant with gunfire.

The gang member then turned his gun on the teen, who was frozen with fear. But when he pulled the trigger, there was only the click of an empty chamber.

“Must be your lucky day,” the gangster said and sped off.

[‘People here live in fear’: MS-13 menaces a community seven miles from the White House]

Silvana, 33, and her son reported the incident to police, also describing Yulio’s run-in with MS-13. Within days, MS-13 members showed up to their door to tell Silvana she’d pay for snitching, she would later tell U.S. immigration officials. And when the 18th Street member saw her in the street, he pointed his finger at her like a gun.

“It was a clear sign that he was on to us and he wanted to hurt me and my child,” she said in immigration court filings.

Relatives drove Silvana and her kids to the border with Guatemala, where they caught the first of many buses on their way to America.

When they arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border several days later, Silvana and her children followed a group of migrants through the night to a tall brick wall.

“When I saw they were jumping a wall, I said, ‘Oh my God, where do I go from here?’ ” Silvana recalled in an interview. But it was too late to turn back, so she ushered her daughter forward and watched as the 11-year-old disappeared over the wall. Then she handed up her 3-year-old.

“My soul left me, because the wall was very high,” she recalled. Out of sight on the other side of the wall, migrants caught the boy using a blanket.

They had been walking through the desert for a few minutes when they were caught and taken to a “hielera,” or ice box, the nickname for the cold, barren Border Patrol facilities along the frontier where detained migrants sleep dozens to a room.

There, Silvana was told she was being separated from her kids because she had tried to enter the country illegally a decade earlier. Border Patrol agents said she would be charged with “illegal reentry” — a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison — and that her children could not join her in court, she recalled later. (The Washington Post is not naming the children because of the family’s fears about their safety.)

Instead, the kids were loaded onto a van and driven for four hours. As his baby brother slept in his arms, the 16-year-old could hear his sister crying out for their mom. He tried to comfort her, but a metal divider stood between them.

[She fought to keep immigrants from being deported. Now she faces the same fate.]

The desert gave way to neighborhoods, and the 11-year-old said she began to believe they were being taken to their dad’s house. When the van finally stopped in front of a large building on the outskirts of Phoenix, she thought: My dad lives in a hotel?

But the building wasn’t a hotel. It was La Hacienda del Sol, one of dozens of shelters around the country for unaccompanied minors. And it was surrounded by a six-foot fence.

Silvana’s sons were given bunk beds in a room with several other boys. The windows were equipped with alarms, which often went off during the night. Each evening, the 16-year-old would lie awake worrying about their fate.

And each morning, the 3-year-old would wake up and ask the same question.

“Where’s Mommy?”

“She had to go to work,” his older brother would say. “She had to go shopping.”

Silvana’s Bermudez’s 3-year-old son kept asking, “Where’s Mommy?” during their long separation. (Michael E Miller/The Washington Post)

The boys had each other, but their sister was by herself in a wing for girls. They only saw her at meals and for a few hours in the evening, when they would play Battleship or Connect 4.

Silvana had given her oldest son a scrap of paper with his stepdad’s phone number on it. But he’d lost it. There was no Internet at the shelter, and when the teen asked to access Facebook to contact Yulio, he said he was told he’d have to make an official request.

Days passed as the children waited for Yulio or Silvana to find them. They took classes, spoke to therapists and received vaccinations. All the while, there was a constant churn of children around them. They would make new friends, only to lose them a few days later, writing their names in notebooks in the hopes of one day re-connecting.

At one point, the 11-year-old’s only roommate was a 4-year-old. Shelter employees asked her to help care for the girl by warming up her bottle and putting her to sleep.

“She was alone,” Silvana’s daughter said. “Without her mom. Without anyone.”

Christmas arrived without word from their parents. Instead of dinner with family and fireworks in the streets of San Salvador, there was pizza and a shelter employee dressed as Santa Claus dispensing winter hats and plastic yo-yos. When Silvana’s daughter began shimmying to Latin music like she had in her dance troupe in El Salvador, she was told to tone it down. And a no-touching rule meant she wasn’t allowed to hug her older brother, even when the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve.

The 11-year-old began to despair.

“At first I thought it’d only be a few days before I saw my dad,” she recalled. “But after a month there, I was going crazy, thinking, When? When? When?”

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

Go to the link to read the rest of the article.

This story should be appalling to every American on two levels. First, the unnecessarily cruel policy of separating families, which has frequently been in the news lately.

But, additionally, these folks are refugees who should be granted protection under U.S laws. However, because of unrealistically restrictive politically influenced decisions by the “captive” Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) in the U.S. Department of Justice, and undue deference given to BIA by the Federal Courts under the so-called “Chevron doctrine,” individuals like this basically face a “crap shoot” as to whether protection will in fact be granted.

With a good lawyer, time to prepare and document their case, the right U.S. Immigration Judge, the right BIA “appellate panel,” and the right Court of Appeals panel, protection can be granted under the law in these cases. But, because there are no appointed counsel in Immigration Court cases, most families like this don’t get the top flight legal help that they need to understand the unduly and intentionally overcomplicated law and prepare a winning case. Moreover, too many Immigration Judges at both the trial and appellate levels are biased against or unreceptive to asylum cases from the so-called “Northern Triangle” involving gang violence. Some Circuit Court of Appeals panels care and take the time to carefully review BIA findings; others view their “Ivory Tower Sinecures” as an excuse to merely “rubber stamp” the BIA result without giving it much, if any, apparent thought. And this was happening before the Trump Administration took over.

Now, with the biased, White Nationalist, anti-asylum, restrictionist Jeff Sessions actually in charge of our Immigration Courts it’s basically “open season” on the most vulnerable asylum seekers. Sessions rapidly is moving to make the entire U.S. asylum process basically a “Death Train” with the Immigration Courts and the BIA as mere “whistle stops on the deportation railway.”

Outrageously and shamelessly, Sessions has moved to make it difficult or impossible for individuals to obtain counsel by detaining them in out-of-the-way locations specifically selected for lack of availability of legal services and harsh conditions; separated families to demoralize, punish, and terrorize applicants; cranked up the pressure on already overburdened U.S. Immigration Judges in a system already collapsing under 670,000 pending cases to turn out more mindless removal orders; limited the rights of asylum applicants to full hearings — for all practical purposes a “death sentence” for the majority of those who are unrepresented; and indicated an intention to strip particularly vulnerable women, children, gays, and other asylum applicants similar to this family of the bulk of the already merger substantive legal protections they now possess.

Yes, Sessions’s evil and idiotic plan — which reverses decades of settled administrative precedents — is likely to tie up the Federal Courts for years if not generations. But, not everyone in the position of these families has the time, resources, and know how to navigate the Courts of Appeals to obtain justice. That’s particularly true when folks are held in detention in deliberately substandard conditions.

Because Congressional Republicans have long since abandoned any pretensions to human decency or to care about the Constitutional and statutory rights of migrants, Sessions is running roughshod over the laws, the Constitution, and human rights, and wasting taxpayer money by grossly mismanaging the Immigration Courts, without any meaningful oversight whatsoever.

No, folks like the Bermudez family aren’t “fraudsters,” “terrorists,” “frivolous filers,” “economic refugees,” “job stealers,” “system abusers,” “dangerous criminals,” “gangsters” or any of the other litany of false and derogatory terms that Sessions and his ilk intentionally and disingenuously use to describe refugees and asylum seekers. They are frightened, yet courageous, human beings fighting for their legal rights and their very lives in a system already intentionally and unfairly stacked against them.

Through articles like this and court cases, we are making a record of the human rights abuses of Sessions and the rest of the Trump Administration. The “New Due Process Army” will continue to fight injustice throughout our country! For those supporting, enabling, or consciously ignoring this Administration’s human rights atrocities, history will be the judge. Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-20-19

ANOTHER DAY IN THE B.R.A. — Trump Mimics Third World Tyrants In Attacks On McCabe, FBI, Mueller Investigation, & Our Justice System!

B.R.A. = “Banana Republic of America”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/were-not-sure-why-mccabe-was-fired-but-trumps-tweet-suggests-the-worst/2018/03/17/0687c78a-2a07-11e8-874b-d517e912f125_story.html

The Washington Post Editorial Board writes:

“MORE THAN the details of the case, President Trump’s tweet early Saturday celebrating the firing of former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe is what stands out: a marquee of bullying and unseemly behavior by a president. Mr. Trump acts like a nasty, small-minded despot, not the leader of a democracy more than two centuries old in which rule of law is a sturdy pillar. If there is doubt that the timing of Mr. McCabe’s dismissal was driven by political vengeance, Mr. Trump does everything he can to prove the worst with his own sordid words.

This is the language of a banana republic. In nations without a strong democratic foundation, tyrants cling to power by belittling perceived enemies and insulting and coopting other institutions, such as a free press, law enforcement and the military, coercing them into subservience. Just look around the world at practices today in Azerbaijan, Cambodia and Turkey, to name a few. The banana republic playbook has no place in the United States, not in a town hall, not in a statehouse, least of all in the Oval Office.

Mr. McCabe is a 21-year-veteran of the FBI and served as deputy director under James B. Comey, whom Mr. Trump fired earlier. A Justice Department inspector general’s report, not yet public, reportedly found that he authorized the disclosure of sensitive information to the media about an investigation involving Hillary Clinton and then misled investigators. He disputes the allegations, noting that he had authority to share the information and corrected what he told investigators. He previously stepped down from the deputy director’s job and was preparing to retire from the FBI on Sunday, which would have assured him of a full federal pension. The rushed timing of the firing on Friday night by Attorney General Jeff Sessions — whose own job security is perpetually threatened by Mr. Trump — robs Mr. McCabe of that full pension.

As Mr. Trump knows, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has been reported to be looking into possible obstruction of justice in the firing of Mr. Comey. Mr. McCabe could be a vital witness in such a prosecution. Now the president has attempted to discredit, and lauded the punishment of, a potential witness against him, an affront to the integrity and independence of law enforcement.

Mr. McCabe’s actions as deputy FBI director are hard to evaluate without release of the inspector general’s report, due out this spring. There will be time to judge him then. What is clear today is that the president jumped on Mr. McCabe with unseemly ferocity, tweeting: “Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI — A great day for Democracy.”

In fact, the hardworking men and women of the FBI, the Justice Department, the intelligence agencies and elsewhere in government come to work every day to uphold the values of a democratic system based on rule of law — a system that is distinguished by the simple principle that everyone is judged fairly, not by grudge or whim, and that no one is above the law, not even the president.”

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

Lest there were any doubt about it, by canning McCabe less than 48 hours before his retirement, Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions cemented his position as a person just as small in heart, soul, character, and integrity as he is in stature.

The irony here is rich: What about Gonzo’s own frequent intentional and rather incredibly claimed “lapses” in candor, whether under oath or not?

PWS

03-19-18

THE UGLY AMERICANS: WASHPOST ARTICLES HIGHLIGHT INTENTIONAL INHUMANITY & CRUELTY OF DHS’S “DETAIN TO DETER” PROGRAM AS ACLU SUES TO HALT THE ABUSES! – Is This The Legacy Of America That YOU Want To Leave?– If Not, Join The NDPA & Fight To Make Our Government Comply With The Due Process Clause Of Our Constitution & To Restore Humane Values!

7d0dc09a-27a4-11e8-bc72-077aa4dab9ef_story.html?utm_term=.e726c83aab19

Why was a 7-year-old separated from her mother for four months? DHS won’t say.

The seal of the Department of Homeland Security. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

By Editorial Board March 15 at 7:23 PM

WHO KNOWS why Homeland Security agents in Southern California forcibly separated a 7-year-old Congolese girl from her mother last fall, flew her 2,000 miles to Chicago, where she was placed at a facility for unaccompanied minors, and kept her there for more than four months? Who knows why the girl, who is credibly reported to have been traumatized, has been permitted to speak with her mother, only recently released from a detention center near San Diego, just a handful of times in the intervening four months? And in the absence of any evidence of wrongdoing by the mother, who presented herself to U.S. officials when she crossed the border from Mexico, who knows why the government has continued to keep parent and child apart?

The Department of Homeland Security has declined to comment on the case of the two asylum seekers, known in court filings as Ms. L and S.S. But a spokesman said in a statement that agents may separate children and adults if they suspect the child may be a human-trafficking victim. “If we are unable to confirm this relationship [between adult and child],” said the spokesman, Tyler Houlton, “we must take steps to protect the child,” including placing her in a facility for unaccompanied children.

In this case, DHS’s effort to establish Ms. L’s guilt by insinuation failed, and its stated concern for the child’s protection and well-being has been exposed as phony. For four months, no testing was performed to establish the woman’s maternity. And when, following a lawsuit filed on their behalf, the two were finally subjected to DNA testing this month, the result was unequivocal: Ms. L is the mother of S.S.

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That finding has been met with silence by DHS. The department, having originally expressed indignation at the idea that it would separate children from their parents for any reason other than the child’s welfare, has been rendered speechless.

U.S. officials who interviewed Ms. L when she crossed the border made a preliminary finding that she had a plausible claim for asylum, based on her account of having fled what the lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, said was “near certain death” in Congo. Despite that, she was detained until the lawsuit and ensuing publicity prompted her sudden release last week.

In a class-action suit, the ACLU asserts that the Trump administration has separated children from their parents in more than 100 cases, even though the department says it does not “currently” have a policy on the matter. If it seems unthinkable that the administration and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen would carry out a practice so cruel, one likely to inflict long-term harm on children, think again: DHS officials, including Ms. Nielsen’s predecessor, John F. Kelly, now the White House chief of staff, have said they believe it would be an effective means of deterring asylum seekers.

If DHS has subjected this small girl to trauma as a warning to other asylum seekers, it is an unconscionable means to an end. If that is not the reason, then what is?

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

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/aclu-sues-trump-administration-over-detaining-asylum-seekers/2018/03/15/aea245e2-27a2-11e8-bc72-077aa4dab9ef_story.html?utm_term=.470a39300b74

Here’s the always highly informative and very readable Post immigration reporter Maria Sacchetti with a summary of what the ACLU suit is all about:

“A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington on Thursday alleges the Trump administration is illegally jailing asylum seekers with credible cases for months on end in an attempt to deter them and others from seeking refuge in the United States.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups filed the class-action lawsuit on behalf of nine detained asylum seekers from Haiti, Venezuela and other countries. They are asking a judge to order the administration to follow a 2009 policy that allows officials to release foreigners while they await their immigration court hearings, a process that can take years.

Among the plaintiffs are Ansly Damus, a 41-year-old ethics teacher who said he was attacked by a gang in Haiti that beat him, set his motorcycle ablaze and threatened to kill him for criticizing a politician. He won his asylum case — twice — but has spent 16 months in detention, most recently in Ohio, while the government appeals.

Other plaintiffs are Alexi Montes, an 18-year-old gay man harassed and beaten in Honduras and who has a relative in Virginia; Abelardo Asensio Callol, a 30-year-old software engineer from Cuba who refused to join the Communist Party or rally for the now-deceased Cuban leader Fidel Castro; and, an unnamed father of two from Mexico who said a drug cartel kidnapped his two brothers and threatened to kill him and his family.

All were initially deemed to have had credible stories and are entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge, lawyers said. While awaiting those hearings, they have been jailed for months.

“The fact that we are doing this to people . . . is really outrageous,” said Michael Tan, a New York-based staff attorney for the ACLU. “What they’re doing here is using detention to send a message that asylum seekers need not apply and they’re not welcome here in the United States.”

The legal challenge comes as the Trump administration engineers a wide-ranging review of the nation’s immigration policies and asylum fraud, which it blames in part for a backlog in the immigration courts of more than 600,000 cases, triple the number in 2009.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said last year that the asylum system is being “gamed” by foreigners and “dirty immigration lawyers.” Instead of a lifeline to people in peril, he said, it had become an “easy ticket to illegal entry into the United States.”

The Justice Department has also said it wants to slash the immigration court docket of 600,000 cases in half by 2020.”

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

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

Pretty predictable that there is a tie to Sessions’s bogus attack on vulnerable asylum seekers. He’s concealing how his mismanagement of the U.S. Immigration Courts, promotion of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” and biased legal views are in fact fueling the docket backlog.

Those actively engaged in oppression and covering up their own misdeeds always look for “scapegoats.” And asylum seekers, many of them scared women and children trying to save their lives, who already are treated with disrespect and lack of due process by our Immigration Court system and DHS are an easy target. Targeting the most vulnerable — that’s exactly what bullies and cowards do!

Pretty disgraceful! But, if we all unite behind the efforts of the New Due Process Army and fight for full Due Process for everyone in the United States in our Article III Courts, we can eventually force a stop to this Administration’s human rights abuses, end the “New American Gulag,” and derail the Sessions/DHS White Nationalist restrictionist program!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-16-18

DACA: IS THE ADMINISTRATION ON THE VERGE OF ANOTHER BIG COURT DEFEAT? — US District Judge Bates Signals He Might Order Restart Of Program!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/federal-judge-in-dc-weighs-ordering-administration-to-restart-dreamers-program/2018/03/14/883b5178-27a7-11e8-bc72-077aa4dab9ef_story.html?utm_term=.b70de8a39e92

Spencer Hsu reports in the Washington Post:

“A federal judge said Wednesday that he is considering ordering the Trump administration to restart the “dreamers” program and accept new applications for protection from deportation by undocumented immigrants brought here as children.

Such a ruling by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates in Washington would go further than federal district judges in California and New York have when they issued nationwide injunctions blocking the government’s plan to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, this month.

The injunctions, issued after lawsuits by several states and organizations, require the Department of Homeland Security to continue to accept DACA renewal requests from about 800,000 people in the program but not to process new applications.

Bates spoke near the end of a two-hour-long hearing Wednesday on two lawsuits seeking to overturn the administration’s ending of DACA in cases brought by the NAACP, Microsoft, Princeton University and a student.

The judge’s remarks came as White House officials told key Republican leaders that President Trump is open to cutting a deal in an upcoming spending bill to protect the dreamers in exchange for border-wall funding.

[Trump is open to short-term DACA deal, White House tells GOP leaders]

No appellate court has reviewed the earlier court decisions, and the Supreme Court last month declined to enter the national controversy for now when it turned down a Trump administration request to immediately consider the decisions.

[Supreme Court declines to enter controversy over ‘dreamers’]

In Washington on Wednesday, Bates appeared skeptical of Justice Department arguments that he dismiss the lawsuits because immigration authorities have discretion and do not need a court review when it comes to deciding to halt a “non-enforcement” policy.

Bates said, “You have been unsuccessful in three other courts with this argument, correct?”

“Yes, your honor,” Justice Department trial attorney Brinton Lucas replied.

A federal judge in San Francisco ruled in January that challengers to the administration probably were correct in their contention that ending DACA violated the Administrative Procedure Act, because it is arbitrary and capricious. A federal judge in Brooklyn reached a similar finding in February. Both judges issued injunctions.

[With three months left in medical school, her career may be slipping away]

Justice Department trial attorney Kathryn Davis told Bates that the administration ended the program because of the threat of legal challenges from a coalition of states led by Texas and a belief that the program created in the Obama administration could not be successfully defended in court.

Noting that explanation, Bates then asked why the change was presented to the government as a policy shift and not a legal conclusion by the Homeland Security and Justice departments. Bates questioned that legal conclusion given a 2014 Justice Department decision.

Noting the Washington court’s expertise in federal regulatory law, Bates sounded skeptical about whether issuing another nationwide injunction would be appropriate.

Local Crime & Safety Email Alerts

Breaking news about public safety in and around D.C.

Rather, Bates said it might be better to strike down or vacate DHS’s attempt to end the program — which would oblige the government to continue to accept new DACA applications while the administration decides whether to try again to cancel DACA but with a fuller justification for the change in position.

Davis, the Justice attorney in court, opposed taking that course of action, saying it would create “undue chaos.”

Lindsay C. Harrison and Joseph M. Sellers, the plaintiff’s attorneys, said allowing new applications would not be disruptive because it would simply restore the status quo.”

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

The Administration’s legal problems here start, not surprisingly, with AG Jeff Sessions.

Sessions told then Acting DHS Secretary Elaine Duke that the Obama Administration’s DACA program “an open-ended circumvention of immigration laws was an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the Executive Branch.” Without any meaningful legal analysis, he summarily concluded that the program inevitably would be successfully challenged in Federal Court by some of his White Nationalist cronies serving as state Attorneys General.

The problem is that the DACA program had never been invalidated on legal grounds. The Fifth Circuit’s order invalidating the different although somewhat related “DAPA Program” was affirmed without opinion by an “equally divided Supreme Court” (a decision having no precedential effect).

There certainly was a strong legal basis for defending DACA that was totally ignored by Sessions. This includes a lengthy DOJ Office of Legal Counsel memorandum prepared during the Obama Administration that certainly was more thoughtful and thorough than the “Sessions letter.” Indeed, even the single U.S. District Judge who upheld the Administration’s DACA termination found that the legal issue was one upon which reasonable minds could differ.

So, basically, Sessions was arguing that the Federal Courts should hold that the Executive Branch is legally without authority to exercise so-called “prosecutorial discretion” in immigration cases. That’s facially absurd as a legal proposition, and a stunningly dumb argument for an Executive Branch official to make. This Administration, like all others, exercises large-scale “prosecutorial discretion” daily. How many actions is Scottie “Make Me AG If You Don’t Fire Me First” Pruitt at EPA taking to enforce existing environmental laws and regulations? How’s Ol’ Gonzo himself doing on enforcing those Civil Rights laws to protect minorities? How about the enforcement of those ethics laws applicable to Cabinet members and other Trump politicos?

Realizing the problem, it appears that in defending the Administration’s actions the DOJ lawyers “subtly switched” their argument to say that the Administration had “discretion” to terminate the DACA program. That’s actually a better argument than the one Sessions made to Duke. After all, if the Obama Administration had essentially unreviewable prosecutorial discretion to institute DACA, why can’t the Trump Administration exercise the same prosecutorial discretion negatively to terminate the program?

But, that position also raises some big problems.

First, it requires the Administration to admit, at least inferentially, that DACA was a proper exercise of prosecutorial discretion by the Obama Administration. That’s hard for them to do, since Sessions’s position was based on a bogus White Nationalist political argument and Trump campaign rhetoric that DACA was “unconstitutional” rather than on any careful objective analysis of the law (something that as far as I can tell, Jeff Sessions has never engaged in during his public career).
Second, it ignores the facts of the case. The “Sessions letter” to Duke did not purport to be based on a different “policy determination” regarding DACA. Rather it contained typical unsupported disingenuous Sessions’ pontificating about the law and his duty to uphold it. This is a joke on its face from probably the most “lawless” Attorney General since John Mitchell.
Third, no Federal Court to date has found that this exercise of prosecutorial discretion is totally unreviewable. And, given that almost everybody in America except Jeff Sessions has acknowledged the merit of the “Dreamers” as a group, it’s doubtful that the Administration could come up with even a “minimally rational” reason for terminating the program.

Several weeks ago, Judge Roger Titus of the US District Court in Maryland basically “tossed the Administration a lifeline.” He effectively “re-jiggered” the facts to find that the Sessions letter combined with Duke’s reaction constituted a “reasonable discretionary determination” to terminate DACA in light of the possible legal difficulties it might face in court.

The only problem with Judge Titus’s ruling is that’s not what Sessions and Duke actually did. We should also remember that even in upholding the Administration, Judge Titus basically found that the Administration had probably chosen the least palatable of the policy choices available to it. Hardly a “ringing endorsement,” despite the “favorable spin” put on the ruling by the DOJ.

So, stay tuned! But, don’t be shocked if Judge Bates hands the Administration another DACA defeat — this time one with potentially larger impact since it would require the Administration to allow new DACA registrations, not just adjudicate renewals of existing ones.

PWS

03-16-18

GONZO’S WORLD: ICE SPOKESMAN QUITS AFTER BEING ORDERED TO LIE IN SUPPORT OF SESSIONS/HOMAN FALSE NARRATIVE ON IMMIGRANTS & CRIME — “I quit because I didn’t want to perpetuate misleading facts!”

https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?e=amVubmluZ3MxMkBhb2wuY29t&s=5aa7c521fe1ff62bafaa308e

James Hohmann reports in the Washington Post “Daily 202:”

Jeff Sessions attacked Oakland’s mayor in a speech last week in Sacramento. An ICE spokesman has resigned over what he says were false statements by the attorney general. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP)

— “The San Francisco spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has resigned over what he described as ‘false’ and ‘misleading’ statements made by top-ranking officials, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and ICE Acting Director Thomas D. Homan,”Meagan Flynn reports. “The now-former spokesman, James Schwab, told news outlets late Monday that his resignation stemmed from statements by Homan and Sessions that potentially hundreds of ‘criminal aliens’ evaded ICE during a Northern California raid in February because Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf warned the immigrant community in advance. Schwab said he pushed back on that characterization — but said ICE instructed him to ‘deflect’ questions from the press.”

“I quit because I didn’t want to perpetuate misleading facts,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I asked them to change the information. I told them that the information was wrong, they asked me to deflect, and I didn’t agree with that. Then I took some time and I quit. … I didn’t feel like fabricating the truth to defend ourselves against her actions was the way to go about it.”

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

https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?e=amVubmluZ3MxMkBhb2wuY29t&s=5aa7c521fe1ff62bafaa308e

It’s not like James Schwab and James Hohmann are the only ones calling out Trump & Sessions for their consistent lies and misrepresentations about immigration. As reported by the always amazing Tal Kopan @ CNN last week, California Governor Jerry Brown essentially issued the same warning that you can’t believe much of anything that comes out of our Attorney General’s mouth:

“California Gov. Jerry Brown fired back at Attorney General Jeff Sessions and President Donald Trump on Wednesday after their lawsuit challenging the state’s immigration laws, calling the administration “full of liars” and repeatedly referencing the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US election.

Jeff Sessions takes immigration fight to California, announces lawsuit

The Democratic governor was speaking on the heels of Sessions’ visit to Sacramento to announce a lawsuit against California for its so-called sanctuary policies of non-cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

In slamming Sessions’ appearance as a “political stunt” that was full of “lies” and untruths, Brown needled Sessions personally and his relationship with the President, which is famously fraught.

“I do think this is pure red meat for the base, and I would assume — this is pure speculation — that Jeff thinks Donald will be happier with him and I bet Donald will be tweeting his joy with this stunt,” Brown said.”

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

You can read both Hohmann’s and Tal’s complete articles at the links.

Sadly, the Trump Administration as a whole, and Jeff Sessions in particular, have made lies, misrepresentations, and knowingly false narratives a staple of their tortured and often illegal immigration policies. I think that, rather than “biased Federal Judges” as disingenuously claimed by Sessions, has led to an impressive string of losses for the Administration and the DOJ in the lower Federal Courts on immigration issues.

I predict that the losing has just begun. If and when Sessions follows through on his apparent plan to destroy the U.S. Immigration Court System, literally thousands of cases are likely to be sent back or permanently blocked by legal rulings in the Circuit Courts.

Although Sessions arrogantly claims that a majority of the Supremes are “in the Administration’s pocket” and therefore can be counted on to overrule the Circuits, fact is that the Supremes can’t and won’t take every big immigration case the Government loses. So, Trump and Sessions better get used to “living with defeat.” It’s going to become a way of life, as our immigration and justice systems deteriorate under this Administration’s toxic leadership.

PWS

03-14-18

SHE’S SMART, HARD-WORKING, MULTI-TALENTED, FUNNY, SELF-AWARE, INDEPENDENT, UNAFRAID, & TOLERANT – A SUCCESSFUL SELF-MADE MULTI-AWARD WINNING BUSINESSWOMAN IN A TOUGH FIELD, A SAVVY ENTREPRENEUR, & A LOVING MOM – HE’S A CHILDISH, EGOTISTICAL, SELF-CENTERED, DISHONEST CREEP — So, How Did A Fundamentally Nice Person Like Stormy Daniels Get Mixed Up With Someone Like Donald Trump?

☠☠☠☠☠☠👹👹👹👹👹🤢🤢🤢

WARNING: THESE ARTICLES DEAL WITH A SUPERSTAR OF THE SO-CALLED ADULT ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY AND A SLEAZY REALITY SHOW HAS BEEN/NEVER WAS NAMED DONALD TRUMP. THEY CONTAIN MATERIAL THAT MIGHT NOT BE SUITABLE FOR FAMILY READING AND/OR VIEWING!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/once-silent-stormy-daniels-speaks-loudly-with-lawsuit-targeting-trump/2018/03/10/b2668ec6-23b1-11e8-a589-763893265565_story.html

Beth Reinhard, Emma Brown and Frances Stead Sellers report for the Washington Post:

March 10 Email the author

More than 16 months ago, Stormy Daniels signed a confidentiality agreement that prohibited her from discussing her alleged affair with Donald Trump. Or his business. Or his children. Or his “alleged children.”

Under the agreement, Daniels couldn’t even keep a copy of the agreement. The penalty for defying these constraints? One million dollars each time.

That was then.

Now, the porn star is trying to rewrite the script. She hired an aggressive new lawyer, Michael Avenatti, who won a $454 million medical fraud verdict last year, the largest in the state of California in 2017. She took the president of the United States to court, declaring that the “hush agreement” under which she was paid $130,000 is void because it lacks Trump’s signature.

Adult film actress Stormy Daniels arrives for the 49th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Feb. 11, 2007. Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is suing President Trump and wants a California judge to invalidate a nondisclosure agreement she signed weeks before the 2016 presidential election. (Matt Sayles/AP)

Possibly in defiance of a secret gag order, Daniels on Thursday gave a yet-to-be-aired interview to CBS News’s “60 Minutes.” She spoke with a reporter for a story published by Rolling Stone on Friday under a headline calling her “the Hero America Needs.” She’s lately been sassy on Twitter, mocking critics and correcting their misspellings.

[Sex and power: Stormy Daniels and the female pioneers of the porn industry]

With each new headline, her marketability surges.

“Look how Stormy is controlling the narrative now,” said Karen Tynan, a lawyer based in the San Francisco area with clients in the porn industry. “The allegedly most powerful man in the world is dancing to the tune played by Stormy.”

Those who know Daniels, 38, say they aren’t surprised. She is viewed as ambitious and resilient in the porn industry, where she rose from actress to director of dozens of films. In 2016, she won industry awards for “Wanted,” a three-hour western that she wrote, directed and starred in.

“She did a lot of things that most porn stars don’t do,” said Kevin Blatt, a broker of celebrity sex tapes. “They don’t graduate to that point of directing and taking control of their own careers. They’re usually manipulated and exploited, chewed up and spit out.”

Daniels herself described her role in the porn world last week in a podcast hosted by erotic photographer Holly Randall. “I’ve written and directed all of my own movies for the last 10 years because I am a control freak,” Daniels said. “Or is it because, if you want something done right, you do it yourself? Or is it because I wanted to get paid double for the day? The correct answer is ‘D,’ all of the above.”

That assertiveness contrasts with the silence that was required of Daniels in the deal she was negotiating in late 2016 with Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen.

“She was kind of in a predicament,” said Slate editor Jacob Weisberg, who spoke with her during that time. “There was a deal being worked out in which she could get money, which she wanted, but it wasn’t working out as she expected, and she didn’t know who to trust or what to do.”

What she decided to do, days before the 2016 election, was take the deal.

Cohen said Friday that the funds for the $130,000 payment came from his own home equity line of credit, a claim first reported by ABC News. Mortgage records show Cohen opened a line of credit for up to $500,000 in February 2016 on his Manhattan condo.

The agreement names four people Daniels said she had told about the alleged affair: representative Gina Rodriguez, friend Keith Munyan, ex-husband Mike Mosney and porn actress Angel Ryan. Ryan, who goes by the stage name Jessica Drake, accused Trump before the election of forcibly kissing her and two friends a decade earlier, during the same Lake Tahoe golf tournament where he met Daniels.

Trump has denied misconduct with women, and his campaign called Drake’s allegations “totally false and ridiculous.”

The deal remained secret for more than a year. It leaked on Jan. 12, in a story published by the Wall Street Journal.

Soon, Daniels was speaking out, though coyly at first.

“You can’t say whether you have a nondisclosure agreement,” observed late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel during a Jan. 30 interview in which Daniels gave up little information. “But if you didn’t have a nondisclosure agreement, you most certainly could say, ‘I don’t have a nondisclosure agreement,’ yes?” he asked.

“You’re so smart, Jimmy!” Daniels responded.

The agreement calls for binding and confidential arbitration in the event of a dispute. (Despite its language, there has been no credible claim of Trump fathering children beyond the five he is known to have.)

On Feb. 27, Cohen enacted that provision. Within hours, the arbitrator issued a temporary restraining order barring Daniels from talking about the deal, catching her by surprise, Avenatti said.

On Tuesday, Daniels forced the matter fully into the public domain with the lawsuit she and Avenatti filed in Los Angeles Superior Court. Though she has never suggested her relationship with Trump was anything other than consensual, the lawsuit links Daniels to the parade of women who accused him of sexual misconduct in the weeks before the 2016 election, motivated to speak out by revelations that he once bragged about groping women.

“Mr. Cohen is proceeding in a private arbitration hidden from public view in an effort to further hide from the public the true circumstances of what happened,” Avenatti said in an interview.

Cohen said in January that Trump denied having had an affair with Daniels. He later acknowledged facilitating the payment. On Friday, citing language in the contract, he said Trump’s signature was not required.

“I believe Mr. Avenatti’s actions and behavior has been both reckless and imprudent as it opens Ms. Clifford to substantial monetary liability, which I intend to pursue,” Cohen said Friday, using Daniels’s given name. “I question whether Mr. Avenatti has weighed his desire for 15 minutes of fame versus his client’s welfare. Time will ultimately prove that I am right.”

Avenatti has become a brash spokesman for Daniels, slinging rapid-fire broadsides in a media blitz that entered its third day on Friday. His website touts his media savvy, saying “most lawyers falter and under-utilize” connections with the press.

The arguments he advances play into the new awareness, heightened by the #MeToo movement, of the ways powerful men have exploited women for decades. Increasingly, nondisclosure agreements and confidential arbitration have kept these matters private long after they are settled.

[The 7 most interesting things about Stormy Daniels’s lawsuit against the president.]

In the tense back-and-forth with Cohen before the election, Daniels was represented by Keith Davidson, a Los Angeles lawyer who built a business around celebrity news — often by brokering deals to keep it out of the public eye. He represented the ex-girlfriend of actor Verne Troyer, best known for playing Mini-Me in the Austin Powers movie series, in a lawsuit over a leaked sex tape. Another client was a woman who had been fired from the Betty Ford Clinic for disclosing confidential information about actress Lindsay Lohan.

In recent weeks, as scrutiny of her alleged relationship with Trump increased, Daniels hired Avenatti, a lawyer whose practice has included cases including wrongful death, negligence and complex class-action lawsuits.

“I retained Michael because I needed a top notch attorney with a proven track record who would listen and put my interests first; who is fearless, really smart, articulate and knows how to deal with the media,” Daniels said in a statement provided by Avenatti. “He has proven to be all of these things.”

It’s not the first time Avenatti has sued Trump: He was on the legal team that in 2005 represented Mark Bethea, who accused Trump and television producer Mark Burnett of stealing his idea for the reality show that became “The Apprentice.” The case was settled the following year on terms that were not disclosed.

Last year, Avenatti won the $454 million judgment against multinational paper company Kimberly-Clark and medical manufacturer Halyard Health over the companies’ claims that their surgical gowns were impermeable to serious diseases, such as Ebola and HIV.

“Michael is a very tenacious lawyer,” said Bruce Broillet, a Santa Monica-based lawyer who has worked closely with Avenatti, noting that he graduated first in his law school class at George Washington University.

The highly visible approach taken by Avenatti and Daniels has caused her popularity to surge.

Each time Daniels has been in the news for her alleged affair with Trump — when she appeared on Kimmel’s show, when Cohen admitted arranging the $130,000 payment, and most recently when she sued the president — searches for her name on Pornhub.com have spiked, according to an analysis by the site.

After the story about the payment broke, searches for her name skyrocketed from a daily average of 2,500 to more than 2 million searches in five days.

Her fee for appearing at a Las Vegas strip club called Little Darlings in late January was unusually high, said manager Ron Nady, though he would not disclose it. “She was the hottest thing on the planet,” he said.

[Interest in Stormy Daniels is surging on Pornhub]

Daniels is from Louisiana, where she once explored a run for U.S. Senate. She lives near Dallas with her husband and their 7-year-old daughter, who is aware her mother makes movies that are not for children.

Daniels is also a serious equestrian, said Packy McGaughan, a Maryland-based horse trainer who first met her at a 2016 equestrian event, one that included Olympic riders. The porn star’s presence can be a distraction when he is teaching children and their parents spot her, McGaughan acknowledged.

“The mothers ask, ‘Is that Stormy Daniels? Errr, um.’ ” he said. “And the fathers go, ‘Oooh.’ ”

McGaughan said he doesn’t think Daniels will shy away from controversy. “This is an extreme sport,” he said. “You have to be a risk taker in all aspect of your life. That’s her personality.”

Daniels’s determination has become a point of pride among sex workers and others in the industry who are tackling issues such as human trafficking and who have long felt marginalized.

“We’ve never had a run-in with the president,” said Brian Gross, a publicist who has clients in the porn industry. “Nothing like this.”

As recently as this past week, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dismissed the notion that Trump had approved a payment to Daniels. “None of these allegations are true,” she said.

In the recent podcast interview, Daniels said she was looking forward to sharing her story on her terms.

“Eventually, hopefully I’ll be able to tell my side,” she said. “Not for any sort of gain other than I want to be able to defend myself. That’s the worst part, is that at this moment I can’t defend myself.

“It’s incredibly frustrating,” she added, “especially for somebody like me, who has no problem usually defending herself.”

The host, Randall, interjected: “Yes, you aren’t somebody to keep your mouth shut.”

Daniels: “My name is Stormy for a reason!”

Alice Crites and Tom Hamburger contributed to this report.

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

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/one-night-with-stormy-daniels-the-hero-america-needs-w517692

Meanwhile, over at Rolling Stone, in an article cited by the “Post three” reporters, Denver Nicks writes:

. . . .

Needless to say, I was intrigued. She seemed funny and quick, but also thick-skinned and refreshingly playful in response to my light Internet derision. I asked if she’d be up for an interview, DM’d her my phone number. A few days later I got a call from “No Caller ID.”

“Hello?” I said, hesitantly.

“You shouldn’t answer calls from blocked numbers,” a female voice said. I stayed silent. “This is Stormy,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “I thought you were my ex-girlfriend.”

“Not yet!” Daniels chirped.

We arranged to meet in Houston a few days later, when her tour passed through town.

. . . .

Watching Daniels that night in full command of the crowd, titillating strangers for cash and flirting with her fans like a pro, I think of how she’s portrayed as a dumb bimbo in the SNL parody, in which Cecily Strong says that in 2018 Stormy Daniels is the hero America deserves. Whether that’s true or not, in 2018 Stormy Daniels may be the hero America needs.

A decade and a half working in porn imbues a person with an unusual frankness, a kind of extreme authenticity. A successful porn star with a career like Daniels’ must be comfortable in her own skin and with other people’s bodies, including the weird-looking parts (penises and vaginas, anuses and perinea), and with the various kinds of discharge the human body produces – all things the rest of us would rather stop thinking about when the erotic moment has passed and we put our clothes back on. Porn stars also have to be comfortable dwelling in the contradictions of porn: in fans’ fantasies, but also in the mundane world of bills, groceries, hobbies and, in Daniels’ case, being a mom; in exposing the most intimate parts of themselves doing one of the most intimate things humans do, while maintaining a life as an authentic person who feels passion and love. Maybe what America needs most in 2018, as we stew in rage, simultaneously enthralled, bewildered and revolted by ourselves, is a porn star to help us take a long, uncompromising, compassionate look at our country and culture, gross parts and all.

. . .

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

I’ve said all along that Daniels is smarter, shrewder, more decent, more down to earth, and just a better all-around person than our “Con-Man-In-Chief.” And, there’s certainly nothing in these two articles that would prove otherwise. Yeah, she’s a Republican. But, a kinder, gentler, more compassionate one than the Trumpster and his nasty followers. It also looks like Daniels might have more skill and judgement in hiring lawyers than Trump.

PWS

03-12-18

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DHS keeps separating kids from their parents — but officials won’t say why or how often

Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all of us. Due Process Forever!

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Why was a 7-year-old separated from her mother for four months? DHS won’t say.

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WARNING: THESE ARTICLES DEAL WITH A SUPERSTAR OF THE SO-CALLED ADULT ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY AND A SLEAZY REALITY SHOW HAS BEEN/NEVER WAS NAMED DONALD TRUMP. THEY CONTAIN MATERIAL THAT MIGHT NOT BE SUITABLE FOR FAMILY READING AND/OR VIEWING!

Beth Reinhard, Emma Brown and Frances Stead Sellers report for the Washington Post:

Meanwhile, over at Rolling Stone, in an article cited by the “Post three” reporters, Denver Nicks writes:

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