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welcome to reality trivia
reality is the state of things as they actually exist
june 21, 2018
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Stephen Colbert
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real news today
june 21, 2018
*The Trump administration tried to hide the dangers of widespread chemicals
(REALITY)
*US oil and gas industry leaks 60 percent more methane than government says: study
(Oil)
*MARYLAND TO JOIN LAWSUIT AGAINST WHITE HOUSE OVER MIGRANT FAMILY CRISIS AS POLICY CONFUSION DEEPENS(DEMO POLITICS)
*Top Dem: Trump created a crisis then falsely took credit for solving it
(Demo Politics)
*First new all-electric mine dumps diesel; cuts costs, pollution
(World)
*Across America: Birmingham publishing company creates stories that children of color don’t often see(Real People)
*The GOP’s New Tax Plan: A Distraction That Could Throw the Midterm Elections
(GOP POLITICS)
*House GOP leaders abruptly postpone high-stakes vote on immigration bill
(GOP Politics)
*Trump: Democrats Have Created A ‘Massive Child Smuggling Industry’
(Trump)
*Betsy DeVos has killed more than 1,200 civil rights probes inherited from Obama
(Education)
*Celebrating the End of Slavery — With One Big Asterisk
(Race Matters)
*Is America Choosing Decline?
(Commentary)
*Fracking may alter fat cells: Study
(Currents)
*WATCH: UNARMED BLACK TEEN SHOT BY POLICE THREE TIMES IN THE BACK WITHOUT WARNING
(Gestapo USA)
*FLORIDA’S GOP GOVERNOR ‘PROUD’ OF A HUGE TAX AWARD HE GAVE TO A FRAUD-CHARGED COMPANY HOUSING MIGRANT KIDS(GOP Politics)
*DOZENS OF ‘TENDER AGE’ FACILITIES HAVE HISTORY OF ABUSE
(Reality)
(for previous day's articles see "what's inside" below)
Michael Moore
Ah, America! We've gone from separating Indian babies from their parents (and then exterminating them), to stealing babies from their slave parents (and then re-selling them into slavery), to building a country on child labor (working in factories as young as 8-yrs. old), to incarcerating Japanese-American toddlers in internment camps, to allowing priests to sexually abuse children for decades, to forcing buckets of high-fructose corn syrup down kids’ throats until half of them are part of a childhood obesity epidemic, to turning our schools into killing fields because we love our guns more than we love our kids -- who the hell are we kidding? Stop being shocked and surprised that Trump is kidnapping Hispanic children from their parents as if "this isn't who we are!" Yes, it is. It has ALWAYS been who we are. Don't say Trump is violating "our American values." Abusing children IS an historic American value. Be proud, America -- Trump is us.
(In order to stop this madness we need to stop telling each other fairy tales about the past and confront the present by putting our bodies on the line for these kids. Find out where in your area they have stashed the children Homeland Security have kidnapped (18 states have jails where they've put these kids — in my area, it's a Betsy DeVos-funded joint called "Bethany Christian Services" in Grand Rapids, MI) — go there, surround the building and refuse to leave until the children are reunited with their parents. If these were your kids, that's EXACTLY what you would do. They are your kids.)
https://www.facebook.com/mmflint/?hc_ref=ARR7EdPuahNLTwEpmIH5aWrLbvjot4pusbWnnDKi5RMgcrKIY87p0MEEOtv2C-fL-Y8&fref=nf
Border Patrol will stop referring migrant parents who cross into the U.S. illegally with children for prosecution, official says
By Nick Miroff - washington post
June 21 at 12:55 PM
The U.S. Border Patrol will no longer refer migrant parents who cross into the United States illegally with children to federal courthouses to face criminal charges, a senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection official told The Washington Post on Thursday.
The about-face comes just one day after President Trump signed an executive order ending his administration’s widely denounced practice of separating parents and children apprehended for illegally crossing the Mexico border. Trump’s order said the government would maintain a “zero tolerance” policy toward those who break the law, but the senior U.S. official, asked to explain how the government would change enforcement practices, said Border Patrol agents were instructed Wednesday evening to stop sending parents with children to federal courthouses for prosecution.
“We’re suspending prosecutions of adults who are members of family units until ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) can accelerate resource capability to allow us to maintain custody,” the official said.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to explain how enforcement operations will change to comply with Trump’s order.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Sarah Isgur Flores, denied that prosecutions would be suspended.
“There has been no change to the Department’s zero tolerance policy to prosecute adults who cross our border illegally instead of claiming asylum at any port of entry at the border.”
Because ICE lacks the detention capacity to increase the number of families it holds in detention, the official acknowledged that many migrant parents and children will likely be released from custody while they await court hearings.
Top CBP officials did not know what the executive order would ask them to do until its release Wednesday, the official said. The decision to cease prosecutions of parents with children was made by the Department of Homeland Security for logistical purposes because the official said it would not be “feasible” to bring children to federal courtrooms while their parents go before a judge.
Adults who cross illegally will continue to face misdemeanor charges under the “zero tolerance” policy implemented six weeks ago, the official said.
Most adults who enter illegally through the busiest span of the border — the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas — are sentenced to time served. But the official said the criminal prosecution of adults would ensure that lawbreakers face consequences.
“When a consequence is applied, it makes a difference on recidivism and illegal activity at the border,” the official said.
In recent weeks the number of migrants arrested along the Mexico border has declined slightly, according to the latest enforcement data. “It’s nothing we could call a trend,” the official said.
CBP officials will monitor migration patterns at the border to see if the policy change leads to an increase in illegal crossings by family groups, the official said. “We’re going to watch closely and do what we need to do.”
The about-face comes just one day after President Trump signed an executive order ending his administration’s widely denounced practice of separating parents and children apprehended for illegally crossing the Mexico border. Trump’s order said the government would maintain a “zero tolerance” policy toward those who break the law, but the senior U.S. official, asked to explain how the government would change enforcement practices, said Border Patrol agents were instructed Wednesday evening to stop sending parents with children to federal courthouses for prosecution.
“We’re suspending prosecutions of adults who are members of family units until ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) can accelerate resource capability to allow us to maintain custody,” the official said.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to explain how enforcement operations will change to comply with Trump’s order.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Sarah Isgur Flores, denied that prosecutions would be suspended.
“There has been no change to the Department’s zero tolerance policy to prosecute adults who cross our border illegally instead of claiming asylum at any port of entry at the border.”
Because ICE lacks the detention capacity to increase the number of families it holds in detention, the official acknowledged that many migrant parents and children will likely be released from custody while they await court hearings.
Top CBP officials did not know what the executive order would ask them to do until its release Wednesday, the official said. The decision to cease prosecutions of parents with children was made by the Department of Homeland Security for logistical purposes because the official said it would not be “feasible” to bring children to federal courtrooms while their parents go before a judge.
Adults who cross illegally will continue to face misdemeanor charges under the “zero tolerance” policy implemented six weeks ago, the official said.
Most adults who enter illegally through the busiest span of the border — the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas — are sentenced to time served. But the official said the criminal prosecution of adults would ensure that lawbreakers face consequences.
“When a consequence is applied, it makes a difference on recidivism and illegal activity at the border,” the official said.
In recent weeks the number of migrants arrested along the Mexico border has declined slightly, according to the latest enforcement data. “It’s nothing we could call a trend,” the official said.
CBP officials will monitor migration patterns at the border to see if the policy change leads to an increase in illegal crossings by family groups, the official said. “We’re going to watch closely and do what we need to do.”
Trump's Mar-a-Lago trips cost $20M in Coast Guard protection: report
BY JACQUELINE THOMSEN - THE HILL
06/21/18 10:30 AM EDT
President Trump’s trips to his Mar-a-Lago estate have cost taxpayers nearly $20 million for Coast Guard protection since he took office, USA Today reported.
Records obtained by the newspaper show more than $1 million for Coast Guard protection alone was shelled out for each of Trump’s trips to the Florida property.
The president has spent 69 days of his presidency at Mar-a-Lago, according to a NBC News tracker.
The Coast Guard records cover all of Trump’s trips to the estate, with the exception of his visit there last year with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The estate and private club are both located on a piece of land between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway, both of which require patrols.
The documents show that the Coast Guard issues 29-foot rubber boats and 87-foot patrol boats with .50-caliber machine guns, as well as a rescue helicopter near the property that costs roughly $8,000 per flight-hour.
Coast Guard members have spent more than 4,200 hours on protective duty near the estate from April 2017 to March 2018.
A spokeswoman for the Coast Guard told the newspaper that the service budgets for presidential travel during each administration.
Records obtained by the newspaper show more than $1 million for Coast Guard protection alone was shelled out for each of Trump’s trips to the Florida property.
The president has spent 69 days of his presidency at Mar-a-Lago, according to a NBC News tracker.
The Coast Guard records cover all of Trump’s trips to the estate, with the exception of his visit there last year with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The estate and private club are both located on a piece of land between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway, both of which require patrols.
The documents show that the Coast Guard issues 29-foot rubber boats and 87-foot patrol boats with .50-caliber machine guns, as well as a rescue helicopter near the property that costs roughly $8,000 per flight-hour.
Coast Guard members have spent more than 4,200 hours on protective duty near the estate from April 2017 to March 2018.
A spokeswoman for the Coast Guard told the newspaper that the service budgets for presidential travel during each administration.
Trump campaign data operation had stolen Clinton emails ‘more than a month’ before WikiLeaks: bombshell report
David Edwards - raw story
21 JUN 2018 AT 14:38 ET
The company that ran then-candidate Donald Trump’s data operation in 2016 reportedly obtained Hillary Clinton’s stolen emails more than a month before WikiLeaks published them.
In a column for the British magazine Spectator, BBC correspondent Paul Wood revealed that Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct company which was in charge of microtargeting voters for the Trump campaign, was in possession of Clinton’s emails at least a month before WikiLeaks was known to have them.
“The (now shuttered) British company did the Trump campaign’s data,” Wood explained. “Its speciality was ‘microtargeting’: individual messages tailored to individual voters, delivered by email, Facebook and Twitter.”
“The US intelligence agencies believe that Russian internet ‘troll factories’ were also pushing out pro-Trump propaganda on social media: sometimes fake news, sometimes real news, such as the hacked contents of Clinton’s emails,” he continued. “The question is whether this was done in coordination with the Trump campaign.”
Wood said that he had information from an “American lawyer” who knew that Cambridge Analytica was in possession of the emails, which U.S. intelligence agencies later determined were stolen by Russian hackers.
An American lawyer I know told me that he was approached by a Cambridge Analytica employee after the election. They had had the Clinton emails more than a month before they were published by WikiLeaks: ‘What should I do?’ Take this to [special counsel Robert Mueller], the lawyer replied.
In a column for the British magazine Spectator, BBC correspondent Paul Wood revealed that Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct company which was in charge of microtargeting voters for the Trump campaign, was in possession of Clinton’s emails at least a month before WikiLeaks was known to have them.
“The (now shuttered) British company did the Trump campaign’s data,” Wood explained. “Its speciality was ‘microtargeting’: individual messages tailored to individual voters, delivered by email, Facebook and Twitter.”
“The US intelligence agencies believe that Russian internet ‘troll factories’ were also pushing out pro-Trump propaganda on social media: sometimes fake news, sometimes real news, such as the hacked contents of Clinton’s emails,” he continued. “The question is whether this was done in coordination with the Trump campaign.”
Wood said that he had information from an “American lawyer” who knew that Cambridge Analytica was in possession of the emails, which U.S. intelligence agencies later determined were stolen by Russian hackers.
An American lawyer I know told me that he was approached by a Cambridge Analytica employee after the election. They had had the Clinton emails more than a month before they were published by WikiLeaks: ‘What should I do?’ Take this to [special counsel Robert Mueller], the lawyer replied.
'This Is What Solidarity Looks Like': Mass Demonstrations at LaGuardia Airport as Kids Ripped From Parents Arrive in New York
"We want to let them know that there are thousands of people who see them, who love them and who will fight for them."
By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams - alternet
June 21, 2018, 2:52 AM GMT
Protests at Laguardia Airport
If President Donald Trump thought his sham executive order would put an end to mass grassroots outrage over his unspeakably cruel anti-immigrant agenda, he was sorely mistaken.
As hundreds of immigrant children forcibly separated from their families arrived on flights to New York City from Texas Wednesday night, massive demonstrations kicked off both inside and outside LaGuardia Airport showing solidarity with the young children and demanding that the Trump administration immediately reunite them with their loved ones, who are detained thousands of miles away.
"We want to let them know that there are thousands of people who see them, who love them, and who will fight for them," Stosh Cotler, CEO of immigrant rights group Bend the Arc and one of the organizers of the rally, said in a statement.
The protests at LaGuardia, which continued into the early hours of Thursday morning, closed with chants of "I believe that we will win!"
The rapid-response demonstration against Trump's family separation practice came amid reports that the administration is quietly transferring young immigrant children to New York "in waves," without the knowledge of state officials.[...]
As hundreds of immigrant children forcibly separated from their families arrived on flights to New York City from Texas Wednesday night, massive demonstrations kicked off both inside and outside LaGuardia Airport showing solidarity with the young children and demanding that the Trump administration immediately reunite them with their loved ones, who are detained thousands of miles away.
"We want to let them know that there are thousands of people who see them, who love them, and who will fight for them," Stosh Cotler, CEO of immigrant rights group Bend the Arc and one of the organizers of the rally, said in a statement.
The protests at LaGuardia, which continued into the early hours of Thursday morning, closed with chants of "I believe that we will win!"
The rapid-response demonstration against Trump's family separation practice came amid reports that the administration is quietly transferring young immigrant children to New York "in waves," without the knowledge of state officials.[...]
Judge Erupts at Prosecutor over Trump's Missing Children: ‘They Take Your Kids And You Get Nothing? Not Even A Slip of Paper?’
"I can’t understand this, the judge said. If someone at the jail takes your wallet, they give you a receipt."
By Travis Gettys / Raw Story - alternet
June 21, 2018, 3:13 AM GMT
A public defender who handles immigration cases said the government has no answers for parents separated from their children at the border — and no apparent intention of ever reuniting those shattered families.
Erik Hanshew, an assistant federal public defender in El Paso, Texas, published a column in the Washington Post describing the nightmarish process parents must go through to find their children.
“The client meetings have been crushing,” Hanshew wrote. “One man sobs, asking how his small child could defend himself in a detention facility. One cries so uncontrollably, he is hardly able to speak. Question after crying question piles up from one client to the next.”
The attorney described how one man wept as he admitted he was unable to read or write, or even spell his missing son’s name.
“This administration appears to have no infrastructure, policy or plan in place to deal with the destruction of families seeking refuge or a new life in our country,” Hanshew wrote.
Immigration agents have no more answers for terrified parents or judges than the government has for lawmakers and reporters about these detained children, the attorney said.
“You would never know from the agent’s testimony that we’re dealing with a parent who has been separated from a child,” Hanshew wrote. “That is not mentioned in the complaint. The prosecutor asks no questions about the child. At no point do they discuss the child. The child might as well not exist.”
One agent told Hanshew during a cross-examination she was the lead investigator in his client’s case, but admitted she hadn’t known the man was arrested with his 4-year-old daughter and added that she had no information in her report about the missing child.
“At another hearing before a different judge, as one of my colleagues asked the agent on the stand about the whereabouts of my client’s child, the prosecutor objected to the relevance of the questions,” Hanshew wrote. “The judge turned on the prosecutor, demanding to know why this wasn’t relevant.”
The judge eventually had enough of the agent’s evasions and the prosecutor’s disinterest in reuniting the parent and child.
“At one point, (the judge) slammed his hand on the desk, sending a pen flying,” Hanshew wrote. “This type of emotional display is unheard of in federal court. I can’t understand this, the judge said. If someone at the jail takes your wallet, they give you a receipt. They take your kids, and you get nothing? Not even a slip of paper?”
Erik Hanshew, an assistant federal public defender in El Paso, Texas, published a column in the Washington Post describing the nightmarish process parents must go through to find their children.
“The client meetings have been crushing,” Hanshew wrote. “One man sobs, asking how his small child could defend himself in a detention facility. One cries so uncontrollably, he is hardly able to speak. Question after crying question piles up from one client to the next.”
The attorney described how one man wept as he admitted he was unable to read or write, or even spell his missing son’s name.
“This administration appears to have no infrastructure, policy or plan in place to deal with the destruction of families seeking refuge or a new life in our country,” Hanshew wrote.
Immigration agents have no more answers for terrified parents or judges than the government has for lawmakers and reporters about these detained children, the attorney said.
“You would never know from the agent’s testimony that we’re dealing with a parent who has been separated from a child,” Hanshew wrote. “That is not mentioned in the complaint. The prosecutor asks no questions about the child. At no point do they discuss the child. The child might as well not exist.”
One agent told Hanshew during a cross-examination she was the lead investigator in his client’s case, but admitted she hadn’t known the man was arrested with his 4-year-old daughter and added that she had no information in her report about the missing child.
“At another hearing before a different judge, as one of my colleagues asked the agent on the stand about the whereabouts of my client’s child, the prosecutor objected to the relevance of the questions,” Hanshew wrote. “The judge turned on the prosecutor, demanding to know why this wasn’t relevant.”
The judge eventually had enough of the agent’s evasions and the prosecutor’s disinterest in reuniting the parent and child.
“At one point, (the judge) slammed his hand on the desk, sending a pen flying,” Hanshew wrote. “This type of emotional display is unheard of in federal court. I can’t understand this, the judge said. If someone at the jail takes your wallet, they give you a receipt. They take your kids, and you get nothing? Not even a slip of paper?”
US Has Split Up Families Throughout Its History
By Associated Press - atlanta black star
June 21, 2018
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Some critics of the forced separation of Latino children from their migrant parents say the practice is unprecedented. But it’s not the first time the U.S. government has split up families, detained children or allowed others to do so.
Throughout American history, during times of war and unrest, authorities have cited various reasons and laws to take children away from their parents. Here are some examples:
SLAVERY
Before abolition, children of black slaves were born into slavery and could be sold by owners at will. Black women could do little to stop the sale of children and often never saw them again after they were sent away.
Owners also split apart parents who had no legal rights to prevent their sale. To resist, slave families regularly ran away together but faced harsh physical punishment, even death, if caught by slave hunters.
Last week, both White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Attorney Jeff Sessions cited the Bible in defending the policy of forced separation of Latino migrant children. Sessions referenced Romans 13, which urges readers “to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.” The same passage was cited before the Civil War to justify slavery, to allow slave hunters to return runaway slaves to their owners and to pull slave children away from mothers.
NATIVE AMERICAN BOARDING SCHOOLS
After the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, when the Army slaughtered 150 Lakota men, women and children in the last chapter of America’s long Indian wars, authorities forced Native American families to send their children to government- or church-run boarding schools. The objective, as Carlisle Indian Industrial School founder Capt. Richard H. Pratt put it, was to “kill the Indian in him and save the man.”
At 150 or so Indian schools around the country, officials made Native American children cut their hair and outlawed all Native American languages. They forced children to adopt Christianity and attempted to “Americanize” children by introducing them to white customs and white history.
Native American children returned home almost unrecognizable to their parents.
Still, some children resisted the boarding school experience by setting fires to buildings, running away or taking their own lives. Others continued to speak their native language in secret. Some Navajo “code talkers,” who used a code based on their native language to transmit messages in World War II, were products of military-style boarding schools as children.
POVERTY
During the early 1900s, states sometimes pulled children from poor families and placed them in orphanages. But reformers in the 1920s and 1930s began promoting the idea that children should not be separated from their families, according to “In the Shadow Of the Poorhouse: A Social History Of Welfare In America” by Michael B. Katz.
However, local and state authorities still used poverty as a reason to take children away from Native American and black families, McClain said. Sometimes the ordered separation came over concerns about a parent’s mental health.
Malcolm X in his autobiography recalled welfare workers coming to take him and his siblings away as children from his struggling single mother after their father, an outspoken black preacher, was mysteriously murdered. The future civil rights leader lived in various foster homes and boarding houses. His mother, without her children, had a breakdown and was sent to a mental institution.
IMMIGRATION
During the Great Depression, local authorities in California and Texas participated in a mass deportation of Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans whom they blamed for the economic downturn. Between 500,000 and 1 million Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans were pushed out of the country during the 1930s repatriation, as the removal is sometimes called.
Some families hid children away from relatives in the U.S. to prevent them from being sent to a foreign country they had never visited, according to Francisco Balderrama, a Chicano studies professor at California State University-Los Angeles and co-author of “Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s.”
Many families felt they were being forced to separate from their children, who were U.S. citizens.
“And many children,” Balderrama said, “never saw their parents again.”
JAPANESE INTERNMENT CAMPS
Starting in 1942, when the U.S. was at war with Japan, around 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were ordered by the U.S. government into prison camps around the country. An estimated 30,000 were children.
The 1999 documentary “Children of the Camps” highlighted the trauma children faced while being detained with their grief-stricken parents. Some older children waited to turn 18 so they could volunteer to fight for the U.S. to prove their families’ loyalty despite not wanting to be separated from their parents. Diaries and later interviews show many of those who went into the military did so reluctantly.
Kiyoshi K. Muranaga, whose family was interned at Granada Relocation Center in Colorado, joined the U.S. Army but was killed in Italy. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor by President Bill Clinton.
Throughout American history, during times of war and unrest, authorities have cited various reasons and laws to take children away from their parents. Here are some examples:
SLAVERY
Before abolition, children of black slaves were born into slavery and could be sold by owners at will. Black women could do little to stop the sale of children and often never saw them again after they were sent away.
Owners also split apart parents who had no legal rights to prevent their sale. To resist, slave families regularly ran away together but faced harsh physical punishment, even death, if caught by slave hunters.
Last week, both White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Attorney Jeff Sessions cited the Bible in defending the policy of forced separation of Latino migrant children. Sessions referenced Romans 13, which urges readers “to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.” The same passage was cited before the Civil War to justify slavery, to allow slave hunters to return runaway slaves to their owners and to pull slave children away from mothers.
NATIVE AMERICAN BOARDING SCHOOLS
After the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, when the Army slaughtered 150 Lakota men, women and children in the last chapter of America’s long Indian wars, authorities forced Native American families to send their children to government- or church-run boarding schools. The objective, as Carlisle Indian Industrial School founder Capt. Richard H. Pratt put it, was to “kill the Indian in him and save the man.”
At 150 or so Indian schools around the country, officials made Native American children cut their hair and outlawed all Native American languages. They forced children to adopt Christianity and attempted to “Americanize” children by introducing them to white customs and white history.
Native American children returned home almost unrecognizable to their parents.
Still, some children resisted the boarding school experience by setting fires to buildings, running away or taking their own lives. Others continued to speak their native language in secret. Some Navajo “code talkers,” who used a code based on their native language to transmit messages in World War II, were products of military-style boarding schools as children.
POVERTY
During the early 1900s, states sometimes pulled children from poor families and placed them in orphanages. But reformers in the 1920s and 1930s began promoting the idea that children should not be separated from their families, according to “In the Shadow Of the Poorhouse: A Social History Of Welfare In America” by Michael B. Katz.
However, local and state authorities still used poverty as a reason to take children away from Native American and black families, McClain said. Sometimes the ordered separation came over concerns about a parent’s mental health.
Malcolm X in his autobiography recalled welfare workers coming to take him and his siblings away as children from his struggling single mother after their father, an outspoken black preacher, was mysteriously murdered. The future civil rights leader lived in various foster homes and boarding houses. His mother, without her children, had a breakdown and was sent to a mental institution.
IMMIGRATION
During the Great Depression, local authorities in California and Texas participated in a mass deportation of Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans whom they blamed for the economic downturn. Between 500,000 and 1 million Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans were pushed out of the country during the 1930s repatriation, as the removal is sometimes called.
Some families hid children away from relatives in the U.S. to prevent them from being sent to a foreign country they had never visited, according to Francisco Balderrama, a Chicano studies professor at California State University-Los Angeles and co-author of “Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s.”
Many families felt they were being forced to separate from their children, who were U.S. citizens.
“And many children,” Balderrama said, “never saw their parents again.”
JAPANESE INTERNMENT CAMPS
Starting in 1942, when the U.S. was at war with Japan, around 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were ordered by the U.S. government into prison camps around the country. An estimated 30,000 were children.
The 1999 documentary “Children of the Camps” highlighted the trauma children faced while being detained with their grief-stricken parents. Some older children waited to turn 18 so they could volunteer to fight for the U.S. to prove their families’ loyalty despite not wanting to be separated from their parents. Diaries and later interviews show many of those who went into the military did so reluctantly.
Kiyoshi K. Muranaga, whose family was interned at Granada Relocation Center in Colorado, joined the U.S. Army but was killed in Italy. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor by President Bill Clinton.
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trump's favorite thief!!!
Documents show Pruitt spent $4.6m on security, thousands on ‘tactical pants’, ‘tactical polos’
The new total spent marks a $1.1 million increase over the amount disclosed last month.
E.A. CRUNDEN - thinkprogress
JUN 21, 2018, 10:12 AM
Embattled Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt spent even more taxpayer money on security expenses than previously thought, according to documents obtained by the Intercept and first reported Wednesday night. The expenses include nearly $3,000 for “tactical pants” and “tactical polos,” part of a total $4.6 million for security, representing a $1.1 million increase over the amount disclosed by the EPA a month ago.
Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveal that Pruitt’s spending habits surpass the millions he is already known to have spent on security, travel, and other expenses, including a $43,000 sound proof phone booth installed in his office. According to the latest documents, Pruitt spent $288,610 on security costs in April alone. Of that, more than $2,700 was spent on apparel for the pants and polos. The EPA administrator has spent $24,115 on body armor and related apparel in 2018.
Other costs revealed by the documents include $88,603.10 for radios and accompanying components, including holsters, batteries, and antennas. Vests “to provide everyday protection” for certain personnel officers also cost $16,240, while leased vehicles expenses cost $83,400 on one occasion and $67,500 on another.
Henry Barnet, director for the EPA’s Office of Criminal Enforcement, Forensics, and Training, downplayed the expenditures in a statement, arguing they were standard costs.
“These are routine expenditures for our Criminal Investigative Division (CID) and Protective Security Detail (PSD) agents to have proper attire for search warrants, arrests, disaster responses, and training. This attire is not used for protection work,” Barnet told the Hill.
Pruitt is currently the subject of more than a dozen ongoing federal investigations. Numerous documents obtained via FOIA by various publications and organizations have indicated that Pruitt has spent millions of taxpayer dollars on security costs, in addition to relying on industry insiders and lobbyists to help arrange his travel and obtain tickets to sporting events.
The administrator is slated to testify before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in August where he’ll likely face questions over the many ongoing investigations. Democrats have pushed the EPA watchdog overseeing the investigations to accelerate their efforts in advance of that time.
The former Oklahoma attorney general first came under scrutiny regarding potential ethics violations and mismanagement after it was revealed he obtained a sweetheart condo deal arranged last year with the wife of J. Steven Hart, a prominent energy lobbyist. Hart’s former firm, Williams & Jensen, has disclosed that Hart had official business before the EPA at the time of the deal. Hart also pushed his client’s nominees for the EPA’s non-partisan Science Advisory Board in a letter sent to Pruitt on August 10, 2017.
Many of Pruitt’s scandals, however, center on his using taxpayer money for what has widely been seen as extravagant purchases. This includes $3,230 spent at a Washington, D.C. jewelry store, including $1,560 for 12 fountain pens. An investigation into Pruitt’s $43,000 sound proof phone booth found that the expense violated federal spending laws.
Pruitt has also used security concerns to justify his first-class travel habits, claiming the upgraded flights represent a safety measure. The EPA also requested $70,000 for a bulletproof desk in Pruitt’s office, meant to replace two pre-existing desks. That request went unfulfilled, but Pruitt was successful in obtaining a car upgrade, swapping in his official vehicle for one with bullet-resistant seat covers.
In recent days, a growing number of conservative commentators have called for Pruitt’s resignation, including Laura Ingraham, a conservative Fox News commentator. Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe (R), a close friend of Pruitt’s, initially indicated he was beginning to have doubts about the EPA administrator last week, before walking those comments back on Wednesday. During a news conference that day, Inhofe said he was “a little embarrassed” to have doubted Pruitt, and reiterated his support for the official.
Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveal that Pruitt’s spending habits surpass the millions he is already known to have spent on security, travel, and other expenses, including a $43,000 sound proof phone booth installed in his office. According to the latest documents, Pruitt spent $288,610 on security costs in April alone. Of that, more than $2,700 was spent on apparel for the pants and polos. The EPA administrator has spent $24,115 on body armor and related apparel in 2018.
Other costs revealed by the documents include $88,603.10 for radios and accompanying components, including holsters, batteries, and antennas. Vests “to provide everyday protection” for certain personnel officers also cost $16,240, while leased vehicles expenses cost $83,400 on one occasion and $67,500 on another.
Henry Barnet, director for the EPA’s Office of Criminal Enforcement, Forensics, and Training, downplayed the expenditures in a statement, arguing they were standard costs.
“These are routine expenditures for our Criminal Investigative Division (CID) and Protective Security Detail (PSD) agents to have proper attire for search warrants, arrests, disaster responses, and training. This attire is not used for protection work,” Barnet told the Hill.
Pruitt is currently the subject of more than a dozen ongoing federal investigations. Numerous documents obtained via FOIA by various publications and organizations have indicated that Pruitt has spent millions of taxpayer dollars on security costs, in addition to relying on industry insiders and lobbyists to help arrange his travel and obtain tickets to sporting events.
The administrator is slated to testify before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in August where he’ll likely face questions over the many ongoing investigations. Democrats have pushed the EPA watchdog overseeing the investigations to accelerate their efforts in advance of that time.
The former Oklahoma attorney general first came under scrutiny regarding potential ethics violations and mismanagement after it was revealed he obtained a sweetheart condo deal arranged last year with the wife of J. Steven Hart, a prominent energy lobbyist. Hart’s former firm, Williams & Jensen, has disclosed that Hart had official business before the EPA at the time of the deal. Hart also pushed his client’s nominees for the EPA’s non-partisan Science Advisory Board in a letter sent to Pruitt on August 10, 2017.
Many of Pruitt’s scandals, however, center on his using taxpayer money for what has widely been seen as extravagant purchases. This includes $3,230 spent at a Washington, D.C. jewelry store, including $1,560 for 12 fountain pens. An investigation into Pruitt’s $43,000 sound proof phone booth found that the expense violated federal spending laws.
Pruitt has also used security concerns to justify his first-class travel habits, claiming the upgraded flights represent a safety measure. The EPA also requested $70,000 for a bulletproof desk in Pruitt’s office, meant to replace two pre-existing desks. That request went unfulfilled, but Pruitt was successful in obtaining a car upgrade, swapping in his official vehicle for one with bullet-resistant seat covers.
In recent days, a growing number of conservative commentators have called for Pruitt’s resignation, including Laura Ingraham, a conservative Fox News commentator. Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe (R), a close friend of Pruitt’s, initially indicated he was beginning to have doubts about the EPA administrator last week, before walking those comments back on Wednesday. During a news conference that day, Inhofe said he was “a little embarrassed” to have doubted Pruitt, and reiterated his support for the official.
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Immigrant child detention center hired ex-Border Patrol agent busted for child porn
Travis Gettys - raw story
21 JUN 2018 AT 10:19 ET
The nonprofit Southwest Key organization hired a former Border Patrol agent to work with immigrant children despite a previous arrest for child pornography.
Ernesto Padron resigned from the government agency in 2010 after his arrest, but he was hired last year to work at the Casa Padre shelter where boys 10-17 are being held, reported Texas Monthly.
He was arrested in 2008, after an undercover FBI sting, for alleged possession of child pornography, a second-degree felony, according to publicly available criminal court records in Cameron County.
Prosecution of the case stalled under then-district attorney Armando Villalobos, who was indicted on corruption charges in 2010 and was eventually convicted and sentenced to 13 years in prison.
Current Cameron County district attorney Luis Saenz reviewed the backlog of cases after taking office in 2013 and found the statute of limitations for Padron’s charges had expired, and the case was dismissed.
A spokeswoman for Southwest Key blames that prosecutorial dysfunction for Pardon’s hiring and access to unaccompanied minors held at Casa Padre.
“In our hiring, extensive background checks are conducted on applicants; however, because Mr. Padron was not convicted of the charges you referenced (or any other disqualifying criminal charges), he was cleared for employment,” said Southwest Key spokeswoman Lizzie Chen. “When we became aware of Mr. Padron’s situation, he was immediately suspended, and he never worked at our shelter again.”
Padron’s arrest was heavily covered by local and national media, and his criminal records remain online, so even a cursory web search of his name should have turned up his background.
Regulators have cited Southwest Key in the past for failing to properly check the backgrounds of other employees at Texas shelters.
One shelter in Combes was cited twice, in June 2016 and February 2018, for failing to submit required information for a background check renewal in a timely manner.
Inspectors found at another shelter two years ago in Houston that two employees had not been checked through the State Child Abuse and Neglect registry, and Southwest Key also failed to renew background checks for five other employees.
Six employees at a Montgomery County shelter had their background checks renewed late in 2016, and inspectors last year found a caregiver with access to children had failed a pre-employment drug test.
“Southwest Key is federally contracted to run child immigration shelters by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is a program of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), which falls underneath the larger umbrella of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,” the magazine reported.
RELATED: Immigrant teens say they were beaten and tortured at Virginia detention center
A half-dozen immigrant teenagers have given sworn statements alleging mistreatment and abuse at the hands of staff members at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center.
Ernesto Padron resigned from the government agency in 2010 after his arrest, but he was hired last year to work at the Casa Padre shelter where boys 10-17 are being held, reported Texas Monthly.
He was arrested in 2008, after an undercover FBI sting, for alleged possession of child pornography, a second-degree felony, according to publicly available criminal court records in Cameron County.
Prosecution of the case stalled under then-district attorney Armando Villalobos, who was indicted on corruption charges in 2010 and was eventually convicted and sentenced to 13 years in prison.
Current Cameron County district attorney Luis Saenz reviewed the backlog of cases after taking office in 2013 and found the statute of limitations for Padron’s charges had expired, and the case was dismissed.
A spokeswoman for Southwest Key blames that prosecutorial dysfunction for Pardon’s hiring and access to unaccompanied minors held at Casa Padre.
“In our hiring, extensive background checks are conducted on applicants; however, because Mr. Padron was not convicted of the charges you referenced (or any other disqualifying criminal charges), he was cleared for employment,” said Southwest Key spokeswoman Lizzie Chen. “When we became aware of Mr. Padron’s situation, he was immediately suspended, and he never worked at our shelter again.”
Padron’s arrest was heavily covered by local and national media, and his criminal records remain online, so even a cursory web search of his name should have turned up his background.
Regulators have cited Southwest Key in the past for failing to properly check the backgrounds of other employees at Texas shelters.
One shelter in Combes was cited twice, in June 2016 and February 2018, for failing to submit required information for a background check renewal in a timely manner.
Inspectors found at another shelter two years ago in Houston that two employees had not been checked through the State Child Abuse and Neglect registry, and Southwest Key also failed to renew background checks for five other employees.
Six employees at a Montgomery County shelter had their background checks renewed late in 2016, and inspectors last year found a caregiver with access to children had failed a pre-employment drug test.
“Southwest Key is federally contracted to run child immigration shelters by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is a program of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), which falls underneath the larger umbrella of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,” the magazine reported.
RELATED: Immigrant teens say they were beaten and tortured at Virginia detention center
A half-dozen immigrant teenagers have given sworn statements alleging mistreatment and abuse at the hands of staff members at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center.
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Trump suggests asylum-seekers are crisis actors
"The legal phrase they are told to say as their password."
AARON RUPAR - thinkprogress
JUN 21, 2018, 12:15 PM
On Thursday morning, President Trump suggested many asylum-seekers are essentially crisis actors who are coached to say “passwords” to enter the United States.
“We shouldn’t be hiring judges by the thousands, as our ridiculous immigration laws demand, we should be changing our laws, building the Wall, hire Border Agents and Ice and not let people come into our country based on the legal phrase they are told to say as their password,” Trump tweeted.
Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump
We shouldn’t be hiring judges by the thousands, as our ridiculous immigration laws demand, we should be changing our laws, building the Wall, hire Border Agents and Ice and not let people come into our country based on the legal phrase they are told to say as their password.
5:12 AM - Jun 21, 2018
Trump’s tweet came two days after a speech in which he alleged that asylum-seekers “have professional lawyers… and they tell these people exactly what to say.”
“They say, ‘say the following’ — they write it down — ‘I am being harmed in my country, my country is extremely dangerous, I fear for my life’ — ‘say that, congratulations, you’ll never be removed,'” Trump said. “This is being given to them by lawyers that are waiting for them to come up… in a way, that’s cheating.”
During that same speech, Trump suggested Democrats turn the other way as massive immigration fraud occurs because “they view that… as potential voters.”
“Some day, they are going to vote for Democrats,” Trump said of people crossing the border.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, someone is eligible for asylum if they meet the following criteria:
Any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.
The words Trump is referring to are not “passwords” to stay in the country. Saying them to a border patrol officer does not guarantee that an asylum seeker will be allowed to stay. From fiscal year 2012 to 2017, the majority of asylum cases from Mexico, Haiti, El, Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala — the top five nationalities who had asylum decisions during that time — were denied.
Kara Lynum, immigration attorney and owner of Lynum Law Office, called Trump’s claims “patently absurd.”
“I’ve met with and represented these families and they do not say a ‘password’ or a ‘magic phrase’ to get asylum, she told ThinkProgress over email. “Anyone who spent 30 seconds with any of these people would realize immediately that they are truly fleeing for their lives.”
Trump isn’t the only administration official who has suggested asylum-seekers are crisis actors. During a CNN interview on Tuesday, acting ICE Director Thomas Homan claimed that asylum-seekers “are coached on what to say, they’ll say the right thing to get released from detention.”
Meanwhile, other administration officials, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, have encouraged asylum-seekers to try and enter the country through official ports of entry.
“If you don’t want your child to be separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally,” Sessions said on May 7.
That claim too appears to have been misinformation. The ACLU has sued the government on behalf of families who entered the country at ports of entry, and were separated from their children nonetheless.
Meanwhile, as Mother Jones and other outlets have reported, ports of entry don’t have enough resources to process all asylum claims, meaning families have to camp out for days on end just to have the opportunity to get their case heard. Many have been turned away.
Lynum told ThinkProgress that a policy change Sessions recently announced excluding victims of gang violence and domestic violence from asylum claims will only make the process more difficult and arduous.
“We shouldn’t be hiring judges by the thousands, as our ridiculous immigration laws demand, we should be changing our laws, building the Wall, hire Border Agents and Ice and not let people come into our country based on the legal phrase they are told to say as their password,” Trump tweeted.
Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump
We shouldn’t be hiring judges by the thousands, as our ridiculous immigration laws demand, we should be changing our laws, building the Wall, hire Border Agents and Ice and not let people come into our country based on the legal phrase they are told to say as their password.
5:12 AM - Jun 21, 2018
Trump’s tweet came two days after a speech in which he alleged that asylum-seekers “have professional lawyers… and they tell these people exactly what to say.”
“They say, ‘say the following’ — they write it down — ‘I am being harmed in my country, my country is extremely dangerous, I fear for my life’ — ‘say that, congratulations, you’ll never be removed,'” Trump said. “This is being given to them by lawyers that are waiting for them to come up… in a way, that’s cheating.”
During that same speech, Trump suggested Democrats turn the other way as massive immigration fraud occurs because “they view that… as potential voters.”
“Some day, they are going to vote for Democrats,” Trump said of people crossing the border.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, someone is eligible for asylum if they meet the following criteria:
Any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.
The words Trump is referring to are not “passwords” to stay in the country. Saying them to a border patrol officer does not guarantee that an asylum seeker will be allowed to stay. From fiscal year 2012 to 2017, the majority of asylum cases from Mexico, Haiti, El, Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala — the top five nationalities who had asylum decisions during that time — were denied.
Kara Lynum, immigration attorney and owner of Lynum Law Office, called Trump’s claims “patently absurd.”
“I’ve met with and represented these families and they do not say a ‘password’ or a ‘magic phrase’ to get asylum, she told ThinkProgress over email. “Anyone who spent 30 seconds with any of these people would realize immediately that they are truly fleeing for their lives.”
Trump isn’t the only administration official who has suggested asylum-seekers are crisis actors. During a CNN interview on Tuesday, acting ICE Director Thomas Homan claimed that asylum-seekers “are coached on what to say, they’ll say the right thing to get released from detention.”
Meanwhile, other administration officials, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, have encouraged asylum-seekers to try and enter the country through official ports of entry.
“If you don’t want your child to be separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally,” Sessions said on May 7.
That claim too appears to have been misinformation. The ACLU has sued the government on behalf of families who entered the country at ports of entry, and were separated from their children nonetheless.
Meanwhile, as Mother Jones and other outlets have reported, ports of entry don’t have enough resources to process all asylum claims, meaning families have to camp out for days on end just to have the opportunity to get their case heard. Many have been turned away.
Lynum told ThinkProgress that a policy change Sessions recently announced excluding victims of gang violence and domestic violence from asylum claims will only make the process more difficult and arduous.
Hundreds in Pittsburgh protest brutal police killing of unarmed Black teen who was shot in back
Antwon Rose was unarmed and fleeing cops during a traffic stop when he was shot in the back three times.
ELHAM KHATAMI - thinkprogress
JUN 21, 2018, 11:45 AM
Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the East Pittsburgh Police station Wednesday evening to demand justice for Antwon Rose, a 17-year-old black teenager who was shot and killed by a Pittsburgh police officer Tuesday night. Rose was unarmed and fleeing cops during a traffic stop when he was shot in the back three times.
Cell phone video of the incident captured by a witness sparked anger across the city Tuesday night. At a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Allegheny County police Superintendent Coleman McDonough said police found two guns on the floor of the car in which Rose was riding, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. The driver of the car was being taken into custody when Rose and a second unidentified individual fled from the scene.
Police pulled the vehicle over because they suspected that the occupants were involved in a gunfire exchange in the North Braddock neighborhood a few minutes earlier. It is unclear why the officer shot at Rose, who did not appear to pose any immediate danger to the police officers as he ran away.
McDonough did not share the name of the officer who shot and killed Rose and urged “people to give us time to conduct an objective investigation, to gather facts.”
But the protesters who gathered outside the station later that evening were outraged.
“Enough is enough!” one activist shouted, according to Facebook video posted by the Post-Gazette, demanding the resignation of Pittsburgh district attorney Stephen A. Zappala, Jr., who has been accused of criminalizing black children and failing to address the staff-on-student violence that has plagued the Woodland Hills School District, where Rose was a student, for several years. A second protest outside Zappala’s office is expected to take place Thursday afternoon.
“Zappala got to go,” the activist continued. “He’s been in office 20 years. He has never tried a case … he was put in there. Nobody’s running against him … That’s the problem. It’s called the good ol’ boys club.”
“What you saw last night, what you witnessed last night on Facebook was a murder,” another protester shouted. “Don’t let the narrative change. Don’t let the press conference after change what you saw with your own eyes last night. You didn’t see a shoot-out. You didn’t see an exchange of bullets. You didn’t see a drive-by. You clicked on Facebook and you see a black boy get shot in his back running.”
The emotional protest lasted several hours, with activists coming face-to-face with area police officers who stood silently.
“Murderer!” the protesters shouted. “Shut it down!”
Rose was remembered as a “really lovely, gentle kid” by Gisele Fetterman, wife of Braddock Mayor John Fetterman (D) and founder of the Free Store nonprofit, where Rose volunteered every summer. “All the kids loved him. Just a fine person. Bubbly. Funny. Goofy. Just really special.”
Cell phone video of the incident captured by a witness sparked anger across the city Tuesday night. At a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Allegheny County police Superintendent Coleman McDonough said police found two guns on the floor of the car in which Rose was riding, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. The driver of the car was being taken into custody when Rose and a second unidentified individual fled from the scene.
Police pulled the vehicle over because they suspected that the occupants were involved in a gunfire exchange in the North Braddock neighborhood a few minutes earlier. It is unclear why the officer shot at Rose, who did not appear to pose any immediate danger to the police officers as he ran away.
McDonough did not share the name of the officer who shot and killed Rose and urged “people to give us time to conduct an objective investigation, to gather facts.”
But the protesters who gathered outside the station later that evening were outraged.
“Enough is enough!” one activist shouted, according to Facebook video posted by the Post-Gazette, demanding the resignation of Pittsburgh district attorney Stephen A. Zappala, Jr., who has been accused of criminalizing black children and failing to address the staff-on-student violence that has plagued the Woodland Hills School District, where Rose was a student, for several years. A second protest outside Zappala’s office is expected to take place Thursday afternoon.
“Zappala got to go,” the activist continued. “He’s been in office 20 years. He has never tried a case … he was put in there. Nobody’s running against him … That’s the problem. It’s called the good ol’ boys club.”
“What you saw last night, what you witnessed last night on Facebook was a murder,” another protester shouted. “Don’t let the narrative change. Don’t let the press conference after change what you saw with your own eyes last night. You didn’t see a shoot-out. You didn’t see an exchange of bullets. You didn’t see a drive-by. You clicked on Facebook and you see a black boy get shot in his back running.”
The emotional protest lasted several hours, with activists coming face-to-face with area police officers who stood silently.
“Murderer!” the protesters shouted. “Shut it down!”
Rose was remembered as a “really lovely, gentle kid” by Gisele Fetterman, wife of Braddock Mayor John Fetterman (D) and founder of the Free Store nonprofit, where Rose volunteered every summer. “All the kids loved him. Just a fine person. Bubbly. Funny. Goofy. Just really special.”
Cleveland restaurant called the cops on black sorority members to make sure they paid for their food
Noor Al-Sibai - raw story
21 JUN 2018 AT 10:44 ET
A tropical-themed restaurant in Cleveland has been accused of racial profiling after calling the police on a group of black sorority members to ensure they paid their bar tabs while they were celebrating one of their sisters’ book deals.
The Plain Dealer newspaper reported that a manager at the Bahama Breeze restaurant in Orange Village — an affluent Cleveland suburb — called police on the group of roughly 40 Delta Sigma Theta members after a woman who was celebrating with them said she was going to leave after waiting 25 minutes to pay her bill.
The woman ultimately stayed and paid the bill, but the manager called the police anyway. According to a police report on the incident, the manager claimed other sorority members threatened to walk out on their tabs and caused a “disturbance” by using profanity — a characterization Delta Sigma Theta member Chante Spencer said is “totally not true.”
“Police were standing there to make sure everyone paid, which we felt was racial profiling,” Spencer told the Plain Dealer, emphasizing that she spoke as an individual and not for the sorority.
“Members of the group — which included a doctor, a judge, educators and other professionals from the Cleveland area – became upset by what they perceived as case of profiling by a manager,” the report noted based on Spencer’s account.
No arrests were made and all of the women paid their bar tabs, the police told the newspaper. They were there for roughly an hour, as per their report.
The Plain Dealer newspaper reported that a manager at the Bahama Breeze restaurant in Orange Village — an affluent Cleveland suburb — called police on the group of roughly 40 Delta Sigma Theta members after a woman who was celebrating with them said she was going to leave after waiting 25 minutes to pay her bill.
The woman ultimately stayed and paid the bill, but the manager called the police anyway. According to a police report on the incident, the manager claimed other sorority members threatened to walk out on their tabs and caused a “disturbance” by using profanity — a characterization Delta Sigma Theta member Chante Spencer said is “totally not true.”
“Police were standing there to make sure everyone paid, which we felt was racial profiling,” Spencer told the Plain Dealer, emphasizing that she spoke as an individual and not for the sorority.
“Members of the group — which included a doctor, a judge, educators and other professionals from the Cleveland area – became upset by what they perceived as case of profiling by a manager,” the report noted based on Spencer’s account.
No arrests were made and all of the women paid their bar tabs, the police told the newspaper. They were there for roughly an hour, as per their report.
As Homeland Security Puts Children In Cages, Dogs Get Resort Treatment
Sheepskin Bedding, Maid Service, Playtime
By Ken Klippenstein, TYT Investigates - dc report
6/21/18
In light of the fact that the Department of Homeland Security is placing undocumented children in literal cages to sleep on mats under tin foil-colored space blankets, you might think its accommodations for dogs would be even worse.
But you’d be wrong.
Instead of space blankets, dogs in the custody of Customs and Border Protection, a division of the department, will be treated to “plush double-sided sheepskin bedding” at the Peninsula Pet Resort in California, according to federal procurement records reviewed by TYT, The Young Turks. The records identify the contract as a purchase for “canine kenneling.” They do not indicate whether the contract is for dogs the division owns or seizes.
The dogs will sleep indoors in the resort’s 177 separate doggie suites, which feature “frequent maid service and clean bedding every day,” as well as “raised kennel decking,” according to Peninsula Pet Resort’s website. The site also says, “MOST IMPORTANTLY—WE PROVIDE LOVING CARE!”
By contrast, the division reportedly has made undocumented detainees sleep in “freezing cold” cells on concrete floors without mats. Trump has referred to undocumented immigrants as “animals.”
Temperature is unlikely to be a problem for the dogs, as the resort includes heating in all indoor areas. They’re even in the process of installing air-conditioning.
Another advantage the dogs may have over detained children is outdoor playtime. Although detention centers reportedly permit children to play outside for two hours each day, Peninsula Pet Resort allows its guests up to four hours of outdoor playtime daily.
The contract, worth $67,324, is listed as lasting for 11 months, from July 1 of this year to June 30, 2019. Which is 12 months.
But you’d be wrong.
Instead of space blankets, dogs in the custody of Customs and Border Protection, a division of the department, will be treated to “plush double-sided sheepskin bedding” at the Peninsula Pet Resort in California, according to federal procurement records reviewed by TYT, The Young Turks. The records identify the contract as a purchase for “canine kenneling.” They do not indicate whether the contract is for dogs the division owns or seizes.
The dogs will sleep indoors in the resort’s 177 separate doggie suites, which feature “frequent maid service and clean bedding every day,” as well as “raised kennel decking,” according to Peninsula Pet Resort’s website. The site also says, “MOST IMPORTANTLY—WE PROVIDE LOVING CARE!”
By contrast, the division reportedly has made undocumented detainees sleep in “freezing cold” cells on concrete floors without mats. Trump has referred to undocumented immigrants as “animals.”
Temperature is unlikely to be a problem for the dogs, as the resort includes heating in all indoor areas. They’re even in the process of installing air-conditioning.
Another advantage the dogs may have over detained children is outdoor playtime. Although detention centers reportedly permit children to play outside for two hours each day, Peninsula Pet Resort allows its guests up to four hours of outdoor playtime daily.
The contract, worth $67,324, is listed as lasting for 11 months, from July 1 of this year to June 30, 2019. Which is 12 months.
1 year ago, Trump got rid of a wildly successful immigration program that didn’t lock people up
The Trump administration is pretending it didn't have a choice to separate families.
ALAN PYKE - thinkprogress
JUN 21, 2018, 1:03 PM
When President Donald Trump conceded defeat Wednesday on his preferred policy of splitting up migrant families, he insisted it is still necessary to keep those families imprisoned ahead of trial.
But Trump’s team knows better. It ended a program that was keeping families together, free, and compliant with their court dates and Immigrations and Custom Enforcement (ICE) check-ins just a year ago.
The reasons Trump staff gave for ending ICE’s Family Case Management Program (FCMP) pilot barely a year after it launched expose, again, the administration’s serial lying about the motives undergirding its deportation campaign. That program served roughly the same population currently targeted by Trump’s zero-tolerance policy: Adults with children who claim asylum but enter the country in between official U.S. ports.
Even though FCMP was delivering a higher compliance rate than other “alternatives to detention” (ATD) systems like ankle monitors and random house visits, and doing so at a fraction of the cost of keeping people locked up pending trial, Trump’s ICE leaders pulled the plug.
The reason? Too many families turned out to have legitimate arguments for obtaining legal status in the U.S. Though Trump and his loyal GOP colleagues now insist family detention is necessary because people won’t show up for court otherwise, the FCMP was delivering near-perfect compliance from immigrant families – it just wasn’t getting enough of them deported.
“Since the inception of FCMP, there have only been 15 removals from this program, as opposed to more than 2,200 from ATD,” ICE spokeswoman Sarah Rodriguez said in June 2017. “By discontinuing FCMP, ICE will save more than $12 million a year — money which can be utilized for other programs which more effectively allow ICE to discharge its enforcement and removal responsibilities.
It was the kind of blandly frank statement that tends to skid by in the bombastic, gaudy Trump era. But Rodriguez was openly saying that a system that delivers good results isn’t a good system unless the results it delivers are deportations.
She was also warping the stats dramatically. FCMP was barely a year off the ground and had served fewer than 1,000 total migrants by the time she cited that state. ATD had been running for close to a decade in various forms, with tens of thousands of people enrolled each year over that span. It is an illogical comparison that offers no actual information.
Rodriguez’s boss Thomas Homan preferred to emphasize the costs of the program, which used social workers employed by private prison firm GEO Group to facilitate families in both settling in to work and live, and ensure they appeared as required for immigration proceedings tied to asylum claims and other vectors toward legal status.
“So when you look at the cost, you know, an average day on the family case management program is $35, almost $36 a day” while ankle monitor ATD runs about $4 per person per day, Homan told members of the House Appropriations Committee in June 2017. “I think as long as it doesn’t change the metrics of who has shown up in court, as long as they both are equally successful and one is $4 and the other one is $36, we decided that we were going to go with the cheaper alternative.”
But it does “change the metrics of who shows up in court.” About 5 percent of ATD migrants absconded from the program in 2012, the most recent year for which data is public. Another 4 percent ended up arrested by other law enforcement agencies while on the program. Just 2 percent of FCMP participants absconded.
Homan was likely invoking the near-identical rates at which people in each program showed up in immigration court: 99.6 percent for the ankle-monitored crowd, and 100 percent for those paired with caseworkers. But either way the programs prove that Trump and his pals – even the ones who acted scandalized about family separation but then showed up to carry water for the president Wednesday as he prepared his strategic-retreat Executive Order – know full well that migrants can be released on their own recognizance without ghosting on the feds.
And if ICE wants to save money, detaining families under Trump’s new self-own of an order ain’t the way. Daily cost figures on ICE detention vary a bit from source to source, but the cheapest credible estimate you’ll find is $159 per person per dayfor family detention, or four times the FCMP rate. Trump’s Wednesday order also makes clear that he expects other agencies including the military to contribute space to the family detention camps project, with ICE on the hook for unknown costs tied to that repurposing of institutional space.
While Trump’s functionaries have been happy to shift the goalposts repeatedly from costs to stats to the need to send a deterrent message south to others eager to flee violence in destabilized Central American countries, the rump reality of the thing doesn’t flicker around so easily.
FCMP was cheaper. It was more effective. It was ended. None of what Trump says is necessary is actually necessary to achieve the goals he claims to pursue when he’s behind a White House desk with loyal senators alongside him.
The only rationale that actually does add up, consistently, is that Trump and Stephen Miller and the rest are aching to punish migrants for daring to seek safety inside the U.S.
The new policy still fits their real goal: To punish and terrorize families in the hope that fewer would view escape to the United States as a superior option to the brutality they were fleeing back home. We will continue to broadcast images of U.S. officials terrorizing children and families to the world.
The White House is still committed to locking up desperate families in prison camps along the border to send a grim message. It’s just losing its grip on the bizarre spin that its conscious choices weren’t really choices at all.
But Trump’s team knows better. It ended a program that was keeping families together, free, and compliant with their court dates and Immigrations and Custom Enforcement (ICE) check-ins just a year ago.
The reasons Trump staff gave for ending ICE’s Family Case Management Program (FCMP) pilot barely a year after it launched expose, again, the administration’s serial lying about the motives undergirding its deportation campaign. That program served roughly the same population currently targeted by Trump’s zero-tolerance policy: Adults with children who claim asylum but enter the country in between official U.S. ports.
Even though FCMP was delivering a higher compliance rate than other “alternatives to detention” (ATD) systems like ankle monitors and random house visits, and doing so at a fraction of the cost of keeping people locked up pending trial, Trump’s ICE leaders pulled the plug.
The reason? Too many families turned out to have legitimate arguments for obtaining legal status in the U.S. Though Trump and his loyal GOP colleagues now insist family detention is necessary because people won’t show up for court otherwise, the FCMP was delivering near-perfect compliance from immigrant families – it just wasn’t getting enough of them deported.
“Since the inception of FCMP, there have only been 15 removals from this program, as opposed to more than 2,200 from ATD,” ICE spokeswoman Sarah Rodriguez said in June 2017. “By discontinuing FCMP, ICE will save more than $12 million a year — money which can be utilized for other programs which more effectively allow ICE to discharge its enforcement and removal responsibilities.
It was the kind of blandly frank statement that tends to skid by in the bombastic, gaudy Trump era. But Rodriguez was openly saying that a system that delivers good results isn’t a good system unless the results it delivers are deportations.
She was also warping the stats dramatically. FCMP was barely a year off the ground and had served fewer than 1,000 total migrants by the time she cited that state. ATD had been running for close to a decade in various forms, with tens of thousands of people enrolled each year over that span. It is an illogical comparison that offers no actual information.
Rodriguez’s boss Thomas Homan preferred to emphasize the costs of the program, which used social workers employed by private prison firm GEO Group to facilitate families in both settling in to work and live, and ensure they appeared as required for immigration proceedings tied to asylum claims and other vectors toward legal status.
“So when you look at the cost, you know, an average day on the family case management program is $35, almost $36 a day” while ankle monitor ATD runs about $4 per person per day, Homan told members of the House Appropriations Committee in June 2017. “I think as long as it doesn’t change the metrics of who has shown up in court, as long as they both are equally successful and one is $4 and the other one is $36, we decided that we were going to go with the cheaper alternative.”
But it does “change the metrics of who shows up in court.” About 5 percent of ATD migrants absconded from the program in 2012, the most recent year for which data is public. Another 4 percent ended up arrested by other law enforcement agencies while on the program. Just 2 percent of FCMP participants absconded.
Homan was likely invoking the near-identical rates at which people in each program showed up in immigration court: 99.6 percent for the ankle-monitored crowd, and 100 percent for those paired with caseworkers. But either way the programs prove that Trump and his pals – even the ones who acted scandalized about family separation but then showed up to carry water for the president Wednesday as he prepared his strategic-retreat Executive Order – know full well that migrants can be released on their own recognizance without ghosting on the feds.
And if ICE wants to save money, detaining families under Trump’s new self-own of an order ain’t the way. Daily cost figures on ICE detention vary a bit from source to source, but the cheapest credible estimate you’ll find is $159 per person per dayfor family detention, or four times the FCMP rate. Trump’s Wednesday order also makes clear that he expects other agencies including the military to contribute space to the family detention camps project, with ICE on the hook for unknown costs tied to that repurposing of institutional space.
While Trump’s functionaries have been happy to shift the goalposts repeatedly from costs to stats to the need to send a deterrent message south to others eager to flee violence in destabilized Central American countries, the rump reality of the thing doesn’t flicker around so easily.
FCMP was cheaper. It was more effective. It was ended. None of what Trump says is necessary is actually necessary to achieve the goals he claims to pursue when he’s behind a White House desk with loyal senators alongside him.
The only rationale that actually does add up, consistently, is that Trump and Stephen Miller and the rest are aching to punish migrants for daring to seek safety inside the U.S.
The new policy still fits their real goal: To punish and terrorize families in the hope that fewer would view escape to the United States as a superior option to the brutality they were fleeing back home. We will continue to broadcast images of U.S. officials terrorizing children and families to the world.
The White House is still committed to locking up desperate families in prison camps along the border to send a grim message. It’s just losing its grip on the bizarre spin that its conscious choices weren’t really choices at all.
Jim Carrey's latest artwork.
bill for thieves and fools!!!
House farm bill passes with controversial food stamp changes
By CATHERINE BOUDREAU - politico
06/21/2018 04:08 PM EDT
The House passed its farm bill Thursday by a vote of 213-211 after weeks of uncertainty over whether leadership would be able to secure enough support within the fractious GOP Conference to pass a measure that is critical to farm country.
Republican leadership succeeded in rebounding from last month’s stunning defeat of the massive $860 billion legislation by meeting the demands of the House Freedom Caucus, which helped tank the first vote by withholding support as leverage to force a roll call on a conservative immigration measure. The immigration bill, written by House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), was voted down earlier Thursday, but clearing that hurdle led the influential conservative bloc to deliver just enough support to pass the farm bill.
Freedom Caucus support was essential, because Democrats were unanimous in their opposition to the bill over new work requirements for food stamp recipients. Twenty Republicans joined with Democrats in opposing the bill, but eight Freedom Caucus members flipped their votes from last month and voted in favor, including caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.).
---
House Democrats walked away from the bill in committee because it would impose stricter work requirements on between 5 million and 7 million recipients of food stamps while pouring billions of dollars into state education and job training programs.
Passage of the House farm bill was a victory for House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republicans who are eager to advance welfare reform. The Senate bill, however, would not make major changes to SNAP.
---
The House farm bill would also tighten eligibility criteria under SNAP — changes that would result in some 400,000 households losing SNAP benefits. Thousands of children would also risk losing their enrollment in free and reduced-price school meal programs.
Republicans contend the plan would put people on a pathway to self-sufficiency. Democrats and anti-hunger groups say it would make it more difficult for millions of needy Americans to receive nutrition assistance, and also would invest in a state-run job training bureaucracy under SNAP that has yet to prove it helps people move out of poverty.
---
The House and Senate legislation largely leaves current farm policy intact, which has prompted taxpayer watchdogs, free-market think tanks and environmental groups to criticize lawmakers for not doing more to rein in spending on commodity supports and the crop insurance program, which total about $13 billion annually.
There are some differences between each chamber’s version on payment limits, however, that could ignite heated negotiations. The House farm bill would exempt operations structured as limited liability corporations and S corporations from a $125,000 cap on commodity subsidies and a $900,000 adjusted gross income limit to qualify for those payments. That means owners would no longer have to split subsidies based on what portion of the business they control; instead, they would each be subject to those payment and adjusted gross income limits.
Further, the House legislation would allow additional family members to qualify for commodity subsidies, including first cousins, nieces and nephews. The Senate version doesn’t contain such changes, and Sen. Chuck Grassley is working to secure language aimed at ensuring that individuals who aren’t involved in the day-to-day operations of a farm are not able to receive commodity subsidies.
---
The House farm bill also would take a different approach to conservation programs than the Senate version. Under the House measure, one of USDA's major conservation initiatives — the Conservation Stewardship Program — would be eliminated, and nearly $800 million over a decade would be cut from the bill's conservation title. The Senate version, on the other hand, would maintain funding for the title and expand resources for certain efforts, such as the Regional Conservation Partnership Program.[...]
Republican leadership succeeded in rebounding from last month’s stunning defeat of the massive $860 billion legislation by meeting the demands of the House Freedom Caucus, which helped tank the first vote by withholding support as leverage to force a roll call on a conservative immigration measure. The immigration bill, written by House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), was voted down earlier Thursday, but clearing that hurdle led the influential conservative bloc to deliver just enough support to pass the farm bill.
Freedom Caucus support was essential, because Democrats were unanimous in their opposition to the bill over new work requirements for food stamp recipients. Twenty Republicans joined with Democrats in opposing the bill, but eight Freedom Caucus members flipped their votes from last month and voted in favor, including caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.).
---
House Democrats walked away from the bill in committee because it would impose stricter work requirements on between 5 million and 7 million recipients of food stamps while pouring billions of dollars into state education and job training programs.
Passage of the House farm bill was a victory for House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republicans who are eager to advance welfare reform. The Senate bill, however, would not make major changes to SNAP.
---
The House farm bill would also tighten eligibility criteria under SNAP — changes that would result in some 400,000 households losing SNAP benefits. Thousands of children would also risk losing their enrollment in free and reduced-price school meal programs.
Republicans contend the plan would put people on a pathway to self-sufficiency. Democrats and anti-hunger groups say it would make it more difficult for millions of needy Americans to receive nutrition assistance, and also would invest in a state-run job training bureaucracy under SNAP that has yet to prove it helps people move out of poverty.
---
The House and Senate legislation largely leaves current farm policy intact, which has prompted taxpayer watchdogs, free-market think tanks and environmental groups to criticize lawmakers for not doing more to rein in spending on commodity supports and the crop insurance program, which total about $13 billion annually.
There are some differences between each chamber’s version on payment limits, however, that could ignite heated negotiations. The House farm bill would exempt operations structured as limited liability corporations and S corporations from a $125,000 cap on commodity subsidies and a $900,000 adjusted gross income limit to qualify for those payments. That means owners would no longer have to split subsidies based on what portion of the business they control; instead, they would each be subject to those payment and adjusted gross income limits.
Further, the House legislation would allow additional family members to qualify for commodity subsidies, including first cousins, nieces and nephews. The Senate version doesn’t contain such changes, and Sen. Chuck Grassley is working to secure language aimed at ensuring that individuals who aren’t involved in the day-to-day operations of a farm are not able to receive commodity subsidies.
---
The House farm bill also would take a different approach to conservation programs than the Senate version. Under the House measure, one of USDA's major conservation initiatives — the Conservation Stewardship Program — would be eliminated, and nearly $800 million over a decade would be cut from the bill's conservation title. The Senate version, on the other hand, would maintain funding for the title and expand resources for certain efforts, such as the Regional Conservation Partnership Program.[...]
*bites from real news - 6/21/2018*
*Officials see no evidence of Trump’s claim that North Korea has started “total denuclearization”
U.S. Pr*sident Donald Trump said on Thursday North Korea was blowing up four of its big test sites and that a process of "total denuclearization ... has already started," but officials said there was no such evidence since a landmark summit last week.
*Trump’s Border Patrol is now randomly stopping drivers in Maine and asking them to prove their citizenship
The United States Border Patrol has set up a checkpoint along the I-95 interstate highway in which agents can stop drivers and ask them to prove they are American citizens.
*Schiff: Nielsen privately said family separations could resume
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Thursday said that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has privately told lawmakers that the Trump administration's family separation practice could resume despite the president signing an executive order to e ... (The Hill)
*North Dakota town may vote to dissolve rather than allow white supremacists to take it over
Ryan Schock, mayor of the roughly 20-person town of Leith, went door-to-door in the village and collected 12 signatures from residents who would be willing to put to a vote whether they should give up their incorporated status.
*STATE ELECTION OFFICIALS DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT RUSSIAN HACKING THREAT UNTIL THEY READ IT IN THE NEWS, EMAILS SHOW
*A RARE LOOK AT YEMEN’S WAR, WHERE CHILDREN STARVE AND HOSPITALS ARE ON LIFE-SUPPORT
Alex Potter — 7:43 a.m. Photojournalist Alex Potter chronicles the suffering of Yemenis after three years of fighting and near famine.
*The Canadian Parliament Has Spoken — Country Will Become Second in the World to Legalize Marijuana
*video: DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen: Russia was not ‘taking sides’ when it hacked 2016 election to help Trump
*so what: Melania Trump makes surprise visit to border facilities
First lady Melania Trump touched down in McAllen, Texas, Thursday making a publicly unannounced and hastily planned trip to get a first-hand look at the crisis affecting immigrant families at the US border. In doing so, she becomes the first Trump f ... (CNN)
Melania Trump photographed wearing 'I really don't care, do u?' jacket en route to border kids
*Trump’s Miss Universe Business Partner Built Two World Cup Stadiums. Now He’s Part of the Russia Probe.
Aras Agalarov used unpaid migrant labor on the $600 million projects, which were bestowed by Putin.
*An Extraordinarily Expensive Way to Fight ISIS
The tale of a bombing raid in the Libyan desert, pitting stealth bombers and 500-pound bombs against 70 ragtag fighters.
*The Children Working America’s Tobacco Fields
The Overlooked Children Working America’s Tobacco Fields Kids as young as 10 and 11 are picking cash crops for giant international companies—and hardly anyone is watching to make sure the work is safe.
*peace officers
How one American city chose to tackle crime, combat racism, and reckon with the legacy of police brutality(new republic)
*Children exposed to 30% more pollution than adults on walk to school due to proximity to exhaust fumes, study says
The results also revealed that for children who are driven to school, the situation is far worse.
*Latinos on pace to outnumber whites in Texas by 2022: data
Hispanic Texans are set to outnumber non-Hispanic whites in the Lone Star State as soon as 2022, according to new data released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday. The data accounts for the state’s popul ... (The Hill)
*D.C. voters just raised the tipped minimum wage, but the fight isn’t over yet
Supporters are already afraid the measure will be overturned.(thinkprogress)
*"No system" to reunite children with parents in detention, former Obama official says
In a rare reversal, Pr*sident Trump said Wednesday the U.S. will maintain "zero-tolerance" at the border but will allow migrant families to stay together temporarily, backing down on his own administration's policy separating children from ... (CBS News)
*Texas sheriff refuses to help feds guard migrant children tent city, saying 'it's wrong'
The El Paso County sheriff prohibited his deputies from working off-duty at a temporary shelter housing migrant children, saying he refused to support the Trump administration's "unjust" policy of separating families at the border. Sheriff ... (Washington Post)
Trump administration tightens rules for federal scientists talking to reporters
By RONG-GONG LIN II - la times
JUN 21, 2018
A new directive from the Trump administration instructs federal scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey to get approval from its parent agency before agreeing to most interview requests from reporters, according to employees and emails from officials with the Department of the Interior and USGS.
USGS employees who spoke with The Times on condition of anonymity because they were unauthorized to do so say the new protocol represents a dramatic change in decades of past media practices at the scientific agency and will interfere with scientists’ ability to quickly respond to reporters’ questions. They expected that taxpayers would see less of the USGS’ scientific expertise as reporters seek scientific comment elsewhere.
The new protocol also permits the Department of the Interior’s communications office to reject interview requests on scientific matters.
A deputy press secretary for the Department of the Interior, Faith Vander Voort, wrote in an email that “the characterization that there is any new policy or that it for some reason targets scientists is completely false.” She said the Department of the Interior’s communications office “simply asked” the USGS public affairs office to follow media guidelines published in 2012 during the Obama administration. Vander Voort did not answer a question as to what prompted the change in media protocol.
The 10-page media manual says that the Department of the Interior’s communications office “must be notified” ahead of media interviews that “may generate significant news coverage, public interest or inquiry.” The manual, however, does not say that agency employees must get clearance or approval before responding to a reporter.
The manual also states that the department “supports a culture of openness with the news media and the public that values the free exchange of ideas, data and information.”
Documents reviewed by The Times show that the Department of the Interior’s press secretary, Heather Swift, on April 25 sent an email saying that the standard protocol is “that interviews with a national outlet — such as the Washington Post, Discovery, NYT, The Atlantic, CNN, etc — go through approval. Additionally, topics that are either very controversial or that are likely to become a national story even if a regional reporter is asking (such as Houston Chronicle doing a story about an USGS employee discovering life on Mars) also go through approval.”
In a subsequent email, a USGS official said Swift “is in the position of clearing interview requests for all bureaus” within the Department of the Interior, which includes the USGS, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The email listed questions to be answered that would help comply with Swift’s directions. Among them:
A slideshow presentation later shown to USGS employees articulating the new protocol said exceptions can be made when timeliness is critical for public health or safety.
The USGS is the nation’s leading scientific agency on natural resources and natural hazards, like earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides and studies risks such as rising sea levels caused by climate change.
Current and former federal employees suggested the new protocols are an unwieldy attempt to control the voices of workers in the Department of the Interior, which employs some 70,000 people, including thousands of scientists at the top of their fields.
“This is really quite troubling. … In the 44 years I was with the agency, I was never required to go through anyone for authorization to speak with a reporter,” said William Ellsworth, former chief scientist of the USGS’ earthquake hazards team and now a professor of geophysics at Stanford University. “The USGS is a nonpolitical science agency. … These new roadblocks will not help them fulfill their mission.”
“You’re hamstringing the ability of the organization to listen to the needs of the public,” said Ross Stein, a USGS scientist emeritus and adjunct professor of geophysics at Stanford University.
Kate Kelly, a former director of communications at the Department of the Interior during the Obama administration, said it’s a problem when political appointees are put in a position where they can require scientists to obtain approval before speaking to journalists.
“This policy, if it’s in fact being implemented as such, has a lot of concerning implications. It essentially gives political appointees veto power over science, scientists and information that the American people should have access to,” Kelly said. “That introduces questions about what scientists are able to say, and whether what they’re sharing is some mangled version of the truth.”
Some also expressed concern about how the work of federal scientists is being affected in the Trump administration. The Center for Investigative Reporting wrote about the deletion of every mention of humans causing climate change in a draft report for the National Park Service; the references were later restored. The Washington Post reported on the deletionfrom a USGS news release about the role climate change played in rising sea levels and reductions in the number of scientists allowed to attend key conferences where they can share their work and learn new things.
In an email, Vander Voort of the Department of the Interior said the agency’s budget is limited and it can only “afford to send people who have a meaningful role at the conference.” Vander Voort added, “Furthermore, if taxpayer dollars are being spent to send someone to a conference, we’d like some degree of confidence that their attendance will advance the department’s priorities.”
USGS employees who spoke with The Times on condition of anonymity because they were unauthorized to do so say the new protocol represents a dramatic change in decades of past media practices at the scientific agency and will interfere with scientists’ ability to quickly respond to reporters’ questions. They expected that taxpayers would see less of the USGS’ scientific expertise as reporters seek scientific comment elsewhere.
The new protocol also permits the Department of the Interior’s communications office to reject interview requests on scientific matters.
A deputy press secretary for the Department of the Interior, Faith Vander Voort, wrote in an email that “the characterization that there is any new policy or that it for some reason targets scientists is completely false.” She said the Department of the Interior’s communications office “simply asked” the USGS public affairs office to follow media guidelines published in 2012 during the Obama administration. Vander Voort did not answer a question as to what prompted the change in media protocol.
The 10-page media manual says that the Department of the Interior’s communications office “must be notified” ahead of media interviews that “may generate significant news coverage, public interest or inquiry.” The manual, however, does not say that agency employees must get clearance or approval before responding to a reporter.
The manual also states that the department “supports a culture of openness with the news media and the public that values the free exchange of ideas, data and information.”
Documents reviewed by The Times show that the Department of the Interior’s press secretary, Heather Swift, on April 25 sent an email saying that the standard protocol is “that interviews with a national outlet — such as the Washington Post, Discovery, NYT, The Atlantic, CNN, etc — go through approval. Additionally, topics that are either very controversial or that are likely to become a national story even if a regional reporter is asking (such as Houston Chronicle doing a story about an USGS employee discovering life on Mars) also go through approval.”
In a subsequent email, a USGS official said Swift “is in the position of clearing interview requests for all bureaus” within the Department of the Interior, which includes the USGS, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The email listed questions to be answered that would help comply with Swift’s directions. Among them:
- What questions does the reporter want to ask the scientist? Include as much detail as possible. Ask the reporter what the gist of the questions will be.
- How will the scientist answer the questions? Be specific. Include links to published studies if available.
- What is the broader thrust of the story? Ask the reporter what the full scope of a story is. Be as specific as possible.
- Are there policy implications? If the answer is “yes,” provide some background for context.
- Is there anything controversial? If the answer is “yes,” please provide some background for context.
A slideshow presentation later shown to USGS employees articulating the new protocol said exceptions can be made when timeliness is critical for public health or safety.
The USGS is the nation’s leading scientific agency on natural resources and natural hazards, like earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides and studies risks such as rising sea levels caused by climate change.
Current and former federal employees suggested the new protocols are an unwieldy attempt to control the voices of workers in the Department of the Interior, which employs some 70,000 people, including thousands of scientists at the top of their fields.
“This is really quite troubling. … In the 44 years I was with the agency, I was never required to go through anyone for authorization to speak with a reporter,” said William Ellsworth, former chief scientist of the USGS’ earthquake hazards team and now a professor of geophysics at Stanford University. “The USGS is a nonpolitical science agency. … These new roadblocks will not help them fulfill their mission.”
“You’re hamstringing the ability of the organization to listen to the needs of the public,” said Ross Stein, a USGS scientist emeritus and adjunct professor of geophysics at Stanford University.
Kate Kelly, a former director of communications at the Department of the Interior during the Obama administration, said it’s a problem when political appointees are put in a position where they can require scientists to obtain approval before speaking to journalists.
“This policy, if it’s in fact being implemented as such, has a lot of concerning implications. It essentially gives political appointees veto power over science, scientists and information that the American people should have access to,” Kelly said. “That introduces questions about what scientists are able to say, and whether what they’re sharing is some mangled version of the truth.”
Some also expressed concern about how the work of federal scientists is being affected in the Trump administration. The Center for Investigative Reporting wrote about the deletion of every mention of humans causing climate change in a draft report for the National Park Service; the references were later restored. The Washington Post reported on the deletionfrom a USGS news release about the role climate change played in rising sea levels and reductions in the number of scientists allowed to attend key conferences where they can share their work and learn new things.
In an email, Vander Voort of the Department of the Interior said the agency’s budget is limited and it can only “afford to send people who have a meaningful role at the conference.” Vander Voort added, “Furthermore, if taxpayer dollars are being spent to send someone to a conference, we’d like some degree of confidence that their attendance will advance the department’s priorities.”
*What's Inside*
june 18 - june 20
~‘WHITE CIVIL RIGHTS’ RALLY COMING TO DC AFTER NATIONAL PARK SERVICE APPROVES APPLICATION (WHITE SUPREMACY)
*NOT SO FAST, YOU REPUBLICAN BASTARDS BY NANCEGREGGS
(GOP POLITICS)
*NORTH CAROLINA’S ENDLESS COAL ASH NIGHTMARE: POISONED WATER AND HIGHER BILLS FROM DUKE ENERGY(ENVIRONMENT)
*WHO DECLASSIFIES BEING TRANSGENDER AS A MENTAL ILLNESS, UNDERMINES TRUMP’S TRANS MILITARY BAN(RIGHTS)
*KANSAS SECRETARY OF STATE DEFIES COURT ORDER, WON’T REGISTER ELIGIBLE VOTERS
(ELECTIONS)
*MORALLY BANKRUPT': AFTER TAX CUTS FOR RICHEST, HOUSE GOP UNVEILS $5.4 TRILLION ATTACK ON NATION'S SAFETY NET(PAYBACK)
*THIS TRUMP DONOR IS PROFITING OFF THE PRESIDENT’S CHILD SEPARATION POLICIES STEPH BAZZLE(REALITY)
*GOP SENATE NOMINEE CRAMER COMPARES CAGES FOR MIGRANT KIDS TO PLAYGROUNDS
(AMERIKKKANS)
*TRUMP ACCUSES CANADIANS OF SMUGGLING U.S. GOODS ACROSS THE BORDER TO GET AROUND 'MASSIVE' TARIFFS(TRUMP)
*BEHIND THE CRIMINAL IMMIGRATION LAW: EUGENICS AND WHITE SUPREMACY
(TRUE HISTORY)
*WHERE WE AT IN MAGA, PART 4(OPINION)
*TRUMP FANS WHINE ABOUT REPORTS ON BABY JAILS: ‘QUIT TRYING TO MAKE US FEEL TEARY-EYED FOR THE CHILDREN’(SUCKERS)
*THE AUDITOR OF CITI, CREDIT SUISSE AND DEUTSCHE BANK WAS TIPPED OFF BEFORE REGULATORY INSPECTION(CORPORATE CRIMINALS)
*'THE ENTIRE HABITAT IS GONE': HAWAII'S NATURAL WONDERS CLAIMED BY LAVA
(ENVIRONMENT)
*CARDINAL THEODORE MCCARRICK, FORMER ARCHBISHOP OF WASHINGTON, HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM MINISTRY AFTER A SEX ABUSE ALLEGATION(CHRISTIANITY)
*DEAD TO ME BY NANCE GREGGS
(TALKERS)
~EXCLUSIVE: US OFFICIALS LIKELY LOST TRACK OF NEARLY 6,000 UNACCOMPANIED MIGRANT KIDS
(GESTAPO USA)
*TEXAS LIBERAL CALLS REPUBLICAN ‘STUPID’ AFTER POSTING ‘INCRIMINATING’ BILLBOARD SIGN
(AMERICA)
*ARIZONA COLUMNIST USES TRUMP DEFENDERS’ OWN WORDS TO EXPOSE THE RACISM BEHIND HIS FAMILY SEPARATION POLICY(AMERIKKKANS)
*OBAMA-ERA PROGRAM TO FIGHT KLEPTOCRATS’ FAVORITE TOOL IS WORKING BETTER THAN ANYONE GUESSED(CORPORATE CRIMINALS)
*EXCLUSIVE: REPUBLICANS, NRA SECRETLY PRESSURE CITIGROUP TO BACK OFF RESTRICTIONS ON GUN SELLERS(GOP POLITICS)
*PRUITT GRANTS HOME STATE COAL ASH REGULATION POWERS, ENRAGING ENVIRONMENTALISTS
(ENVIRONMENT)
*THE COLD POLITICAL CALCULUS OF TAKING AWAY THE CHILDREN OF MIGRANTS
BY THE RUDE PUNDIT(COMMENTARY)
*TRUMP AND MULVANEY KEEP HACKING AWAY AT THE FINANCE PROTECTION BUREAU
(CORPORATE CRIMINALS)
*SOUTH CAROLINA GOVERNOR REQUESTED EXEMPTION TO ALLOW FOSTER-CARE AGENCY TO DISCRIMINATE AGAINST NON-CHRISTIANS(RIGHTS)
*WATER RESTORED TO MAJORITY OF PUERTO RICO, BUT PROBLEMS PERSIST
(COLONIES)
*MILLIONS LACK BASIC NECESSITIES, BUT THE SENATE JUST PASSED A $716 BILLION BILL FOR ENDLESS WAR AND EMPIRE(AMERICA)
*JUNETEENTH: FREEDOM’S PROMISE IS STILL DENIED TO THOUSANDS OF BLACKS UNABLE TO MAKE BAIL(RACE MATTERS)
*EX-NASA SCIENTIST: 30 YEARS ON, WORLD IS FAILING 'MISERABLY’ TO ADDRESS CLIMATE CHANGE
(WORLD)
*NINA SIMONE: THE GROWING LEGACY OF A ONCE UNDERAPPRECIATED FIGURE
(REAL PEOPLE)
*'COMMIE CADET' WHO WORE CHE GUEVARA T-SHIRT KICKED OUT OF US ARMY
(REAL PEOPLE)
*CONSERVATIVES’ ANTI-IMMIGRATION FERVOR IS POLITICAL: THEY THINK KEEPING AMERICA WHITE WILL SAVE THEM(TALKERS)
*THIS MODERN WORLD(FUNNIES)
~WORKPLACE DEATHS ARE RISING. TRUMP-ERA BUDGET CUTS COULD MAKE IT WORSE.
(PAYBACK)
*DETROIT GRADUATES LOSE JOB OFFER AFTER BEING TOLD DIPLOMA’S ARE NOT LEGITIMATE
(REAL PEOPLE)
*THESE CHILDREN WILL HAVE STORIES TO TELL. AND THEY WILL BE TOLD.
(TALKERS)
*'HORROR PLANT' DISCOVERED IN ANOTHER US STATE
(WEIRD THINGS)
*THE TIPPING POINT(SUCKERS)
*SUPREME COURT REJECTS DEATH PENALTY APPEAL FOR GAY MAN SENTENCED TO DIE BECAUSE JURORS THOUGHT HE’D ENJOY PRISON(RIGHTS)
*DRUDGE USES PHOTO FROM SYRIA TO DEPICT KIDS FROM LATIN AMERICA AS VIOLENT CRIMINALS
(WORTHLESS MEDIA)
*AMERICANS GRAPPLE WITH RECOGNIZING FACTS IN NEWS STORIES: PEW SURVEY
(AMERICA)
*TEXAS DEPUTY ACCUSED OF RAPING 4-YEAR-OLD — AND THREATENING TO DEPORT HER IMMIGRANT MOM(GESTAPO USA)
*HOW DC’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS WENT FROM SUCCESS STORY TO CAUTIONARY TALE
(EDUCATION)
*FLOODING FROM SEA LEVEL RISE THREATENS OVER 300,000 US COASTAL HOMES – STUDY
(ENVIRONMENT)
*late news of interest*
Black county worker stumbles upon insanely racist ‘nigger owners manual’ his co-workers left in office
Travis Gettys - raw story
21 JUN 2018 AT 13:48 ET
A black county employee in Tennessee found a slave “owners manual” filed away while working in the Obion County Highway Department, after suffering years of racist abuse from colleagues.
DeAndre Adams found the “slave owners manual” in a filing cabinet and a few other employers had access to, and his brother Josh Jones posted photos on Facebook of the document that had been downloaded from the internet, reported the Commercial Appeal.
The document, which is labeled as “racist jokes,” is a short compendium of the most vile racist stereotypes of African-Americans as subhumans who are barely able to speak or control their animal urges.
The printout suggests cutting out a slave’s tongue to keep him from “barking” complaints, and suggests black people enjoy thrashings, lynchings and being dragged behind vehicles.
“Niggers are cheap and there are millions more where yours came from,” the document reads. “So every now and then, push the boat out a bit and lynch a nigger.”
Jones said his brother brought the document to his head supervisor, who Adams said told him not to say anything about it.
“Until a month ago, De has been the only black person of color to be employed by Obion County Highway Department in the last 7 years,” Jones said in his Facebook post.
Adams had complained to his brother over the years about the racist abuse he endured, and Jones said he had enough.
“Over the course of those 7 years, I have received numerous phone calls of him telling me about the racist ‘jokes’ and comments being made about him,” Jone said. “Some he overheard while standing nearby. Others he experienced face-to-face. There was even one circumstance where some of the employees had the audacity to make a noose and tell De it was for him.”
Adams found an attorney, who confirmed the account described by Jones was “completely accurate.”
“He has endured this kind of treatment for quite some time,” said attorney Kathy Laughter Laizure. “The ‘owners manual’ was pretty much the icing on the cake. It’s obviously a difficult time for him and his family.”
The attorney said it’s the most offensive situation she has seen in her 15 years of practicing employment law.
“Not once have I seen anything this blatant and horrific,” she said. “One of the foremen at one point made a noose and waved it at him and said, ‘Isn’t this part of your history?’ or something to that effect.”
Laizure said has not gotten a response from the county’s attorneys since taking on the case last week.
An attorney for the county did not respond to the newspaper’s requests for comment.
DeAndre Adams found the “slave owners manual” in a filing cabinet and a few other employers had access to, and his brother Josh Jones posted photos on Facebook of the document that had been downloaded from the internet, reported the Commercial Appeal.
The document, which is labeled as “racist jokes,” is a short compendium of the most vile racist stereotypes of African-Americans as subhumans who are barely able to speak or control their animal urges.
The printout suggests cutting out a slave’s tongue to keep him from “barking” complaints, and suggests black people enjoy thrashings, lynchings and being dragged behind vehicles.
“Niggers are cheap and there are millions more where yours came from,” the document reads. “So every now and then, push the boat out a bit and lynch a nigger.”
Jones said his brother brought the document to his head supervisor, who Adams said told him not to say anything about it.
“Until a month ago, De has been the only black person of color to be employed by Obion County Highway Department in the last 7 years,” Jones said in his Facebook post.
Adams had complained to his brother over the years about the racist abuse he endured, and Jones said he had enough.
“Over the course of those 7 years, I have received numerous phone calls of him telling me about the racist ‘jokes’ and comments being made about him,” Jone said. “Some he overheard while standing nearby. Others he experienced face-to-face. There was even one circumstance where some of the employees had the audacity to make a noose and tell De it was for him.”
Adams found an attorney, who confirmed the account described by Jones was “completely accurate.”
“He has endured this kind of treatment for quite some time,” said attorney Kathy Laughter Laizure. “The ‘owners manual’ was pretty much the icing on the cake. It’s obviously a difficult time for him and his family.”
The attorney said it’s the most offensive situation she has seen in her 15 years of practicing employment law.
“Not once have I seen anything this blatant and horrific,” she said. “One of the foremen at one point made a noose and waved it at him and said, ‘Isn’t this part of your history?’ or something to that effect.”
Laizure said has not gotten a response from the county’s attorneys since taking on the case last week.
An attorney for the county did not respond to the newspaper’s requests for comment.
Oregon DMV suspends employee who encouraged shooting immigrants at the border to save ‘billions’ of tax dollars
Martin Cizmar - raw story
21 JUN 2018 AT 17:04 ET
A racist woman who is employed by the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles said that all immigrants should be shot at the border, according to the Oregonian.
The employee, Lori McAllen, has reportedly been placed on leave Thursday.
In response to a post about how Trump has handled the migrant crisis, McAllen said that the children should be shot to save tax dollars.
“I personally think they should shoot them all at the border and call it good,” she wrote in screenshots circulated on Twitter. “It’ll save us hard working AMERICAN’S billions of dollars on our taxes!! ;)”
The Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles did not mention her by name in a tweet announcing an employee had been put on leave.
McAllen is paid $34,596 in tax dollars to do her job and has worked for the state for less than a year.
The employee, Lori McAllen, has reportedly been placed on leave Thursday.
In response to a post about how Trump has handled the migrant crisis, McAllen said that the children should be shot to save tax dollars.
“I personally think they should shoot them all at the border and call it good,” she wrote in screenshots circulated on Twitter. “It’ll save us hard working AMERICAN’S billions of dollars on our taxes!! ;)”
The Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles did not mention her by name in a tweet announcing an employee had been put on leave.
McAllen is paid $34,596 in tax dollars to do her job and has worked for the state for less than a year.
driving home while black and confronted by white trash!!!
WATCH: Racist blocks black doctor from entering her gated community — then calls the cops on her
TOM BOGGIONI - raw story
21 JUN 2018 AT 16:14 ET
Dr. Nnenna Aguocha -- screenshot
In a video posted online, a black doctor in Atlanta who attempted to enter the gated community where she has a home was blocked from entering by a man who called the police to have her arrested, reports 11 Alive.
According to Dr. Nnenna Aguocha, she had just come off a night shift and was attempting to pull into the Buckhead Townhome complex where she has lived for eight years when the man blocked her with his SUV in a confrontation that lasted 30 minutes.
In the video you can see the man’s white car blocking the only way into the complex, with Aguocha approaching the man and pointing out where she lived as he muttered at her with his window rolled up.
“He got out of the car and threatened to call the police on me because I was trespassing,” she said in the video, adding. “This is racial profiling at its finest.”
According to the doctor, her antagonist called the police — as did she, explaining: “He called the police, so I called the police as well.”
Aguocha added that man said he didn’t believe she lived in the complex and called her a trespasser — saying it was an obvious case of racism.
“I absolutely think it was racially motivated,” Aguocha explained. “When this altercation was going on, what went through my mind was this guy could do absolutely anything to me. He could shoot me dead on the spot because he was trying to protect the neighborhood and the property and people would make up stories later.”
Police state that the man, who was not identified, blocked her because there had been a series of air conditioner thefts in the community – which the homeowners association denied.
According to Dr. Nnenna Aguocha, she had just come off a night shift and was attempting to pull into the Buckhead Townhome complex where she has lived for eight years when the man blocked her with his SUV in a confrontation that lasted 30 minutes.
In the video you can see the man’s white car blocking the only way into the complex, with Aguocha approaching the man and pointing out where she lived as he muttered at her with his window rolled up.
“He got out of the car and threatened to call the police on me because I was trespassing,” she said in the video, adding. “This is racial profiling at its finest.”
According to the doctor, her antagonist called the police — as did she, explaining: “He called the police, so I called the police as well.”
Aguocha added that man said he didn’t believe she lived in the complex and called her a trespasser — saying it was an obvious case of racism.
“I absolutely think it was racially motivated,” Aguocha explained. “When this altercation was going on, what went through my mind was this guy could do absolutely anything to me. He could shoot me dead on the spot because he was trying to protect the neighborhood and the property and people would make up stories later.”
Police state that the man, who was not identified, blocked her because there had been a series of air conditioner thefts in the community – which the homeowners association denied.
Trump admits order 'ending family separation' is a fake—because 'zero tolerance' is still his policy
Mark Sumner
Daily Kos Staff
Thursday June 21, 2018 · 1:00 PM PDT
In a televised cabinet meeting on Thursday, Donald Trump admitted that the executive order he signed on Wednesday would still "lead to separation ultimately" because it doesn’t address existing court rulings concerning detaining children. The comment only reinforced the futility of Trump’s order which was designed to—and did—receive unwarranted credit for “ending” a crisis that he created intentionally through the institution of his “zero tolerance” policy.
The heart of that crisis isn’t family separation. Family separation is only a side effect of Trump’s zero tolerance policy. Even as he was signing his executive order, Trump made it clear that zero tolerance would continue. And during his Thursday cabinet meeting, he reinforced that idea.
Trump: If you took zero tolerance away, you would be overrun. There would be millions of people. … There would be a run on this country the likes of which you have never seen.
Trump’s evidence that people from other countries would gather up their “few belongings” and make a run on the United States is … there is no evidence. They were not doing so before the policy began, and there’s no reason to think that would change. The thousands of children now being warehoused for profit around the nation have built up since Jefferson Sessions announced Trump’s zero tolerance program on April 6. Family separations are the result of zero tolerance. And only ending zero tolerance can end family separations.
When multiple Democratic politicians stated that Trump could end the problem of children taken from their families with a phone call, they were not saying that he should keep families locked up together. They were saying that Trump need only call Sessions and end zero tolerance. Because zero tolerance is the issue. The executive order pretending to end family separations without ending zero tolerance is like handing out Band-Aids in the middle of a shooting—and letting the shooting continue.
Zero tolerance makes absolutely no sense. To justify it, Trump has been pressing the lie that 97 percent of immigrants skip out on their asylum hearings. That is not true. It’s an enormous lie. In fact, until last year, there was a program in place asylum seekers to come to their hearings—a program that was 99 percent effective. Trump shuttered that program. Because creating a crisis was required before he could take credit for ending it. Read More
The heart of that crisis isn’t family separation. Family separation is only a side effect of Trump’s zero tolerance policy. Even as he was signing his executive order, Trump made it clear that zero tolerance would continue. And during his Thursday cabinet meeting, he reinforced that idea.
Trump: If you took zero tolerance away, you would be overrun. There would be millions of people. … There would be a run on this country the likes of which you have never seen.
Trump’s evidence that people from other countries would gather up their “few belongings” and make a run on the United States is … there is no evidence. They were not doing so before the policy began, and there’s no reason to think that would change. The thousands of children now being warehoused for profit around the nation have built up since Jefferson Sessions announced Trump’s zero tolerance program on April 6. Family separations are the result of zero tolerance. And only ending zero tolerance can end family separations.
When multiple Democratic politicians stated that Trump could end the problem of children taken from their families with a phone call, they were not saying that he should keep families locked up together. They were saying that Trump need only call Sessions and end zero tolerance. Because zero tolerance is the issue. The executive order pretending to end family separations without ending zero tolerance is like handing out Band-Aids in the middle of a shooting—and letting the shooting continue.
Zero tolerance makes absolutely no sense. To justify it, Trump has been pressing the lie that 97 percent of immigrants skip out on their asylum hearings. That is not true. It’s an enormous lie. In fact, until last year, there was a program in place asylum seekers to come to their hearings—a program that was 99 percent effective. Trump shuttered that program. Because creating a crisis was required before he could take credit for ending it. Read More
Endangered Republicans staged a rebellion to fix DACA, then sold out for a 'fake bill'
Kerry Eleveld
Daily Kos Staff
Thursday June 21, 2018 · 1:50 PM PDT
Two House Republicans’ efforts in tough re-election races to push through a DACA fix for Dreamers were exposed Thursday as a total sham. While GOP Reps. Carlos Curbelo of Florida and Jeff Denham of California led a rebellion that fell two members short of forcing a vote on deportation protections for Dreamers, they subsequently became chief sponsors of a so-called "compromise" immigration bill negotiated in concert with the White House's chief nativist adviser, Stephen Miller.
Miller was so hot on the bill, he dubbed it "the best thing we've seen since 1965." It meets Trump's "four pillars," which includes legal status for DACA recipients but also border wall/security funding, ending the visa lottery, and curtailing family reunification.
Last week, House Speaker Paul Ryan openly admitted the legislation was nothing more than a show vote to "give members their ability to express their positions.” That was even more obvious as Ryan downplayed the chances of either bill passing on Thursday just hours before the intended vote. Meanwhile, at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Donald Trump shot down the entire effort.
"What's the purpose of the House doing good immigration bills when you need 9 votes by Democrats in the Senate?" Trump tweeted, right as the House began debating two competing Republican bills.
In taking aim at the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, Trump also exposed the House vote as the scam everyone knew it was—a scam the endangered Republicans who were supposedly making a good-faith effort to protect Dreamers signed up for.
House Republicans have passed more than 300 of those useless bill this Congress, knowing full well they would die in the Senate—and Ryan has actually touted the practice as if it means he's doing his job.
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi disparaged the tack taken by the the so-called “moderate” Republicans during a Thursday press conference, saying they were “too afraid to stick to their discharge petition pledge, and now are folding with this fake bill."
Sahil Kapur✔
@sahilkapur
.@NancyPelosi on the GOP immigration bill: "It's not a compromise. It may be a compromise with the devil, but it's not a compromise with the Democrats."
8:10 AM - Jun 21, 2018
As Politico’s Jake Sherman pointed out, the Curbelo and Denham cohort had a choice—execute their discharge petition and get four guaranteed votes on immigration in the House, or trust the GOP leadership to negotiate an immigration compromise that could become law. They put their faith in the leadership, which created a bill that may or may not pass the House (the vote’s been postponed until Friday), but it’s DOA in the Senate.
Miller was so hot on the bill, he dubbed it "the best thing we've seen since 1965." It meets Trump's "four pillars," which includes legal status for DACA recipients but also border wall/security funding, ending the visa lottery, and curtailing family reunification.
Last week, House Speaker Paul Ryan openly admitted the legislation was nothing more than a show vote to "give members their ability to express their positions.” That was even more obvious as Ryan downplayed the chances of either bill passing on Thursday just hours before the intended vote. Meanwhile, at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Donald Trump shot down the entire effort.
"What's the purpose of the House doing good immigration bills when you need 9 votes by Democrats in the Senate?" Trump tweeted, right as the House began debating two competing Republican bills.
In taking aim at the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, Trump also exposed the House vote as the scam everyone knew it was—a scam the endangered Republicans who were supposedly making a good-faith effort to protect Dreamers signed up for.
House Republicans have passed more than 300 of those useless bill this Congress, knowing full well they would die in the Senate—and Ryan has actually touted the practice as if it means he's doing his job.
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi disparaged the tack taken by the the so-called “moderate” Republicans during a Thursday press conference, saying they were “too afraid to stick to their discharge petition pledge, and now are folding with this fake bill."
Sahil Kapur✔
@sahilkapur
.@NancyPelosi on the GOP immigration bill: "It's not a compromise. It may be a compromise with the devil, but it's not a compromise with the Democrats."
8:10 AM - Jun 21, 2018
As Politico’s Jake Sherman pointed out, the Curbelo and Denham cohort had a choice—execute their discharge petition and get four guaranteed votes on immigration in the House, or trust the GOP leadership to negotiate an immigration compromise that could become law. They put their faith in the leadership, which created a bill that may or may not pass the House (the vote’s been postponed until Friday), but it’s DOA in the Senate.
denial conservative style!!
From Crooks & Liars: I've never gone wrong betting on the racism and arrogant ignorance of the Right: I've only erred occasionally on the point spread. And predicting Conservative behavior is dead-easy because traditionally they only have four basic settings:
Pleading Ignorance.
Of course Conservatives are ignorant -- deeply and malignantly ignorant. This comes from letting lying demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity take a dump in their skulls for the last 20 years. But since the GOP OnStar only emits turns in one direction, traditionally the only way Conservatives have been permitted to be "wrong" about anything was that they were "not Conservative enough!". From Crain's, October, 2015:
- Arrogant triumphalism: The aforementioned "We won! You lost! Bush is a genius! Suck it Libtards!"
- All-out denialism: The aforementioned "Everything I see on non-Fox teevee is fake! Terrible lies by the terrible Murrica-hating Libtard media conspiracy!"
- Bargaining: It doesn't matter whether or not I'm a brain-washed moron...because Both Sides!"
- Running Away: As I pointed out back during the first Great Skedaddle back in 2009, because Conservatives are by nature abject moral cowards, their last "out" is doing like German soldiers did after the fall of Berlin: stop running away from the catastrophe they created only long enough to burn their uniforms. See, "I'm an independent."
Pleading Ignorance.
Of course Conservatives are ignorant -- deeply and malignantly ignorant. This comes from letting lying demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity take a dump in their skulls for the last 20 years. But since the GOP OnStar only emits turns in one direction, traditionally the only way Conservatives have been permitted to be "wrong" about anything was that they were "not Conservative enough!". From Crain's, October, 2015: