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welcome to reality trivia
reality is the state of things as they actually exist
september 21, 2018
real news today
september 21, 2018
*Electric car batteries’ ‘second life’ could be a clean energy game-changer
(World)
*Six endangered House Republicans still haven’t divested of their Elliott Broidy donations
(GOP Politics)
*young bret(Funnies)
(for previous day's articles see "what's inside" below)
comment/tweet of the day
"Because fuck you, that's why"
scheming daemons - demo underground
Jeff Tiedrich
@itsJeffTiedrich
so help me understand this Supreme Court thing: it was OK to keep Scalia's seat open for over 400 days because fuck you, that's why, and right now it's imperative that we rush into a vote on Blackout Brett as soon as possible because fuck you, that's why, do I have that right
9:54 AM - Sep 20, 2018
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TOᑭ ᖇOᑭE TᖇAViS
@TopRopeTravis
A man poses as a Tomi Lahren “fan” and while pretending to take a selfie, records himself asking her, “Hey Tomi, how does it feel to be a racist piece of shit?”
Who else wants to buy this man a beer?
2:43 PM - Sep 20, 2018
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The Planners Of The Trump Tower Meeting Moved Millions, And Mueller Is Now Investigating
Documents show suspicious transfers began six days before the controversial meeting.
Anthony Cormier
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Jason Leopold
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on September 21, 2018, at 10:45 a.m. ET
On June 3, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. received one of the most striking emails of the presidential campaign, offering dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of the Russian government’s “support for Mr. Trump.”
Trump Jr. responded 17 minutes later: “if it’s what you say I love it.”
That email led to a meeting at Trump Tower that has become a central focus of the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.
But the very day that email was sent, another exchange was taking place behind the scenes.
Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that $3.3 million began moving on June 3 between two of the men who orchestrated the meeting: Aras Agalarov, a billionaire real estate developer close to both Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, and Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, a longtime Agalarov employee once investigated for money laundering.
That money is on top of the more than $20 million that was flagged as suspicious, BuzzFeed News revealed earlier this month, after the money ricocheted among the planners and participants of the Trump Tower meeting. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which has been investigating whether any individuals colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, is examining the suspicious transactions, four federal law enforcement officials said. A spokesperson for Mueller’s office declined to comment.
Although the documents do not directly link the $3.3 million to the meeting, they show that officials at three separate banks raised red flags about the funds. Many of the transfers seemed to have no legitimate purpose, bankers noted. Kaveladze quickly moved money to other accounts he controlled, and appeared to use some of it to make payments on Agalarov’s behalf — including more than $700,000 to pay off American Express charges.
Scott Balber, an attorney for Agalarov and Kaveladze, said each of these transactions was legitimate and there is nothing improper with their financial activity. Balber explained that Agalarov sent funds to Kaveladze, an employee, to pay various business or personal expenses in the US.
“What is suspicious, or insidious, about a billionaire who pays his employee in the US to pay his business or domestic bills?” Balber said. “This looks like complete nonsense.”
“It’s obvious the events of June 2016 have been a focal point of the special counsel’s investigation, various congressional inquiries, tremendous media attention and the like,” Balber said. “We are in the lens of that reality, so it doesn’t surprise me that there’s been some flyspecking, some gross overreporting by a number of financial institutions. They won’t be criticized for overreporting suspicious activity.”
None of these transactions was discovered until 2017, after the New York Times revealed the Trump Tower meeting. Shortly after those reports, investigators asked financial institutions to look back at their accounts to learn how money flowed among the people who planned and attended the meeting: Agalarov; Kaveladze; Agalarov’s pop star son, Emin; their employee, Rob Goldstone, who sent the original email to Trump Jr.; and others.
To unearth connections between some of their accounts, banks took an extraordinary step: They invoked a provision of the Patriot Act — a post-9/11 law that included new tools to track money laundering and terrorist financing. That provision, rarely used in the Trump-Russia investigation, allowed the banks to share information about customers with one another.
Three financial institutions — Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley — discovered the $3.3 million that flowed from Agalarov to Kaveladze.
They also learned that Kaveladze had given different banks radically different descriptions of one of his main companies, Corsy International. To JP Morgan Chase, Kaveladze said Corsy was a “transportation equipment and supplies merchant wholesaler.” He told Citibank it was a “music promotion company.” Agalarov gave yet another description to Morgan Stanley, calling the firm a “service provider” for his vast real estate company, Crocus Group.
Balber, the attorney, said that there are two separate businesses, both named “Corsy International,” that Kaveladze controlled. One is based in California and is involved in “procurement” issues related to Agalarov’s business empire. The other is based in New York and is largely involved with the music career of Emin Agalarov.
That lack of transparency made it difficult for bankers to know the true purpose of the funds into the company’s accounts. Examiners also became concerned with how Kaveladze handled the money.
On June 3, the day of the email exchange with Donald Trump Jr., Kaveladze began depositing checks into his JP Morgan Chase Platinum business checking account in California. He used three different branches in Huntington Beach, California, and the five checks totaled about $397,000. Each originated with Agalarov and referred to “compensation Amex expenses.”
Then on June 6, Agalarov started sending checks through an account at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management to Kaveladze’s company.
Those funds totaled about $971,000.
When they reviewed these accounts, bank examiners became suspicious because it was unclear exactly how the money was supposed to be used.
For instance, at JP Morgan Chase, Kaveladze transferred money from one of his companies’ accounts to another and ultimately sent 24 payments over 15 months to American Express for a total of $725,000 — a red flag to bankers because they said it appeared Kaveladze was making the payments for Agalarov. The documents do not say what expenses were charged to American Express, and three federal law enforcement agents said investigators are still trying to figure it out. Balber said these transactions were legitimate personal and business expenses for Agalarov.
The details unearthed by bankers were compiled in “suspicious activity reports” sent to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which shared them with other law enforcement agencies investigating Russian interference.
Suspicious activity reports are not evidence of wrongdoing, but they can provide valuable information to investigators looking into possible money laundering, fraud, tax evasion, or other financial misconduct.
During their reviews in 2017, some banks noticed behavior that they had not previously flagged. Bank of America, for example, noted about $7.8 million that was sent from Corsy International to another of Kaveladze’s businesses, Promomed, between 2012 and 2014. Bankers said they were concerned that by transferring funds from one company to another, Kaveladze was trying to obscure the original source of the money.
Citibank went far back into its accounts to search for suspicious activity by Kaveladze and the Agalarov family. Examiners “elevated” about $11.9 million in transactions that began in 2015, largely because the transactions originated in “high-risk jurisdictions,” or locations that are known as havens for money laundering, and because the funds were sent for “unknown purposes.”
Kaveladze had popped up on Citibank’s radar in September 2015, when he applied for a $100,000 line of credit for Corsy International. At that time, he told bankers that the company had $8 million in sales the previous year and that it had about $240,000 in available funds — but when Citibank investigated further, examiners learned that Corsy International’s account was actually overdrawn.
Citibank denied the loan.
Balber, Kaveladze’s attorney, said that his client did nothing improper, and that he doesn’t recall telling the bank about Corsy International’s available funds.
All three banks cited a 2000 report by the Government Accountability Office, in which Kaveladze was investigated as part of a Russian money laundering scheme. Kaveladze, that report found, established more than 2,000 corporations in Delaware for Russian real estate brokers, then set up US bank accounts for them. The brokers used these accounts to transfer about $1.4 billion, the report found.
Kaveladze was never charged with a crime and called the GAO’s inquiry a “witch hunt.”
Trump Jr. responded 17 minutes later: “if it’s what you say I love it.”
That email led to a meeting at Trump Tower that has become a central focus of the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.
But the very day that email was sent, another exchange was taking place behind the scenes.
Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that $3.3 million began moving on June 3 between two of the men who orchestrated the meeting: Aras Agalarov, a billionaire real estate developer close to both Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, and Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, a longtime Agalarov employee once investigated for money laundering.
That money is on top of the more than $20 million that was flagged as suspicious, BuzzFeed News revealed earlier this month, after the money ricocheted among the planners and participants of the Trump Tower meeting. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which has been investigating whether any individuals colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, is examining the suspicious transactions, four federal law enforcement officials said. A spokesperson for Mueller’s office declined to comment.
Although the documents do not directly link the $3.3 million to the meeting, they show that officials at three separate banks raised red flags about the funds. Many of the transfers seemed to have no legitimate purpose, bankers noted. Kaveladze quickly moved money to other accounts he controlled, and appeared to use some of it to make payments on Agalarov’s behalf — including more than $700,000 to pay off American Express charges.
Scott Balber, an attorney for Agalarov and Kaveladze, said each of these transactions was legitimate and there is nothing improper with their financial activity. Balber explained that Agalarov sent funds to Kaveladze, an employee, to pay various business or personal expenses in the US.
“What is suspicious, or insidious, about a billionaire who pays his employee in the US to pay his business or domestic bills?” Balber said. “This looks like complete nonsense.”
“It’s obvious the events of June 2016 have been a focal point of the special counsel’s investigation, various congressional inquiries, tremendous media attention and the like,” Balber said. “We are in the lens of that reality, so it doesn’t surprise me that there’s been some flyspecking, some gross overreporting by a number of financial institutions. They won’t be criticized for overreporting suspicious activity.”
None of these transactions was discovered until 2017, after the New York Times revealed the Trump Tower meeting. Shortly after those reports, investigators asked financial institutions to look back at their accounts to learn how money flowed among the people who planned and attended the meeting: Agalarov; Kaveladze; Agalarov’s pop star son, Emin; their employee, Rob Goldstone, who sent the original email to Trump Jr.; and others.
To unearth connections between some of their accounts, banks took an extraordinary step: They invoked a provision of the Patriot Act — a post-9/11 law that included new tools to track money laundering and terrorist financing. That provision, rarely used in the Trump-Russia investigation, allowed the banks to share information about customers with one another.
Three financial institutions — Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley — discovered the $3.3 million that flowed from Agalarov to Kaveladze.
They also learned that Kaveladze had given different banks radically different descriptions of one of his main companies, Corsy International. To JP Morgan Chase, Kaveladze said Corsy was a “transportation equipment and supplies merchant wholesaler.” He told Citibank it was a “music promotion company.” Agalarov gave yet another description to Morgan Stanley, calling the firm a “service provider” for his vast real estate company, Crocus Group.
Balber, the attorney, said that there are two separate businesses, both named “Corsy International,” that Kaveladze controlled. One is based in California and is involved in “procurement” issues related to Agalarov’s business empire. The other is based in New York and is largely involved with the music career of Emin Agalarov.
That lack of transparency made it difficult for bankers to know the true purpose of the funds into the company’s accounts. Examiners also became concerned with how Kaveladze handled the money.
On June 3, the day of the email exchange with Donald Trump Jr., Kaveladze began depositing checks into his JP Morgan Chase Platinum business checking account in California. He used three different branches in Huntington Beach, California, and the five checks totaled about $397,000. Each originated with Agalarov and referred to “compensation Amex expenses.”
Then on June 6, Agalarov started sending checks through an account at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management to Kaveladze’s company.
Those funds totaled about $971,000.
When they reviewed these accounts, bank examiners became suspicious because it was unclear exactly how the money was supposed to be used.
For instance, at JP Morgan Chase, Kaveladze transferred money from one of his companies’ accounts to another and ultimately sent 24 payments over 15 months to American Express for a total of $725,000 — a red flag to bankers because they said it appeared Kaveladze was making the payments for Agalarov. The documents do not say what expenses were charged to American Express, and three federal law enforcement agents said investigators are still trying to figure it out. Balber said these transactions were legitimate personal and business expenses for Agalarov.
The details unearthed by bankers were compiled in “suspicious activity reports” sent to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which shared them with other law enforcement agencies investigating Russian interference.
Suspicious activity reports are not evidence of wrongdoing, but they can provide valuable information to investigators looking into possible money laundering, fraud, tax evasion, or other financial misconduct.
During their reviews in 2017, some banks noticed behavior that they had not previously flagged. Bank of America, for example, noted about $7.8 million that was sent from Corsy International to another of Kaveladze’s businesses, Promomed, between 2012 and 2014. Bankers said they were concerned that by transferring funds from one company to another, Kaveladze was trying to obscure the original source of the money.
Citibank went far back into its accounts to search for suspicious activity by Kaveladze and the Agalarov family. Examiners “elevated” about $11.9 million in transactions that began in 2015, largely because the transactions originated in “high-risk jurisdictions,” or locations that are known as havens for money laundering, and because the funds were sent for “unknown purposes.”
Kaveladze had popped up on Citibank’s radar in September 2015, when he applied for a $100,000 line of credit for Corsy International. At that time, he told bankers that the company had $8 million in sales the previous year and that it had about $240,000 in available funds — but when Citibank investigated further, examiners learned that Corsy International’s account was actually overdrawn.
Citibank denied the loan.
Balber, Kaveladze’s attorney, said that his client did nothing improper, and that he doesn’t recall telling the bank about Corsy International’s available funds.
All three banks cited a 2000 report by the Government Accountability Office, in which Kaveladze was investigated as part of a Russian money laundering scheme. Kaveladze, that report found, established more than 2,000 corporations in Delaware for Russian real estate brokers, then set up US bank accounts for them. The brokers used these accounts to transfer about $1.4 billion, the report found.
Kaveladze was never charged with a crime and called the GAO’s inquiry a “witch hunt.”
REVEALED: Former Trump lawyer John Dowd tried to funnel White House cash to Paul Manafort
Brad Reed - raw story
21 SEP 2018 AT 12:42 ET
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that former Trump attorney John Dowd tried to use the White House legal defense fund to pay off legal fees for both Paul Manafort and Rick Gates.
According to the Journal, Dowd “told associates of the president he wanted to direct money from the legal defense fund set up for White House officials and campaign aides to the lawyers for Messrs. Manafort and Gates.”
However, the idea was rejected by some White House advisers on the grounds that Gates and Manafort were being prosecuted for crimes they committed before coming into Trump’s orbit — and the legal defense fund is only supposed to be used to pay for defendants who have allegedly committed crimes while working for the president.
Dowd did not give up on his crusade to help out Manafort, however, as he started soliciting donations from Trump associates and pledged to help fund the legal defense effort with $25,000 of his own money.
Dowd tells that Journal that he never wound up putting up his own money to help pay for Manafort’s legal fees.
“Upon the advice I received, I did not make that contribution,” he said.
Dowd also said that he was not trying to interfere with Mueller’s probe by raising money to help Manafort and Gates, but was rather outraged at the supposedly unjust way the two men were being treated by prosecutors.
“I care about a lot of people,” he told the Journal.
According to the Journal, Dowd “told associates of the president he wanted to direct money from the legal defense fund set up for White House officials and campaign aides to the lawyers for Messrs. Manafort and Gates.”
However, the idea was rejected by some White House advisers on the grounds that Gates and Manafort were being prosecuted for crimes they committed before coming into Trump’s orbit — and the legal defense fund is only supposed to be used to pay for defendants who have allegedly committed crimes while working for the president.
Dowd did not give up on his crusade to help out Manafort, however, as he started soliciting donations from Trump associates and pledged to help fund the legal defense effort with $25,000 of his own money.
Dowd tells that Journal that he never wound up putting up his own money to help pay for Manafort’s legal fees.
“Upon the advice I received, I did not make that contribution,” he said.
Dowd also said that he was not trying to interfere with Mueller’s probe by raising money to help Manafort and Gates, but was rather outraged at the supposedly unjust way the two men were being treated by prosecutors.
“I care about a lot of people,” he told the Journal.
Trump attacks Christine Ford: She would have gone to police if assault was ‘as bad as she says’
Brad Reed - raw story
21 SEP 2018 AT 09:23 ET
Pr*sident Donald Trump on Friday ramped up his attacks on the credibility of Christine Blasey Ford, the woman accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of attempted sexual assault when they were both teenagers.
“I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents,” the president wrote on Twitter. “I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!”
Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump
I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents. I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!
6:14 AM - Sep 21, 2018
“The radical left lawyers want the FBI to get involved NOW,” the president wrote in a followup tweet. “Why didn’t someone call the FBI 36 years ago?”
Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump
The radical left lawyers want the FBI to get involved NOW. Why didn’t someone call the FBI 36 years ago?
6:29 AM - Sep 21, 2018
Ford has said that she didn’t go to the police after Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge allegedly tried to rape her when she was 15 years old.
Sexual assaults often go unreported, as many women are often scared of facing retaliation and of getting unwanted scrutiny of their personal lives.
RELATED: Fox News spreads crackpot ‘mistaken identity’ theory about Kavanaugh accusation
“I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents,” the president wrote on Twitter. “I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!”
Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump
I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents. I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!
6:14 AM - Sep 21, 2018
“The radical left lawyers want the FBI to get involved NOW,” the president wrote in a followup tweet. “Why didn’t someone call the FBI 36 years ago?”
Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump
The radical left lawyers want the FBI to get involved NOW. Why didn’t someone call the FBI 36 years ago?
6:29 AM - Sep 21, 2018
Ford has said that she didn’t go to the police after Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge allegedly tried to rape her when she was 15 years old.
Sexual assaults often go unreported, as many women are often scared of facing retaliation and of getting unwanted scrutiny of their personal lives.
RELATED: Fox News spreads crackpot ‘mistaken identity’ theory about Kavanaugh accusation
the "best people"
What’s in a Resume? A Lot, When It Comes to Trump Staffers
We’re compiling the resumes of political appointees for our Trump Town application — and some of them include telling information not revealed in financial disclosure forms.
by Derek Kravitz - pro publica
Sept. 21, 5 a.m. EDT
It’s no surprise that hundreds of staffers on 2016 presidential and congressional campaigns parlayed their work into political jobs in the Trump administration. But you wouldn’t always know about those roles from reading their financial disclosures, which sometimes reveal them and sometimes don’t.
Details about the past jobs and work histories of these staffers — from on-the-ground field work for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to fundraising for super PACs supporting Republican congressional candidates — can be found in the place where people tend to exhaustively list their credentials: their resumes.
The Washington-based transparency group Property of the People took information from ProPublica’s Trump Town database and submitted Freedom of Information Act requests seeking the resumes of more than 2,700 political appointees in the Trump administration.
We’ve added the documents the group collected to the Trump Town app and created a separate page so that you can examine them yourself. We’ll update the page as we get more.
Think of the resulting information as the equivalent of batting statistics on baseball cards, in this case for staffers in the Trump administration: It’s data viewed as fascinating by some, and as minutiae by others. The resumes received so far largely cover staffers with midlevel and junior positions, and many in this initial batch come from the departments of Agriculture, Interior and Transportation.
They reveal a wide range of roles played by some of them in propelling Trump into the White House — and also their sometimes quirky employment histories.
Consider, for example, the resume for Kevin Jayne, now at the Department of Energy as a special adviser for renewable energy. It claimed that, as a “site specialist” for the campaign, Jayne was “entrusted with the security of President-elect Donald J. Trump and the Trump family” and others, as well as managing the flight manifest for Trump’s plane and making sure members of the media were “secured in assigned area to provide best possible coverage.” Jayne’s CV also indicates that he is a former Chicago-area utility worker and bouncer.
Jason Funes, a special assistant in the Department of the Interior, wrote in his resume that he worked for the Trump campaign in South Florida, targeting Hispanic voters. The document also indicates that he worked as a sales representative for a motorized scooter company in South Florida.
And David Matthews, now a confidential assistant at the Farm Service Agency, oversaw the campaign in 32 pivotal counties in western Pennsylvania. According to his resume, he used to be a legal receptionist and once sold his own line of custom-scented candles in Alabama.
(Jayne, Funes and Matthews did not respond to requests for comment.)
Does knowing that one staffer used to make scented candles provide any valuable insight into the Trump administration? Perhaps not.
But between the original Trump Town database and this new information, readers can glean ever-more-detailed portraits of the individuals who do the nitty-gritty work of running the federal government.
Details about the past jobs and work histories of these staffers — from on-the-ground field work for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to fundraising for super PACs supporting Republican congressional candidates — can be found in the place where people tend to exhaustively list their credentials: their resumes.
The Washington-based transparency group Property of the People took information from ProPublica’s Trump Town database and submitted Freedom of Information Act requests seeking the resumes of more than 2,700 political appointees in the Trump administration.
We’ve added the documents the group collected to the Trump Town app and created a separate page so that you can examine them yourself. We’ll update the page as we get more.
Think of the resulting information as the equivalent of batting statistics on baseball cards, in this case for staffers in the Trump administration: It’s data viewed as fascinating by some, and as minutiae by others. The resumes received so far largely cover staffers with midlevel and junior positions, and many in this initial batch come from the departments of Agriculture, Interior and Transportation.
They reveal a wide range of roles played by some of them in propelling Trump into the White House — and also their sometimes quirky employment histories.
Consider, for example, the resume for Kevin Jayne, now at the Department of Energy as a special adviser for renewable energy. It claimed that, as a “site specialist” for the campaign, Jayne was “entrusted with the security of President-elect Donald J. Trump and the Trump family” and others, as well as managing the flight manifest for Trump’s plane and making sure members of the media were “secured in assigned area to provide best possible coverage.” Jayne’s CV also indicates that he is a former Chicago-area utility worker and bouncer.
Jason Funes, a special assistant in the Department of the Interior, wrote in his resume that he worked for the Trump campaign in South Florida, targeting Hispanic voters. The document also indicates that he worked as a sales representative for a motorized scooter company in South Florida.
And David Matthews, now a confidential assistant at the Farm Service Agency, oversaw the campaign in 32 pivotal counties in western Pennsylvania. According to his resume, he used to be a legal receptionist and once sold his own line of custom-scented candles in Alabama.
(Jayne, Funes and Matthews did not respond to requests for comment.)
Does knowing that one staffer used to make scented candles provide any valuable insight into the Trump administration? Perhaps not.
But between the original Trump Town database and this new information, readers can glean ever-more-detailed portraits of the individuals who do the nitty-gritty work of running the federal government.
US embassy in London, snubbed by Trump, opens doors to visitors
The US president refused to visit the new embassy in July, saying it was in an ‘off location’
Esther Addley
the guardian
Fri 21 Sep 2018 09.05 EDT
The new US embassy in London has been famously derided by Donald Trump, who was so unimpressed with its unfashionable location and the “bad deal” behind it he refused to attend its opening ceremony.
But the US president’s lack of enthusiasm for his country’s new home in the capital has not put off visitors to the fortress-like building, a select 75 of whom will breach its moat and six inch-thick bomb-proof glass on Saturday as part of the annual Open House London festival.
In a late night tweet in January, Trump declared he was so unimpressed with his embassy’s move from Grosvenor Square in Mayfair to the “off location” of Nine Elms, Wandsworth, that he had cancelled his trip to the UK.
Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump
Reason I canceled my trip to London is that I am not a big fan of the Obama Administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for “peanuts,” only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars. Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbon-NO!
9:57 PM - Jan 11, 2018
He later called the south London site “lousy” and “horrible”, though the US confirmed the deal had in fact been signed off under the George W Bush administration. The trip went ahead in July, with the president snubbing the £800m embassy.
Those visitors who managed to snap up tickets will be able to tour the lobby, exhibition space and gallery of a building which the Observer called “as nice a fortress as possible” and “better than everything else that developers are putting up around it”. Fittingly, however, guests have been warned to expect “airport-style security” in order to enter.
The world’s most expensive embassy is the most eye-catching new addition to the festival’s roster of 800 buildings welcoming an expected 250,000 visitors. Other sites include the newly-renovated Royal Opera House, the Here East technology campus in what was once the London Olympics 2012 media centre, and a “sustainable” riverside housing development in Barking, east London.
Diplomacy aficionados who cannot make it past US security might wish to try their luck at the embassies of Estonia, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary, all of which will also open their doors.
But the US president’s lack of enthusiasm for his country’s new home in the capital has not put off visitors to the fortress-like building, a select 75 of whom will breach its moat and six inch-thick bomb-proof glass on Saturday as part of the annual Open House London festival.
In a late night tweet in January, Trump declared he was so unimpressed with his embassy’s move from Grosvenor Square in Mayfair to the “off location” of Nine Elms, Wandsworth, that he had cancelled his trip to the UK.
Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump
Reason I canceled my trip to London is that I am not a big fan of the Obama Administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for “peanuts,” only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars. Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbon-NO!
9:57 PM - Jan 11, 2018
He later called the south London site “lousy” and “horrible”, though the US confirmed the deal had in fact been signed off under the George W Bush administration. The trip went ahead in July, with the president snubbing the £800m embassy.
Those visitors who managed to snap up tickets will be able to tour the lobby, exhibition space and gallery of a building which the Observer called “as nice a fortress as possible” and “better than everything else that developers are putting up around it”. Fittingly, however, guests have been warned to expect “airport-style security” in order to enter.
The world’s most expensive embassy is the most eye-catching new addition to the festival’s roster of 800 buildings welcoming an expected 250,000 visitors. Other sites include the newly-renovated Royal Opera House, the Here East technology campus in what was once the London Olympics 2012 media centre, and a “sustainable” riverside housing development in Barking, east London.
Diplomacy aficionados who cannot make it past US security might wish to try their luck at the embassies of Estonia, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary, all of which will also open their doors.
Global push to cut deaths from cancer and heart disease wildly off course
Lack of progress in reducing early deaths from chronic diseases could cause majority of UN member states to miss 2030 deadline
Amanda Boateng
the guardian
Fri 21 Sep 2018 06.19 EDT
More than half of all countries will not meet global targets to cut deaths from cancer, heart disease and other chronic conditions, according to a report in the Lancet.
In 2015, world leaders pledged to cut deaths from chronic disease among 30- to 70-year-olds by a third as part of the sustainable development goals. However, the latest figures show that progress on tackling the issue has so far has been too slow to meet the 2030 deadline for achieving the target.
The Lancet research shows that death rates in one in 10 countries have either stood still or got worse.
In the US, for example, death rates among women have stagnated, with almost one in eight (12.5%) dying from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) between the ages of 30 and 70. Conversely, in South Korea, the best performing country, the rate for women is one in 20.
In the UK in 2016, women aged 30 had a 9% chance of dying from one of the four major non-communicable diseases – cardiovascular disease, cancer, respiratory diseases and diabetes – before their 70th birthday, while men had a 13% chance.
Countries where sustainable development target 3.4 is likely to be achieved for both men and women include South Korea, Czech Republic, Denmark, Kazakhstan, Timor-Leste and New Zealand.
Broadening the scope of the research to include people up to the age of 80 offers an even bleaker picture, with only 17 countries (9%) on track to meet the target for women, and five countries (3%) for men. In 2016, 27.3 million people under the age of 80 died from chronic disease.
The study, entitled NCD countdown 2030 and published ahead of a high-level UN meeting on the subject in New York next week, found that although mortality due to chronic disease is going down, the rate of decline varies significantly, even among countries in the same region.
The authors, who believe this may be due to a lack of improvement in risk factors such as smoking, alcohol and obesity, have called on policymakers to act. The measures they have suggested include the introduction of restrictions, taxation and advertising bans to reduce the use of alcohol and tobacco. They also called for earlier diagnosis and treatment of chronic disease.
“Despite clear commitments, international aid agencies and national governments are doing too little to reduce deaths from cancers, heart and lung diseases and diabetes. Progress is even slower for other diseases, and diabetes, which are not a part of the sustainable development goals target, meaning that the true health of people in most countries is even more dire,” said Professor Majid Ezzati of Imperial College London, the report’s lead author.
“The NCD Countdown 2030 is a shot in the arm for the global response to the NCD epidemic, which has long needed a stronger accountability process,” said Katie Dain, CEO (London) of the NCD Alliance.
“The aspirations and promises of commitments from political leaders made at the meeting are now on notice. Even those governments who appear to be on track cannot be complacent – they must remain vigilant and respond with effective policies to emerging threats to the health of the next generation, including child obesity, air pollution and the ever evolving tactics of the tobacco and alcohol industries.”
Writing in an editorial, the Lancet’s editor, Dr Richard Horton, said: “Calls for strengthened NCD accountability have been made for at least a decade. Many obstructions have blocked progress. The promises made by the international community must be delivered.”
In 2015, world leaders pledged to cut deaths from chronic disease among 30- to 70-year-olds by a third as part of the sustainable development goals. However, the latest figures show that progress on tackling the issue has so far has been too slow to meet the 2030 deadline for achieving the target.
The Lancet research shows that death rates in one in 10 countries have either stood still or got worse.
In the US, for example, death rates among women have stagnated, with almost one in eight (12.5%) dying from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) between the ages of 30 and 70. Conversely, in South Korea, the best performing country, the rate for women is one in 20.
In the UK in 2016, women aged 30 had a 9% chance of dying from one of the four major non-communicable diseases – cardiovascular disease, cancer, respiratory diseases and diabetes – before their 70th birthday, while men had a 13% chance.
Countries where sustainable development target 3.4 is likely to be achieved for both men and women include South Korea, Czech Republic, Denmark, Kazakhstan, Timor-Leste and New Zealand.
Broadening the scope of the research to include people up to the age of 80 offers an even bleaker picture, with only 17 countries (9%) on track to meet the target for women, and five countries (3%) for men. In 2016, 27.3 million people under the age of 80 died from chronic disease.
The study, entitled NCD countdown 2030 and published ahead of a high-level UN meeting on the subject in New York next week, found that although mortality due to chronic disease is going down, the rate of decline varies significantly, even among countries in the same region.
The authors, who believe this may be due to a lack of improvement in risk factors such as smoking, alcohol and obesity, have called on policymakers to act. The measures they have suggested include the introduction of restrictions, taxation and advertising bans to reduce the use of alcohol and tobacco. They also called for earlier diagnosis and treatment of chronic disease.
“Despite clear commitments, international aid agencies and national governments are doing too little to reduce deaths from cancers, heart and lung diseases and diabetes. Progress is even slower for other diseases, and diabetes, which are not a part of the sustainable development goals target, meaning that the true health of people in most countries is even more dire,” said Professor Majid Ezzati of Imperial College London, the report’s lead author.
“The NCD Countdown 2030 is a shot in the arm for the global response to the NCD epidemic, which has long needed a stronger accountability process,” said Katie Dain, CEO (London) of the NCD Alliance.
“The aspirations and promises of commitments from political leaders made at the meeting are now on notice. Even those governments who appear to be on track cannot be complacent – they must remain vigilant and respond with effective policies to emerging threats to the health of the next generation, including child obesity, air pollution and the ever evolving tactics of the tobacco and alcohol industries.”
Writing in an editorial, the Lancet’s editor, Dr Richard Horton, said: “Calls for strengthened NCD accountability have been made for at least a decade. Many obstructions have blocked progress. The promises made by the international community must be delivered.”
HHS to cut funds from Head Start, cancer research to pay for the detention of immigrant children
HHS Secretary Alex Azar's plan reallocates up to $266 million in funding.
REBEKAH ENTRALGO - thinkprogress
SEP 20, 2018, 3:45 PM
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is planning to divert millions of dollars in funding originally allocated for programs like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in order to pay for the growing number of detained immigrant children, according to an HHS letter obtained by Yahoo! News.
The letter was addressed to Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), ranking member on the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and outlined HHS Secretary Alex Azar’s plan to reallocate up to $266 million in funding for the current fiscal year, which ends in less than two weeks. The funding would go to the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program housed inside the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).
Of the $266 million, $80 million will come from other refugee programs within HHS that have faced serious budget cuts as the Trump administration continuously reduces the number of refugees admitted to the U.S.
The remainder will come from programs like Head Start, an HHS-funded initiative that provides early-childhood education to low-income pre-kindergartners. Nearly $6 million will be pulled from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program, and $13.3 million from the National Cancer Institute. According to the letter, funding for programs dedicated to mental and maternal health is also being reallocated, as is money for women’s shelters and substance abuse programs.
The news comes just one week after it was reported the Trump administration diverted another $200 million from other programs in order to pay for the continued detention of undocumented immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
HHS will likely use the funds to keep up with the growing number of detained immigrant children.
According to recent data from the Office of Refugee Resettlement, 13,312 immigrant children were in federal custody as recently as yesterday. In May 2017, that number was around 2,400.
With the capacity of ORR’s existing facilities approaching 92 percent, HHS is looking for ways to accommodate the growing population.
As ThinkProgress has previously reported, HHS officials have said they would add an additional 3,800 beds at the Tornillo, Texas-based emergency tent-city for immigrant minors, effectively tripling its current capacity. The estimated cost of operating at these emergency facilities is $750 per child per day — nearly triple the cost of a regular ORR shelter.
It’s worth noting that immigration detention facilities are not facing capacity shortages due to a recent influx of children crossing the border, but rather because of the broken immigration system in the U.S. The current administration has sharply reduced the number of children being released and allowed to live with families and other sponsors, which has a placed an immense amount of strain on the migrant shelter network tasked with looking after them.
And this is likely just the beginning. In Azar’s letter to Sen. Murray, Azar stated that, based on “an increased length of time needed to safely release unaccompanied alien children to sponsors, HHS is preparing for the trend of high capacity to continue.”
Immigration law enforcement agencies are having some difficulty keeping up with the Trump administration’s haphazard deportation and detention demands, so much so that ICE has requested an additional $1 billion from the federal government, according to budget document obtained by The Washington Post.
According to immigration officials, an average of 43,000 immigrants are detained every day, which is more than Congress authorized in the current budget.
ICE has threatened that thousands of immigrants in federal custody may suffer “reductions in services” if Congress denies the funding they requested.
The letter was addressed to Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), ranking member on the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and outlined HHS Secretary Alex Azar’s plan to reallocate up to $266 million in funding for the current fiscal year, which ends in less than two weeks. The funding would go to the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program housed inside the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).
Of the $266 million, $80 million will come from other refugee programs within HHS that have faced serious budget cuts as the Trump administration continuously reduces the number of refugees admitted to the U.S.
The remainder will come from programs like Head Start, an HHS-funded initiative that provides early-childhood education to low-income pre-kindergartners. Nearly $6 million will be pulled from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program, and $13.3 million from the National Cancer Institute. According to the letter, funding for programs dedicated to mental and maternal health is also being reallocated, as is money for women’s shelters and substance abuse programs.
The news comes just one week after it was reported the Trump administration diverted another $200 million from other programs in order to pay for the continued detention of undocumented immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
HHS will likely use the funds to keep up with the growing number of detained immigrant children.
According to recent data from the Office of Refugee Resettlement, 13,312 immigrant children were in federal custody as recently as yesterday. In May 2017, that number was around 2,400.
With the capacity of ORR’s existing facilities approaching 92 percent, HHS is looking for ways to accommodate the growing population.
As ThinkProgress has previously reported, HHS officials have said they would add an additional 3,800 beds at the Tornillo, Texas-based emergency tent-city for immigrant minors, effectively tripling its current capacity. The estimated cost of operating at these emergency facilities is $750 per child per day — nearly triple the cost of a regular ORR shelter.
It’s worth noting that immigration detention facilities are not facing capacity shortages due to a recent influx of children crossing the border, but rather because of the broken immigration system in the U.S. The current administration has sharply reduced the number of children being released and allowed to live with families and other sponsors, which has a placed an immense amount of strain on the migrant shelter network tasked with looking after them.
And this is likely just the beginning. In Azar’s letter to Sen. Murray, Azar stated that, based on “an increased length of time needed to safely release unaccompanied alien children to sponsors, HHS is preparing for the trend of high capacity to continue.”
Immigration law enforcement agencies are having some difficulty keeping up with the Trump administration’s haphazard deportation and detention demands, so much so that ICE has requested an additional $1 billion from the federal government, according to budget document obtained by The Washington Post.
According to immigration officials, an average of 43,000 immigrants are detained every day, which is more than Congress authorized in the current budget.
ICE has threatened that thousands of immigrants in federal custody may suffer “reductions in services” if Congress denies the funding they requested.
Wells Fargo plans to slash thousands of jobs Nation’s 4th-largest bank working to fix image in wake of 2016 scandal
Charlotte Observer
Published on Sept. 21, 2018
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Wells Fargo expects to slash its employment by about 5 to 10 percent over the next three years, as part of a sweeping initiative to streamline the bank and make it more customer-focused, CEO Tim Sloan said Thursday.
The reduction would involve job cuts as well as attrition, Sloan said in a statement. Wells Fargo is based in San Francisco but maintains its largest employee base in Charlotte, where it has about 25,100 workers in the metro area.
The move comes as Wells Fargo continues pushing to fix its reputation in the wake of a 2016 scandal involving the creation of unauthorized customer accounts, as well as more revelations of customer harm. Such disclosures have cost the bank business.
Wells Fargo had 264,500 employees companywide as of the end of June. Five percent of that figure is 13,225 jobs, and 10 percent is 26,450.
“We are continuing to transform Wells Fargo to deliver what customers want — including innovative, customer-friendly products and services — and evolving our business model to meet those needs in a more streamlines and efficient manner,” Sloan said in the statement.
The statement also cited changing customer habits, including the rising use of digital banking options, as a factor in plans to cut employment.
Sloan, who became CEO in 2016 after John Stumpf retired when the accounts scandal erupted, has been working to trim expenses at the fourth-largest U.S. bank by assets.
Under previously disclosed plans, the bank has said it wants to lower expenses by $4 billion through the end of 2019.
“When you pledge to cut costs, and need to cut costs, head-count is the first line of attack,” independent bank analyst Nancy Bush said Thursday.
Tribune News Service
The reduction would involve job cuts as well as attrition, Sloan said in a statement. Wells Fargo is based in San Francisco but maintains its largest employee base in Charlotte, where it has about 25,100 workers in the metro area.
The move comes as Wells Fargo continues pushing to fix its reputation in the wake of a 2016 scandal involving the creation of unauthorized customer accounts, as well as more revelations of customer harm. Such disclosures have cost the bank business.
Wells Fargo had 264,500 employees companywide as of the end of June. Five percent of that figure is 13,225 jobs, and 10 percent is 26,450.
“We are continuing to transform Wells Fargo to deliver what customers want — including innovative, customer-friendly products and services — and evolving our business model to meet those needs in a more streamlines and efficient manner,” Sloan said in the statement.
The statement also cited changing customer habits, including the rising use of digital banking options, as a factor in plans to cut employment.
Sloan, who became CEO in 2016 after John Stumpf retired when the accounts scandal erupted, has been working to trim expenses at the fourth-largest U.S. bank by assets.
Under previously disclosed plans, the bank has said it wants to lower expenses by $4 billion through the end of 2019.
“When you pledge to cut costs, and need to cut costs, head-count is the first line of attack,” independent bank analyst Nancy Bush said Thursday.
Tribune News Service
Colin Kaepernick to be honored by Harvard
Associated Press
Thursday, September 20, 2018
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick and comedian Dave Chappelle are among eight people being honored by Harvard University for their contributions to black history and culture, the university announced Thursday.
All eight recipients of the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal will be honored Oct. 11 by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard.
"The medal honors those who have made significant contributions to African and African-American history and culture, and more broadly, individuals who advocate for intercultural understanding and human rights in an increasingly global and interconnected world," the Hutchins Center said.
Kaepernick, formerly of the San Francisco 49ers, created a firestorm when he began kneeling during the national anthem in 2016 to protest police brutality and social injustice. He has more recently been the centerpiece of an advertising campaign by Nike.
He has donated and helped raise millions of dollars for organizations fighting social injustice, and founded the Know Your Rights Camp.
All eight recipients of the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal will be honored Oct. 11 by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard.
"The medal honors those who have made significant contributions to African and African-American history and culture, and more broadly, individuals who advocate for intercultural understanding and human rights in an increasingly global and interconnected world," the Hutchins Center said.
Kaepernick, formerly of the San Francisco 49ers, created a firestorm when he began kneeling during the national anthem in 2016 to protest police brutality and social injustice. He has more recently been the centerpiece of an advertising campaign by Nike.
He has donated and helped raise millions of dollars for organizations fighting social injustice, and founded the Know Your Rights Camp.
New Senate Bill Would Allow Indefinite Detention of Migrant Families
BY
Mike Ludwig Truthout
PUBLISHED
September 21, 2018
Advocates for asylum seekers are lining up against the latest effort to expand detention of migrant children, as congressional Republicans continue searching for a legislative “solution” to the intensified family separation crisis resulting from the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policies.
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican and chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, introduced a bill on Tuesday that would bolster border security and help the Trump administration to circumvent the 1997 settlement in the major case on immigrant detention known as Flores v. Reno, which has generally prevented the government from detaining children who arrived with their parents longer than 20 days.
The bill is known as the FAMILIES Act. It would embrace President Trump’s plan to expand jails for migrant families and allow the indefinite detention of children with their parents – all, supposedly, in the name of preventing the brutal family separations that shocked the nation and eventually sent the White House backpedaling.
“It’s frustrating to see Republicans in the Senate aiding and abetting the Trump administration’s cruel and inhumane policies that imprison innocent children, families fleeing violence, and kids coming to this country alone hoping for a better life,” said Sandra Cordero, director of the Families Belong Together Coalition Campaign, in a statement.
The Trump administration wants to automatically jail migrants arriving at the southern border rather than releasing them under supervision while they wait to see a judge, but immigration courts are backlogged. The Flores settlement prevents children from being detained for long periods of time, so, earlier this year, the Trump administration began separating children from their parents as part of its “zero-tolerance” policy. The administration has since halted family separations under public pressure.
In his opening statement before a committee hearing on family detention Tuesday, Johnson said it was a federal court’s “reinterpretation” of the Flores settlement during the Obama administration — rather than the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policies — that had left federal law enforcement with only “bad” options on the southern border: jail children and their parents, or release children while jailing their parents.
Johnson’s bill would allow the administration to indefinitely hold families together in order to continue the zero-tolerance policy without the type of family separations that have captured the spotlight. In practice, the legislation is similar to family detention policies rolled out under the Obama administration that were eventually challenged in court under the Flores precedent.
An executive order from Trump in June that “addresses” family separation by opening the door for more detention center construction, as well as proposed regulatory changes that would undermine the Floressettlement, have paved the way for the administration to build migrant family jails.
Under President Obama, family detention centers run by private prison companies became a national scandal as immigrants and human rights groups complained about abuse, neglect and poor oversight. The National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) reports that the nation’s immigrant detention system remains “cruel and mismanaged” today, with at least 15 people dying in immigration jails since Trump took office, often after suffering medical neglect.
Johnson’s legislation would require that all asylum-seeking families be jailed in detention facilities upon arrival at the border, with no exceptions made for parents or children with disabilities or medical problems, according to analysis by the NIJC. This is particularly disturbing in light of Mariee Juarez, a toddler who recently died while in custody at a family detention center in Arizona. Her family alleges she died due to medical neglect.
“In fact, Johnson’s so-called FAMILIES Act actually seeks to imprison children and their families indefinitely in facilities with stomach-turning records of abuse,” Cordero said.
NIJC warns that Johnson’s bill would also spark a new round of family separations by requiring parents to be jailed in a separate facility for a variety of reasons, including minor crimes committed years ago. (As of this writing, Congress had yet to publish the text of the bill online, and Johnson’s office had not responded to a request for the bill from Truthout.)
“The United States already holds the shameful distinction of being ranked among the worst nations in treatment of migrant children, largely due to the Department of Homeland Security’s detention of children in immigration jails,” said NIJC Director of Policy Heidi Altman, in a statement. “Senator Johnson’s legislation would embrace rather than mitigate these systemic abuses.”
Last week, a coalition of medical and human rights organizations sent a letter to Johnson and other members of Congress asking them to oppose any legislation that would authorize indefinite family detention. The letter states that instead of incarcerating immigrants, the government should invest in supervision and case management for asylum seekers, which is much cheaper and avoids traumatizing children.
The groups, which included the American Pediatric Society and the American Psychological Association, pointed to a 2017 report by the American Academy of Pediatrics that found detaining children in federal immigration jails causes long-term trauma and psychological problems, even if the children are with their parents. The report recommends that children accompanied by their parents should never be detained, which can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal ideation, behavioral problems and difficulty functioning in school.
More recently, a whistleblower letter to Congress from two physicians working with the Department of Homeland Security’s civil liberties office declared that detaining children with a parent “also poses high risk of harm to children and their families.” Investigations of family immigration jails “frequently” revealed compliance problems resulting in harm to children, the doctors wrote.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-New Hampshire) asked two top Trump administration customs and border protection officials, who were requesting that Congress lift the Flores restrictions, if they had reviewed the report from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Both admitted that they had not.
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican and chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, introduced a bill on Tuesday that would bolster border security and help the Trump administration to circumvent the 1997 settlement in the major case on immigrant detention known as Flores v. Reno, which has generally prevented the government from detaining children who arrived with their parents longer than 20 days.
The bill is known as the FAMILIES Act. It would embrace President Trump’s plan to expand jails for migrant families and allow the indefinite detention of children with their parents – all, supposedly, in the name of preventing the brutal family separations that shocked the nation and eventually sent the White House backpedaling.
“It’s frustrating to see Republicans in the Senate aiding and abetting the Trump administration’s cruel and inhumane policies that imprison innocent children, families fleeing violence, and kids coming to this country alone hoping for a better life,” said Sandra Cordero, director of the Families Belong Together Coalition Campaign, in a statement.
The Trump administration wants to automatically jail migrants arriving at the southern border rather than releasing them under supervision while they wait to see a judge, but immigration courts are backlogged. The Flores settlement prevents children from being detained for long periods of time, so, earlier this year, the Trump administration began separating children from their parents as part of its “zero-tolerance” policy. The administration has since halted family separations under public pressure.
In his opening statement before a committee hearing on family detention Tuesday, Johnson said it was a federal court’s “reinterpretation” of the Flores settlement during the Obama administration — rather than the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policies — that had left federal law enforcement with only “bad” options on the southern border: jail children and their parents, or release children while jailing their parents.
Johnson’s bill would allow the administration to indefinitely hold families together in order to continue the zero-tolerance policy without the type of family separations that have captured the spotlight. In practice, the legislation is similar to family detention policies rolled out under the Obama administration that were eventually challenged in court under the Flores precedent.
An executive order from Trump in June that “addresses” family separation by opening the door for more detention center construction, as well as proposed regulatory changes that would undermine the Floressettlement, have paved the way for the administration to build migrant family jails.
Under President Obama, family detention centers run by private prison companies became a national scandal as immigrants and human rights groups complained about abuse, neglect and poor oversight. The National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) reports that the nation’s immigrant detention system remains “cruel and mismanaged” today, with at least 15 people dying in immigration jails since Trump took office, often after suffering medical neglect.
Johnson’s legislation would require that all asylum-seeking families be jailed in detention facilities upon arrival at the border, with no exceptions made for parents or children with disabilities or medical problems, according to analysis by the NIJC. This is particularly disturbing in light of Mariee Juarez, a toddler who recently died while in custody at a family detention center in Arizona. Her family alleges she died due to medical neglect.
“In fact, Johnson’s so-called FAMILIES Act actually seeks to imprison children and their families indefinitely in facilities with stomach-turning records of abuse,” Cordero said.
NIJC warns that Johnson’s bill would also spark a new round of family separations by requiring parents to be jailed in a separate facility for a variety of reasons, including minor crimes committed years ago. (As of this writing, Congress had yet to publish the text of the bill online, and Johnson’s office had not responded to a request for the bill from Truthout.)
“The United States already holds the shameful distinction of being ranked among the worst nations in treatment of migrant children, largely due to the Department of Homeland Security’s detention of children in immigration jails,” said NIJC Director of Policy Heidi Altman, in a statement. “Senator Johnson’s legislation would embrace rather than mitigate these systemic abuses.”
Last week, a coalition of medical and human rights organizations sent a letter to Johnson and other members of Congress asking them to oppose any legislation that would authorize indefinite family detention. The letter states that instead of incarcerating immigrants, the government should invest in supervision and case management for asylum seekers, which is much cheaper and avoids traumatizing children.
The groups, which included the American Pediatric Society and the American Psychological Association, pointed to a 2017 report by the American Academy of Pediatrics that found detaining children in federal immigration jails causes long-term trauma and psychological problems, even if the children are with their parents. The report recommends that children accompanied by their parents should never be detained, which can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal ideation, behavioral problems and difficulty functioning in school.
More recently, a whistleblower letter to Congress from two physicians working with the Department of Homeland Security’s civil liberties office declared that detaining children with a parent “also poses high risk of harm to children and their families.” Investigations of family immigration jails “frequently” revealed compliance problems resulting in harm to children, the doctors wrote.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-New Hampshire) asked two top Trump administration customs and border protection officials, who were requesting that Congress lift the Flores restrictions, if they had reviewed the report from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Both admitted that they had not.
Students Don’t Know How to Buy Stamps So They’re Not Voting by Mail
WED, SEP 19TH, 2018
BY LEO VIDAL - politicus usa
College students often have to use the U.S. Postal Service to vote, since they don’t live where they are registered. This requires them to mail their absentee ballots to a different location. But this is not happening as often as it should.
A recent focus group in Fairfax County, Virginia has found that a large number of college students who have received an absentee ballot failed to send it back in because they didn’t know where to buy a U.S. Postal Service stamp.
Lisa Connors is with the Fairfax County Office of Public Affairs, the agency which sponsored the focus group. She said:
“One thing that came up, which I had heard from my own kids but I thought they were just nerdy, was that the students will go through the process of applying for a mail-in absentee ballot, they will fill out the ballot, and then, they don’t know where to get stamps.”
“That seems to be like a hump that they can’t get across.”
The focus group included college interns from many different county departments.
“They all agreed that they knew lots of people who did not send in their ballots because it was too much of a hassle or they didn’t know where to get a stamp,” Connors said.
“Across the board, they were all nodding and had a very spirited conversation about ‘Oh yeah, I know so many people who didn’t send theirs in because they didn’t have a stamp.’”
Students are able to change their voter registration location to the college location only if they get a new driver’s license or fill out a new voter registration application on campus.
After the surprising focus group results, Fairfax County is now encouraging students to vote in-person absentee while visiting their homes during fall breaks.
Kate Hanley, Fairfax County Electoral Board secretary, said:
“We’re really working on information to get the college students to be able to actually vote where they’re registered and vote absentee because it’s very confusing and it has a lot of pieces that can sort of go wrong in the middle of it.”
Younger voters generally have very low turnout rates in midterm elections, and this latest information is not encouraging for those who want to increase those rates. For a generation raised with electronic devices and instant communications using “snail mail” is obviously a foreign concept. Perhaps some better way needs to be developed to overcome this challenge.
Either that, or maybe college students could be taught where to buy postage stamps.
A recent focus group in Fairfax County, Virginia has found that a large number of college students who have received an absentee ballot failed to send it back in because they didn’t know where to buy a U.S. Postal Service stamp.
Lisa Connors is with the Fairfax County Office of Public Affairs, the agency which sponsored the focus group. She said:
“One thing that came up, which I had heard from my own kids but I thought they were just nerdy, was that the students will go through the process of applying for a mail-in absentee ballot, they will fill out the ballot, and then, they don’t know where to get stamps.”
“That seems to be like a hump that they can’t get across.”
The focus group included college interns from many different county departments.
“They all agreed that they knew lots of people who did not send in their ballots because it was too much of a hassle or they didn’t know where to get a stamp,” Connors said.
“Across the board, they were all nodding and had a very spirited conversation about ‘Oh yeah, I know so many people who didn’t send theirs in because they didn’t have a stamp.’”
Students are able to change their voter registration location to the college location only if they get a new driver’s license or fill out a new voter registration application on campus.
After the surprising focus group results, Fairfax County is now encouraging students to vote in-person absentee while visiting their homes during fall breaks.
Kate Hanley, Fairfax County Electoral Board secretary, said:
“We’re really working on information to get the college students to be able to actually vote where they’re registered and vote absentee because it’s very confusing and it has a lot of pieces that can sort of go wrong in the middle of it.”
Younger voters generally have very low turnout rates in midterm elections, and this latest information is not encouraging for those who want to increase those rates. For a generation raised with electronic devices and instant communications using “snail mail” is obviously a foreign concept. Perhaps some better way needs to be developed to overcome this challenge.
Either that, or maybe college students could be taught where to buy postage stamps.
*bites from real news - 9/21/2018*
*GOP strategist Steve Schmidt rips Trump's messy White House: 'Monkeys throwing excrement at each other'
*New Legislation Would Give Access to Medication Abortion on California Public College Campuses
(truthout)
*Long-lost letter from Galileo reveals new details about his battle with the church
*Rosenstein Suggested He Secretly Record Trump and Discussed 25th Amendment
WASHINGTON -- The deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 2 ... (New York Times)
*NJ sheriff facing calls to resign over racist remarks caught on tape
A New Jersey sheriff recorded making disparaging remarks about African-Americans and the state's first Sikh attorney general apologized Thursday night. Bergen County Sheriff Michael Saudino said the remarks were "not representative of the pers ... (CBS News)
*APNewsBreak: Dam breach at Duke plant; coal ash could spill
Duke Energy said Friday that a dam containing a large lake at a Wilmington power plant has been breached by floodwaters from Florence, and it’s possible coal ash from an adjacent dump is flowing into the Cape Fear River. Duke spokeswoman Paige Sheeh ... (AP News)
*Engine plant in Mike Pence’s hometown takes $200 million hit from Trump trade war
*Trump's shrinking of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is a disaster for paleontology
*WATCH: Michigan restaurant calls cops on black man after dispute over the taste of his food
Maurice El-Amin summoned a server Tuesday night at Dearborn’s M Cantina to complain about a strong chemical taste that burned his mouth and throat, and another employee said the menu clearly stated the dish he ordered contained chipotle peppers.
*‘We’ve lost the messaging battle’: Republican poll shows voters were not fooled by the GOP tax scam
The Supreme Court vacancy, once presumed to be a political winner for midterm season by Republicans, is currently blowing up in their faces. But there is another massive scheme Republicans executed in the hope it would bolster their prospects in November.
*Texas What do you think of when you think of a cowboy?
In Texas and Louisiana, Creole cowboys are correcting our perceptions – and it starts with ‘trail rides’. Hop on and join the fun
*bullshit: Trump administration: US steps up fight against slave labor 'to safeguard American jobs'
*The Plot to Subvert an Election For two years, Americans have tried to absorb the details of the 2016 interference by Russia — hacked emails, social media fraud, suspected spies — and President Trump’s claims that it’s all a hoax. We unravel the story so far.
GOP donor busted for calling Obama a ‘Muslim nigger’ — then repeatedly uses racial slurs to justify himself
Travis Gettys - raw story
20 SEP 2018 AT 09:13 ET
A Republican donor complained that black comedians can use racial slurs but he can’t — despite his repeated use of the N-word on social media and during interviews with reporters.
Steven Alembik, a GOP activist who donated $22,920 to the Ron DeSantis gubernatorial campaign and thousands more to other Republican candidates, called former President Barack Obama a “FUCK MUSLIM NIGGER” recently on Twitter, and used racial slurs when asked to explain the post, reported Politico.
DeSantis spokesman Stephen Lawson denounced the “disgusting rhetoric” of Alembik, who also helped the Florida lawmaker set up a speech at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.
The controversy is the fifth racism-related issue concerning DeSantis, who warned the day after he won the Aug. 28 primary that his black Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum, would “monkey this up” if elected, referring to the economy.
Alembik, a self-employed information technology provider from Boca Raton, admitted using the racial slur in anger Sept. 8 after Obama gave a speech criticizing Trump and the Republican Party.
“Over the past few decades, the politics of division and resentment and paranoia has unfortunately found a home in the Republican Party,” Obama said, and Alembik saw a tweet by the Republican National Committee highlighting the remarks.
The 67-year-old Alembik said he was “absolutely not” a racist, but used several slurs to complain that white people were held to what he believes is a double standard.
“So somebody like Chris Rock can get up onstage and use the word and there’s no problem? But some white guy says it and he’s a racist? Really?” Alembik said. “I grew up in New York in the ‘50s. We were the kikes. They were the n*ggers. They were the goyim. And those were the spics.”
He said his social media activity should be held to a different standard than his behavior offline.
“When I write anything inflammatory, it’s because I’m seriously pissed off,” Alembik said. “I’m an emotional human being. Do I have a filter on what I say? In public, yes. Would I use that word in public? No. This is Twitter.”
Steven Alembik, a GOP activist who donated $22,920 to the Ron DeSantis gubernatorial campaign and thousands more to other Republican candidates, called former President Barack Obama a “FUCK MUSLIM NIGGER” recently on Twitter, and used racial slurs when asked to explain the post, reported Politico.
DeSantis spokesman Stephen Lawson denounced the “disgusting rhetoric” of Alembik, who also helped the Florida lawmaker set up a speech at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.
The controversy is the fifth racism-related issue concerning DeSantis, who warned the day after he won the Aug. 28 primary that his black Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum, would “monkey this up” if elected, referring to the economy.
Alembik, a self-employed information technology provider from Boca Raton, admitted using the racial slur in anger Sept. 8 after Obama gave a speech criticizing Trump and the Republican Party.
“Over the past few decades, the politics of division and resentment and paranoia has unfortunately found a home in the Republican Party,” Obama said, and Alembik saw a tweet by the Republican National Committee highlighting the remarks.
The 67-year-old Alembik said he was “absolutely not” a racist, but used several slurs to complain that white people were held to what he believes is a double standard.
“So somebody like Chris Rock can get up onstage and use the word and there’s no problem? But some white guy says it and he’s a racist? Really?” Alembik said. “I grew up in New York in the ‘50s. We were the kikes. They were the n*ggers. They were the goyim. And those were the spics.”
He said his social media activity should be held to a different standard than his behavior offline.
“When I write anything inflammatory, it’s because I’m seriously pissed off,” Alembik said. “I’m an emotional human being. Do I have a filter on what I say? In public, yes. Would I use that word in public? No. This is Twitter.”
‘Not Relevant’: Franklin Graham says alleged Kavanaugh assault just something ‘he did as a teenager’
David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement - raw story
20 SEP 2018 AT 09:38 ET
‘I Don’t Know What the Issue Is’
Christian Evangelical Leader Franklin Graham says the allegations of sexual assault and attempted rape against Judge Brett Kavanaugh by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford are simply “not relevant”
The 66-year old ordained minister and political activist spoke with Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network Tuesday, saying, “it’s just a shame that a person like Judge Kavanaugh who has a stellar record–that somebody can bring something up that he did as a teenager close to 40 years ago. That’s not relevant.”
Graham is the son of the late Rev. Billy Graham, who served as a pastor and unofficial advisor to a dozen presidents, from from Harry Truman to Barack Obama. Today, Franklin Graham serves on President Trump’s evangelical advisory board.
WHY THIS MATTERS: Franklin Graham has over 7 million followers on Facebook, and CBN reportedly is broadcast to up to one million people daily. He has the ability to influence a large number of people’s views and beliefs, which is why his false claims must be corrected. You can help counter the spread of his false statements by sharing this information with your friends and family members.
In his CBN interview, Graham falsely claimed, “there wasn’t a crime committed.”
But sexual assault and attempted rape are crimes. And if the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh are true, there is no statute of limitations in Maryland and he could still face charges.
“These are two teenagers and it’s obvious that she said no and he respected it and walked away.”
That is also egregiously false, according to the accusations in Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s letter.
“Brett Kavanaugh physically and sexually assaulted me during high school in the early 1980’s,” she states. “Kavanaugh tried to disrobe me,” she adds.
“With Kavanaugh’s hand over my mouth I feared he may inadvertently kill me,” she says, noting he was highly intoxicated.
“After a few attempts to get away, I was able to take this opportune moment to get up and run across to a hallway bathroom. I locked the bathroom door behind me.”
Graham continued to defend Kavanaugh, saying: “He just flat out says that’s not true. Regardless if it was true, these are two teenagers and she said no and he respected that so I don’t know what the issue is.”
Clearly he did not respect her wishes, nor did he walk away, based on Dr. Blasey Ford’s letter.
Christian Evangelical Leader Franklin Graham says the allegations of sexual assault and attempted rape against Judge Brett Kavanaugh by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford are simply “not relevant”
The 66-year old ordained minister and political activist spoke with Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network Tuesday, saying, “it’s just a shame that a person like Judge Kavanaugh who has a stellar record–that somebody can bring something up that he did as a teenager close to 40 years ago. That’s not relevant.”
Graham is the son of the late Rev. Billy Graham, who served as a pastor and unofficial advisor to a dozen presidents, from from Harry Truman to Barack Obama. Today, Franklin Graham serves on President Trump’s evangelical advisory board.
WHY THIS MATTERS: Franklin Graham has over 7 million followers on Facebook, and CBN reportedly is broadcast to up to one million people daily. He has the ability to influence a large number of people’s views and beliefs, which is why his false claims must be corrected. You can help counter the spread of his false statements by sharing this information with your friends and family members.
In his CBN interview, Graham falsely claimed, “there wasn’t a crime committed.”
But sexual assault and attempted rape are crimes. And if the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh are true, there is no statute of limitations in Maryland and he could still face charges.
“These are two teenagers and it’s obvious that she said no and he respected it and walked away.”
That is also egregiously false, according to the accusations in Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s letter.
“Brett Kavanaugh physically and sexually assaulted me during high school in the early 1980’s,” she states. “Kavanaugh tried to disrobe me,” she adds.
“With Kavanaugh’s hand over my mouth I feared he may inadvertently kill me,” she says, noting he was highly intoxicated.
“After a few attempts to get away, I was able to take this opportune moment to get up and run across to a hallway bathroom. I locked the bathroom door behind me.”
Graham continued to defend Kavanaugh, saying: “He just flat out says that’s not true. Regardless if it was true, these are two teenagers and she said no and he respected that so I don’t know what the issue is.”
Clearly he did not respect her wishes, nor did he walk away, based on Dr. Blasey Ford’s letter.
perfect guy for trump's white house!!!
Republican lawmaker abruptly drops his re-election bid after daughter accuses him of sex abuse
Tana Ganeva - raw story
21 SEP 2018 AT 16:45 ET
Minnesota Republican state Rep. Jim Knoblach abruptly dropped his re-election bid Friday, after Minnesota Public Radio reported that his grown daughter is accusing him of sexual abuse.
Knoblach’s 23-year-old daughter Laura told MPR that Knoblach had touched her inappropriately for most of her life, with her first memories of the abuse beginning at age nine. She says she told authority figures at her school and at her church for years.
Knoblach denies the allegations, but his attorney says he’s dropping out of the race because he “does not want to drag his family through six weeks of hell.”
Laura told MPR News about the abuse and provided the station with documentation chronicling her efforts to get help.
Knoblach’s 23-year-old daughter Laura told MPR that Knoblach had touched her inappropriately for most of her life, with her first memories of the abuse beginning at age nine. She says she told authority figures at her school and at her church for years.
Knoblach denies the allegations, but his attorney says he’s dropping out of the race because he “does not want to drag his family through six weeks of hell.”
Laura told MPR News about the abuse and provided the station with documentation chronicling her efforts to get help.
*What's Inside*
september 18 - september 20
✌THE U.S. ISN’T JUST BACKING THE YEMEN WAR—IT’S HELPING TRAP THOSE FORCED TO FLEE
(WORLD)
*A YEAR AFTER DEADLY MARIA, U.S. HOUSING FUNDS ON WAY TO PUERTO RICO
(COLONIES)
*REP. DANA ROHRABACHER ENDORSES LOCAL POLITICIAN ACCUSED OF PEDDLING “RACIST CONSPIRACIES”
(GOP POLITICS)
*OH, FFS - JUST SAY IT!
(TALKERS)
*OLE MISS EX-CHANCELLOR FACES BACKLASH FOR COMPLAINING BLACK WOMEN IN TIGHT DRESSES WILL LOWER PROPERTY VALUES(AMERIKKKANS)
*TAXING AMERICANS TO REFORM THE CHINESE
(REALITY)
*TRUMP ADMITS FOX NEWS HOSTS INFLUENCED HIS DECISION TO DECLASSIFY KEY RUSSIA DOCUMENTS
(TRUMP)
*FORGET WEDDING CAKES. ADF NOW WANTS TO KEEP TRANSGENDER WOMEN OUT OF HOMELESS SHELTERS.
(RIGHTS)
*CONSERVATIVES ARE RIGHT: THIS IS ABOUT ABORTION BY THE RUDE PUNDIT
(COMMENTARY)
*PRIVATE PRISON OFFICIALS ALLOWED TO FORCE-FEED IMMIGRANT HUNGER STRIKERS
(GESTAPO USA)
*KAVANAUGH POSES A THREAT TO ASIAN AMERICAN AND PACIFIC ISLANDER WOMEN
(RIGHTS)
*STRIKING HOTEL WORKERS SAY "SLOW SEASON" IS NO EXCUSE FOR LOSING HEALTH CARE
(SLAVERY 21ST CENTURY)
*'NOT JUST IN THE US': AMATEUR HISTORIAN HIGHLIGHTS CANADA'S FORGOTTEN RACISM
(HISTORY)
*BUILD WALLS ON SEAFLOOR TO STOP GLACIERS MELTING, SCIENTISTS SAY
(CURRENTS)
*GIANT SPIDERS' WEB COVERS GREEK BEACH
(WEIRD THINGS)
*'IT'S HYPED UP': CLIMATE CHANGE SKEPTICS IN THE PATH OF HURRICANE FLORENCE
(SUCKERS)
*WORKER DEATH TOLL RISES IN KINGSTON COAL ASH SPILL; ROANE COUNTY MAN LATEST VICTIM
(ENVIRONMENT)
😉REPUBLICANS BAR AFRICAN-AMERICANS AND OTHER MINORITIES FROM VOTING
(ELECTIONS)
*HURRICANE FLORENCE UNLEASHES COAL ASH, SENDING A TOXIC WARNING TO TRUMP'S EPA
(ENVIRONMENT)
*WHY THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT COULDN'T CARE LESS ABOUT ACCUSATIONS AGAINST BRETT KAVANAUGH
IT'S NOTHING BUT HYPOCRISY.(CHRISTIANITY)
*ANCIENT THREE-WAY COLLISION FORMED BRITISH MAINLAND
(ANCIENT TIMES)
*RACIST MAILER TARGETS ASIAN-AMERICAN CANDIDATE IN NEW JERSEY
(ELECTIONS)
*TRANSGENDER MILITARY BAN’S ‘UNIT COHESION’ CLAIM FAILS SPECTACULARLY IN COURT
(RIGHTS)
*THE NFL'S ROONEY RULE: WHY FOOTBALL'S RACIAL DIVIDE IS LARGER THAN EVER
(RACE MATTERS)
*CLASSROOMS: THE LATEST BATTLEGROUND IN TEXAS'S CULTURE WARS
(EDUCATION)
*A YEAR AFTER HURRICANE HARVEY, SOME CLEANUP WORKERS ARE STILL UNPAID
(SLAVERY 21ST CENTURY)
*'NO ONE COMES TO HELP US': FLORENCE CLEANUP HIGHLIGHTS WILMINGTON'S STARK SOCIAL DIVIDE
(AMERICA)
😊TWO NEW STUDIES SHOW JUST HOW UNDERPAID TEACHERS ARE — AND THAT'S EXACTLY HOW REPUBLICANS WANT IT
(EDUCATION)
*GERMAN SPYMASTER OUSTED FOR SUGGESTING REAL VIDEO OF FAR-RIGHT RAMPAGE WAS FAKE
(WORLD)
*TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TO EASE RULE ON METHANE LEAKS ON PUBLIC LAND
(ENVIRONMENT)
*WHITE PEOPLE EXPLAIN WHY THEY FEEL OPPRESSED
(RACE MATTERS)
*HERE’S WHY THE ALLEGATION AGAINST KAVANAUGH IS CREDIBLE: HE’S SMEARED AND ATTACKED WOMEN BEFORE
(COMMENTARY)
*RESEARCHERS BLOCK COCAINE CRAVING AND ADDICTION WITH A SPECIAL SKIN GRAFT
(CURRENTS)
*TRUMP, WITHOUT EVIDENCE, ACCUSES CHINA OF TRYING TO SWAY US ELECTION
(TRUMP)
*U.S. SPACE CENTER HEADS INTO NEW FRONTIER WITH FEMALE BOSS
(REAL PEOPLE)
*TIME TO KILL THE ZOMBIE ARGUMENT: ANOTHER STUDY SHOWS TRUMP WON BECAUSE OF RACIAL ANXIETIES — NOT ECONOMIC DISTRESS(REALITY)
*SKETCH FOUND IN SOUTH AFRICAN CAVE COULD BE WORLD’S OLDEST DRAWING
(ANCIENT TIMES)
*IN NORTH CAROLINA, IT'S THE POOREST WHO BEAR THE BRUNT OF FLOODING
(AMERICA)
*MCDONALD’S WORKERS IN 10 CITIES STRIKE OVER SEXUAL HARASSMENT BY BOSSES
(SLAVERY 21ST CENTURY)
*late news of interest*
Trump’s FEMA chief Brock Long referred to prosecutors for possible violation of ‘criminal statutes’
Sarah K. Burris - raw story
17 SEP 2018 AT 16:51 ET
Federal Emergency Management chief Brock Long and two top aides have been referred to prosecutors for violation of “criminal statues,” The Wall Street Journalreported Monday.
The case was sent to federal prosecutors, who will uncover whether to issue criminal charges, those familiar with the probe said.
Long and two other federal employees may have broken several laws while going back and forth between Washington, D.C. and Long’s home in Hickory, N.C. at taxpayers’ expense.
Long says he will cooperate with investigators. In the past, the investigation was led by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general before it was handed over to federal prosecutors.
Long joins a score of Trump aides found to have used taxpayer dollars to fund their lifestyle. Most notably was former EPA chief Scott Pruitt, who was forced to resign after it was discovered he made strange purchases and used secret service to run errands for him.
When President Donald Trump campaigned in 2016, he pledged to “drain the swamp” of unethical political leaders in Washington.
The case was sent to federal prosecutors, who will uncover whether to issue criminal charges, those familiar with the probe said.
Long and two other federal employees may have broken several laws while going back and forth between Washington, D.C. and Long’s home in Hickory, N.C. at taxpayers’ expense.
Long says he will cooperate with investigators. In the past, the investigation was led by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general before it was handed over to federal prosecutors.
Long joins a score of Trump aides found to have used taxpayer dollars to fund their lifestyle. Most notably was former EPA chief Scott Pruitt, who was forced to resign after it was discovered he made strange purchases and used secret service to run errands for him.
When President Donald Trump campaigned in 2016, he pledged to “drain the swamp” of unethical political leaders in Washington.
ICE is giving undocumented immigrants ‘dummy’ court dates
Immigrants are being told to arrive at the courthouse on dates that don't even exist.
REBEKAH ENTRALGO - thinkprogress
SEP 17, 2018, 2:55 PM
Some undocumented immigrants living in the United States have received fake documents, ordering them to arrive at the courthouse at midnight, on weekends, or on dates that don’t exist, such as September 31, according to a report by The Dallas Morning News.
According to the outlet, roughly two dozen immigrants arrived at a Texas courthouse last week for their hearings only to be turned away by court staffers who told them their names were not on the docket and that they had been given “fake dates.”
The immigrants had been taken into custody during a raid conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last month. Some 159 undocumented immigrants, many of them without a criminal record, were detained at the Load Trail trailer factory in Sumner, Texas “about 100 miles northeast of Dallas.”
According to the Morning News, the raid was described by ICE officials as “one of the largest such operations at a single workplace in a decade.”
The immigrants were later given their “fake” court dates by ICE officials, who apparently never coordinated with immigration courts to clear the dates, resulting in what advocates have described as “chaos.”
“The immigration court system is confusing enough on a normal day,” Ashley Huebner, associate director of legal services at the National Immigrant Justice Center, told the Morning News. “But to have an individual who probably does not speak English…and receives a document in which DHS has purposely listed a fake date and time is a real different level of confusion and absurdity.”
“Fake dates,” sometimes called “dummy dates,” are not a phenomenon unique to Texas. According to the Morning News, reports of fake court dates have sprung up in Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Atlanta, and Miami.
Neither the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, nor the Justice Department have offered a clear explanation for why undocumented immigrants are being handed fake court dates.
ICE spokesman Tim Oberle shifted the blame to a court agency known as the Executive Office for Immigration Review saying it “is responsible for setting and resetting appearance dates upon receipt of a notice to appear filed by” ICE.
The court debacle comes as the national immigration backlog continues to grow at an astonishing rate. Reports suggest that, even without any new arrests, it could take up to four years to eliminate the backlog in its entirety.
Additionally, ICE has requested $1 billion dollars from the federal government to keep with the Trump administration’s demands of detaining an average of 43,000 undocumented immigrants a day. Health and Human Services officials have also requested hundreds of additional beds at a juvenile detention camp in Tornillo, Texas, to partly accommodate the surge in detained minors over the past year.
As ThinkProgress previously reported, the current number of children detained in immigration facilities stands at nearly 13,000.
According to the outlet, roughly two dozen immigrants arrived at a Texas courthouse last week for their hearings only to be turned away by court staffers who told them their names were not on the docket and that they had been given “fake dates.”
The immigrants had been taken into custody during a raid conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last month. Some 159 undocumented immigrants, many of them without a criminal record, were detained at the Load Trail trailer factory in Sumner, Texas “about 100 miles northeast of Dallas.”
According to the Morning News, the raid was described by ICE officials as “one of the largest such operations at a single workplace in a decade.”
The immigrants were later given their “fake” court dates by ICE officials, who apparently never coordinated with immigration courts to clear the dates, resulting in what advocates have described as “chaos.”
“The immigration court system is confusing enough on a normal day,” Ashley Huebner, associate director of legal services at the National Immigrant Justice Center, told the Morning News. “But to have an individual who probably does not speak English…and receives a document in which DHS has purposely listed a fake date and time is a real different level of confusion and absurdity.”
“Fake dates,” sometimes called “dummy dates,” are not a phenomenon unique to Texas. According to the Morning News, reports of fake court dates have sprung up in Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Atlanta, and Miami.
Neither the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, nor the Justice Department have offered a clear explanation for why undocumented immigrants are being handed fake court dates.
ICE spokesman Tim Oberle shifted the blame to a court agency known as the Executive Office for Immigration Review saying it “is responsible for setting and resetting appearance dates upon receipt of a notice to appear filed by” ICE.
The court debacle comes as the national immigration backlog continues to grow at an astonishing rate. Reports suggest that, even without any new arrests, it could take up to four years to eliminate the backlog in its entirety.
Additionally, ICE has requested $1 billion dollars from the federal government to keep with the Trump administration’s demands of detaining an average of 43,000 undocumented immigrants a day. Health and Human Services officials have also requested hundreds of additional beds at a juvenile detention camp in Tornillo, Texas, to partly accommodate the surge in detained minors over the past year.
As ThinkProgress previously reported, the current number of children detained in immigration facilities stands at nearly 13,000.
another traitor exposed!!!
Paul Manafort got Ben Shapiro to push his pro-Russia propaganda
Manafort's plea agreement contained a reference to the far-right provocateur.
FRANK DALE - thinkprogress
SEP 17, 2018, 12:09 PM
Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman for President Donald Trump, reached a plea deal on Friday that includes cooperation with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
Manafort’s plea agreement contained numerous details that could be pivotal to Mueller’s investigation.
But one incident in particular, outlined in court documents, was largely overlooked before it was spotted by the Daily Beast’s Spencer Ackerman: Manafort convinced conservative provocateur Ben Shapiro to support his political work in Ukraine.
“Manafort owes much of his time behind bars to his work on behalf of Russian-backed Ukrainian political interests,” according to Ackerman. Manafort worked for Kremlin-supported Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych during his re-election campaign against Yulia Tymoshenko in 2012. The superseding criminal informationreleased on Friday detailed Manafort’s work in the U.S. on behalf of Yanukovych:
In addition to disseminating stories about (Tymoshenko) soliciting murder, noted above, in October 2012, MANAFORT orchestrated a scheme to have, as he wrote in a contemporaneous communication, “[O]bama jews” put pressure on the Administration to disavow Tymoshenko and support Yanukovych.
Part of that effort was coordinating “privately with a senior Israeli government official to issue a written statement publicizing this story.” Court documents state that Manafort then, “with secret advance knowledge of that Israeli statement, worked to disseminate this story in the United States.”
Who did Manafort get to write about this baseless allegation in the U.S.? None other than Shapiro. As the Guardian’s Luke Harding explained in April:
Manafort’s media operation included attacks on (Hillary) Clinton. In October 2012 (Rick) Gates emailed Manafort and (Alan) Friedman, flagging a piece written by the journalist Ben Shapiro. The Breitbart article criticised Clinton for her public support of Tymoshenko, who had recently made an electoral pact with the far-right Svoboda party.
The article cited a Jewish “leader” who accused Clinton anonymously of creating a “neo-Nazi Frankenstein.” Gates wrote: “Gentlemen – Here is the first part of a series of articles that will be coming as we continue to build this effort. Alan, you get full credit for the Frankenstein comment.”
Rick Gates is the former Trump campaign associate who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI and has cooperated with Mueller’s investigation.
Shapiro’s Manafort-inspired piece was published by Breitbart — his former employer — in October 2012 under the headline “Jewish Leaders Blame Hillary Clinton for ‘Legitimizing’ Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Party.” It contained the apparent “neo-Nazi Frankenstein” reference that Manafort’s team took credit for in Gates’ email:
One prominent Jewish leader, who asked to remain unnamed, says that Clinton’s New York Times op-ed ripping the current Ukrainian administration has “created a neo-Nazi Frankenstein by issuing a de facto endorsement of Mrs. Tymoshenko and her choices.”
Shapiro has yet to comment on his connection to Manafort.
Manafort’s plea agreement contained numerous details that could be pivotal to Mueller’s investigation.
But one incident in particular, outlined in court documents, was largely overlooked before it was spotted by the Daily Beast’s Spencer Ackerman: Manafort convinced conservative provocateur Ben Shapiro to support his political work in Ukraine.
“Manafort owes much of his time behind bars to his work on behalf of Russian-backed Ukrainian political interests,” according to Ackerman. Manafort worked for Kremlin-supported Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych during his re-election campaign against Yulia Tymoshenko in 2012. The superseding criminal informationreleased on Friday detailed Manafort’s work in the U.S. on behalf of Yanukovych:
In addition to disseminating stories about (Tymoshenko) soliciting murder, noted above, in October 2012, MANAFORT orchestrated a scheme to have, as he wrote in a contemporaneous communication, “[O]bama jews” put pressure on the Administration to disavow Tymoshenko and support Yanukovych.
Part of that effort was coordinating “privately with a senior Israeli government official to issue a written statement publicizing this story.” Court documents state that Manafort then, “with secret advance knowledge of that Israeli statement, worked to disseminate this story in the United States.”
Who did Manafort get to write about this baseless allegation in the U.S.? None other than Shapiro. As the Guardian’s Luke Harding explained in April:
Manafort’s media operation included attacks on (Hillary) Clinton. In October 2012 (Rick) Gates emailed Manafort and (Alan) Friedman, flagging a piece written by the journalist Ben Shapiro. The Breitbart article criticised Clinton for her public support of Tymoshenko, who had recently made an electoral pact with the far-right Svoboda party.
The article cited a Jewish “leader” who accused Clinton anonymously of creating a “neo-Nazi Frankenstein.” Gates wrote: “Gentlemen – Here is the first part of a series of articles that will be coming as we continue to build this effort. Alan, you get full credit for the Frankenstein comment.”
Rick Gates is the former Trump campaign associate who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI and has cooperated with Mueller’s investigation.
Shapiro’s Manafort-inspired piece was published by Breitbart — his former employer — in October 2012 under the headline “Jewish Leaders Blame Hillary Clinton for ‘Legitimizing’ Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Party.” It contained the apparent “neo-Nazi Frankenstein” reference that Manafort’s team took credit for in Gates’ email:
One prominent Jewish leader, who asked to remain unnamed, says that Clinton’s New York Times op-ed ripping the current Ukrainian administration has “created a neo-Nazi Frankenstein by issuing a de facto endorsement of Mrs. Tymoshenko and her choices.”
Shapiro has yet to comment on his connection to Manafort.
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: