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Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Immigration, Liberty, Misconduct, Press, Race

Detained, Unaccompanied Minors Discouarged from Talking About Their Conditions

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“If for whatever reason you talk to a reporter, you know what’s going to happen to your case?” the woman is heard saying in Spanish. “It is going to be on the news, and then one doesn’t know what is going to happen. If you are going to last here for a long time, I am not trying to scare you. I am just telling you it’s the truth.”

If their conditions were truly good, and they were truly happy, then one would expect these children would be encouraged to talk to anyone and everyone about their conditions and states of mind.

It’s far more probable that they are told to be quiet lest they reveal their own misery to independent third parties.

Via Rachel Maddow Shares Leaked Footage From Inside a Migrant Children Detention Center (“A facility employee warned children not to talk to the media”).

Immigration, Law

Trump v. Hawaii

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Below, I’ve embedded the full decision in Trump v. Hawaii, a decision concerning Trump’s travel ban. The decision was handed down this morning, upholding the ban on 5-4 vote.

The case was reversed and remanded.  Immediately below, readers will find the syllabus for the case, a summary that’s useful to review before reading the opinion.  (“NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.”)

Syllabus:

Trump, President of the United States, et al. v. Hawaii et al.

No. 17–965.  Argued April 25, 2018—Decided June 26, 2018

In September 2017, the President issued Proclamation No. 9645, seeking to improve vetting procedures for foreign nationals traveling to the United States by identifying ongoing deficiencies in the information needed to assess whether nationals of particular countries present a security threat. The Proclamation placed entry restrictions on the nationals of eight foreign states whose systems for managing and sharing information about their nationals the President deemed inadequate. Foreign states were selected for inclusion based on a review undertaken pursuant to one of the President’s earlier Executive Orders. As part of that review, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in consultation with the State Department and intelligence agencies, developed an information and risk assessment “baseline.” DHS then collected and evaluated data for all foreign governments, identifying those having deficient information-sharing practices and presenting national security concerns, as well as other countries “at risk” of failing to meet the baseline. After a 50-day period during which the State Department made diplomatic efforts to encourage foreign governments to improve their practices, the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security concluded that eight countries—Chad, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen—remained deficient. She recommended entry restrictions for certain nationals from all of those countries but Iraq, which had a close cooperative relationship with the U. S. She also recommended including Somalia, which met the information-sharing component of the baseline standards but had other special risk factors, such as a significant terrorist presence. After consulting with multiple Cabinet members, the President adopted the recommendations and issued the Proclamation. Invoking his authority under 8 U. S. C. §§1182(f) and 1185(a), he determined that certain restrictions were necessary to “prevent the entry of those foreign nationals about whom the United  States Government lacks sufficient information” and “elicit improved identity-management and information-sharing protocols and practices from foreign governments.” The Proclamation imposes a range of entry restrictions that vary based on the “distinct circumstances” in each of the eight countries. It exempts lawful permanent residents and provides case-by-case waivers under certain circumstances. It also directs DHS to assess on a continuing basis whether the restrictions should be modified or continued, and to report to the President every 180 days. At the completion of the first such review period, the President determined that Chad had sufficiently improved its practices, and he accordingly lifted restrictions on its nationals.

Plaintiffs—the State of Hawaii, three individuals with foreign relatives affected by the entry suspension, and the Muslim Association of Hawaii—argue that the Proclamation violates the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and the Establishment Clause. The District Court granted a nationwide preliminary injunction barring enforcement of the restrictions. The Ninth Circuit affirmed, concluding that the Proclamation contravened two provisions of the INA: §1182(f), which authorizes the President to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens” whenever he “finds” that their entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States,” and §1152(a)(1)(A), which provides that “no person shall . . . be discriminated against in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of the person’s race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence.” The court did not reach the Establishment Clause claim.

Held:

1. This Court assumes without deciding that plaintiffs’ statutory claims are reviewable, notwithstanding consular nonreviewability or any other statutory nonreviewability issue. See Sale v. Haitian Centers Council, Inc., 509 U. S. 155. Pp. 8–9.

2. The President has lawfully exercised the broad discretion granted to him under §1182(f) to suspend the entry of aliens into the United States. Pp. 9–24.

(a) By its terms, §1182(f) exudes deference to the President in every clause. It entrusts to the President the decisions whether and when to suspend entry, whose entry to suspend, for how long, and on what conditions. It thus vests the President with “ample power” to impose entry restrictions in addition to those elsewhere enumerated in the INA. Sale, 509 U. S., at 187. The Proclamation falls well within this comprehensive delegation. The sole prerequisite set forth in §1182(f) is that the President “find[ ]” that the entry of the covered aliens “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” The President has undoubtedly fulfilled that requirement here. He first ordered DHS and other agencies to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of every single country’s compliance with the information and risk assessment baseline. He then issued a Proclamation with extensive findings about the deficiencies and their impact. Based on that review, he found that restricting entry of aliens who could not be vetted with adequate information was in the national interest.

Even assuming that some form of inquiry into the persuasiveness of the President’s findings is appropriate, but see Webster v. Doe, 486 U. S. 592, 600, plaintiffs’ attacks on the sufficiency of the findings cannot be sustained. The 12-page Proclamation is more detailed than any prior order issued under §1182(f). And such a searching inquiry is inconsistent with the broad statutory text and the deference traditionally accorded the President in this sphere. See, e.g., Sale, 509 U. S., at 187–188.

The Proclamation comports with the remaining textual limits in §1182(f). While the word “suspend” often connotes a temporary deferral, the President is not required to prescribe in advance a fixed end date for the entry restriction. Like its predecessors, the Proclamation makes clear that its “conditional restrictions” will remain in force only so long as necessary to “address” the identified “inadequacies and risks” within the covered nations. Finally, the Proclamation properly identifies a “class of aliens” whose entry is suspended, and the word “class” comfortably encompasses a group of people linked by nationality. Pp. 10–15.

(b) Plaintiffs have not identified any conflict between the Proclamation and the immigration scheme reflected in the INA that would implicitly bar the President from addressing deficiencies in the Nation’s vetting system. The existing grounds of inadmissibility and the narrow Visa Waiver Program do not address the failure of certain high-risk countries to provide a minimum baseline of reliable information. Further, neither the legislative history of §1182(f) nor historical practice justifies departing from the clear text of the statute. Pp. 15–20.

(c) Plaintiffs’ argument that the President’s entry suspension violates §1152(a)(1)(A) ignores the basic distinction between admissibility determinations and visa issuance that runs throughout the INA. Section 1182 defines the universe of aliens who are admissible into the United States (and therefore eligible to receive a visa). Once §1182 sets the boundaries of admissibility, §1152(a)(1)(A) prohibits discrimination in the allocation of immigrant visas based on nationality and other traits. Had Congress intended in §1152(a)(1)(A) to constrain the President’s power to determine who may enter the country, it could have chosen language directed to that end. Common sense and historical practice confirm that §1152(a)(1)(A) does not limit the President’s delegated authority under §1182(f). Presidents have repeatedly exercised their authority to suspend entry on the basis of nationality. And on plaintiffs’ reading, the President would not be permitted to suspend entry from particular foreign states in response to an epidemic, or even if the United States were on the brink of war. Pp. 20–24.

3. Plaintiffs have not demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the Proclamation violates the Establishment Clause. Pp. 24–38.

(a) The individual plaintiffs have Article III standing to challenge the exclusion of their relatives under the Establishment Clause. A person’s interest in being united with his relatives is sufficiently concrete and particularized to form the basis of an Article III injury in fact. Cf., e.g., Kerry v. Din, 576 U. S. ___, ___. Pp. 24–26.

(b) Plaintiffs allege that the primary purpose of the Proclamation was religious animus and that the President’s stated concerns about vetting protocols and national security were but pretexts for discriminating against Muslims. At the heart of their case is a series of statements by the President and his advisers both during the campaign and since the President assumed office. The issue, however, is not whether to denounce the President’s statements, but the significance of those statements in reviewing a Presidential directive, neutral on its face, addressing a matter within the core of executive responsibility. In doing so, the Court must consider not only the statements of a particular President, but also the authority of the Presidency itself. Pp. 26–29.

(c) The admission and exclusion of foreign nationals is a “fundamental sovereign attribute exercised by the Government’s political departments largely immune from judicial control.” Fiallo v. Bell, 430 U. S. 787, 792. Although foreign nationals seeking admission have no constitutional right to entry, this Court has engaged in a circumscribed judicial inquiry when the denial of a visa allegedly burdens the constitutional rights of a U. S. citizen. That review is limited to whether the Executive gives a “facially legitimate and bona fide” reason for its action, Kleindienst v. Mandel, 408 U. S. 753, 769, but the Court need not define the precise contours of that narrow inquiry in this case. For today’s purposes, the Court assumes that it may look behind the face of the Proclamation to the extent of applying rational basis review, i.e., whether the entry policy is plausibly related to the Government’s stated objective to protect the country and improve vetting processes. Plaintiffs’ extrinsic evidence may be considered, but the policy will be upheld so long as it can reasonably be understood to result from a justification independent of unconstitutional grounds. Pp. 30–32.

(d) On the few occasions where the Court has struck down a policy as illegitimate under rational basis scrutiny, a common thread has been that the laws at issue were “divorced from any factual context from which [the Court] could discern a relationship to legitimate state interests.” Romer v. Evans, 517 U. S. 620, 635. The Proclamation does not fit that pattern. It is expressly premised on legitimate purposes and says nothing about religion. The entry restrictions on Muslim-majority nations are limited to countries that were previously designated by Congress or prior administrations as posing national security risks. Moreover, the Proclamation reflects the results of a worldwide review process undertaken by multiple Cabinet officials and their agencies. Plaintiffs challenge the entry suspension based on their perception of its effectiveness and wisdom, but the Court cannot substitute its own assessment for the Executive’s predictive judgments on such matters. See Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, 561 U. S. 1, 33–34.

Three additional features of the entry policy support the Government’s claim of a legitimate national security interest. First, since the President introduced entry restrictions in January 2017, three Muslim-majority countries—Iraq, Sudan, and Chad—have been removed from the list. Second, for those countries still subject to entry restrictions, the Proclamation includes numerous exceptions for various categories of foreign nationals. Finally, the Proclamation creates a waiver program open to all covered foreign nationals seeking entry as immigrants or nonimmigrants. Under these circumstances, the Government has set forth a sufficient national security justification to survive rational basis review. Pp. 33–38.

878 F. 3d 662, reversed and remanded.

Roberts, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Kennedy, Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, JJ.,

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Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 6.26.18

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with occasional thunderstorms and a high of seventy-five.  Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 19m 11s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the five hundred ninety-first day.Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.

 

On this day in 1963, President Kennedy delivers his now-famous Ich bin ein Berliner speech in West Berlin.


Miller Center: June 26, 1963: “Ich bin ein Berliner” Speech

I am proud to come to this city as the guest of your distinguished Mayor, who has symbolized throughout the world the fighting spirit of West Berlin. And I am proud to visit the Federal Republic with your distinguished Chancellor who for so many years has committed Germany to democracy and freedom and progress, and to come here in the company of my fellow American, General Clay, who has been in this city during its great moments of crisis and will come again if ever needed.

Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was “civis Romanus sum.” Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
I appreciate my interpreter translating my German!

There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass’ sic nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.

Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us. I want to say, on behalf of my countrymen, who live many miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, who are far distant from you, that they take the greatest pride that they have been able to share with you, even from a distance, the story of the last 18 years. I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for 18 years that still lives with the vitality and the force, and the hope and the determination of the city of West Berlin. While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of. the Communist system, for all the world to see, we take no satisfaction in it, for it is, as your Mayor has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together.

What is true of this city is true of Germany—real, lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice. In 18 years of peace and good faith, this generation of Germans has earned the right to be free, including the right to unite their families and their nation in lasting peace, with good will to all people. You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main. So let me ask you, as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.

Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner!”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Alan Rappeport reports Trump Threatens Harley-Davidson as Company Shifts Production Overseas:

President Trump lashed out at one of his favorite American manufacturers on Tuesday, criticizing Harley-Davidson over its plans to move some of its motorcycle production abroad and threatening it with steep punitive taxes.

In a series of tweets on Tuesday, the president accused the Wisconsin-based company of surrendering in Mr. Trump’s trade war with Europe and said the firm would lose its “aura” if it produced bikes overseas.

“If they move, watch, it will be the beginning of the end — they surrendered, they quit!” he wrote. “The Aura will be gone and they will be taxed like never before!”

The attack came a day after Harley-Davidson announced that it would move some of its production abroad in response to stiff retaliatory tariffs that the European Union imposed in response to Mr. Trump’s trade measures. Rather than raise prices to cover the new 31 percent tariff on bikes it exports to the European Union, Harley said it would shift some of its production to overseas facilities to avoid the tariffs.

(Trump’s trade war undermines America competitiveness, and when companies try to compensate for the consequences of his harmful economic policies, he threathens them with even worse consequences.)

Matthew DeFour reports As immigration debate rages, Scott Walker is not weighing in:

On Monday, Walker refused to comment on Trump’s statement questioning whether detained immigrants should receive basic due process rights, saying “that’s a federal jurisdiction.”

But in response to another question, he explained that he wants to reduce or eliminate international tariffs imposed by the Trump administration that led to Harley-Davidson’s announcement Monday that it is moving some production overseas.

“Obviously, tariffs we just talked about are a federal issue, but they directly impact the businesses in the state of Wisconsin,” Walker said.

When it was pointed out that immigrant labor has a major impact on the state’s dairy industry and Walker’s own re-election campaign has used the deployment of Wisconsin National Guard troops to the border in online ads, Walker continued to resist taking a position on immigration.

(So much for being ‘Unitimidated.’  Marc Thiessen wrote Walker’s book, but didn’t manage to give Walker the characteristic of the title.)

Molly Beck reports Justices are considering limits on how the Wisconsin public records law applies to courts:

MADISON – The state Supreme Court is deliberating over how the state’s public records law applies to justices, judges and other court officials — setting off alarm bells with government transparency advocates.

It’s unclear exactly what the justices are considering — the state’s court system director said earlier this month the high court intended to decide whether the court system is subject to Wisconsin’s public records law.

But on Monday, the Supreme Court spokesman indicated the court is weighing something narrower: whether email addresses for judges and justices should be released, potentially answering a long-debated question of whether unsolicited, direct communication from the public can disrupt the judicial process.

….

A records request filed June 12 by conservative radio show host Mark Belling seeking email addresses for judges, justices and other court officials prompted the review, Sheehan said.

The court’s deliberations are troubling state government watchdogs who are worried the court could go further and end up matching an unsuccessful effort by the state Legislature three years ago to keep private nearly every record created by a lawmaker.

Jay Rosen contends It’s time for the press to suspend normal relations with the Trump presidency:

In 2012 the government of Canada announced that it would suspend diplomatic relations with Iran. “Canada views the government of Iran as the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today,” said the foreign minister.

Journalists charged with covering him should suspend normal relations with the presidency of Donald Trump, which is the most significant threat to an informed public in the United States today.

….

I began making this point on the third day of his presidency, January 22, 2017, when I said the press should send interns to the White House briefing room. Normal practice would not be able to cope with the political style of Donald Trump, which incorporates a hate movement against journalists.

“Send the interns” means our major news organizations don’t have to cooperate with this. They don’t have to lend talent or prestige to it. They don’t have to be props. They need not televise the spectacle live (CNN didn’t carry Spicer’s rant) and they don’t have to send their top people. They can “switch” systems: from inside-out, where access to the White House starts the story engines, to outside-in, where the action begins on the rim, in the agencies, around the committees, with the people who are supposed to obey Trump but have doubts… The press has to become less predictable. It has to stop functioning as a hate object. This means giving something up. [Rosen lists other ways to suspend normal relations in the full article.]

Lena Masri reports Astronomers at famed Greenwich observatory turn eyes to the skies again after 60-year break:

After a 60-year hiatus, astronomers at the Royal Observatory Greenwich in London are studying the sky again.

The observatory, which is home to the Prime Meridian of the World and Greenwich Mean Time, has installed a new telescope that will allow astronomers to study the surface of the sun, star clusters and perhaps even exploding stars in other galaxies. The telescope is named after Annie Maunder, one of the first women scientists to work at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.

The Royal Observatory was founded in 1675 by King Charles II and it was a working observatory until 1957, when its instruments were moved to Herstmonceux in Sussex, England. The observatory then became a museum and place that educates the public about modern astronomy. With the new telescope, the site will go back to being a working observatory.

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, June 26th, 12:30 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Murder on the Orient Express

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This Tuesday, June 26th at 12:30 PM, there will be a showing of Murder on the Orient Express @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin community building.

Kenneth Branagh directs the one-hour, fifty-four minute film of Agatha Christie’s famous murder mystery.  Hercule Poirot finds himself asked to solve a murder that’s taken place on the train on which he’s traveling.

The cast includes Kenneth Branagh, Tom Bateman, Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Josh Gad, Derek Jacobi, Leslie Odom Jr., Michelle Pfeiffer, and Daisy Ridley. The film is rated PG-13 by the MPAA.

Quotes from the film —

Hercule Poirot: I see evil on this train.

Hercule Poirot: I detect criminals. I do not protect them.

Gerhard Hardman: [Speaking about black and white people] It is out of respect for both that I like to keep them separated. To mix your red wine and your white would be to ruin them both.
Miss Mary Debenham: [Pouring her red wine into her white] I like a good rosé.

One can find more information about Murder on the Orient Express at the Internet Movie Database.

Enjoy.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 6.25.18

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-eight.  Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 19m 33s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the five hundred ninetieth day.Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission is scheduled to meet at 4:30 PM, and Whitewater’s School Board will meet at 7 PM at Central Office (after a prior offsite tour).

 

On this day in 1950, the Korean War begins.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Rick Barrett reports In response to tariffs, Harley-Davidson moving more motorcycle production overseas:

Harley Davidson Inc. said Monday it plans to move production of motorcycles destined for the European Union to its international factories, in response to tariffs the EU has imposed on its bikes.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Harley said the impact of the 31 percent tariffs, up from 6 percent previously, could be $100 million per year or roughly $2,200 per motorcycle.

“Harley-Davidson believes the tremendous cost increase, if passed onto its dealers and retail customers, would have an immediate and lasting detrimental impact to its business in the region, reducing customer access to Harley-Davidson products and negatively impacting the sustainability of its dealers’ businesses,” the company said.

Robert J. Samuelson writes We’re going to lose this trade war:

If we are to have a “trade war” with China, it would be best to win it. We should be better off after the fighting. Unfortunately, the chances of this happening seem slim to none, because President Trump’s plan of attack suggests that everyone — us and them — will lose.

….

The trouble is that Trump’s bombastic assaults against our traditional trading partners — and military allies — virtually guarantee that the essential cooperation will be difficult, if not impossible, to attain. “Trump’s focus on the trade deficit is causing specific harms to American national security, including the distortion of U.S. [foreign] alliance relationships and loss of leverage against China,” wrote Derek Scissors of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Consider how. Trump has suggested imposing a 25 percent tariff on imported cars, trucks, sport utility vehicles and parts. This might reduce the trade deficit (in 2017, these U.S. imports totaled $324 billion from all countries, Scissors reported), but only because higher-priced vehicles would reduce consumer demand and vehicle production. Other countries would retaliate, finds a study from the Peterson Institute. The estimated U.S. job loss would total 624,000 over one to three years.

Michael Birnbaum reports If they needed to fend off war with Russia, U.S. military leaders worry they might not get there in time:

SUWALKI, Poland — U.S. commanders are worried that if they had to head off a conflict with Russia, the most powerful military in the world could get stuck in a traffic jam.

Humvees could snarl behind plodding semis on narrow roads as they made their way east across Europe. U.S. tanks could crush rusting bridges too weak to hold their weight. Troops could be held up by officious passport-checkers and stubborn railway companies.

Although many barriers would drop away if there were a declaration of war, the hazy period before a military engagement would present a major problem. NATO has just a skeleton force deployed to its member countries that share a border with Russia. Backup forces would need to traverse hundreds of miles. And the delays — a mixture of bureaucracy, bad planning and decaying infrastructure — could enable Russia to seize NATO territory in the Baltics while U.S. Army planners were still filling out the 17 forms needed to cross Germany and into Poland.

During at least one White House exercise that gamed out a European war with Russia, the logistical stumbles contributed to a NATO loss.

The Committee to Investigate Russia offers the Russia-NRA-Trump Connection Explained Again:

Vanity Fair‘s latest article about the possibility that Russia funneled money to the Trump campaign through the National Rifle Association does not contain much new information, but it does an excellent job of piecing together what we already know about the connections Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating and members of Congress continue to probe.

An excerpt:

The F.B.I. and special counsel Robert Mueller are investigating meetings between N.R.A. officials and powerful Russian operatives, trying to determine if those contacts had anything to do with the gun group spending $30 million to help elect Donald Trump—triple what it invested on behalf of Mitt Romney in 2012. The use of foreign money in American political campaigns is illegal. One encounter of particular interest to investigators is between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian banker at an N.R.A. dinner.

The Russian wooing of N.R.A. executives goes back to at least 2011, when that same banker and politician, Alexander Torshin, befriended David Keene, who was then president of the gun-rights organization. Torshin soon became a “life member,” attending the N.R.A.’s annual conventions and introducing comrades to other gun-group officials. In 2015, Torshin welcomed an N.R.A. delegation to Moscow that included Keene and Joe Gregory, then head of the “Ring of Freedom” program, which is reserved for top donors to the N.R.A. Among the other hosts were Dmitry Rogozin, who until last month was the deputy prime minister overseeing Russia’s defense industry, and Sergei Rudov, head of the Saint Basil the Great Charitable Foundation, one of Russia’s wealthiest philanthropies.

It’s possible that the men were merely bonding over a shared love of firearms. Mike Carpenter, a Russian specialist who worked in the Pentagon during the Obama administration, laughs at the notion. “The Russian state is run by a K.G.B. elite that wants nothing less than to have an armed citizenry,” Carpenter says. “Rogozin is a heavyweight in Russian politics. . . . Torshin has a direct line to Putin . . . and also has possible ties to organized crime. Rudov is the right-hand man of Konstantin Malofeev, who is sort of a paleo-conservative, ultra-nationalist figure who bankrolls a lot of projects involving mercenaries in Ukraine.” Carpenter sees how a dark money trail could connect the Kremlin to the gun lobby. “Those three would only meet with N.R.A. officials if there were some concerted effort by senior members of the Russian government to try and co-opt the N.R.A. politically,” he continues. “And they are all money men. They can throw tens of millions around.”

Full story: “COINCIDENCE NUMBER 395”: THE N.R.A. SPENT $30 MILLION TO ELECT TRUMP. WAS IT RUSSIAN MONEY? (Vanity Fair)

Great Big Story looks Inside World Cup’s Sticker Collecting Craze:

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 6.24.18

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty.  Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 19m 52s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 87.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the five hundred eighty-ninth day.Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.

 

On this day in 1948, the Soviets begin the Berlin Blockade:

On 24 June, the Soviets severed land and water connections between the non-Soviet zones and Berlin.[35] That same day, they halted all rail and barge traffic in and out of Berlin.[35] The West answered by introducing a counter-blockade, stopping all rail traffic into East Germany from the British and US zones. Over the following months this counter-blockade would have a damaging impact on East Germany, as the drying up of coal and steel shipments seriously hindered industrial development in the Soviet zone.[36][37] On 25 June, the Soviets stopped supplying food to the civilian population in the non-Soviet sectors of Berlin.[35] Motor traffic from Berlin to the western zones was permitted, but this required a 23-kilometer (14.3-mile) detour to a ferry crossing because of alleged “repairs” to a bridge.[35] They also cut off the electricity relied on by Berlin, using their control over the generating plants in the Soviet zone.[32]

Recommended for reading in full — 

A new website, Trump Hotels http://www.trumphotels.org/, displays Trump’s political views as though they were the policies of his hotels:

Manny Fernandez and Linda Qiu write Is the Border in Crisis? ‘We’re Doing Fine, Quite Frankly,’ a Border City Mayor Says:

BROWNSVILLE, Tex. — The mayor of this Texas border city has been dealing with a crisis.

This week, he declared a state of emergency. Drones filled the skies and emergency vehicles raced down the streets. But none of it had anything to do with illegal immigration.

It had to do with the weather.

A severe thunderstorm caused widespread flooding throughout the Rio Grande Valley in recent days. That other crisis — the one President Trump says has been unfolding on the border because of illegal immigration — is largely a fiction, the mayor, Tony Martinez, and other Brownsville residents and leaders said.

“There is not a crisis in the city of Brownsville with regards to safety and security,” said Mr. Martinez, who has lived in Brownsville since the late 1970s. “There’s no gunfire. Most of the people that are migrating are from Central America. It’s not like they’re coming over here to try to take anybody’s job. They’re trying to just save their own lives. We’re doing fine, quite frankly.”

Mr. Martinez is a Democrat in a mainly conservative state, and many Republicans in Texas, like Mr. Trump, have raised an alarm over the numbers of migrants still flowing into Texas. But there is evidence, in federal data and on the ground in places like Brownsville that the immigration crisis Mr. Trump has cited over the past week to justify the separation of families is actually no crisis at all.

Stephanie Leutert explains Who’s Really Crossing the U.S. Border, and Why They’re Coming:

Despite what the president says, the situation at the border is much more nuanced. There’s not a flood of people racing across the border. The majority of migrants aren’t dangerous criminals. Many are women and families—and many are fleeing gang violence rather than seeking to spread that violence farther north.

For the past two years, I’ve worked to document these issues at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin, and also in the Beyond the Border column for Lawfare—based in part on my fieldwork from across Mexico. There are few straightforward and easy answers to what often feel like basic questions for Central American migration. So it’s worth taking a step back and asking: who are the people arriving at the border? Why are they coming? And how does the current situation compare to migration in the past?

First off, while the current administration has tried to tie Central American migrants to MS-13, government data reveals that gang members crossing irregularly are the rare exceptions. Since the Trump administration took office, the Border Patrol has detected fewer gang members crossing irregularly than during the Obama administration. In FY2017, these detections amounted to 0.075 percent of the total number of migrants (228 MS-13 members out of 303,916 total migrants). When combined with MS-13’s rival, the Barrio 18 gang, the number rises only slightly to 0.095 percent. This is far from the “infestation” of violent gang members described by the president.

The current crisis hasn’t been caused by a sudden influx of migration, either. The peak in apprehensions of irregular migrants actually took place some 17 years ago, in FY2000. At that point, U.S. Border Patrol agents caught 1,643,679 migrants attempting to enter the United States without the appropriate papers, compared to 303,916 apprehensions in this past fiscal year. But this decreasing number of apprehensions should not be confused with a gentler, kinder approach to border security—in fact, just the opposite. Since 2001, the number of Border Patrol agents along the southwest border has nearly doubled from 9,147 agents to 16,605. Border fencing also increased: to date, there are 705 miles of fencing along the 2,000-mile long U.S.-Mexico border.

The face of migration has also changed. Back in 2000, Mexican nationals made up 98 percent of the total migrants and Central Americans (referring to Honduran, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran migrants) only one percent. Today, Central Americans make up closer to 50 percent.

 Catherine Rampell describes The real hoax about the border crisis:

It’s all a hoax. A great big hoax.

Not the family separations, the babies alone in cages, the drugged immigrant children, the stolen toddlers too traumatized to speak, the wailing children whom Ann Coulter slanders as “child actors.”

Sadly, those cruelties are all too real.

The hoax is the premise that President Trump’s administration has invented to rationalize such crimes against humanity: his narrative that America has been “ infest[ed]” with hordes of crime-committing, culture-diluting, job-stealing, tax-shirking, benefits-draining “aliens.”

No part of that description is remotely true. Yet the Trump administration seems to have successfully shifted the national dialogue away from “Do we have a border immigration problem?” to “What’s the right way to fix our border immigration problem?”

Truly, it’s bizarre. Unauthorized border crossings have been falling over time. In fact, apprehensions of unauthorized immigrants along the Southwest border last fiscal year declined to about 300,000, the lowest level since 1971, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. They’ve risen in recent months, though year-to-date they’re still below historical levels.

An internal government report commissioned by Trump found that refugees brought in $63 billion more in tax revenue over the past decade than they cost the government. Finding those results inconvenient, the administration suppressed them, though they were ultimately leaked to the New York Times last year.

RetroPod describes The first shark attacks:

Embed from Getty Images
See also Blood in the water: Four dead, a coast terrified and the birth of modern shark mania.

Daily Bread, Trump

Daily Bread for 6.23.18

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of seventy-nine.  Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 20m 05s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 81% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the five hundred eighty-eighth day.Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.

 

On this day in 1911, the first home-built airplane flies:

On this date Wausau native John Schwister became a pioneer in Wisconsin aviation by flying the state’s first home-built airplane. The plane, named the “Minnesota-Badger,” was constructed of wooden ribs covered with light cotton material. Powered by an early-model aircraft engine, the “Minnesota-Badger” flew several hundred feet and reached a maximum altitude of 20 feet. [Source: Wisconsin Aviation Hall of Fame]

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Alex Wagner writes The Republican Party Moves From Family Values to White Nationalism:

But in the Trump era, it is clear these values no longer define the movement. Family values would never have permitted the separation of babies from their mothers and fathers, the incarceration of toddlers, the placement of grade schoolers in shelters with histories of sexual and physical abuse. Nor would family values have allowed the disregard of families already separated: There is no plan in place to reunite the 2,342 children who have been taken from their parents. The former director of ice, John Sandweg, told my colleague Priscilla Alvarez that it is entirely possible these children and their parents will remain permanently separated. But to hear it in conservative news outlets, such concern—what will happen to these children now?—is a tedium of leftist whining.

Family values, further, would not permit policies likely to ensure these families will be kept apart: In early May, the administration announced its intention to begin screening sponsor families for their citizenship status—this includes extended family seeking to take in immigrant children who have been separated from their mothers and fathers (such screening would include biometric data, like fingerprinting). To place the specter of deportation over an immigrant family is to practically guarantee that its members will remain in the shadows, leaving unaccompanied children to find a home elsewhere—likely in foster care, with strangers. It is to ensure that the family unit, once broken, remains broken.

Trump has instead redefined his party around white nationalism, which deems brown-skinned men, women, and children of degraded humanity—and therefore absent any inherent value and unworthy of protection. You could see that this week as the president compared immigrant men, women, and children to vermin (they want to “infest our country,” he tweeted). You could see it when his deputy, Stephen Miller, painted migrants as menaces—not candidates for asylum, but rather incarceration:

Reading from a list of arrests in Philadelphia in May 2017, Mr. Miller recounted the crimes committed by illegal immigrants: murder, child neglect, negligent manslaughter, car theft, prostitution, racketeering, rape. “It is impossible to take moral lectures from people like the mayor of Philadelphia, who dance in jubilant celebration over ‘sanctuary cities,’ when you had innocent Americans, U.S.-born and foreign, who are victimized on a daily basis because of illegal immigration,” Mr. Miller said.

You could see it when Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, responded to the proposition of a 10-year-old migrant child with Down Syndrome being separated from her mother and kept in a cage. “Womp womp,” said Lewandowski—half-cheer, half-IDGAF. How could a human not care about a child in such dire straits? Deny the child’s humanity. Lewandowski would not apologize.

(I’ll put these next words in red, as those on the other side of these issues often favor the garish over-use of bright colors.  Wagner’s correct about what the Republican Party has become, but historians are likely to debate for generations when this dark orientation first began.  As a racist nationalism is inimical to a democratic society, it must be fought regardless of the time one assigns for its origin.  That’s why comparisons to the Bund – German American Bund, Amerikadeutscher Volksbund – are apt: (1) it’s a racist party, and (2) a racist party whose leader admires a foreign dictator.  A good man would not have joined the Bund, or would have quit if his party became the Bund.  In any event, members of that foul party were by their own membership associated with the party’s ideology & leadership.  The same is now true, locally, statewide, and nationwide for those who proud membership in Trump’s Republican Party.  The principal object of resistance & opposition should be Trump, His Inner Circle, Principal Surrogates, and Media Defenders.  There is, however, a strain of Trumpism Down to the Local Level.  Local officials who are members of Trump’s party deserve no deference merely for being local, as though a small-town member of the Amerikadeutscher Volksbund was somehow less racist and less authoritarian than the leaders of the party of which he was a proud local member.

I am not now, and since 2016 have not been, a member of any political party, including the third party of which I was once a national member.  One does not have to be a Democrat, or even ideologically a libertarian as I am, to oppose Trump.  One simply has to be committed to a free society.

There are surely some, including in Whitewater, who hope they’ll be able to wait this out, saying nothing, or hoping that by saying only local things they will keep themselves from culpability over nationwide injustices.  Those hopes are futile.  There’s no running, no avoiding, now.

Both sides of this national conflict will not prevail; like other great conflicts in our past, one will triumph, and the other meet only ruin.)

George F. Will urges Vote against the GOP this November:

Amid the carnage of Republican misrule in Washington, there is this glimmer of good news: The family-shredding policy along the southern border, the most telegenic recent example of misrule, clarified something. Occurring less than 140 days before elections that can reshape Congress, the policy has given independents and temperate Republicans — these are probably expanding and contracting cohorts, respectively — fresh if redundant evidence for the principle by which they should vote.

The principle: The congressional Republican caucuses must be substantially reduced. So substantially that their remnants, reduced to minorities, will be stripped of the Constitution’s Article I powers that they have been too invertebrate to use against the current wielder of Article II powers. They will then have leisure time to wonder why they worked so hard to achieve membership in a legislature whose unexercised muscles have atrophied because of people like them.

….

Ryan and many other Republicans have become the president’s poodles, not because James Madison’s system has failed but because today’s abject careerists have failed to be worthy of it. As explained in Federalist 51: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.” Congressional Republicans (congressional Democrats are equally supine toward Democratic presidents) have no higher ambition than to placate this president. By leaving dormant the powers inherent in their institution, they vitiate the Constitution’s vital principle: the separation of powers.

 Dan Balz reports A GOP strategist abandons his party and calls for the election of Democrats:

For three decades, Steve Schmidt has played at the highest levels of Republican politics, as a top strategist in presidential campaigns and as an adviser to other GOP candidates. He has also been one of the most vociferous critics of President Trump. On Wednesday, he made that opposition even more emphatic, renouncing his party affiliation and urging Americans to vote for Democrats in the November elections.

“Trump’s election did not spell doom for the Republican Party,” Schmidt said by telephone Wednesday while traveling. “The reality is that our Founders always predicted that one day there would be a president like Trump, and that’s why they designed the system of government the way they designed it. What they never imagined is the utter abdication of a co-equal branch of government, which we’re seeing now. .?.?. The definition of conservatism now is the requirement of complete and utter obedience to the leader.”

….

He said he came to see the Republican Party as living in fear of the president and, as such, “a threat to the American republic and to liberal democracy.” The party, he said, “is irredeemable,” at risk of going the way of the Whig Party or, as it now is in California, running third in registration behind Democrats and “decline to state.”

Schmidt will not enroll in the Democratic Party. He will change his registration from Republican to independent. But in a two-party system, he sees the Democrats as the lone hope to prevent an ultimate unraveling of democratic norms. “The Democratic Party is called to be the sentinel of American democracy and liberty,” he said. “It is beyond bone-chilling to consider what happens if that party fails in that task, in that duty.”

Matt Willstein reports MSNBC Host Stephanie Ruhle Shames ‘Fox & Friends’ Immigration ‘Propaganda’:

MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle has had enough of Fox News trying to defend President Donald Trump’s policy of ripping immigrant children away from their parents at the border.

Over the course of the past several days, Fox guests like Ann Coulter have called the immigrant kids “child actors” while hosts such as Laura Ingraham said they are being held in what are “essentially summer camps.”

But the straw that broke the camel’s back came on Friday morning when Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade said, “Like it or not, these aren’t our kids. Show them compassion, but it’s not like he is doing this to the people of Idaho or, uh, or, uh, Texas. These are people from another country.” Kilmeade then added, “And now people are saying that they’re more important than people in our country who are paying taxes and who have needs as well.”

 New ‘InSight’ into the Red Planet:

Cats

Friday Catblogging: Cats Cradle

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Cats are like potato chips, reads a sign in Bruce and Terry Jenkins’s home. You can’t just have one!

In fact, the Jenkinses have 30. They have devoted their retirement to caring for this plethora of elderly cats, transforming their home over the years into a makeshift feline senior center. “It’s kind of a big family,” says Terry Jenkins in Jonathan Napolitano’s short documentary, Cats Cradle. “It gives me the opportunity to be with more cats than I possibly could ever have imagined.”

The couple welcomes older cats that have been abandoned due to the death or sickness of a previous owner. “The cats come with different neuroses from where they were before… it’s very gratifying to see the transition from what they were when they came here to what they become,” says Bruce.

“It’s like they bloom,” adds Terry. “They get to be what they’re meant to be.”

Cats Cradle is by turns heartwarming and heartbreaking as it showcases the love that exists between the quirky couple and their horde of cats. “These cats are old, and we’re old,” says Terry. “We have a sense of those issues. We’re kind of bound together by it. Just like feeding them, petting them, and loving them, you have to help [the cats] at the end.”

Napolitano, who himself has three cats, told The Atlantic that Terry and Bruce’s devotion to each other and their cats is unparalleled. “You never know what’s going to happen when you turn the camera on,” Napolitano said. “I’ve met people full of life, and as soon I press record, they drop dead almost immediately. Bruce and Terry have something you can’t fake. There’s a lot of love in that house.”

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 6.22.18

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be rainy in the morning with a daytime high of sixty-five.  Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 20m 16s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 72.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the five hundred eighty-eighth day.Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.

 

On this day in 1945, after a 62-day battle, the Allies are victorious at the Battle of Okinawa:

The battle has been referred to as the “typhoon of steel” in English, and tetsu no ame (“rain of steel”) or tetsu no bofo (“violent wind of steel”) in Japanese.[23][24][25] The nicknames refer to the ferocity of the fighting, the intensity of Japanese kamikaze attacks, and the sheer numbers of Allied ships and armored vehicles that assaulted the island. The battle was one of the bloodiest in the Pacific, with approximately 160,000 casualties on both sides: at least 75,000 Allied and 84,166–117,000 Japanese,[26] including drafted Okinawans wearing Japanese uniforms.[16] 149,425 Okinawans were killed, committed suicide or went missing, a significant proportion of the estimated pre-war 300,000 local population.[26]

In the naval operations surrounding the battle, both sides lost considerable numbers of ships and aircraft, including the Japanese battleship Yamato. After the battle, Okinawa provided a fleet anchorage, troop staging areas, and airfields in proximity to Japan in preparation for the planned invasion.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Adam Serwer writes Trumpism, Realized (“To preserve the political and cultural preeminence of white Americans against a tide of demographic change, the administration has settled on a policy of systemic child abuse”):

Few of the Trump administration’s policies better exemplify the Trump campaign’s commitment to restoring America’s traditional hierarchies of race, religion, and gender, than family separation. That commitment—and Republicans’ muted opposition to or vigorous support of the administration’s actions —has plunged the United States into a profound moral crisis that will define the nation’s character for decades to come. To harden oneself against the cries of children is no simple task. It requires a coldness to suffering that will not be easily thawed. The scars it inflicts on American civic culture will not heal quickly, and they will never completely fade.

Americans should have fathomed the depth of the crisis Trump would cause in 2016, but many chose denial, ridiculing those who spoke the plain meaning of Trumpism as oversensitive. Since then, Trump has failed the people of Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria; deliberately revoked the immigration status of hundreds of thousands of black and Latino immigrants; retreated from civil-rights enforcement; applied an immigration ban to a set of predominantly Muslim countries; attempted to turn black athletes into pariahs for protesting the unjust killings of their countrymen by the state; and defended the white nationalists who terrorized Charlottesville, Virginia. The separation of children from their families at the border in order to punish children for their parents’ decision to seek a better life America, as the forebears of millions of Americans once did, has now clarified for many what should have been obvious before.

People who would do this to children would do anything to anyone. Before this is over, they will be called to do worse.

Jennifer Rubin contends It’s this simple: Report the abuse:

A reader who has spent five decades as a clinical child psychologist has made a brilliant suggestion to mitigate the harm being done to innocent, defenseless children under President Trump’s inhumane child separation policy.

The Children’s Bureau, an office of the Administration for Children and Families within the Department of Health and Human Services, has a handy website to explain the rules regarding the reporting of suspected mistreatment or abuse of children:

All States, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have statutes identifying persons who are required to report suspected child maltreatment to an appropriate agency, such as child protective services, a law enforcement agency, or a State’s toll-free child abuse reporting hotline.

In fact, all the doctors and other professionals inside these facilities have a legal obligation to report abuse and mistreatment. (“Approximately 48 States, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands designate professions whose members are mandated by law to report child maltreatment.”) The people who must report abuse or mistreatment include teachers, counselors, law enforcement and child-care providers. When must they report?

The circumstances under which a mandatory reporter must make a report vary from State to State. Typically, a report must be made when the reporter, in his or her official capacity, suspects or has reason to believe that a child has been abused or neglected. Another standard frequently used is in situations in which the reporter has knowledge of, or observes a child being subjected to, conditions that would reasonably result in harm to the child.

 Rosie Gray cautions Don’t Blame Trump’s Advisers for Trump (“The tendency to look for a puppet master behind Trump’s actions is misguided.”):

And Trump is also charting his own course on his Twitter feed, where he can sway the outcome of events without consulting anyone beforehand. House Republican leaders delayed a vote on an immigration bill that would give a pathway to citizenship for the so-called “Dreamers,” or undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children, while also funding Trump’s border wall, after a more conservative bill failed to pass. The move to delay the vote came after Trump, who backs the legislation, undermined it in a tweet on Thursday morning. “What is the purpose of the House doing good immigration bills when you need 9 votes by Democrats in the Senate, and the Dems are only looking to Obstruct (which they feel is good for them in the Mid-Terms). Republicans must get rid of the stupid Filibuster Rule-it is killing you!” Trump tweeted.

“I think the president is a little all over the place when it comes the legislative process,” Nunberg said. “And partly that’s the failure of his White House staff.  They tell him one thing and then it’s another thing.”

If the White House sometimes seems at odds with itself, well, that’s partly the president’s doing too, the former White House official said. “He loves watching people fight.”

Gina Barton and Ashley Luthern report A killer left DNA evidence behind. But Milwaukee police destroyed it:

The body of Deborah Lynn Oberg was found under the Hoan Bridge on July 11, 1983.

The 28-year-old single mother struggled with the man who assaulted and stabbed her outside the Summerfest grounds.

At autopsy, the medical examiner discovered the assailant had left pubic hairs behind.

But even with continuing advances in DNA technology, Oberg’s killer likely will never be caught.

That’s because the Milwaukee Police Department destroyed the evidence in her case — along with at least 50 other homicides. Police trashed the evidence in the 1990s, well after authorities became aware of DNA’s value in solving crimes. While most of the homicide cases were closed, some remained open and unsolved, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation found.

The department’s reason for the destruction? Making more room in a storage facility.

Oberg isn’t the only victim deprived of justice because of the purge. In another case, a man who killed a 34-year-oldmother on a playground is still free. In a third, four children were molested after a pedophile avoided conviction for murdering a 9-year-old girl.

  A Tiger Slowly Creeps Up Behind Visitors:

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 6.21.18

by  • 

Good morning.

Thursday, the first day of summer, will in Whitewater be rainy with a high of sixty-eight.  Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 20m 23s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 62.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the five hundred eighty-seventh day.Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.

 

On this day in 1788, the U.S. Constitution is ratified:

Delaware, on December 7, 1787, became the first State to ratify the new Constitution, with its vote being unanimous. Pennsylvania ratified on December 12, 1787, by a vote of 46 to 23 (66.67%). New Jersey ratified on December 19, 1787, and Georgia on January 2, 1788, both with unanimous votes. The requirement of ratification by nine states, set by Article Seven of the Constitution, was met when New Hampshire voted to ratify, on June 21, 1788.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Julia Preston writes What You Should Know About Family Separations (“Yes, it’s Trump policy. No, it’s not the law”):

Okay. So doesn’t the law require children to be separated from parents caught crossing illegally?

No, it doesn’t.

The surge in children separated from parents since May 7 is directly related to the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy. This is convoluted, so bear with me.

Under that policy, parents apprehended at the border have been transferred from Customs and Border Protection, an agency that includes the Border Patrol and is part of DHS, into the custody of the United States Marshals Service. Those are the law enforcement officers who handle movements of people on trial in federal courts. The parents have been held in federal pre-trial detention.

Their children don’t go with them. When the parents and their children crossed the border, they were together, forming what DHS officials call a family unit. Under the new policy, when the parent is transferred to federal court, DHS officials are re-classifying their children as unaccompanied minors—the term for children who arrived at a United States border without a parent or legal guardian. The children are physically separated from their parents. They are sent to deportation proceedings in immigration court, separate from their parents. And, by law, DHS border officials are required within 72 hours to transfer the children to the custody of yet another federal agency: the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS. The children are held in shelters overseen by health officials, mostly administered by private contractors, which are closed to the public.

Can DHS officials just declare that a child who crossed the border with a parent now suddenly is unaccompanied, and separate them to be sent to HHS shelters?

Good question.

DHS officials say they have broad authority to make these determinations. But until the zero tolerance policy, DHS officials were identifying children as unaccompanied only if there was no parent or legal guardian with them “at the time of apprehension.”

The explicit intent of several laws and federal court rulings governing the handling of children at the border is that they should always be treated with special care. In general under American law, disrupting or severing the relationship between a child and their parent is a severe measure to be taken when less harsh alternatives are not available.

William Wan reports The trauma of separation lingers long after children are reunited with parents:

“It’s not like an auto body shop where you fix the dent and everything looks like new. We’re talking about children’s minds,” said Luis H. Zayas, professor of social work and psychiatry at the University of Texas at Austin. “Our government should be paying for this. We did the harm; we should be responsible for fixing the damage. But the sad thing for most of these kids is this trauma is likely to go untreated.”

Children who have undergone traumatic separation often cling desperately to their parents after they are reunited and refuse to let them out of their sight, say therapists and child psychologists. Many suffer from separation anxiety, cry uncontrollably and have trouble sleeping because of recurring nightmares.

Others develop eating disorders, problems with trust and unresolved anger, in some cases against their parents.

Chris Geidner reports No Immediate Changes Planned For Children Already Separated Under Trump Policy, HHS Officials Say (“It is still very early and we are awaiting further guidance on the matter”):

Although the executive order signing followed days of national outcry over the policy, it was not immediately clear what effect the order would have on new migrant families crossing the border — and federal officials were unclear Wednesday night about whether there would be any changes for those families already separated.

On the question of what happens to the more than 2,000 children already separated from their parent or parents over the past two months, the initial answer from the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for “unaccompanied” minors, was that nothing would change immediately.

“For the minors currently in the unaccompanied alien children program, the sponsorship process will proceed as usual,” HHS spokesperson Kenneth Wolfe told BuzzFeed News.

Hours later, a more senior spokesperson said in a statement that Wolfe “misspoke earlier regarding the Executive Order signed today by the President.” That spokesperson, Brian Marriott, went on to say, “It is still very early and we are awaiting further guidance on the matter” — while noting that “[r]eunification is always the ultimate goal.”

Philip Rucker writes of ‘A blowtorch to the tinder’: Stoking racial tensions is a feature of Trump’s presidency:

President Trump this week likened Hispanic immigrants to vermin. He warned that they would “pour into and infest our country.” And he defended his administration’s family separation policy by alleging that parents crossing the southern border with their children were poised to commit crime and murder.

For him, this language is not new.

Echoing the words and images of the white nationalist movement to dehumanize immigrants and inflame racial tensions has become a defining feature of Donald Trump’s presidency and of the Republican Party’s brand.

Trump has stirred supporters at rallies by reading “The Snake,”a parable about a tenderhearted woman who takes in an ailing snake but is later killed when the revived creature bites her. It should be heard as a metaphor for immigration, he says.

The president referred to some African nations as “shithole countries.” He posited that “both sides” were to blame for last summer’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. And, again and again, he has accused black football players who took a knee during the playing of the national anthem to protest police discrimination of being un-American.

 Consider The Elephant’s Superb Nose:

Alt-Right, America, Authoritarianism, Bigotry, Immigration, Resistance, That Which Paved the Way, Trump

Sounds of Trumpism’s Malevolence

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Robert Kagan, writing of Trump’s foreign policy, describes the uncaring malevolence of Trump’s perspective:

Trump’s America does not care. It is unencumbered by historical memory. It recognizes no moral, political or strategic commitments. It feels free to pursue objectives without regard to the effect on allies or, for that matter, the world. It has no sense of responsibility to anything beyond itself.

The same is true for domestic policy. Trumpism is similar to that which likely would have happened if Know Nothings, the Klan, or the Bund had gained national power.

Indeed, it’s most like the Bund: a perverse mix of domestic and foreign autocratic positions and symbols, in the service of authoritarianism, racism, and the self-dealing of key operatives.

There were large numbers in these dark organizations at their respective heights; members were proud of their views.  We can expect the same now.

Arguing with each person so ignorantly or malevolently aligned is a poor strategy – the principal objects of opposition & resistance are Trump, His Inner Circle, Principal Surrogates, and Media Defenders.  Along the way, one may sometimes find Trumpism Down to the Local Level.

The detestable movements that our forefathers faced and overcame did not fall because their adherents saw reason; they fell because their leaders and elites met ruin.

Yet, there’s a misguided – and self-destructive – view that one should not speak ill of Trumpism lest the mass of Trump supporters should become offended.

Places big (and even small like Whitewater) have some who shirk from offending, and hope that they’ll come through this time as though it were no time at all.

That’s a diminished and degraded approach. Sins of omission and silence are yet sins.

In any event, it does no good to approach a wolf in the same way one would a golden retriever.  One changes nothing by pretending the former is the latter.

As for sounds, one need hear no more to be certain of Trump’s malevolence, but as he is malevolent, he produces daily among the innocent new and increasingly anguished cries.

Decency compels us to remember, first to offer whatever imperfect aid we can, and later to assure lawful retribution against those responsible.

Via Listen to Children Who’ve Just Been Separated From Their Parents at the Border (“ProPublica has obtained audio from inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility, in which children can be heard wailing as an agent jokes, ‘We have an orchestra here.’ “)

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 6.20.18

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of seventy-four.  Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:36 PM, for 15h 20m 25s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 51.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the five hundred eighty-sixth day.Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.

 

On this day in 1816, troops arrive at Fort Crawford:

After the War of 1812, the United States Congress approved a plan to erect a chain of forts along the Fox-Wisconsin-Mississippi waterway. In 1816 Fort Crawford was erected on a mound behind the main village of Prairie du Chien. It was a four-sided enclosure made of squared logs, set horizontally. At the two opposing corners stood a blockhouse. Soldiers’ quarters formed the walls of the fort, faced the parade ground, and accommodated five companies. By the middle of the year, the 8th Infantry had established three posts on the east bank of the Mississippi: Fort Edwards, Fort Armstrong and Fort Crawford, the latter named for the Secretary of War. [Source: The History of Wisconsin, Volume 1, SHSW 1973, page 97]

Recommended for reading in full — 

Adam Schell reports Stocks end lower, wiping out Dow’s gains for year after new Trump tariff threat:

The Dow erased its gains for the year Tuesday, finishing 287 points lower and extending a global stock sell-off triggered by President Donald Trump’s threat to levy billions of dollars more in tariffs on Chinese goods.

It’s the latest escalation in a dispute that Wall Street fears could develop into a full-blown trade war. Trump has directed the U.S. Trade Representative to prepare new tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports. The president accused Beijing of being unwilling to resolve the dispute over complaints it steals or pressures foreign companies to hand over technology. China’s Commerce Ministry criticized the White House action as blackmail and said Beijing was ready to retaliate.

The Dow Jones industrial average, after falling nearly 420 points at its low,  closed down 287.26 points, or 1.2 percent, at 24,700, according to Bloomberg data. That means the blue-chip index has slipped below the level where It finished 2017 – 24,719.22. Roughly half of the Dow’s losses are due to two stocks, Boeing, which fell $13.61 a share, or 3.8 percent, and Caterpillar, which declined $5.39, or 3.6 percent.

Rick Barrett reports Tariffs squeeze Wisconsin automotive parts suppliers and could raise car prices:

“I am a fan of doing something to combat poor behavior from China, relative to intellectual property theft and other things they do to prop up their domestic industries … I just think this tariffs policy is a terrible, counterproductive way to get after it,” said Austin Ramirez, chief executive officer of Husco International, a Waukesha manufacturer of engine controls for the automotive industry.

In addition to its U.S. factories, Husco has plants in China and other countries. About half of the company’s business is in automotive components, and the other half is in components for off-highway equipment such as excavators and mining trucks.

Like most manufacturers, Husco’s supply chain crosses many borders.

 “The biggest impact that these tariffs have is it puts us at a disadvantage to our global competitors” in Germany and Japan, Ramirez said.

“When a tariff structure like this is put in place, it adds to my costs, but they don’t have it in their costs. So they are automatically, overnight, 25 percent more competitive.”

(All that support over the years for the GOP, and money from Walker’s WEDC, and all Austin Ramierez got was this lousy trade war.  Live by state intervention, perish by state intervention.)

Paul Farhi asks Propaganda or news: Should media publish government’s child-detention photos?:

Based on the photographic evidence, living conditions inside government-run detention centers for immigrant children separated from their parents in south Texas look reasonably orderly and clean.

But there’s a major catch: All of the photographs depicting life inside the facilities have been supplied by the government itself. There’s been no independent documentation; federal officials, citing the children’s privacy, have barred journalists from taking photographs or video when they’ve been permitted inside.

This has left news organizations with a quandary: Do they publish the handouts supplied by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — which has an incentive to make its facilities look as humane and comfortable as possible — or do they reject the photos as essentially propaganda?

  AJ Dellinger reports Scott Walker Finally Gave Foxconn Enough Handouts to Get the Company’s US Headquarters in Wisconsin:

Foxconn’s decision to set up shop in Wisconsin is a score for the state only achieved by completing favor after favor in order to woo the manufacturing giant. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the majority-Republican state legislature agreed in 2016 to provide Foxconn with a $3 billion package of tax breaks and incentives if the company would build a plant in the state.

The original deal included $1.5 billion in state income tax credits for job creation, another $1.35 billion for capital investment, and $150 million for sales and use tax exemptions—all in exchange for 3,000 jobs. (Foxconn has claimed it could bring as many as 13,000 to the factory, but the company announced a $4 billion investment in automation earlier this year and bragged about replacing 60,000 factory workers with robots in 2016. That will likely keep a cap on just how many people it actually employs.)

Governor Walker has happily played up the 13,000 figure but even if Foxconn managed to hit that high ceiling, Wisconsin would still be paying out a massive amount to create those jobs. Per CNN, the state will pay between $15,000 and $19,000 per job per year in incentives, assuming 13,000 positions are created—well above the standard cost of $2,400 per job per year, according to a report from the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.

(The Wisconsin Foxconn project is economic development for confidence men and easy marks – it won’t work, and it dupes only the gullible or desperate.)

  So, Can Anyone Try to Climb Everest?: