America First. The new @DerSPIEGEL cover by @edelstudio. @SPIEGELONLINE @SPIEGEL_English pic.twitter.com/P2b5d4GgBy
— Klaus Brinkbäumer (@Brinkbaeumer) February 3, 2017
Exclusive: Breitbart editor reflects on the riots that led to the cancellation of his speech at U.C. Berkeley, mainstream media creating environment for violence against conservatives, his new book, hate speech and more...He's irresistible, actually.
This is Trump's campaign ad for the 2020 election. Thanks Antifa, thanks leftists. pic.twitter.com/IT8Jbw4ZHS
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) February 2, 2017
Democrats prepare to fight Trump's #SCOTUS pick as GOP-led Senate weighs #nuclearoption on #filibuster https://t.co/nenGfcw6ea
— Lisa Mascaro (@LisaMascaro) January 31, 2017
After Republicans blocked a string of President Obama’s judicial and executive nominees, frustrated Senate Democrats in 2013 used their majority to change long-standing filibuster rules and allow confirmations with a simple majority.Heh.
Now Republicans are considering the same “nuclear option” to confirm President Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court if Democrats mount a filibuster, as they appear poised to do.
So while Democrats sound alarms over Trump’s high court nomination and threaten to block it, their ability to actually stop him will be limited, thanks in part to their past willingness to change the filibuster rule when they held power.
Trump plans to announce Tuesday evening his choice for the seat made vacant last year by the death of conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia.
Senate filibusters of Supreme Court nominees are rare, largely because the decision had been seen as too important to be bogged down in partisanship.
When President Johnson tried to elevate Justice Abe Fortas to the position of chief justice, senators filibustered in part over an ethics scandal that eventually forced Fortas to resign. In 2006, Democrats, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, tried to filibuster Samuel A. Alito Jr., but the effort fizzled and Alito was confirmed.
Trump has encouraged Republican senators to scrap the filibuster and quickly confirm his choice. “We have obstructionists,” Trump told Fox’s Sean Hannity last week. Asked whether he wants GOP leaders to change the rules for the high court, he said, “I do.”
Without a filibuster, Republicans have enough votes to confirm Trump’s pick, assuming the party is unified. Republicans hold a 52-48 majority.
But if a filibuster is allowed, they’d need Democrats to help reach the 60-vote threshold needed to defeat the tactic.
And Democrats are in no mood to cooperate with Trump. Many remain incensed that Republicans refused to consider President Obama’s choice of Judge Merrick Garland after Scalia’s death, leaving the court with only eight justices for nearly a year.
“This was a stolen seat; it’s not Trump’s to fill,” said one Senate Democratic aide granted anonymity to discuss the situation...
Democrats cannot play by the old set of rules now that the Republicans are playing by a new one, writes @DLeonhardt https://t.co/gRhzTJQj9U— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) February 1, 2017
It’s important to remember just how radical — and, yes, unprecedented — the Senate’s approach to the previous Supreme Court nominee was.It doesn't make him "deeply uncomfortable." Frankly, by a look at his Twitter feed, the dude's reveling in his partisan hatred and demonization of the administration.
Republican leaders announced last March that they would not consider any nominee. They did so even though Barack Obama still had 10 months left in his term and even though other justices (including Anthony Kennedy) had been confirmed in a president’s final year.
The refusal was a raw power grab. Coupled with Republican hints that no Hillary Clinton nominee would be confirmed either, it was a fundamental changing of the rules: Only a party that controlled both the White House and the Senate would now be able to assume it could fill a Supreme Court vacancy.
The change is terribly damaging for the country’s political system. It impedes the smooth functioning of the court and makes it a much more partisan institution.
Of course, the strategy also worked, and the flip from an Obama justice to a Trump justice will likely be the deciding factor in many of the most important cases in coming years.
So what can Democrats do?
First, they need to make sure that the stolen Supreme Court seat remains at the top of the public’s consciousness. When people hear the name “Neil Gorsuch,” as qualified as he may be, they should associate him with a constitutionally damaging power grab.
Second, Democrats should not weigh this nomination the same way that they’ve weighed previous ones. This one is different. The presumption should be that Gorsuch does not deserve confirmation, because the process that led to his nomination was illegitimate....
*****
Finally, the Democratic Party should begin planning its long-term strategy for the court, and that strategy needs to revolve around last year’s events. One option, for example, would be a plan first to deprive a Republican president of one nominee in coming years and second to offer a truce with Republicans.
I understand that all of these options sound aggressive and partisan, and it makes me deeply uncomfortable to make such an argument. But Democrats simply cannot play by the old set of rules now that the Republicans are playing by a new one. The only thing worse than the system that the Republicans have created is a system in which one political party volunteers to be bullied.
Mainstream Democrats will continue to denounce anyone to their left as naïve. But they're wrong to do so: https://t.co/eMnwY64Pk6 pic.twitter.com/L7WTqnPRjQ
— New Republic (@NewRepublic) February 2, 2017
In late October 2011, I was volunteering at the Occupy Wall Street library in lower Manhattan. Tucked into a corner of Zuccotti Park, the library was staffed mainly by anarchists of an exceedingly orderly bent. If society were suddenly freed from coercive institutions like libraries, these people would gladly spend the morning sorting donated books by Dewey decimal number—as they were doing in the mild fall weather. I was there for only a few days, but one conversation with a book borrower has stayed with me. He was having trouble understanding why he kept returning to the encampment. He wondered: Had anything like this happened before? Were there books that could tell him who had done it, and why? I felt I was meeting a victim of a political shipwreck. In my mind, he became emblematic of a left that felt itself so unmoored from any shared past that it was puzzled by its own existence.An interesting, although profoundly mistaken analysis. Hillary Clinton ran far to the left, much farther than her 2008 campaign, and farther left than both of Barack Obama's campaigns.
Now that Donald Trump occupies the White House, it’s easy to feel that we are all castaways in historical time. There is talk in some quarters of leaving the country, of turning blue cities and states into sanctuaries, not just for the undocumented, but for disillusioned liberals—a response that amounts to giving up on creating a just and inclusive democracy in this divided land. But such feelings of despair miss the deeper and perhaps more lasting political transformation that has taken place in the five years since Zuccotti Park.
Indeed, the irruption of radicalism at Occupy turned out to be prophetic. For the first time in decades, the left regained its focus and put down new roots. Fight for $15, the campaign for a higher minimum wage led by fast-food workers, made gains in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco. Rolling Jubilee, founded in 2012, bought and canceled almost $32 million in medical and student debt. Black Lives Matter has forced America to reckon with police violence against black men and highlighted the economic isolation of many black communities. Last year, Bernie Sanders won more than 13 million votes. And recent polls show that a majority of Americans under the age of 30 now prefer socialism to capitalism. While it is unclear just what they mean by that, a renewed openness to radical ideas is unmistakable among young people. The mass protests in response to Trump’s policies, both at the women’s march and at airports around the country, in the last weeks show a sense of urgency and willingness to fight for robust legal equality and inclusiveness. At the very moment when establishment politics have been severely undermined—the GOP hijacked by Trump, the Democrats confounded by Hillary Clinton’s loss—the American left has been reborn.
For most of the 2016 election cycle, however, the left was told, implicitly or explicitly, that while they might be charming or admirable, they should leave real politics to the adults of the Democratic National Committee and the liberal commentariat. There was one candidate, we were assured, and one web of institutions and experts who understood how to get things done: They were battle-tested and ready to win, then to hit the ground governing. The rest of us had pretty sentiments; it was sweet that we thought the word democracy could refer to something larger in ambition and imagination than the current version of the Democratic Party; but politics means putting away childish things.
In the wake of Trump’s victory in November, the present leadership of the Democratic Party has failed to grasp the lessons of its own defeat. “I don’t think people want a new direction,” Nancy Pelosi insisted on Meet the Press just after the election. The DNC doubled down on that position in early January, announcing the creation of an anti-Trump “war room” staffed with Clinton operatives who will continue attacking Trump’s ethics, character, and speculative ties to Russia. This is the same strategy that failed to win the presidential election against a palpably flawed and eminently beatable candidate.
Though fragmented and incipient, this nascent left is now best placed to mount a convincing opposition to Trump, and to engage with the forces that brought him to power. With its focus on economic inequality and collective action, the left knows things that liberals have been reluctant to acknowledge, or in any event to say—knowledge that is necessary to embrace the populist moment, push back on its reactionary inclinations, and seize its progressive potential. The left is able to diagnose the malfunctioning of our democracy because, unlike the Democratic establishment, it starts from the premise that American democracy as it is currently constituted is profoundly insufficient...
The state of higher education in the age of Trump. #Berkeley pic.twitter.com/VrBZnYNcFD
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) February 2, 2017
Police amassing on ground floor of Berkeley student union. Things could get...real. pic.twitter.com/p128zX7IT8
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) February 2, 2017
Milo wasn't welcome in Berkeley. pic.twitter.com/3KUMorC0zL
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) February 2, 2017
Trump presidency, day 13. #berkeley pic.twitter.com/A9MCOqWq6E
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) February 2, 2017
The graffiti on the destroyed generator says "Fuck Trump." pic.twitter.com/x9E5OVtdtt
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) February 2, 2017
People taking photos in front of defaced Walgreens on Telegraph Avenue. pic.twitter.com/3IO3xsJgkE
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) February 2, 2017
Berkeley protests. pic.twitter.com/oVLI9NHo3A
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) February 2, 2017
UC Berkeley looks like a war zone right now thanks to violent protesters furious over #MiloYiannopoulos speech https://t.co/NUTF1NFfy0 pic.twitter.com/tQSYtcQUfL
— Jason Howerton (@jason_howerton) February 2, 2017
#BREAKING: Protest continues with the burning of a #MAGA hat & "fuck Donald Trump" chants #UCBerkeley pic.twitter.com/XrT1fm4pX1
— Kris Cruz (@rc_kris) February 2, 2017
Protesters migrating to Bancroft Way. Preparing to march. #UCBerkeley #MiloYiannopoulos pic.twitter.com/cJT86j7DX8
— Lilian Kim (@liliankim7) February 2, 2017
Police threaten use of batons, chemical agents for UC Berkeley protest: https://t.co/zaKBMCXz4X #MiloAtCal
— ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea) February 2, 2017
#UCBerkeley responds after violent #protest forces cancelation of #MiloYiannopoulos speech: https://t.co/bYIzUvYuLN pic.twitter.com/WK2CpMhUu1
— ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea) February 2, 2017
Proudly intolerant of genocide. Intolerant of a fascist government. Intolerant of #alternativefacts. #onevictory #MiloAtCal #NOFASCISTUSA pic.twitter.com/zx04LYKQzY
— #NoFascistUSA (@RefuseFascism) February 2, 2017
Lefty groups are freaking out about the draft of Trump's religious liberty EO. It's good policy. He should issue it. https://t.co/Y1ICL3Ansz
— Ryan T. Anderson (@RyanTAnd) February 2, 2017
If signed, the order would create wholesale exemptions for people and organizations who claim religious objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and trans identity.Still more.
leaked copy of a draft executive order titled “Establishing a Government-Wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom,” obtained by The Investigative Fund and The Nation, reveals sweeping plans by the Trump administration to legalize discrimination.
The four-page draft order, a copy of which is currently circulating among federal staff and advocacy organizations, construes religious organizations so broadly that it covers “any organization, including closely held for-profit corporations,” and protects “religious freedom” in every walk of life: “when providing social services, education, or healthcare; earning a living, seeking a job, or employing others; receiving government grants or contracts; or otherwise participating in the marketplace, the public square, or interfacing with Federal, State or local governments.”
The draft order seeks to create wholesale exemptions for people and organizations who claim religious or moral objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and trans identity, and it seeks to curtail women’s access to contraception and abortion through the Affordable Care Act. The White House did not respond to requests for comment, but when asked Monday about whether a religious freedom executive order was in the works, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters, “I’m not getting ahead of the executive orders that we may or may not issue. There is a lot of executive orders, a lot of things that the president has talked about and will continue to fulfill, but we have nothing on that front now.”
Language in the draft document specifically protects the tax-exempt status of any organization that “believes, speaks, or acts (or declines to act) in accordance with the belief that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, sexual relations are properly reserved for such a marriage, male and female and their equivalents refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy, physiology, or genetics at or before birth, and that human life begins at conception and merits protection at all stages of life.”
The breadth of the draft order, which legal experts described as “sweeping” and “staggering,” may exceed the authority of the executive branch if enacted. It also, by extending some of its protections to one particular set of religious beliefs, would risk violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
“This executive order would appear to require agencies to provide extensive exemptions from a staggering number of federal laws—without regard to whether such laws substantially burden religious exercise,” said Marty Lederman, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and an expert on church-state separation and religious freedom.
The exemptions, Lederman said, could themselves violate federal law or license individuals and private parties to violate federal law. “Moreover,” he added, “the exemptions would raise serious First Amendment questions, as well, because they would go far beyond what the Supreme Court has identified as the limits of permissive religious accommodations.” It would be “astonishing,” he said, “if the Office of Legal Counsel certifies the legality of this blunderbuss order.”
The leaked draft maintains that, as a matter of policy, “Americans and their religious organizations will not be coerced by the Federal Government into participating in activities that violate their conscience.”
It sets forth an exceptionally expansive definition of “religious exercise” that extends to “any act or refusal to act that is motivated by a sincerely held religious belief, whether or not the act is required or compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief.” “It’s very sweeping,” said Ira Lupu, a professor emeritus at the George Washington University Law School and an expert on the Constitution’s religion clauses and on the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). “It raises a big question about whether the Constitution or the RFRA authorizes the president to grant religious freedom in such a broad way.”
In particular, said Lupu, the draft order “privileges” a certain set of beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity—beliefs identified most closely with conservative Catholics and evangelical Christians—over others. That, he said, goes beyond “what RFRA might authorize” and may violate the Establishment Clause.
Lupu added that the language of the draft “might invite federal employees,” for example, at the Social Security Administration or Veterans Administration, “to refuse on religious grounds to process applications or respond to questions from those whose benefits depend on same sex marriages.” If other employees do not “fill the gap,” he said, it could “lead to a situation where marriage equality was being de facto undermined by federal employees, especially in religiously conservative communities,” contrary to Supreme Court rulings...
And today at the Conservative Treehouse, "Sorry #NeverTrumpers but You Don’t Get to Dismount Your High Horse Today…":I've argued all along that most #NEVERTRUMPERS are closet leftists. They need to join the #TrumpTrain now or retire. https://t.co/DH9NasGXMZ— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 1, 2017
Sorry #NeverTrumpers But You Don’t Get To Dismount Your High Horse Today… https://t.co/AyBp2CmNVR pic.twitter.com/0jtXhAcyJB
— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) February 1, 2017
Sorry #NeverTrumpers, but you don”t get to dismount your high horse and celebrate the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch today. This is NOT your victory, this is ours!Actually, Mary Katharine Ham did apologize, but not anyone else that I know of.
There is a gobsmacking level of pontificating self-righteousness visible from the collective proletariat within your crony-conservative movement who made the decision to formulate their political argument from a position of opposition.
Perhaps it would be different if you framed your antagonism from a position of advocacy, but that wasn’t the direction you chose. No, you chose a specific position of opposition as clearly evident within your chosen mantra “Never Trump”.
Perhaps it would be different if you ever had a come-to-Jesus moment and apologized immediately following the November election. Then again, when your opinion of your own self-importance is this high, those humble words are just as foreign as your understanding of the movement that won.
You don’t get to frame the entire construct of your argument around opposition to a team, and then claim benefit to the outcome of victory. Stay on your high-horse, move along and ride off into that proverbial land of irrelevance; you’re dead here.
Save your dismount for another defining “conservative” assembly where you can gather at CPAC again and give a standing ovation to House Speaker Paul Ryan a month after he eliminates the debt ceiling and passes a $2 trillion OmniBus spending bill, funding all of the progressive priorities you hypocritically claim to oppose; you’re good at that.
That particular circle of crazy just doesn’t sell here any longer.
Save up your fiscal hypocrisy, you’ll need it. Because in less than two months our victorious bastard will deliver a budget that cuts a trillion “per year” out of the federal coffers…. and there is no doubt the beneficiary of your prior applause will be counting on your fiscally conservative sensibilities to protest for more spending on his behalf.
Oh, and keep your newest VAT tax construct. We’ll bring the sledgehammer, save your gilded and monogrammed tweezers for a swamp audience stupid enough to believe it – Thank you.
Oh, and don’t go getting all pearl-clutchy. This isn’t anger directed toward you, this is far, far worse. This is a very targeted and deliberate Cold Anger surrounding you and the swamp creatures of your affiliation. This sensibility never forgets.
You had a choice. You chose a direction, you lost; and you damn near lost the entire friggin’ country. Just because the team you ridiculed and attacked has overcome all opposition and gained victory, that doesn’t mean you get to backtrack now and expect the bruised and bloodied recipients to forget those who launched the stones and arrows.
Save your wine-spritzers and crust-less triangle sandwiches. We didn’t have well financed high-horses, we launched boots, well-worn boots, scratched, clawed and advanced despite your hoighty-toighty principles, intransigence and unwillingness to cuss or get your hands dirty.
Good grief, your insufferable sensibilities were frightened of frog memes, FROG MEMES!
It was our deplorable and calloused hands that volunteered, opened our piggy banks, and held firm to support each other and our vulgarian candidate against all opposition. You were part of that opposition...
Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review calls Neil Gorsuch a “worthy” appointee to the Supreme Court, “a well-respected conservative whose legal philosophy is remarkably similar to that of Antonin Scalia, the justice he will replace if the Senate confirms him.”Yeah, well, like I said, it ain't pretty.
The “if” in that sentence expresses a contingency that is difficult to estimate at this point. Democrats are still butt-hurt because when Scalia died in an election year, the Republican majority in the Senate refused to take action on Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland for the vacant seat. Whatever one may think of that controversy, that was last year’s fight and Republicans won it — not only was Donald Trump elected president, but the Garland nomination didn’t hurt the GOP in Senate elections last fall, either. We might therefore conclude that the people ratified the Republican opposition to Obama’s SCOTUS nominee. Yet the Democrats in the Senate evidently don’t recognize the legitimacy of either the Trump presidency or the GOP Senate majority. Many vowed to invoke the filibuster against Trump’s court nominee, even before it was known who the president would nominate...
The establishment is pushing back against President Trump, creating a palpable air of uncertainty and chaos https://t.co/DYhJzM6j8E
— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 31, 2017
WASHINGTON — President Trump made clear in his fiery inaugural speech that he was going to challenge the Washington establishment. Now the establishment is quickly pushing back, creating a palpable air of uncertainty and chaos in the opening days of his administration.Keep reading.
The new president fired an acting attorney general who refused to defend the administration’s executive order on immigration. Democrats on Tuesday boycotted Senate confirmation hearings to prevent votes on cabinet nominees. State Department employees opposed to the administration were urged to quit if they didn’t like Mr. Trump’s direction.
Even after years of unbreakable gridlock and unyielding partisanship, it was a jarring new level of confrontation and conflict, and it was contributing to a building sense of crisis just as the new president was to disclose the identity of a new Supreme Court nominee — a selection certain to further inflame tensions.
Republicans, adjusting to the new era, seemed blindsided by the rapid pace of events and the worrying failure of the new administration to engage in the information-sharing and consultation that would typically accompany the issuance of a potentially explosive proposal like the freeze on visas for refugees and immigrants from select countries.
“It’s regrettable that there was some confusion with the rollout,” Speaker Paul D. Ryan told reporters Tuesday, noting that top Republicans learned of the contents of the order only as it was being issued.
That secretive, closely held approach may be the preferred choice of the president and self-proclaimed disrupters like his senior adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, who is quickly emerging as the power in the West Wing, but not by more conventional politicians who definitely don’t like to be caught off guard.
Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, said similar failings had emerged in the early days of previous administrations but would not be tolerated for long.
“You get a brief period you’re allowed for a learning curve, but after that, you have to get your act together,” Mr. King said.
One veteran of past Republican administrations, acknowledging the Trump White House was still in its “shakedown” phase, encouraged the president’s staff to focus more on consultation to avert confusion. “Process matters,” said Kenneth M. Duberstein, who served as chief of staff to Ronald Reagan. “You are dealing with not just senior management, but with a variety of constituencies and a board of directors of 535 people.”
Still, the main Republican objection seemed to be with the handling of the executive order by the inexperienced and understaffed White House rather than the actual content of the order...
Gorsuch! #Scotus
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) February 1, 2017
I'm THRILLED. Home run. #Gorsuch #SCOTUS
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 1, 2017
Mea culpa. I didn't believe him on judges. He done good.
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) February 1, 2017
Oh my. Nice voice! #NeilGorsuch
— Dana Perino (@DanaPerino) February 1, 2017
Is @chuckschumer going to start crying again? #SCOTUS #SCOTUSnominee #NeilGorsuch pic.twitter.com/XGowqKugs2
— Pamela Geller (@PamelaGeller) February 1, 2017
JUST IN: @POTUS is nominating Judge Neil Gorsuch as the next Justice of the Supreme Court. pic.twitter.com/sIWvre7XhD
— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 1, 2017
Trump chooses Neil Gorsuch, a conservative seen as likely to be confirmed, for Supreme Court https://t.co/qhRjVyuC8D pic.twitter.com/mXh6z0z5zl
— L.A. Times Politics (@latimespolitics) February 1, 2017
Neil Gorsuch could fall somewhere between his hero, Justice Scalia, and former boss, centrist Justice Kennedy https://t.co/2UiBPidkQl
— L.A. Times Politics (@latimespolitics) February 1, 2017
Another Breitbarter to join WH https://t.co/J02X4IkI1x— Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) January 24, 2017
Well the radio silence is over.— Sebastian Gorka PhD (@SebGorka) January 31, 2017
Congrats to those who guessed!
Honored to be Deputy Assistant to the President of the United States.
MAGA pic.twitter.com/wgTy70E4jx
People will spin it anyway they like — and they will — but President Trump’s decision to take a pause and review travel to the United States from seven Middle Eastern and North African countries is sound national security policy.More.
It’s also completely defensible in these troubled times.
The presidential executive order will temporarily alter visa issuance, immigration and refugee flows to America from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen while U.S. entry programs are examined.
All of these countries have one thing in common: terrorism.
They may have a terrorist group operating within their borders or may have been slapped with the U.S. State Department’s State Sponsor of Terrorism designation as a country that uses terrorism or supports terrorist groups.
Of particular importance now is the Islamic State (aka ISIS) which, in my estimation, is in big trouble. The “caliphate” is under significant pressure in Syria and Iraq as forces close in on its key strongholds in Raqqa and Mosul.
For instance, Iraqi forces, with U.S. support, have made significant advances against ISIS since the battle for Mosul began last fall. The going is still tough, but Iraqi forces have reportedly taken back a good chunk of Iraq’s second largest city from ISIS fighters.
While Raqqa is still functioning as the Islamic State’s capital, tougher days are ahead for ISIS there. Syrian Kurdish and Arab forces, with U.S. help, are targeting the terrorist headquarters for a final assault.
But taking Raqqa won’t terminate ISIS...
Dissent memo circulating in the State Department over Trump's policy on refugees and immigrants https://t.co/WIGCPLVWZX
— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 30, 2017
State Department employees should resign if they don't support #PresidentTrump. #BreakingNews #MAGA #TRUMP https://t.co/BRKU8sURSt
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 30, 2017
Brookings' Lawfare Blog obtained a copy of a draft memo created by "numerous Foreign Service officers and other diplomats" to express dissent to President Trump's executive order restricting immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. Hundreds of foreign service officers are expected to be party to the memo, which will be submitted through the State Department's Dissent Channel.Here's the piece at Lawfare, "BREAKING NEWS: Full Text of Draft Dissent Channel Memo on Trump Refugee and Visa Order."
A potus acting through congress has the right to do this and its the most settled area of law https://t.co/uLrGBBeeC9 pic.twitter.com/4wvGaDXS0m
— Daniel Horowitz (@RMConservative) January 29, 2017
Settled law on the right of a nation to exclude or to place any conditions on LPRs https://t.co/ruTPSp0sNY pic.twitter.com/cmvvgCejZO
— Daniel Horowitz (@RMConservative) January 29, 2017
This is what American sovereignty looks like. https://t.co/xCMJfapqJT
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) January 29, 2017
We are rapidly approaching a time when anything short of mass migration from the middle east will be ruled unconstitutional by the courts.
— Daniel Horowitz (@RMConservative) January 29, 2017
Still more.“Any alien coming to this country must or ought to know, that this being an independent nation, it has all the rights concerning the removal of aliens which belong by the law of nations to any other; that while he remains in the country in the character of an alien, he can claim no other privilege than such as an alien is entitled to, and consequently, whatever risque he may incur in that capacity is incurred voluntarily, with the hope that in due time by his unexceptionable conduct, he may become a citizen of the United States.” ~ Justice James Iredell, 1799.There is a lot of confusion swirling around the events that transpired this weekend as a result of Trump’s executive order on immigration. Make no mistake: every word of Trump’s executive order is in accordance with statute. It’s important not to conflate political arguments with legal arguments, as many liberals and far too many “conservatives” on social media are doing. While the timing and coordination of implementing this order might have been poorly planned, we shouldn’t allow that to undermine the broader need to defend our sovereignty. For courts to violate years’ worth of precedent and steal our sovereignty should concern everyone.
What the order actually does
Among other things, the key provisions at the center of the existing controversy are as follows:
It shuts off the issuance of all new immigrant and non-immigrant visas for 90 days from the following seven volatile countries: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. Any non-citizen from those seven countries (not “all” Muslim countries) is excluded from entering the country during this time-period (which usually means they won’t be able to board a direct flight to America). After 30 days, the secretary of state and secretary of homeland security must submit a report to completely revamp the vetting process going forward.
Within 60 days, countries will have to submit any information that the administration determines necessary, pursuant to the findings of this report, in order to adjudicate a visa application and ensure they are properly vetted. Any country that fails to submit this information will not be able to send foreign nationals to our country. All the while, the ban can be extended and expanded at any time.
In addition, the entire refugee resettlement program is suspended for four months pending a complete investigation of the program and a plan to restructure it and prioritize those who are truly in danger of religious persecution. After 120 days, the program may resume, but only for those countries Secretaries Kelly and Tillerson determine do not pose a threat. The program from Syria is completely suspended until the president personally gives the green light.
With regards to refugees and those who seek to enter from the seven countries temporarily excluded, the order gave discretion to the State Department and DHS to admit individuals on a case-by-case basis for important reasons, even during the temporary moratorium.
Statement of principles on the right of a country to exclude non-citizens
Those who want to immigrate: There is no affirmative right, constitutional or otherwise, to visit or settle in the United States. Period. Based on the social contract, social compact, sovereignty, long-standing law of nation-states, governance by the consent of the governed, the plenary power of Congress over immigration, and 200 years of case law, our political branches of government have the power to exclude or invite any individual or classes people for any reason on a temporary or even permanent basis – without any involvement from the courts.[1] Congress has already delegated its authority to the president to shut off any form of immigration at will at any time.
Immigrants already here: Those already admitted to this country with the consent of the citizenry have unalienable rights. They cannot be indefinitely detained. However, they can be deported for any reason if they are not citizens. In Fong Yue Ting v. United States (1893), which is still settled law, the court ruled that Congress has the same plenary power to deport aliens for any reason as it does to exclude them and that the statutory procedures and conditions for doing so are due process.[2] Congress has established the process for deportation of those already here. However, as long as a legal permanent resident leaves the country he has no affirmative right to re-enter.[3] Either way, they have absolutely no right to judicial review other than to ensure that statutes are properly followed.
But can Trump prevent those with green cards from re-entering the country?
The statute is clear as day. The Immigration and Nationality Act (§ 212(f)) gives the president plenary power to “by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants.” Clearly, the president has the authority to block any non-citizen – including refugees, green card holders, and foreign students – from entering the country. Also, for purposes of deportation, there is no difference between a green card holder or a holder of a non-immigrant visa. No foreign national who has not yet obtained citizenship has an affirmative right to re-enter the country...
Over at National Review, Andrew McCarthy writes that President Trump's executive order instituting a temporary ban on entry into the United States for foreign nationals from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen is statutorily and constitutionally sound:Keep reading.
Under the Constitution, as Thomas Jefferson wrote shortly after its adoption, "the transaction of business with foreign nations is Executive altogether. It belongs then to the head of that department, except as to such portions of it as are specifically submitted to the Senate. Exceptions are to be construed strictly."McCarthy, a former U.S. Attorney who prosecuted the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case argues that the 1965 immigration act prohibiting discrimination against immigrants on the basis of national origin does not make Trump's order illegal:
The rare exceptions Jefferson had in mind, obviously, were such matters as the approval of treaties, which Article II expressly vests in the Senate. There are also other textual bases for a congressional role in foreign affairs, such as Congress's power over international commerce, to declare war, and to establish the qualifications for the naturalization of citizens. That said, when Congress legislates in this realm, it must do so mindful of what the Supreme Court, in United States v. Curtiss-Wright (1936), famously described as "the very delicate, plenary and exclusive power of the President as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations – a power which does not require as a basis for its exercise an act of Congress."
With that as background, let's consider the claimed conflict between the president's executive order and Congress's statute. Mr. Bier asserts that Trump may not suspend the issuance of visas to nationals of specific countries because the 1965 immigration act "banned all discrimination against immigrants on the basis of national origin." And, indeed, a section of that act, now codified in Section 1152(a) of Title 8, U.S. Code, states that (with exceptions not here relevant) "no person shall receive any preference or priority or 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" (emphasis added).McCarthy also cites specific language in federal immigration law that specifically authorizes this kind of temporary restriction for national security purposes...
Even on its face, this provision is not as clearly in conflict with Trump's executive order as Bier suggests. As he correctly points out, the purpose of the anti-discrimination provision (signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965) was to end the racially and ethnically discriminatory "national origins" immigration practice that was skewed in favor of Western Europe. Trump's executive order, to the contrary, is in no way an effort to affect the racial or ethnic composition of the nation or its incoming immigrants. The directive is an effort to protect national security from a terrorist threat, which, as we shall see, Congress itself has found to have roots in specified Muslim-majority countries. Because of the national-security distinction between Trump's 2017 order and Congress's 1965 objective, it is not necessary to construe them as contradictory, and principles of constitutional interpretation counsel against doing so.
Resistance & Reconstruction-- Shock. Outrage. Resistance. Repeat. Is this the new normal in Trump’s America? https://t.co/qOi9KBkyyv
— Katrina vandenHeuvel (@KatrinaNation) January 30, 2017
In Donald Trump’s America, there may be no more weekends — just an incessant cycle of shocks, of actions and reactions. For the second weekend in a row, Friday to Sunday was wall to wall with resistance and outrage.Yes. The left is all about perpetual outrage. Meanwhile, the rest of us go about our lives while the White House restores are sovereignty.
On Friday, President Trump signed an executive order banning people from seven nations in the Middle East and Africa from entering the United States.
On Saturday, protesters began heading to the airports to welcome international travelers, some of whom were detained for hours without access to lawyers.
On Sunday, thousands pushed peacefully against the fences around the White House in protest of Trump’s order. The signs spelled out embarrassment and resolve — and a cheeky self-awareness that only Washington can muster.
“SHAME ON AMERICA.”
“DEATH TO FASCISM.”
“PROTEST IS THE NEW BRUNCH.”
Is this what we’re in for, even on weekends? Will every news alert force us to ask ourselves who we are or send us out into the streets in a spontaneous counterattack?
Yeah, confusion reigns: Can America remain a Christian nation, or will leftist Islamic supremacy take over? pic.twitter.com/A6LesjY0Ae— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 30, 2017
With protesters’ chants echoing through arrival halls and beyond, confusion prevailed Sunday at airports across the United States amid seemingly contradictory signals from the Trump administration over a hotly contested executive order blocking U.S. entry to refugees and nationals of seven Muslim-majority nations.
Even as the White House defended the directive’s rollout as a success, advocacy groups and administration officials remained locked on an apparent collision course. Since its signing on Friday, the measure has led to the detention of more than 100 people landing at airports across the country with valid entry documents.
About twice as many others were denied permission to board flights to the United States, according to lawyers representing a consortium of groups that won a temporary nationwide stay Saturday night against the deportation of anyone who had arrived with a valid visa.
On the ground, backlash to the ban grew. While major international airports were the locus of protests, thousands rallied in cities including Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Boston.
Despite the air of gravity surrounding debate over the ban, the atmosphere at many airport rallies was raucous and cheerful. Whenever anyone was released from detention, he or she was greeted with cheers and applause from well-wishers.
At Los Angeles International Airport, thousands of protesters filled the lobby at the Tom Bradley International Terminal and spilled into the street outside, chanting, "Let them in!" and "Love, not hate, makes America great."
Jacob Kemper, a 35-year-old Army veteran who served two tours in Iraq, said he was infuriated to think soldiers he fought alongside might be denied entry to the country.
"I really don't care about religion, but I really hate oppression," he said, holding a sign that read, "I Fought Next To Muslims."
Shay Soltani, a network engineer, fled the Iranian revolution 40 years ago and still has family members in Iran. She joined Sunday’s protest in Los Angeles, she said, because she doesn't know if she will be able to see them again, thanks to Trump’s order.
"I am so hurt by this," she said. "He is against freedom of speech and the Constitution and everything I believe in as an American."
Groups including the American Civil Liberties Union said they would ultimately press to have Trump’s order overturned as unconstitutional.
In the meantime, the emergency stay issued by a federal judge in Brooklyn on Saturday represented an “absolute baseline” prohibiting the removal of any of those who were halted upon arrival, said Lee Gelernt, the deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.
But it remained essentially the luck of the draw in terms of who was halted upon arrival, who was released after questioning, and who had access to legal counsel if detained, the lawyers said.
1/20/2017 "We the People" pic.twitter.com/CDOrl8Cs2P
— 🍒TrumpGirl® says... (@___TrumpGirl___) January 20, 2017
#PresidentTrump creates chaos by doing what he promised, keeping his promises! #MAGA https://t.co/iBfJQfMpoD via @SusanPage
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 29, 2017
WASHINGTON — New presidents typically start with a flurry of actions designed to demonstrate to supporters and opponents alike that they will deliver on their campaign promises, and that there is a new guy in charge.More.
But never in modern times — a phrase that Donald Trump has made familiar in his opening 10 days in the White House — has there been a whirlwind of action that has so disrupted the political order. President Trump has opened a breach with Mexico over building a wall, created chaos at U.S. airports by blocking immigrants from Muslim countries, moved to undercut the Affordable Care Act even before Congress formally resumes debate over repealing it and more.
In other words, after a campaign that upended political assumptions, Trump has grabbed the headlines and prompted protests in the streets and the courts by doing precisely what he said he would do if elected.
"We've been in office now for about seven or eight days, and we've done an incredible amount," White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said Sunday on CBS' Face the Nation after deflecting questions on the orders to begin building a wall along the southern border and to temporarily block refugees from seven majority-Muslim countries. "I think that one thing people can say about President Trump is that he's following through on his promises, and I don't think people should be surprised that he's doing it. I'm kind of surprised that people are surprised that he's actually conducting himself exactly the way he said he would."
It has been a surprise to those who assumed candidate Trump had more of a combative attitude than a specific policy plan. That gave rise to the observation, first credited to Saleno Zito of The Atlantic, that Trump's supporters took him seriously but not literally, while journalists took him literally but not seriously.
What's also surprised many is the speed with which Trump has moved, in some cases reportedly without the traditional consultation with members of his Cabinet, leaders of Congress or even the government lawyers who customarily would review the language and legal basis for the executive orders and presidential memorandums he has signed with fanfare.
Of course, presidents who have taken over at times of crisis have acted in the past with far-reaching actions and left it to the future for the courts and the critics to sort out. Franklin Roosevelt, taking over during the depths of the Great Depression, on the day after being inaugurated in 1933 declared a bank holiday and called Congress into special session. When he took office in 1861, Abraham Lincoln was dealing with a nation being split by Southern secession.
This time, though, Trump isn't taking over at a time of war or economic calamity. He has in effect created his own sense of crisis, a situation he seems to find useful when it comes to dominating the debate and conducting negotiations.
And while FDR coined the idea of the "first 100 days" as a measure for decisive action, Trump seems to be speeding up even that timetable — akin to his mode of unprecedented and instantaneous presidential communication via the burst of 140-character tweets...
The Democrats' Rise Is Far From Inevitable, writes @asymmetricinfo https://t.co/EZzqhzrLUP
— Milena Rodban (@MilenaRodban) January 24, 2017
Why are the left's public demonstrations more impressive than its voter turnout? Because there are a whole lot of Democrats in the large population centers where such demonstrations are generally held. People can join a protest simply by getting on the subway; it's an easy show of force.
But there are a lot of small towns in America, and as Sean Trende and David Byler recently demonstrated, those small towns are redder than ever. Effectively, the Democratic coalition has self-gerrymandered into a small number of places where they can turn out an impressive number of feet on the ground, but not enough votes to win the House. Certainly not enough to win the Senate or the Electoral College, which both favor sparsely populated states and discount the increasingly dense parts of the nation.
The Senate map in 2018 is brutal for Democrats. If Democrats want to get their mojo back, they’re going to need to do more than get a small minority of voters to turn out for a march. They’re going to need to get back some of those rural votes.
To do that, they’re probably going to have to let go of the most soul-satisfying, brain-melting political theory of the last two decades: that Democrats are inevitably the Party of the Future, guaranteed ownership of the future by an emerging Democratic majority in minority-white America. This theory underlay a lot of Obama’s presidency, and Clinton’s campaign. With President Trump's inauguration on Friday, we saw the results.
Why was this such a bad theory? Let me count the ways...
I am not surprised by President Donald Trump’s antics this week. Not by the big splashy pronouncements such as announcing a wall that he would force Mexico to pay for, even as the Mexican foreign minister held talks with American officials in Washington. Not by the quiet, but no less dangerous bureaucratic orders, such as kicking the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff out of meetings of the Principals’ Committee, the senior foreign-policy decision-making group below the president, while inserting his chief ideologist, Steve Bannon, into them. Many conservative foreign-policy and national-security experts saw the dangers last spring and summer, which is why we signed letters denouncing not Trump’s policies but his temperament; not his program but his character.Interesting, and not all that disagreeable. And I find the talk of impeachment and exercising the 25th Amendment rather humorous.
We were right. And friends who urged us to tone it down, to make our peace with him, to stop saying as loudly as we could “this is abnormal,” to accommodate him, to show loyalty to the Republican Party, to think that he and his advisers could be tamed, were wrong. In an epic week beginning with a dark and divisive inaugural speech, extraordinary attacks on a free press, a visit to the CIA that dishonored a monument to anonymous heroes who paid the ultimate price, and now an attempt to ban selected groups of Muslims (including interpreters who served with our forces in Iraq and those with green cards, though not those from countries with Trump hotels, or from really indispensable states like Saudi Arabia), he has lived down to expectations.
Precisely because the problem is one of temperament and character, it will not get better. It will get worse, as power intoxicates Trump and those around him. It will probably end in calamity—substantial domestic protest and violence, a breakdown of international economic relationships, the collapse of major alliances, or perhaps one or more new wars (even with China) on top of the ones we already have. It will not be surprising in the slightest if his term ends not in four or in eight years, but sooner, with impeachment or removal under the 25th Amendment. The sooner Americans get used to these likelihoods, the better...
@littlekique, I'm just so angry. If the last ten days are any indication, it's going to be a long and terrible four years.— Nick Kulmala (@NNNICKKK) January 28, 2017
After a day of chaos at airports around the world, a federal judge in Brooklyn on Saturday night stayed deportations under President Trump’s executive order barring citizens of some Muslim countries from entering the United States.Keep reading.
U.S. District Judge Ann M. Donnelly ordered a halt to any removal of refugees or others who hold valid visas to enter the United States — meaning those who have arrived at U.S. airports from the seven predominantly Muslim countries named under the president’s executive order can remain, for now.
The judge did not rule on the legality of the executive order, nor did she say that others who have not yet arrived in the U.S. can be allowed to proceed.
The ruling came in response to a petition filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of two Iraqis detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York: Hameed Khalid Darweesh, who was an interpreter for the U.S. military, and Haider Alshawi, who was on his way to join his wife, who had worked for a U.S. contractor in Iraq.
ACLU attorneys argued that returning either petitioner could cause “irreparable harm” by exposing them and their families to retaliation from extremists.
The two lead plaintiffs were held by authorities and threatened with deportation, even though both “assert a fear of returning to their countries, and if they are not admitted pursuant to their valid entry documents, [they] seek an opportunity to pursue asylum,” the lawyers argued in the emergency petition.
“This ruling preserves the status quo and ensures that people who have been granted permission to be in this country are not illegally removed off U.S. soil," said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, who argued the case.
The executive order Trump signed Friday suspends all refugee entries for 120 days, blocks Syrian refugees indefinitely and bars for 90 days the entry of citizens from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia.
While the court did not take on the legal merits of that action, the judge’s order said the Trump administration and its employees are “enjoined and restrained from the commission of further acts of and misconduct in violation of the Constitution.”
“The petitioners have a strong likelihood of success in establishing that the removal of the petitioner and others similarly situated violates their rights to Due Process and Equal Protection guaranteed under the United States Constitution,” the court ruled.
Surrounded by a throng of cheering demonstrators, who had rushed from Kennedy airport to the Brooklyn courthouse, an exultant Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, said, ``This was a remarkable day. What we’ve shown today is that the courts can work. They are a bulwark in our democracy when President Trump enacts laws or executive order that are unconstitutional and illegal.’’
