Both Williams sisters are civil rights icons for our age, but Serena is the best of all: https://t.co/fbr666Ytdz
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 28, 2017
OBAMA DID A 6-MONTH IMMIGRATION PAUSE ON IRAQ, NOBODY CARED. TRUMP DOES A 3-MONTH PAUSE ON A LIST OF COUNTRIES THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION PUT TOGETHER AND HE’S LITERALLY HITLER. The Green Card thing is genuinely horrible, but that’s not even what people are going apeshit about.Click through for the tweet roundup.
And Trump’s fine with that, because it will play badly, and he knows it.
His campaign and those around him have been pretty explicit about their populist-nationalist bent. I think conservatives must resist the temptation to be constant cheerleaders and must resist the temptation to let President Trump be the standard bearer for a movement he really is not a part of.Actually, I don't think any serious conservative thinks Trump's one of their own. My support, for example, has been to foster an ideological reaction, to have a force opposed to the left's fundamental transformation come to power. I've been pleased as punch since election day. No, I'm not down with everything Trump says or does. But that's besides the point. He's putting the brakes on leftist radicalism, and the country needed that more than anything else. He's saving our democracy, not destroying it. The Democrat-left was doing that just fine all by itself.
Read this. What a massive story, with wide-ranging consequences that cross industries and touch thousands of lives. https://t.co/lPmhevijjr
— Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) January 29, 2017
President Trump’s executive order suspending refugee arrivals and banning travel to the United States from several Muslim-majority countries spawned chaos and consternation across the globe Saturday, igniting legal challenges, trapping unwitting airline passengers and galvanizing anguished questions about core American values.
The abrupt ban ensnared people from all walks of life who were caught in transit or expecting to soon return to the U.S. — not only refugees but students on a break from studies, business travelers, tourists, concert musicians, even the bereaved who had gone home for funerals.
A group of advocacy organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a legal action against the policy on Saturday in New York, acting on behalf of two Iraqis who were stopped at John F. Kennedy Airport hours after the order was signed. The writ seeks the release of the two Iraqis, who held valid U.S. visas, unless the government can show lawful grounds for their detention.
One of the two detained Iraqis, Hameed Khalid Darwish, was an interpreter who had worked on behalf of the American government. Freed after 19 hours in custody, he wept as he spoke to reporters, thanking supporters and calling America “the land of freedom, the land of rights.”
The groups bringing the legal action, who also included the International Refugee Assistance Project and the National Immigration Law Center, said a separate motion sets the stage for a larger action involving other would-be refugees, visitors and immigrants stopped at other ports of entry.
“We’ll see you in court, Mr. Trump,” tweeted the ACLU’s national legal director, David Cole, after the writ was filed.
Arab American advocacy groups also were reacting to the new order, warning that it was disrupting travel all over the world.
“We see complete chaos in the way this has been implemented. … Individuals overseas have not been able to board airplanes and fly back into the United States,” Abed A. Ayoub, legal and policy director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said in a conference call with reporters Saturday morning.
This is tearing apart families. We have students overseas stuck there who can’t get back. We have students abroad who cannot return here at all,” he said.
Another legal challenge was in the works as well. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, said it would file a federal lawsuit on behalf of more than 20 individuals challenging the order. The suit, to be filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Virginia, argues that the executive order is unconstitutional because of its apparent aim of singling out Muslims.
“There is no evidence that refugees — the most thoroughly vetted of all people entering our nation — are a threat to national security,” the group’s national litigation director, Lena F. Masri, said in a statement. “This is an order that is based on bigotry, not reality.”
The order, signed Friday by the president during a visit to the Pentagon, suspends all refugee entries for 120 days. In addition, it indefinitely blocks Syrian refugees, and bars entry to the U.S. for 90 days for those traveling from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
Prominent Muslim figures raised their voices in opposition to the temporary refugee ban, saying children would be among those suffering the most from it. Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot by the Taliban, said in a statement that she was “heartbroken” that Trump was closing the door on “children, mothers and fathers fleeing violence and war.”
On Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security said the travel ban covered holders of green cards, who are authorized to live and work in the U.S. Some reports have put the number of such permanent residents from the affected countries as high as half a million.
An administration official eventually said that current green card holders from the affected countries would be allowed to remain in the U.S. — but that those caught outside the country at the time of the ban’s imposition would have be allowed back in on a case-by-case basis. Those with business overseas will have to meet beforehand with a consular official.
Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway took to Twitter on Saturday to praise the directive, calling the president “a man of action and impact.”
“Promises made, promises kept,” she tweeted. “Shock to the system. And he’s just getting started.”
Get used to it. @POTUS is a man of action and impact.
— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) January 28, 2017
Promises made, promises kept.
Shock to the system.
And he's just getting started https://t.co/AoUsZWClXt
Other than San Bernardino shootings, has there been a terrorist attack involving a non-US-born attacker since 9/11?
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 28, 2017
The war on abortion is just beginning | Jessica Valenti https://t.co/ApomJTiYh5
— Guardian news (@guardiannews) January 26, 2017
A common #MarchForLife sign: "I regret my abortion." But regretting a decision doesn't mean others shouldn't have the right to make one.
— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) January 27, 2017
I hope that journalists ask #MarchForLife protesters how they feel about women going to jail for abortion (which is already happening!)
— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) January 27, 2017
If you’ve ever wondered what the oft-used and much maligned word “patriarchy” looks like, you need look no further than a picture of Donald Trump, surrounded by white men, reinstating the global gag rule. The policy, which bans funding any international organization that dares to even talk about abortion, has contributed to thousands of women’s deaths across the globe.Leftism (and feminism) is a death cult, and women like Valenti are the Joseph Mengeles of the movement.
The executive order was just the beginning. In the short time Trump has been president, his administration has set a disastrous course for women’s health and rights. On Tuesday, days after historic marches that put millions of women on the street globally, Republican congressmen introduced the first ever federal ‘heartbeat bill’ - a policy that would ban abortions after six weeks, well before most women even know they’re pregnant.
That same day, the House passed a bill that would make the dangerous and discriminatory Hyde Amendment – which prevents federal funds from covering abortion, even in cases of fetal abnormalities and maternal health issues – permanent. The bill, which targets poor women, would also impact abortion coverage for women with private insurance. Congressional republicans have even introduced a federal ‘personhood’ bill that would define life as beginning at conception.
While the bills will not likely get far, the new administration is sending a clear message – they’re keeping Trump’s promise to punish women who have abortions, and rolling back hard-won rights. These are far-reaching and radical policies that quite literally kill women. There is no overstating just how harmful they are.
So you’ll excuse me for laughing off recent suggestions that feminists embrace “pro-life” women in the name of inclusivity. You don’t get to feel bad about being banned from the treehouse when you’re in the middle of setting the trunk on fire...
Trump temporarily shuts U.S.'s door to most of the world's refugees and start "extreme vetting" https://t.co/MMpo3a5xKe pic.twitter.com/gbGD9jGLlt
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) January 27, 2017
Read the full text of Trump's executive order regarding visas, refugees and "extreme vetting": https://t.co/5B6PkVzYRw pic.twitter.com/GowoK2Xx9Z
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) January 28, 2017
President Trump signed an executive order Friday that temporarily halts the nation’s refugee program and ushers in the most sweeping changes in more than 40 years to how the U.S. welcomes the world’s most vulnerable people.More.
The order blocks all refugees from entering the U.S. for 120 days and suspends the acceptance of refugees from war-torn Syria indefinitely.
“We want to ensure that we are not letting into our country the very threats that our soldiers are fighting overseas,” Trump said after swearing in new Defense Secretary James N. Mattis at the Pentagon.
Trump also blocked visa applicants entirely from a list of countries that the administration considers of major terrorism concern, including Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, until a new “extreme vetting” procedure for visa applicants can be launched.
The action capped Trump’s frenetic first week in the White House, as well as a busy day that included his first meeting with a foreign leader, British Prime Minister Theresa May.
Trump also spoke by phone for about an hour with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, attempting to soothe what has already become a tense relationship. And he swore in Mattis and signed a second directive that instructs the Pentagon to draw up a list of plans to upgrade equipment and improve training.
The U.S. has admitted more than 3.3 million refugees since 1975, including more than 80,000 refugees in the last year. Under Trump’s plan, those numbers will plummet to a trickle for the next several months. For the full fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, the order sets a cap of 50,000 refugees.
The order provides an exception for “religious minorities,” a category that could include Christians fleeing largely Muslim countries as well as other groups including Yazidis and Bahais that face persecution in the Mideast.
Trump said in an interview Friday with the Christian Broadcasting Network that the order will help Christians fleeing Syria enter the United States.
The order also expands the ability of local jurisdictions to block the settlement of refugees they object to. During the Obama administration, the federal government stopped efforts by some local officials to block refugee resettlements.
Trump’s action, seen as part of his campaign pledge to ban Muslims from entering the country, sparked an international outcry, given the historic role that the U.S. and other industrialized nations have long played in embracing victims of war and oppression. The last major change in U.S. refugee policy came during the Vietnamese resettlement programs of the mid-1970s.
In recent months, Trump has backed away from a blanket ban on Muslims and instead says he will focus on blocking people from countries linked to terrorism...
What a goddamn hero! FedEx guy! Do work buddy! A bunch of punk ass protestors doing punk ass protestor things like trying to burn the Amrican flag and the FedEx dude was having NONE OF IT. They picked the wrong day to protest in Iowa City. FedEx guy stopped delivering packages and saved the damn day. I wanna kiss that FedEx dude on the mouth...More.
Flag burning sets off clash at pedestrian mall in Iowa. https://t.co/s3wHt7Rovd
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 27, 2017
This FedEx guy is my hero. Merica.pic.twitter.com/WEcS268m75
— Cloyd Rivers (@CloydRivers) January 27, 2017
A finals match for Venus and Serena Williams. But probably not final. https://t.co/Uxvfro9Tyz pic.twitter.com/q8RBWOYUMp
— NYT Sports (@NYTSports) January 27, 2017
MELBOURNE, Australia — The sibling rivalry, at least on the tennis tour, started right here at the Australian Open for the Williams sisters.Still more.
It was 1998, and older sister Venus beat younger sister Serena, 7-6 (4), 6-1, in a second-round match that — as intrusive as it felt to watch — surely drew more attention than any second-round match in history between a pair of Australian Open debutantes.
The fascination in their dynamic and their futures was there from the start in Melbourne Park, known then as Flinders Park when it had only one stadium with a retractable roof instead of three. A picture of Venus consoling Serena after the match was on the front page of The New York Times.
Though it would be tempting to label their Australian Open final on Saturday as a full-circle moment and to speculate that it might be their last meeting at this late a stage of a Grand Slam tournament, it seems best to resist the temptation.
The Williams sisters have taught us a lot about the limits of conventional tennis wisdom through the years. And so, even if 19 years have passed and Serena is now 35 and Venus 36, it is wise to avoid fencing them in again after they have run roughshod over so many other preconceptions.
“I watched Venus today celebrating after she won the semifinal like she was a 6-year-old girl, and it made you want to cry for joy just watching her,” said Marion Bartoli, a former Wimbledon champion. “Such a powerful image, and it makes you think about all those questions she was getting: ‘When are you retiring? Have you thought about retiring? How much longer?’
“You must let the champions decide when the right moment comes.”
The Williamses are both great champions, even if Serena is clearly the greater player with her 22 Grand Slam singles titles and her long run at No. 1, a spot she can reclaim from Angelique Kerber with a win Saturday....
*****
They have not played since the 2015 United States Open, when Serena won, 6-2, 1-6, 6-3, in a quarterfinal in which Venus attacked, often successfully, from the start but had no answer in the end for Serena’s ultimate weapon: her first serve.
Saturday’s final in Melbourne could be intriguing on multiple levels, in part because of the Australian public. Venus is viewed here, as elsewhere, as a sympathetic figure: the older sister who has handled the younger’s greater tennis success unselfishly and with dignity. And though both sisters have had to cope with major health problems and family tragedy, with the murder of their half sister Yetunde Price in 2003, Venus is the one whose tennis fortunes dipped more dramatically.
A seven-time Grand Slam singles champion and a former No. 1, she did not advance past the third round in any major event in singles from late 2011 to the end of the 2014 season.
She was a major star reduced to a minor role, largely because of an autoimmune disorder — Sjogren’s syndrome, diagnosed in 2011 — that sapped her strength and endurance. When Russian hackers breached the World Anti-Doping Agency’s databases last fall, it was revealed that Venus had needed 13 therapeutic-use exemptions for drugs in recent years.
The retirement questions to which Bartoli referred started during that period. But Venus’s ability to cope with her condition has improved, and after rejoining the top 10 in 2015, she reached the semifinals at Wimbledon last year and then the final here.
“She never even thought of the word retire,” said David Witt, her coach and hitting partner of 10 years. “I just think when she got diagnosed, it was a step back, a shock. She’s learned a lot about how to deal with it and her body, how to eat, how to manage it...
"Something there is that doesn't love a wall," wrote poet Robert Frost in the opening line of "Mending Walls."Keep reading.
And on the American left there is something like revulsion at the idea of the "beautiful wall" President Trump intends to build along the 1,900-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico.
The opposition's arguments are usually rooted in economics or practicality. The wall is unnecessary. It will not stop people from coming illegally. It costs too much.
Yet something deeper is afoot here. The idea of a permanent barrier between our countries goes to the heart of the divide between our two Americas on the most fundamental of questions.
Who are we? What is a nation? What does America stand for?
Those desperate to see the wall built, illegal immigration halted, and those here illegally deported, see the country they grew up in as dying, disappearing, with something strange and foreign taking its place.
It is not only that illegal migrants take jobs from Americans, that they commit crimes, or that so many require subsidized food, welfare, housing, education and health care. It is that they are changing our country. They are changing who we are...
From the trial to a cancer diagnosis, here's how @ErinAndrews found strength in the most difficult year of her life. https://t.co/KtdwO2DENw
— Emily Kaplan (@emilymkaplan) January 24, 2017
Thanks for all of the Twitter love. Touched by how many are touched by EA's story. A little backstory on the piece.. https://t.co/dBmfXb9v0Z
— Emily Kaplan (@emilymkaplan) January 24, 2017
The National Elite Nervous Breakdown - by @jpodhoretz https://t.co/oytEkuaWcL pic.twitter.com/sxjdhmkzxI— Commentary Magazine (@Commentary) January 26, 2017
It cannot go on like this. It’s been five days since the inaugural and the adrenalized, hypercaffeinated, speed-freak affect of the entire chattering class is beginning to seem like we’re living through Bob Woodward’s classic depiction in his book Wired of John Belushi’s final overcharged sleepless days before dying from a cocaine speedball overdose in 1981.Actually, I'm totally impressed.
If every word out of Donald Trump’s mouth is greeted with shrieks of horror and rage and anger and despair and hysteria by his opponents, they are going to find it impossible to serve as any kind of effective opposition to him. If media spends their hours celebrating each other for the most creative or the most direct way in which to call Trump a liar, they are going to take their (our) taste for self-referential solipsism to a new level at which their capacity to communicate with their own readers and viewers will be fatally compromised. And just at the moment when they could find new audiences and new credibility in serving as an authoritative source of information in a sea of White House spin and outright disinformation.
This is where the follow-through on Saturday’s “women’s marches” will tell the tale. It would be a terrible mistake for conservatives, Republicans, and Trump supporters to pooh-pooh this mass event, which happened simultaneously in several cities and towns, with a gross turnout dwarfing any mass protest in American history. Dismissing three million people taking to the streets nationwide would be an act of willful blindness, and ascribing the march’s success to Soros money would be foolish.
Similarly, it would be wrong to assume those crowds even heard a single word of Madonna’s curses or cared one whit about the fight between the “check your privilege” activists and the offended/cowed Brooklynite feminists over whose march it was. It was no one’s march. It was everyone’s march. And it worked, I believe, for one reason: It had a simple message. That message: We don’t like Trump and his behavior toward women...
The people of Syria are crying for peace, asking the US to stop arming terrorist "rebels" who are destroying Syria. https://t.co/tu0O5ThBvc
— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) January 25, 2017
I met these beautiful children at a shelter in Aleppo. The message I heard from the Syrian people there: Give peace a chance. #voicesofsyria pic.twitter.com/j9wjZ97ksU
— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) January 25, 2017
My goodness. Logan Act violations are like Bigfoot sightings: Claims are made all the time but they’re never solid enough to convince anyone. In this case, we may have the equivalent of a real-life ‘Squatch in captivity. Quote:Keep reading.
Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.Gabbard went to Damascus not only without the endorsement of leaders in Congress, she went without their knowledge. Paul Ryan and Nancy Pelosi had no idea she was gone until after she’d arrived in Syria. It was the Ohio chapter of the Arab American Community Center for Economic and Social Services that footed the bill for her, apparently, which until today had been another mystery about Gabbard’s trip. Watch the clip below. It sounds like she went to Damascus to lend Assad moral support and to carry back talking points aimed at convincing Americans to take his side. Unless you want to argue that no “dispute” technically exists between the U.S. and Syria, which would be hard given the American aid provided to anti-Assad rebels, how is this not a Logan Act violation? Does being a member of Congress mean by definition that she enjoys the “authority of the United States” in carrying out freelance diplomacy?
A choice bit from her interview with Tapper below:
“When the opportunity arose to meet with [Assad], I did so because I felt it’s important that if we profess to truly care about the Syrian people, about their suffering, then we’ve got to be able to meet with anyone that we need to if there’s a possibility that we could achieve peace,” Gabbard said. “And that’s exactly what we’ve talked about.”What do you mean “we”? The president speaks for Americans on foreign policy. Last week that was Obama, this week it’s Trump. Meeting with Assad is especially dubious since the U.S. broke off official diplomatic relations with his regime several years ago. It was the judgment of the White House that he’s a sufficiently monstrous human that the United States shouldn’t legitimize him by formally meeting with him. Gabbard, a member of Congress, had other ideas. By what authority does her judgment trump Trump’s?
