Jennifer Delacruz Midweek Forecast

It's warming up!

Here's the beautiful Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:

President Trump to Deny Asylum to Illegals at Mexican Border

Good.

At LAT, "Trump moves to eliminate nearly all asylum claims at U.S. southern border":

ICYMI: For months, CBP leadership has spoken about the current border security & humanitarian crisis at the border. They’ve testified before Congress. They’ve been interviewed by the press. Months later, the influx of illegal crossings continues to overwhelm CBP resources. pic.twitter.com/9hA3noSRMJ

— CBP (@CBP) July 12, 2019

This veggie tale didn't have a happy ending for some attempted smugglers: #CBP officers at the Otay Mesa port of entry discover more than 3,300lbs of marijuana mixed in with a cargo load of broccoli following a K9 alert. Details: https://t.co/GL1qkkM1Ab pic.twitter.com/WbqsTwJRaQ

— CBP (@CBP) July 12, 2019

Reporting from Washington —  The Trump administration moved Monday to effectively end asylum for any migrant who arrives at the U.S.-Mexico border, an enormous shift in U.S. immigration policy that could block hundreds of thousands of people from seeking protection in the U.S. — and is certain to draw legal challenges.
The new rule, published in the Federal Register and set to take effect Tuesday, would bar asylum claims for nearly all migrants from any country. It would do so by prohibiting claims from anyone who has passed through another country en route to the U.S., which essentially would cover anyone other than Mexican residents.

Only in rare cases, such as when a migrant applies for asylum elsewhere and is denied, would a person be eligible to apply for protection in the U.S.

The rule would, in effect, nearly wipe out U.S. asylum law, which establishes a legal right to claim protection for anyone who arrives at the U.S. border and can make a case that they face torture or persecution at home. The law applies regardless of how a migrant reaches the border.

The law currently provides a major exception in cases in which the U.S. has negotiated a “safe third country” agreement with another government. Under those agreements, such as the one the U.S. has with Canada, migrants must apply in the first safe country they reach.

The new proposal would short-circuit that, effectively requiring migrants to apply in any country they land in, whether the U.S. formally considers that country safe or not.

The new rule was issued by the Justice and Homeland Security departments, which administer the asylum system, and it was written to take effect immediately when it’s formally published on Tuesday. It would apply only to those arriving to the U.S., not migrants already in the country.

The sweeping change drew an immediate threat of a legal fight.

“This rule is inconsistent with both domestic and international law, and we intend to sue immediately to block it,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s national Immigrants’ Rights Project, said.

“If allowed to stand, it would effectively end asylum at the southern border and could not be more inconsistent with our country’s commitment to protecting those in danger.”

The rule would most directly affect Central American families and unaccompanied minors, who account for most of a recent surge in migrants arriving at the border. But it applies to any nationality, including the large numbers of Haitians, Cubans and Africans who transit South and Central America and Mexico in order to claim asylum at the border.

“With limited exceptions, an alien who enters or attempts to enter the United States across the southern border after failing to apply for protection in a third country outside the alien’s country of citizenship, nationality, or last lawful habitual residence through which the alien transited en route to the United States is ineligible for asylum,” the rule states.

The rule would place a major burden on Mexico, which has already been inundated with a record number of asylum requests. Mexico’s Commission for Aid to Migrants projects that it will receive 80,000 asylum requests this year, up from 29,648 last year and 2,137 five years ago.

Last month, Mexico agreed to ramp up its immigration enforcement, and in exchange, Trump agreed to hold off on imposing tariffs on Mexican imports for 45 days. Many in Mexico reacted angrily on Monday, saying Trump had reneged on that agreement and had unilaterally imposed a policy that would hurt Mexico.

At a news conference, Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said Mexico disagrees with the new rule, but said he did not see it as a violation of the June immigration deal because Mexico does not have a safe third country agreement with the U.S.

“Our country has made it very clear that we will not enter into any phase of negotiation on a safe third party agreement without the express authority of [the Mexican] Congress,” he said.

Ebrard avoided answering a question about what will happen to migrants currently waiting in Mexico for their chance to apply for asylum in the U.S. Those migrants who have already been screened by U.S. officials and are waiting in Mexico until their court hearings under the administration’s Remain in Mexico plan will be able to complete the asylum process in the U.S., he said.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan said the rule was necessary despite a recent $4.6-billion bill to address humanitarian challenges at the border, and would deter migrants crossing through Mexico “on a dangerous journey.”

“The truth is that it will not be enough without targeted changes to the legal framework of our immigration system,” McAleenan said in a statement Monday.

Why Kamala Harris' Ancestry is Relevant

At the Other McCain, "The Media Smear Machine (and Why Kamala Harris’s Ancestry Is Relevant)."

Neither of Kamala Harris’s parents are Americans. Her mother is from India and her father is from Jamaica. Harris spent most of her childhood in Canada. She thus has little in common with most black people in the United States whose ancestors were slaves here. Before this fact became controversial, it was referenced by such “far-right” personalities as . . . CNN’s Don Lemon.

Keep reading.

'Maxim' Model Hannah Palmer

At Inquisitr, "‘Maxim’ Model Hannah Palmer Goes Braless in Tiniest Crop Top Ever on Instagram."

And Celeb Jihad, "HANNAH PALMER NUDE PUSSY FLASH FOR AMERICA."

Still more, at the Fappening, "Hannah Palmer Nude And Sexy 2019 Collection."

Jeffrey Epstein

Robert Stacy McCain has the story, "MSNBC and CNN Are Trying to Spin the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal Against Trump."

And the biggest journalist on this has been Julie K. Brown, at the Miami Herald, who even had a New York Times write-up about her investigative reporting. See, "The Jeffrey Epstein Case Was Cold, Until a Miami Herald Reporter Got Accusers to Talk."

NEW: Great work by My Miami Herald team today. Love the headline. Thank you to my editor @caseyfrank1 pic.twitter.com/VjKdNzYFrR

— julie k. brown (@jkbjournalist) July 9, 2019

ICYMI: From the penthouse to the jailhouse: Jeffrey Epstein pleads not guilty to sex traffickinghttps://t.co/4qAuqNAxhH

— julie k. brown (@jkbjournalist) July 9, 2019

Megan Rapinoe

I saw all the Twitter outrage over the politicization of the Women's World Cup Championship. I don't care about the politics. I just want to enjoy sports, and I did enjoy watching the U.S. Women's National Team. They're incredible. Rapinoe herself is just phenomenal. And I think she's beautiful. I could look at her all day. I love her hair, her face, her teeth, her smile. What I don't love is how she's taken her success in sports and turned it into a platform to elect Democrats. That's not the role she was given by being a sports leader, an ambassador for women's and girls' soccer. And thus, she's going to harm her agenda ultimately, especially in how she says the debate's won, the conversation's finished, and that she'll only meet with people who already agree with her. That's not how you win in politics. That's how you divide.

More later, I guess, But until then, at WaPo, "Fifteen minutes on cable television that illustrated one of America’s deepest political divides" (via Memeorandum).

And at CNN and MSNBC, where else?

School Bus Driver Drives Bus Loaded With Kids Through Raging Floodwaters in Maryland (VIDEO)

Umm, don't do this. *Eye-roll.*

TURN AROUND DON'T DROWN: This video (@SweeneyABC) shows a bus driver in Montgomery County doing exactly what law enforcement is telling people NOT to do.
The entire region is dealing with flooding this morning as heavy rain moves through. WATCH LIVE: https://t.co/2p4dm0PrYy pic.twitter.com/2gF3hVaZSz

— ABC 7 News - WJLA (@ABC7News) July 8, 2019

Alex Morgan Behind the Scenes (VIDEO)

I'd rather have Alex Morgan, heh.

We all want to have sex with Megan Rapinoe right?

— Megan Gailey (@megangailey) July 7, 2019

Added: At Celeb Jihad, "ALEX MORGAN ULTIMATE ASS COMPILATION."

Bella Thorne Bikini and Beer

At Drunken Stepfather, "BELLA THORNE NOT GETTING EATEN BY SHOTS OF THE DAY."

Megan Rapinoe and U.S. Women's Team Win World Cup 2019

At the Los Angeles Times, "Megan Rapinoe took center stage and owned it at Women's World Cup."

And at the Other McCain, "Anti-American Women Win World Championship of Anti-American Sport":

.@PatriarchTree "Anti-American Women Win World Championship of Anti-American Sport." #USWNT #Soccer #WordCup 🤷‍♂️🙄 https://t.co/kWhFZZW0NT pic.twitter.com/HPuJrHhUhB

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) July 8, 2019

If you don’t want to Make America Great Again, why should Americans cheer for you? If you are an American opposed to the freely elected government of your own country, our First Amendment protects your right as a citizen to engage in protest, but those who support the government cannot be required to endorse your protest.

How many celebrity athletes expressed Tea Party sentiments while Obama was president? Can anyone recall sports teams refusing to go to the White House after winning a championship during the Obama years? Perhaps you can think of a right-wing analog of Megan Rapinoe, but searching my memory, I don’t recall any Democrat president ever being openly insulted the way the U.S. women’s World Cup team has insulted President Trump. And if Rapinoe and her teammates imagine that soccer will become more popular because they have made their sport symbolic of an anti-American protest movement, my guess is that they will be learn otherwise. There has been a lot of noise about the disparity of income between men and women in professional soccer, but the fact is that in most of the world, this is a sport played primarily by men. Only in the United States, where real men play real football, is soccer regarded as a coed sport. One reason the U.S. women are so dominant in international competition is that in soccer-crazy countries like Brazil and Argentina, the sport is still regarded as too rough for girls to play. (And if you’ve seen how Brazilians and Argentines play the game, you understand why they routinely stomp the crap out of the U.S. men’s team.)

Honestly, I am pro-soccer...

Still more.

Jennifer Delacruz's Monday Forecast

We're having wonderfully mild weather.

Compared to Oklahoma, this is heaven.

Here's the lovely Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:

How the 'Invisible Primary' May Pick Dems' 2020 Nominee

From Bill Schneider, who used to be a great analyst on CNN back in the day, but you never see him anymore. *Shrugs.*

At the Hill, "The 'invisible primary' has begun":

My latest piece for The Hill:https://t.co/41ky5eohU4

— Bill Schneider (@BillSchneiderDC) July 7, 2019

The first primary of the 2020 presidential campaign is underway. It’s called the “invisible primary.” Nobody actually goes to a polling place to cast a ballot — but there are winners and losers.

The invisible primary takes place the year before the presidential election. The winner is the candidate who ends the year with the most support in the polls and the most money raised.

Does the invisible primary predict the ultimate winner? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It worked four years ago when Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump came out on top of their respective parties. It didn’t work in the 2004 election when the winner of the invisible Democratic primary was Howard Dean. In January 2004, when the actual voting began, Dean came in third in the Iowa caucuses and second to John Kerry in New Hampshire. By mid-February, Dean was out.

So where does the Democratic race stand now?

California Sen. Kamala Harris was the clear winner of the first Democratic debate. That has brought her a huge amount of media attention and a rise in the polls. She may become the leading progressive candidate. But not necessarily the nominee.

Since World War II, Democratic primaries have often ended up as showdowns between progressives and populists. The difference is social class. Progressive Democratic voters tend to be relatively affluent, well educated and liberal, particularly on social issues like abortion and guns. Populist Democratic voters tend to be working class, non-college educated and moderate on social issues, though often liberal on economic issues like health care.

In the 1950s, Democrats were divided between Adlai Stevenson (progressive) and Estes Kefauver (populist). In 1968, it was Eugene McCarthy (progressive) versus Robert Kennedy (populist). In 1972, George McGovern (progressive) and Hubert Humphrey (populist). 1984: Gary Hart (progressive) and Walter Mondale (populist). 1988: Michael Dukakis (progressive) and Richard Gephardt (populist). 1992: Paul Tsongas (progressive) and Bill Clinton (populist). 2000: Bill Bradley (progressive) and Al Gore (populist). 2008: Barack Obama (progressive) and Hillary Clinton (populist). In the 2016 Democratic race, Bernie Sanders branded himself a populist, but his core support came from young progressives.

Democrats won in 2018 because, in a midterm, the party didn’t have to come up with one presidential candidate. In 2020, they do.

Right now, Joe Biden dominates the populist wing of the party, often described as “moderates.”

The progressive field is more crowded — and more divided.

Harris is poised to challenge Sanders as the progressive alternative to Biden. But she faces a lot of competition from other Democrats popular with the NPR crowd — Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke, Kirsten Gillibrand. Biden has to hope progressives fail to unite behind a single “Stop Biden” candidate.

The polls show Biden doing best among older Democrats. To young progressives, Biden is a voice of the past. The English novelist L.P. Hartley once wrote, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” Like bipartisanship and compromise. And collaboration with outright racists. To older Democrats, however, the past is when things used to work — before Trump came along to cause chaos and disruption. They’re counting on Biden to restore that past.

From the 1930s to the 1960s, white populists, led by organized labor, were the dominant force in the Democratic Party. They began leaving the party when Democrats embraced the civil rights movement. Non-college educated whites have not voted for a Democrat for president in more than 50 years.

The populist vote in the Democratic Party today is mostly minority voters. Southern whites and northern white ethnics (who used to be called “Archie Bunker” voters) have become out of reach for Democrats. White working-class voters are often depicted as the swing vote, but they’re unlikely to swing back to the Democratic Party, not even for Biden. Biden started the race with strong black and Latino support. He’s finding out that he can’t afford to alienate those minorities.

The swing vote today is college-educated white suburban voters who are appalled by President Trump. In 2018, Democratic House candidates made their biggest gains in affluent suburban districts like Orange County, Calif., and Fairfax County, Va. Those upscale voters respond to progressive messages on social issues like abortion and guns. Not to tax hikes or “socialism.”

The 2016 election taught Democrats an important lesson. They expected that revulsion at the prospect of a Trump presidency would rally the party. That didn’t quite happen. Here’s why...

Still more.

Diarmaid MacCulloch, All Things Made New

At Amazon, Diarmaid MacCulloch, All Things Made New: The Reformation and Its Legacy.

Local CBS News Anchor Ducks Under Desk During 7.1 Earthquake (VIDEO)

Althouse has it, "'I think we need to get under the desk'."

And at the Hollywood Reporter, "Panic on Local L.A. News Station Following 7.1 Earthquake."

I didn't feel the need to duck, not yet, at least. But the earthquake was long, and I was ready to move if it kept going. My wife said perhaps this lady wasn't from California, and hadn't live through earthquakes. If you're not used to them, you might freak out.

Thanks Alan. Whew! https://t.co/BUJjv0ErzW

— Juan Fernandez (@NewsJuan) July 6, 2019

New 7.1 Magnitude Earthquake Rocks California (VIDEO)

I felt both earthquakes, but last night's was much more powerful. My apartment was rolling for about 20 seconds, but even as it was rolling and rocking, I felt bad for Ridgecrest, because I could imagine how strong and deadly it was at the epicenter.

This second quake was actually a "foreshock" to the Fourth of July temblor.

At the Los Angeles Times, "7.1 earthquake causes damage; more significant temblors likely":

A magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Southern California on Friday night, the second major temblor in less than two days and one that rocked buildings across Southern California, adding more jitters to an already nervous region.

The quake was centered near Ridgecrest, the location of the July Fourth 6.4 magnitude temblor that was the largest in nearly 20 years. It was followed by an aftershock first reported as 5.5 in magnitude. Scientists said the fault causing the quakes appears to be growing...

More.

Celebrating Our Unique Country's Origins

From Professor Gordon Wood, at NYDN, "What Independence Day really means: Our unique country’s origins":

The Fourth of July, Independence Day, is not just a time for barbecues and fireworks. It is also a time for us to reflect on the meaning of the Declaration of Independence. That declaration is the most important document in our history, even more important than the Constitution. It sums up the principles by which the nation lives. Indeed, it is what holds us together as a nation.

We are a very unusual country, and were unusual even at the time of independence. Lacking a common ancestry, we have never been able to take our nationhood for granted. In America, said John Adams, the country’s second president, there was nothing like “the Patria of the Romans, the Fatherland of the Dutch, or the Patrie of the French.”

Even at the outset, Adams wondered whether a people composed of so many religious denominations and so many ethnicities could hold together as a nation. In 1813, he counted 19 different religious sects in the country. “We are such an Hotch potch of people,” he concluded, “such an omnium gatherum of English, Irish, German, Dutch, Sweedes, French &c. that it is difficult to give a name to the Country, characteristic of the people.”

No wonder then that at the end of the Declaration of Independence, the members of the Continental Congress could only “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” There was nothing else but themselves that they could dedicate themselves to: no patria, no fatherland, no nation as yet.

n comparison with the nearly two-and-a-half-centuries-old United States, many countries in the world today are new, some of them created in the relatively recent past. Yet many of these states, new as they may be, are undergirded by peoples who had a pre-existing sense of their common ancestry, their tribal and blood connections, by which they meant their nationhood.

In the case of the United States the process was reversed. In some sense we have never become a nation, and today, with people from all over the world gathered within our borders, we can never be a nation in any traditional meaning of the term.

In the present this peculiarity of American nationhood, this lack of a common ethnicity, may be our saving grace. It may turn out to be an advantage in the 21st century, dominated as it is by mass immigration from the south to the north and east to west. It certainly enables the United States to be more capable than other countries of accepting and absorbing immigrants.

Of course, America has its own recent problems with immigrants, but these problems pale in comparison with the problems of immigration the European nations are facing and will continue to face.

Because we are not a traditional nation and have no ethnic base, the Declaration of Independence with its ringing affirmation that all men are created equal has become the sacred document holding us together. On the eve of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln came to realize how important the Declaration was in defining the nationhood of the United States, how it had become the adhesive for a diverse people.

Half the American people, Lincoln said in 1858, had no direct blood connection to the founders of the nation. These German, Irish, French and Scandinavian citizens had either come from Europe themselves or their ancestors had, and “finding themselves our equals in all things,” had settled in America. Although these different ethnicities may have had no actual connection in blood with the revolutionary generation, they had, said Lincoln, “that old Declaration of Independence” with its expression of the moral principle of equality to draw upon...

More.

All the Military Flyovers at 'Salute to America' Celebration on the National Mall (VIDEO)

Following-up, "President Trump's Fourth of July 'Salute to America' at Lincoln Memorial (VIDEO)."

Traveling Photo Model Marta Gromova

At Drunken Stepfather, "MARTA GROMOVA OF THE DAY."

Philip Roth, American Pastoral

At Amazon, Philip Roth, American Pastoral American Trilogy (1).

Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

At Amazon, Philip Roth, I Married a Communist: American Trilogy (2).