SESSIONS J 2 6%

see main

GAVE US STEPHEN FUCKING MILLER?!

recall he recused himself from russia b/c he met with kislyak (at RNC, lethal aid platform deleted), after being remind/busted; this made him less able to be firewall against russia collusion charges, so he was repeatedly humiliated then fired; he's looking to run for senate again?!

new tag 11/17 jeff (jbs taken)

4/17 age of trump

===

https://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/jeff-sessions

life 6%

DISPATCH JONAH G

Stephen Miller Is (Virtually) Untouchable

David M. Drucker / March 18, 2026

General

the political fallout from President Donald Trump’s mass deportation program has damaged his job approval ratings, led to the firing of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and prompted the White House to urge Republicans in Congress to abandon the issue and instead tout administration efforts to remove criminal aliens.

But the main architect of mass deportations, Stephen Miller, remains the White House deputy chief of staff because of his unquestionable loyalty to Trump and personal popularity among GOP voters. Few if any Republicans in Washington, D.C.—elected officials, lobbyists or operatives—are demanding Miller’s ouster, or even that immigration be removed from his portfolio. That’s despite the boost the mass deportation operation has given to the Democratic Party’s bid to recapture the House of Representatives and Senate in midterm elections.

A key reason why: The White House aide enjoys a following all his own inside the GOP.

“He’s the Holy Grail of MAGA,” a Republican lobbyist told The Dispatch, requesting anonymity to speak candidly, as did most who were interviewed for this story. “He’s the true north of MAGA for the president.” In a January Quinnipiac University poll, Trump’s job approval among Republican voters was 88 percent. Miller scored an impressive 73 percent rating in the same survey.

John Fredricks, a conservative talk radio host and a Trump supporter since the president first sought the GOP nomination a decade ago, has known Miller for 15 years. He explained Miller’s rise in the Make America Great Again movement, and White House staying power, to The Dispatch this way: “He’s got balls and a plan—most people have one without the other. He’s got them both, and you can quote me on this. He’s got balls and he’s got a plan. And that’s why he is revered within MAGA.”

“Stephen Miller is the guy, that if he were to leave the administration, everybody would doubt the sincerity of the other administration people,” Fredricks, who is based in Washington, D.C., added.

Many Republicans who work in the nation’s capital view Miller with “a combination of admiration and hate, but mostly fear,” a second GOP lobbyist said. This party insider added that Miller’s adept management of his close relationship with Trump is among the reasons the long knives haven’t come for Miller the way they did Noem, a Senate-confirmed Cabinet secretary, and others who have been in the president’s orbit as long as he has.

“He operates in a fiefdom with almost unlimited power and he’s smart enough not to overstep—a very dangerous combination for such an opportunistic hardliner,” this lobbyist said.

That keen sense to avoid big-footing Trump has made Miller an elusive figure for many Republican professionals in Washington. Even Republican lobbyists supportive of the president, or at least not openly hostile, have told The Dispatch they have had no interaction with Miller, despite his broad sway over domestic and foreign policy. “Stephen is way more focused internally than externally,” a GOP operative said. However, this experience is not universal.

Miller has been in town, and involved in Republican politics, for years. He has relationships that predate Trump. And so some Republicans with business or concerns related to the administration’s agenda have, from time to time, used Miller as a high-level White House conduit. Given Miller’s deep involvement in immigration policy, he is often sought after for help on that issue. “People backchannel to Miller all the time,” a Republican who works on K Street said. “The consensus is, unless immigration-related, it usually isn’t a useful backchannel.”

Miller, 40, is something of a MAGA wunderkind.

Well before Trump first campaigned on a platform of securing the border and limiting immigration—both legal and illegal—Miller was making a name for himself fighting the fight on Capitol Hill. In 2013, Miller was a communications aide to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican. As many Republicans in Congress negotiated with Democrats to pass a bipartisan overhaul of federal immigration law, Miller worked furiously to kill the legislation and at times seemed more emotionally invested in the legislation’s defeat than Sessions. (The bill cleared the Senate but died in the House.)

During Trump’s 2016 campaign, Sessions was among the first congressional Republicans to endorse, precipitating Miller’s move to the populist candidate’s campaign and eventually, Trump’s first White House. Throughout that period and in the years since, Miller’s power in Trump’s circle, and his stature in the MAGA movement, has grown. He played a key role in planning Trump’s second administration during the four years out of power, became a regular warmup act at the president’s campaign rallies, and now exercises inordinate influence—far more than his title, deputy chief of staff for domestic policy, suggests.

This has made Miller a unique force to contend with in Washington, a phenomenon appreciated by Republican operatives supportive of Trump.

For instance, one Republican government relations executive friendly with the White House conceded that Miller is often a terrible messenger for Trump’s agenda, causing supporters like this individual to gripe privately among themselves about his television appearances and preference that he leave on-camera interviews to more capable voices in the administration. The same is occasionally said of the president. But observe how Trump and Miller are viewed through a similar lens: “The benefit of the doubt is given to Trump at every turn—and that applies to Miller,” the government relations executive said.

Republicans in town who lack the same affection for Trump tend to find Miller’s political durability frustrating. The generic ballot gauging which party voters would prefer to be in control of Congress has worsened for Republicans over the past few months, suggesting the GOP’s 2026 turbulence is at least partially related to the public backlash against the mass deportation program. While midterm elections are historically challenging for the president’s party, some Republicans argue Miller is making matters worse.

“It’s probably time for him to move on. I don’t think he’s helping the president,” a veteran GOP lobbyist said. “There was a victory here: Trump sealed the border. Let’s get rid of—using Trump’s words, not mine, the ‘bad hombres,’ and call it a day. This is a classic example of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”

The White House did not respond to an email requesting comment.

David M. Drucker

David M. Drucker is a senior writer at The Dispatch and is based in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining the company in 2023, he was a senior correspondent for the Washington Examiner. When Drucker is not covering American politics for The Dispatch, he enjoys hanging out with his two boys and listening to his wife's excellent taste in music.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/sheriff-s-fellowship/

no lnx

One far-right, Trump-inspired think tank is adding more fuel to the extremism fire.

According to The Bulwark,The Claremont Institute is at the center of a new initiative called the "Sheriff's Fellowship." The disturbing new movement is described as an incentive to "weaponize 'patriotic law enforcement officers' to counter 'the perversion of the justice system by which the revolutionary left seeks to advance its totalitarian agenda.'"

In short, these types of sheriff groups classify more as "militias with badges, guns, and formal law enforcement powers. Or, if you like, secession-by-sheriff."

While the Sheriff's Fellowship is a new initiative for Claremont, the publication notes that other similar organizations like the Constitutional Sheriffs have existed for quite some time.

"Although the Oath Keepers, another anti-government extremist group that recruits from law enforcement, have garnered more media attention in recent years," the Anti-Defamation League said in their report, the Constitutional Sheriff movement "has arguably had more success infiltrating law enforcement, including at the executive level."

The central tenet of [the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association], borrowed from the anti-government extremist sovereign citizen movement, is that thecounty sheriff is the ultimate authority in the county, able to halt enforcement of any federal or state law or measure they deem unconstitutional.

Trump, members of his administration, and well-known law enforcement officials have echoed the values and beliefs highlighted by the Claremont Institute. In fact, during a previous interview, Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions (R) lauded the practices of "Anglo-American" law enforcement.

"Since our founding, the independently elected sheriff has been the people's protector, who keeps law enforcement close to and accountable to people through the elected process," said Sessions. "The office of sheriff is a critical part of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement. We must never erode this historic office."

Sheriff Mark Lamb, the sheriff of Pinal County, Ariz., is also seen as an upcoming member of the Republican Party. The law enforcement officer, who describes himself as "America's Sheriff," who "fashions himself as more of a vigilante resister, with a heavy dose of anti-government, sometimes militant rhetoric."

Lamb supported the "stop the steal" campaign in Arizona and has expressed sympathy for the Jan. 6 rioters. He has called vaccine mandates "garbage" and spoke at a recent anti-vaccine rally in Phoenix, where he told supporters, "We're going to find out what kind of patriots you are. We're going to find out who is willing to die for freedom." He also makes direct appeals to citizens, an effort that looks more dangerous after former President Donald Trump riled up supporters on Jan. 6.

For example, Lamb, an ardent defender of the Second Amendment, has spoken in support of the formation of private militias — "well within the Constitution," he told a group of supporters in March — and emphasized the power of sheriffs in Arizona, an open-carry state, to call local civilians into service to "suppress all affrays, insurrections and riots that comes to the attention of the sheriff." Last year, as Black Lives Matter protests swept across the country, he formed a local civilian "posse" to assist his office with law enforcement, even though there were no such protests in Pinal County.

Milwaukee's Sheriff David Clarke, a known vocal supporter of Trump, has also expressed extremist views. In the days leading up to the January 6 insurrection, Clarke even urged Capitol rioters not to comply with law enforcement.

"ALERT!!!," Clarke wrote on Facebook at the time. "If you attended the Trump rally in Washington DC last Wednesday and are contacted by the FBI or they come to your home, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TALK TO THEM. DON'T LET THEM IN YOUR HOME EITHER. POLITELY TELL THEM TO LEAVE AND CLOSE THE DOOR."

"If you did not go into the US Capital (sic) you do not have to explain why you exercised your Constitutional right to assemble," Clarke wrote. "TRUST NO GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL right now."

[[[he and trump and barr are the strict fathers? explains jeff's anti-pot jihad ~ hippie clinton godless pelosi bay area?

hmm dunno if story of metaphor/schema, both?

the duty of the strict father is to instill/enforce strict discipline/control/ sacrifice vs short term childish sinful hedonism; law and order, hierachy vs those uppity AA and women hippie antifa

capitalism built on myth/story /schema of spot transaction/barter, not found in real world?

aha: trump is just apotheosis: invis hand me vs we short vs long term: $ = winner, vs losers who deserve poverty, corruption/crony capitalism is natural inevitable outcome

// metaphor; immune sys digestive sys goes on overdrive?

aha: reduction = retaliation = transaction [extraction is just a more extreme form where other has no power] INEQUALITY

terministic screen/tunnel vision limits to small number of visible things right here and now self-ishvs larger complex system/ long term; also zero sum

long term means more entities, more events thus more complexity (tho a story can simplify/screen/ change emphasis, make a pattern (even where none exists, eg qanon) thus meaning, which then acts as term screen filter to repell conflicting/anomalous/dissonance info ); but fills vacuum need, that previously would have been filled by experts/textbooks/teachers/leaders/pastors?

aha: reduction = retaliation = transaction

terministic screen/tunnel vision limits to small number of visible things right here and now vs larger complex system/ long term

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/americas-enemies-perceive-weakness-in-donald-trump-foreign-policy-expert-explains-how-the-president-squandered-us-exceptionalism/

no lnx audio

c de v]]]

bogeyman july 2009

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna31750700

week before her Senate hearings, Republicans are floundering in their efforts to trip up Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, unable to find an effective message about why she's not fit to serve.

Blame the tricky politics of opposing the woman who would be the first Hispanic justice, especially for a party struggling to broaden its base and whose chief spokesman on Sotomayor has a troubled history of racism allegations.

Add to that the mathematical impossibility of Republicans' rejecting President Barack Obama's first high court nominee, and it's a recipe for a weak-kneed response.

Conservative activists have noticed, and they're not happy.

"Too many Republicans and conservatives planned to lose instead of planning to win" the debate over Sotomayor, said Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch. His group has mounted strong opposition to the federal appeals court judge.

About half the Senate's Republicans are willing to raise serious questions about Sotomayor and there's "a sizable minority who — partly because she's Hispanic — just want this to go away," said Curt Levey of theCommittee for Justice.

Conservative groups have sought to convince Senate Republicans that they can benefit politically by strongly opposing Sotomayor. But many of their leaders complain the message isn't getting through.

During recent confrontations, some activists have told GOP senators, "Don't throw away yet another conservative agenda item when it's a successful one for you. Your base cares about this and you should, too," said former Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., who's advising some outside groups on Sotomayor's nomination. "It was kind of a blunt message."

There are good reasons for Republicans to be holding back, wondering what their best approach is to opposing a nominee who's broadly acknowledged to be qualified and whose past rulings make it difficult to pigeonhole her as a liberal crusader.

The GOP has just 40 votes in the Senate — well short of the majority they would need to defeat Sotomayor or to sustain a drawn-out effort to block a final vote to confirm her.

Even if they could stall Sotomayor's nomination, though, it's evident that many Republicans don't think it's politically prudent to take on a Hispanic woman, given the GOP's low standing in the polls and its efforts to appeal to women and minorities. Those groups traditionally have shunned the party.

The issue of race and ethnicity has proven a toxic one for the key Republican carrying the party message on Sotomayor: Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the senior GOP member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which begins hearings on Sotomayor on July 13....Sessions' own nomination for a federal judgeship in 1986 was scuttled by allegations that he made racist comments and targeted black civil rights leaders as a federal prosecutor in Alabama....denied those charges. But he did acknowledge making what he called some off-color "jokes," such as calling civil rights groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People "un-American."

Sessions has spoken in similar terms recently about a Puerto Rican legal advocacy group on whose board Sotomayor sat from 1980 until 1992.

"This is a group that has taken some very shocking positions with respect to terrorism," Sessions said of LatinoJustice PRLDEF, citing its defense in 1990 of Puerto Rican nationalists who 36 years earlier had wounded five lawmakers during an attack on the House while it was in session....Sessions said Thursday the group's stances on issues from capital punishment to race were "extreme."His staff raised concern about its ties with the community organizing group ACORN,which Republicans routinely describe as a radical organization.

Democrats said the GOP was grasping at straws.

It's not that Republicans aren't criticizing Sotomayor. Early on, they went out of their way to treat her gently, trying to distinguish themselves from party firebrands such as radio host Rush Limbaugh and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who called her a racist.

In recent days, GOP senators have faulted her for her stance on gun rights, her ruling against white firefighters who alleged reversed discrimination, and her participation in the Puerto Rican legal advocacy group. They've raised questions about her ability to be "colorblind."

Still, they've had to reach to score points against Sotomayor.

For instance, Republicans recently banded together to raise concerns about her position on gun rights. They held a news conference about an appeals court decision Sotomayor joined that said the Second Amendment's protection against curbs on bearing arms applies only to the federal government — not to states.

That was in line with Supreme Court precedent on the issue, Sessions acknowledged, and presumably in keeping with GOP views that judges should be restrained.

But Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, criticized Sotomayor for taking a "cramped and restricted view of a basic civil liberty." At the same time, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said Sotomayor had been too expansive in her ruling on the right to keep and bear arms. "I wish Judge Sotomayor had been similarly restrained on these issues" as other courts that ruled differently, he said.

The message was as clear as mud.

eg retaliation

Senators Demand DOJ Cease Investigation Into Opponents of President Obama’s Energy Policies

may 26, 2016

|

202-228-7561 WASHINGTON –U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah),Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), David Perdue (R-Ga.), and David Vitter (R-La.) today sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, demanding that the Department of Justice (DOJ) end its use of law enforcement resources against political opponents of President Obama’s energy agenda.

“These actions provide disturbing confirmation that government officials at all levels are threatening to wield the sword of law enforcement to silence debate on climate change,” the letter reads. “As you well know, initiating criminal prosecution for a private entity’s opinions on climate change is ablatant violation of the First Amendment and an abuse of power that rises to the level of prosecutorial misconduct.”

The letter goes on to demand that Attorney General Lynch confirm that all investigations into any private individual’s views on climate change end within 14 days and promise not to initiate any future such investigations.

“Freedom of thought and inquiry is at the very heart of liberty,” Sen. Cruz said. “Sadly, the Obama administration and its allies in state attorney general offices across the country are threatening to use the power of government to intimidate and ultimately silence companies and researchers who do not agree with the government’s opinions about the allegedly harmful effects of climate change and what should be done about it. This is an abuse of power and a direct assault on the First Amendment. The Obama Justice Department should immediately cease any further consideration of such action and should instead do everything in its power to protect the freedom of thought of all Americans.”

“Threatening prosecution of those who dare to challenge the most outlandish scaremongering by climate activists strikes at the very heart of the Free Speech protections on which this nation was founded,” Sen. Lee said. “Issuing subpoenas to harass researchers and academics with whom they have communicated, as some state attorneys general offices have done, shows a basic disregard for Americans’ Freedom of Association. The public expects us to prevent such abuses, not perpetrate them. It is our responsibility to contain the inevitable chilling effects by calling for an end to any consideration by the Department of Justice of such harassment at once.”

“I have serious concerns any time that the Department of Justice uses its power to repress constitutionally protected speech and open dialogue on any public policy issue,” Sen. Perdue said. “Given the unprecedented politicization of the Obama Justice Department, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s oversight responsibilities have become more important than ever before. There is no place in our democracy for politically-motivated investigations by the Department of Justice.”

“Unnecessary government intrusion of private citizens’ lives is an unfortunate characteristic of the reign of the Obama Administration,” Sen. Vitter said. “It is contemptible for the Justice Department to target and threaten individual American citizens and private or non-profit organizations in pursuit of its far-left environmental agenda.”

Read the letter in its entirety here.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04**012017**/exxon-climate-investigation-jeff-sessions-attorney-general-trump

over the past year, the battle lines formed along partisan lines on the question of whether the Justice Department should launch a probe intoExxonMobil's stance on climate change.

The designated referee in that battle was to have been U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who received the formal letters staking out each side's position on an investigation.

One of those letters, sent by five Republican senators sympathetic to Exxon, carried the signature of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, who isDonald Trump's choice to succeed Lynch as the next attorney general.

That letter argued that a federal investigation of Exxon would suppress debate on the validity of climate change and amounted to prosecutorial misconduct. Any investigation of the oil giant must be stopped immediately and no future probes initiated, Sessions and the other senators told Lynch.

If he is confirmed by the Senate to replace Lynch, Sessions will become the nation's top law enforcement officer and would hold ultimate authority on the future of any federal investigations of Exxon, making it highly unlikely that any investigation underway would proceed any further. Sessions did not respond to an interview request.

Sessions would have a seat at Trump's cabinet table alongside like-minded climate denialists tapped to run the Environmental Protection Agency as well as the Departments of Commerce, Interior and Energy. And even if Rex Tillerson, Trump's choice for secretary of state, has acknowledged the scientific consensus that the risks of climate change are real and need to be dealt with, he has been the chief executive of Exxon for the past 10 years.

In other words, Sessions will fit comfortably into an administration loaded with supporters of the fossil fuel industry. That leaves little hope federal authorities will take action on Exxon, said Joel Schwartz, a former federal prosecutor who worked on the prosecution of the tobacco industry.

"If they don't see climate change as causing a problem then there is no crime to prevent; there is no wrong to right," Schwartz said. "Under their argument there can be no bad actors—just scientists with honest differences of opinion."

California Reps. Ted Lieu and Mark DeSaulnier were among the first to call for Lynch to open a probe of Exxon.The two Democrats asked the attorney general to determine whether Exxon had violated federal law by "organizing a sustained deception campaign disputing climate science" and "failing to disclose truthful information" about climate change.

The request came in the wake of an investigative series ofstories published by InsideClimate News that reveals Exxon scientists were warning of potentially catastrophic effects of a buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuels as early as 1977. (The Los Angeles Times laterpublished stories researched by the Columbia School of Journalism.)

The Justice Department confirmed in January that it had referred the request to the FBI for an initial inquiry, but no details were ever disclosed.

In May, Sessions was one of five Republican senators who demanded Lynch halt that preliminary investigation.

"We write today to demand that the Department of Justice (DOJ) immediately cease its ongoing use of law enforcement resources to stifle private debate on one of the most controversial public issues of our time—climate change," according to the letter.

Sessions was joined by Sens. Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, David Perdue and David Vitter in signing the letter that suggested a prosecution of Exxon would amount to prosecutorial misconduct.

"As you well know, initiating criminal prosecution for a private entity's opinions on climate change is a blatant violation of the First Amendment and an abuse of power that rises to the level of prosecutorial misconduct," they told Lynch.

David Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and former director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection of the Federal Trade Commission, said the position staked out by Sessions and the others in the letter to Lynch is a signal Exxon will get a free pass at the federal level.

"That means it will be left to the state attorneys general to pick up the cudgel if there is going to be any holding Exxon accountable," he said.

But given Exxon's resources, its powerful allies in Congress and the ferocity it has shown in attacking the investigations being undertaken by New York and Massachusetts, other attorneys general may be reluctant to engage in litigation.

"They may believe it's the right thing to do, but they know they can't sustain the fight they will surely encounter," Vladeck said. "So Exxon...will go on about its business without being held accountable for its conduct."

Lieu and DeSaulnier, both Democrats from Southern California, are grudgingly accepting what lies ahead.

"It's not looking very encouraging," DeSaulnier said.

Lieu said he hopes the FBI will turn up enough evidence that cannot be ignored, but said, "I am pessimistic about the attorney general's office."

Exxon may also find a more agreeable Securities and Exchange Commission under the Trump administration. The SEC reportedly launched an investigation into how Exxon accounts for climate change impacts when it values its assets. Exxon has confirmed the SEC investigation and pledged its cooperation.

In the wake of the probe, Exxon announced in October that it was revising the estimated value of its Canadian tar sands reserves to conform to SEC guidelines.

On Wednesday, Trump announced lawyer Jay Clayton as his choice to replace Mary Jo White as SEC chair. Clayton has represented a number of Wall Street giants and could be instrumental in helping implement Trump's promise to scale back on financial regulation.

In addition to designating a chair, the new president likely will be making three other appointments this year to the five-member commission.

The commission is designed as a non-partisan body, and no more than three commissioners may belong to the same political party. Appointees are subject to confirmation by the Senate.

Yet Trump will shape the commission with conservative appointees who will be industry-friendly and lenient enforcers of regulatory rules, according to experts.

It's unlikely Trump will appoint commissioners explicitly opposed to investigating Exxon, saidAndrew Vollmer, a law professor at the University of Virginia and former deputy general counsel at the SEC. New Republican commissioners, however, are likely to share the president's ideological policy preferences, he said.

"The kind of people he will pick can influence and affect investigations," Vollmer said. "There is nothing improper about that as long as a commissioner does not have a conflict of interest."

Trump's appointee to head the SEC, for instance, could instruct the SEC's enforcement division to stop a particular investigation, he said. But that carries the risk of alienating staff and exposing the commission to public criticism, making the power more theoretical than real, he said.

Still, he said, "the chair has the power."

If allegations of wrongdoing came from a whistleblower, then the SEC would be mandated to conduct a summary investigation of Exxon, according to according toBevis Longstreth, a former SEC commissioner who was appointed by Ronald Reagan. But even then, it need only be a cursory look to satisfy the statutory requirements that the credibility of whistleblower complaints be weighed, Longstreth said.

"I don't think you can look to the SEC—given what will be its be makeup—to do very much in the way of an Exxon investigation," he said.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/president-trump-is-the-child-trafficker-in-chief/

President Donald Trump thinks of himself as a champion against human trafficking. He addressed a White House Summit on the issue in January claiming there was a “humanitarian crisis” at the border fomented by criminal organizations and that “traffickers victimize countless women and children.” He signed an executive order and diverted $400 million in funding to combat the issue, boasting in his usual manner that “we have signed more legislation on human trafficking than any other administration has ever even thought about.” But in recent months, the administration has been found to be flouting the United States’ own anti-trafficking laws by deporting thousands of children and families seeking asylum, practically delivering them into the hands of traffickers across the border in Mexico.

Dr. Amy Cohen, executive director of Every Last One, explained to me in an interview that under the Trump administration’s so-called “Remain in Mexico” program, “the United States has been essentially feeding vulnerable migrant children and families to cartel traffickers in Mexico continuously.”The program, officially known by the Orwellian-sounding title of “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP), sends immigrants seeking entry into the United States across the border to Mexico to await the adjudication of their cases. While the Department of Homeland Security claimed that MPP would “decrease the… ability of smugglers and traffickers to prey on vulnerable populations,” in fact it does the opposite.

Cohen elaborated on this horrific phenomenon, saying, “migrants are dropped off with nothing on the other side of the border, with no shelter, with no protection, with no food, with no money. And within minutes, they are picked up by cartel gangs that are waiting.”As a child and family psychiatrist who works closely with traumatized migrant children, she did not mince words, saying that families are, “kidnapped and used for extortion, which is a form of trafficking. Sometimes they are tortured. Sometimes they are raped. Children are compelled to watch. Sometimes children themselves are raped.”

The only way to view the outcome of this policy is that the United States is actively participating in a trafficking operation. The Trump administration cannot claim ignorance of the outcome of MPP. According to Cohen, “This is happening in cities literally all along the border. This is not a secret; this is widespread.” So extensive is the abuse that according to her, “The vast majority of asylum seekers who we’ve placed into the MPP program have at one time or another experienced at least one, sometimes multiple, episodes of what I would consider trafficking, of kidnapping, and some form of psychological or physical torture."

because of the extreme danger that the Trump administration has put families in, according to Cohen it has “forced many parents into a decision” about whether to keep their children with them or send them unaccompanied across the U.S. border.

But under cover of the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government has accelerated the expulsion of even unaccompanied children to Mexico and Central America—in violation of federal law. The Associated Press explained that “More than 2,000 unaccompanied children have been expelled since March under an emergency declaration enacted by the Trump administration, which has cited the coronavirus in refusing to provide them protections under federal anti-trafficking and asylum laws.”

Now reports have emerged of the government hiring a private security and transportation firm to move immigrant families and children into hotels in the United States before expelling them. According to the New York Times, which broke the story, the Trump administration has created “a largely unregulated shadow system of detention and swift expulsions without the safeguards that are intended to protect the most vulnerable migrants.” Children, some as young as one year old, are being cared for in hotels like Best Western and Hampton Inn by private security personnel who have no childcare training.

Cohen says advocates like her believe that “this has been a way for the United States to try to hide a number of these children who they are deporting.” Those children held in government facilities have to be registered as having entered the United States, which then triggers legal protections for them. But by holding children in hotels, effectively off the books and out of public view, “government attorneys are denying that they are actually in the custody” of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, says Cohen. Bizarrely, they are claiming that the children are in the custody of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) over concerns of COVID-19, and thereby flouting the legal mandate known as the Flores Settlement to maintain the safety, care, and oversight of the children.

Where the children end up once they are removed from the U.S. is not known, and the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency will not say. According to Reuters, “Between April and June, U.S. officials arrested more than 3,300 unaccompanied children on the southwest border, but CBP has declined to say how many have been expelled under the new process or give a breakdown of arrests by nationality for that time period.” During that same time frame, out of the thousands of children apprehended, only about 160 remain in U.S. custody.

It is ironic, to say the least, that some of Trump’s most loyal followers are conspiracy theorists who label themselves QAnon claiming that the president is facing off against a “cabal of Democratic pedophiles.” So mainstream is this movement that one of its followers just won a GOP congressional primary in Georgia. QAnon is now appropriating the social media hashtag #SaveTheChildren and promoting fantastical claims of a widespread child sex trafficking ring. Its followers have even joined the anti-trafficking movement in the United States. But they have entirely ignored the very real trafficking and exploitation of children at the U.S. border that their president has unleashed.

More than two years ago, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions claimed that the government cared about children when he officially announced Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, saying, “If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law.” It was a thinly veiled attempt to punish those fleeing poverty and violence for a better life in America. And while mass public outrage forced Trump to back off (he signed an executive order in June 2018 to end what his own discretionary policy initiated), in truth the torture and trauma facing immigrant families did not end. It was simply moved out of our view across the border into even more dangerous conditions.

As America hurtles toward November 3 with a desperation unlike any we’ve felt for previous presidential elections, the issue of how President Trump has treated immigrant families and children has been largely off the radar. But if we care about children and about protecting them from horrific torture and abuse, Trump’s role as Child-Trafficker-in-Chief ought to be central to our election discourse.

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/first-sessions-now-kobach-america-first-candidates-are-flopping-at-the-voting-booth/

Far-right anti-immigration hardliner Kris Kobachlost the Kansas Republican Senate primaryto Rep. Roger Marshall by more than 50,000 votes, marking the latest defeat for far-right “America First” candidates at the ballot box.

In 2020, several high-profile Republican candidates championed by far-right and white nationalist political activists have been rejected by their constituencies. Right Wing Watch reported in January that white nationalists were excited by the prospect of Kobach, the former secretary of state of Kansas, serving in the Senate. White nationalist podcaster James Allsup told listeners at the time that “having somebody like Kobach in the upper house, in a position of power, as an anti-immigration, as an immigration restrictionist leader, that would be immensely powerful going forward.”

On Tuesday night the race was called, and the far-right activists who had supported Kobach’s bid mourned his electoral loss online.Many “America First” white nationalist movement figures blamed the GOP for Kobach’s defeat.

“Back to the hills. Of course, we’ve been there before,” Peter Brimelow, editor of the anti-immigrant, white nationalist publication VDARE,said. He added that it was “annoying” that far-right commentator Ann Coulter was right about President Donald Trump.Coulter, once an avid supporter of Trump, has attacked the president in recent years and called Trump the “most disloyal actual retard” after he endorsed former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Republican primary opponent Tommy Tuberville in Alabama.

“Fuck the weak Kansas Republicans who are looking at this primary as a ‘victory.’ No matter what you’re electing a member of the monoparty in November who hates you and will continue to sell you out to our globalist elites,” far-right Kansas State student Jaden McNeil said. “Enjoy your state’s continued degradation.”

Scott Greer, a former editor at The Daily Caller who was revealed to be writing alt-right columns under a pseudonym, only offered one comment on Kobach’s loss: “Damn.”

White nationalist and alt-right poster boy **Richard Spencer** theorized that Kobach’s loss reflected the unpopularity of “conservative nationalism.” Spencer has been vocal in his disdain for the elements of the far-right that overtook him in popularity and the flaws he sees in those ranks.

“Steve King . . .Jeff Sessions. . . Kris Kobach . . . then Donald Trump in November . . . The’America First’ conservatives and supposed ‘immigration hawks’ are falling like dominos,” Spencertweeted. He later added, “You can blame Trump’s tactical failures—and there are many—you can blame Jared and Ivanka, etc.At some point you must conclude that conservative nationalism isn’t going anywhere, and it’s simply not very popular.”

Joshua Foxworth, a Republican “America First” candidate in Texas who was trumped by incumbent Rep. Randy Weber in a blow-out loss in March, blamed Kobach’s loss on the media.

“The loss of Kobach in Kansas is upsetting but not surprising,” Foxworth said. “Almost no one can overcome a media that constantly promotes or opposes a candidate. Deplatforming of supporters doesn’t help. The GOP is in danger of becoming a party without core issues and without a base.”

But Kobach’s loss does not exist in a vacuum. Other far-right supported candidates, like Sessions, Iowa Rep. Steve King, and Arizona former sheriff Joe Arpaio have seen their hopes for high office dashed.

Sessions’ campaign attempted to earn the support of far-right and anti-immigration voters, going so far as to tap far-right columnist Michelle Malkinto author a fundraising letter in May. Malkin made the play obvious, opening the letter by calling Sessions “an old friend of the America First movement.”But President Donald Trump, nursing a grudge against Sessions for recusing himself from the probe of Russian influence in the 2016 election, urged Republican voters to reject Sessions. Last month, Sessionslost Alabama’s Republican runoff electionto Tuberville by more than 100,000 votes.

King, who has a sordid history of racist remarks during his nine terms serving in the U.S. House, lost the Iowa Republican primary to Randy Feenstra by nearly 10 percentage points.

And in Arizona, former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is facing a close contest against challenger Jerry Sheridan in a race to get his old job back after receiving a pardon from Trump in 2017. (Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt in going after undocumented immigrants.) With 90 of 99 vote centers counted at the time of publication, Sheridan is shown slightly ahead. Arpaio has not yet conceded the race.

William Gheen, president of the anti-immigrant Americans for Legal Immigration PAC mourned the loss of Sessions, Arpaio, Kobach, and King.

“All four of America’s top illegal immigration fighters have fallen.Farewell Joe Arpaio, Kris Kobach, Jeff Sessions, and Rep. Steve King,” Gheen said. “ Who would have ever guessed after four years of Trump our top voices against illegal immigration would [be] gone.”

“America First is inevitable,” white nationalist and anti-Semitic podcaster Nick Fuentes declared on July 7.

It would seem that it’s actually anything but.

However, these far-right losses at the ballot box are not indicators that extremism in the Republican Party is retreating, rather the opposite appears to be true. For certain far-right causes—like the “America First” movement—the defeats may prompt an exploration of options beyond electoral politics. And while extremists gaining legislative power can have disastrous consequences for a democracy, history has shown that extremists seeking solutions outside of the political system can also prove to be dangerous.

Tags: Jeff Sessions Joe Arpaio Kris Kobach Nick Fuentes Peter Brimelow Scott Greer Steve King Alt-Right anti-immigrant white nationalism VDARE

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/jeff-sessions-taps-far-right-columnist-michelle-malkin-for-fundraising-email/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/jeff-sessions-hits-back-at-donald-trump-after-the-president-endorses-senate-opponent/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trump-campaign-lashes-out-in-letter-to-jeff-sessions-accusing-him-of-making-a-delusional-claim/

Another religious-right favorite who failed to make it through yesterday’s primaries is former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who lost a special election for the U.S. Senate in 2017 and wanted a chance to run again against the winner of that race, Sen. Doug Jones. But Moore didn’t manage to make it out of the single digits yesterday, finishing in fourth place. Former senator and attorney general Jeff Sessions did make the runoff, but President Donald Trump seems determined to stymie his bid to return to the Senate, tweeting this morning, “this is what happens to someone who … doesn’t have the wisdom or courage to stare down & end the phony Russia Witch Hunt.”

Tags: Amy Phan West David Lane DeAnna Lorraine Jack Hibbs Jeff McFarlin Jeff Sessions Roy Moore Sean Feucht Young Kim Church-State Dominionism Election 2020 American Renewal Project California Renewal Project Republican Party

hard core?

https://themoscowproject.org/dispatch/ukrainian-weapons-and-the-rnc-platform/

Two interesting Ukrainian weaponry threads are in the news this week. First, of course, is the fact that Ukrainian investigators are freezing their cooperation with the Mueller investigation so as not to upset the administration amid anti-tank missile sales.

Second, Mueller is still reportedly investigating a decision to remove language supporting lethal weapons for Ukraine from the GOP party platform, a surprising reversal of a key attack on President Obama’s Ukraine policy. While Republicans—House Intel Committee members in particular—have tried to downplay that event, consider it in the broader timeline of Trump-Russia collusion. This could be a down payment on a quid for Russian interference quo. In other words, the platform change is a clear and tangible deliverable from Trump to Russia.

It was an odd change.

Initially, a draft of the RNC platform called for “providing lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine to combat Russian incursions. This was a common demand made by GOP senators since 2014 and the basis for frequent Republican attacks on Obama.
Days later, the language was softened: The final version called instead for “providing appropriate assistance” to Ukraine.
After weeks of intrigue, the motive became clear: It happened because the Trump campaign asked for it.
In fact, Trump adviser J.D. Gordon intervened to make the change at the convention.

But it didn’t happen in a vacuum. Other events in July of 2016 show a broader pattern: the Trump campaign repeatedly handing the Kremlin gifts.

Campaign adviser Carter Page, already on the FBI’s radar as a potential Russian infiltrator, traveled to Moscow’s New Economic School to and discuss the campaign with high-ranking Russian officials and oligarchs.
On July 20,Gordon, Page, and then_{-Senator Jeff Sessions}_ met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyakat the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
While ordinarily this might be written off as mundane diplomatic box-checking, in this case Kislyak made no such appearance at the Democratic National Convention to check in with the clear front-runner in the race.
Two days later, WikiLeaks began releasing emails from the DNC. By July 26, it was clear the Kremlin was behind the hack. Trump not only refused to denounce this, but encouraged Russia to hack into his opponent’s inbox.
Trump ended the month by telling George Stephanopoulos that Putin was “not going into Ukraine” and that “the people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were.”

For the Kremlin who, like everyone else, didn’t think Trump would become president, softening the platform of a historically hawkish party would be a huge foreign policy achievement.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/historian-explains-why-jeff-sessions-sessions-was-arguably-the-most-abusive-and-disgraceful-attorney-general-in-history/

HNN

https://www.alternet.org/history-will-remember-these-3-things-jeff-sessions-accomplished-attorney-general

The company sought to influence a variety of issues ranging from potential changes to government oversight programs to corporate tax issues. One of the team's newest members, Sandra Luff, was a national security adviser to Attorney General Jeff Sessions when he served in the Senate.

nixonesque departure? leo picked matt whit cos; 1st sen to support trump, but not loyal enough (ie respected basic norm fairness recuse [how long did it take djt to realize danger and get mad?]; some speculation that senate wd come to his defense out of clubby solidarity, but no.

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/worst-attorney-general-modern-history-jeff-sessions-last-act-doj-solidified-his

no lnx

"He was a racist when appointed, a racist while serving, and a racist to the very end."

By Jessica Corbett / Common Dreams November 9, 2018, 10:12 AM GMT

In his last "evil" act as head of the Justice Department under President Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions reminded "everyone yet again why he's been the worst attorney general in modern history" and drastically limited the ability of federal officials to use court-enforced deals to require reforms at police departments that are found systematically violating people's civil rights.

Trevor Timm

@trevortimm

Sessions, on his way out the door, reminds everyone yet again why he’s been the worst attorney general in modern history.

Jason Leopold

@JasonLeopold

Sessions, in Last-Minute Act, Sharply Limits Use of Consent Decrees to Curb Police Abuses https://nyti.ms/2yYKGvI

7:31 PM - Nov 8, 2018

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Shortly before Trump forced Sessions to resign on Wednesday—and appointed a temporary replacement who is hostile toward Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation—Sessions signed a memorandum (pdf), as the New York Times reports, "sharply curtailing the use of so-called consent decrees, court-approved deals between the Justice Department and local governments that create a road map of changes for law enforcement and other institutions," by imposing "three stringent requirements for the agreements."

The decrees were, as the Times noted, "used aggressively by Obama-era Justice Department officials to fight police abuses," but soon after Sessions took office, he had signaled he would scale back their use and "ordered a review of the existing agreements, including with police departments in Baltimore, Chicago, and Ferguson, Mo., enacted amid a national outcry over the deaths of black men at the hands of officers."

Sessions' last-minute final act was met with widespread outrage, but not surprise—rather, as many critics quickly pointed out, it fit with the patterns of Sessions' moves throughout his tenure as attorney general.

"From day one, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions expressed open and naked hostility to the use of consent decrees, especially in the civil rights context," said Kristen Clarke of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "This action by Sessions, on his way out the door, seals his legacy as an obstructionist when it comes to advancing justice and protecting rights in our country."

Eric Klinenberg

@EricKlinenberg

It’s like Sessions thought, “What’s one more, big thing I can do to make sure governments across the country can get away with racist violence?” And then quietly snuck it into federal law just as the movers showed up. Good riddance. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/us/politics/sessions-limits-consent-decrees.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share …

4:48 AM - Nov 9, 2018

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Jeff Sessions, the attorney general at the time, in March in Nashville. The move means that consent decrees will be much more difficult to enact.

Sessions, in Last-Minute Act, Sharply Limits Use of Consent Decrees to Curb Police Abuses

Jeff Sessions, fired as attorney general, has expressed skepticism about Obama-era efforts to improve relations between the police and their communities, saying the pacts vilify law enforcement.

nytimes.com

See Eric Klinenberg's other Tweets

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"I would never expect Sessions to be anything other than an unrepentant civil rights foe until the very last minute," tweeted Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Leslie Proll

@LeslieProll

On his way out the door, Sessions issued guidelines to limit scope, duration & effectiveness of consent decrees which are used in all types of civil rights cases, including those addressing police abuse & misconduct. Sessions was true to form until bitter end.

Justice Department

@TheJusticeDept

Justice Department Releases Memorandum on Litigation Guidelines for Civil Consent Decrees and Settlement Agreements https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-releases-memorandum-litigation-guidelines-civil-consent-decrees-and …

179

5:13 PM - Nov 8, 2018

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"He was a racist when appointed, a racist while serving, and a racist to the very end," Josh Moon of the Alabama Reporter said of his state's former senator. "There is no redeeming quality to Jeff Sessions. He's a horrible racist at his core."

Charles M. Blow

@CharlesMBlow

Once a racist, always a racist!… https://nyti.ms/2yYKGvI?smid=nytcore-ios-share …

2,100

7:18 PM - Nov 8, 2018

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Jeff Sessions, the attorney general at the time, in March in Nashville. The move means that consent decrees will be much more difficult to enact.

Sessions, in Last-Minute Act, Sharply Limits Use of Consent Decrees to Curb Police Abuses

Jeff Sessions, fired as attorney general, has expressed skepticism about Obama-era efforts to improve relations between the police and their communities, saying the pacts vilify law enforcement.

nytimes.com

716 people are talking about this

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The New Republic's Matt Ford concluded simply, "He is who we thought he was."

Although Sessions, much to Trump's frustration, recused himself from the Mueller probe, while serving as attorney general, he made several moves—including canceling Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and implementing the "zero-tolerance" policy that tore migrant children away from their parents—that had civil and human rights advocates constantly raising alarm about "the Trump/Sessions white supremacist agenda."

Even before news broke about his memo to curb the use of consent decrees, social justice advocates began to document Sessions' record as he departed.

"Jeff Sessions was the worst attorney general in modern American history. Period," the ACLU charged in a series of tweets on Wednesday that, among other things, noted his discrimination against trans people, enthusiastic enforcement of racist drug laws, and use of religion to attack women's reproductive rights.

ACLU

@ACLU

Nov 7, 2018

Replying to @ACLU

From his plot to deport Dreamers, roll back police accountability, discriminate against trans people, enforce racist drug laws, use religion to end reproductive rights, and lie to the Senate to cover up campaign contact with Russian officials, Sessions’ tenure was a disgrace.

ACLU

@ACLU

Sessions allowed the DOJ to function as the political arm of the Trump administration to undo fundamental rights, disregarding years of legal precedent.

The Senate must demand that any nominee for attorney general commit to not interfere in the special counsel investigation.

1,567

12:15 PM - Nov 7, 2018

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One of the most prominent parts of Sessions' legacy is the immigration crisis he leaves behind, as Julia Preston outlined for The Marshall Project on Wednesday. Acknowledging Preston's report, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law summarized on Twitter, "On President Trump's favorite issue, the departing attorney general leaves behind record-breaking backlogs of cases, onerous constraints on judges, and a bulwark of punitive attitudes toward families seeking asylum."

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trumps-new-attorney-general-slammed-fcking-fool-and-suck-inside-doj-report

https://thinkprogress.org/matthew-whitaker-grotesque-incoherent-ab07fbb09c84/

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/key-republican-senators-lay-groundwork-trump-fire-sessions-heres-catch

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/jeff-sessions-1924-immigration/512591/

Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Justice Department, once praised a 1924 immigration law whose chief author in the House once declared was intended to end “indiscriminate acceptance of all races.”

Will tech save or ruin us?

Listen to Derek Thompson’s new podcast, Crazy/Genius, to see where you side.

Sessions has long been a proponent of immigration restriction, and was one of the first to back Trump’s call on a ban on Muslims entering the United States during the primary.

During an October 2015 radio interview with Stephen Bannon of Breitbart, now a top adviser to the president-elect, Sessions praised the 1924 law saying that:

In seven years we'll have the highest percentage of Americans, non-native born, since the founding of the Republic. Some people think we've always had these numbers, and it's not so, it's very unusual, it's a radical change. When the numbers reached about this high in 1924, the president and congress changed the policy, and it slowed down immigration significantly, we then assimilated through the 1965 and created really the solid middle class of America, with assimilated immigrants, and it was good for America. We passed a law that went far beyond what anybody realized in 1965, and we're on a path to surge far past what the situation was in 1924.

Sessions comments were first flagged by the liberal blog Right Wing Watch.

The 1924 immigration law, known as the Johnson-Reed Act, drastically limited immigration and made permanent restrictions designed to keep out Southern and Eastern Europeans, particularly Italians and Jews, Africans, and Middle Easterners, barring Asian immigration entirely.

Asked about the interview, Sessions’s spokesperson Sarah Isgur Flores wrote in an email, “As Attorney General, Sessions will prioritize curtailing the threats that rising crime and addiction rates pose to the health and safety of our country and that includes enforcing our existing immigration laws.”

Representative Albert Johnson, a Washington Republican described by the historian Edwin Black as a “fanatic raceologist and eugenicist,” used his stewardship of the immigration committee to ensure that racist pseudoscience provided an “empirical” basis for immigration restriction. Immigration historian Roger Daniels put it even more bluntly, writing in Guarding the Golden Door that Johnson’s “racial theories” would “in slightly different form” become “the official ideology of Nazi Germany.”

When the law passed, its primary Senate author, Rhode Island Senator David A. Reed, expressed relief in The New York Times, writing that “the racial composition of America at the time is thus made permanent.”

Sessions’s praise for the 1924 law highlights the difficulty of making the case for immigration restriction, which often relies on popular antagonism toward particular immigrant groups rather than the benefits of restriction per se. The centerpieces of Donald Trump’s immigration policies have been a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border and a ban on Muslims entering the United States.

“I don’t know any historian who would tell you the 1920s law wasn’t a racist law. That was what it was all about. They didn’t try to hide that,” said David Reimers, a professor of history at New York University. The national origin restrictions in the 1924 law were not fully lifted until the passage of the 1965 Nationality and Immigration Act.

Sessions is correct, however, that the percentage of Americans who are foreign born is near record levels. A 2015 Pew report found that 14 percent of Americans were foreign born in 2015, close to the record high of about 15 percent in 1890, and similar to the percentage in 1920, when a rash of immigration-restriction laws was passed. Pew estimates that 18 percent of Americans could be foreign born by 2065.

Some historians have backed up the idea that restricting immigration aided assimilation––by making it easier politically to enact liberal social programs. Historians have also pointed to World War II as a crucial factor in enhancing the stature of “white ethnics,” such as Italians and Jews, once looked upon as inferior to northern Europeans.

“Among the other ironies of that history is that immigration restriction in the twentieth century—along with World War II—was probably a major contributor to the assimilation, and what some historians call ‘the whitening,’ of the millions of southern and eastern European immigrants who had once been widely regarded as a serious danger to the vigorous Nordic ‘germ-plasm’ that had made the country great,” wrote Peter Shrag in Not Fit For Our Society. “Low levels of immigration probably also made it easier to enact the great New Deal and Great Society social programs of the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, just as the existence of those programs today—welfare, health, state and federal support for higher education—probably reinforces pressure to restrict immigration and drive out illegal aliens now.”

Mae Ngai, a history professor at Columbia University, said that “restriction was a factor” in immigrant assimilation through the 1960s but that “others were in my opinion more important,” pointing to “[an] expanding economy, declining income inequality, and the strength of the welfare state.”

Historians’ evaluations of the law have rarely been as effusive or unqualified as Sessions’s, however, even when acknowledging merits to immigration restriction.

“It is easy to see that, in a frontierless democracy, some kind of restriction of immigration was not only inevitable but desirable,” wrote Daniels. “The real tragedy is not that the United States restricted immigration, but that it did so in a blatantly racist way that perpetuated old injustices and created new ones, which endured for decades.”

Franken on Friday broke a month-long silence on social media to reveal that he and his former colleague, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT), were the two lawmakers who asked the FBI to investigate Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ repeated false statements under oath about his interactions with Russia.

Writing on Facebook, Franken discusses the multiple false statements and omissions that Sessions gave during testimony before the Senate about his knowledge of the Trump campaign’s efforts to contact Russian government officials.

He then reveals that he and Leahy were so concerned with Sessions’ pattern of making false statements that they asked the FBI to look into the attorney general to see if he had perjured himself.

“Nearly one year before Attorney General Sessions fired Andrew McCabe… Mr. McCabe oversaw an investigation into whether Attorney General Sessions… lacked candor when he repeatedly misrepresented his contacts with Russians when testifying before Congress,” he writes. “That investigation was opened after my former colleague, Senator Pat Leahy, and I wrote to the FBI last year and requested that the Bureau examine the attorney general’s false statements.”

Franken then said he felt disturbed by the fact that Sessions decided to fire McCabe even though McCabe had launched an investigation against him.

“That the attorney general would fire the man who was tasked with investigating him raises serious questions about whether retaliation or retribution motivated his decision,” he writes. “It also raises serious questions about his supposed recusal from all matters stemming from the 2016 campaign.”

Read the whole post below.

===

https://www.alternet.org/immigration/trumps-doj-has-audacious-new-project-suppress-vote

Civil rights advocates have raised alarms because the Department of Justice has asked the U.S. Census to include a question about citizenship in its 2020 national survey. But the way the Trump administration has framed this request also shows it's poised to make proof of citizenship the latest voter suppression tool.

As many civil rights groups have noted, asking immigrant families to disclose undocumented relatives will push people to evade Census takers or simply lie, causing an undercount and diverting federal funds away from locales with immigrant populations.

“The Justice Department’s untimely and unnecessary request to the U.S. Census Bureau to add a question to the 2020 Census would destroy any chance for an accurate count,” said Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Gupta noted that the Justice Department justified its request by saying it was needed to enforce voting rights.

“The Justice Department has never needed to add this new question to the decennial census to enforce the Voting Rights Act before," Gupta said. "Contrary to the Justice Department’s letter, the Census Bureau has not included a citizenship question on the modern census ‘short form,’ sent to every household, since enactment of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.”

The DOJ’s mid-December letter requesting the citizenship question is the latest anti-immigrant development from the Trump administration, but it also underscores that the DOJ’s Voting Rights Section is now being run by right-wing Republicans who are known for wanting otherwise eligible voters to present paper proof of citizenship to register—which some key blue constituencies lack.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions comes from one of a handful of states that require would-be voters to produce paper proof of citizenship to register to vote in state elections. To vote in federal elections, they can simply sign an oath at the bottom of the federal registration form. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who heads Trump’s so-called Election Integrity Commission, has made this separate and unequal standard a personal crusade. He and his allies, including those in the DOJ who are pushing the Census to ask about citizenship, are ignoring that every person who registers must declare they are a citizen and that their signature is a sworn legal oath.

(Editor's note: Late on Wednesday, Trump disbanded this commission, a victory for pro-voting advocates who criticized its secrecy, voter suppression agenda and illegal handling of public records. However, Kobach commented he will pursue its goals through the Department of Homeland Security, which has jurisdiction over citizenship.)

Why would Republicans focus on proof of citizenship in order to vote? Because, as the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law reported in 2006 and updated in a report last summer, an estimated 7 percent of eligible voters don’t have such documentation—typically a birth certificate or passport. In other words, adding proof of citizenship to register will reduce participation in elections. (Think of it as a barrier at the starting line of the process, just as stricter state voter ID requirements is a barrier at the finish line.)

“A nationwide survey by the Brennan Center in November 2006 found that 7 percent of the citizen voting age population, or 13 million people, did not possess documents that would prove their citizenship,” the Center’s July 2017 reportsaid. “The rate is twice as high among citizens earning less than $25,000 per year. Women who changed their name upon getting married are especially likely to lack the relevant documents: A third of voting-age women don’t have proof of citizenship that reﬂects their current name.”

That 7 percent figure hasn’t changed in the past decade, the 2017 report by senior counsel Ian Vandewalker said. “In fact, national studies show that between 5 and 7 percent of Americans don’t have any documents to prove their citizenship. Birth certiﬁcates are frequently lost or destroyed. The most recent State Department statistics indicate that 59 percent of Americans don’t have passports.”

Seen narrowly, the Justice Department’s 11th-hour request to add a citizenship question to the next Census is a disruptive anti-immigrant action, because it will likely lead to undercounts that will deprive states and cities of funds for their migrant populations. But seen broadly, it signals the Department’s Voting Section has a selective enforcement agenda with deep partisan implications.

“A study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in September 2006 reached substantially the same conclusion [as Brennan]:

...

===

update:

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/jeff-sessions-takes-stand-debtors-prisons

aclu:

During the holiday season, many of us think about what we can do to help people struggling with poverty. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, on the other hand, decided just before Christmas to rescind a guidance meant to protect low-income Americans.

The 2016 guidance, issued by former President Obama’s Justice Department, urged state and local courts nationwide to abide by constitutional principles prohibiting the jailing of poor people who cannot afford to pay court fines and fees. Jeff Sessions’ action makes clear that he and his Justice Department are unconcerned by courts trampling on the rights of poor people.

The Obama Justice Department issued the 2016 letter after reports and lawsuits by the ACLU and other groups revealed how modern-day debtors’ prisons function inmore than a dozen states, despite the fact that the U.S. two centuries ago formally outlawed jailing people simply because they have unpaid debts.

These efforts revealed that poor people were being locked up in Georgia, Washington, Mississippi, and elsewhere without court hearings or legal representation when they could not pay fines and fees for traffic tickets or other civil infractions or criminal offenses. These efforts also show that modern-day debtors’ prisons result from state laws allowing or requiring the suspension of driver’s licenses for unpaid court fines or fees without first requiring confirmation that the person could actually pay.

Modern-day debtors’ prisons received unprecedented national attention in 2015 when the Justice Department issued a 185-page report in its investigation of the Ferguson Police Department after the shooting of teenager Michael Brown. It documented how Ferguson police sought to advance the “City’s focus on revenue rather than ... public safety needs,” leading to the routine incarceration of poor people to elicit court fine and fee payments, which raised due process concerns and reflected racial bias.

This wave of attention on draconian debtors' prisons spurred the Justice Department to issue the 2016 letter on fines and fees.

Prior to rescinding the letter and other Obama-era guidances the attorney general claimed that such documents constitute overreach and “impose new obligations” on parties “outside the executive branch.” But that is not what the Justice Department letter on fines and fees did.

The Obama Justice Department showed leadership by reminding state chief justices and court administrators that the U.S. Constitution’s promises of due process and equal protection apply when courts impose and collect fines and fees. Far from creating new policy, the letter cited caselaw from the U.S. Supreme Court and other courts in support of seven constitutional principles. Among the most basic of these principles is the fact that the 14th Amendment prohibits jailing people for non-payment of court fines and fees without safeguards, including a hearing before a neutral judge to determine one’s ability to pay, and meaningful alternatives to jail for people who cannot pay.

Sessions’ withdrawal of the letter on fines and fees cannot rescind these principles or the caselaw on which they are based. Nor can it stop the ongoing momentum behind reform of modern-day debtors’ prisons in places like Biloxi, Mississippi; Missouri; Ohio; Michigan; and New Hampshire.

Several weeks ago, a federal court ruled that New Orleans judges faced a conflict of interest in jailing poor people for unpaid fines because the judges control the money collected and rely on it for court funding. That same week, a federal court issued a preliminary injunction halting Michigan’s system for suspending driver’s licenses upon non-payment of traffic tickets due to constitutional concerns. And days later, the Mississippi Department of Public Safety agreed to reinstate the driver’s licenses of all drivers whose licenses were suspended for non-payment of court fines and fees.

There is no place in this country for a justice system that lets rich people buy their freedom while poor people are locked up or lose their driver’s licenses because they can’t afford to pay money to courts. The momentum for change will continue even as the current Justice Department declines to lead by encouraging fairness and equal treatment of rich and poor.

no link

https://www.alternet.org/human-rights/horrifying-step-backwards-sessions-retracts-guidance-designed-end-abuse-poor-courts

Civil rights advocates accused Attorney General Jeff Sessions of "turning back the clock" on criminal justice reforms after the Department of Justice rescinded Obama-era guidance that protected low-income defendants from being forced to pay gratuitous fees to local courts.

"Profit-minded court policies targeting the most economically vulnerable Americans have resulted in a resurgence of unconstitutional but widespread practices penalizing the poor and people of color," said Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law. "Attorney General Jeff Session's decision to retract guidance from the Justice Department rooting out practices resulting in a perpetual cycle of fines, debt and jail of America's poor is a horrifying step backwards in ongoing efforts to reform the criminal justice system."

Under President Barack Obama, the DOJ issued a warning to local courts in May 2016 regarding the common practice of handing fines to poor defendants in order to boost their own revenues.

"Individuals may confront escalating debt; face repeated, unnecessary incarceration for nonpayment despite posing no danger to the community; lose their jobs; and become trapped in cycles of poverty that can be nearly impossible to escape," wrote Vanita Gupta, the head of the DOJ's civil rights division at the time, and former Office for Access to Justice director Lisa Foster. "Furthermore, in addition to being unlawful, to the extent that these practices are geared not toward addressing public safety, but rather toward raising revenue, they can cast doubt on the impartiality of the tribunal and erode trust between local governments and their constituents."

The "Dear Colleague" letter of guidance sent by Gupta and Foster, which was not legally binding, cited examples of unfair demands for payment made by municipal courts, including drivers who could be ordered to pay a penalty of $300 for a driving citation and told that a court date could only be scheduled after the payment was made.

Such requirements "can have the effect of denying access to justice to the poor," they wrote.

Sessions said Friday that he was reversing the guidance to combat "the long-standing abuse of issuing rules by simply publishing a letter or posting a web page" and to prevent "confusing the public with improper and wrong advice."

Gupta told the Washington Post that Sessions's decision "seems like an abdication of the Justice Department's responsibility" to guide municipal courts.

"I think it just takes the pressure off of some jurisdictions that may have been more reluctant to engage in reform," she said.

On social media, other critics denounced Sessions's decision.

Breitbart and Fox News serve up talking points for Jeff Sessions' DACA-rescinding press conference.

If one needs more evidence the Trump administration takes its tone and language directly from Fox News and Breitbart, look no further than Jeff Sessions' press conference this week. As liberal watchdog Media Matters notes, Sessions' primary talking points were ripped off directly from the two outlets. Breitbart/Fox and Sessions both claimed DACA was “amnesty” (it’s not), that the “child migrant surge” was due to DACA (it’s not), that DACA recipients take American jobs (they don’t), and that DACA was “unconstitutional” (it isn’t).

Steve Bannon may have exited the White House, but his propaganda reach hasn’t. Recently, there have been reports Trump’s new Chief of Staff John Kelly was trying to wean Trump off InfoWars, but it’s doubtful the two pillars of Breitbart and Fox News will go anywhere anytime soon. After all, where else would they trial balloon their talking points?

active in comey tho recused on russia

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/21/headlines/cnn_trump_administration_seeks_to_arrest_wikileakss_julian_assange

CNN is reporting the Trump administration has prepared an arrest warrant for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. At a Thursday news conference, Attorney General Jeff Sessions confirmed that the Justice Department is seeking to put Assange in jail.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions: "We have professionals that have been in the security business of the United States for many years that are shocked by the number of leaks. And some of them are quite serious. So, yes, it is a priority. We’ve already begun to step up our efforts. And whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put people in jail."

Last week, CIA chief Mike Pompeo blasted WikiLeaks as a "hostile intelligence service," calling Julian Assange and his supporters "demons." That’s despite Pompeo’s praise for WikiLeaks on Twitter last year and despite this comment from Donald Trump on the campaign trail last October.

Donald Trump: "This just came out. This just came out. WikiLeaks! I love WikiLeaks!"

We’ll have more on the Trump administration’s plans to seek the arrest of Julian Assange after headlines. We’ll speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, co-founder of The Intercept.

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/21/headlines/cnn_trump_administration_seeks_to_arrest_wikileakss_julian_assange

ith Donald Trump appearing to be on the verge of blowing up the world, it stands to reason that people might not be paying attention to his attorney general’s attempt to consolidate support for the administration among local law enforcement by selling off the rights of the American people. Add to that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s suggestion Thursday that Hitler never used chemical weapons “on his own people,” or revelations of the FBI’s investigation of a former Trump foreign policy adviser as a possible Russian espionage asset, and your brain may have absorbed all it can about the present political moment.

But while you weren’t looking, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been courting local and federal law enforcement with the promise of lax oversight of police abuses against citizens, punishment for cities that choose not to use local resources to hunt down undocumented immigrants, and a renewal of the so-called war on drugs that for decades was little more than a war on people of color. On Tuesday, Sessions disbanded the independent, nonpartisan National Commission on Forensic Science—the people who evaluate the scientific soundness of evidence admitted in criminal trials. The idea seems to be to task law enforcement with deciding the means by which it determines which evidence is permissible, even as the administration seeks ways to lock up people on the pretext of drug possession. The responsibility for making recommendations on the scientific soundness of various means of evidence collection will now fall to prosecutors.

It doesn’t stop there. On April 4, Sessions demonstrated his contempt for his department’s past interventions on local law enforcement in jurisdictions where abuses of citizens are shown to be systemic, and promised to lighten up on the use of consent decrees that place offending police departments under Justice Department monitoring for a period of time. He’s also been on a speaking tour of threats against the (mostly Democratic) political leadership of the nation’s great cities, promising to slash their federal funding unless local law enforcement is turned into a locally funded arm of the federal government by participating in the roundup of immigrants who don’t have papers. (So much for the right’s love of local control.) For good measure, Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, is calling on Republicans in Congress to include these proposed funding penalties against so-called sanctuary cities in the spending bill Congress must soon take up in order to keep the government running—a move that could lead to a government shutdown.

We need to sit a minute to take this in, because surely it cannot mean what it looks like, right? At a moment when the White House is occupied by a unilaterally acting authoritarian populist, his top law enforcement officer is signaling an expansion of law enforcement powers and the reduction of rights for citizens.

By now, every well-informed person knows that the war on drugs failed to ameliorate America’s thirst for illegal substances, and that the war’s selective targeting yielded an absurdly high proportion of non-white prisoners. Soon, those law enforcement entities can return to entering into evidence, without compunction, test results yielded by methods the forensic science panel had deemed unreliable. If police have all the power, who needs reliable evidence?

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