Month: September 2017

We’re not as white or Christian as we used to be

by digby

A new study shows one of the many stress points in our society that has led to the anger and anxiety among a certain sub-set of white Americans:

I. Executive Summary

The American religious landscape is undergoing a dramatic transformation. White Christians, once the dominant religious group in the U.S., now account for fewer than half of all adults living in the country. Today, fewer than half of all states are majority white Christian. As recently as 2007, 39 states had majority white Christian populations. These are two of the major findings from this report, which is based on findings from PRRI’s 2016 American Values Atlas, the single largest survey of American religious and denominational identity ever conducted. This landmark report is based on a sample of more than 101,000 Americans from all 50 states and includes detailed information about their religious affiliation, denominational ties, political affiliation, and other important demographic attributes.

Among the major findings:

White Christians now account for fewer than half of the public. Today, only 43% of Americans identify as white and Christian, and only 30% as white and Protestant. In 1976, roughly eight in ten (81%) Americans identified as white and identified with a Christian denomination, and a majority (55%) were white Protestants.

White evangelical Protestants are in decline—along with white mainline Protestants and white Catholics. White evangelical Protestants were once thought to be bucking a longer trend, but over the past decade their numbers have dropped substantially. Fewer than one in five (17%) Americans are white evangelical Protestant, but they accounted for nearly one-quarter (23%) in 2006. Over the same period, white Catholics dropped five percentage points from 16% to 11%, as have white mainline Protestants, from 18% to 13%.

Non-Christian religious groups are growing, but they still represent less than one in ten Americans combined. Jewish Americans constitute 2% of the public while Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus each constitute only 1% of the public. All other non-Christian religions constitute an additional 1%.

America’s youngest religious groups are all non-Christian. Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists are all far younger than white Christian groups. At least one-third of Muslims (42%), Hindus (36%), and Buddhists (35%) are under the age of 30. Roughly one-third (34%) of religiously unaffiliated Americans are also under 30. In contrast, white Christian groups are aging. Slightly more than one in ten white Catholics (11%), white evangelical Protestants (11%), and white mainline Protestants (14%) are under 30. Approximately six in ten white evangelical Protestants (62%), white Catholics (62%), and white mainline Protestants (59%) are at least 50 years old.

The Catholic Church is experiencing an ethnic transformation. Twenty-five years ago, nearly nine in ten (87%) Catholics were white, non-Hispanic, compared to 55% today. Fewer than four in ten (36%) Catholics under the age of 30 are white, non-Hispanic; 52% are Hispanic.

Atheists and agnostics account for a minority of all religiously unaffiliated. Most are secular. Atheists and agnostics account for only about one-quarter (27%) of all religiously unaffiliated Americans. Nearly six in ten (58%) religiously unaffiliated Americans identify as secular, someone who is not religious; 16% of religiously unaffiliated Americans nonetheless report that they identify as a “religious person.”

There are 20 states in which no religious group comprises a greater share of residents than the religiously unaffiliated. These states tend to be more concentrated in the Western U.S., although they include a couple of New England states, as well. More than four in ten (41%) residents of Vermont and approximately one-third of Americans in Oregon (36%), Washington (35%), Hawaii (34%), Colorado (33%), and New Hampshire (33%) are religiously unaffiliated.

No state is less religiously diverse than Mississippi. The state is heavily Protestant and dominated by a single denomination: Baptist. Six in ten (60%) Protestants in Mississippi are Baptist. No state has a greater degree of religious diversity than New York.
The cultural center of the Catholic Church is shifting south. The Northeast is no longer the epicenter of American Catholicism—although at 41% Catholic, Rhode Island remains the most Catholic state in the country. Immigration from predominantly Catholic countries in Latin America means new Catholic populations are settling in the Southwest. In 1972, roughly seven in ten Catholics lived in either the Northeast (41%) or the Midwest (28%). Only about one-third of Catholics lived in the South (13%) or West (18%). Today, a majority of Catholics now reside in the South (29%) or West (25%). Currently, only about one-quarter (26%) of the U.S. Catholic population lives in the Northeast, and 20% live in the Midwest.

Jews, Hindus, and Unitarian-Universalists stand out as the most educated groups in the American religious landscape. More than one-third of Jews (34%), Hindus (38%), and Unitarian-Universalists (43%) hold post-graduate degrees. Notably, Muslims are significantly more likely than white evangelical Protestants to have at least a four-year college degree (33% vs. 25%, respectively).

Asian or Pacific-Islander Americans have a significantly different religious profile than other racial or ethnic groups. There are as many Asian or Pacific-Islander Americans affiliated with non-Christian religions as with Christian religious groups. And one-third (34%) are religiously unaffiliated.

Nearly half of LGBT Americans are religiously unaffiliated. Nearly half (46%) of Americans who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) are religiously unaffiliated. This is roughly twice the number of Americans overall (24%) who are religiously unaffiliated.

White Christians have become a minority in the Democratic Party. Fewer than one in three (29%) Democrats today are white Christian, compared to half (50%) one decade earlier. Only 14% of young Democrats (age 18 to 29) identify as white Christian. Forty percent identify as religiously unaffiliated.

White evangelical Protestants remain the dominant religious force in the GOP. More than one-third (35%) of all Republicans identify as white evangelical Protestant, a proportion that has remained roughly stable over the past decade. Roughly three-quarters (73%) of Republicans belong to a white Christian religious group.

White conservative evangelicals have made a deal with the devil by backing the cretinous libertine Donald Trump. I suspect that will only hasten the reduction in their numbers.

.

Look who’s joining the Freedom Caucus

by digby

I wrote about our old friend Steve Bannon for Salon this morning:

A highly self-satisfied Attorney General Jeff Sessions had his long-awaited moment in the sun on Tuesday morning when he stood before the American people and declared that nearly 800,000 young people may be deported for simply doing what their parents and their government told them to do. He proclaimed that the executive branch had no legal authority to issue the DACA policy and that the Department of Justice was therefore rescinding it, to take effect six months from now — supposedly to give Congress time to pass something to fix the situation. (He didn’t mention that Congress had already tried and failed numerous times because anti-immigrant zealots, led by then-Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, blocked the legislation.)

His legal analysis is questionable, to say the least. But Sessions went on to make it clear that the underlying reason for the decision is that the “Dreamers” have stolen the jobs of deserving Real Americans, and he also claimed the policy had drawn child refugees to the border. (Those are lies.) He associated immigrants with crime, violence and terrorism. He called them “illegal aliens.” It was an ugly performance.

President Trump seemed to be out to lunch all day, merely telling the cameras at one point that he hoped Congress would do something and pointing out that the Dreamers are actually young adults, as if that makes a difference. Then, after the White House issued a formal statement saying that “there can be no path to principled immigration reform if the executive branch is able to rewrite or nullify federal laws at will,” the president issued this weird tweet:

Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can’t, I will revisit this issue!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2017

Clearly, he didn’t read Sessions’ statement or his own — or didn’t understand them if he did. We have no idea what he’s talking about at this point, and neither does he.

I don’t find Trump’s tweet surprising, frankly. He has already shown that he thinks Congress and the courts are like the HR and accounting departments at the Trump Organization, and he’s the big boss. But in this case, if Congress fails to provide the Dreamers with a secure future and the president rescinds his rescission, then fine. But it will be very interesting to see how the administration jumps through hoops to explain itself if he does.

Meanwhile, the focus now moves to Congress, where members looked as if they’d been run over by a Mack truck on their first day back in session. Nobody wants to deal with this highly emotional hot potato in the middle of what was already going to be a brutal September. They must raise the debt ceiling, pass a continuing budget resolution, address the situation with health care payments and deal with massive hurricane relief funding — and now Trump wants them to try to repeal Obamacare one more time. Dealing with the fallout from this ill-timed DACA decision is the last thing they needed.

Just to make the whole situation really crazy, our old friend Steve Bannon has apparently taken on the role of chief strategist for the extremist faction of the GOP. Jonathan Swan at Axios reported that Bannon recently met with Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., the head of the House Freedom Caucus, which has about 40 hardcore right-wing members ready to rumble. Swan writes that they plan to fight the leadership’s decision to attach hurricane relief to the debt ceiling increase. The only good news is that unctuous Sen. Ted Cruz won’t be leading the opposition to relief funds this time around, since his constituents in Texas are the ones who need it. Swan quotes a source saying this:

This is bigger than Breitbart or the Freedom Caucus . . . The topics discussed included conservative alternatives to everything the anti-Trump Republican leadership has planned on every major policy matter facing the United States of America in September. Including Paul Ryan’s and Mitch McConnell’s demonstrated failure to govern, and how to effectively implement the Trump agenda moving forward.

A source told Hallie Jackson and Kristen Welker of MSNBC that “they focused on the idea that the GOP should brace for a ‘bloody September,’ as the president’s far-right base prepares to dig in on key issues from DACA to the debt ceiling.” This may well include Bannon’s desire to settle scores with his enemies, like White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, but it’s also likely to result in some twisted legislative scenarios in which Republicans will be battling each other simply to keep the country from defaulting on its debts or the government from shutting down.

Bannon has been pushing for brinksmanship from inside the White House since January, and now that he’s out, he’s coming at it from the direction of Congress instead. If reports are true that he’s been strategizing with Meadows to thwart the plan to couple the debt ceiling with hurricane relief funding, then he’s working directly against his old boss. The White House is endorsing that move, and will tell congressional leaders there is no money to pay for the flood damage if the debt ceiling isn’t raised. Meadows told Breitbart on Tuesday that he’s having none of it.

As for DACA, Bannon supposedly has some tolerance for the Dreamers because he thinks they are “culturally American,” perfectly illustrating that it’s fatuous to claim that his “economic nationalism” has no racial or ethnic component. (“Culture” in that context is a white supremacist buzzword and has nothing to do with economics.)

According to BuzzFeed, Bannon believes DACA is “a strategic asset” in the immigration debates. In other words, it can be traded for certain items that he and the hardliners would like to achieve in addition to the all-important border wall funding, including building more jails and “sharply increasing enforcement and deporting millions.”

Bannon’s most famous quote is:

Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.

He helped get Donald Trump into the White House. Now that he’s out, he’s working with congressional extremists and warning that it will be a “bloody September.” So far everything’s going according to plan.

.

The Great Leader
by Tom Sullivan

America would be great again. “Again” being the racial dog whistle in the great leader’s campaign slogan. He would even sell you a ball cap — a really great ball cap — with the slogan.

So where was The Great Leader (TGL) yesterday when it came time to announce ending the DACA program (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival)? TGL sent out Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions to do the dirty work of threatening to deport 800,000 residents for whom this country is the only home they’ve ever known. The same Sessions who TGL a few short weeks ago tried to humiliate into resigning because he lacked the nerve to fire Sessions face-to-face.

There has been a flood of commentary against the actions. So, a sampling.

“Heartless,” the headline on the Washington Post’s lead editorial calls the decision. “The president didn’t have the spine to announce his decision himself,” the editors write. So, spineless too. “He shuffled it to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, an anti-immigration extremist who seemed to relish sticking a knife in DACA.”

TGL “didn’t even have the guts to do the job himself,” the New York Times Editorial Board reiterates, noting the diminutive Sessions did the dirty work TGL couldn’t stomach:

Mr. Sessions, a longtime anti-immigrant hard-liner, was more than up to the task. In a short, disingenuous speech, he said a program set up by President Barack Obama in 2012 — known as DACA, for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — was a lawless policy that “yielded terrible humanitarian consequences” and denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of American citizens. (Mr. Trump echoed these claims in a statement released by the White House.) Mr. Sessions called DACA “an unconstitutional exercise of authority” and said “failure to enforce the laws in the past has put our nation at risk of crime, violence and terrorism.”

False, false, false and false.

Some of it, right out of headlines at Breitbart, Mark Joseph Stern writes at Slate:

Sessions could have given a straightforward speech that criticized the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program’s alleged legal infirmities and urged Congress to legislate a solution. Instead, he slandered DACA’s nearly 800,000 recipients in nativist language with barely concealed racist undertones.

Not that we might have expected any better.

The Post, the Times, Slate and others decry the false narrative presented by TGL’s administration. DACA participants have to possess a near-spotless record to be accepted. The program President Obama announced in 2012 did not generate a surge in new immigration. That started in 2008. The notion that his actions were unconstitutional are “nonsense,” Ian Millhiser details at Think Progress:

It’s tempting to think of DACA as a single act of the executive branch — the government offers certain immigrants a package of benefits as part of a single, unified program. Legally, however, it is a mistake to envision DACA this way. The program offers its beneficiaries a basket of certain freedoms, including security against deportation, permission to work in the United States, and the opportunity to become eligible for Social Security and Medicare benefits after 10 years of working and paying taxes. So the proper legal question is whether the executive branch has the authority to offer each of these benefits on their own.

The question whether the executive can simply choose not to deport certain individuals turns out to be very easy. As the Supreme Court explained in Arizona v. United States, “a principal feature of the removal system [used to remove immigrants from the country] is the broad discretion exercised by immigration officials.” When confronted with an immigration who is eligible for deportation, executive branch officials still must decide “as an initial matter, must decide whether it makes sense to pursue removal at all.”

Even though some among its leadership on Capitol Hill support retaining the program, based on past experience this is a decision the Republican Party will come to rue, writes James Fallows at The Atlantic:

When listening to Sessions’s announcement, I could not help thinking of Pete Wilson, then governor of my home state of California, exulting over the passage of the state’s famous Proposition 187 in 1994. Wilson, a Republican, had tied his own reelection campaign to passage of Prop 187, which included a number of tough crackdowns on illegal immigrants. It passed; Wilson beat Kathleen Brown—Pat Brown’s daughter, Jerry’s sister—and stayed in office; “We won, you lost, get over it.” But then, as all chronicles of California politics attest, the “getting over it” involved not simply federal courts staying and eventually throwing out Prop 187 (as improper state interference with federal immigration law) but also the near extinction of the Republican Party as a force in current multi-ethnic California. In the nation’s most populous state, Republicans hold no statewide offices at all; make up less than one-third of both the state assembly and the state senate; and hold just over one-quarter of the state’s 53 Congressional seats (14 Republicans, 39 Democrats). And this is under a non-gerrymandered, “fair” redistricting plan.

The country doesn’t yet look like California, so the impact might not be as strong. Nevertheless, it could be a decision the GOP will come to regret. Not that TGL thinks that far ahead. Anthony L. Fisher writes at The Week that eliminating DACA is about TGL chalking up another “win” at others’ expense. Cruelty is his brand:

Trumpism is a zero-sum worldview — someone has to lose for someone else to win — and winning isn’t worth the effort unless your opponent isn’t merely defeated but also crushed.

But as enjoyable as crushing others’ dreams may be, TGL is faced with huge blowback, tremendous blowback from his DACA announcement. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg called the decision to end DACA “particularly cruel.” As we knew he would, TGL is already waffling.

Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can't, I will revisit this issue!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2017

It’s who The Great Leader is.

* * * * * * * *

Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

The media cycle

by digby

I am begging the media to finally stop this. It’s so destructive.

Trump does not deserve the benefit of the doubt. Ever. We know what he is. He will never change. Let’s just accept that move on. This constant need to turn him into a normal human on the part of the press is making things worse.

A tiny ray of hope

by digby

Election expert Dave Wasserman has some possible good news for Democrats:

Even with the political winds at their back, Democrats enter the 2018 congressional midterms at a historic geographic disadvantage. They also face demographic hurdles: Midterm electorates tend to be older and whiter than those that show up in presidential years. That’s part of the reason Republicans picked up so many House and Senate seats in 2010 and 2014.

But there is one crucial demographic dynamic working in Democrats’ favor: The 2018 midterms are poised to feature the most college-educated electorate in American history.

Almost exactly eight years ago, I argued that Democrats were in deep danger because 2010 could be the “Year of the Angry White Senior.” The premise was simple: Midterm elections had always skewed toward older voters, but never before had there been such a generational divide. In 2008, Barack Obama carried voters 18 to 29 by 34 percentage points but lost seniors by 8 points — a whopping 42-point gulf. Sure enough, Democrats’ young base stayed home in the midterms, and they lost 63 House seats.

Eight years later, there’s an analogous dynamic working the opposite way. Midterms have always skewed toward college-educated voters, but never before has there been such an educational divide, particularly among whites. In 2016, exit polls found that Donald Trump carried white voters with a college degree by just 3 percentage points, but won whites without a college degree by 37 points — a massive 34-point gap. By contrast, this gap was just 14 points in 2008.

This leaves Republicans dangerously exposed. Just as Obama’s legions of young supporters failed to show up at the polls for Democrats in 2010 and 2014, Trump’s base of whites without college degrees could leave the GOP stranded in 2018.

Midterm elections are almost always a referendum on the party in the White House. And although college-educated whites narrowly supported Trump over Hillary Clinton last November, there’s evidence they are now among his most intense detractors.

The most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal national survey found that whites with a college degree disapproved of Trump’s job performance 61 percent to 37 percent, with 51 percent strongly disapproving — a remarkable level of intensity for a group that he carried just 10 months ago. By comparison, non-college whites approved of Trump 56 percent to 38 percent, with only 27 percent disapproving strongly.

If numbers like these hold through November 2018, college-educated voters could swing hard toward Democrats at a time they represent a disproportionate share of the electorate.

Somewhat counterintuitively, the impact of these angry graduates won’t be felt only in highly educated districts. That’s because the story isn’t just about them. It’s just as much about their non-college counterparts dropping out of the electorate.

For example: If college graduates were to turn out at 80 percent of their presidential levels but non-college graduates turn out at only 60 percent of theirs — uniformly across all districts — the college-educated share of the electorate would actually go up by about the same amount in a district where 30 percent of voters hold degrees as it would in a district where 60 percent hold degrees.

That might help explain why so far in 2017, Democrats have made just as big strides — if not bigger ones — in special elections in blue-collar districts like Kansas’s 4th Congressional District and Montana’s at large seat as they have in highly educated, white-collar suburbs like Georgia’s 6th District.

Still, Democrats’ “diploma bonus” is likely to be partially offset by a transition to an older and whiter electorate in the midterms.

Of the two effects, the age dynamic has given them more trouble in the past. But Democrats can take solace that the partisan age gap may not be quite as wide as it was last decade: In 2016, exit polls found Trump performed 16 points better with voters 65 and older than he did among voters 18 to 29; back in 2008, Obama performed 21 points better with voters 18 to 29 than he did with voters 65 and over.

As for the racial dynamic, the impact of a whiter electorate could vary widely from place to place. That’s because while virtually every competitive district has a big share of whites without college degrees, many districts have only a small percentage of nonwhite residents. There’s evidence, moreover, that African-American turnout is slumping in the post-Obama era. Trump had a 92 percent disapproval rating among black respondents in the most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, but African-Americans make up a large share of the electorate in relatively few competitive House districts.

A bigger concern for Democrats plotting to take back the House could be Latino voters. Democrats are targeting seven GOP-held House seats in California and as many as five in Texas — two states with a high share of Latino voters. Together, that’s half of the 24 seats they need to win back the majority. Unfortunately for them, Latino participation in both states tends to plummet in midterm elections.

Last month, a political data journalism colleague asked me why the Cook Political Report continues to rate California GOP Rep. David Valadao’s race as “Likely Republican” even though Clinton won his district by 16 percentage points. The answer: His Central Valley seat holds twin distinctions as the least college-educated district in the country and the most Latino seat held by a Republican. In a midterm setting, that’s the worst of all worlds for Democrats — short on a voting group that tends to punch above its weight in midterms, and reliant on a group that tends to punch below its weight.

At the end of the day, however, the midterm education gap is more dangerous for Republicans because its impact could be so widespread. In 2016, Trump’s white working class “true believers” showed up, well, for Trump. He won’t be on the ballot in 2018. And the challenge of motivating these voters — who are typically less likely to vote in midterms anyway — could be compounded by Trump’s perpetual bashing of congressional Republicans who are on the ballot.

That could allow college graduates to power Democrats to big gains — at least until 2020, when the electorate’s structure shifts again.

Clinton carried all college educated voters by 9 points. If they are as appalled by Trump as the polling shows they are, maybe they’ll come out to vote. Assuming the voting systems are sound, it’s possible that this will be the kind of wave that wins the majority.

Everything argues against it because of all the gerrymandering and the fact that so many more Democratic Senators are up for reelection having won on Obama’s coat tails in 2012. But Trump is a cult at this point and the GOP congress is very unpopular with Republicans. His voters may very well stay home and unhappy college educated voters may come out in droves.

Let’s hope so. Validating this fascist regime at the ballot box in 2018 would a very, very big problem. Yuge. This is the first of two possible electoral chances to put the country back onto some semblance of normality. 2020 is the second.

It’s really not optional. The Democrats simply have to take one House of congress. They just have to.

.

He just can’t quit him

by digby

We all know that Trump can’t say a bad word about Vladimir Putin. Apparently Putin can’t say a bad word about Trump either:

Russian President Vladimir Putin refrained from criticizing U.S. President Donald Trump at a news conference in China on Tuesday, but said a decision to shutter Russian diplomatic outposts in the U.S. was poorly handled.

Speaking at a news conference during a summit in China on Tuesday, Putin dismissed as “naive” a question about whether he was disappointed in Trump.

In comments carried by Russian news agencies, Putin said Trump is “not my bride, and I’m not his groom.”

Asked how Russia would feel if Trump were impeached, Putin said it would be “absolutely wrong” for Russia to discuss domestic U.S. politics.

Russian officials cheered Trump when he was elected last year, and Putin praised him as someone who wanted to improve ties with Russia. However, further U.S. sanctions on Russia and the U.S. decision to close Russian diplomatic outposts have raised concerns that the two countries remain far apart.

The Trump administration last week ordered the closure of three Russian facilities in the U.S.: The San Francisco consulate and trade missions in New York and Washington. It was the latest in a series of escalating retaliatory measures between the former Cold War foes.

Putin said the U.S. had a right to close consulates but “it was done in such a rude way.”

“It is hard to hold a dialogue with people who mix Austria with Australia,” he continued, an apparent reference to a decade-old gaffe by George W. Bush, who during a 2007 visit to Sydney referred to Austrian troops when he meant Australian troops.

“The American nation, America is truly a great country and a great people if they can tolerate such a big number of people with such a low level of political culture,” Putin said.

Notice that he insults Americans for their “low level of political culture” but uses George W. Bush instead of the cretinous moron Donald Trump as an example. He’s obviously not ready to give up on his bff.

.

No they aren’t all criminals


by digby

It’s important that everyone does this:

.@HallieJackson educates Kris Kobach when he tries to smear DACA recipients as criminals https://t.co/qzE5dH8eCJ pic.twitter.com/WGzHAo7Axt— Leanne Naramore (@LeanneNaramore) September 5, 2017

Another step toward Making America White Again

by digby

A legal expert makes a good point about the supposed “principle” at work in Trump’s decision to destroy the lives of almost a million people:

It appears that President Trump will likely announce that in six months he will cancel Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the Obama-era program that enables people who came to the US without proper documentation as children to remain in the country to pursue an education and/or work. Ending DACA would be cruel and would betray Trump’s February assurance that he would “show great heart” to the hundreds of thousands of “Dreamers” who have relied on DACA. It would also display an incoherent approach to executive power, as can be seen by juxtaposing Trump’s apparent plan to end DACA with his administration’s SCOTUS brief in the Travel Ban litigation.

In the Travel Ban brief, the Trump administration argues for maximum discretion in construing the federal statute that authorizes the president to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate” whenever he “finds that” their “entry . . . would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” Various courts have found that Trump’s executive order was unconstitutional religious discrimination, but there is a threshold question whether it was statutorily authorized. The Ninth Circuit said no, because Trump did not provide a sufficient basis for its determination that the people whose entry the challenged Executive Order bars pose any threat or are otherwise “detrimental” to American interests. Findings of difficult conditions in the countries listed in the ban, the Ninth Circuit said, have no real bearing on the nationality-based ban. In its SCOTUS brief, the administration vigorously contests the Ninth Circuit reading of the statute, essentially arguing that the president’s say-so is enough to satisfy the statutory requirement of a finding.

Whether that argument prevails in the Supreme Court remains to be seen. Perhaps it will. Perhaps it won’t. Or perhaps the justices will find that the case is moot. Or perhaps they’ll find that the Travel Ban falls within the president’s delegated authority but that he exercised that authority unconstitutionally. For now, I simply want to make the point that the administration’s position on the statutory question in the Travel Ban case is more or less what one would expect from most administrations: presidents typically assert that acts of Congress grant them broad discretion.

Contrast that position with the view that Trump would be taking by canceling DACA after a six-month delay. The delay would enable Congress to enact DACA-like protections for Dreamers, which, presumably, Trump would sign. Why? If Trump disagrees with the policy of DACA, why kick it over to Congress? Why not just end DACA immediately?

One answer might be that Trump dislikes DACA on policy grounds but wants to make a deal with Congress: He would sign DACA-like legislation in exchange for funding of his border wall. Maybe, but that doesn’t quite explain why Trump would make this particular deal rather than some other deal that includes border wall funding. If Trump really dislikes the DACA policy, one would think that he would want to use something else as leverage to get border wall funding.

Meanwhile, many people on the right who don’t disagree with DACA as a policy matter have nonetheless opposed DACA on separation-of-powers grounds. The president, they say, has a duty to enforce the immigration laws and DACA doesn’t satisfy that duty. Is this Trump’s position?

Possibly, but if so, that is a very peculiar position for his administration to take. It amounts to saying that the immigration laws constrain his prosecutorial discretion to withhold deportation, even as the administration says that the law at issue in the Travel Ban case maximizes his discretion.

That’s not necessarily a contradiction, to be sure. It’s possible for one statute to confer broad presidential discretion and another statute to constrain presidential discretion. But color me skeptical about the possibility that the Trump administration’s positions with respect to DACA and the Travel Ban reflect careful and disinterested parsing of the wording of the respective statutes.

There is a much simpler explanation: Notwithstanding the occasional claim that President Trump wants to show “heart,” his administration will invoke whatever views of statutes and executive power maximize cruelty towards the foreign nationals he and his supporters most despise.

I won’t even bring up the pardon of that sadistic “lawman” Joe Arpaio which was a big “fuck you” to the courts and the rule of law. Sessions was all for it.

Trump and Sessions and the people who back them are dangerous racist fascists. And the only people who can stop them at this point are just as bad. They had their chance to fix this for the last five years and didn’t do it. DACA wouldn’t have been necessary if they’d passed Comprehensive Immigration Reform or the DREAM Act.

Maybe they’ll do it now. But I wouldn’t be too sanguine. So far they have not been able to show they can get anything done, much less something that their base hates with a passion. Does anyone believe that after the failure of Obamacare Repeal these people will legalize a bunch of Latinos?

Maybe they’ll surprise us. I certainly hope so. This is a nightmare.

.

.

Trump’s “big heart”


by digby

Well it’s official. Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions gleefully announced that the Trump administration is rescinding DACA because it’s bad that all those DREAM kids are stealing the jobs from Real Americans. Also too, he’s very compassionate.

It was a sickening moment, maybe the worst reminder of the travesty of that awful vote last November. This is a day that will live in infamy.

Before it happened, I wrote this for Salon this morning:

As I write this, we’re still awaiting word on President Trump’s final decision whether to deport nearly a million people who were brought to this country as kids. Of course I’m speaking of the DREAM kids who are Americans in every way but some technical paperwork.  Stipulating he could still change his mind, Politico reported on Sunday night that, the president had decided to end the DACA program but allow those young people to stay and work in the country for another six months to allow the congress to act.

Some in the media are describing this as a sign that Trump really truly doesn’t want to do the dastardly deed because he has such deep feelings for the DREAM kids. After all, he told them that they could “rest easy” and said that he loves them because they’re kids and he has kids. So his delay in dealing with the issue and now possibly ending the program but tossing the hot potato to congress is a sign of his inner turmoil.

Let’s take a little look at some of the evidence of Trump’s “big heart” shall we? I won’t even go into the fact that he’s endorsed torture, beheading,”taking out” families, summary executions, police brutality, vigilantism, and nuclear war among other big hearted policy proclamations.

But for now, let’s just focus on a couple of aspects of his immigration policy to get a good idea of just how “conflicted” he really is.

He was a big fan of the notorious 1950s “Operation Wetback”, which deported over 1.5 million Latinos, some of them Americans. He’s especially enthusiastic about its policy of dropping people off as far from the border as possible with no money and no water.

During the campaign he said outright, “they have to go” when asked if the DREAM kids and their families could get a reprieve. He also said that he wants to end birthright citizenship:

“I don’t think they have American citizenship and if you speak to some very, very good lawyers — and I know some will disagree, but many of them agree with me — and you’re going to find they do not have American citizenship,”

He already ended the Obama era program aimed at allowing the parents of Americans to stay in the country under strict conditions. And he said during the campaign that the “anchor babies” would be deported with their parents.

And here is one of his standard quotes from the campaign trail in 2016 about the DREAM kids:

…Where is the sanctuary for American children? Where is that sanctuary? The dreamers we never talk about are the young Americans. Why aren’t young Americans dreamers also? I want my dreamers to be young Americans.”

After the election he seemed to back off his harsh stance. Nobody knows why but it’s a wee bit much to assert that this president, the man who ran on all those cruel policies, suddenly grew a “big heart.”

Neither is it likely that Trump suddenly gained a serious concern about constitutional questions of presidential authority with the DACA policy. That was the Republicans’ collective primal scream when President Obama enacted the policy and Politico reports that this is the excuse being put forth by his advisers.

Now, under normal circumstances the constitutionality of the order would be a legitimate legal argument. But as the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent pointed out on Monday, it holds no water when it comes to this administration. Trump doesn’t know the difference between the constitution and “The Art of the Deal” (which he also hasn’t read.) This is, after all, the man whose most notorious Executive Order was the unambiguously unconstitutional travel ban. In fact, he fired the acting Attorney General when she refused to enforce it. When it was blocked by the courts they revised it and when the revision was blocked he had a twitter tantrum which was used as evidence against him by the Federal Appeals Court when they ruled it unconstitutional:

The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017

People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017

No, the most likely explanation for Trump’s gyrations over DACA is that somebody whispered in his ear that these hundreds of thousands of decent, hardworking, taxpaying people would make excellent hostages to get a deal for his wall and some other expensive toys on their wish list. His hardline advisers like Stephen Miller and Jeff Sessions — and his base — are adamantly opposed. This is the source of Trump’s conflict.

You can see why he would be tempted by the idea of a “DACA for the wall” deal. It’s a perfect Trump boondoggle. He can get taxpayers to pay for something he promised someone else would pay for in exchange for something that shouldn’t cost anyone a dime. Indeed, the DACA recipients themselves contribute billions to the economy. It’s a neat scam.

If this becomes the deal, Democrats may be tempted to vote against it and let the Republicans fight it out. But I think they should probably offer to vote for it as long as it provides an iron-clad guarantee that the DREAMers will get a path to citizenship. They should take credit for it if it passes too, and run against Trump and the GOP for torturing these people for years before finally deciding they needed that stupid wall so badly they capitulated.

As for the Big Beautiful Wall, it will likely be yet another failed Trump development. It will have shoddy construction, cost overruns and will be falling down within a few years. It’s a daft proposal that everyone knows came out of his silly imagination one day and sounded cute on the stump. Trump’s even saying now that you have to see through it so you can tell if someone’s going to drop heavy bags full of drugs on your head. (I’m not kidding.) Maybe they can just tell him that the wall is invisible and that Mexico paid for it and save the money altogether.

Either way, getting citizenship for the 800,000 DREAM kids at long last will be worth it. If there’s one item that Democrats should back it’s this one. Don’t worry, it won’t help Trump. Everyone but the mainstream media and his followers know very well that he’s heartless. He just wants his wall.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/mexico/2017/08/27/willful-blindness-deportees-becoming-easy-prey-gangs-along-us-mexico-border

Fiery, furious tweets

by digby

This piece by Amy Davidson Sorkin in the New Yorker on the North Korea situation kind of ruined my morning:

It seems to have escaped Trump that matters with North Korea, never good, have deteriorated during his Presidency. What has changed is not the South’s “appeasement” but his heedless will toward escalation. That the people of Seoul, who have built up their city, and, over the years, their democracy, in the face of the spectre of war, might have their own definition of fortitude is an idea that he doesn’t seem able to grasp. (As the Times noted, Trump’s anger at South Korea appears to be connected to his anger over his so far unsuccessful attempt to rewrite trade deals with that nation—an issue that, one hopes, will not be entangled with the question of triggering a nuclear war.) Instead, last week, Trump said that he thought that Kim had begun to show “respect” for him. That boast was followed by North Korea’s firing of a ballistic missile on a flight path that took it over the Japanese island of Hokkaido. Trump responded by tweeting, “The U.S. has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years. Talking is not the answer!” What, again, is Trump’s answer? China, which quickly condemned the test, could certainly do more, but baiting its officials with talk of their “embarrassment” may not be the best mode of persuasion—unless Trump thinks that he has cowed President Xi Jinping into a state of abject respect for him, too.

“Mr. President, will you attack North Korea?” a reporter asked Trump on Sunday morning, as he was leaving church, a couple of hours after his tweets. He answered, “We’ll see.” By then, his national-security team had mustered, to deal with both Kim and, presumably, Trump. In yet another tweet, a little after noon, Trump said, “I will be meeting General Kelly, General Mattis and other military leaders at the White House to discuss North Korea. Thank you.” It is revealing that Trump still classifies John Kelly, his chief of staff, who, like James Mattis, his Secretary of Defense, is retired from the Marines, as a general and a military leader. And was that “Thank you.” directed at them? There are reasons it should be: within an hour of Trump’s rejection of talk last week, Mattis told reporters that “we’re never out of diplomatic solutions.”

Mattis was also asked, in a separate encounter with reporters last week, why he hadn’t quit working for Trump. “You know, when a President of the United States asks you to do something, I come,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s Republican or Democrat; we all have an obligation to serve. That’s all there is to it.” Mattis added that he had had arguments with Trump, he said, but “this is not a man who’s immune to being persuaded, if he thinks you’ve got an argument. So anyway, press on.” Press on, and hope, meanwhile, that President Trump will not press any buttons.

That whole scenario is just chilling.

Can’t someone make an argument that heshouldn’t be threatening North Korea in twitter for god’s sakes? This is insane.

.