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Month: June 2019

More grotesque human rights violations at the border

Published by digby on June 26, 2019

More grotesque human rights violations at the border

by digby

Buzzfeed with new information:

When Department of Homeland Security inspectors visited several border facilities in the Rio Grande Valley earlier this month, they found adults and minors with no access to showers, many adults only fed bologna sandwiches, and detainees banging on cell windows — desperately pressing notes to the windows of their cells that detailed their time in custody.

The inspectors compiled a draft report, obtained by BuzzFeed News, that described the conditions as dangerous and prolonged. Some adults were held in standing room–only conditions for a week. There was little access to hot showers or hot food for families and children in some facilities. Some kids were being held in closed cells. There was severe overcrowding.

The draft report was written by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General and addressed to the acting DHS secretary, Kevin McAleenan. It comes after inspectors visited five border facilities and two ports of entry during the week of June 10.

It appears to have been sent to DHS officials last week for comments and requests for redactions before being released publicly.

“Specifically, we are recommending that the Department of Homeland Security take immediate steps to alleviate dangerous overcrowding and prolonged detention of children and adults in the Rio Grande Valley,” wrote Jennifer Costello, acting inspector general.

The review comes amid intensifying pressure aimed at DHS and US Customs and Border Protection officials after attorneys visited facilities and described rapidly deteriorating conditions, especially for children, as CBP struggles to cope with record levels of families and children crossing the border. The report itself makes a point to note that the Rio Grande Valley has seen a massive increase in families and children crossing the border over the past year and has the highest volume on the southwest border.

In a press call with reporters Tuesday, CBP officials pushed back against the claims made by the attorneys of the alleged filthy conditions for children at one facility near El Paso.

At three of the facilities in the Rio Grande Valley, unaccompanied minors and families had no access to showers, and children had only a limited change of clothes. At two facilities, children and families did not have hot meals until the week the inspectors arrived. The inspectors documented that the children were provided juice, formula, diapers, wipes, and snacks.

The inspectors said the overcrowding and prolonged detention for the single adults represented a security risk for detainees, agents, and officers. Adults purposely clogged toilets with Mylar blankets and socks in order to be released from their cells, while some refused to return to cells after they had been cleaned. Others tried to escape.

The inspectors reviewed Border Patrol data that revealed children were being held for long periods of time. The data showed that 826 of the 2,669 children held at the border facilities were in custody longer than the 72 hours mandated by court orders.

At the centralized processing center in McAllen, Texas, 165 unaccompanied children had been in detention for longer than a week as they awaited to be sent to shelters that care for immigrant kids. More than 50 of them were younger than 7 years old, and some of them had waited more than two weeks in border facilities.

The report noted that agents had tried to provide the least-restrictive setting possible for children, but “the limited space for medical isolation resulted in some [unaccompanied children] and families being held in closed cells.” (Last month, following the death of a 16-year-old boy in Border Patrol custody who had been diagnosed with the flu, many immigrants were quarantined.)

The dire conditions were not limited to families and minors.

Most single adults had not showered for nearly a month while in CBP custody, the report said. Instead, wet wipes were handed out to maintain hygiene. Many single adults were being fed only bologna sandwiches, leading to some having medical issues like constipation. In one facility, officials found some single adults in standing room–only conditions for a week while others were held in overcrowded cells for more than a month.

At one facility, officials ended their visit early because they were agitating the situation.

“Specifically, when detainees observed us, they banged on the cell windows, shouted, pressed notes to the window with their time in custody, and gestured to evidence of their time in custody (e.g. beards),” the report read.

Read the whole thing. But get prepared. You will be very, very angry when you finish.

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Rogue Superpower threatening nuclear war? That’s what it sounds like

Published by digby on June 26, 2019

Rogue Superpower threatening nuclear war? That’s what it sounds like

by digby


Yesterday:

U.S. President Donald Trump threatened on Tuesday to obliterate parts of Iran if it attacked “anything American,” in a new war of words with Iran which condemned fresh U.S. sanctions on Tehran as “mentally retarded.”

Today

President Trump said Wednesday that a war with Iran would not “last very long” or involve ground troops, as he seemingly dismissed warnings that limited U.S. military action could spiral into a larger conflict.

Trump reiterated his desire to avoid a war but said “we’re in a very strong position if something should happen.”

“It wouldn’t last very long, I can tell you that,” he said during a wide-ranging interview on Fox Business.

“I’m not talking boots on the ground,” Trump added. “I’m not talking, we’re going to send a million soldiers. I’m just saying if something would happen, it wouldn’t last very long.”

Trump also pointed to his decision last week to call off a military strike after Iran shot down a U.S. surveillance drone.

“I’ve been very nice to them,” he said. “They shot down our drone. I decided not to kill a lot of Iranians. I know a lot of Iranians. I like Iranians so much, and that plays into your decision, too. They’re human beings. They’re people. I didn’t want to kill 150 people.”

His comments come amid increasing tensions between the two countries and personal insults between Trump and Iranian leaders. They also come as some U.S. officials and national security experts warn that an administration can never be sure that a military action will not rapidly expand into a new war.

While military analysts assess that the United States would beat Iran in an all-out clash, Tehran possesses ballistic and cruise missiles, air defenses and proxy forces that could kill U.S. troops.

Jim Stavridis, a retired admiral, said Iran also has “exceptionally strong” asymmetric warfare capability, in which a belligerent in a conflict stands up to an opponent with greater abilities.

“Cyber, swarm small-boat tactics, diesel submarines, special forces and surface-to-surface cruise missiles are all high-level assets,” Stavridis recently told The Washington Post. “They are also very experienced at employing them in the demanding environment of the Middle East. They would pose a formidable challenge to U.S. forces, although we would ultimately prevail in any confrontation of course.”
[…]
In recent days, Iranian President ­Hassan Rouhani has described the White House as “mentally crippled” and denounced new sanctions against Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as “outrageous and idiotic.”

Trump on Tuesday called Rouhani’s comments “ignorant” and said that Iran does “not understand reality.” Any attack on “anything American,” tweeted the president, will bring “overwhelming” U.S. force and “obliteration” of some Iranian assets.

During Wednesday’s interview, Trump said he doesn’t think that Iran has “smart leadership at all.”

“Iran’s going down the tubes,” he said.

That’s very useful. Earlier today he also called the Iranian leadership selfish and stupid.

Let’s just hope that this exchange of personal insults serves to let the air out of this confrontation instead of escalating it.

It’s playground bullying with millions of lives at stake so it’s just crazy. But it’s all we’ve got.

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Trump’s legacy

Published by digby on June 26, 2019

Trump’s legacy

by digby



Following up on Tom’s post below, I wanted to post the picture for posterity. NYT:

MEXICO CITY — The father and daughter lie face down in the muddy water along the banks of the Rio Grande, her tiny head tucked inside his T-shirt, an arm draped over his neck.

The portrait of desperation was captured on Monday by the journalist Julia Le Duc, in the hours after Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez died with his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria, as they tried to cross from Mexico to the United States.

The image represents a poignant distillation of the perilous journey migrants face on their passage north to the United States, and the tragic consequences that often go unseen in the loud and caustic debate over border policy.

It recalled other powerful and sometimes disturbing photos that have galvanized public attention to the horrors of war and the acute suffering of individual refugees and migrants — personal stories that are often obscured by larger events.

Like the iconic photo of a bleeding Syrian child pulled from the rubble in Aleppo after an airstrike or the 1993 shot of a starving toddler and a nearby vulture in Sudan, the image of a single father and his young child washed up on the Rio Grande’s shore had the potential to prick the public conscience.

As the photo ricocheted around social media on Tuesday, Democrats in the House were moving toward approval of an emergency $4.5 billion humanitarian aid bill to address the plight of migrants at the border.

Representative Joaquin Castro, Democrat of Texas and the chairman of the Hispanic Caucus, grew visibly emotional as he discussed the photograph in Washington. He said he hoped that it would make a difference among lawmakers and the broader American public.

“It’s very hard to see that photograph,” Mr. Castro said. “It’s our version of the Syrian photograph — of the 3-year-old boy on the beach, dead. That’s what it is.’’

The young family from El Salvador — Mr. Martínez, 25, Valeria and her mother, Tania Vanessa Ávalos — arrived last weekend in the border city of Matamoros, Mexico, hoping to apply for asylum in the United States.

But the international bridge was closed until Monday, officials told them, and as they walked along the banks of the river, the water appeared manageable.

The family set off together around mid-afternoon on Sunday. Mr. Martínez swam with Valeria on his back, tucked under his shirt. Ms. Ávalos followed behind, on the back of a family friend, she told government officials.

But as Mr. Martínez approached the opposite bank, carrying Valeria, Ms. Ávalos could see he was tiring in the rough water. She decided to swim back to the Mexican bank.

Back on the Mexico side, she turned and saw her husband and daughter, close to the American bank, sink into the river and get swept away.

On Monday, their bodies were recovered by Mexican authorities a few hundred yards from where they were swept downstream, fixed in the same haunting embrace.

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Nobody knows the magic formula to beat Trump. A little humility is required right now

Published by digby on June 26, 2019

Nobody knows the magic formula to beat Trump.  A little humility is required right now


by digby

My Salon column this morning:

We are just hours away from the first debate of the presidential primary season. It’s hard to believe that four years have passed since the last round of primary debates. It feels like 40. But here we are, getting ready to embark on yet another presidential campaign featuring Donald Trump. And everyone on the planet has advice for the Democratic candidates about what they need to do to beat him. It may be the most annoying conversation in all of politics and that’s saying something.

The pundits are all dully blathering on about “lanes” again, extending the horserace metaphor to ridiculous lengths, as they did in the GOP primaries in 2016. So far they’ve declared the lanes to be “establishment,” “insurgent,” “youth,” “black vote,” and “working class.” And yes, they are meaningless, since the person who wins the nomination will have to take up big parts of all the “lanes.” But it makes it easy for pundits and analysts to drone on endlessly about polling despite the fact that there is very little chance this campaign will end up going the way they are predicting.

Former candidates have been all over TV the past week or so talking about what the candidates absolutely must do in these first debates which almost always comes down to “getting attention” and “being themselves.” I’m sure this is a very good idea but I’d guess that anyone who needs to be told this probably shouldn’t be running for president. In fact, they probably shouldn’t be in politics at all.

But of all the annoying advice inundating us in recent days, the most irritating has to be that coming from the Never-Trumpers. First, let me say I totally believe that they, like the majority of Americans, are desperate to defeat Trump, and I would never reject anyone who wants to enter the fray to make that happen. I’m not a Never-Trumper basher.  (Of course, I also understand that some of them have a lot to answer for in terms of how we got to this point and I look forward to the day when the Trump emergency has passed and we can sort all that out. If that day doesn’t come, we will have bigger problems to worry about.) I welcome them to the fight.

So, I hope they don’t take this the wrong way.  But they really need to zip it when it comes to harranguing Democrats about their primary. They particularly need to stop speaking to the Democratic base as if they are a bunch of fools who need remedial lessons in politics from Republicans who couldn’t stop Donald Trump from snagging the nomination right out from under them. They should know better than anyone that running against him is like running against an alien from outer space. There is only one race that Democrats and Never-Trumpers can look to for clues about how to defeat him and neither of them were successful so nobody has the higher ground here.

Here’s an example of the discussion from one of my favorite Never-Trumpers, strategist Rick Wilson, who is wildly entertaining and spot on about Trump:

I’m a Republican strategist who with others helped take 1100 seats from the Dems in the late 90s and 2000s, including in places like WA, VT, MA, and NY.

But by all means, preen and front when i tell you how to avoid getting your ass kicked. https://t.co/1R0o5pXkT2

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 20, 2019

I hate to preen and front, but it must be pointed out that the Republicans have only won the popular vote once in the last 31 years and the two other electoral college victories were more than a little bit suspect. 

Strategists in both parties have had big victories.  Again, nobody knows the magic formula that will beat Trump.

More importantly, Never-Trumpers telling Democrats what they shouldn’t be doing is even worse. It’s not just insulting, it’s also strangely naive in a way that explains why some of these folks were so surprised that a demagogic conman took out that venerable list of GOP All-Stars back in 2016, with none other than the odious Senator Ted Cruz being the last man standing. These are not normal times and simply assuming that the way for Democrats to win is to be more like pre-TrumpRepublicans is going to fall on deaf ears for good reason:

Telling Democrats to be more like Mitch McConnell in the same breath as saying they should stop talking about court packing and the electoral college doesn’t make sense. When they talk about those things they ARE being like Mitch McConnell. It’s not as if McConnell has ever hidden his agenda.

Former radio talk show host and prominent Never-Trumper Charlie Sykes wrote a snarky piece for Politico this week in which he laid out a long list of all the things the Democrats need to stop doing if they want to beat Trump. Unsurprisingly, it’s mostly standard hippie bashing, including admonitions not to “embrace the weird” which, coming from a Republican, is just a bit rich these days. He also says they should talk about Democratic priorities on issues like health care and immigration and abortion as if they are moderate Republicans. Indeed, it appears he thinks they should adopt Jeb Bush’s agenda from 2016 because that’s what Americans really want.

This line of argument will not convince any Democrats, whether they are leaning toward Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren or Andrew Yang.  I’m sorry, there is no Jeb Bush lane in the Democratic Party.

As this excellent post by Neil H. Buchanan at The Verdict legal blog points out, Never-Trumpers are “perfectly satisfied with the radical-right changes wrought by Republicans (and triangulating Democrats) over the past four decades…By contrast, it is on matters of process, not substance, that the anti-Trump right actually has a good point to make.”

In other words, their appalled reaction to the assault on the constitution and the political norms that make it possible for the system to function is where they have the power to make a difference. As Buchanan writes,  “American conservatives who are genuine “constitutional conservatives” understand that there are more important things than, say, the optimal design of the estate tax…If you are on the winning side in the fight to save our constitutional democracy, you can live to fight another day to attempt to reverse your losses in the fights over various substantive policies. But the opposite is not true, because if we lose the fight for our political system, there will be no more opportunities to fight for anything else.”

I know they want Democrats to beat Donald Trump. But Democrats have a large coalition that must be respected by their leaders. These Republicans should take their own smug advice and get off twitter and they’ll find that the Party is ideologically diverse and is also even more committed to defeating Donald Trump than they are.  Democrats will make their decisions accordingly.

But if there are Republicans and GOP leaning Independents who are appalled by Trump’s assault on the system and the GOP’s descent into madness, these Never-Trumpers could best contribute to this fight by helping them realize that stopping Trump means we’ll all live to fight each other on the issues about which we disagree another day.  There’s no guarantee of that if he wins.

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Small hands, smaller world view by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on June 26, 2019

Small hands, smaller world view
by Tom Sullivan


Asylum seekers arrive in Tijuana, Mexico (2018). Photo by Daniel Arauz via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

A father and daughter drowned June 23 trying to cross the Rio Grande into Texas from Mexico. Oscar Alberto Martínez and his two-year-old daughter Valeria made it across safely when he turned back to help his wife cross. Seeing him leave, Valeria jumped in after him. Martínez was able to reach her and put her inside his tee shirt to stay together, but the current swept away both to their deaths. They were found later face-down in shallow water, the girl’s arm still wrapped around her father’s neck.

The Salvadoran family had been unable to present themselves as asylum seekers at the U.S. border. The AP photo of their bodies, taken Monday, evokes the image of the three-year-old Syrian boy found washed up on the beach on the Greek island of Kos in 2015. Alan Kurdi’s attempt to flee Syrian violence with his family similarly ended in tragedy. They were hoping to reach Canada.

The Trump administration portrays refugees from Central America as criminals or economic migrants ineligible even to request asylum, much less win it. Its treatment of separated children held in appalling conditions in, essentially, concentration camps erected along the border testify to the cruelty of Trump’s myopic ethno-nationalism. But more regional forces are at work in driving people north from their homes. Migrants in the Americas are headed south as well.

A report from the Center for American Progress portrays the migrant flow as part of a hemispheric problem. The problem, Greg Sargent summarizes in the Washington Post, is much bigger than than the one at the U.S. southern border.

CAP reports “the movement of displaced persons within South America vastly exceeds northbound migration from Mexico and Central America toward the United States.” Over 1.3 million Venezuelan nationals have fled their homeland for Columbia, Peru, Argentina and Brazil. Once prosperous Venezuela’s economy is in collapse, making it “the No. 1 country of origin for those claiming asylum in the U.S.” In spite of branding the government of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro an oppressive dictatorship, Trump has increased deportations of Venzuelans.

Branding asylum seekers economic migrants fleeing local violence is oversimplified. They are fleeing deprivation.

“In the Northern Triangle—and in Guatemala especially—drought and crop disease have created an epidemic of hunger in communities that were already living at or near subsistence levels,” CAP finds. Climate change is disrupting regional agricultural patterns that once sustained many communities. “Drought and irregular rainfall—have increased food insecurity and devastated livelihoods across the region.” In the Caribbean Basin, Trump’s efforts to punish Cuba’s economy combined with more damaging hurricane seasons threaten to restart the flow of “boat people” to U.S. shores.

Sargent writes:

Those conditions could get worse. As the report notes, it’s plausible that future events — further political deterioration in Venezuela, a major climate disaster in Central America — could “significantly exacerbate migration dynamics in the Americas.”

This is a crucial point: It underscores the folly of imagining that tweaking a few laws, or making it harder to apply for asylum, or ramping up the cruelty, or building walls is enough to make a difference. The long-term challenges demand much more from us.

The Trump administration’s sticks-only approach adding to the humanitarian crisis on the border with Mexico is not only cruel, cost-ineffective, and failing. It is woefully inadequate to the task of preparing for and ameliorating what could become a hemisphere-wide and global crisis the acting president’s head-in-the-sandbox nationalism will not solve. Failing to assist neighbors to the south in addressing the drivers of migration is not American leadership, but retreat from it. The result will be greater instability across the hemisphere. And we already have more instability than we can manage sitting in the Oval Office.

Honk for Impeachment. Scream for Impeachment. #Impeachment Now! @spockosbrain

Published by Spocko on June 26, 2019

Honk for Impeachment! Scream for Impeachment. #Impeachment Now!

by Spocko

I made this 10 days ago, before Trump almost started a war with Iran. Now this is urgent.

Kelly, Mattis and McMaster are gone folks.  This is hair on fire time. There is no fire break.

When I see news media people calmly discussing war with Iran, I want to scream the tired scream of the Bush era.  “Where is the outrage?” which some fresh activist would ask when a new atrocity would happen.

The answer? Outrage fatigue. Too many mornings of looking at the news and wondering,  “What fresh hell is this?”

Then we had “no drama Obama.”  Relax. Adults are in charge. (Don’t ask about the drones. Don’t get pissed off at the bankers and prosecute them for their crimes. At least we don’t have W!)

We forgot how easily the media got pulled into accepting war, starting a war is exciting, but continuing war is boring. We mostly saw non-messy, non-bloody coverage of war.

It can happen again because we didn’t “De-Bushify” and “De-Cheney” the war pundits. We didn’t demand to cut the war machine funding.

We didn’t demand the news media stop having defense contractor employees (aka Retired Generals) on talking about missiles vs boots on the ground without telling us they make money when Raython’s or Blackwater’s stock goes up.  (Who was on from the companies that make money from peace?)

I won’t put this sticker on my car because there would be constant honking, I’ll put it on my laptop instead.

Trump has floated to the top of our political system like a swamp gas filled balloon. He stinks of rotting fast food. His inflated ego keeps him afloat. His team of sycophants, cowards and corrupt, greedy nut-balls keep people from puncturing his balloon.

There is a sickness in our country. We must stop Trump and the sickness he embodies.

Impeach.

When we fight, we thrive.

Impeach.

I made this at @BuildASign $2.54 each and free shipping. Get yours here. #ImpeachTrump (link)

There Are No Moderates in the GOP by tristero

Published by tristero on June 26, 2019

There Are No Moderates in the GOP 

by tristero

If you don’t follow politics regularly, you might be shocked by the dismissive attitude many of us — including me — have towards the GOP and their politics. You might think, “Not everyone is as bad and extreme as Trump.”

I’m sorry, but that just isn’t so. An overt white supremacist, Steve King, votes Trump 92% of the time.  So you’d think that a moderate like Mitt Romney would vote the Trump agenda far, far less. But that just isn’t so. Romney votes Trump an incredible 81% of the time. 

The “mainstream” GOP is simply insane right now.

We don’t need no stinkin’ exit strategies

Published by digby on June 26, 2019

We don’t need no exit strategies

by digby

The “Trump Doctrine” in a nutshell:

I think that says it all. Well, I would just amend it a tiny bit to say:

I don’t need a strategy. Beautiful letters will do.

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It isn’t just Trump. Duncan Hunter is a lowlife lawbreaker. His GOP constituents love him for it

Published by digby on June 26, 2019

Duncan Hunter is a lowlife lawbreaker.

by digby

His GOP constituents love him for it.

The Trump phenomenon is not confined to Trump.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) insisted it was all his wife’s fault.

When the California congressman and his wife Margaret Hunter were both indicted in August 2018 for alleged campaign finance fraud of $250,000, Rep. Hunter took to Fox News to chuck his spouse right under the bus just three days later.

“I’m saying when I went to Iraq in 2003 the first time I gave her power of attorney and she handled my finances throughout my entire military career and that continued on when I got to Congress since I’m gone five days and home for two,” Hunter said at the time. “She was also the campaign manager.”

“So whatever she did, that will be looked at, too, I’m sure,” he continued. “But I didn’t do it.”

On Monday, a new twist in the story emerged when prosecutors alleged in a court filing that in the years leading up to the charges, Hunter was engaged in a series of extramarital affairs.

In painstaking detail, the prosecutors laid out the ways in which Hunter repeatedlyspent donor contributions on five different women ever since he entered office in 2009. The following allegations are based on the Department of Justice’s filing.

The congressman spent thousands of dollars on the women, all of whom were lobbyists or congressional staffers. However, as the new court filing showed, those purchases and the interactions that came with them were far from professional.

Hunter’s donors unknowingly paid for drinks, food, a ski vacation, a road trip to the beach and hotel stays with the five women he was seeing on the side. They also paid for the Uber rides he’d take from the women’s homes after hooking up with them.

In one notable instance, Hunter even used a hotel room reservation his wife had booked to engage in one of the affairs.

According to the filing, Margaret Hunter had reserved a room at a Capitol Hill hotel from June 21 through 24 in 2011, but then rescheduled her flight to arrive in Washington, D.C. on June 22. Instead of cancelling the first night’s reservation, Hunter allegedly spent the night with a female lobbyist whom he’d been seeing since 2009.

Even before the prosecution’s latest accusations, it seemed like Margaret Hunter had had enough. Reporters noted that she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring on her way to court several weeks ago.

That’s when she switched the “not guilty” plea that she’d originally submitted with her husband to “guilty.”

Under Margaret Hunter’s new plea deal, she will cooperate with prosecutors and has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy, a charge for which she faces up to five years in prison.

Duncan Hunter’s defense lawyer, Gregory Vega, shrugged off the deal.

“At this time, that does not change anything regarding Congressman Hunter,” Vega, told the San Diego Tribune. “There are still significant motions that need to be litigated.”

Another mystery in the case remains unresolved. At the end of the filing, prosecutors mentioned a mysterious “clearly non-work related activity during (Duncan Hunter’s) get-togethers with his close personal friends.”

The document didn’t disclose what exactly that “potentially sensitive evidence” is because prosecutors said doing so “runs the risk of improperly tainting the jury pool before the trial begins.”

I have no doubt that the rightwingers will circle the wagons and say the wife is a liar and anyway she was asking for it. That’s very Trumpish too.

By the way, Hunter was at the White House today. And why not? The president himself broke campaign finance laws right in the oval office signing hush money checks to his porn star sex partner. Trump probably pulled Hunter aside and gave him a big “attaboy.” He like the son Trump never had.

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