Trump: ‘Emergency! Emergency! I Mean, If I Wanted to….’

After spending a week threatening to declare lack of a border wall a national emergency, President Trump backed off, saying he could do that if he wanted to, but he won’t do that just yet. There are two reasons for him to say that:

1. Diverting Army Corps of Engineers project money from disaster prevention and recovery for useless political promise fulfillment isn’t a good look; and
2. Democrats in the House and border landowners would tie him up in court well past 2020.

More:

“No ‘Emergency’ Will Allow Trump to Build His Wall,” Noah Feldman, Bloomberg

“Toddler-in-Chief Doesn’t Wanna ‘Do’ a National Emergency,” Claire Lampen, The Cut

“Bipartisan blowback hits idea of tapping Army Corps for wall money,” Annie Snider, Politico

“Texas Border Landowners Vow To Reject Buyouts For Trump’s Wall,” Nomaan Merchant, AP, via Talking Points Memo

“6 real emergencies that should be more important to Donald Trump than the wall,” Paul Brandus, USA Today

Related:

“That GoFundMe to build a border wall is issuing $20 million in refunds,” Taylor Hatmaker, Techcrunch

“A Border Is Not a Wall. It’s much more interesting.” Alexis C. Madrigal, The Atlantic

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Border Wall: Art of the Threat

After being schooled on TV by Nancy Pelosi, President Trump is conducting his latest extortion campaign via Twitter and White House Staff Creature Stephen Miller. The Trump Doctrine: Gimme $5 billion for my border wall, or else:

“If we don’t get what we want one way or the other, whether it’s through you, it’s through military, I will shut down the government.”

The deadline is Friday.

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Adiós blanco América cristiana

The United States is no longer a majority white, Christian country. At 45 percent of the population, white Christians are a shrinking demographic, and it’s obvious, hence the bitter backlash from many members of the group against the country’s increasing diversification.

“People fight like that when they are losing a sense of place, a sense of belonging, and a sense of the country that they understand and love. How do they reengage in public life when they can’t be the majority?” — Robert P. Jones, author of The End of White Christian America.

An Atlantic video.

Related:

“Trump can’t make America white again,” Eugene Robinson, Washington Post

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Trump Immigration Policy

Yesterday President Donald Trump announced his new immigration policy, which would restrict legal entry to the United States to highly-skilled, rich people who already speak English. If that policy had been in place in the past, Friedrich Trump, the president’s German-speaking grandfather, would never have landed in America, and his Scottish immigrant mother, a domestic servant, would have been denied entry. They were “legal” immigrants for the simple fact that they arrived at a time when there was no “illegal immigration” (for white people, anyway).

More recently, while Donald Trump’s two immigrant wives spoke some functional English when they arrived in the US, they were relatively unskilled, unless pouting and walking on a runway counts.

Even Trump policy advisor Stephen Miller, the anti-immigrant zealot and poetry-hating pest, is descended from low-skilled, impoverished  immigrant great-grandparents fleeing anti-semitic violence in Belarus. They arrived in New York Harbor aboard the German ship S.S. Moltke in 1903, the same year the plaque bearing the Emma Lazarus poem describing their plight was installed on the base of the Statue of Liberty, which welcomed them to the United States.

Deportation Force!

President Trump seems bent on fulfilling his campaign promise to round up millions of your neighbors and deport them. But how? The administration can appoint more administrative judges to rubber-stamp deportation orders, and private contractors can make a buck from imprisoning millions in new concentration camps, but who will round up all those people? Where’s the promised Deportation Force? How can you quickly recruit and hire 5,000 new Border Patrol agents and 10,000 more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents?

Easy. Just lower the standards. A Department of Homeland Security memo suggests ending polygraph and physical fitness tests and eliminating Spanish language skills from the entrance exams.

More:

“Trump administration moving quickly to build up nationwide deportation force,” David Nakamura, Washington Post

“To Detain More Immigrants, Trump Administration to Speed Border Hiring,” Vivian Yee and Ron Nixon, New York Times

Related:

“ICE immigration arrests of noncriminals double under Trump,” Maria Sacchetti, Washington Post

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Trump On Immigration

On Wednesday, Chinese clothing importer and GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump talked about immigration in Mexico and Arizona (aka Joe Arpaio‘s playpen). Mr. Trump’s immigration policy has not not changed; he is just saying different words. He may have tried out some of those new words on Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, but they dispute what was said during their closed-door meeting.

But there’s no mistaking what Donald Trump said in Phoenix. His Deportation Force would deport millions of people who have lived in the U.S. for years, breaking up families, destroying small businesses and agriculture, and hobbling the manufacturing and construction industries.

Most of the GOP’s hastily assembled “Hispanic Advisory Council for Trump” have since self-deported from the campaign, and RNC Hispanic media relations chief Ruth Guerra has resigned.

At the Phoenix rally, Rudy Giuliani and Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions sported “Make Mexico Great Again Also” baseball caps.

More:

“‘He Used Us as Props’: Conservative Hispanics Deplore Donald Trump’s Speech,” Alan Rappeport, New York Times

“‘No amnesty’: Trump vows to deport millions during ‘first hour in office,'” Rory Carroll, The Guardian

“Trump’s immigration speech decoded: What he said, what it means and how it would work,” Lisa Mascaro, Los Angeles Times

“Fact-checking Donald Trump’s immigration speech,” By Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Glenn Kessler,” Washington Post

Virginia KKK Backs Trump

The Imperial Wizard of the Rebel Brigade Knights of the Ku Klux Klan has endorsed Donald J. Trump as his choice for US President. “The reason a lot of Klan members like Donald Trump is because a lot of what he believes in, we believe in,” he told Richmond WWBT’s Chris Taylor.

More:

“Virginia KKK Leader Endorses Trump: ‘What He Believes In, We Believe In,’”Katherine Krueger, TPM Livewire

Related:

“David Duke Hails Donald Trump For Thwarting The ‘Jewish Supremacists Who Control Our Country,'” Brian Tashman, Right Wing Watch

“Klan’s Trump Fans Rip ‘Liberal Media’ For Making Them Look Too ‘Racist,’” Asawin Suebsaeng, Daily Beast

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New Crime: Flying While Bilingual

While his Southwest Airlines flight was at the gate at LAX two weeks ago, a college student called his uncle on his mobile phone and was promptly hauled off the plane. Why? He was speaking to his uncle in Arabic.

UC Berkeley senior Khairuldeen Makhzoomi was on a flight to Oakland on April 6 when he called his uncle in Baghdad to tell him about an event he attended in LA. A frightened passenger spoke with flight attendants, and Mr. Makhzoomi was escorted off the plane to a public area in the terminal, where security officers searched him. FBI agents arrived, spoke with him, determined he was no threat, and let him fly back home on Delta.

Mr. Makhzoomi has lived in the US since 2010. He is the son of an Iraqi diplomat who was imprisoned and killed by Saddam Hussein. Imagine what he must make of this LAX experience. He is the sixth Arab American thrown off a flight at a US airport in the past four months. How many Islamophobes have been removed from planes? Zero.

1,700,000 Arab Americans — and the world’s 300 million Arabic speakers — just got a message: don’t fly Southwest.

More:

“College Student Is Removed From Flight After Speaking Arabic on Plane,” Liam Stack, New York Times

“UC Berkeley student questioned, refused service after speaking Arabic on flight,” Maya Eliahou, Daily Californian

“Student who fled Saddam Hussein kicked off flight for speaking in Arabic,” Alix Culbertson, Daily Express

“UC Berkeley student removed from Southwest flight after speaking Arabic on plane,” Yanan Wang, Washington Post

Related:

“The unapologetic racial profiling of Muslims has become America’s new normal,” Haroon Moghul, Quartz

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Trump PAC: ‘Don’t Vote for a Cuban’

The white nationalist American Freedom Party‘s American National Super PAC has been robocalling voters with this message:“The white race is dying out in America and Europe because we are afraid to be called ‘racist.'” …. “Donald Trump is not a racist, but Donald Trump is not afraid. Don’t vote for a Cuban. Vote for Donald Trump.”

Un-American. Unconstitutional. Unacceptable.

Making people from a minority group wear identity badges, registering them in a database and tracking them. Denying sanctuary to refugees due to their faith traditions and returning them to deadly war zones. Closing houses of worship. Barring valid travelers from entering this country due solely to their religion.

That’s not America.

A man who grew up across the street from his German-American immigrant grandmother should know better. Even one who is an egocentric, bigoted, billionaire bully.

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