The Weak And Vulnerable Always Get Preyed On... First

Not every child molester is a wresting coach or a Republican legislator. Yesterday, Michael Graball and Topher Sanders reported for ProPublica that the ICE prisons (redubbed "immigrant youth shelters") Trump is sending children, are a "gold mine" for predators. Are they sending Jim Jordan (R-OH) down to investigate? The way Trump's Gestapo (ICE) has kidnapped children and now unable to reunited them with their families is a human rights crime... and one of the most horrible things Americans have ever done to Americans, at least in my lifetime. And now we find out the the shelters-- which hold around 10,000 kids on any given day-- are being used as rape rooms by the Trump Gestapo.

Just five days after he reached the United States, the 15-year-old Honduran boy awoke in his Tucson, Arizona, immigrant shelter one morning in 2015 to find a youth care worker in his room, tickling his chest and stomach.

When he asked the man, who was 46, what he was doing, the man left. But he returned two more times, rubbing the teen’s penis through his clothing and then trying to reach under his boxers. “I know what you want, I can give you anything you need,” said the worker, who was later convicted of molestation.

In 2017, a 17-year-old from Honduras was recovering from surgery at the shelter when he woke up to find a male staff member standing by his bed. “You have it very big,” the man said, referring to the teen’s penis. Days later, that same employee brushed the teen with his hand while he was playing video games. When the staff member approached him again, the boy locked himself in a bathroom.

And in January of this year, a security guard at the shelter found notes in a minor’s jacket that suggested an inappropriate relationship with a staff member.

Pulled from police reports, incidents like these at Southwest Key’s Tucson shelter provide a snapshot of what has largely been kept from the public as well as members of Congress-- a view, uncolored by politics, of troubling incidents inside the facilities housing immigrant children.

...[I]mmigrant advocates, psychologists and officials who formerly oversaw the shelters say the Trump administration’s harsh new policies have only increased pressures on the facilities, which often are hard-pressed to provide adequate staffing for kids who suffer from untold traumas and who now exist in a legal limbo that could shape the rest of their lives.

“If you’re a predator, it’s a gold mine,” said Lisa Fortuna, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Boston Medical Center. “You have full access and then you have kids that have already had this history of being victimized.”

Southwest Key wouldn’t discuss specific incidents, but said in a statement that the company has a strict policy on abuse and neglect and takes every allegation seriously. HHS declined ProPublica’s requests to interview the refugee resettlement program’s director, Scott Lloyd. The agency released a statement saying it “treats its responsibility for each child with the utmost care” and has a “zero-tolerance policy for all forms of sexual abuse or inappropriate behavior” at the shelters.

...The reports also reveal dozens of incidents of unwanted groping and indecent exposure among children and teenagers at the facilities. Some kids fleeing threats and violence in their home countries arrived in the United States only to be placed in shelters where they faced similar dangers. In March, a 15-year-old boy at the Southwest Key shelter in Tucson reported that his roommate lifted up his legs as he was trying to go to sleep, made thrusting motions and said, “I’m going rape you.” And in late 2016, a 15-year-old at KidsPeace told police that another boy there had been forcing him to have oral sex. After an investigation, one teen was transferred to a more secure facility. (KidsPeace said it wouldn’t discuss specific information about kids in its care.)

While it’s difficult to get a complete count, the police reports show that children go missing or run away from the shelters roughly once a week. Several shelters, including Southwest Key's Tucson facility, have seen a significant increase in missing person and runaway calls since the start of 2018. St. PJ’s Children’s Home in San Antonio, which primarily cares for immigrant children, has had 26 such calls in the first half of the year, records show, compared to 14 for all of last year and nine for 2016.

...Many children have experienced traumatic events in their home countries, are desperate for stability after the long journey, and have little understanding of American laws-- all things that make them particularly vulnerable.

“When a perpetrator is trying to pick a victim they’re picking somebody that they think is less likely to report the abuse,” Chavez-Dueñas said. “Children and youth that are coming from outside of the country, that have no legal status here, that don’t speak English, that don’t have access to lawyers or people who can protect them-- they already might think they’re not going to be believed.”

In the back of their minds, she said, is the fear that speaking up could ultimately hurt their immigration case.

The worker who was convicted of molesting the boy in Tucson isn’t the only shelter employee to face criminal charges. Last year, according to court records, a youth care worker at a Homestead, Florida, shelter was sentenced to 10 years in prison after she sent nude photos of herself to a 15-year-old boy who had recently left the shelter and asked him for sex. In 2012, a case manager at a Fullerton, California, shelter was convicted of molesting several teenage boys when they went into his office for regular calls with family, court records show.

...At a Southwest Key shelter in Conroe, Texas, in May, a boy told a youth care worker that his mental health counselor brushed his shoulders, rubbed his arm and caressed his face while continually peeking out of the office’s blinds “as if he was checking to see if someone was coming.” The counselor began to unbuckle his own pants, but stopped, the police report said.

The boy later repeated the story to a state child welfare worker. The counselor was suspended during the investigation. But a more formal forensic interview didn’t take place until six days after the incident.

At that point, the police report said, the boy “made no outcry regarding any criminal offense” and the case was closed.

Waiting six days for a forensic interview is not on its face unusual, said David Palmiter, a psychology professor at Marywood University who has conducted forensic interviews of abused children. But he noted that the interview should be done sooner rather than later.

“Everything from legitimate confusion to some calculation of what the consequences could be or whether they would please or hurt the adults around them could impact the child,” he said. “There could be any number of reasons why the story changes.”

A large part of the current pressure on the shelters stems from a series of changes made by the Trump administration in how it handles unaccompanied minors, immigrant advocates say.

As part of an information-sharing agreement, the ORR is now required to provide Immigration and Customs Enforcement with potential sponsors’ names, dates of birth, addresses and fingerprints so that ICE can pull criminal and immigration history information on the sponsor, usually a family member, and all adult members of the sponsor’s household.

Officials say the vetting is being done to protect children. In one case a few years ago, the agency unintentionally turned teenagers over to a smuggling network that forced them to work on an egg farm to pay off their debts.

But immigrant advocates say the policy is deterring family members who are often undocumented from coming forward, leaving children to languish in shelters where they may become increasingly desperate.

Why did people work for Hitler's Nazi regime? Why do people work for Trump's? The people at the top can't do much without people at every level helping them. Can they? Just say NO. Tell your children to just say NO... even if the pay is good.

Now You Know Why Nobody Gives A Damn About Trump Banging Porn Stars

by Bob Lynch

Well, Monday was certainly a big day for all the straight, white, Christian, men in this country and there is no doubt that Mother allowed Mike Pence an extra ‘Nilla Wafer before his 8:30 bedtime. But for the rest of us it was an existential crisis.

I don’t mean that in the sense of the word that most pseudo intellectuals commonly associate with Sartre or Kierkegaard. I mean it in the literal sense in that it could means a potential end of existence for anyone that doesn’t check the aforementioned boxes.

This is no longer a game or a joke or hyperbole folks. Eventually they are coming for You and the shameless hoax of a Justice, that was only added to a long since cultivated list of judges from the despicable Heritage Foundation and various evangelical groups that have been positioning for this very moment since the day after Roe v Wade was decided, was added and nominated for precisely one reason.

He has been outspoken about the fact that a sitting president cannot be indicted at the obvious point in our country’s history where a sitting president absolutely needs to be indicted. Despite what noted condoner of sexual assault Jim Jordan, outright Nazi/whackjob Steve King, and DUI enthusiast Matt Gaetz will tell you about the Deep State, the real Deep State is every single member in the last 40 years of the GOP who sold their souls to make this moment happen and looked the other way...

To say this is a national disgrace is an actual disgrace to the word disgrace. This is a threat to the very fabric of American Democracy, every level of civil rights, and basic human decency.

We are now faced with a situation where we have a complicit Congress, a rubber stamp Senate and a Supreme Court that has now not only decided that the president can do whatever the fuck he wants under the guise of national security, but he also cannot be held accountable for any criminal liability. Even Erdoğan-- who just appointed his son-in-law finance minister-- had a tougher road to authoritarianism.

This is how democracy dies. Right out in the open. Nobody gives a shit about the Constitution anymore in the GOP. They are just handing out lifetime achievement awards to the corporate and Evangelical donors they have been beholden to ever since Nixon came up with the Southern Strategy.

But this time, they are gonna take us all down with them and not only do they not care, that’s the plan. Women’s rights? Bye. Gay rights? Ciao. Civil rights? Gone. Pre-existing condition? You’re on your own. Hablas Español? Adios. Environmental Regulations? Gutted. Assault Weapons as a fundamental “God Given” right? You betcha.

Look up Kavanaugh’s record and then ask me again why I’m still up at 5:30 in the morning on a Monday night and then editing it Tuesday morning watching Kavanaugh walk up the steps with Mike Pence and I’m about to puke.

There is no longer an outside chance that Trump just declares himself dictator or president for life, Congress goes along, and a Kavanaugh featured court decides it is ok for national security reasons. Who is gonna stop it? John Roberts? Samuel Alito who famously tried to deny that Citizen’s United wasn’t going to lead us to the exact position we’re in? Susan Collins? Chuck Fucking Schumer? Wake up people.

This is not Civil War, this is Infinity War. Half of us might be gone before this thing is over.

So much damage has already been done and the next stage will be exponentially worse. I say that only because I want people to be realistic, not disheartened.

No matter who you are or where you live, someone you know and someone you love will have their life permanently altered by this decision even if you don’t realize it. Democracy is a team sport.

There is only one option to even possibly put a stop to any of this, let alone roll it back. You have to vote Blue in every single race for any nominee for the House. People like Ted Lieu can actually make a difference if given a real chance to get into leadership positions. Meanwhile the GOP is wasting his time still talking about Hillary’s emails. Do not save your strength for the next battle. This is the ONLY battle.

Oh and also, the government of Thailand is rescuing children, that don’t even know how to swim, from underwater caves, and we don’t know where 3,000 kids are???

If we don’t win this one, no one should ever be proud to be an American ever again. Let’s just fold up the tents and go home. Change the name, declare bankruptcy. Wait, isn’t that exactly what Putin wanted in the first place??

I’m going to watch the France World Cup game. At least those people still give a damn.

The La Quinta Tour-- A Guest Post By Texas Gubernatorial Candidate Tom Wakely

-by Tom Wakely

On July 22nd I announced I was planning on running as an Economic Populist for Governor of Texas. On August 4th I set out on a 60 day tour of my state not only to introduce myself but to gain a better understanding of why people are not voting. You see, Texas is neither a red state nor a blue state; it is a no-vote state. When over 60% of registered voters aren’t voting, there has to be a reason and I wanted to find what that reason was. So to find exactly why people in my state aren’t voting and what would motivate them to get out an vote, I decided that the best place to start was to visit them where they work and play.

My first step was to map out a travel schedule and since I planned to drive the state I selected La Quinta Inn and Suites, a chain of low-cost limited service hotels, as the place where I would hang my hat each night. My travels would take me from south Texas to north Texas. From central Texas to east Texas and all points in between. I calculated I would put little over 3,500 miles on my vehicle in August, staying on the road for 20 nights. I estimated the travel costs at $1,500. I called a friend up in Austin and he funded my first month on the road.

Over that first month on the road, I talked to dozens of Texans each morning in the La Quinta hotel’s dining room where a free breakfast was served. I didn’t tell anyone I was running for Governor because I wanted to find out what they thought about politics in general and Texas politics specifically. I also wanted to find out if they voted or not. I think it is safe to say that the vast majority of folks I spoke to were registered voters but didn’t vote. When I asked them why they didn’t vote, the response was basically the same in town after town "why should I vote; my life wasn’t going to change." I also took the time that first month on the road to talk to the staff at each of the hotels I stayed at. No one I spoke to earned over $10 an hour and without exception, not a one of them told me they voted. When I asked them why, they told me basically the same thing the hotel guests told me, "why should I vote; my life wasn’t going to change." By the end of my first month on the road I estimate I talked to around 600 people; about 100 hotel employees and 500 guests.

My second month on the road took me back to the Texas/Mexico border towns I had already visited but also to many places I hadn’t been to since I was a child, cities like Amarillo, Lubbock and Abilene in the Texas panhandle. I also visited places I had never been to-- tiny communities like Goliad (pop. 1,900) and Garfield (1,700). Once again, I stayed in La Quinta hotels in or near the town I was planning to visit. I also added another venue to my tour-- Washaterias (for you Yankees, a laundromat). This time around, I told everyone I met that I was running for Governor on a platform of addressing income inequality in Texas. I told the folks at the hotel breakfast, the housekeeping staff, and the dozens of women I met in the washaterias that I was advocating for a $15 minimum wage and without exception, everyone I spoke to said "YES!" The only thing the women in the washaterias added to the conversation was "healthcare."

Now, like I said before, Texas is neither a red state nor a blue state; it is a no-vote state. The last time a Democrat was elected Governor of Texas was in 1991 when Ann Richards was elected. She served until she was beaten in the 1994 November general election by George Bush. That year a little over 50% of registered voters voted. Bush took a little over 53% of those voting and Richards took about 45%. But as a percentage of total registered voters in Texas, Bush took about 25% and Richards about 20%. It’s been downhill ever since for the Texas Democrat Party.

In 1998, Bush beat Gary Mauro to win a 2nd term as Governor. That year only 32% of registered voters voted. As a percentage of total registered voters, Bush took about 22% and Mauro received less than 10%. In 2002, Republican Rick Perry beat millionaire Democrat Tony Sanchez. That year, about 36% of registered voters voted. As a percentage of total registered voters, Perry took about 24% and Sanchez received about 12% of the vote. In 2006, Perry won a second term, beating Congressman Chris Bell. That year, about 33% of registered voters voted. As a percentage of total registered voters, Perry took about 13% and Bell received about 10% of the vote. The remaining votes were split between two Independent candidates, Carole Keeton Strayhorn and singer/songwriter Kinky Friedman. In 2010, Rick Perry won a third term, beating former Houston mayor, Bill White. That year, about 38% of registered voters voted. As a percentage of total registered voters, Perry took roughly 20% and White received about 16% of the vote. In 2014, Greg Abbott was elected Governor of Texas beating State Senator Wendy Davis. That year, about 33% of registered voters voted. As a percentage of total registered voters, Abbott took roughly 19% and Davis received about 13% of the vote.

Since 1998, on average, only about a 1/3 of registered voters in Texas are voting. Republicans have been winning with a little under 20% of registered voters voting for the party. Democrats have been losing with a little over 13% registered voters voting for them. Another way to put it, on average 80% of the state’s registered voters are either voting against the Republican candidate or not supporting the candidate but the Republicans are still winning; why? Because 87% of the state’s registered voters are either voting against the Democratic candidate for Governor or not supporting the candidate by not voting-- 87%-- that is amazing. It should also be noted that all of the Republican and Democratic candidates for Governor since 1998 have been wealthy lawyers with ties to the oil and gas industry, some with very deep ties. So, it seems that Republicans don’t mind voting for wealthy lawyers with ties to the fossil fuel industry while Democratic voters in Texas don’t like wealthy lawyers with ties to the oil and gas industry and don’t vote for them.

Does anyone see a pattern to the above?

So, this is where we are today. A cabal of three ultra-conservative white men came to power in 2014, in a political coup orchestrated by the Koch brothers among others. Texas has turned from a business conservative red state to a far-right inferno that makes Dante’s nine circles of Hell look like a walk through the park. Gregg Abbott, a neo-fascist is Governor. He has built what is effectively a police state in Texas. Dan Patrick, a conservative radio talk show host is Lt. Governor. A white supremacist, Patrick is the leader of the movement that effectively made being brown a crime in Texas. And finally, there’s Ken Paxton, our Attorney General. A champion of the Tea Party movement, Paxton is currently under indictment on felony charges for securities fraud.

I think it’s fair to say that since taking office Gov. Abbott, who has amassed a re-election war chest of over $41 million, has demonized pretty much everyone in Texas except for his base: white, conservative, evangelical Christians. He has painted a bull’s-eye on the backs of labor, women, refugees and immigrants, Hispanics and other minorities, the LBGTQ community, the poor in my state. His fervent support of Senate Bill 4 also known as the "show me your papers law" and which went into effect on Sept. 1st, effectively bans local law enforcement agencies from adopting patterns or practices that limit cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Sheriffs, police chiefs, and jail administrators face Class A misdemeanor charges and fines up to $25,500 if they violate the law by instructing officers not to inquire about a person’s immigration status or fail to comply with so-called detainer requests to transfer jailed immigrants to ICE custody. Just before voting on SB4, hard-line conservatives’ in the Texas legislature, led by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, amended its "show me your papers" provision to let police inquire not just about the immigration status of anyone they arrest but also to ask anyone who is being questioned if they are a U.S. citizen. What SB4 effectively does, like I said, is make being brown a crime in Texas. Add to all of this is Abbott’s love of guns. Under his leadership it is now legal in my state to open-carry every conceivable type of weapon from a sword to an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. Just recently a small heavily armed group of white men dressed in green battle fatigues surrounded the San Antonio city hall to protest the council’s decision to remove a confederate statue from a downtown park. The police could do nothing; the protesters were lawfully carrying.

Given all of the above, why in hell would I want to run for Governor? The answer is simple-- because I have to. When I was in seminary I came to know a man named Martin Niemöller. He was a Lutheran minister who became an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler. Niemöller spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps; imprisoned first in Sachsenhausen and then at Dacha. This anti-Nazi theologian summed up perfectly how I feel about Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, Ken Paxton and their tea-party brethren who have taken over the Great State of Texas. He said, "First they went after the Communists, and I did not stand up, because I was not a Communist. Then they went after the homosexual and infirm, and I did not stand up, because I was neither. Then they went after the Jews, and I did not stand up, because I was not a Jew. Then they went after the Catholics, and I did not stand up, because I was Protestant. Finally, they went after me, and there was no one left to stand up for me."

Our campaign for Governor will focus on 4 main issues. 1- Income inequality. I will fight for a raise in the state minimum wage to $15 an hour along with repealing Texas’s right-to-work laws. I also want to scrap the Texas business franchise tax system in favor of a Business Income Tax. It’s way past time for Texas’ largest corporations like IBM, Wal-Mart, ATT, Toyota, Dell Computer and Exxon, to start paying their fair share of taxes. 2- Healthcare. Texans need access to healthcare not access to health insurance. I will fight for the establishment of a statewide network of health clinics and hospitals similar in nature to the VA healthcare system that I am a part of. If you have health insurance through your employer and our happy with it-- keep it. If you have health insurance through the ACA and our happy with it-- keep it. For everyone else, the statewide network of health clinics and hospitals that I propose will be there for you. 3- Gun Violence Prevention programs. I will fight to ban the sale and possession of military-style weapons like the AK-47 and AR-15 in Texas. I will fight to repeal our state’s open-carry laws. I also support limiting the number of handguns and long guns that a person can lawfully own. In addition, we should require background checks at gun shows.  4- Global Warming. Through policies and practices like instituting a carbon fee on the burning of carbon-based fuels (coal, oil, gas), the carbon fee is at the core of my policy to reduce and eventually eliminat the use of fossil fuels whose combustion is destabilizing and destroying our climate. I will fight to ban fracking and flaring in Texas. I will work to see that scrubbers are installed on all cement factory smokehouses. These are all meaningful steps to mitigating the harmful effects of global warming.

On October 14th, I officially launch my campaign for Governor from a ranch in Blanco County (pop. 11,000). Though I will be running as a Democrat, our campaign is rooted in the Texas People’s Party which was founded in the 1890’s. The People’s party, which evolved from the Grange, the Greenback party, and the Farmer’s Alliance, became the most successful of the third-party movements in state history. Like the economic populist of old, who recruited from small farmers, sheep ranchers, laborers, and blacks our campaign will reach out to the 62% of non-voters in my state with a very simply message. To paraphrase Senator Bernie Sanders, we live in one of the richest state’s in the nation, the Texas economy is the 12th largest in the world but that reality means little because much of that wealth is controlled by a tiny handful of Texans. To quote him, “The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great moral issue of our time, it is the great economic issue of our time, and it is the great political issue of our time.”

What If You Could Get A Time Machine And Go Back To 1946 when Baby Trump Was In His Crib?

You remember Anne Frank, the Dutch girl with the diary during the German occupation of Amsterdam, right? She could be a 77-year-old woman living in Boston or Atlanta or Laguna Niguel today but she was denied a U.S. visa because she was Jewish and seen as a danger. Nice diary, though, right? Utah Republican, Jason Chaffetz, one of the most partisan hacks in Congress, announced yesterday that he's considering a bill to require presidents to undergo independent mental health exams. It has finally begun to dawn on Republicans that electing a mentally unbalanced narcissist and psychopath to the White House and then enabling him, is, to say the very least, not patriotic... and not safe. Yesterday Trump suddenly announced that he had dropped the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from the National Security Principles Committee and replaced them with neo-Nazi crackpot Steve Bannon.



I'm not an observant Jew but this past June I was in St. Petersburg, Russia-- a city with incredibly beautiful public buildings-- and I visited the Grand Choral Synagogue. It's the second biggest synagogue in Europe and was the first synagogue built in Russia's then-capital. It opened in 1893. My teenaged grandfather and his brothers and sisters left Russia in 1905 after a series of pograms had killed thousands of Jews across the country including in small, rural villages like the one his family lived in. When he got to St Petersburg to board a ship for America, the Grand Choral Synagogue was 12 years old. He wasn't any more religious than I am but he had never been in a grand building of any kind before. He prayed at the synagogue the night before leaving for America. When his ship got to New York only he and one brother were allowed, arbitrarily, to enter the U.S. 10 brothers and sisters wound up in Bahia and Recife in Brazil. Almost my whole family lives in Brazil and speaks Portuguese. The U.S. turned them away because Jews were looked down on and feared, the way Germans and the Irish and Italians and Chinese had once been looked down on and feared. Hours after Trump announced his ban on Muslims, a Texas mosque was burned down. It reminded people of when Hitler's and Goebbels' anti-Jewish rhetoric resulted in the burning of synagogues across Germany and Austria in 1938.



Trump has brought this back-- but for Muslims. And it started yesterday. Right after he was declared the winner of the presidential election, several state universities across the country-- including here in California-- wrote to their students studying abroad to warn them that once Trump took over the possibility of some of them not being allowed to re-enter the U.S. would be a real possibility. That started yesterday. Reuters reported that Trump included green card holders in his Muslim ban, in other words, barring legal permanent residents from returning to the U.S. The first report in yesterday's NY Times indicated that Friday night "refugees who were in the air on the way to the United States when the order was signed were stopped and detained at airports" and that the Trump Regime will be entangled in law suits immediately as a result.

The detentions prompted legal challenges as lawyers representing two Iraqi refugees held at Kennedy Airport filed a writ of habeas corpus early Saturday in the Eastern District of New York seeking to have their clients released. At the same time, they filed a motion for class certification, in an effort to represent all refugees and immigrants who they said were being unlawfully detained at ports of entry.

...It was unclear how many refugees and immigrants were being held nationwide in the aftermath of the executive order. The complaints were filed by a prominent group including the American Civil Liberties Union, the International Refugee Assistance Project at the Urban Justice Center, the National Immigration Law Center, Yale Law School’s Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization and the firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton.

The lawyers said that one of the Iraqis detained at Kennedy Airport, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, had worked on behalf of the U.S. government in Iraq for 10 years. The other, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, was coming to the United States to join his wife, who had worked for a U.S. contractor, and young son, the lawyers said. They said both men were detained at the airport Friday night after arriving on separate flights.

The attorneys said they were not allowed to meet with their clients, and there were tense moments as they tried to reach them.

“Who is the person we need to talk to?” asked one of the lawyers, Mark Doss, supervising attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project.

“Mr. President,” said a Customs and Border Protection agent, who declined to identify himself. “Call Mr. Trump[anzee].”

Trumpanzee has shut down the White House call-in lines but you can leave him a message at his hotels and other shady businesses. Most mainstream Jewish groups are horrified but, predictably, the very right-wing Zionist Organization of America is on Trump's side. ZOA's extremist president, Morton Klein (no relation) says his organization "is appalled that leftwing Jewish groups are wrongly analogizing this humane, reasonable, security-based draft Executive Order to U.S. restrictions in the 1930s on Jewish refugees fleeing from Nazi Germany. A ZOA official who had several relatives on the SS St. Louis is particularly offended that leftwing Jewish groups are attempting to analogize President Trump’s humane draft Executive Order to Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s refusal to allow the SS St. Louis, which was carrying over 900 Jews, land in the United States.  Europe’s Jews in the 1930s – 1940s had no safe zones to flee to: Britain had slammed shut the door to the area that is now the State of Israel. Most importantly, Jewish refugees posed no threat to the United States. No Jewish immigrants flew airplanes into buildings, or massacred scores of innocent people at a holiday party or nightclub or marathon or drive trucks into innocent citizens.

"As Homeland Security Committee Chair Congressman Peter King put it: 'in [previous] refugee situations [Bosnian refugees in the 1990s, Jew in the 1930s], the refugees coming were not a threat to the United States. . .  the Jews [in the 1930s] . . . should have been let in, because they were no threat to the United States, plus they needed, of course, the relief from the horror they were going through. In this case [Syrian refugees], we have no idea who we’re getting. And a lot of these refugees . . . were [already in Turkey and] going to Europe for economic gain. And, you can understand that, but do you open up all your borders, not knowing who’s a real refugee, who’s coming for economic reasons, and who is affiliated with ISIS?'... ZOA strongly praises President Trump for his wise and humane order that protects Americans."

Over the weekend, David Brooks compared Señor Trumpanzee to one of his own heroes, Ronald Reagan.

Trump is on his political honeymoon, which should be a moment of joy and promise. But he seems to suffer from an angry form of anhedonia, the inability to experience happiness. Instead of savoring the moment, he’s spent the week in a series of nasty squabbles about his ratings and crowd sizes.

If Reagan’s dominant emotional note was optimism, Trump’s is fear. If Reagan’s optimism was expansive, Trump’s fear propels him to close in: Pull in from Asian entanglements through rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Pull in from European entanglements by disparaging NATO. It’s not a cowering, timid fear; it’s more a dark, resentful porcupine fear.

We have a word for people who are dominated by fear. We call them cowards. Trump was not a coward in the business or campaign worlds. He could take on enormous debt and had the audacity to appear at televised national debates with no clue what he was talking about. But as president his is a policy of cowardice. On every front, he wants to shrink the country into a shell.

J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, “A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a shortcut to meet it.”

Desperate to be liked, Trump adopts a combative attitude that makes him unlikable. Terrified of Mexican criminals, he wants to build a wall that will actually lock in more undocumented aliens than it will keep out. Terrified of Muslim terrorists, he embraces the torture policies guaranteed to mobilize terrorists. Terrified that American business can’t compete with Asian business, he closes off a trade deal that would have boosted annual real incomes in the United States by $131 billion, or 0.5 percent of G.D.P. Terrified of Mexican competition, he considers slapping a 20 percent tariff on Mexican goods, even though U.S. exports to Mexico have increased 97 percent since 2005.

Trump has changed the way the Republican Party sees the world. Republicans used to have a basic faith in the dynamism and openness of the free market. Now the party fears openness and competition.

Brooks frets that his party has fundamentally changed and he pinpoints that change to when "Trump became the Republican nominee and his dark fearfulness became the party’s dark fearfulness. In this case fear is not a reaction to the world. It is a way of seeing the world. It propels your reactions to the world. As Reagan came to office he faced refugee crises, with suffering families coming in from Cuba, Vietnam and Cambodia. Filled with optimism and confidence, Reagan vowed, 'We shall seek new ways to integrate refugees into our society,' and he delivered on that promise. Trump faces a refugee crisis from Syria. And though no Syrian-American has ever committed an act of terrorism on American soil, Trump’s response is fear. Shut them out... A mean wind is blowing."

A few minutes ago a liberalish friend of mine called to complain about how Trump is destroying our relationship with Mexico, causing unnecessary tension and anxiety and creating negative feelings for no reasons. When I brought up the horror at the airports he said he doesn't care about "fucking Muslim terrorists from Somalia." We're doomed. I read him Pastor Martin Niemöller's famous little homily after he was freed from a Nazi concentration camp.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Don't let Trump divide us. Please speak out. Loudly. Clearly. wo of the first congressional resisters to jump into action yesterday were Jerrold Nadler and Nydia Velazquez who traveled to JFK airport to demand the release of the dozen refugees being held under Trump's unconstitutional executive order. They got one of them-- an Iraqi who fought for the U.S.-- released quickly and were still working to free the other 11 as I wrote this. Nadler's and Velazquez's statement:

Today, we saw in real human terms the damage and the absurdity of Trump’s policies. The president’s executive order is mean-spirited, ill-conceived, and ill-advised. The order almost banned a man from entering the country who has worked for the United States government for 10 years, who risked his life to help us and to help our troops, and who loves our country. Thankfully, we did not sit idly by. We took action. We demanded his release, and the release of the others who are being unlawfully detained. We are pleased to announce that Hameed Khalid Darweesh has been released and can now be reunited with his family.

This should not happen in America. We shouldn’t have to demand the release of refugees one by one. We must fight this executive order in the streets, in the courts, anywhere, anytime. We must resist. We must fight.  We must keep working to keep America the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Constitutional Crisis Already

Three federal judges, one in New York, one in Alexandria, VA and one in Seattle all handed down rulings blocking Trump's unconstitutional orders to detain Muslim visa and green card holders at airports. Bannon had the Department of Homeland Security issue a statement that they would continue implementing Trump's illegal order. (A 4th federal judge, in Boston, has since weighed in that Trump's orders to ban legal immigrants is unwarranted and he blocked it pending further hearings.) Bannon's defiance: "The president's Executive Orders remain in place-- prohibited travel will remain prohibitted, and the U.S. government retains the right to revoke visas at any time if required for national security or public safety."