Trump And His Walls

I wonder if adolescent Trump was ever a stamp collector. Most Americans who know of the existence of Spanish Sahara (1884-1975) only know about it as a part of their collections. It's a big, mostly empty territory south of Morocco and north and west of Mauritania, bordering on a stretch of the Atlantic Ocean. A tiny corner touches southwest Algeria. Today it is a 100,000 square mile-- around the size of Colorado-- disputed area with about half a million people, 40% of whom live in the only real city, Laayoune. The main claimants are Morocco and the Polisario Front, which set up a government-in-exile as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic in Tindouf, Algeria. North of the Spanish Sahara, south of Agadir on the Moroccan coast is a 580 square mile enclave called Ifni (which is also best known in America to stamp collectors). About 50,000 people live there, primarily in Sidi Ifni. Spain occupied it in 1476 but abandoned it after fierce resistance from the locals. Spain reoccupied it in 1859 after a short war with Morocco, but ignored it until 1934. It was reoccupied by Morocco on 1957 and reintegrated into Morocco in 1969.

Today Spain has to tiny enclaves-- basically smuggling ports-- on the north coast of Morocco, Ceuta and Melilla. The Sahara Desert-- 3,600,000 square miles, about the size of the U.S.-- stretches from what was until 1975 the Spanish Sahara and Morocco through Mauritania, Mali, Algeria, Tunisia, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Libya, and Egypt.

I've been visiting Morocco since 1969 and had started wandering south of the Atlas Mountains in the 1990s. A couple of different times Roland and I drove as far south as Moroccans roads would go, once to Sidi Ifni on the coast and once to M'Hamid on the edge of the Sahara. We rented some camels and a guide and set off for the legendary Timbuktou. We never got close and turned around and headed back for M'Hamid. Years later we made it to Mali, went to Timbuktou and hiked north to trade with Tuaregs in the desert. Another time we took a Nile cruise, got off halfway, got on some camels and rode out into the Libyan Desert, an extension of the Sahara. In all the Sahara desert is about 3,000 miles from east to west, a thousand miles longer than the U.S. border with Mexico.

So why bring all this up? Trump told the Spanish government-- which hasn't been able to finish building a modern freeway from Madrid to Barajas Airport-- to build a wall across the Sahara to stem the migration of Africans across the Mediterranean Sea and on into Europe. The Guardian reported that Josep Borrell, Spain's foreign minister, revealed that during a visit to the White House by King Felipe and Queen Letizia in June, Señor Trumpanzee made his crackpot proposal. When someone mentioned that the Sahara is 3,000 miles long, Trump dismissed the objection by stating flatly that "The Sahara border can’t be bigger than our border with Mexico." Of course, there is no "Sahara border" and what does it have to do with Spain anyway? Spain has been overwhelmed by over 33,000 refugees getting across the Mediterranean to its shores this year, more than have come via Italy or Greece.

The migration issue has been used as a political weapon by rightwing parties who have been accusing Spain's socialist government-- and the EU-- of being too soft on immigration. None of those parties, however, have embraces Trump's insane scheme, which everyone in Europe is laughing about. Meanwhile, Trump was whining and pestering congressional Republicans about not including his own idiotic wall on the Mexican border in the budget.

Trump pressed fellow Republicans in Congress on Thursday to “get tough” and push to fund his proposed border wall in the current spending bill, raising the specter of a government shutdown when funding lapses later this month.

In a post on Twitter, Trump called the bill “ridiculous” for not including funds for a planned wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, and blamed Democrats for blocking it in the plan passed by the Republican-controlled Senate on Tuesday.

The Senate-approved massive spending package included a provision to fund the federal government through Dec. 7 in an effort to avoid a government shutdown when funding ends Sept. 30.

The move gives lawmakers more time to finalize plans for next year’s spending, and avoids potentially angering voters who could be left without services from federal agencies weeks before the Nov. 6 congressional elections.

Republicans, who are seeking to keep control of both chambers in the November election, narrowly control the Senate with 51 seats against 49 for Democrats, and need Democrats’ support to pass any spending legislation.

The spending legislation must pass the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives before it can be signed into law by Trump.

Trump has previously threatened to let the government shut down on Oct. 1 if he does not get money for the border wall.

“I want to know, where is the money for Border Security and the WALL in this ridiculous Spending Bill, and where will it come from after the Midterms? Dems are obstructing Law Enforcement and Border Security. REPUBLICANS MUST FINALLY GET TOUGH!” Trump said on Twitter.

Trump is seeking to make good on a key campaign promise to build the wall, but had long pledged that Mexico-- not U.S. taxpayers-- would fund it, something Mexico has refused to do. He has now, instead, turned to Congress for support.

Trump Decides To Repay Loyalty With Deadly Indifference-- Not Just In West Virginia, But In Afghanistan Too

US soldier in Afghanistan, questions captive with the help of an Afghan translator

My friend Sonia, a Holocaust survivor and author of over 40 books, is writing a new one now about a torn-apart family of Afghan refugees who are living in the Bay Area in the late 1970s. After two long stays in Afghanistan in the 1960s and '70s, I too was living in the Bay Area when her book is set. And in the same scene-- the Mabuhay Gardens punk rock scene-- her protagonist gets involved with. So I'm helping Sonia create the back story to give her characters context.

I've been traveling since I was a kid, when I ran away from home one Easter and hitch-hiked to Florida as a dress rehearsal for a summer escape to Tonga via California. International travel is in my blood. The countries I like to visit multiple times aren't about the shopping opportunities or great restaurants or beautiful scenery; the big factor is always the people. All told, I spent nearly a year in Afghanistan because I thought the people were so awesome-- so independent minded, so-honor bound and loyal and so true to their moral code. I've been back in touch with that code again-- Pashtuniwali-- because of Sonia's book.

Yesterday I saw a disturbing report from NPR that Afghans who worked with U.S. forces have been told they can no longer apply for special visas. Many of these people are in mortal danger because they helped the U.S. and were explicitly promised sanctuary in America in return for their aid.

On Thursday, the U.S. State Department announced that it expected the visas to be depleted by June 1 and that "No further interviews for Afghan principal applicants ... will be scheduled after March 1, 2017."

NPR's Quil Lawrence reported, "The Special Immigrant Visa program was designed to reward Iraqis and Afghans who help U.S. forces at war, but it's been plagued by a lengthy vetting process and changing politics in Washington."

The special visas also apply to spouses and children of people who worked as translators, drivers and other staff for the U.S. military and other agencies.

...Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said in a statement that "It is no exaggeration to say that this is a matter of life and death as Afghans who served the U.S. mission continue to be systematically hunted down by the Taliban. The number of visas needed for those in danger far surpasses what's provided in this bill."

Shaheen, a Democrat, has partnered with Sen. John McCain, a Republican, to push for the program to continue, and both have condemned what they see as a shortsighted policy of limiting visas, making it more difficult for the U.S. government to persuade local allies to work with them.

"It's not just a quid pro quo, 'Hey you help me out [and] I'll help you get to America,' " Marine veteran Zach Iscol told Quil. "It's taking care of those who took care of us when we were in their country."

Last month the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan asked Congress to send more troops to Afghanistan, where American soldiers have been assisting Afghan security forces since the U.S. formally ended its combat mission in 2014 and are increasingly drawn into battle there.

There are currently 8,400 U.S. service members deployed to Afghanistan.

Last year, nine former Iraqi translators sued the federal government over delays in the program. Some had been waiting five years or more to get an answer about their visa applications.

Mac McEachin of the International Refugee Assistance Project, which has helped Afghans apply through the special visa programs in both Afghanistan and Iraq, said in a statement that he believes allowing the program to lapse could affect U.S. operations outside the two countries.

"This news deals our ground efforts an especially harsh blow, as it comes on the heels of the announcement that troops from the 82nd Airborne will be deployed to Syria," he wrote. "Now that the world has seen how we turn our backs on our Afghan allies, there is almost no chance that local allies in Syria will be inclined to work with us."

The collapse of the U.S. special visa program is part of a larger closing of U.S. borders to people fleeing war and political violence.

What's most repulsive about Donald J. Trump is that he is utterly devoid of any sense of honor or human dignity. He's an amoral monstrosity-- a true American Psycho-- who lured voters with fake promises and is now leaving them high and dry. In West Virginia, he promised help with the opioid epidemic that is killing thousands of people. Now he's all about making deals with the criminal PhRMA corporations that are preying on West Virginia Trump supporters. That's who he is. The very idea of a lowlife like Trump honoring the commitments America has made to Afghans who risked their lives for our troops is at odds with the ugly essence of this ugly, despicable, dishonorable man.

Trump Doesn't Understand The American System Of Government And Bannon Is Encouraging Him Towards Tyranny

I'm hearing anecdotal evidence from all over the country that people are tense and disturbed and attributing their change in mood to Trump. I know it sounds unbelievable-- and maybes' just people I know-- but everyone sounds on edge. People are seeing psychiatrists and self-medicating and getting off the wagon and everyone seems nervous and depressed... Have you seen any of that too? I don't mean the freaks on the right descrating Jewish cemeteries or burning mosques or starting fights (or even Mika Brzezinski); I'm talking about normal regular people-- neighbors, friends, relatives, random folks who aren't even that involved with politics.

I'm proud to say I serve on the board of People For the American Way with Khizer Khan, an American citizen for over 3 decades who takes the Constitution super-seriously. According to multiple reports he was told his "freedom to travel abroad" is "under review" and had to cancel appearances in Toronto this week. Silver lining: maybe Trump will be impeached even sooner than anyone expected. You remember him right? He's the Muslim American Gold Star father who aroused Trump’s ire and the Democratic National Convention when he spoke about his son, U.S. Army Capt. Humayun S.M. Khan, being killed in combat in Iraq. According to Rosa Hwang, a senior producer at CTV National News, Khan cancelled a speech he was scheduled to give in Toronto after being informed that his travel privileges are "under review."

"This turn of events is not just concerning to me, but to all my fellow Americans who cherish our freedom to travel abroad. I have not been given any reason as to why." None of us have but this comes just as so-called-president Trumpf signed his second attempt at a Muslim Ban Monday morning behind closed doors.

Farhana Khera president of a civil rights legal organization, Muslim Advocates, and Jonathan Swift, the organization's legal director, penned an OpEd for the NY Times that ran a few hours ago, pointing out the new ban's fatal flaw: "it constitutes unlawful religious discrimination."

Let’s be clear: This revised order is a Muslim ban. All the countries he has excluded are more than 90 percent Muslim. Three of them-- Iran, Somalia and Yemen-- are more than 99 percent Muslim. Even though Mr. Trump tailored his order to survive legal challenges, as his former adviser Rudolph Giuliani conceded on national television, his objective is clearly to exclude Muslims.

The Trump administration argues that the ban protects the country. Yet by excluding Iraq from the order, Mr. Trump has cleared travel from one of the two countries from which Islamic State terrorists operates. Moreover, the Department of Homeland Security concluded last month that “country of citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential terrorist activity.” Former national security officials from Democratic and Republican administrations have made clear that the January order does not make our country safer. Instead, the bigotry that Mr. Trump spews at news conferences and on Twitter have been a boon for terrorists’ recruitment efforts.

The twisted worldview does not match reality. Muslims have been part of America for centuries, since the first slave ships arrived in the 17th century. Today, Muslims represent 1 percent of the United States population: They are our teachers, doctors, neighbors and co-workers.

American Muslims will suffer a particular harm from this executive order: Those who have ties to the banned countries won’t be able to see their family members and close friends. American Muslims will also be deprived of the instruction from the leading Islamic scholars who are from those countries.

Thousands of Muslim men and women serve in the armed forces; many have given their lives defending our nation and our ideals. They contribute to the diversity that has always been our nation’s pride and strength. President George W. Bush paid tribute to this in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks when he said, “There are thousands of Muslims who proudly call themselves Americans, and they know what I know-- that the Muslim faith is based upon peace and love and compassion.”

President Trump and his top advisers would be wise to listen to President Bush. The Muslim ban and President Trump’s relentless attacks on Islam are not just an assault on thousands of patriotic, innocent Americans-- they violate our Constitution and our most fundamental American values and beliefs.

Joan Walsh, writing for The Nation asserts, correctly, that the real goal of the travel ban is to make America white again. Bannon, she wrote, insists Muslims don't have the right DNA for democracy.

Lindsey Graham must have enjoyed being booed in Clemson Saturday, because it sounds like he wants more of the same, announcing that he backs Trump's unconstitutional travel ban and congratulating him for exempting people with visas, green card holders and people from Iraq. I'm sure there are other Republicans in the same unconstitutional camp as ole Lindsey. But that's very different from what I'm hearing from Members of Congress who actually take the Constitution seriously. Ted Lieu (D-CA) was the first Member I saw putting out a statement after word leaked out that Trump had signed the ban this morning.

25 days after his first unconstitutional immigration ban was rejected by the courts, Donald Trump has signed a new executive order that is-- once again-- as harmful as it is incompetent. This monumental waste of federal resources is wrong on all levels-- strategically, morally, and from a national security perspective.

Trump’s Muslim Ban 2.0 is nothing short of a strategic failure. A leaked DHS report from his own cabinet called citizenship from the banned countries an unreliable indicator of threat. If the banned countries in question are such a threat, then why does this second ban arbitrarily drop the nation of Iraq? And why does the ban go into effect on March 16th?  Where’s the urgency in that?  This second executive order just makes zero sense.

As studied by the CATO Institute, the chances of being killed by a refugee committing a terrorist act is 1 in 3.6 billion. For perspective, the chances of being struck by lightning twice is 1 in 9 million. That’s why members of Trump’s own administration recognize that banning women and children fleeing from terrorist groups isn’t just morally bankrupt-- it’s bad for national security. It hands our real enemies like ISIL and al-Qaeda a powerful recruiting tool and undermines our relationships with partners abroad.

Trump is quick to tweet about who is American and who is un-American. As an immigrant, veteran, and member of Congress, I can tell you there is nothing more un-American than undermining our fundamental value of accepting those who are fleeing tyranny, those who want to start a better life in the United States. This order is based on bigotry and must-- once again-- be opposed.

Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) rfeel the same way. "Barring people based on their nation of origin or the religion they practice isn’t just a policy change-- it’s a tacit admission by our new president that he is incompetent to lead in ways his predecessors were not," he said in a statement for his constituents. "And to be clear, the only difference between this Muslim ban and the last one-- which was found unconstitutional by four federal judges-- is the time Trump and his cronies spent scheming up a plan to get it past our legal system. Regardless of how successful they are at side-stepping the judicial branch’s rightful check on executive power, they cannot implement this ban without Congressional Republicans providing funding. It remains to be seen if the GOP will stand by our Constitution, our separation of church and state, and the international order that hinges on American leadership, or if they will vote to rubberstamp this president’s hateful agenda and wrecking ball diplomacy. I will fight this Muslim ban and every other corrosive policy Trump pursues that betrays who we are as a people and leaves our nation fundamentally less safe."

Mark Pocan (D-WI), who represents the Madison area, tried to clam the people in his district impacted by this. "Although Steve Bannon didn’t write this new Muslim ban in the dead of night," he said, "it does not mean the ban is any less harmful to America and our image around the world. Rehashing this hateful and divisive travel ban not only sends the wrong message to immigrants and refugees, it also makes our country less safe. The President should be focused on helping working families struggling to make ends meet, not waging an unconstitutional war on our core American value of freedom from persecution and discrimination. I will stand alongside the people of my district and fight with my colleagues in Congress against this prejudice and division. My office will continue to work to support residents and visitors experiencing difficulties as a result of the travel ban while the courts ultimately decide the fate of this unconstitutional ban."

Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL), the congressman who came up with the idea to boycott the Trumpanzee inauguration, issued a statement an hour after Trump made his move:

This is just the same stuff on a different day. If you called xenophobia a rose, would it not smell just as foul? Our President, who clearly has a hard time distinguishing facts from fiction, is continuing to take us down the wrong road, the road away from security, morality, and prosperity.

 As I said in January, the President should have faith in the strength of our own country and the vitality of her citizens and culture. A nation of 300 million people that has blazed a trail for the world for more than 240 years can withstand 50,000 or 100,000 moms, dads and children fleeing for their lives. We always have and we always should.   The poem on the Statue of Liberty says “I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” not “We are scared of you, come back later when we feel better.”

One last congressional reaction-- Pramila Jayapal from Seattle, who's been fighting this kind of ugly, divisive bigotry all her life:

The president has been forced to recognize-- through the clear signal sent from several courts and in our streets-- that his original travel ban was both unconstitutional and ineptly executed. The new order recognizes that we must honor the visas of those who already have been given clearance to come to the United States, as well as expressly excludes legal permanent residents and dual citizens from the ban. It also excludes Iraq from the list of countries, another clear sign that such a ban would hurt our coalition efforts for peace in the Middle East. It should not have taken the courts and nationwide protests to stop such an order from taking effect in the first place. The president was irresponsible in throwing the country into chaos and putting fear in the hearts of millions of families across our country and world.

  Unfortunately, however, the president’s Muslim Ban 2.0 is driven by the same xenophobic priorities that wreaked havoc at airports around the nation and led to the shameful detentions of innocent men, women and children. It continues to single out Muslim majority countries only, drastically limits and suspends refugee resettlement, and deeply affects our relationships with countries around the world. It continues to do nothing to make our country safer, alienates our allies and gives extremists propaganda for recruitment.

President Trump is once again attempting to shut America’s door to immigrants and vulnerable refugees who are fleeing war-ravaged countries. This ‘do-over’ order still has consequences that stretch far and wide and hurt our national security. It is still extremely ill-conceived and paints wide swathes of people and countries with negative stereotypes that have little to do with a logical plan for peace and security in our country. We will continue to work in the courts and in the streets to stop this administration-- as we have done before.

The thermometer just above and to the right... that leads to the ActBlue page we've put up for the most outspoken and effective leaders of The Resistance inside Congress. These are the most crucial voices in Congress... because this Know Nothing fanatic isn't on the side of America:

Trump Is Already At Odds With His Own Cabinet-- And #PresidentBannon Is At Odds With The World

Bannon has a 19% approval rating. Only a third of voters approve of him being on the National Security Council

In the Time cover story this week about #PresidentBannon, there was a quote from an interview with former Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro on his old boss: "He is legitimately one of the worst people I've ever dealt with. He regularly abuses people. He sees everything as a war. Every time he feels crossed, he makes it his business to destroy his opponent," a sentiment that was echoed by conservative commentator Dana Loesch, a former Breitbart employee. "One of the worst people on God's green earth." Today Homeland Security Secretary, retired General John Kelly, is on Bannon's enemies list. Josh Rogin reported in the Washington Post over the weekend that when Kelly decided to defuse the Trump executive order-incited chaos at the nation's airports last weekend by issuing a waiver for lawful permanent residents, a.k.a. green-card holders, "Bannon paid a personal and unscheduled visit to Kelly’s Department of Homeland Security office to deliver an order: Don’t issue the waiver."

Kelly, according to two administration officials familiar with the confrontation, refused to comply with Bannon’s instruction. That was the beginning of a weekend of negotiations among senior Trump administration staffers that led, on Sunday, to a decision by Trump to temporarily freeze the issuance of executive orders.

The confrontation between Bannon and Kelly pitted a political operator against a military disciplinarian. Respectfully but firmly, the retired general and longtime Marine told Bannon that despite his high position in the White House and close relationship with Trump, the former Breitbart chief was not in Kelly’s chain of command, two administration officials said. If the president wanted Kelly to back off from issuing the waiver, Kelly would have to hear it from the president directly, he told Bannon.

Bannon left Kelly’s office without getting satisfaction. Trump didn’t call Kelly to tell him to hold off. Kelly issued the waiver late Saturday night, although it wasn’t officially announced until the following day.

That did not end the dispute. At approximately 2 a.m. Sunday morning, according to the two officials, a conference call of several top officials was convened to discuss the ongoing confusion over the executive order and the anger from Cabinet officials over their lack of inclusion in the process in advance.

On the call were Bannon, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, White House Counsel Donald McGahn, national security adviser Michael Flynn, Kelly, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State designee Rex Tillerson, who had not yet been confirmed.

One White House official and one administration official told me that Kelly, Mattis and Tillerson presented a united front and complained about the process that led to the issuance of the immigration executive order, focusing on their near-complete lack of consultation as well as the White House’s reluctance to make what they saw as common-sense revisions, such as exempting green-card holders.

Bannon and Miller pushed back, defending the White House’s actions and explaining that the process and substance of the order had been kept to a close circle because the Trump administration had not yet installed its own officials in key government roles and other officials were still getting settled into place.

...The weekend’s events were the first major dust-up between the White House political leadership and the powerful figures Trump has appointed to head the national security bureaucracies. The Cabinet members stood up for themselves and their agencies and successfully pushed for a policy tweak that the administration later embraced in a memorandum to “clarify” the executive order.

The Cabinet members also demonstrated that they had something to offer the White House besides their policy input; they are the most credible spokespeople for controversial White House policies in the eyes of the public. On Tuesday, Kelly gave the White House badly needed political cover by holding a press conference and strongly defending the immigration executive order.

“This is not, I repeat, not, a ban on Muslims,” Kelly said. “We cannot gamble with American lives. I will not gamble with American lives. These orders are a matter of national security, and it is my sworn responsibility as secretary of homeland security to protect and defend the American people,” he said.

The Post later reported that now the State Department has also pushed back about Bannon's attempt to push his own destructive and calamitous agenda forward. While Trumpanzee-- high on Adderall-- was tweeting childishly that a "so-called judge" was encroaching his power, the now confirmed Rex Tillerson ordered that previously banned travelers will be allowed to enter the country in line with the orders of the federal judge in Washington state who blocked enforcement of President Trump’s unconstitutionall immigration ban.

“We have reversed the provisional revocation of visas under” Trump’s executive order, a State Department spokesman said Saturday. “Those individuals with visas that were not physically canceled may now travel if the visa is otherwise valid.”

Department of Homeland Security personnel “will resume inspection of travelers in accordance with standard policy and procedure.”

Immigrant advocates said they were encouraging travelers from the affected countries to get on planes as soon as possible, since the Trump administration has said it plans to appeal the stay on the travel ban.

Bannon is flipping out and has insisted that the Justice Department go to court immediately to get Judge Robart's ruling overturned. This is complicated by the entire Republican Senate being down in Florida for a fundraiser with multimillionaires and billionaires who grease the wheels of their reactionary politics. Yesterday was the first day the Senate could have voted to confirm Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary. There's a 50-50 split and Pence will cast the deciding vote for DeVos. But, were Sessions to be confirmed as Attorney General he wouldn't be able top vote and DeVos would't get confirmed. Ergo: another self-inflicted Trumpanzee Regime mess.

Robart has been on the bench since 2004, and was nominated by President George W. Bush.

“This ruling is another stinging rejection of President Trump’s unconstitutional Muslim ban,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “We will keep fighting to permanently dismantle this un-American executive order.”

Robart granted a request from attorneys for the state of Washington who had asked him to stop the government from acting on critical sections of Trump’s order. Justice and State department officials had revealed earlier Friday that about 60,000-- and possibly as many as 100,000-- visas already have been provisionally revoked as a result of Trump’s order. A U.S. official said that because of the court case, officials would examine the revoking of those visas so that people would be allowed to travel.

The State Department said it is still working with other government agencies and the organizations that process refugees overseas to comply with the judge's order. That means the action does not immediately help those approved for resettlement or those seeking approval.

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson (D) hailed the case as “the first of its kind” and declared that it “shuts down the executive order immediately.”

Robart said in his written order that U.S. officials should stop enforcing the key aspects of the ban: the halting of entry by refugees and citizens from certain countries. He did not specifically address the matter of those whose visas already had been revoked.

Following the ruling, government authorities immediately began communicating with airlines and taking steps that would allow travel by those previously barred from doing so.

At the same time, though, the White House said in a statement that the Justice Department would “at the earliest possible time” file for an emergency stay of the “outrageous” ruling from the judge. Minutes later, it issued a similar statement omitting the word “outrageous.”

"Outrageous" had been inserted by Bannon. Meanwhile Trump was sulking on Twitter, grousing that "certain Middle-Eastern countries agree with the ban," referring to the brutal fascist dictators in the region he admires. "They know if certain people are allowed in it’s death & destruction!"

President Bannon Vs IQ Clusters... And, Yes, He Does Need Senate Confirmation

A NY Times editorial last night was entitled President Bannon and just blasted Trump's top advisor, neo-Nazi Steve Bannon. "[W]e’ve never witnessed a political aide move as brazenly to consolidate power as Stephen Bannon," they wrote-- "nor have we seen one do quite so much damage so quickly to his putative boss’s popular standing or pretenses of competence." And it's probably going to get much, much worse. Unless... well, according to section (a)(6) of federal statute 50 U.S. Code 3021, a civilian like Bannon actually does need to go through Senate confirmation in order to serve on the National Security Council because he doesn't fit into any of the five listed pre-approved categories for membership. That obscure law, which has remained obscure because no president has ever tried to put a political hack on the NSC until now, was dug up by Jonathan Alter late night. A well-placed Senate staffer on the Republican side of the aisle I talk to regularly told me this morning that the chances of Bannon being confirmed by the Senate are zero. "Everyone hates him; it wouldn't even be close."

But a new executive order, politicizing the process for national security decisions, suggests Mr. Bannon is positioning himself not merely as a Svengali but as the de facto president.

In that new order, issued on Saturday, Mr. Trump took the unprecedented step of naming Mr. Bannon to the National Security Council, along with the secretaries of state and defense and certain other top officials. President George W. Bush’s last chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, was so concerned about separating politics from national security that he barred Mr. Rove, Mr. Bush’s political adviser, from N.S.C. meetings. To the annoyance of experienced foreign policy aides, David Axelrod, President Barack Obama’s political adviser, sat in on some N.S.C. meetings, but he was not a permanent member of the council.

More telling still, Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Bannon to the N.S.C. “principals’ committee,” which includes most of those same top officials and meets far more frequently. At the same time, President Trump downgraded two senior national security officials — the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a role now held by Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., and the director of national intelligence, the job that Dan Coats, a former member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and former ambassador to Germany, has been nominated to fill... In giving Mr. Bannon an official role in national security policy making, Mr. Trump has not simply broken with tradition but has embraced the risk of politicizing national security, or giving the impression of doing so.

...As his first week in office amply demonstrated, Mr. Trump has no grounding in national security decision making, no sophistication in governance and little apparent grasp of what it takes to lead a great diverse nation. He needs to hear from experienced officials, like General Dunford. But Mr. Bannon has positioned himself, along with Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as the president’s most trusted aide, shutting out other voices that might offer alternative views. He is now reportedly eclipsing the national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

While Mr. Trump long ago embraced Mr. Bannon’s politics, he would be wise to reconsider allowing him to run his White House, particularly after the fiasco over the weekend of the risible Muslim ban. Mr. Bannon helped push that order through without consulting Mr. Trump’s own experts at the Department of Homeland Security or even seeking deliberation by the N.S.C. itself. The administration’s subsequent modifications, the courtroom reversals and the international furor have made the president look not bold and decisive but simply incompetent.

Bannon is widely seen as the hand behind Trump's hated and unconstitutional executive order to ban Muslim refugees, an order that stirred up exactly the kind of anxiety and strife Bannon was aiming for. Bannon isn't interested in "IQ magnets." (Watch the short video below.) Republicans want more Betsy DeVos policies to dumb-down the country, making people susceptible to demagogues like Trump. A few days ago we mentioned that when injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty and delineated urbanologist Richard Florida's views about how Trump's anti-refugee and anti-immigrant stances will be catastrophic for the economic well-being of the nation. Yesterday, writing for The Atlantic, Florida's piece, How Trump Threatens America's Talent Edge went into far greater detail and is worth considering. Right from the twitter storm we considered a few days ago, Florida starts out reminding his readers that "Trump's executive order on immigration threatens what goes to the very core of America's innovative edge: the ability to attract global talent. Even if the ban is lifted, the damage has been done. Global talent has been put on alert."

America’s science and tech edge has long been fueled by the talented immigrants it attracts from across the world. Immigrants have played an incredibly important role in America’s high-technology competitiveness. Foreign talent makes up a huge share of America’s science and technology workforce, and from a third to half of the founding teams of significant U.S. technology startups.

The reality is that high-skilled immigrants can choose where to go. For decades, they’ve picked the United States and those choices have benefitted us. But they can just as easily pick other places. More than a decade ago, in my book The Flight of the Creative Class, I pointed out that efforts to restrict the flow of immigrants to the United States would have serious economic consequences. This was a smaller threat a decade or two ago, when global competitors were less established. The U.S. could rest on its “talent laurels."

But today, there are a handful of countries and dozens of global cities with great universities that can effectively compete for high-skill immigrants. Countries like Canada and Australia have come to understand the economic advantages of attracting immigrants and have upped their efforts to attract top talent from around the globe.

A recent National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by Sari Pekkala Kerr, William Kerr, Çaǧlar Özden, and Christopher Parsons drives this point home. They outline how the U.S. has fallen behind in attracting immigrants and how much it benefits from their dense clustering in knowledge-based cities and metros like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the Boston-New York-Washington Corridor.

An especially worrying trend the study points out: Even before Trump, the U.S. has been losing the competition for talent. The chart below is a bit wonky but it tells the tale. It compares the share of immigrants with high school educations in 1990 to the share in 2010 across a whole bunch of countries.

The countries that are above the line—like Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Norway and yes, even Mexico, have grown their share of more highly educated immigrants. The U.S. is the big dot that sits below the line; its share of more educated immigrants has fallen relative to other nations. Trump’s immigration crackdown comes at the worst possible time for America’s ability to attract global talent.

The map below shows the extreme clustering across the Bos-Wash Corridor, along the West Coast from Los Angeles and Southern California to the Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest as well as Chicago, Miami, and the border areas of Texas and Arizona. The darkly shaded places in the interior of the country are largely college towns, which have long functioned as key immigrant gateways, in effect comprising the Ellis Islands of our time. Immigrants not only cluster geographically, but by occupation and industry-- for example computer scientists and software engineers in the Bay Area or mathematical finance whizzes in Manhattan, magnifying their positive impacts, as the study notes.

As the authors point out, immigrants to the United States haven take home larger shares of Nobel Prizes; they’ve won half of the nation’s Fields Medals for outstanding achievements in mathematics and a third of its Man Booker prizes for literature. And of course, America’s science and tech workforce broadly depends on the considerable numbers of highly educated foreign students it attracts in fields computer science, software engineering, math, and other science and engineering fields.

Indeed, by declaring war on sanctuary cities, Donald Trump has effectively declared war on half the U.S. economy. Cutting of federal funding would hurt these cities drastically. But harming their economic output could even more disastrous for the U.S. economy writ large.

The metro areas encompassed by the fifteen sanctuary cities below make up 45 percent of the entire U.S. economy, according to data put together by my colleague Steven Pedigo, who heads up the Urban Lab at NYU’s Schack Institute of Real Estate.

Immigrants benefit the U.S. enormously-- but they no longer need to come here. Global talent is already heading to cities and nations outside the United States. The Trump administration’s moves to limit immigration pose a deep threat to America’s ability to attract global talent, to its innovative prowess, and ultimately, to the living standards of its people.

Resistance, California-- Winter, 2017... Ted Lieu, Jimmy Gomez

Late yesterday-- just as 4 Senate Democrats were voting with the Republicans to shut down the filibuster that could have stopped Tillerson's confirmation-- Ted Lieu offered a theme for the resistance: "We should not give him a chance to govern. I believe he is a danger to the Republic." Trump's neo-Nazi supporters are going bonkers over Ted's ability to rally opposition against their Führer. These two tweets should give you an idea of the kind of reaction Ted is getting for his courageous stands:

Ted needs allies-- allies in committee meetings, allies on the House floor, allies when he's leading the resistance to Trump the way he did at LAX this weekend. I'm guessing that's why one of the first members of Congress to endorse Jimmy Gomez was... Ted Lieu. My district is right between Ted's congressional district and Jimmy's assembly district. I know them both well enough for dinners, lunches and intense conversation. When Ted was in Sacramento in the state legislature, he was the best member. Best? Why the best? Because he got the tough jobs done everyone else was afraid to tackle. He took that experience with him to Congress, immediately got elected by his peers freshman class president and is one of the most effective members of Congress now. And guess what-- today, Jimmy Gomez is the best member of the Assembly for the same reason-- taking on tough issues other members don't even understand and working and working and working until he puts together the coalitions that will pass them-- like an effective way to make climate change legislation work for people who can't afford to buy a Tesla and like an effective way to make Family Leave legislation work for the women who need it most, not just people making over $80,000 a year.

And guess who was at LAX this weekend, besides Ted, working diligently to free Trump's prisoners and. This is Jimmy:

Look, CA-34 is a solid blue district. Republicans don't even bother running around here. The district gave Hillary a massive 83.6% to 10.7% landslide over Trump. Voters rejected Trump by an even greater number than they rejected Romney by. After all, Romney got a full 14% in 2012. Although there are a couple of creeps running who are being financed by the anti-union charter school interests, most of the two dozen candidates know what to say to appeal to the voters. There are at least 4 people claiming they're Bernie candidates. But there's only one who's been getting Bernie's agenda passed in Sacramento. And that's Jimmy Gomez.

Ted's district is CA-33. If Jimmy wins the primary in April, his district will be CA-34. These guys are going to make a powerful bloc in L.A., not just of candidates who vote well, but candidates who understand what moving and shaking means. Today Jimmy, who had just been endorsed by the Nurses Union and the Electrical Workers Union, told voters in the district that "Trump’s executive order targeting immigrants and refugees on the basis of religion and national origin is unconstitutional, and it outrages me. It tramples on our American values of freedom of religion and equality and I will not stand for it-- and I hope you won’t either. On Saturday night, I went to LAX in solidarity with the protestors and to tell to our Muslim and immigrant communities here in California and across the world: You are not alone. We stand with you, and as the son of immigrants I will join my fellow Americans in fighting for you and your rights."

Ted's parents came to the U.S. from Taiwan. Jimmy's parents came here from Mexico. Both Ted and Jimmy embraced the American dream with fervor and both are dedicated and sincere public servants. "In California," said Jimmy as part of his statement about Trump's unconstitutional refugee executive order, "we don’t just tolerate diversity. We celebrate it and we know it makes our communities and our economy stronger. America is better than this ban, and while we made some progress yesterday-- with the action taken through the ACLU’s lawsuit and the strong show of solidarity at protests around the country. We cannot stop fighting and resisting Trump’s movement. We have the power to defeat them, but we have to keep organizing. I just got back to Sacramento and the first thing I instructed my staff to do was draft a resolution to officially put California on the record against Trump’s Muslim Ban. There's plenty that you can do too. Join a rally. Volunteer. Call your representatives. Our nation’s values depend on us and we owe it to our neighbors to protect them."

We need more people like Ted Lieu in Congress. And that's more people like Jimmy Gomez. Please consider contributing to his campaign by tapping the thermometer below. April 4th isn't that far away.

Are You Going To Remember Who Tried To Help The Refugees In November, 2018?

The last time I drank a Coke (or Pepsi) I was barely 20; it was in 1970. There was no social media then (aside from postcards) and international telephone calls were way too expensive for someone like me. So, while I was making my way by land across the world I depended on letters from home for news. If you read the comments here at DWT, you've no doubt run across someone calling herself "Hone." She was a friend of mine in college and she sent me a letter-- to poste restante (I think in Kabul) which came to me months after the massacre at Kent State. Although she doesn't remember it today, her letter included a call to arms: American students would topple Coca Coca and Pepsi, two iconic American brands, as a response to the murders of the peaceful protestors. Foolishly I had been depending on Coke for hydration because the water was so dangerous to drink in countries like Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India in those days. The U.S. consulates in Iran and Afghanistan would warn American travelers to boil water for several minutes, let it cool down and then boil it again before drinking it. So it was a great sacrifice for me to give up consuming soft drinks. But I did and never touched one again. Yesterday I deleted my Uber app and I'll never get in another Uber. It'll be taxis and Lyft for me from now on.

OK, how about a few words from Pope Francis? This is what he told a group of Catholic and Lutheran pilgrims yesterday: "[T]he sickness or, you can say the sin, that Jesus condemns most is hypocrisy... You cannot be a Christian without living like a Christian. You cannot be a Christian without practicing the Beatitudes. You cannot be a Christian without doing what Jesus teaches us in Matthew 25," a reference to Christ’s injunction to help the needy by such works of mercy as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and welcoming the stranger. It’s hypocrisy to call yourself a Christian and chase away a refugee or someone seeking help, someone who is hungry or thirsty, toss out someone who is in need of my help. If I say I am Christian, but do these things, I’m a hypocrite.

Randian fake-Christian Paul Ryan, who can be eliminated, politically, in 2018, is still pissing off God by swearing that Trump's executive order is not a Muslim ban. He's lying. And most of the Republicans in Congress are right there with him. The relatively new congressman from Staten Island, Dan Donovan said the same thing a;most all the GOP members are saying, namely that "President Trump's decision is in America's best interest." Even the Republicans criticizing Trump-- so far Senators Susan Collins (ME), Jeff Flake (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC), Lamar Alexander (TN) and Ben Sasse (NE) plus House members Mike Coffman (CO), Carlos Curbelo (FL), Elise Stefanik (NY), Will Hurd (TX), Mike Fitzpatrick (PA), Charlie Dent (PA), Justin Amash (MI), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL) and Barbara Comstock (Va), all from blue-leaning or swing districts-- are bing very circumspect. Barbara Comstock, for example, one of the most electorally vulnerable Republicans in Congress, issued a tepid statement saying, "As I consistently have said, I don't believe it is constitutional to ban people from our country on the basis pf religion. However, I do support-- and the House of Representatives has supported on a bipartisan basis-- increased vetting based on national security concerns. The president’s executive order yesterday went beyond the increased vetting actions that Congress has supported on a bipartisan basis and inexplicably applied to Green Card holders, people who are legally within our country who have followed the rules. Green Card holders go through a detailed legal process and are vetted. They are required to register with the selective service-- many serve in the military. They pay taxes. I find it hard to believe that green card holders-- legal permanent residents-- were intended to be included in this Executive Order. This should be addressed and corrected expeditiously."

It was addressed expeditiously, thought not corrected. When Department of Homeland Security officials asked the White House for a clarification, the neo-Nazi who Trump has put in charge of this whole mess, psychopathic right-wing blogger Steve Bannon, said Green Card holders were very much meant to be included. No comment on that report from Ryan or Comstock or any of the other Republicanos enabling Trump and Bannon. The only Republican who seems sincere and principled in his opposition to Trump's unconstitutional mayhem is Justin Amash, noting Trump's executive order "overreaches and undermines our constitutional system... The president's denial of entry to lawful permanent residents of the United States (green card holders) is particularly troubling. Green card holders live in the United States as our neighbors and serve in our Armed Forces. They deserve better... Ultimately, the executive order appears to be more about politics than safety. If the concern is radicalism and terrorism, then what about Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and others? Finally, we can't effectively fight homegrown Islamic radicalism by perpetuating the 'us vs. them' mindset that terrorists use to recruit. We must ensure that the United States remains dedicated to the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and liberty."

Politically, Democrats better follow the lead of resisters like Ted Lieu and Jerry Nadler and let their own base know they are fighting-- and for real-- and not let the story become a false narrative about a few"brave Republicans" standing unto Trump. But what Comstock and other Republicans are talking about when they refer to "bipartisan support" is the 289-137 approval of an ugly, bigoted anti-refugee bill by Texas' Michael McCaul. 47 Democrats-- mostly from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- joined forces with 242 Republicans to pass it. 135 Democrats and just 2 Republicans voted against it-- and one of the Republicans, Iowa extremist Steve King, voted NO because he didn't feel the bill was draconian enough. Over the weekend into today many of the 47 Democrats who voted with the Republicans are trying desperately to distance themselves from their own votes.

Take right-wing Blue Dog Jim Cooper, who represents (badly) a safe blue seat in Nashville. Yesterday he was trying to hide his bigotry with a tweet. Steve Israel, one of the leaders of the move to get Democrats to vote with the GOP against refugees, was practically rending his clothing today in sympathy for the immigrants. Here's a list of the worst of the traitors who are still in Congress:

• Pete Aguilar (New Dem-CA)
• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)
• Julia Brownley (worthless coward-CA)
• Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL)
• Gerry Connolly (New Dem-VA)
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)

• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• John Delaney (New Dem-MD)
• Tulsi Gabbard (LOL-HI)
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)
• Steve Israel (Blue Dog-NY)
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)
• Ann Kuster (New Dem-NH)
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)
• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)
• Donald Norcross (Corrupt-NJ)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Kathleen Rice (New Dem-NY)
• Tim Ryan (Would-be Leader-OH)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
• David Scott (Blue Dog-GA)
• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)
• Filemon Vela (Blue Dog-TX)

There's only one group that has been working consistently to drive Blue Dogs and New Dems out of Congress for over a decade-- Blue America. No one else has dared. Want to help? You can here.

Since Mike decided to delete this tweet over the weekend, we decided to decorate it for him

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."