Immigration

Militarize the border? Has this fool ever heard of posse comitatus?

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FOX & Friends and FOX prime time pundits (aka presidential advisers) have our nativist racist Twitter-troll-in-chief all worked up about a “caravan” of Central American refugees coming to America. Why Is Trump Still Obsessing About a Caravan of Migrants?

But the truth is that, according to the Washington Post, Trump’s ignorance about what is going on is even worse than we thought. Here are some things he doesn’t seem to know:

  • “The Mexican government on Monday evening moved to break up the caravan of migrants moving through southern Mexico”
  • This is an “annual caravan intended to raise awareness about the plight of people making the dangerous trek across Mexico toward the United States”
  • “Mexico deported 16,278 people during the first two months of 2018; 97 percent of them were Central Americans, according to the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group.”
  • “Mexico increased its immigration enforcement in 2014, when it enacted a “Southern Border Plan” in response to a flood of unaccompanied Central American children who were transiting the country and arriving in the United States.

While Trump is rage tweeting, this is happening:

On Monday, Mexico’s interior minister, Alfonso Navarrete, said he and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen had spoken. “We agreed to analyze the best ways to attend to the flows of migrants in accordance with the laws of each country,” Navarrete tweeted.

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Fear Dominates Secret Tucson GOP CD 2 Congressional Candidate Forum

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GOP Congressional candidates Danny Morales, Lea Marquez-Peterson, Marilyn Wiles and Brandon Martin.
GOP Congressional candidates Danny Morales, Lea Marquez-Peterson, Marilyn Wiles and Brandon Martin.

You could smell the fear in the room at the Pima County GOP’s secret CD 2 Congressional Candidate  Forum at the gaudy Oyster Club in Tucson. The candidates were asked how they could win in light of recent democratic victories, and how they could govern without dominating all three branches of government.

Lea Marquez-Peterson repeatedly pleaded for donations, noting with alarm that “Nancy Pelosi has already been in Arizona and made a half-million-dollar ad buy!” and that front-runner Ann Kirkpatrick had raised more money than she did.

Only 40 people attended the event, which the Republicans tried desperately to keep secret. The GOP tried to ban reporters, to prohibit photos, and to require all cell phones to be turned off. The forum was so secret that candidate Casey Welch didn’t show up.

Only one serious candidate

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Candidate Brandon Martin complained, “I hope we can speak in bigger venues.” (Last month, more than 400 people attended the Democrats’ Congressional candidate forum in Green Valley.)

Martin and candidate Danny Morales battled to take the more arch-conservative position. Candidate Marilyn Wiles didn’t really have many positions. Marquez-Peterson appeared to be the only serious candidate.

None of them proposed any idea to actually help people. They were all against things — like “chain migration,” not becoming “part of the establishment,” against the “Dreamers,” against raising taxes, and against the Mueller investigation.

Guns, Guns, Guns

Noting that hundreds of thousands of people were currently in the nationwide March For Our Lives against gun violence, the candidates had differing ideas for gun safety. Marquez-Peterson and Wiles called for better background checks. Morales called for arming teachers. Martin actually said, “We don’t have a gun problem. They don’t jump off shelves and shoot people.”

Firing Mueller

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House approves massive spending bill, moves to Senate to avert a government shutdown (Updated)

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The U.S. House of Representatives on a vote of 256-167 (proceeding under the TARGET Act) has approved a $1.3 trillion spending bill to avert a government shutdown and to fund federal agencies through Sept. 30, sending the measure over to the Senate ahead of a midnight Friday deadline.

Arizona Delegation: YES McSally, O’Halleran, Sinema; NO Biggs, Gallego, Gosar, Grijalva, Schweikert.

The Senate is expected to vote late on Thursday or Friday, before current government funding expires at midnight on Friday. There could still be another brief Aqua Buddha shutdown from Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) desperately seeking attention.

You can read the massive 2,232-page, $1.3 trillion spending bill to search for what is hidden in it.

Here are a few highlights of what is (and is not) in the spending bill compiled from several sources including the Washington Post, Politico, and Vox.com.

OVERALL SPENDING

Defense spending generally favored by Republicans is set to rise $80 billion over previously authorized budget sequester levels, including a 2.4 percent pay raise for military personnel and $144 billion for Pentagon hardware.

Domestic spending generally favored by Democrats is set to rise by $63 billion over previously authorized budget sequester levels, including increases in funding for infrastructure, medical research, veterans programs and efforts to combat the opioid epidemic. Civilian federal employees get a 1.9 percent pay raise.

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Martha McSally goes full racist demagogue

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Will the Arizona media that helped to create this mythical moderate Republican and get her elected now finally turn on her? Martha McSally has gone full racist demagogue. The Hill reports, Martha McSally: ‘We might need to build a wall between California and Arizona’: Rep. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) proposed building a border wall between California … Read more

Arizona loses on denying drivers licenses to DACA recipients

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected the last-ditch plea by Attorney General Mark Brnovich to uphold a 2012 executive order by then-Gov. Jan Brewer to deny licenses to DACA recipients, an order current Gov. Doug Ducey has left in place. The justices gave no reason for their ruling. U.S. Supreme Court allows ‘Dreamers’ to drive:

Arizona’s “dreamers” will keep their licenses to drive – at least as long as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program remains in existence.

Monday’s ruling ends years of efforts by the state to claim that the decision by the Obama administration to allow those in the program to remain in this country and work does not mean they are “authorized” to be here.
That verbiage is significant.

It was shortly after the action by Obama that Brewer directed the state Department of Transportation to deny licenses to DACA recipients. She cited a 1996 Arizona law that says state licenses are available only to those whose presence in this country is “authorized by federal law.”

Brewer argued that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has no legal authority to permit DACA recipients to remain and work. And what that meant, Brewer said, is they were not “authorized” to be here.

That argument failed to persuade federal appellate judges who said Arizona cannot decide for itself who is legally entitled to be in the country. In fact, Judge Harry Pregerson wrote that the state policy “appears intended to express animus toward DACA recipients.”

With today’s high court action, that ruling is now final.

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