Immigration

Trump fires a consummate public servant for defying his unconstitutional and unlawful executive order

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The Attorney General is supposed to maintain arms-length independence from the political influence of the White House in “the pursuit of justice.”  The last time a president fired someone in the attorney general’s office, it was Richard Nixon executing the infamous Saturday Night Massacre at the height of the Watergate scandal.

Last night, Donald Trump fired acting attorney general Sally Q. Yates for defying him by announcing that Justice Department lawyers would not defend  his executive order for a Muslim travel ban and a religious test for entry into the United States against legal challenges. Trump Fires Acting Attorney General Who Defied Him.

Nancy LeTourneau at the Political Animal blog tells us What You Should Know About the Public Servant Trump Just Fired, Sally Yates:

Sally Yates, who served as Deputy Attorney General since 2015, was asked by the Trump administration to be the Acting Attorney General until their nominee—Jeff Sessions—was confirmed. Yesterday she issued a memo to the top lawyers in the Justice Department directing them to not defend Trump’s executive order on immigrants and refugees as long as she was in that position. You can read her memo here.

By the end of the day, Trump fired Yates for taking that action, accusing her of “betraying the Justice Department” and suggesting that she is “weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration.” While some have compared this to Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre,” it might not rise to that level—but it certainly sends a chilling message to anyone in the federal bureaucracy who might contemplate resisting the administration.

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America’s descent into the darkness of ‘Trumpism,’ the new American fascism

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On Friday, International Holocaust Remembrance Day no less, No mention of Jews in White House’s Holocaust Remembrance Day tribute, and with no sense of irony, our Dear Leader Donald J. Trump announced his long-anticipated Muslim travel ban and an unconstitutional religious test for entry into the United States. Trump Bars Refugees and Citizens of 7 Muslim Countries:

President Trump on Friday closed the nation’s borders to refugees from around the world, ordering that families fleeing the slaughter in Syria be indefinitely blocked from entering the United States, and temporarily suspending immigration from several predominantly Muslim countries.

In an executive order that he said was part of an extreme vetting plan to keep out “radical Islamic terrorists,” Mr. Trump also established a religious test for refugees from Muslim nations: He ordered that Christians and others from minority religions be granted priority over Muslims.

“We don’t want them here,” Mr. Trump said of Islamist terrorists during a signing ceremony at the Pentagon. “We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas. We only want to admit those into our country who will support our country, and love deeply our people.”

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Women's March, Tucson

15,000 Join Women’s March in Tucson (video)

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Women's March, Tucson
Women’s March, Tucson

One day after Donald Trump became president of the United States the world saw the largest mass protest ever.

On January 21, 2017, the Women’s March on Washington drew more participants than Trump’s inauguration the day before, and “sister marches” were held in 600 locations around the world. If you are a long-time follower of my blogging, you know that I have attended and videotaped many protests, marches and rallies. This was by far the largest protest march I have seen in my 35 years in Tucson. It was impressive.

The Tucson marchers were a diverse group. Although the event was dubbed the Women’s March, everyone was invited, and everyone came. From children to seniors, all ages were represented. There was an impressive number of men who marched, and the LGBTQ, Latino,  and African American communities were also well-represented. There were people in strollers and people who use wheelchairs. For more photos, go to my Facebook page.  (Video after the jump.)

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Americans are going to pay for the border wall with higher consumer prices

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Republicans are at a retreat today to come up with policies, er, ways to screw the American people over. And together with our Dear Leader Donald Trump, they have come up with a doozy of a plan to pay for Trump’s “beautiful wall” with Mexico. Trump wants 20% tax on imports from Mexico to pay for wall:

President Donald Trump has decided he will seek to pay for the wall on the US’s southern border by imposing a 20% tax on imports from Mexico and as part of a larger comprehensive tax reform plan, the White House said Thursday.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the comprehensive tax reform package Trump and Republicans are looking to put together will include taxing imports from other countries, like Mexico.

“By doing it that we can do $10 billion a year and easily pay for the wall just through that mechanism alone. That’s really going to provide the funding,” Spicer said, referring to a 20% tax. According to the Office of the US Trade Representative, Mexico’s exports to the US in 2015 was valued at $316.4 billion. The trade deficit is estimated to be $50 billion.

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Trump Inaugural Address: American Carnage, America First

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Donald J. Trump used his inaugural address to do what no other American president has ever done before: he described America as a dystopian post-apocalyptic hellscape right out of Escape from New York.

Trump takes office, vows an end to ‘American carnage’:

Trump delivered a dark inaugural address in which he pledged fealty to all Americans. But he made little overt attempt to soothe a nation still wounded from arguably the ­ugliest election season of modern times and signaled that he intends to govern as if waging a permanent political campaign.

Trump reprised the central ­arguments of his candidacy and harshly condemned the condition of the country he now commands. He said communities had fallen into disrepair with rampant crime, chronic poverty, broken schools, stolen wealth and “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones.”

“This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” Trump declared in his 16-minute address.

Trump has spent his entire life living in the toney gated communities of wealth and privilege only made possible by his living in America, where this grifter and con artist can take advantage of the vulnerable and the gullible.

The “American carnage” he describes exists only in the fetid imagination of Donald J. Trump (and the fever swamps of the conservative media entertainment complex from which he emerged). Fact-checking President Trump’s inaugural address. As the New York Times editorializes, America was already pretty great, despite its flaws, before Trump took office on Friday. What President Trump Doesn’t Get About America.

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