Authoritarianism

Justice Kennedy announces his retirement: this means war

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Justice Anthony Kennedy surprisingly announced his retirement at the end of the term for the Supreme Court — he had already hired his judicial clerks for next term — playing into the narrative of right-wingers who have been pressuring him all year to retire in order to put another young ideological conservative on the Court like junior associate justice Neil Gorsuch.

The New York Times reports, Justice Anthony Kennedy to Retire From Supreme Court:

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy announced on Wednesday that he will retire this summer, setting in motion a furious fight over the future of the Supreme Court and giving President Trump the chance to cement a conservative judicial philosophy on the American legal system for generations.

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Justice Kennedy delivered a letter of resignation to Mr. Trump Wednesday afternoon, shortly after a half-hour meeting at the White House, where the president called him a jurist with “tremendous vision and tremendous heart.”

“Please permit me by this letter to express my profound gratitude for having had the privilege to seek in each case how best to know, interpret and defend the Constitution and the laws that must always conform to its mandates and promises,” Justice Kennedy wrote to Mr. Trump.

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Trump reverses course, will jail immigrant families together in indefinite detention (Updated)

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“Dear Leader” Donald Trump reversed course today in the face of public outrage against his immoral, inhumane and cruel family-separation policy.

Instead, he will now jail families together in indefinite detention. That’s a middle-finger to America. His defiance of the law and his cruelty knows no bounds.

The Washington Post reports, Trump reverses course, says he will put an end to family separations on southern border:

President Trump abruptly reversed course Wednesday, saying he would sign an executive order ending family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border after a public uproar over the impact of his administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy.

The plan, as described by administration officials, would keep families together in federal custody while awaiting prosecution for illegal border crossings, potentially violating a 1997 court settlement limiting the duration of child detentions.

“We have to be very strong on the border but at the same time we want to be very compassionate,” Trump said at the White House during a meeting with lawmakers that was opened to the media.

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Trump’s order is not expected to alter the “zero tolerance” policy itself that the administration put in place in April. Under that policy, the administration has sought to prosecute as many border-crossing offenses as possible, including those involving families with children.

Because the Justice Department can’t prosecute children along with their parents, the result of the zero-tolerance policy has been a sharp rise in the number of children detained separately.

On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security said 2,342 children have been separated from their parents since last month.

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America faces a moral crisis of its fundamental values

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The Washington Post editorial states it concisely, The Trump administration created this awful border policy. It doesn’t need Congress to fix it. As Senator Lindsey Graham said, pick up the damn phone and make the call.

But as the New York Times interview with White House crypto-fascist white nationalist adviser Stephen Miller makes abundantly clear about what is happening, “they want this” (h/t graphic: Rachel Maddow Show). How Anti-Immigration Passion Was Inflamed From the Fringe:

It was Jeff Sessions who ordered prosecutors to take a new “zero tolerance” attitude toward families crossing into the United States, part of his plans to reshape the country’s law enforcement priorities to limit immigration. It is Stephen Miller who has championed the idea inside the White House, selling President Trump on the benefits of a policy that his adversaries have called “evil,” “inhumane” and equivalent to child abuse or the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

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Asked if the images of children being taken from their parents would eventually make the president back down, Mr. Miller was adamant.

“There is no straying from that mission,” he said.

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In the recent interview, Mr. Miller dismissed as ignorant the hand-wringing of Republicans about the family separation controversy.

“You have one party that’s in favor of open borders, and you have one party that wants to secure the border,” Mr. Miller said. “And all day long the American people are going to side with the party that wants to secure the border. And not by a little bit. Not 55-45. 60-40. 70-30. 80-20. I’m talking 90-10 on that.”

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Senate Republicans are complicit in Trump’s evil

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The New York Times headline reads, Leading Republicans Join Democrats in Pushing Trump to Halt Family Separations.

The online Washington Post headline reads, Growing number of Republicans urge Trump to change policy on separating families.

Talk is cheap.  “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” – Edmund Burke.

ChildImmigrant
“They look so innocent. They’re not innocent.” – Donald Trump

Steve Benen reports, So far, no Republicans endorse the Dems’ ‘Keep Families Together Act’:

The official line from the Trump White House is that critics of the administration’s practice of separating children from their parents at the border should simply change the law. The argument is indefensibly wrong: Donald Trump chose to implement a policy that separates these families, and he can change course at any time.

But Democrats have more or less accepted the challenge anyway, and have proposed specific legislation to prevent the Republican president from keeping his current policy in place. Vox.com highlighted the Senate Dems’ effort to pass the “Keep Families Together Act,” which was introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

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First the Trumpkins came for the ‘toonists’ …

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I have posted the week in political cartoons on Sundays for many years. One of the “toonists” who regularly appears in our Sunday editorial cartoon lineup is Rob Rogers, the long-time editorial cartoonist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. A 1999 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Rogers has won numerous awards for his work, which is syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate.

RobRogers

On Thursday, this talented “toonist” was fired by his new Trumpkin editorial page director at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Cartoonist Fired as Paper Shifts Right:

The firing is the latest controversy involving the newspaper’s editorial pages. In January, The Post-Gazette and its sister paper, The Toledo Blade, published an editorial titled “Reason as Racism” that defended President Trump’s stance on immigration despite his profane description of countries like Haiti or those in Africa when discussing the issue. Mr. Burris, then the editorial page editor of The Blade, was the author of the editorial, which drew condemnation from the Post-Gazette newsroom, some members of the Block family and from outside critics.

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