white nationalism

The Arizona GOP has a white nationalist problem

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Rep. Paul Gosar, Arizona’s most embarrassing congressman, has endorsed former state legislator Kelli “Chemtrails” Ward for the U.S. Senate over his colleague Rep. Martha McSally. Paul Gosar endorses Kelli Ward for Senate, attacks Martha McSally’s GOP credentials. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

The real story here is Paul Gosar’s white nationalism and Kelli “Chemtrails” Ward’s embrace of the same. (Here they are together hobnobbing with Cliven Bundy during his standoff with the government. Republican Legislators Caravan To The Bundy Ranch). Their connection runs through white nationalist Steve Bannon and his wealthy benefactors, Robert and Rebekkah Mercer.

Earlier this year, white nationalist Steve Bannon endorsed Ward as well. Bannon endorses Ward. After doing campaign events together, Ward subsequently publicly distanced herself from Bannon after the former Breitbart chief fell out of favor with the White House and many Republicans after he criticized members of President Donald Trump’s family in Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury.” Kelli Ward distances herself from Bannon and Arpaio.

Bannon is gone, but Ward’s embrace of his white nationalist politics remains the same.

Just last week, Bannon’s former wealthy benefactor at Breitbart, Robert Mercer cut a $500,000 check to a super PAC backing Arizona Senate hopeful Kelli “Chemtrails” Ward. Megadonor boosts Ward in Arizona Senate race:

Mercer, a reclusive billionaire and a former hedge fund executive, has emerged as a major Ward benefactor. With his latest contribution, he has given KelliPAC a total of $800,000 in support of Ward this election cycle.

Mercer also funded Ward during the 2016 election season, when she waged an unsuccessful primary challenge against Sen. John McCain.

Mercer and his daughter, Bekah, have been major funders of conservative, anti-establishment causes, including Trump’s 2016 campaign and Breitbart News.

Last weekend during Trump’s disastrous trip to Great Britain, Rep. Paul Gosar was also there, at a London rally in support of a jailed anti-Muslim, ant-immigrant activist, Tommy Robinson. GOP lawmaker speaks at rally for jailed anti-Muslim activist in UK:

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) spoke at a London rally in support of a jailed anti-Muslim activist, invoking the First Amendment and arguing for free speech.

Gosar spoke at a “Free Tommy Robinson” rally on Sunday.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is a founder of the anti-Muslim English Defense League, which has organized violent protests against Muslim immigrants.

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GOP train wreck on immigration coming next week

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The other day I told you that the House schedules vote on two DACA bills destined to fail:

So now we have the hardline Goodlatte-MsSally bill from the GOP House Freedom Caucus, which does not have the votes to pass Congress, and a so-called GOP moderate bill still being drafted that will fall far short of the Dream Act and the bipartisan measure that couples a path to citizenship for Dreamers with beefed-up border security.

House Republicans have released a first draft of their new “compromise” immigration bill, the “Border Security and Immigration Reform Act.”

The nearly 300-page bill is one of two that the entire House will vote on next week. It is considered a GOP “moderate” alternative to the GOP conservative bill proposed by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA).

Riiight.

The New York Times reports, House Immigration Bill, Pitched as Compromise, Tilts to a Harder Line:

The draft bill, circulating among lawmakers on Thursday afternoon and up for a vote next week, closely adheres to President Trump’s vision for an immigration overhaul. In addition to protecting the young immigrants, it provides billions of dollars for a wall on the southwest border while imposing new limits on legal immigration.

The bill would also toughen rules for asylum seekers. And it would address the separation of children from parents under the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal border crossings by mandating that families be kept together while in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security, according to a summary of the measure.

In effect, the measure would offer Democrats and immigration moderates in the Republican Party a difficult choice: accept hard-line changes to much of the immigration system in exchange for protections for young undocumented immigrants and what appears to be a modification of the wrenching policy of splitting up families at the border.

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The not-so-great Martha McSally Makeover

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Rep. Martha McSally, who is running for the Senate in a GOP primary against anti-immigrant hardliners crazy Uncle Joe Arpaio and Kelli “Chemtrails” Ward, is so concerned about not appearing to be the most virulent anti-immigrant hardliner in the GOP primary that she is now trying to disappear her past.

CNN reports GOP Senate candidate Martha McSally’s office removes video of her praising DACA:

The office of Arizona Republican Rep. Martha McSally has removed from public view a video on YouTube of her defending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.

A press release from her office in June 2017, before her Senate bid, highlighted McSally’s questioning of then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly about immigration and border issues at a House committee hearing.

The release said that McSally questioned Kelly on the department’s plan to address DACA, and whether Kelly could assure her that DACA recipients would be protected from deportation.

“These children were brought here at no fault of their own. In Arizona, there are 57,000 of them,” McSally said in the release. “Uncertainty brings fear to my constituents in this position. Can you assure me that they will be protected?”

Kelly assured her they would not be targeted for deportation.

The press release embedded a YouTube video of that interaction below a line that says, “to watch the exchange from the hearing, click below,” but the YouTube video has since been made unavailable for viewing, meaning the video has been made private or deleted. Two other videos from the hearing also included in the press release, neither DACA-related, are still available and online.

Representatives of McSally’s office and her Senate campaign did not respond to CNN’s multiple requests for comment.

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White nationalists making immigration policy in Trump White House

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Donald Trump played to nativist and racist fears in the 2016 campaign by focusing heavily on illegal immigration: “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border and I will make Mexico pay for that wall.”

However, Trump’s alt-right campaign advisors, Steven Bannon and Stephen Miller, are also opposed to legal immigration.

On Wednesday, Trump, GOP senators reintroduced a bill to slash legal immigration levels (this is a modified version of a bill submitted in February that went nowhere):

Trump appeared with Republican Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.) and David Perdue (Ga.) at the White House to unveil a modified version of a bill the senators first introduced in February to create a “merit-based” immigration system that would put a greater emphasis on the job skills of foreigners over their ties to family in the United States.

The legislation seeks to reduce the annual distribution of green cards awarding permanent legal residence to just over 500,000 from more than 1 million.

The bill also gives a preference to those who speak English.

The bill faces dim prospects in the Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow majority and would have difficulty reaching 60 votes to fend off a filibuster. But the president’s event came as the White House sought to move past a major political defeat on repealing the Affordable Care Act by pivoting to issues that resonate with Trump’s core supporters.

White House alt-right advisor Stephen Miller attended the White House press briefing with Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to explain and defend the bill, and wound up being the story with his outrageous behavior.

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Get to know the ‘de facto president’ Stephen K. Bannon

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Screen Shot 2017-01-30 at 7.57.21 AMThe other day I posited the possibility that “Stephen K. Bannon may be more than just ‘Trump’s Brain.’ It is becoming increasingly evident that he is the ‘power behind the throne’ so to speak, a ‘shadow president’ who is pulling the strings of his puppet. And that should deeply concern all Americans.”  ‘Trump’s brain’, Stephen K. Bannon, elevated to National Security Council.

Shortly thereafter the New York Times in an editorial asked, President Bannon?

Plenty of presidents have had prominent political advisers, and some of those advisers have been suspected of quietly setting policy behind the scenes (recall Karl Rove or, if your memory stretches back far enough, Dick Morris). But we’ve never witnessed a political aide move as brazenly to consolidate power as Stephen Bannon — nor have we seen one do quite so much damage so quickly to his putative boss’s popular standing or pretenses of competence.

Mr. Bannon supercharged Breitbart News as a platform for inciting the alt-right, did the same with the Trump campaign and is now repeating the act with the Trump White House itself. That was perhaps to be expected, though the speed with which President Trump has moved to alienate Mexicans (by declaring they would pay for a border wall), Jews (by disregarding their unique experience of the Holocaust) and Muslims (the ban) has been impressive. Mr. Trump never showed much inclination to reach beyond the minority base of voters that delivered his Electoral College victory, and Mr. Bannon, whose fingerprints were on each of those initiatives, is helping make sure he doesn’t.

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.

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