Tag: Trump racism

Barr Says Legal Path to Census Citizenship Question Exists, but He Gives No Details

New York Times logoEDGEFIELD, S.C. — President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr began working to find a way to place a citizenship question on the 2020 census just after the Supreme Court blocked its inclusion last month, Mr. Barr said on Monday, adding that he believes that the administration can find a legal path to incorporating the question.

“The president is right on the legal grounds. I felt the Supreme Court decision was wrong, but it also made clear that the question was a perfectly legal question to ask, but the record had to be clarified,” Mr. Barr said in an interview. He was referring to the ruling that left open the possibility that the citizenship question could be added to the census if the administration came up with a better rationale for it.

“It makes a lot of sense for the president to see if it’s possible that we could clarify the record in time to add the question,” Mr. Barr added.

View the complete July 8 article by Katie Benner on The New York Times website here.

Pelosi: Census citizenship question is effort to ‘make America white again’

The Hill logoSpeaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) argued Monday that President Trump‘s push to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census is an effort to “make America white again” in an adaptation of his campaign slogan.

“This is about keeping — you know his hat — make America white again,” Pelosi said at an event in San Francisco about election security legislation, referring to the red “Make America Great Again” hats that are popular among Trump supporters. 

Pelosi, like other critics of adding the citizenship question to the 2020 census, argued that it could result in racial minorities being undercounted so that legislative maps can be drawn more favorably for Republicans.

View the complete July 8 article by Cristina Marcos on The Hill website here.

Trump’s legal battles over census go public

The Hill logoThe Trump administration’s internal legal struggles to add a question on citizenship to the 2020 census are spilling out into the open.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced late Sunday that it was cleaning house on the team of lawyers that have spent the past year defending the citizenship question in court. That move came just days after DOJ attorneys told a federal judge that they were caught off guard by President Trump’s announcement that he still wanted the question on the census after the Supreme Court ruled against it. 

Legal experts were shocked by the decision to change attorneys. But it may have been the only way the administration could continue pushing for the citizenship question in court.

View the complete July 8 article by Jacqueline Thomsen on The Hill website here.

Trump sees a border threat. Others see a crisis of conscience.

Washington Post logoThe numbers of asylum-seeking migrants arriving at America’s southern border may be dropping, but the political pressure is not. President Trump and his opponents seem to be locked in a weekly struggle over immigration and identity in America. Critics decry the conditions and methods that thousands of migrants have been subjected to at the border. Last week, a Nicaraguan man became the 12th person to die in the custody of U.S. immigration authorities since September.

Trump remains undeterred and is sticking to his hard-line stance. He sees the influx of predominantly Central American migrants as an epochal crisis — and a political opportunity. In rallies, he has sought to rile up a nationalist base with his misleading insistence that his Democratic opponents favor “open borders” and zero enforcement. Even after securing funding from Congress for a raft of border security measures, he has renewed his promise to carry out mass deportations of undocumented migrants living in various parts of the country.

“I don’t know when I leave in the morning if I’ll come home in the night,” said Eva, who arrived illegally 19 years ago from Mexico and whose teenage daughter is a U.S. citizen. “They could come and get me at any time.”

View the complete July 8 article by Ishaan Tharoor on The Washington Post website here.

The Trump administration has changed its story on the census citizenship question at least 10 times in four months

Washington Post logoOriginally, it was supposed to help the Justice Department enforce the Voting Rights Act. Then the Supreme Court said that was a pretext.

It would not be used for immigration enforcement. Then it could be used to deal with the “burden” of undocumented immigrants.

It would not be used for congressional redistricting. Then it could be.

View the complete July 8 article by JM Rieger on The Washington Post website here.

New York Times Hits Back At Trump Claim Of ‘Phony’ Story On Migrant Detention

The president denied the paper’s report about nightmarish conditions at a Clint, Texas, facility.

The New York Times is hitting back at President Donald Trump after he accused the paper of fabricating a story about nightmarish conditions inside a Clint, Texas, migrant detention center.

On Sunday, Trump tweeted that the Times had written “phony and exaggerated accounts,” adding that “people should not be entering our Country illegally, only for us to then have to care for them.”

In response, the publication’s communications department told the president it stood by its reporting.

“We are confident in the accuracy of our reporting on the U.S. Border Patrol’s detention centers,” it said.

View the complete July 7 article by Amy Russo on the Huffington Post website here.

We Can Enforce Border Security Without Trump’s Racist Cruelty

You don’t have to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement or “decriminalize” illegal entry into the United States to humanize the Border Patrol. You don’t have to close all the detention centers into which migrants are now cramped and stacked as if, yes, they are in concentration camps (though that would help). You don’t have to give up enforcing the country’s borders.

You do have to replace President Donald J. Trump, who has stage-managed the cruelty and fed the racism that seeps through ICE. And you have to fire many of the men now working as Border Patrol agents — men so steeped in racism and misogyny and violence that they never should have been hired in the first place. The agency can be fixed, but many of its hirelings cannot be.

That is clear from reading some of the “secret” messages that were posted on a Facebook page that was closeted from public view — a page for retired and current Border Patrol agents. Aired earlier this week in an investigative report by ProPublica, the messages ranged from the crude to the violent. Some made light of the deaths of migrants trying to cross into the United States illegally. Others used racist language and ugly stereotypes to refer to both migrants and Latino members of Congress.

View the complete July 6 article by Cynthia Tucker on the National Memo website here.

Despite Supreme Court Ruling, Trump Still Aims For Citizenship Query In Census

President Donald Trump and the Republican Party were seemingly dealt a major blow when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling late last month that blocked, at least for now, a citizenship question from being included on the 2020 U.S. Census. After the high court’s ruling, the Trump administration appeared to give up on the idea; as recently as July 2, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross (who oversees the Census) said the administration would be printing Census forms without a question on citizenship.

But Trump is refusing to give up on the possibility of a citizenship question somehow being included on the 2020 Census and appears to be looking for possible ways to do so without running afoul of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

On Friday, Trump told reporters he was weighing his options and was considering some type of “executive order” on a citizenship question for the Census.

View the complete July 5 article by Alex Henderson from AlterNet on the National Memo website here.

ICE Officials Sent ‘Happy Hunting’ Emails To Agents Preparing Migrant Raids

ICE officials preparing to carry out Trump’s mass-arrest raids expressed glee at the prospect of “hunting” thousands of people, newly released emails revealed.

In September 2017, the Trump administration was planning a series of raids, dubbed “Operation MEGA,” that were designed to round up at least 8,400 undocumented immigrants across the country and take them from their homes, families, and communities. It would have been the largest ICE operation of its kind, but was called off at the last minute.

A trove of documents, resulting from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Detention Watch Network and Mijente, were provided to the Daily Beastand published Wednesday. The documents detail internal communications from the government agency on the eve of the planned event.

View the complete July 5 article by Oliver Willis on the National Memo website here.

Trump just admitted something he probably shouldn’t have about the census citizenship question

Washington Post logoPresident Trump just explained why he thinks we need a citizenship question on the census. But in doing so, he seems to have said the quiet part out loud — and conceivably could have undercut the Justice Department’s legal case.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said you need the census citizenship question “for many reasons.”

“Number one, you need it for Congress — you need it for Congress for districting,” he said Friday. “You need it for appropriations — where are the funds going? How many people are there? Are they citizens? Are they not citizens? You need it for many reasons.”

View the complete July 5 article by Aaron Blake on The Washington Post website here.