Tag: Trump racism

The Supreme Court fight over Trump’s last-ditch effort to rig the census, explained

The Court must decide whether to follow the Constitution’s clear text — or to rubber-stamp an illegal effort by Trump.

Donald Trump will no longer be president in two months. But an unconstitutional memorandum he handed down last July could potentially shape both US policy and American elections for the next decade, if the Supreme Court, scheduled to hear the case on November 30, allows that memo to take effect.

The Constitution provides that “representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed.” Nevertheless, Trump’s memo claims that “aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status” should not be counted when seats in the House of Representatives are allocated following the 2020 census.

The memo, in other words, violates the unambiguous text of the Constitution, as well as federal laws governing who should be included in census counts. Continue reading.

U.S. border officials close Texas warehouse where chain-link ‘cages’ for migrants became a symbol of mistreatment

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U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have shut down the South Texas warehouse where chain-link enclosures were deplored as “cages” during the Trump administration’s crackdown on migrant families and children. The facility will undergo renovations until 2022, CBP officials said.

The chain-link partitions will be removed, and the warehouse will be redesigned to provide detained migrants with more humane conditions, CBP officials said. The renovations will take 18 months or longer, leaving border agents without a large-volume facility if a new migration surge occurs next year.

“The new design will allow for updated accommodations, which will greatly improve the operating efficiency of the center as well as the welfare of individuals being processed,” Thomas Gresback, a spokesman for the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector, told The Washington Post. Continue reading.

Radical Trump aide who was fired for ties to white nationalists rehired to manage US Holocaust memorials

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A former speechwriter for President Donald Trump who was fired after attending a white nationalist meeting has been rehired to manage the United States’ memorials to commemorate the Holocaust genocide.

Although Trump is now in the lame duck period of his presidency, the White House released a statement on Wednesday, confirming several key positions the president is now filling. The statement confirmed Trump nominated Darren Beattie to become a Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. The board, which was founded in 1985, has the responsibility of “seeking out, and overseeing, the preservation of overseas sites related to the Holocaust,” according to Business Insider.

In 2018, Beatie was hired by the White House as a speech writer. However, his time at the White House was short-lived due to CNN’s investigative findings that determined he was a keynote speaker at a white nationalist conference in 2016. According to the publication, CNN determined “Beattie spoke on a panel alongside Peter Brimelow, the founder of anti-immigration website Vdare, at a conferences hosted by the right-wing society the H.L. Mencken Club.” Continue reading.

The Daily 202: Trump’s ugly pattern of attacking urban areas spotlights failure to act like president for all Americans

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After a hand recount of nearly 5 million ballots, and an audit that found no fraud or irregularities, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state announced Thursday night that President-elect Joe Biden beat President Trump in the state by 12,284 votes.

Multiple factors can be described as decisive when a race is so close, but here is one to consider: John Lewis represented Clayton County in Congress from 1986 until he diedfrom pancreatic cancer in July. In 2016, Hillary Clinton garnered 75,908 from Clayton, which is just south of downtown Atlanta and includes the city’s airport. In 2020, Biden won with 95,232 votes from Clayton.

Trump set the tone for his relationship with urban America in January 2017 when he ripped Lewis for declining to attend his inauguration by saying that the civil rights legend was “all talk” and “no action.” This was a ludicrous line of attack: Only one of these men was nearly beaten to death by police for protesting racial injustice, and it was not Trump. Continue reading.

Trump administration revives talk of action on birthright citizenship

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The Trump administration has revived discussions around taking executive action targeting birthright citizenship in its final weeks before leaving office, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

President Trump has spoken throughout his first term about ending birthright citizenship. Drafts of a possible order have been circulating for some time, and there is now internal discussion about finalizing it before the Biden administration takes over in January, sources said.

The administration is aware the order would be promptly challenged in court, but officials would hope to get a ruling on whether birthright citizenship is protected under the 14th Amendment, according to one source familiar with the plans. Many lawmakers and experts have argued it is protected, but the courts have not definitively ruled on the issue. Continue reading.

Trump’s legal fight targets Black Americans

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President Trump‘s efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election through legal action have become increasingly focused on throwing out votes in cities in key electoral battlegrounds, a development that would impact significant Black populations.

The efforts have prompted a strong pushback, particularly in Michigan, a center of this week’s fight.

“You could see the racism in the behavior last night,” Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan (D) said Wednesday morning after two GOP Trump allies on the Board of Canvassers for Wayne County — home to Detroit, the country’s largest predominantly Black city — had initially refused to certify the county’s election results, claiming widespread voting fraud in Motor City. Continue reading.

Kenosha: How two men’s paths crossed in an encounter that has divided the nation

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Kyle Rittenhouse, in a jailhouse interview, said he used stimulus money to get a gun. The first man he shot had just left a psychiatric hospital.

In a summer roiled by protests for racial justice, Kenosha, Wis., moved into the national spotlight in August after a White police officer shot a Black man named Jacob Blake seven times in the back.

Peaceful protests during the day were followed by rioting and civil unrest at night. Just before midnight on Aug. 25, tensions peaked when a 17-year-old named Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum. Moments later, Rittenhouse shot two other men, one fatally.

Rittenhouse was arrested and charged with multiple counts of homicide and weapons offenses, but right-wing groups have rallied to his cause, celebrating him as a hero who sought to protect Kenosha from destructive rioting and who fired in self-defense. The events have become a litmus test for a deeply divided nation. Continue reading.

Hate Crimes in U.S. Rose to Highest Level in More Than a Decade in 2019

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An F.B.I. report on hate crimes also found that more murders motivated by hate were recorded in 2019 than in any year before.

Hate crimes in the United States rose to their highest level in more than a decade last year, while more murders motivated by hate were recorded than ever before, the F.B.I. said on Monday.

The sharp rise in homicides driven by hatred — there were 51 last year, according to the F.B.I. — was attributed in large part to the mass shooting in El Paso in August 2019. In that shooting, the authorities say a 21-year-old gunman motivated by hatred toward Latinos stormed a Walmart and killed 23 people and injured many more.

The death toll in the El Paso attack more than doubled that of 2018’s deadliest hate-motivated crime, the mass shooting targeting Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Continue reading.

Militia Groups, Conspiracy Theorists Rally In D.C. For Election Loser Donald Trump

President Donald Trump briefly waved to the crowd from his motorcade on his way to go golfing.

Demonstrators as part of a “Million MAGA March” swarmed Washington, D.C., on Saturday in a show of support for President Donald Trump, whose loss to President-elect Joe Biden was determined exactly a week ago.

The protest didn’t quite live up to its name, however.

A few thousand Trump supporters ― many of them unmasked ― did show up to Freedom Plaza in a show of solidarity with the president, who has spent the last week desperately seeking to overturn the results of the election by falsely claiming widespread voter fraud, but the number of marchers fell way short of the “more than one million” falsely touted by the Trump administration on Saturday afternoon.  Continue reading.

Trump put up walls to immigrants, with stinging rhetoric and barriers made of steel and regulation

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President Trump has at times spoken favorably of immigrants during the past four years, echoing conventional Republican praises for those who arrive in the United States legally. But in his less scripted moments, like at a rally in Minnesota in late September, Trump’s words fully align with the policies he has put in place, and something electric happens between the president and his supporters.

The event took place as the Trump administration prepared to cut the number of refugees eligible for admission into the country to 15,000, the lowest level since 1980. The president told the audience that his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, would reverse that and “turn Minnesota into a refugee camp.”

The crowd hissed and booed. The president stood basking in the sound, a throng of Americans jeering at immigrants who seek shelter in the United States legally, fleeing religious persecution, torture, genocide. Continue reading.