Fred Korematsu, whose legal challenge of the WWII internment orders was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1944, at his family nursery (third from left). Credit: POV: Of Civil Wrongs and Rights
For decades, Karen Korematsu has hoped and prayed that someday the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn its infamous 1944 decision upholding the mass incarceration of her father, Fred, and 120,000 others of Japanese descent during World War II.
But when the high court condemned that decision Tuesday, Korematsu was not overjoyed. She was disheartened.
“My heart sank,” she said. “I feel the court all over again dishonored my father and what he stood for. To me what the Supreme Court did was substitute one injustice for another.”
The following article by Paul Sonne and Lisa Rein was posted on the Washington Post website June 26, 2018:
Robert Wilkie, President Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, will face a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday. Credit: Carlos Barria, Reuters
Robert Wilkie, President Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, is a conservative Washington insider who would bring three decades of military policymaking and a deep list of Capitol Hill connections to a Cabinet post responsible for serving one of the administration’s most crucial constituencies.
But when he appears Wednesday for his Senate confirmation hearing, Wilkie also will draw on a career spent working shoulder to shoulder with polarizing figures in U.S. politics and often defending their most divisive views.
The following article by Salvador Rizzo was posted on the Washington Post website June 26, 2018:
We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order.” — President Trump, in a tweet, June 24, 2018
“Hiring many thousands of judges, and going through a long and complicated legal process, is not the way to go – will always be disfunctional. People must simply be stopped at the Border and told they cannot come into the U.S. illegally. Children brought back to their country…… ….If this is done, illegal immigration will be stopped in it’s tracks – and at very little, by comparison, cost. This is the only real answer – and we must continue to BUILD THE WALL!” — Trump, in a pair of tweets, June 25, 2018Continue reading “President Trump’s misconceptions about immigration courts and law”
The following article by Anna Flagg was posted on the New York Times website March 30, 2018:
The Trump administration’s first year of immigration policy has relied on claims that immigrants bring crime into America. President Trump’s latest target is sanctuary cities.
“Every day, sanctuary cities release illegal immigrants, drug dealers, traffickers, gang members back into our communities,” he said last week. “They’re safe havens for just some terrible people.” Continue reading “The Myth of the Criminal Immigrant”
The following article by Tommy Christopher was posted on the ShareBlue.com website June 24, 2018:
Trump reaches further into authoritarianism every day.
After a terrible week that saw him surrender to public outrage over his child confiscation policy, Trump let his dictatorial streak come through by demanding that his political opposition stop trying to check him.
The following article by Rebekah Entralgo was posted on the ThinkProgress website June 18, 2018:
“They can go to our ports of entry if they want to claim asylum and they won’t be arrested,” he claimed.
Credit: Screengrab
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions addressed the National Sheriffs’ Association Monday morning in New Orleans, Louisiana, delivering a speech riddled with misinformation about the nation’s immigration policies, particularly as they relate to asylum claims.
Sessions defended the administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the border and alleged that if immigrants simply waited their turn at ports of entry to claim asylum, they would not be arrested.
“We do have a policy of prosecuting adults who flout our laws to come here illegally instead of waiting their turn, claiming asylum at ports of entry. They can go to our ports of entry if they want to claim asylum and they won’t be arrested,” Sessions said. “We cannot and will not encourage people to bring their children or other children to the country unlawfully by giving them immunity in the process.” Continue reading “Sessions says immigrants should apply for asylum at ports of entry, where many have been turned away”
The following commentary by Charles M. Blow was posted on the New York Times website June 6, 2018:
In Trump’s America people are understandably experiencing news fatigue. There are torrents of it on multiple streams. There is outrage after outrage. It is often overwhelming.
That’s the plan, I suspect. Trump is operating on the Doctrine of Inundation. He floods the airwaves until you simply give up because you feel like you’re drowning.
And unfortunately, it’s working. A Pew Research Center report released Tuesday found that nearly seven in 10 Americans “feel worn out by the amount of news there is these days.”
Fighting this fatigue is the real test of a person’s resolve, including mine.
When my enthusiasm for resisting this vile man and his corrupt administration starts to flag, I remember the episode that first revealed to me the darkness at Trump’s core, and I am renewed.
On an April night nearly 30 years ago, a young investment banker was beaten and raped when she went for a jog in Central Park. The attack left her in a coma. She happened to be white. Five teenagers arrested for the crime — four black and one of Hispanic descent — went to trial. As this newspaper reported at the time, they were “in what the police said was part of a marauding spree by as many as 30 youths in the northern end of the park” that night.
After being questioned for hours, the defendants gave false confessions that conflicted with one another, and those confessions were captured on video. As The New York Times pointed out in 2002: “The defendants in the jogger case were put on camera after they had been in custody, in some cases, for as long as 28 hours.”
As one of the five wrote in 2016 in The Washington Post: “When we were arrested, the police deprived us of food, drink or sleep for more than 24 hours. Under duress, we falsely confessed.”
A few days after the attack, long before the teenagers would go on trial, Donald Trump bought full-page ads in New York newspapers — you may think of this as a precursor to his present-day tweets to a mass audience — under a giant, all-caps headline that read: “Bring Back the Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police!”
After serving up to 13 years in prison, the boys were proven right: Another man confessed to the crime and his DNA matched that at the scene of the crime.
The boys, then men, had their convictions overturned, were freed, and eventually reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with the city over their wrongful convictions.
How did Trump respond after having called for them to be put to death? In true Trump fashion, he refused to apologize or show any contrition whatsoever.
In a 2014 opinion essay in The Daily News, Trump wrote that the settlement was a “disgrace” and that “settling doesn’t mean innocence.” He continued his assertion that the men were guilty, urging his readers: “Speak to the detectives on the case and try listening to the facts. These young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels.”
Some people will never admit that they are wrong, even when they are as wrong as sin.
But it is the language in the body of Trump’s 1989 death penalty ad that sticks with me. Trump wrote:
“Mayor Koch has stated that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so. I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.”
He continued:
“Yes, Mayor Koch, I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them.”
That to me is the thing with this man: He wants to hate. When Trump feels what he believes is a righteous indignation, his default position is hatred. Anyone who draws his ire, anyone whom he feels attacked by or offended by, anyone who has the nerve to stand up for himself or herself and tell him he’s wrong, he wants to hate, and does so.
This hateful spirit envelops him, consumes him and animates him.
Credit: Tom Brenner, The New York Times
He hates women who dare to stand up to him and push back against him, so he attacks them, not just on the issues but on the validity of their very womanhood.
He hates black people who dare to stand up — or kneel — for their dignity and against oppressive authority, so he attacks protesting professional athletes, Black Lives Matter and President Barack Obama himself as dangerous and divisive, unpatriotic and un-American. Continue reading “‘I Want to Hate …’”
The following article by Caroline Orr was posted on the ShareBlue.com website March 30, 2018:
A brutal new poll shows young Americans are not impressed by the tweeter-in-chief.
AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File
A majority of young Americans think Trump is racist, dishonest, and “mentally unfit” to serve as president, according to a brutal new poll of the youngest generation of voters and soon-to-be voters.
The following article by Ian Millhiser was posted on the ThinkProgress website March 12, 2018:
Remember when Trump said a Mexican American judge couldn’t be impartial?
Credit: Eric Thayer/Getty Images
As you may recall, back when Donald Trump was just a candidate for president, he claimed that Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a U.S. citizen born in Indiana, was unable to be impartial towards Trump because of Curiel’s “Mexican heritage.” As president, Trump appears determined to make the judiciary white again.
The following article by Eugene Scott was posted on the Washington Post website March 11, 2018:
California congresswoman Maxine Waters, D-Calif., continues to call for President Trump’s impeachment, explaining why she thinks he is unfit for the office. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post)
Jabs between President Trump and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) aren’t new. But Trump’s latest comments are a reminder of how often he will go out of his way to personally attack the black women who challenge him.
We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order.”
After a terrible week that 
