Trump's Immigration Ban and A Constitution In Peril - John Tirman

The fact that the Customs and Border Protection agency is defying court orders not to enforce certain provisions of the ban means we have a constitutional fracture just 10 days into Trump's presidency.

The imbroglio caused by President Trump’s executive order on immigration and refugees is, above all, a constitutional crisis. As was apparent in the first two days after the order was signed on Friday, the crisis pivots not only on the substantive merits of the White House action — whether or not certain classes of people can be banned from entering the United States — but the fact that the Customs and Border Protection agency is defying court orders not to enforce certain provisions of the ban. Thus, by the 10th day of the Trump presidency, a constitutional fracture was emerging.

The manner in which travelers have in fact been detained, questioned, prevented from entry or flights and denied access to legal counsel also prohibits the due process clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

This is, like the Custom and Border Protection’s violation of court orders, a crime of implementation rather than inherent in the executive order. But the order was inviting such insolence by its vague, broad and discriminatory language.

It is this implementation that sparks fresh worries about the Trump regime. The ban itself, for all its detestable qualities, was promised by Trump during the campaign, and will likely be overturned in court. But the process of realizing that promise has been fraught with incompetence and malevolence.

The full article is available here  

Trump’s Faulty Refugee Policy Comparison - Factcheck.org

Trump ordered a far wider ban — albeit also temporary — without identifying a specific threat.

President Donald Trump defended his sweeping immigration policy by calling it “similar to what President Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months.” That’s a faulty comparison.

The fact is that the Obama administration was responding to a known and specific threat from one country and limited its response to refugees from that country, while Trump’s order temporarily bans refugees from all countries — indefinitely in the case of those from Syria — and temporarily bars all other visitors from seven predominately Muslim countries.

There was a delay in processing Iraqi refugees in 2011 after it was discovered that two Iraqi refugees living in Kentucky had been involved in roadside bombing attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. One of the refugee’s fingerprints were found on a detonation device in Iraq, prompting U.S. immigration, security and intelligence agencies to use federal databases to rescreen about 58,000 Iraqi refugees in the U.S. and more than 25,000 Iraqis who had been approved to enter the U.S., but had not yet been admitted, Department of Homeland Security officials testified at the time.

The Kentucky case not only caused a backlog in processing Iraqi refugees in 2011, but it also resulted in an overhaul of the refugee screening process.

The full article is available here

Confused Why Women Marched Against Trump? I'll Help You Out - Jeff Wiersma

If you're confused about the women's march on D.C., let me help you out.

At a recent panel discussion that I attended, Historian Heather Cox Richardson summed it succinctly:

I will expand upon that.

We elected a president who rates women by the size of their breasts, who called bragging about how he has grabbed women's private parts without asking permission - which is sexual assault - as just "locker room talk."

We elected a man who went on the Howard Stern show bragging about how he liked to barge into the ladies dressing room uninvited and see his pageant girls naked (bragging he got away with it because he was president of the show).

We elected a man who bragged about the size of his own daughter's breast and said that if she wasn't his daughter, he'd probably be dating her, and said that his daughter is hot enough to pose in Playboy.

We elected a man who said he'd love to have sex with Lindsey Lohan because "deeply troubled" girls are the best in bed, who called his own wife a "young, beautiful piece of ass", who mocked a woman saying she had "blood coming out of her wherever."

These are but a few of the countless misogynistic things Trump has said and done.

If you think that making someone like this the president of the USA doesn't shape the self-view of young girls, doesn't normalize sexism, and doesn't need women to stand up for their worth, then you're on the wrong side of history.

Not only that, but plenty of men attended these marches too; men who are fathers, brothers, husbands and friends of amazing women and who wanted to publicly demonstrate that they're in opposition to such dreadfully sexist misogyny.

Birtherism: The Big Lie Behind the Rise of Trump - Bill Moyers

Donald Trump rode to power on the wings of a dark lie — one of the most malignant and ugly lies in American history: the Birther lie. This should not be forgotten.

Bill Moyers and four historians dissect the big lie Trump rode to power: Nell Painter, historian and Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, at Princeton University; Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of history, race and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School; Christopher Lebron, assistant professor of African-American studies and philosophy at Yale University; and Philip Klinkner, James S. Sherman Professor of Government, Hamilton College discuss the fertile ground on which the birther lie was sown: our nation’s history of white supremacy.

CHRISTOPHER LEBRON: I remember when he was going to prove that President Obama was not American, that he was not able to offer that proof. And even more amazingly, Trump has been able to not only convince himself for the longest time but has been able to convince a not-insignificant portion of the American people that no matter what documentation President Obama provides, he’s not American, which is an amazing thing to have done. 

NELL PAINTER: The ground was very fertile for the birther lie, and in fact, if it hadn’t been, somebody could have said oh no, no, no, the president was not born in this country, he cannot be president — and it would have fallen to Earth. It never would have gone anywhere. 

KHALIL GIBRAN MUHAMMAD: More particularly it expresses the illegitimacy of a person of African descent as a true American, as someone truly endowed with the capacity to govern this great nation. And that lie is just the tip of the iceberg, though foundational for everything else that flows from Donald Trump’s lips. 

PAINTER: I have said, more than once, that we would not have Trump without Obama. And that is, we have this running current of white supremacy — the assumption that nonwhite people are sort of over there and they’re inferior, they don’t work hard. 

PHILIP KLINKNER: If you’re going to tell a lie about somebody, it works a lot better if you focus on somebody who is different from you. They have a different skin color, they attend a different church or house of worship. They come from a different country or speak a different language. It’s harder to sort of see them a common citizen. Easier to see them as somebody who’s different and therefore dangerous to you and to your country.

The full article is available here

Isn't the "not my president" sentiment counter-productive? - Jeff Wiersma

If you're among those saying "not my president" about Trump, could I politely ask you to reconsider?

I'm as anti-Trump as they come and have been since before he even announced his candidacy (birtherism, his fear-mongering in the case of the Central Park Five, etc.)

He is a despicable, disgraceful man who is woefully unqualified to be president and represents everything I teach my sons not to be. His misogyny, fear-mongering, bullying, sexual assaulting, greed, narcissism, and prosperity gospel idolatry are unacceptable and should not be tolerated.

As a student of history and politics and as an advocate for justice, I'm highly exasperated, discouraged, and concerned by all of this. I will continue - in radical solidarity with those Trump demonizes and scapegoats - to resist and oppose him.

Yes, his election is far different than ones in the past where the candidate I did not prefer ended up winning (I was rooting for Trump to lose, not for Hillary to win). Yes, he represents a credible, existential threat to our republic. I will not "get over" that.

HOWEVER ... isn't the "not my president" sentiment counter-productive? Yes, he is not kind of person that many of us want to be the President. Yes, many of us can plainly see that he has no business being the President.

But he is our president.

Once that is acknowledged, we need to work within the mechanisms of democratic society to quarantine Trumpism for the good of our republic.

The Progressive Future Of The Republican Party - historian Heather Cox Richardson

Historian Heather Cox Richardson, author of a history of the Republican Party entitled To Make Men Free (2004), explains the rise of the cabal of Movement Conservatism in the 1950's, then discusses how she sees Moderate Conservatism coming to the fore again in the coming years and how it will be a progressive movement.

 Betsy DeVos Just Flunked Her Senate Test - The Nation



From guns in schools to accountability for for-profit colleges, the nominee for Secretary of Education either could not or chose not to answer most serious policy questions.

If confirmed as secretary of education, would Betsy DeVos promise not to strip funding from public schools? “I look forward, if confirmed, to working with you to talk about how we address the needs of all parents and all students,” the Republican donor and activist told a Senate committee in response.

What are her proposals for making childcare affordable? “I would look forward to working with you,” DeVos responded. 

Does she support transparency around student loans? “I certainly will look forward to working with you and your colleagues.”

Do guns have a place in public schools? That’s “best left to locales and states to decide,” she said, adding that they might be necessary to ward off grizzly bear attacks. 

There were plenty of moments in Tuesday’s hearing that betrayed DeVos’s lack of preparation for the country’s top education post, but none more than her stumble over protections for disabled students. Should all schools that receive taxpayer money be required to provide an equal education to students with disabilities? “I think that is certainly worth discussion,” DeVos said.

DeVos appeared unfamiliar with (or uncommitted to) the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, a major civil rights law that requires publicly-funded schools to accommodate disability.

The full article is available here 

Trump AG Pick Needs Sunday School Lesson On Immigration - Religion News Service

Sessions might want to find fodder in the Bible for his reactionary positions, but the fact is he is isolated and out of step with more than a millennium of Christian thought and discipleship. 

While Donald Trump thrilled crowds during the election campaign with his pledge to build a “great wall” on the U.S.-Mexico border, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions - who Donald Trump has picked to be his Attorney General - cited the Old Testament story of Nehemiah to make a defense of the president-elect’s plans. 

Scripture scholars and religious leaders — including many conservative evangelicals —widely agree that Old Testament's unmistakable message to the Israelites is to protect and defend the stranger. 

In the New Testament, Jesus radically expanded the definition of neighbor in the parable of the good Samaritan, praising the Samaritan (whom Israelites despised for being foreigners) for stopping to help a man wounded by the side of the road while the respectable of society — a priest and a Levite — passed him by. 

When George W. Bush, a self-styled “compassionate conservative” and "born-again Christian," pushed a comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2007 that was supported by many business and law-enforcement officials, Sessions railed against what he called the “no illegal alien left behind bill” and led the charge against the failed effort. Sessions is also opposed to increases in legal immigration, and his views are well outside the mainstream. 

Sessions might want to find fodder in the Bible for his reactionary positions, but the fact is he is isolated and out of step with more than a millennium of Christian thought and discipleship.

The full article is available here