American Politics from 2019 on

[Brian Peacock]

From Bella. Don't know how to do pictures on my tablet yet.

Except the Right is the Top.

[Cunt]

Speaking of 'blaming democrats', who is in charge of that dumpster fire right now? Is it Harris? Biden? Newsom?

[Tero]

Speaking of 'blaming democrats', who is in charge of that dumpster fire right now? Is it Harris? Biden? Newsom?

It's irrelevant. Look for the most action in the Wisconsin judge election April 1. Newsom is going full centrist. Never liked him. In fact I hardly ever liked CA governors. I lived there 2 years.

[Tero]

Constitutional crisis week X
Marcus writes that Federal Judge James Boasberg couldn't have been more clear in his order issued on Saturday afternoon by Zoom that the U.S. government needed to return the captured Venezuelan immigrants to the U.S.

"Federal judges are accustomed to being obeyed, but there is a new Administration in town, and it is dangerously and deliberately testing the limits of judicial power. As Boasberg was speaking, the planes were in the air; authorities had them continue on to El Salvador, which had agreed to jail the Venezuelans for a reported six million dollars.

“Oopsie . . . Too late,” the Salvadoran President, Nayib Bukele, posted on X the next morning, along with a laughing-tears emoji and a screenshot of a New York Post story about Boasberg’s order. Bukele was quickly retweeted by, among other Administration officials, Secretary of State Marco Rubio."

The non-compliance with the Judge's order led President Trump to announce that Judge Boasberg should be impeached. That led to the unprecedented comment from U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts that the remedy for parties that are dissatisfied with a judge's ruling is not impeachment but appeal.

"There’s been talk for weeks now of an impending constitutional crisis. The term is imprecise, but there’s broad agreement that it covers the spectacle of a President outright refusing to comply with a court order. And here we are—although the Administration asserts otherwise. Now comes an uncomfortable question: Are courts—lacking, as Alexander Hamilton observed, “influence over either the sword or the purse”—capable of doing anything much in response?"

"So Boasberg—this time in robes—summoned the lawyers to an emergency hearing on Monday, to find out what had happened. What ensued was one of the most extraordinary exchanges I’ve witnessed in years of covering the courts. Boasberg, displaying remarkable forbearance, asked basic, seemingly innocuous questions, only to be met with stonewalling from the Justice Department."

"Boasberg ordered the Justice Department to provide more explanation for why it wouldn’t explain itself. “I will memorialize this in a written order, since apparently my oral orders don’t seem to carry much weight,” he noted. When, on Tuesday, the department balked again at providing such “sensitive information” while Boasberg’s order to halt the deportations is on appeal, Boasberg gave it another twenty-four hours to come up with answers, to be submitted under seal and directly to him.

"Just before its latest refusal, the Justice Department made an extraordinary request: that the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit not only reverse Boasberg’s order but remove him from the case, because, it said, he had engaged in “highly unusual and improper procedures.” (I can confidently predict that this is not going to happen.)"

"The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, appeared on Fox News on Monday evening to underscore the supposed dangers of Boasberg’s intervention: “If we live in a country where the will of the American people is subverted by a single judge in a single court, we no longer live in a democracy.” Let me fix that for her. If we live in a country where judges’ orders can be ignored by an Administration bent on amassing unchecked power, we no longer live in a democracy."

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede ... the-courts

[Cunt]

Speaking of 'blaming democrats', who is in charge of that dumpster fire right now? Is it Harris? Biden? Newsom?

It's irrelevant.

That's why the Trump white house has no problem setting up the dems for anything they want. There is no leader right now, who can say 'no - that's not us', so they get to wear anything Trump throws on them.

Maybe that skinny kid can save them. What was his name again? The vegan-looking waif who was near a shooting once, and made some celebrity out of it...can't remember his name, so maybe he isn't much of a lead after all lol

[Tero]

There are a good number, like Raskin, making noise. The media fear Trump and are just trying to survive 4 years. So you do not see much. The Orban plan to kill media.

There is no point in being leader now. Look what happened to Biden: Trump attempts to manipulate Ukraine to kill Biden chances.

[Tero]

Courts can only do so much when the SC is on Trump side about half the time. Plus, repealing laws is easy.

"The reality is that the second Trump administration is only pushing things further in the same direction the Supreme Court has been heading toward for years. It has overturned almost 500 laws in its history, and the frequency has increased of late. It guts others by reinterpreting them. From campaign finance to voting rights, congressional and popular respect for judicial precedent has played directly into our constitutional crisis. The president, whose three appointments to the court created its conservative supermajority, is relying on the justices to sidestep laws Congress has rightfully passed.

"Idealizing courts as the last and most important line of defense of Congress’s laws is both foolish and irresponsible. Though liberals should take whatever litigation wins they can, real resistance must take place in Congress, at government workplaces and in the streets."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... cy-crisis/

[Tero]

Reporter Cottle visits with Colorado Congressman Jason Crow who has been given the task or recruiting Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives and winning back a majority.

"How the Democratic Party wound up in the political wilderness has myriad answers. But one of the clearest and, for many Democrats, the most vexing is that the party became identified as the champion of cultural elites. Mathematically speaking, this is no way to win the White House, the Senate or the House — the chamber where Mr. Crow recently became a point person in recruiting candidates to run in the midterms and give the Democratic Party its best chance to regain a modicum of power in Washington."

"How the Democrats lost their identification as the party of factory workers, nurses, cops and firefighters is not a theoretical matter for Mr. Crow, who grew up in a working-class family and helped pay his way through college by working in construction and joining the National Guard and R.O.T.C. program before going on to become a paratrooper and Army Ranger, with three combat tours and a Bronze Star to his credit. In 2018 he unseated a five-term Republican congressman to become the first Democrat to represent what was then a tough swing district."

"Nothing conveys independence and builds trust quite like a politician standing up to his own leadership, and here Mr. Crow is a standout. He arrived in the House in 2019, and his first vote was against Nancy Pelosi as speaker, on the grounds that it was time for a new generation. For “a brand-new baby congressperson” to do that is something, said Abigail Spanberger, a friend and fellow newcomer and Pelosi rebel that year. “The pressure campaign to get you to fall in line is more than anything you could ever imagine,” she recalled. Fast-forward to last July, when Mr. Crow confronted President Joe Biden on a Zoom call with moderate Democrats, warning that “without a major change,” the party was headed for electoral defeat and questioning if Mr. Biden’s age posed a national security risk. The president reportedly got testy. “I don’t want to hear that crap,” he barked, according to Politico. Eight days later, Mr. Biden dropped his re-election bid."

"There is no quick or easy road out of the wilderness for Democrats, Mr. Crow said. “The secret is there is no secret.” You just have to rebuild trust one voter at a time. “That’s done through individual leadership, through town halls, through engagement,” he said. “By showing up.”

Democrats need new leaders. The party won't rebound with Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. Thanks, Charlyne, for sharing this profile on a Democrat who might help the party return.

NYT paywall

[Brian Peacock]

Speaking of 'blaming democrats', who is in charge of that dumpster fire right now? Is it Harris? Biden? Newsom?

It's irrelevant.

That's why the Trump white house has no problem setting up the dems for anything they want. There is no leader right now, who can say 'no - that's not us', so they get to wear anything Trump throws on them.

Maybe that skinny kid can save them. What was his name again? The vegan-looking waif who was near a shooting once, and made some celebrity out of it...can't remember his name, so maybe he isn't much of a lead after all lol

Those poor Democrats. The billionaires have forsaken them for another.

[Tero]

Who knew? Obama caused it all. Move allng folks, nothing to see here. It was all unstippable. Ukraine and all.

[Tero]

[Tero]

Self deporting

In recent years, Denver has absorbed 40,000 migrants — the most per capita of any city. Most of the newcomers are Venezuelans who fled their broken country. But the city is also home to many Latino immigrants who came long ago. I visited last week to take their temperature.

Most are not inclined to bolt. Two-thirds of undocumented immigrants have been in the country for a decade or longer. Most pay taxes. They’re people like Mirna, a Mexican who crossed the border 28 years ago. Her husband owns a house-painting business. They bought a mobile home and have three American children, including a daughter serving in the Navy. Mirna, who speaks English fluently, told me she wouldn’t go back to Mexico because it would mean leaving her kids.

But recent border crossers are much more likely to consider departing. I interviewed several young men from Venezuela who are among them. They see footage of shackled migrants shuffled onto deportation planes. They watch the videos of more than 200 Venezuelan men, accused by the Trump administration of gang affiliation, being flown to a mega-prison in El Salvador. Reporting suggests that some of them may not have been gang members.

Rather than risk subjecting themselves to that ordeal, they want to leave on their own terms.

Since arriving in Denver in 2023, Cristian, 29, has delivered meals and worked on construction sites. (Like other migrants I interviewed, he worried that immigration agents would find him and spoke on the condition that I identify him only by his given name.) He sends money to his wife and children in Venezuela. Cristian does not have any tattoos, a customary gang indicator, he said. He possesses a work permit and an active asylum application, which theoretically protects him from imminent deportation.

But the enforcement climate since Trump took office has changed Cristian’s calculus “360 degrees,” he told me. With the help of an American friend who escorted him to several immigration offices, he made an appointment to appear before a judge today so he could request a voluntary departure from the United States. (Immigrants who receive formal permission to leave have an easier time returning later.)

Other Venezuelans contemplating an exit were released into the United States by border officials with orders to report to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement every few months. Recently, officials have detained and deported people when they’ve shown up for their check-ins.

ICE agents and the local authorities detain a person in Denver. Chet Strange for The New York Times
Jesús, 25, has his next ICE appointment in early May and sees the writing on the wall. After arriving last year, he languished for months in detention until officials turned him loose, probably to make room for others. He found work remodeling homes in Denver. Now he’d rather return voluntarily to Venezuela than be confined again. “I came here to work to help my family,” said Jesús, the sole brother to five sisters. “I just hope to manage to leave before they deport me.”

He has enough money to buy an airline ticket. But, like others, he told me that the U.S. authorities had confiscated his passport. How can he board a plane without it?

American women in Denver formed groups in late 2023 to help recent arrivals from Venezuela. But more recently they also share tips about how to leave because the bureaucracy can be hard to navigate. A mother with a U.S.-born child needs to get a passport for her child, for instance. But his father, who needs to sign forms, has been deported. The local volunteers have researched what happens if migrants leave without an ID — and whether it’s safer to depart by air or over land.

The departures are not exclusive to Denver. A family in Chicago recently left for Mexico, according to their lawyer. People have abandoned Springfield, Ohio — the town where Trump claimed Haitians were eating their pets — employers there told me. Others are contemplating leaving from elsewhere, like Houston.

Miriam Jordan, NYT

[Tero]

Did not say where to sign up.

[Tero]

Ban problems like racism and pandemics and they will go away. Sort of. Gender issues got complicated:

A cisgender woman Walmart employee who says she was verbally assaulted in the female restroom by a man who mistook her for a transgender woman was fired because she reported the incident to the wrong supervisor and created a security risk.

Dani Davis, who is queer, took to social media on March 24 and wrote a post about what she said happened while she was at work. The incident occurred on March 14 at the Walmart in Lake City, Florida. She noted she was a nearly seven-year employee of Walmart and holds several other part-time jobs, including the “joy and privilege" of tutoring "special-needs children as requested,” describing herself as a hard worker who has never been in trouble.

She also describes herself as “really tall” at “just shy of 6'4," adding that "every inch is natural me.”

Around 8 p.m. on March 14, she wrote that she was alone in a stall in the women's restroom when she heard a man yelling.

“The voice was much louder than simply someone yelling in from the door. This man was fully IN the restroom, yelling something about” transgender women, Davis wrote.

Davis said the man yelled he was going to “beat" them and was going to “protect his wife/girlfriend from them” while his wife or girlfriend was pleading with him to stop and leave before he got into trouble.

Davis wrote she was scared and froze, not knowing if the man was going to physically attack her.

“I was the only one in there so it seemed pretty clear that he saw me enter the restroom and he assumed that I am trans because of my height,” Davis recalled. “It was terrifying and I wish no one else ever had an experience like that.”

The man eventually left, and Davis was able to leave the restroom and return to her workstation.

"My immediate supervisor came by and noticed that I was visibly shaken and emotional. After taking a few moments to calm myself down, I told her what had happened. I didn't go home since it wasn't long until my shift was done (10 p.m.),” Davis wrote. “Less than a week later, I was fired.”

The reason given for her termination was that she did not report the incident to a salaried management employee and, therefore, created a security risk.

“I took it to mean that I was the security risk because someone had mistaken me for trans,” Davis told the Washington Post.

Davis said she was devastated. Because of the anti-LGBTQ+ climate in Florida, she had been planning on leaving the state. But now, she doesn't know after losing the job.

https://www.advocate.com/news/walmart-f ... rans-woman

[Tero]

Mornin'!