Despite growing up in Mexico and speaking Spanish fluently, Bret Stephens espouses us-versus-them attitudes and lambasts Democrats for their support of undocumented immigrants. How cool! (Photo Credit: Veni Markovski/Flickr/CC BY 2.0)
Despite President Donald Trump’s umpteen comments in reference to the “failing” New York Times, the “Fake News Washington Post,” and other notable publications critical of his leadership, there has been a lot of good reporting during his tenure in the White House and in the campaign leading up to the election.
It is good reporting borne out of necessity, prompted by an administration in disarray built on a complete disregard for transparency and truth. Alas, there has also been some less-than-good reporting and/or questionable editorial oversight in recent times. Frequently, media outlets will report Trump’s public comments at face value, devoid of meaningful context. “President Trump accuses Democrats of election fraud.” Right, but what about the idea he is doing so without citing any credible evidence? For the love of journalistic integrity, call a spade a spade, won’t you?
If reporting on Trump’s failed stewardship of the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City or the utter fraud behind Trump University or his repeated aggressive sexual behavior in and out of marriage or his stance on the Central Park Five and advocacy for their execution is the good, and reporting on, say, Stephen Miller eating glue as a child is the bad, the ugly may be the out-of-touch views promulgated by today’s television pundits and columnists, many of them white males who refuse to check their privilege at the door.
Case in point, Bret Stephens, whose work, according to many familiar with it, is a repository for bad takes. In a recent column for the New York Times, Stephens opined that the Democratic Party, as evidenced by the first round of presidential debates, is off to a “wretched start” in advance of 2020 and “seems interested in helping everyone except the voters it needs.”
Let’s put aside our puzzlement over why Stephens, a conservative notorious for being a climate change “agnostic” (as he terms it), feels he needs to criticize the Dems declared for presidential runs in this way even noting his frequent criticism of President Trump. The startlingly crude viewpoints in his piece speak for themselves. In particular, this passage drew jeers and censure from the blogosphere/Twitterverse:
In this week’s Democratic debates, it wasn’t just individual candidates who presented themselves to the public. It was also the party itself. What conclusions should ordinary people draw about what Democrats stand for, other than a thunderous repudiation of Donald Trump, and how they see America, other than as a land of unscrupulous profiteers and hapless victims?
Here’s what: a party that makes too many Americans feel like strangers in their own country. A party that puts more of its faith, and invests most of its efforts, in them instead of us.
They speak Spanish. We don’t. They are not U.S. citizens or legal residents. We are. They broke the rules to get into this country. We didn’t. They pay few or no taxes. We already pay most of those taxes. They willingly got themselves into debt. We’re asked to write it off. They don’t pay the premiums for private health insurance. We’re supposed to give up ours in exchange for some V.A.-type nightmare. They didn’t start enterprises that create employment and drive innovation. We’re expected to join the candidates in demonizing the job-creators, breaking up their businesses and taxing them to the hilt.
As numerous critics have pointed out, for Stephens, who spent his childhood in Mexico and is fluent in Spanish, to lump himself in with the “this is America, we speak English” crowd is woefully disingenuous. You know, unless he suffered a head injury that has caused him to forget the Spanish he learned as well as the very fact he speaks it, which in that case, my condolences.
More than that, though, the dehumanizing “them-versus-us” rhetoric at a time when migrant families are being indefinitely detained en masse in substandard facilities (the term “facilities,” in many cases, is a generous one) without legal representation or even being charged with a crime is chilling. Not to mention it’s riddled with inaccuracies as a function of being grounded in nativism and trickle-down hogwash.
They broke the rules, even though seeking asylum is supposed to be legal. They don’t pay taxes, even though they do. They got themselves into debt. Who? Are we talking about undocumented immigrants here or college students/young adults born in the States, whose issues with repaying their student loans are nothing at which to scoff? And spare me the “job-creators, taxed to the hilt” line. If we’re talking about multinational corporations, some of them have gotten exceedingly proficient in paying little to no taxes while forgoing investment in their employees and the surrounding communities for the sake of relentlessly seeking profit. In this respect, creating jobs (which may not even be that rewarding for the job-holders in the first place) is the least they could do.
Stephens isn’t the only one at the Times trafficking in self-centered moderate conservative whining. In his own reaction column to the Democratic debates, David Brooks, another Never-Trumper, pleads with Democrats not to “drive him away,” taking it upon himself to speak for the 35% of American voters who identify as “moderates.”
In doing so, he decries how “the party is moving toward all sorts of positions that drive away moderates and make it more likely the nominee will be unelectable.” Americans like their health plans. The economy is doing well (yay, capitalism!). These candidates sound like they want open borders, which has lost progressives elections elsewhere around the world. There’s too much raging against the top 1% and not against the top 20% (the upper middle class).
There’s that concept again: “electability.” It’s a concept everyone seems to profess knowing a lot about without being able to clearly define it. Will advocating for Medicare for All (which, by the by, has broad support from Americans across the political spectrum) make a candidate unelectable in the general election? How would we even know? The economy is doing well now. What happens if we suffer another economic crisis (and yes, there are warning signs to be had)?
On immigration, are we to ignore the ethical and moral concerns for-profit imprisonment of asylum-seekers and immigrants presents, not to mention the real economic benefits these people bring to the table, because of moderate whites’ vague worries about a loss of “cultural identity?” On the Democrats trying to engage with Trump in a battle of “populist v. populist,” why not mention how Trump’s supposed “populism” is really just a concession to wealthy white males like himself?
Ultimately and in all, Brooks is critical of progressives who reject calls for civility and, in laying out their vision of the future, ensure the party can’t win next November. What good is “civility,” however, when today’s Republican Party is premised on bad-faith, deceptive arguments for holding up the status quo? And rather than appealing to a shrinking, elusive voting bloc, why not try to generate actual enthusiasm among those who haven’t voted or previously couldn’t vote? Why not try to win rather than playing not to lose? Have we learned nothing from 2016?
Evidently not. Instead, we get moderates who lauded Hillary Clinton and assured us voters would tire of Trump once again propping up an establishment candidate in Joe Biden because he supposedly “can stand up to” the orange-faced incumbent. Never mind Biden’s checkered past as a senator or that he seems to lack original policy ideas. Let the gaslighting continue and ignore the sound of progressives banging their heads against the wall.
I’ve highlighted Bret Stephens’s and David Brooks’s questionable outlooks on the 2020 presidential race, but this kind of analysis is by no means limited to conservatives. On the Democratic/liberal end of things, there are examples of punditry gone awry a-plenty.
Rebecca Traister, columnist at The Cut, an offshoot of New York magazine skewed toward women’s interests, describes this as the “Donny Deutsch problem in media.” As she explains, while the Democratic Party field is indicative of the country’s growing diversity—both ethnic and ideological—the face of today’s talking heads in political media hasn’t kept pace. Traister writes:
Where many Americans have seen the emergence of compelling and charismatic candidates who don’t look like those who’ve preceded them (but do look more like the country they want to lead), some prominent pundits seem to be looking at a field of people they simply can’t recognize as presidential. Where many hear Democratic politicians arguing vigorously on behalf of more justice and access to resources for people who have historically been kept at the margins of power, some prominent columnists are hearing a scary call to destabilization and chaos, imagining themselves on the outside of politics they’ve long assumed should be centered around them.
Altogether, what’s emerging is a view of a presidential commentariat that — in terms of both ideas and diversity — is embarrassingly outpaced by the candidates, many of whom appear smarter, more thoughtful, and to have a nimbler grasp of American history and structural inequities than the television journalists being paid to cover them.
Traister acknowledges Stephens amid the elaboration of her column, but adds some more names as examples of individuals who are supposed to be experts in their field but seem out of touch with what’s happening in the world more than anything.
Following the debates, Joe Scarborough railed against the Democrats’ stances in favor of undocumented immigrants being entitled to health care and that their crossing the border should be decriminalized. Chris Matthews, like Stephens, framed Kamala Harris’s taking of Joe Biden to task on the subject of busing during the debate as making white people feel as if they are “on trial” or that she is speaking out of some racially-based resentment. As for Mr. Deutsch, he panned Elizabeth Warren’s prospects in the general election next to Biden’s, touting his experience as an advertising and branding executive as an affirmation of the validity of his viewpoint. He, like Donald Trump, evidently gets people. Well, I’m sold, I don’t know about you.
As Traister finds and as others would agree, the “safe center” on which these men think the Democrats can rely may no longer be the source of salvation they or other mainstream liberals imagine it to be. This much becomes evident when looking at the substantial appeal of signature policy ideals such as the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and taxing the wealthy at a higher marginal rate. The contention of Deutsch et al. is that promoting these positions will hand Trump the election in 2020. Maybe it’s through embracing a bold vision of the future (a vision furthered by strong female candidates, no less) that the excitement needed to turn out the necessary voters to prevent his re-election will be achieved, though.
In fairness, Traister admits the likes of Stephens and Scarborough may be right, at least in the short term. Maybe the Democrats will win with Biden as their chosen candidate. Over the long term, however, the party strategy will almost certainly have to change in deference to a “different, faster, smarter, lefter turn toward the future.” To this end, the hegemonic hold white males have over political punditry will need to be addressed at some point too.
Unfortunately, this won’t be realized nearly fast enough, meaning newspaper subscribers and TV viewers will be forced to see the 2020 campaign through the prism of these privileged, moneyed men’s worldviews. Meaning we’re liable to get defenses of Biden and his condescending attitude toward people unlike him ad nauseum until the election or until his bid for the White House goes down in flames.
There’s a #MeToo dimension to this disproportionate representation as well. Matthews caught heat last year for an unearthed “hot mic” incident of sorts from 2016 where he jokingly asked where he put “that Bill Cosby pill” he brought with him in advance of an interview with Hillary Clinton. Deutsch, by his own admission, is a shameless flirt who has fantasized about women he was worked with and waxed poetic on Sarah Palin’s hotness when she first came to political prominence.
When Traister speaks to how problematic it is that potential voters and prospective candidates for public office are having their opinions shaped by these men, she has a firm grasp of what she’s talking about. Their professionalism (or lack thereof) is certainly not above reproach. Might we not submit the same of their political insights?
The male-dominated world of political media reacting with pearl-clutching bewilderment at up-and-comers in the Democratic Party like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez leading by example. Joe Biden’s place atop the polls despite his apparent unpreparedness in that first debate. These phenomena are related. These men are unused to a world in which their place atop the hierarchy is no longer guaranteed, where a twenty-something who previously worked as a bartender—gasp!—is beating them in the open exchange of ideas. As the very title of Rebecca Traister’s article asks, politics is changing; why aren’t the pundits who cover it?
President Donald Trump (center) is considering a plan to send undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities as a form of political retribution. Sens. Tom Cotton (left) and David Perdue (right) are co-sponsors of a bill that seeks to drastically reduce legal immigration to the U.S. Both proposals are garbage steeped in prejudice. (Photo Credit: The White House/Flickr)
A burden. An infestation. Like refuse to be sent away and dumped elsewhere.
These are the kinds of characterizations evoked by the Trump administration’s considered plan to send undocumented immigrants detained at the border to so-called “sanctuary cities” and “sanctuary states” as a means of political retribution. The plan, which is of questionable legality to begin with, obviously has Trump’s backing and the tacit approval of White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, but congressional Republicans have been slow if unwilling to throw their support behind such a measure. While not explicitly endorsing such a policy, though, they yet may try to leverage pushback by Democrats into a bipartisan legislative deal. Where there’s political will, there’s a way, eh?
Before we begin dissecting Trump’s proposal, let’s first get one thing straight about “sanctuary” cities and states. The term refers to municipalities and other jurisdictions that limit their cooperation with federal authorities on immigration law so as to reduce fear among immigrant communities and to encourage them to use necessary public resources and to report crimes to law enforcement. To this effect, sanctuary cities may prohibit law enforcement and municipal officials from asking about an individual’s status or may refuse to hold immigrants beyond their release date without a judge’s warrant for committing a crime not related to immigration status.
This distinction, however, does not preclude ICE agents from enforcing immigration law of their own accord. For this reason, some immigrant rights activists favor the term “welcoming city” or “fair and welcoming city” to pertain to these places so as not to imbue immigrants or their advocates with an undue sense of security. Calling your city a “sanctuary city” does not magically seal its boundaries to prevent federal authorities from coming in.
With that point behind us, let’s get to Trump’s idea. Donald Trump has had sanctuary cities in his crosshairs even before becoming president. On the campaign trail, he suggested refusing to send federal funding to these jurisdictions who fail to cooperate on matters of immigration law. In doing so, Trump pointed to highly-publicized cases like Kate Steinle’s murder at the hands of an undocumented immigrant as a partial justification for his policy proposal. Such a directive, as with the current notion of unloading undocumented immigrants on sanctuary cities/Democratic Party strongholds, would’ve been of questionable legality, not to mention it was probably overstated so as to gin up his base. If anything, Trump is more likely to target specific programs like Justice Assistance Grants or the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which President Barack Obama even eyed axing during his tenure.
In this respect, a decision to ship out asylum-seekers and undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities is nothing new for Trump, who has made illegal immigration his chief bugaboo since announcing his bid for the presidency. It is, meanwhile, of questionable utility. By relocating asylum-seekers and economic migrants within the U.S., his administration is making it all the more unlikely these people won’t be deported. Press Secretary Sanders noted this isn’t the president’s first option. As we all know, Trump and his stalwart fans want the wall and they want it yesterday.
Even so, if the goal is deportation and deterrence, this move would seem to fly in the face of that agenda. Reportedly, several mayors of major U.S. cities seemed to embrace the idea, and Central American migrants and their advocates reason this could actually be a godsend for them. In addition, some analysts believe the intended overtaxing of public resources implied by the administration’s plan would be slim to none. Even in smaller municipalities identifying as sanctuary cities or towns theoretically less equipped to deal with a rapid influx of people, undocumented immigrants would probably just move on if the economic resources were to be lacking in a given locale. There would be nothing to compel them to stay in one place or to dissuade them from heading elsewhere.
It’s one thing that the Trump administration’s sanctuary city proposal, as with that of a wall at the Mexican border, would be of dubious effectiveness in controlling illegal immigration and marshalling flows of peoples. For that matter, knowing Trump’s, er, penchant for details, such an undertaking would likely be a logistical nightmare marked by cost overruns, delays, harsh treatment of the people to be transported, and lack of meaningful oversight. As with the wall, however, it’s the cruelty of the messaging behind it that really makes it so disturbing.
Bill Carter, CNN media analyst and author, for one, decries Trump’s “vicious” revenge plan. For Carter, the “depraved,” “grotesque,” “insane,” and “sociopathic” policy proposal (as others have described it) is, on the face of it, “awful.” What makes it especially troublesome is that this event is but one in a sea of additional complications facing this country, a number of them involving Pres. Trump. Carter writes:
By any historical standard, the proposed White House plan to try to inflict some kind of damage on districts hospitable to immigrants by busing masses of detainees to those locations and setting them loose — like an “infestation,” a favorite characterization of this White House about immigrants from Mexico and Central America — would have unleashed a torrent of intense and sustained high-volume coverage. And viewers and readers encountering widespread analysis of a story marked by terms like insanity and sociopathy would recognize something extraordinary had happened.
Instead, the din of incessant political noise can be expected to quickly obliterate any effort to give this latest development what would, in the past, have been its proper due as a screamer of a headline. And context will fly off into the ether. Astonishment will ebb. Media heads will snap back.
For Carter, despite the obvious allusions to be made between Watergate and Trump’s scandals and despite the media’s “indispensable” role in holding the president accountable, when it comes to the mess that is the Trump White House, it’s unclear just how strong the media’s influence still is. The era of Trump is one defined by incomprehensible absurdity that defies attempts to easily define or explain it. As Carter makes the analogy, it’s like fighting wave after wave of zombies. After a while, the sheer volume would wear you down. In Trump’s America, news of a notion to move undocumented immigrants to and fro, treating them like trash, is but one part of an assault on the senses of the news media consumer. And, as Carter tells ominously, it just keeps coming.
Along the lines of what Bill Carter points to as a barrage of newsworthy events, this latest to-do involving Donald Trump and U.S. immigration policy is concerning beyond its immediate circumstances. For one, the half-baked sanctuary cities plan is a distraction from any number of things amiss with the Trump administration, not the least of which is the ongoing drama surrounding the findings of the Mueller investigation.
If anything, Attorney General William Barr, in his presser on the Mueller report and his release of a heavily redacted version of the document, has raised more questions than he has provided concrete answers on whether Trump obstructed justice. His presentation of its contents in a misleading, if not patently false, way has prompted Democratic lawmakers to call for Robert Mueller to testify before Congress on matters relevant to his findings, and in a few cases—notably as recommended by presidential nominee Elizabeth Warren—to begin impeachment proceedings against the president. Barr’s actions smack of cronyism and certainly have done nothing to appease those on the left who have closely followed this investigation.
To boot, news of this plan may be a way to get a less drastic policy directive across and make it seem all the more savory by comparison. Back in 2017, Carlos Maza, video producer at Vox and the creative force behind the “Strikethrough” series, which examines manifestations of the media in the Trump era, published a seven-minute video piece about Trump’s antics in the context of what is known as the Overton window, or the range of acceptability for an idea in public political discourse. As Maza explains in accordance with the theory, the easiest way to move that window is to propose an “unthinkable” idea, even if it is rejected, as it will make more “radical” or “ridiculous” ideas seem relatively “normal.”
As this concept relates to Trump, behavior that would’ve shocked us under previous presidents has become that much more commonplace. We regularly expect to be bullshitted, as Maza so colorfully puts it. A side effect of this reality, though, is that media outlets have stocked their panels with anti-Trump conservatives to argue against pro-Trump personalities, creating a new middle ground for the conversation. As a result, our expectations get lower. Republicans are no longer concerned with governing well, but merely with not being Trump. The proverbial bar is so low it’s on the ground.
Maza points to the egregious Republican tax bill as an example of this. The Senate version of the bill was rushed through a vote with lawmakers barely having read it. Meanwhile, Pres. Trump was busy tweeting about Michael Flynn. Suddenly, with Trump pushing his brand of crazy, the GOP’s chicanery was not the embarrassment it should’ve been but rather a win from which Trump’s ranting served to distract. The president provided political cover for his party mates helping to promote his regressive domestic agenda.
Billed as a defense of American workers, it is a proposal supported by White House adviser Stephen Miller—and that alone should give one pause. The claim that “they’re taking our jobs” has been argued for years without much credible evidence to support it. In addition, the bill’s given priority to highly-skilled workers despite an ever-present need for “skilled” and “unskilled” labor is recognizable as a backdoor to reduce the influx of immigrants altogether. The RAISE Act, ostensibly a piece of legislation geared toward benefiting the U.S. economy, appears to be plagued by an misunderstanding of the immigration situation in this country, or worse, intentionally skews a debate informed by racial prejudices. Next to Trump’s absurd sanctuary cities plan, however, it not only seems more logical, but more responsible. The available evidence suggests otherwise.
Amid the chaos of the Trump administration, a notion to send migrants and asylum-seekers to sanctuary cities as political retribution is just one in a series of confounding happenings. But even if doesn’t come to pass, the message it sends is not to be minimized. It is one of cruel dehumanization of some of the most vulnerable residents here in America, and it, unlike them, is garbage.
The DACA debate is one that exposes an ugly side of American attitudes toward immigration, a side fueled by cruelty, ignorance, and hate. (Photo Credit: AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
I do not follow President Donald Trump on Twitter, if for no other reason than I don’t want to be counted among his followers. Seeing as he’s President, though, and his words matter—perhaps they should matter more than they do, but matter they do—the media reports on what he says, and so I get enough of what I need to know secondhand. This is not to say that his words don’t affect me—indeed, they do, and because they affect me, I try to distance myself so as not to get overwhelmingly angry or distraught.
In saying this, I realize I am privileged to the extent that, while what Trump says might affect me emotionally, what he says is unlikely to affect my daily existence to the extent it disrupts it or completely changes it. For recipients of legal status under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, the stakes are much higher, and as such, every Tweet has the potential to signify a policy shift which could make for a life-altering event. Akilah Johnson, in a recent piece for The Boston Globe, explores this reality for so-called Dreamers, who have to monitor the volatility of Trump’s Tweets the way others might follow the ups-and-downs of the stock market (and increasingly so in the wake of fears of a brewing trade war). Johnson provides a bit of context thusly:
On Easter morning, Trump began a series of tweets about DACA, border security, and the country’s immigration laws, and there has been at least one nearly every day since, though he has been tweeting about immigration since before taking office.
But young immigrants said they don’t see themselves in many of the tweets, which equate immigration with criminality one day and express sympathy for DACA recipients who have been “abandoned” and received “very unfair” treatment in another.
It’s as if, they say, their academic accomplishments, hard work, and individual stories mean little. Instead, they are reduced to stereotypes in the immigration debate that is playing out on social media. The declarations of support are even more confusing, they say, because it was Trump who seeks to end the program that shields them from deportation.
And so each news alert or iPhone notification about the president’s ever-changing immigration agenda can be panic-inducing.
That Donald Trump’s mindset and position on specific issues tend to vacillate—I’m being kind here—is no big secret or surprise. Assuming he even understands what he’s talking about, and that’s a big enough assumption as it is, Trump lacks the familiarity with the underlying subject matter and its nuances by virtue of not having seriously considered it as a function of his political inexperience. To a certain extent, the malleability of his stances reflect the notion he is a novice, as well as the high probability he seems unprepared to take the lead on areas like immigration because he not only wants to deflect blame or responsibility, but that he also was unprepared to win the 2016 presidential election in the first place.
Beyond learning on the job, however, Trump’s treatment of DACA recipients via Twitter reflects an attitude toward their plight that representatives of both parties at times have seemed too ready to embrace: that of behaving as if DACA is a mere bargaining chip and not something which affects hundreds of thousands of young people currently residing in the United States. Earlier this year, DACA negotiations were a notable sticking point in spending bill negotiations that ultimately resulted in a relatively brief government shutdown, but a shutdown it was. Democratic Party leadership apparently had its fears that Republican legislators would refuse to hold a vote on the immigration issue assuaged by Mitch McConnell’s promise that hearings on the matter would be forthcoming.
That was in January. We’re into April now, and evidently, little progress in Congress has been made on the subject of DACA, leaving Trump to unleash Tweetstorms about illegal immigration with his usual reckless abandon and even address the topic during the White House Easter Egg Roll. Seriously. At the time of the shutdown’s end, activists and other advocates for Dreamers maligned Chuck Schumer et al. for what they saw as “caving” on DACA, a characterization that was not lost on the GOP and other conservative critics who took their own opportunity to take jabs at their opponents at the center-left of the spectrum. Specifically, pro-immigrant groups voiced their disappointment with Democratic leadership agreeing to anything predicated on a Mitch McConnell promise, which would be—and these are my words, but I’m sure the sentiment is shared—like trusting a pack of wolves not to touch a juicy steak. Three months later, it appears their concerns were well justified.
What is singularly disturbing about the political gridlock surrounding DACA, and whether it is “dead” or simply in limbo following the passing of the March 5 deadline set by President Trump to get a deal done, is that, amid the inaction and turmoil, Trump’s voice is amplified. This is a terrible development, because in making illegal immigration a central theme of his campaign and into his presidency, Trump has exploited Americans’ fears about immigration, legal and not—as well as their lack of knowledge about the subject and/or refusal to adequately fact-check. On Easter morning, he raged about “big flows of people” trying to come to America and take advantage of DACA. He also has Twitter-shouted about “caravans” of dangerous criminals trying to cross the border, and has blamed Democrats for standing in the way of reform and wanting to let would-be Mexican border-crossers in unchecked. Presumably, it’s because the Dems are banking on undocumented Latinos to illegitimately vote by the millions for them, you know, despite there being any evidence of this whatsoever.
Like Akilah Johnson, Tessa Stuart, writing for Rolling Stone, spoke directly with Dreamers back in September 2017 to discuss the confusion surrounding DACA and the misconceptions that might exist as a result of hateful rhetoric related to its fate. In particular, the young people consulted for this piece hoped to debunk these myths about them and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals:
Myth #1: DACA recipients can just become citizens.
Even Barack Obama as President was explicit about the idea that DACA is neither amnesty nor immunity nor a path to citizenship. As Astrid Silva, interviewed for the article, outlines, one of the primary benefits of DACA is an Employment Authorization Document, or EAD. But as Silva asserts, the current immigration picture is more complex than a situation like in The Proposal where Sandra Bullock marries for papers, and as Stuart spells out with the help of Rep. Ruben Kihuen, the first Dreamer elected to Congress, it’s much different than it was some 30 years ago, when immigrants who overstayed their visas could adjust their status.
Myth #2: DACA allows immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to stay indefinitely.
Nope. As Stuart spells out, the window for qualifying to receive DACA is a fairly narrow one: one had to arrive in the United States before the age of 16, live in the country since 2007, and be younger than 31 as of June 15, 2012. Of the 1.7 million people eligible, fewer than half actually have registered for the program, and have had to apply for a renewal of their status every two years.
Myth #3: DACA recipients “put our nation at risk of crime, violence, and even terrorism.”
Wrong again. That’s Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, espousing his views based on tolerance as head of the Trump administration’s totally impartial Department of Justice. Felony convictions and multiple or significant misdemeanors disqualify DACA recipients, as do those who are considered “a threat to public safety or national security.” The vast majority of Dreamers are law-abiding, America-loving people. Which makes Jeff Sessions full of you-know-what.
Myth #4: DACA gives undocumented immigrants access to federal benefits.
DACA recipients can obtain driver’s licenses and go to college. But they can’t receive federal financial aid, nor can they even enroll in a healthcare plan under the Affordable Care Act. For the young people trying to afford school, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals at least affords them the opportunity to work while they go to school so they can apply for private loans. People who harp on the supposed glorious “benefits” received by Dreamers overstate their case, and understate the contributions made by these immigrants, including but not limited to paying income taxes.
It should be stressed that Donald Trump is not the only influential voice to espouse anti-immigrant views steeped in racism and xenophobia. Worldwide, migration and refugeeism/asylum-seeking has helped put a strain on relations between ethnic groups; in Europe, for instance, one need look no further than the notion Marine Le Pen was one of the finalists, so to speak, in the race for France’s presidency that ultimately saw Emmanuel Macron elected, or how the Brexit referendum was pushed by far-right elements within the United Kingdom.
Besides, for Trump to succeed with a presidential campaign that, on Day One, bashed Mexicans as criminals, drug dealers, and rapists (with some good people; gee, thanks), he had to tap into prejudices shared by his supporters and others who voted for him. Though not an altogether significant group, a certain percentage of voters in the 2016 election went from casting their ballots for Barack Obama in 2012 to buying a ticket for the “Trump Train.” While economic factors and Trump’s faux populism had a part to play in this, the trepidation of white Americans over the nation “losing its identity” and of having “their culture” diminished by the influx of other ethnic groups likewise figured heavily into Trump’s upset electoral victory.
All this aside, Trump regularly ginning up the “deplorables” within his base deserves every bit of condemnation one can muster, and for the conservatives who cling to trickle-down theories of economics and change, this should inspire a proportionate sense of shame. While still misplaced, it would be one thing for Trump and his administration to more provincially focus their intensity on those undocumented immigrants who commit violent crimes or are otherwise found guilty of significant misdemeanors, as he indicated he would do while stumping for votes.
Instead, Trump being Trump, DACA recipients are liable in their own right to be detained or deported, with boasts of “DACA being dead” and no opportunity wasted to throw members of Congress (especially Democrats) under the bus, and Trump keeping with the nonsense about a wall furnished and paid for by Mexico. Meanwhile, Trump, Jeff Sessions, and their conservative ilk continue to push the myth that DACA recipients and immigrants in general are more likely to commit crimes. This is made especially galling when considering that immigrant children often outperform their peers in school, as Bruce Fuller, sociologist at UC-Berkeley, and others have observed. By this token, we should be outraged that Trump et al. are attacking our best and brightest.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, during an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes for Recode’s Revolution TV special, spoke about how DACA is not an immigration issue, but a moral issue. Indeed, by going after Dreamers, the Trump administration is demonstrating its penchant for cruelty in threatening to deport those who came here as young children and who have little to no recollection of living in the country of their birth. People, who, moreover, contribute to America’s rich cultural tapestry, not to mention its economy. Even those who trumpet the need to uphold our nation’s laws seem to have their priorities in disarray. Are we content to punish DACA recipients for the “sins of their parents,” as outgoing GOP senator Jeff Flake would say? Is that “making America great again?”
The DACA debate is one that should serve as an impetus for all of us as Americans—native, immigrant, and otherwise—to consider who and what we support, and where we are going as a country. For members of the Republican Party, it is high time for them to contemplate how long they can continue to push false narratives about immigrants given a rapidly changing and increasingly diverse pool of individuals here. For Democrats and conscientious members of the electorate, it’s time to reassess whether or not we are doing enough to advocate for DACA recipients, open borders, and other liberal/progressive policies related to immigration. The shadow of the so-called “ugly American” looms large over the battle to protect a vulnerable subset of the U.S. population. Whether or not we care enough to put aside our hate and privilege, and act on these matters, is the question ultimately worth asking.
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Joe Arpaio is a real son-of-a-bitch. Forget about being pardoned for criminal contempt of court—he’s lucky he’s not in jail for worse. (Photo Credit: Angie Wang/AP)
In the interim before Donald Trump was sworn into office, no one was quite sure what to expect when the orange-faced one with a predilection for comically long ties would take the reins. He was, by most accounts, long on rhetoric and short on defined policy goals, such that when he finally was made official as the 45th President of the United States of America, observers were keen to look for any signs of possible shifts in our country’s approach to various economic, political, and social issues. In the early going, the White House’s official website proved to be quite the good indicator of where the Trump administration stands on key topics. Before we had even gotten to February, Trump and Co. had purged the site of pages referring to climate change, civil rights/LGBT rights, and regulations.
Obviously, these were symbolic gestures, but given how swift and specific the changes were, as well as the weight they took on considering they were coming from the leader of the nation, they spoke volumes. More than half a year since these alterations went into effect, Pres. Trump has since pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement—a symbolic device in it of itself—has vowed to roll back Dodd-Frank, backed by Paul Ryan and his pro-business lackeys in Congress; and has issued a directive to ban transgender people from the United States military, with apparent intentions to remove protections for the LGBT community within the Affordable Care Act and having communicated a position that favors the ability of businesses to discriminate against homosexuals all in the name of “religious freedom.” In short, it was evident early on in Donald Trump’s presidency that this was a new day and age for the U.S.A.—except that it was a return to previous positions marked by a deliberate reversal against progress we’ve made over the years and decades. We were “making America great again”—two steps forward and five steps back.
Perhaps the most notable change made to the White House’s official website, however, particularly in light of how Donald Trump started his campaign, was the removal of Spanish-language content from whitehouse.gov. As you’ll recall, Trump began his political ascendancy by essentially boiling down the entire country of Mexico—one with a rich culture and history—down to a haven for crime, drugs, and rape. You know, with some decent folks sprinkled in. As Trump stayed more than relevant in the polls, his message grew no more nuanced regarding his characterization of our neighbor to the south and his potential policies to be enacted, with calls for a costly, ineffective, imprudent, and literally divisive wall to be built growing ever louder and threatening to start a row between the countries with the insistence that Mexico pays for the wall after the election. Or, if you’re former Mexican president Vicente Fox, that f**king wall. Guy likes his expletives—what can I say?
Heretofore, that bleeping monstrosity has yet to be constructed, but an appreciably different tone has been taken toward the issue of immigration—both legal and illegal. While the Obama administration was responsible for its fair share of deportations, the increased vigor with which ICE agents have gone after undocumented immigrants regardless of whether or not they have committed violent crimes has evoked greater feelings of fear and a heightened sense that these deportations are being carried out as a measure of deliberate cruelty. As for the legal immigration aspect, so too does a shift seem to be underway regarding white supremacists’ notions of empowerment and entitlement following Trump’s electoral victory that would see America reject an international mindset and multiculturalism as detrimental forces to the country. To those who are willing participants in what is termed as a “culture war,” this is a conflict for the very soul of the nation. As protracted conflicts go, so too does collateral damage, and one need look no further than the violence in Charlottesville to see just how much people believe this ideological clash to be one worth physically and emotionally fighting.
The latest turn in the ongoing saga that is Donald Trump’s America vs. Mexicans, Muslims, and other people of color, is related to his pardoning of a figure central to the issue of immigration. A figure that, to call him controversial, would be akin to calling water wet. With Hurricane Harvey barreling down on the state of Texas and much of the United States duly distracted, President Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio, former sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona, known to many as “Sheriff Joe.” Arpaio was facing a contempt of court charge stemming from his willful disregard of a federal court order from 2011. The original complaint was filed in 2007 when his department detained a Mexican man with a valid tourist’s visa for nine hours. Arpaio and the rest of the MCSO were found to be in violation in this instance and others, stopping motorists based on racial profiling and effectually trying to enforce immigration law out of their jurisdiction (immigration law is a federal issue, not a state matter). Joe Arpaio, though, not one to go gently into that good night, openly defied the order, even going as far as to tell local news media he wasn’t going to abide by the court’s mandate and lying under oath to misrepresent the fact his department was still profiling and making immigration-based arrests. So, in 2015, Arpaio, still Maricopa County sheriff, was charged with civil contempt of court, and last year, when a U.S. District Judge assessed that Sheriff Joe still wasn’t doing a very good job of not doing the feds’ job, she found him guilty of criminal contempt and set sentencing for October 5. That’s when President Trump swooped in and pardoned Joe Arpaio, no longer head of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office after losing in his re-election bid this past November.
OK, so maybe the Artist Formerly Known as Sheriff Joe was a bit zealous in wanting to uphold immigration law as well as that endemic to Maricopa County. One would imagine he is not the only lawman to feel this way, and Arizona does possess its own unique challenges within the immigration sphere. Moreover, as Arpaio’s supporters would allege, this trial was, above all else, a “show trial.” The man was working with the federal government to help them in their pursuit of those who had failed to abide by the law. That’s not such a bad thing, is it? You’d really put an octogenarian in jail for up to six months? If it were just about giving the federal courts the proverbial middle finger, perhaps one might be tempted to agree with Joe Arpaio’s fervent champions. Might, I stress, might.
Thus far, however, we have only scratched the surface of how Joe Arpaio became one of the most hated sheriffs, if not the most hated sheriff, in all of America. Michelle Mark, writing for Business Insider, profiles the litany of policies enacted under Arpaio’s watch that human rights activists would find more than disagreeable. He removed salt and pepper as well as coffee from the meals at county jails, of which there were only two a day. He held inmates outside in “Tent City” in extreme conditions in summer and winter with limited amounts of cold water during the former and meant no heaters or jackets during the latter. His office was regularly cited for use of excessive force, including use of pepper spray and restraint chairs. He approved of “random” searches of cars for people suspected of being illegal immigrants (which, often enough, were Native Americans instead of Hispanics/Latinos), and supported Arizona SB 1070, also known as the “Papers, Please” law and ratified in 2010, which essentially allowed uniformed police to harass and intimidate people within Arizona’s Spanish-speaking community. For all his bluster about being America’s “toughest sheriff,” Joe Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office were sued an inordinate amount of times from the families of those convicted of crimes, alleging police brutality. What makes this all especially egregious is that the Justice Department knew full well of the scope of Arpaio’s use of racial profiling and other misdeeds, but let him off with little more than a slap on the wrist. Democrat Janet Napolitano, prior to becoming governor of Arizona, led that investigation. So, naturally, whose endorsement did Napolitano seek and get in advance of her first gubernatorial election victory? Joe Arpaio’s. Politics is great like that, huh?
But, wait—it gets better. And, of course, by “better,” I mean, worse. Reporters like Michelle Mark and pontificating bloggers such as myself speak about Joe Arpaio’s transgressions from afar, but the powers-that-be behind the Phoenix New Times, a free local newspaper, have had a front row seat to the kind of bullshit Arpaio and his former department regularly pulled in the name of “law and order.” In an epic series of Tweets, the periodical’s official Twitter account provided additional context for how Sheriff Joe ran the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. Here are some of the, ahem, “highlights”:
Going back to that Tent City business, Arpaio unapologetically referred to his creation as a “concentration camp.”
Inmates in his jails died at a disproportionate rate to other such facilities, whether because they took their own lives or as a direct result of harsh treatment by their jailers. Often, the MCSO had no explanation for these fatalities.
One time, as a publicity stunt, Arpaio had Latino inmates marched into a segregated area with electric fencing.
He also ran, before its ultimate cancellation, a “Mugshot of the Day” feature on the MCSO website where the public could vote on pictures of prisoners for their enjoyment.
The department failed to investigate scores of sex abuse cases, but had enough time to send a deputy to Hawaii to try to procure Barack Obama’s birth certificate. (Yup. He was/is a birther.)
Following the official finding by U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow that Arpaio had been profiling Latinos, he hired a private investigator to investigate the judge and his wife. He also attempted to destroy evidence specifically requested by the judge.
Arpaio had a “Sheriff’s Posse,” one of whom was brought up on child porn charges, and according to the New Times, the Sheriff’s Office was “responsible for countless fiascos” like a “botched SWAT raid, where deputies set a puppy on fire.” That doesn’t exactly sound like serving and protecting, if you ask me.
It is with a hint of irony, then, that Joe Arpaio’s supporters talk about court proceedings against him being a “show trial” and that Arpaio himself derides it all as being a “witch hunt” when he has exhibited all the signs of being a showman—even when countless lives stand to hang in the balance. That Donald Trump, a consummate showman and strongman in his own right, would pardon him sends a clear message about where we are in the state of American politics, and it likewise clearly communicates to his core supporters that the fears and prejudices of white America will be held sacrosanct above the rights of all others. Justice for all? Not by a long shot.
The debate over whether or not Joe Arpaio deserved his pardon unfortunately can invoke the kind of conflicts which denote the existence of the phrase “Blue Lives Matter.” Arpaio was a lawman, and I imagine he and the MCSO were responsible for their fair share of apprehending legitimate violent criminals. This does not, however, and should not exculpate him of what would appear to be a long list of offenses against the civil rights of inmates in Maricopa County jails, not to mention those who suffered physical harm, psychological distress, and/or death as a function of being housed in these “correctional facilities.” Simply put, two wrongs do not make a right, and that Arpaio might’ve gotten six months in jail for criminal contempt of court would have realistically been getting off light in light of the destruction he has encouraged in Hispanic/Latino communities. I’m not a religious person, but if Hell exists, I firmly believe Joe Arpaio may have earned himself a spot there—if only temporarily. Moreover, by characterizing Sheriff Joe in this way, I am recognizing that those sworn to uphold the law may abuse their privileges, but I am not condemning police forces and uniformed police wholesale. I believe most individuals who wear the badge do the right thing and want to do so because it is the right thing. Some, on the other hand, are bad actors, as with any profession. At least from where I’m standing, rather than reacting defensively to any outside criticism, those police should want to know when one of their own has been irresponsible or derelict in his or her duties. That is, the universal fraternity of policemen and policewomen has its limits.
Returning to an earlier notion and somewhat of a devil’s advocate distinction, Arpaio is not the only sheriff who has been accused of approaching law enforcement at all levels with—shall we say—extreme robustness. Still, he and others like him shouldn’t be celebrated or pardoned by the President of the United States, much less have their latest book plugged on Twitter. Such was the case when Donald Trump took to his favorite medium to hock Sheriff David Clarke’s book and to cheer him as a great man. There’s any number of problems with these sentiments coming from POTUS, not the least of which is that, based on what we know of Mr. Trump, dude doesn’t read all that much, so how he can recommend something he almost certainly has never cracked open? Besides this, though, Clarke, sheriff of Milwaukee County in Wisconsin, is a notorious figure in his own right. As with Joe Arpaio, David Clarke and his office have been the subject of numerous lawsuits alleging abuse and neglect of inmates, even to the point of death. Plus, while we, ahem, shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, I’m not immediately sure why cowboy hats should be a thing in Wisconsin. Is this standard issue or does Clarke just wear it because he’s the “Sheriff?” This is the Midwest, not the Wild West.
We like to subscribe to the black-and-white narrative in the United States of America that all police are of exemplary character and, conversely, that all people behind bars are deserving of their fate because of some character defect. The reality, of course, is much more complicated, and as literal issues of black and white go, matters of race factor heavily into why. The seemingly never-ending tally of black suspects being murdered at the hands of police despite relatively minor offenses (see also “driving while black”) demands accountability of the individual officers responsible for the escalations that lead to these deaths as well as that of the departments which assign and train these arms of the force. Racial profiling and disproportionate apprehension/sentencing of people of color are critical to understanding the systemic racism inherent in our modern-day prison-industrial complex. Joe Arpaio’s pardoning at the hands of Donald Trump was a symbolic gesture, but this is not to say it doesn’t resonate deeply with Americans of differing demographics and ideologies. It is basically the President of the United States thumbing his nose at Latinos, liberals, and those who would reject a “tough love” approach to law enforcement in this country, and pouring more kerosene on the Republican Party’s burning bridge between white America and people of color. It sets a terrible precedent, and should not be sanctioned by neither the left nor the right in the name of common decency.
In the zombie apocalypse, recounts will be made and elections will be rigged only with respect to the amount of fresh BRAAAAAAAAAINS. (Image Credit: Brian Allen)
We had the 2016 presidential election, which sucked. We talked about why the 2016 election sucked. (Short answer: because the candidates both sucked and half the country made a stupid choice.) We’ve discussed just how much it’s going to suck should what we think what is going to happen actually comes to fruition. Therefore, in contemplating just how profound the suckitude, if you will, will prove, we have put the election behind us and are ready to move on and steel ourselves for the politics of the years to come. Right?
Not so fast. By now, most of us get the gist of what went down but a few weeks ago both in terms of the Electoral College and the popular vote. Concerning the former, which is what counts given our current system, Donald Trump carried Election Night. His 306 electoral votes, ahem, trump Hillary Clinton’s 232, an advantage secured by winning 30 states to his rival’s 20. Conversely, with respect to the latter, Clinton had the better showing; as of this writing, over 125 million votes have been counted, and her tally of 64.8 million bests Trump’s figure of 62.5 million, more than 2 million more. Percentage-wise, it’s still close—Hillary captured about 48.0% of the vote to Trump’s 46.3%—but no matter how you slice it, the woman of 1,000 pantsuits won the popular vote. You can’t take away the historic nature of her nomination as the Democratic Party nominee for President of these United States, and you can’t act as if, to borrow a Trump-ism, Hillary Clinton got “schlonged” in the general election.
These realities of the election seem pretty much ironclad. So what’s the lingering preoccupation with the results, especially on the part of people who supported and/or voted for Hillary? Aren’t they just kidding themselves, living in a state of denial? While on some level this may be the case, to be fair, some of the outcomes of individual states were close contests. Like, really close. In Michigan, for example, Donald Trump captured 16 electoral votes on the strength of a margin of victory of less than 10,000 votes, a difference of only about two-tenths of a percent. In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, too, a divide of only about 1% separates who won and who lost, with the victor (Trump) earning 10 or more electoral votes despite the slim advantage. Noting these narrow wins, which would appear to fall within some sort of margin of error, it wouldn’t be outrageous to think that error alone could have swayed the results in one candidate’s favor. Or, perhaps something more nefarious.
If only there were some way to verify whether or not the purported vote totals in key states are accurate, or at least more accurate than previously determined. Oh, wait—there is. It’s called a recount. As in counting again. When the tallies are this close between candidates, it’s not only advisable to effect a re-running of the ballots through the machine, but one might argue it should be necessary. If the results in swing states and other close contests are enough to potentially sway the election, shouldn’t it be incumbent upon the powers-that-be in these jurisdictions to revisit the vote counts for the peace of mind of the electorate as well as their own sense of self-respect for wanting to do their jobs correctly? Suppose a county clerk in one of these states went rogue and inserted the ballots of 20,000 dead people and fictional characters for his or her candidate of choice. If Darth Vader and Kylo Ren voted for Donald Trump in Lancaster County, PA (they totally would vote Trump if given the choice, by the way—you know they would), I, as a voter from this area, would want to know as much. From what we know of history, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that local voting officials might try to game the results coming out of their district.
This last scenario speaks to more than just the possibility of error in the processing of people’s ballots, but in line with the idea of something more “nefarious” happening, electoral fraud occurring within the 2016 election. Now, with all due respect, even during the primary season, reports of fraud and voter disenfranchisement were rampant on the Internet and social media. Anecdotally, I observed a number of Bernie Sanders supporters/political conspiracy theorists indiscriminately hurling around accusations that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and its friends in high places were rigging the electoral process in her favor. With yet more due respect, as Wikileaks has helped convey, the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and members of the news media were more than a little chummy with one another, and especially on the part of the DNC, deliberately operated and spoke against the Sanders campaign. Within the specific sphere of influence of primary voting, however, a lot of these reports are, if not unfounded, then otherwise unproven. As much as I might be loath to admit it, Hillary Clinton fairly easily outpaced Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Party primaries, and even if independent voters were allowed to cast ballots for one of the two in these party primaries (many states did not permit this), Clinton likely still would’ve come out ahead. Of course, we’ll never know for sure what would’ve happened had Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Co. not acted so conspiratorially and/or undeclared voters had been given an authentic voice, but let’s not act as if fraud completely got her the nomination.
With all this in mind, though, let’s also not completely negate the possibility that something underhanded occurred with respect to voting in one or more key regions, and furthermore, that those instrumental in influencing American votes were based outside the United States. While Hillary Clinton and her campaign were awfully quick to throw out the specter of Russia as a deleterious force in our electoral process (that is, while the Russians were likely behind hacks of the Democratic National Committee which led to the Wikileaks DNC E-mail dump, they didn’t coerce the officials represented in those messages to say the disagreeable shit they did), at the same, we shouldn’t consider it impossible that skilled Russian operatives could hack the software used in our voting machines. J. Alex Halderman, professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, recently wrote a piece about this very hypothetical scenario.
As Halderman reasons, Russia has already been asserted by multiple government agencies to be behind hacks of the DNC and the E-mail of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, as well as voter registration systems in Arizona and Illinois, not to mention the vote-counting infrastructure in Ukraine during its 2014 presidential election, almost causing the wrong winner to be announced completely. What’s more, as Prof. Halderman cites, we’ve been able to hack our own machines. Princeton professor Andrew Appel was able to do it with the help of graduate students—Halderman himself being one of them. J. Alex Halderman is reasonably certain he and his own grad students at Michigan could pull off the same caper, and with numerous states reading ballots using machines with severely-outmoded software, lacking the resources or perhaps the urgency to update what they have, the risk is all the more widespread. The solution, as Halderman and election security experts reason, seems counter-intuitively old-fashioned, but nonetheless may yet prove more effective in deterring fraud: checking the paper trail. To quote the Professor:
I know I may sound like a Luddite for saying so, but most election security experts are with me on this: paper ballots are the best available technology for casting votes. We use two main kinds of paper systems in different parts of the U.S. Either voters fill out a ballot paper that gets scanned into a computer for counting (optical scan voting), or they vote on a computer that counts the vote and prints a record on a piece of paper (called a voter-verifiable paper audit trail). Either way, the paper creates a record of the vote that can’t be later modified by any bugs, misconfiguration, or malicious software that might have infected the machines.
After the election, human beings can examine the paper to make sure the results from the voting machines accurately determined who won. Just as you want the brakes in your car to keep working even if the car’s computer goes haywire, accurate vote counts must remain available even if the machines are malfunctioning or attacked. In both cases, common sense tells us we need some kind of physical backup system. I and other election security experts have been advocating for paper ballots for years, and today, about 70% of American voters live in jurisdictions that keep a paper record of every vote.
To interpret what J. Alex Halderman is saying for my own purposes, maybe voting and the necessity of paper ballots is something with which we shouldn’t f**k around. Additionally, maybe—just maybe—we should check these records in the event of an inquiry, because these matters of choosing a president are kind of a big deal.
So, about this whole idea of a recount now. We know where we might opt for to revisit the tallies for each candidate. We know why it might be prudent to go ahead with such an electoral review. We even know who might be hacking our dadgum machines. How do we make a recount reality? Just ask Jill Stein. Wait, the Green Party presidential candidate? One and the same, reader, one and the same. As someone who voted for Stein in the general election knowing full well she wouldn’t win, it’s vaguely amusing to see opinions of her change now that she has been instrumental in fundraising and otherwise spearheading a campaign for a recount in the pivotal states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. For some voters, opinions aren’t really changing, but rather are being formed in the first place, as there’s a good chance they had no idea Jill Stein was the Green Party representative, or a representative for any party, for that matter. For the Democratic Party voters who dismissed Stein as a lightweight candidate and annoyance as a potential spoiler for Hillary Clinton’s hopes to become the United States’ first female President, many are likely regarding her with a newfound sense of appreciation, and at any rate, probably figure it’s the least she could do after taking votes from their candidate.
But about her supporters and those within the Green Party ranks? Daniel Marans, writing for Huffington Post, helps to map out the tangled web of approval and disapproval that has met Jill Stein in her quest for a three-state recount, and concerning the Green Party, Stein’s choice to challenge results in these states and primarily for the benefit of Democrats, at that, has these Green Partiers, ahem, seeing red. So, what’s got Jill’s critics up in arms? Let’s review the charges, if you will:
1. The recount doesn’t help Green Party in its efforts to build and grow.
Right, although this is the beginning of December, the election just happened, and the window to file a recount is tighter than Chris Christie in skinny jeans. One jurisdiction Marans cites in the article that Green Party brass would rather Jill Stein focus on is Texas, where a Green Party candidate almost captured the 5% of the vote to keep the party on the ballot for the 2018 midterm elections in the state. On one hand, I am sympathetic to the cause of Andrea Merida Cuellar, party co-chair, and others who feel this is an important battle to be fought for the sake of the Green Party’s initiatives and values. On the other hand, however, Stein, as the face of the party, is generating publicity for their movement, even if she happens to be “serving the interests” of Democrats in doing so. In the big picture, Stein may be doing more good for third parties than her supporters otherwise might think.
2. There are more pressing issues facing election integrity in this country.
From a purist’s standpoint, yes, there are serious problems facing the electoral process in the United States. As Kevin Zeese, adviser to Jill Stein’s campaign, notes, issues with voter registration and the prevention of people voting are pressing concerns, the kind that tends to get glossed over in the winner-takes-all format of the Electoral College. Still, Zeese and other like-minded critics behave as if these concerns are the likes of which can be quickly resolved, or that by raising support for a recount, these other pursuits will be done irreparable damage. America’s electoral system is indeed riddled with flaws, but they will not be solved overnight, and it is not as if calls for a recount do not expose additional liabilities of individual state systems.
3. If the recount is not done manually, inherent inadequacies of our electoral system will be not exposed.
It seems kind of silly that a “recount” of the balloting in key states would involve anything other than a by-hand review of the tallies for each candidate, but yet that is what is being contemplated in Wisconsin, for one, where a judge ruled that Jill Stein’s campaign could not compel the state’s 72 counties to actually count their ballots, though Daniel Marans’ Huffington Post piece notes that a majority voluntarily obliged anyhow. Otherwise, though, what would suffice as a recount would be merely re-running the votes through the machines and seeing if anything else comes out. Presumably, this could turn a spotlight on any attempts at computer fraud or external hacking, but it still seems just as likely that this would provide little solace or new information. As far as Stein is concerned, though, as with votes for the Green Party, she’ll probably take what she can get.
4. Depending on the level of Democratic Party involvement in the recount, the integrity of the results might be doubtful.
Merely petitioning for a recount, an act which might benefit Democrats, has raised suspicion among Green Party activists. Throw in the fact that Jill Stein’s representation for the sake of the recount in Michigan, Mark Brewer, was once chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, and you can understand from the appearance of things why independents and party supporters might be upset. Especially in the minds of progressives, neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party are particularly trustworthy institutions right now. That said, I think a good part of the antipathy to Stein’s mission for multiple recounts is that she apparently decided to crowd-fund and solicit the recount petitions in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin of her own volition—that is, without consulting Green Party leadership. Jill Stein is a bit of a political neophyte still, and it’s very possible she didn’t think she had to let anyone know first. From the gist of Marans’ report, though, Green Party die-hards aren’t real happy with her decision, and this could be the beginning of the end for Stein as the face of the party. It’s never easy to serve in such a role, is it?
Michigan’s Attorney General, Republican Bill Schuette, would have you believe politics did not play a role in his decision to follow a suit to stop recount efforts in his state. In other words, Santa Claus is real, and money does, in fact, grow on trees. (Photo Credit: Ryan Garza/TNS/Zuma Press)
At this writing, Wisconsin’s recount is ongoing, though Trump supporters have filed a lawsuit and request for a temporary restraining order in federal court in hopes of bringing it to a stop. Donald Trump’s camp and the Pennsylvania Republican Party have also asked a court to dismiss a recount request in Pennsylvania, where Trump’s lead has shrunk from 1% to 0.8% as some of the final votes in some counties have come in. And in Michigan, a request to prevent a recount was issued by—guess who—Donald Trump supporters, but with the state elections board vote ending in a deadlock, the case will proceed later next week unless a forthcoming court order supersedes this result. The common theme with these individual state recounts, viewed through the lens of opposition to them, obviously is that the Trump campaign and his followers really, really don’t want any recounts to occur. The reason behind this is likewise painfully clear: President-Elect Trump has everything to lose from a challenge to the results of the votes already tabulated, having secured enough electoral votes to garner victory. Bested by more than 2 million votes in the popular vote, and with potentially less than a percentage point separating the winner and loser in valuable swing states, there is sufficient reason for concern on his point. Anytime a candidate fails to win a convincing majority, I feel there should be at least some concern that a recount could produce a materially different outcome.
Jill Stein, for her part, has averred that she is asking for a recount with the best intentions. That is, she only wishes to confirm the integrity of the results—not anticipating a meaningful change in the counts already observed—and is not soliciting a review of the tallied ballots to curry favor with the Democratic Party or anything of that nature. Indeed, even with her penchant for conspiracy-theory-type disbelief of what the mainstream media tells us, she is not the one who has cast the most doubt on the veracity of the American electoral process this cycle. No, in his usual baffling, counterproductive style, it is Donald Trump himself who has cast aspersions on the fidelity of the counts thus recorded. As noted, Trump has everything to lose from challenges to the totals in key states, having captured the win with narrow margins in a few of them.
But, lo, it his losing the popular vote which has truly set him off. The self-centered egotist that he is, Trump has built his legacy on the iconography of being a “winner”—of course, with a healthy heaping of helping from his father, as well as his evident ability to lie, cheat and steal his way to greater fortune—such that winning the presidency is not good enough for him, apparently. Indeed, losing the popular vote has stuck in Mr. Trump’s craw, to the extent he has challenged the results in his own grouping of states, and most reprehensibly, says he would have won if not for the “millions of people who voted illegally.” He’s not saying it directly, but you know he’s saying it in a way for his faithful to interpret in such a way: he’s accusing undocumented immigrants of voting for Hillary Clinton. Non-citizens, as we know, are unable to vote in presidential elections, and to wit, election officials and reporting news media outlets have found no evidence that such widespread fraud occurred in the 2016 election. What’s more, to have millions of people voting illegally for the same candidate suggests collusion on the part of Democrats. It’s believable enough for the crackpots among us, but reckless as f**k otherwise. It’s not like this is the first time we’ve heard this charge from the man, either. Even before Election Day, Donald Trump preemptively insinuated the election would be proven as “rigged” if he lost the state of Pennsylvania. He still might, mind you, but why even invite this allegation for a specific state? To your non-supporters, it only makes you seem more suspicious. What can you say, though? Dude’s worse than a sore loser—he’s a sore winner.
Whatever you call him, insinuations of this sort are a dick move on Trump’s part, as the American people’s flagging confidence in politicians and voting doesn’t need any more grease to help it along a downward path. According to this article by Daniel S. Levine on Heavy.com, an estimated 57.9% of eligible voters voted in the 2016 presidential election. That’s better than half, but still low by international standards. Moreover, according to survey information, even fewer have deep and abiding confidence in the electoral process as a whole. In a Pew Research report authored by researchers Betsy Cooper, Daniel Cox, Rachel Lienesch, and Robert P. Jones and published less than a month before Election Day, 43% of the individuals surveyed said they had great confidence that their vote would be counted accurately, and a significant gap was found between the confidence of intended Clinton voters and Trump supporters—with those riding the Trump Train pulling down the overall average. Donald Trump isn’t just casting a single line in the hopes of eroding public confidence in the electoral process—he’s chumming the water. And a significant portion of Americans, like sharks smelling blood, are eating it up. This would be fine if it were Shark Week, but it’s not, and this country doesn’t need help in fomenting its innermost fears. I mean, if Trump said snakes and spiders were attacking Americans on the regular and thus presented a present danger to the United States, I tend to believe too many of us would have clubs and tissues on hand, ready to bludgeon and squish these creatures in a spirit of bloodlust and wanton destruction. As far as many of us are concerned, it’s a scary time, politically speaking, in this country.
Now that I’ve mentioned sharks and snakes and spiders, you may be dredging up all sorts of personal nightmares, so let’s bring this discussion back to its central thrust. Should we have a recount in crucial swing states? Sure, it couldn’t hurt, and if we are really concerned about pervasive fraud, we should encourage such examinations of the accuracy of the vote, right, Mr. Trump? What does Jill Stein’s involvement in recount efforts mean for the future of the Green Party? I don’t know, but all the pissing and moaning about potentially helping the Democratic Party’s cause seems rather short-sighted. We get it—major parties are not to be trusted—but occasionally, the interests of both parties do coincide, especially when Donald Trump is up to no good. What do we make of Trump’s ranting and raving about millions of people voting illegally? Quite frankly, very little, and once again, it’s upsetting the mainstream media is not more vocal in denouncing his false claims. For an institution like the news media, you would think they would understand the importance of maintaining and bolstering public confidence when they have faced their own difficulties in attracting and keeping customers, but as usual, the lure of short-term ratings numbers are evidently too much to ignore. Finally, where does all this leave us? As with the future of the Green Party, one can’t tell for sure, but one thing is certain: though a winner has been called, the 2016 presidential election is far from over. Unfortunately.
“That Humpty Dumpty was a real loser. Couldn’t even survive a fall! Sad! When I am President, our falls will be even greater, and we will put America back together again, believe me!” (Image retrieved from madmagazine.com.)
When Donald Trump “misstates” something (read: “outright lies”) or “outlines a policy plan” (read: “has a really bad idea”), you’ve got to give it to the man—he tends to commit to it. Whereas Hillary Clinton can’t recall having conversations about classified E-mails, or can’t remember having specific conversations about classified E-mails, or blames a concussion on not being able to follow protocol, or claims she doesn’t know how thousands of messages got deleted, or expresses the belief that Colin Powell whispered sweet nothings about private servers in her ear, Trump has been largely resolute on his awful anti-immigrant agenda. By now, he and his campaign are largely synonymous with the notion of building a wall at the Mexican border. Dude’s got a real hard-on over the whole thing, in fact. Don’t like the wall? That shit just got ten feet higher! Still sassing back? We’ll add ten more! And we can keep going like this too! Why? Mexico’s paying for the whole damn thing! So put away that wallet, Joe America, our construction workers are only accepting pesos from here on out!
Heretofore, Donald Trump’s policy on curbing illegal immigration to the United States has been criticized as lacking specificity—and that’s a nice way of putting it. This past Wednesday, capping off a fun-filled month of August in this presidential campaign (obvious sarcasm intended), Trump spoke to supporters outlining his “detailed” policy on “one of the greatest challenges facing our country today” in illegal immigration, from—where else?—Phoenix, Arizona. I’m going to give you 24 choice quotes from his address—one for each hour of the day!—with my own annotations, and you can reach your own conclusions from there. Brace yourself.
1. “The truth is our immigration system is worse than anybody ever realized. But the facts aren’t known because the media won’t report on them. The politicians won’t talk about them and the special interests spend a lot of money trying to cover them up because they are making an absolute fortune. That’s the way it is. Today, on a very complicated and very difficult subject, you will get the truth. The fundamental problem with the immigration system in our country is that it serves the needs of wealthy donors, political activists and powerful, powerful politicians.”
Groan. We’ve only just begun, and already, I’m somewhat regretting my decision to examine what Donald Trump actually, you know, says. It seems almost disingenuous for a man who has gained so much free publicity from the media without being challenged more seriously on aspects of his finances (tax returns, cough, cough) to turn around and blame the media on anything, but that’s our Donald, after all. Apparently, there’s a lot of misinformation by omission concerning immigration trends in America happening on the part of some vague conspiracy involving a leftist media, lobbyists, politicians, and wealthy private citizens. It’s not that corporations and other businesses could actually be to blame—including your own, Mr. Trump. Not that at all.
2. “We…have to be honest about the fact that not everyone who seeks to join our country will be able to successfully assimilate. Sometimes it’s just not going to work out. It’s our right, as a sovereign nation, to chose immigrants that we think are the likeliest to thrive and flourish and love us.”
Trump doesn’t mention Muslims here. But you know he totally f**king means it.
3. “A 2011 report from the Government Accountability Office found that illegal immigrants and other non-citizens, in our prisons and jails together, had around 25,000 homicide arrests to their names, 25,000.”
Ooh, look! Donald Trump has learned to make citations! Besides the fact this statistic is misleading in that it makes it seem as if Mexican and other immigrants were responsible for this many murders in 2011 alone—the FBI reports fewer than 15,000 estimated homicides that year, but what do they know?—it cherry-picks the figure from one group without considering how much violent crime is perpetrated by American citizens. Of course, though, that doesn’t fit the narrative.
4. “Illegal immigration costs our country more than $113 billion a year. And this is what we get. For the money we are going to spend on illegal immigration over the next 10 years, we could provide one million at-risk students with a school voucher, which so many people are wanting. While there are many illegal immigrants in our country who are good people, many, many, this doesn’t change the fact that most illegal immigrants are lower skilled workers with less education, who compete directly against vulnerable American workers, and that these illegal workers draw much more out from the system than they can ever possibly pay back. And they’re hurting a lot of our people that cannot get jobs under any circumstances.”
Trump throws so much into one thought that it’s almost impossible to address it all in the time you would need to consider it fully before moving on to the next tangent. With the benefit of being able to rationally confront his remarks retrospectively, however, let’s give it a whirl. 1) Republicans often like to tout school vouchers as an alternative for our “failing” public schools, but not only are they to a large extent responsible for this failure based on their refusal to fund education and other public programs, but their assumption that school choice is a vastly superior option, especially when the private sector is involved, is a fallacy. In many cases, these additional options are no better than their public-school counterparts, if not worse, and what’s more, affording our presumed “best and brightest” to pick and choose their school when others cannot just encourages division along racial and socioeconomic lines. 2) If these illegal immigrants are such good people, what’s the problem? OK, even if the issue is that they supposedly “take our jobs,” this claim is overblown, because often times, they are doing dangerous or more physically intensive work in agriculture or, say, the meat packing industry, jobs that American citizens don’t want to do, or otherwise have been challenged more significantly by trends like automation and global trade.
But wait—there’s more! 3) According to Harvard economist George Borjas, as cited in this NPR Q&A, the net effect on the average American’s wealth as a result of illegal immigration is minimal (less than 1%), and if anything, slightly positive. While the report acknowledges the negative economic effects of illegal immigration, including depressing effects on wages of low-skilled workers and an income tax shortfall, on the other hand, undocumented immigrant labor does make products and services more affordable, not to mention these immigrants do pay property and sales taxes and are ineligible for certain classes of benefits as non-citizens. Let’s not let these considerations get in the way of a good argument, though.
5. Only the out of touch media elites think the biggest problems facing America — you know this, this is what they talk about, facing American society today is that there are 11 million illegal immigrants who don’t have legal status. And, they also think the biggest thing, and you know this, it’s not nuclear, and it’s not ISIS, it’s not Russia, it’s not China, it’s global warming.
For Christ’s sake! We don’t have time to argue the merits of global f**king warming! Moving along.
6. Hillary Clinton, for instance, talks constantly about her fears that families will be separated, but she’s not talking about the American families who have been permanently separated from their loved ones because of a preventable homicide, because of a preventable death, because of murder. No, she’s only talking about families who come here in violation of the law. We will treat everyone living or residing in our country with great dignity. So important. We will be fair, just, and compassionate to all, but our greatest compassion must be for our American citizens.
Commence with the ritual Clinton-bashing! We’ve already discussed how Donald Trump’s figures on violent crime committed by immigrants are kind of wonky, but let’s tackle the notion of relative compassion. If we’re truly being compassionate to all, then at heart, it shouldn’t matter who is receiving more or less compassion, as if you can modulate such things just like that. I’ve heard it said that Jesus never went out of his way for anyone—because He never considered helping anyone to be going out of His way. Just something to think about.
7. “[Hillary Clinton’s] plan [is] to bring in 620,000 new refugees from Syria and that region over a short period of time. And even yesterday, when you were watching the news, you saw thousands and thousands of people coming in from Syria. What is wrong with our politicians, our leaders if we can call them that. What the hell are we doing?”
8. “We will build a great wall along the southern border. And Mexico will pay for the wall. One hundred percent. They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for it. And they’re great people and great leaders but they’re going to pay for the wall. On day one, we will begin working on an impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful southern border wall. We will use the best technology, including above and below ground sensors that’s for the tunnels. Remember that, above and below. Above and below ground sensors. Towers, aerial surveillance and manpower to supplement the wall, find and dislocate tunnels and keep out criminal cartels and Mexico you know that, will work with us. I really believe it. Mexico will work with us. I absolutely believe it. And especially after meeting with their wonderful, wonderful president today. I really believe they want to solve this problem along with us, and I’m sure they will.”
OK, now we start to get to Trump’s plan a.k.a. the 10-point path to Crazy Town. Point One, obviously, is the wall, which is his baby and the centerpiece of his plan. Which is unfortunate, because it’s a complete disaster in the making. Let’s disregard any talk of effectiveness in light of the cost of this theoretical monstrosity. Donald Trump has averred the cost of the wall would be only about $8 billion or so, but more realistic estimates suggest the actual price tag could reach upwards of $25 billion. Wait, you say, it’s OK. Mexico’s paying for the wall. I’m no expert in international relations, but Mexico is not going to pay for that wall. Trump acts as if, because Mexico has a trade deficit with the United States, they just have money lying around to throw at a grandiose construction project, but this just demonstrates the man’s lack of understanding of economics despite his professed business acumen.
This is aside from the reality that Mexico has never said they would pay for the wall. Former Mexican president Vicente Fox dropped F-bombs over the whole idea, and current Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto has categorically denied his country will foot the bill, despite Donald Trump’s insistence it will, and moreover, referred to the Republican Party nominee’s proposals as a “threat to the future of Mexico.” So, yeah, seriously, this whole wall thing-a-ma-jig is a waste of time and money, won’t lead to permanent jobs being created, will alienate Spanish-speaking people across the globe, and on top of that, probably won’t work all that well. And that people actually would vote for Trump based on the wall scares the shit out of me.
9. “We are going to end catch and release. We catch them, oh go ahead. We catch them, go ahead. Under my administration, anyone who illegally crosses the border will be detained until they are removed out of our country and back to the country from which they came. And they’ll be brought great distances. We’re not dropping them right across. They learned that. President Eisenhower. They’d drop them across, right across, and they’d come back. And across. Then when they flew them to a long distance, all of a sudden that was the end. We will take them great distances. But we will take them to the country where they came from, O.K.?”
Um, yeah, Mr. Trump, you’re not referring to Eisenhower’s operation in name by design, I can guarantee it. What he’s invoking, by the way, is a little something called, ahem, Operation Wetback, and by many objective measures, it was a failure. For one, on a human rights dimension, the quick-minded nature of the program’s relocations often resulted in deportees being unable to claim their property in the United States, let alone notify their family they had been deported in the first place. In addition, there were reports of beatings by Border Patrol agents, and when the deportees actually got to Mexico, they faced hardship from being relocated to unfamiliar territories, if not dying from the sweltering Mexican heat. Perhaps more significantly, however, in terms of its effectiveness, Operation Wetback did not deter illegal immigration. By the end of the program, about one in five deportees were repeat offenders, and American employers in border areas were undermining border agents’ efforts anyway, hiring undocumented immigrants because of the cheap labor incentive. Needless to say, this is an awful chapter in history with a shitty legacy to match, so I’m not sure why you would even invoke Operation Wetback with a similar initiative.
10. “According to federal data, there are at least two million, two million, think of it, criminal aliens now inside of our country, two million people, criminal aliens. We will begin moving them out day one. As soon as I take office. Day one. In joint operation with local, state, and federal law enforcement. Now, just so you understand, the police, who we all respect—say hello to the police. Boy, they don’t get the credit they deserve. I can tell you. They’re great people. But the police and law enforcement, they know who these people are. They live with these people. They get mocked by these people. They can’t do anything about these people, and they want to. They know who these people are. Day one, my first hour in office, those people are gone. And you can call it deported if you want. The press doesn’t like that term. You can call it whatever the hell you want. They’re gone. Beyond the two million, and there are vast numbers of additional criminal illegal immigrants who have fled, but their days have run out in this country. The crime will stop. They’re going to be gone. It will be over. They’re going out. They’re going out fast.”
Trump is worried about the use of the word “deported” here, but it’s not that term which is the offensive one here. That would be “criminal aliens.” Contrary to popular belief, Mexicans don’t like being referred to as criminals. Call them crazy, I guess. Also, for all his talk about Clinton’s pandering to groups, his appeals to America’s uniformed police are pretty damn blatant. Besides, in general, I feel like the police get their fair share of credit for the important service they provide, and at times, too much, or at least the benefit of the doubt, in instances of violence against minorities. Again, though, that doesn’t fit the narrative that Donald Trump and his supporters wish to hear. My apologies. It’s always the black person’s fault.
11. “We will issue detainers for illegal immigrants who are arrested for any crime whatsoever, and they will be placed into immediate removal proceedings if we even have to do that”.
Any crime? Like, even jaywalking? I know much of this is tough talk, but the itchy trigger finger that Trump is encouraging here would set a dangerous precedent, if for no other reason than it lends itself to profiling and possibly even vigilantism. The vagueness of the phrase “if we even have to do that,” too, is worrisome. Do we just literally throw people over the wall back into Mexico? Or somehow exact a physically worse punishment? What we don’t know might just hurt us, and cause Lady Liberty to hide her face in shame.
12. “My plan also includes cooperating closely with local jurisdictions to remove criminal aliens immediately. We will restore the highly successful Secure Communities Program. Good program. We will expand and revitalize the popular 287(g) partnerships, which will help to identify hundreds of thousands of deportable aliens in local jails that we don’t even know about. Both of these programs have been recklessly gutted by this administration. And those were programs that worked.”
“Highly successful?” If it were highly successful, why was the Secure Communities Program suspended? Maybe it was because it didn’t do an effective job of targeting and curbing violent criminals who immigrated illegally to the United States. Or because it was responsible for numerous cases of people being deported who are actually American citizens. Or because it didn’t allow states and local police forces to opt out, as was first promised. Or because it made people less likely to report serious crimes by undocumented immigrants for fear of being deported. The Secure Communities Program was, in no uncertain terms, an abysmal endeavor, so there’s no reason Donald Trump should be touting its merits. Ditto for 287(g). That provision, put into practice, lacked requisite oversight, diverted police resources away from the investigation of local crimes, and, again, led to profiling of Latino residents in border states. It’s already bad if public policy is marked by ethical lapses, but when it doesn’t even accomplish its stated purpose, it deserves to be deep-sixed. If Trump were hoping to name-drop effectively, he didn’t do it on this occasion.
13. “Within ICE I am going to create a new special deportation task force focused on identifying and quickly removing the most dangerous criminal illegal immigrants in America who have evaded justice just like Hillary Clinton has evaded justice, OK? Maybe they’ll be able to deport her.”
Hmm, new task force—I’m sure this will be handled with the requisite oversight so as to prevent abuses of civil liberties and cost overruns. (If I could, I would put an eye-rolling emoji here for emphasis.) By the way, Mr. Trump, your joke about Hillary being deported isn’t all that funny considering she’s an American citizen and therefore could never be deported. Though the relevance factor would be lost in that he’s done serving as President after this term, Barack Obama being deported is more amusing because stupid, gullible people are convinced he was born outside the country and/or is a secret Muslim. Like, um, yourself. It all would still be reprehensible to suggest, even in jest, but at least your stab at humor would be more spot-on. It’s the principle of the thing, Donald.
14. “We will end the sanctuary cities that have resulted in so many needless deaths. Cities that refuse to cooperate with federal authorities will not receive taxpayer dollars, and we will work with Congress to pass legislation to protect those jurisdictions that do assist federal authorities.”
The idea of sanctuary cities is a complicated one in the light of highly-publicized deaths such as that of Kate Steinle in 2015, who was shot and killed by an undocumented Mexican immigrant who had been deported multiple times, had seven felony convictions to his name, and was on probation at the time of the incident. The Steinle example, however, sticks out because a) San Francisco, the setting of the fateful event, is a sanctuary city, and in this instance, did not honor a detainer from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) because no active warrant existed for the shooter’s arrest, and b) Steinle was white, and a beautiful young woman at that, who presumably loved life, was kind to all people and animals, and all that jazz.
In all seriousness, a loss is a loss, and I can only imagine what Kate Steinle’s family felt and still feels. Still, her death, while tragic, doesn’t mean we necessarily should abandon sanctuary cities wholesale. Errol Louis penned an op-ed piece last year on the subject of sanctuary cities, and he rightly pointed out that numerous cities and other municipalities do not want to have to shoulder the financial and logistical burden of trying to enforce immigration law when resources are at a premium in investigating and stopping all other crimes that happen within their jurisdiction. Not only this, but law enforcement in these same places doesn’t want to jeopardize the trust it stands to lose and has forged with members of Hispanic/Latino communities. Deportation, legally speaking, is a federal enterprise, and Donald Trump’s insistence that only those who comply with ICE’s demands for information and detention would receive federal subsidies is appalling, because it is prejudicial against those areas who oppose his viewpoints, and only encourages local governments to comply meekly to avoid sanctions or try to manipulate the situation such as to maintain the appearance of compliance. Sanctuary cities, despite their concerns, are a bit of a political red herring.
15. “We will immediately terminate President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties in which he defied federal law and the Constitution to give amnesty to approximately five million illegal immigrants, five million.”
Or we can just continue to have Obama’s executive orders batted around in court, which, owing to how slow the law moves, is pretty much a death sentence anyway, amirite?
16. “We are going to suspend the issuance of visas to any place where adequate screening cannot occur. According to data provided by the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, and the national interest between 9/11 and the end of 2014, at least 380 foreign born individuals were convicted in terror cases inside the United States. And even right now the largest number of people are under investigation for exactly this that we’ve ever had in the history of our country.”
More vagueness from Donald J. Trump, whose “detailed” plan is seeming less and less accurate as we go along. How do we define “adequate” screening? Who decides such things? How long is the suspension of visa issuance? Indefinite? I ask these questions not only because they deserve to be asked, but because it’s wholly possible Trump has not even considered how to answer them. And in case anyone has forgotten to keep score, THE MAN MIGHT BE ELECTED PRESIDENT. HE SHOULD KNOW THESE THINGS.
17. “Countries in which immigration will be suspended would include places like Syria and Libya. And we are going to stop the tens of thousands of people coming in from Syria. We have no idea who they are, where they come from. There’s no documentation. There’s no paperwork. It’s going to end badly, folks. It’s going to end very, very badly. For the price of resettling one refugee in the United States, 12 could be resettled in a safe zone in their home region. Which I agree with 100 percent. We have to build safe zones and we’ll get the money from Gulf states. We don’t want to put up the money. We owe almost $20 trillion. Doubled since Obama took office, our national debt. But we will get the money from Gulf states and others. We’ll supervise it. We’ll build safe zones which is something that I think all of us want to see.”
Wow. There’s a lot to unpack here, and a lot of it just further cements the idea that Trump either doesn’t understand what he’s talking about, is intentionally misinforming the public, or both. Let’s start with the vetting of refugees from countries like Syria, which just happens to be some of the most intensive vetting done by the United States for refugees from any country, or by any country, for that matter. At any rate, the vetting process for these potential entrants into the U.S. is sadly better than the one, ahem, used for Republican Party presidential candidates. This leads into the discussion of theoretical safe zones in Syria. Ideally, and depending on the actual wishes of the refugees originally displaced, they would be able to return to their homeland. But right now? THERE ARE NO F**KING SAFE ZONES IN SYRIA! Certainly not with Assad in power, and not likely in the foreseeable future with all the factions currently there, not to mention the specter of jihadism in the region.
Finally, let’s talk about the idea of Persian Gulf states paying for these ill-conceived “safe” zones. These are the same countries that have refused to take in refugees, people who are fleeing violence and other unspeakable horrors in the nations of their birth. Much like Mexico ponying up for the cost of a $25+ billion wall, there is little to no chance these places are going to volunteer to throw money at the problem, and for all his talk of renegotiating bad deals, Donald Trump is unlikely to be able to convince foreign leaders or wealthy private individuals to fork over the cash. Most certainly, America would be adding to the national debt to authorize and enforce these safe zones, and by that token, would be as bad “as Barack Obama,” even though the conditions which brought about our deficit spending were in place long before he took office.
18. “Another reform involves new screening tests for all applicants that include, and this is so important, especially if you get the right people. And we will get the right people. An ideological certification to make sure that those we are admitting to our country share our values and love our people. Thank you. We’re very proud of our country. Aren’t we? Really? With all it’s going through, we’re very proud of our country. For instance, in the last five years, we’ve admitted nearly 100,000 immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan. And these two countries, according to Pew Research, a majority of residents say that the barbaric practice of honor killings against women are often or sometimes justified. That’s what they say. That’s what they say. They’re justified. Right? And we’re admitting them to our country. Applicants will be asked their views about honor killings, about respect for women and gays and minorities. Attitudes on radical Islam, which our president refuses to say, and many other topics as part of this vetting procedure. And if we have the right people doing it, believe me, very, very few will slip through the cracks. Hopefully, none.”
Ugh. This is getting tiresome. I can almost see why the media doesn’t spend more time wading through Trump’s bullshit. Almost. So you’re saying we want immigrants who “share our values.” Again, who decides this? You, a man who has advocated bringing back waterboarding and torturing the families of suspected terrorists? You, a man who has made numerous sexist remarks during this campaign alone, likened an entire country to a haven for rapists and murderers, and may or may not have expressed the belief that “laziness is a trait in blacks”? If you’re our shining example of American values, we’re in some deep doo-doo, let me tell you. Also, right, “radical Islam.” Because the fundamental problem is with their entire religion, not with those kill in the name of. If you can call jihadists radical Islamists, I submit I should be able to call those who denounce homosexuality as a sin and harass Planned Parenthood workers as radical Christians. Because if that’s what “our God” wants, then I think I need a new one.
19. “There are at least 23 countries that refuse to take their people back after they’ve been ordered to leave the United States. Including large numbers of violent criminals, they won’t take them back. So we say, OK, we’ll keep them. Not going to happen with me, not going to happen with me.”
Yeah, you and what army? Oh, right, that army. Still, are you prepared, Mr. Trump, to use force to get your way on this issue, risking American lives and sanctions from other nations at what is considered an affront to diplomacy? Because that seems to be the only way you’re going to get these countries to play ball with you—unless you really are the great negotiator you think you are.
20. “We will finally complete the biometric entry-exit visa tracking system which we need desperately. For years Congress has required biometric entry-exit visa tracking systems, but it has never been completed. The politicians are all talk, no action, never happens. Never happens.”
You know, Donald Trump is full of big ideas that cost a nice chunk of change. Probably because his other big ideas, all his life, have been paid for by other people, namely his rich daddy, creditors he has been unable to recompense, and investors he has bilked. He’s convinced Mexico will cover the cost of the wall. (They won’t.) He assumes neighboring countries in the Middle East will make generous donations to ensure safe zones are created in Syria. (They won’t.) So, when it comes to potentially including biometric data (facial, fingerprint, or iris recognition) on passports stored on radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips, once more, it will be on someone else’s tab—yours and mine. Here’s the thing about biometric passports. Not only is the chip technology used to store identifying information costly to produce, but there are security concerns with storing this data all in one place, as there is the potential to hack and exploit this info, as well as obvious concerns about civil liberties in the seeming invasiveness of these requirements. Thus, yet again, Trump is oversimplifying a complicated issue and dining on people’s fear and paranoia. Great work, Donald.
21. “We will turn off the jobs and benefits magnet. We will ensure that E-Verify is used to the fullest extent possible under existing law, and we will work with Congress to strengthen and expand its use across the country. Immigration law doesn’t exist for the purpose of keeping criminals out. It exists to protect all aspects of American life. The work site, the welfare office, the education system, and everything else.”
I’ve touched upon the notion that Donald Trump’s pointing of the finger at undocumented immigrants on the problematic domestic employment situation is a red herring because often, these immigrants are doing work that American citizens are not flocking to. As for the benefits situation, there seems to be a lot of confusion concerning what benefits undocumented immigrants are and are not permitted. Those who don’t have legal status can get compulsory public education for their children and emergency medical care, as well as potentially worker’s compensation, but numerous benefits, including food stamps, Medicaid, Social Security, state and local benefits, and welfare, are not available to non-citizens, at least in theory. Sure, there are abuses of benefits programs, but potential for fraud exists in many facets of our lives, and irrespective of legal immigration status, so while this is not to undermine the seriousness of people taking advantage of gaps in reporting false claims, let’s not overstate the severity of the problem when the occasion arises. We also shouldn’t demean the contributions made by hard-working undocumented immigrants who do contribute in the form of paid taxes—even when they can’t make use of the benefits they fund.
22. “We’re going to bring our jobs back home. And if companies want to leave Arizona and if they want to leave other states, there’s going to be a lot of trouble for them. It’s not going to be so easy. There will be consequence. Remember that. There will be consequences. They’re not going to be leaving, go to another country, make the product, sell it into the United States, and all we end up with is no taxes and total unemployment. It’s not going to happen. There will be consequences.”
You know, many states and municipalities at least try some sort of carrot-and-stick incentive to encourage American corporations to stay at home, namely tax breaks. Apparently, Donald Trump is dispensing with the carrot portion of the metaphor and just shaking the stick at Fortune 500 companies and their ilk. Is this all his warning is? Could he join rival Hillary Clinton in the call for an exit tax? Does he have other consequences in mind? Or did he make all this up on the spot and would be forced to come up with something after the fact should he become President of these United States? It’s anyone’s guess, and sadly, I don’t think Trump has any more of a clue than we do.
23. “So let’s now talk about the big picture. These 10 steps, if rigorously followed and enforced, will accomplish more in a matter of months than our politicians have accomplished on this issue in the last 50 years. It’s going to happen, folks. Because I am proudly not a politician, because I am not behold to any special interest, I’ve spent a lot of money on my campaign, I’ll tell you. I write those checks. Nobody owns Trump. I will get this done for you and for your family. We’ll do it right. You’ll be proud of our country again. We’ll do it right. We will accomplish all of the steps outlined above. And, when we do, peace and law and justice and prosperity will prevail. Crime will go down. Border crossings will plummet. Gangs will disappear. And the gangs are all over the place. And welfare use will decrease. We will have a peace dividend to spend on rebuilding America, beginning with our American inner cities. We’re going to rebuild them, for once and for all.”
You’re not a politician—except you have been one for the last year and change, and are a major-party candidate for President—so the grace period is effectively over, Mr. Trump. You say you’ve spent a lot of your money on your campaign, but you’ve been borrowing the money, as you usually do, and from yourself, no less, and there’s evidence to suggest people within your own campaign are not being compensated as they should. Furthermore, you say you will accomplish all these things, so what is your timetable? One year? Two years? The kinds of things you’re promising certainly won’t be accomplished within a single presidential term, and sound more like the boasts of a snake oil salesman than the policy plan of a legitimate presidential candidate.
24. “The result will be millions more illegal immigrants; thousands of more violent, horrible crimes; and total chaos and lawlessness. That’s what’s going to happen, as sure as you’re standing there. This election, and I believe this, is our last chance to secure the border, stop illegal immigration and reform our laws to make your life better. I really believe this is it. This is our last time. November 8. November 8. You got to get out and vote on November 8. It’s our last chance. It’s our last chance. And that includes Supreme Court justices and the Second Amendment. Remember that. So I want to remind everyone what we’re fighting for and who we are fighting for.”
Wait—what are we fighting for again? I thought we were talking about illegal immigration. Now you’re bringing in Supreme Court justices, except for the idea that Barack Obama already nominated a fine candidate in Merrick Garland—whom your buddies in the GOP kindly refused to even acknowledge and do their job by hearing—and the Second Amendment—which Hillary Clinton has said she doesn’t want to repeal, and probably couldn’t if she wanted to—but which you’re convincing people she’s coming after.
So, now that I don’t know what we are fighting for, or even who we are, now I’m curious as to who we are fighting for. Future generations? The children of undocumented immigrants? Nah, you want to deport their parents as soon as possible and probably want to reverse birthright citizenship while you’re at it. The alt-right? Other white supremacists? At the end of the day, Mr. Trump, your campaign, when all is said and done, has been about one person and one person only: yourself. You don’t give a shit about the average American. How could you? You’ve never been one, and your pretense that you’re running on behalf of the “little guy” is as nauseating as your relationship with your daughter, Ivanka. You’re a fraud, a liar, a cheat, and an all-around terrible person. I proverbially spit on your candidacy, much like anyone who actually bought one of Trump Steaks surely spit what he or she chewed back onto his or her plate. That’s what I truly think about Trump-Pence 2016.
Sweet Jesus! There’d be nacho cheese and black beans everywhere! (Image retrieved from boringpittsburgh.com.)
Donald Trump’s depiction of the future of the country, should he fail to win in his bid for the presidency, is an apocalyptic one, filled with visions of Mexicans overrunning America and general anarchy and lawlessness, like something you would see in a scene from The Purge movies. Ironically, this is what many envision will happen should Trump succeed in his bid, replete with rivers of blood and the Four Horsemen and whatnot. Regardless of who may or may not be correct in matters cataclysmic, this prediction of doom and gloom taps into the fear of a significant portion of the electorate, of which a chief subset is working-class whites. Perhaps no better symbol of a Trumpian foretelling of the United States’ downfall exists, however, than one uttered by one of his Latino supporters (yes, they do exist!). In a recent panel discussion led by Joy-Ann Reid of MSNBC, Marco Gutierrez, founder of the organization Latinos for Trump, had this to say, apropos of nothing:
“My culture is a very dominant culture, and it’s imposing and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re going to have taco trucks on every corner.”
The almost uniform response to this, on social media and in news story Comments sections, and deservedly so, was, “Um, why is this a bad thing? Tacos are delicious.” And maybe there’s a lesson in this reaction. For all the blustering about a Mexican invasion, and the fear and hate Donald Trump’s campaign has engendered, at heart, there is much more to appreciate concerning Hispanic/Latino contributions to our proud melting pot of a nation than the actions of a few bad manzanas could ever hope to spoil. This includes, yes, tacos, enchiladas, fajitas, burritos, and any other delicious confluences of tortillas, meat, cheese and/or vegetables you can think of. And the Spanish language. Es muy bueno. And plus, there are other hallmarks of cultural significance, including works of art, film, literature, music and poetry, and other genres I can’t readily think of off the top of my head. And, you know, if we believe that people are inherently good and not out to screw the rest of us over, there’s a whole lot of hard-working, law-abiding individuals to call neighbors. In this respect, I feel the vast majority of immigrants, Mexican or Muslim, legal or not, understand the American spirit better than some self-identifying “true Americans” do.
For those who support Trump in his goal of being elected to the highest office in the land, there are numerous reasons why they might favor the man of the orange complexion. Maybe they’re Republican loyalists. Maybe they hate Hillary Clinton with a passion and will vote for anyone but her. Maybe they secretly want Democrats to succeed down the road in the legislature and in the White House, and are inviting a blowing-up of the system we know to rebuild it in a better, more progressive fashion. However they justify their choice, though, they should know that they can’t separate any more meritorious reasons for backing Donald Trump—such as his business acumen or his straight talk, both of which are highly overrated—from his hateful rhetoric on immigration and his uninspired 10-point plan to save America from the “Mexi-pocalypse.” It’s an agenda built on mistruths and outright lies about immigration trends, insufficiently detailed solutions to, ahem, trumped-up problem areas, and one that undoubtedly will cost the United States tens of billions of dollars and standing in the international community, with little to no tangible reward to show for it.
While this isn’t an endorsement of Hillary Clinton, as I feel her presidency would preserve a fundamentally flawed status quo in the name of incremental progress the likes of which fewer and fewer working-class Americans can afford, at least she wouldn’t send the country on a blatantly morally-regressive path. President Trump would, though. Taco trucks on every corner? Nope, the real danger would be Humpty Trumpty looking down from atop his Mexican wall like some sort of dictatorial ruler. If that comes to pass, all of our horses and all of our men might not be able to put the country back together again.
United States of Joe 