JUNE 20, 2018


NEWS AND VIEWS


THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME THAT I’VE SEEN CLAIMS THAT BERNIE “SOLD OUT.” HE, HOWEVER, SOMETIME BEFORE THE TIME OF THE DNC, STATED TO THE PRESS THAT HE HAD PROMISED NOT TO “BE A SPOILER.” OF COURSE, SOME DIE HARD HILLARY FANS BELIEVED HE DID THAT ANYWAY, BY PUTTING UP TOO STIFF A COMPETITION AGAINST HILLARY. HE DID STOP CAMPAIGNING FOR HIMSELF AFTER THE PRIMARY, AND STUMPED FOR HILLARY GOING UP TO THE ELECTION DAY ITSELF.

I THINK IT WOULD HAVE BEEN INTERESTING IF HE HAD RUN FROM THE BEGINNING AS AN INDEPENDENT AND HAD NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH THE DEMOCRATS. IF HE HAD DONE THAT, HILLARY COULDN’T HAVE PLAYED SOME OF THE DIRTY TRICKS ON HIM THAT SHE DID. (WHEN I SAY “SHE” HERE, I AM THINKING OF HER BLOC OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.) THIS ARTICLE IS VERY INTERESTING, THOUGH, FOR THE DETAIL IT GIVES ON THE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN BERNIE AND THE PARTY. IN 2020, I WANT SANDERS TO RUN AS AN INDEPENDENT OR UNDER OUR REVOLUTION, THOUGH I DON’T THINK THAT IS A STRONG ORGANIZATION YET; AND THE NAME “REVOLUTION” THOUGH IT IS ALMOST TONGUE-IN-CHEEK IN IT’S USAGE HERE, IS A REAL TURNOFF FOR SOME AMERICANS EVEN TODAY. I THINK “PROGRESSIVE PARTY” WOULD BE BETTER. OR, LET'S ASK CHRIS HEDGES. HE IS CLEARLY A PASSIONATE PROGRESSIVE WHO HAS BEEN DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED BY SANDERS' BOWING OUT TO HILLARY. I AM, TOO, BUT HE HAD MADE A PROMISE NOT TO SPLIT OUT AND RUN AS AN INDEPENDENT. HEDGES SEEMS TO DOUBT THAT. I CAN'T PROVE IT, BUT I LOVE SANDERS' BELIEFS AND HIS ABILITY TO SPEAK THEM CLEARLY AND BEAUTIFULLY. WIN OR LOSE, HE'S MY GUY. IF THERE WERE SOMEONE ELSE COMPARABLE ON THE HORIZON, I WOULD RECONSIDER IT, MAYBE. I AGREE WITH HEDGES. WHAT WE NEED IS A NEW PARTY. THE CORPORATE INFLUENCE ON BOTH PARTIES IS WEAKENING OUR ABILITY TO BRING THE USA BACK TO A SEMI-DEMI DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/et-tu-bernie-3/
Et Tu, Bernie?
JUN 17, 2018
Chris Hedges
Columnist
Mr. Fish
Cartoonist

There are two versions of Bernie Sanders. There is the old Bernie Sanders, who mounted a quixotic campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination as a democratic socialist who refused corporate cash and excoriated corporate Democrats. And there is the new Bernie Sanders, who dutifully plays by the party’s rules, courts billionaires, refused to speak out in support of the lawsuit brought against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for rigging the primaries against him and endorses Democratic candidates who espouse the economic and political positions he once denounced.

Sanders’ metamorphosis began in December 2015 when he saw the groundswell of support for his candidacy and thought he could win the nomination. He dropped the fiery, socialist rhetoric that first characterized his campaign—he had given whole speeches on democratic socialism shortly after he announced his candidacy in May 2015. He hired establishment Democratic Party consultants such as Tad Devine, who, ironically, played a role in the creation of the superdelegates that helped fix the nomination victory of Hillary Clinton. He would spend tens of millions of the some $230 million he raised during the campaign on professional consultants. When it was clear he would lose, Sanders and his influential campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, began coordinating closely with the Clinton campaign. By May of 2016, Sanders had muted his criticisms of Clinton and surrendered to the Democratic Party machine. He has been an obedient servant of the party establishment ever since.

Sanders was always problematic. His refusal to condemn imperialism and the war industry—a condemnation central to the message of the socialist leader Eugene V. Debs—meant his socialism was stillborn. It is impossible to be a socialist without being an anti-imperialist. But at least Sanders addressed the reality of social inequality, which the Republican and Democratic establishment pretended did not exist. He returned political discourse to reality. And he restored the good name of socialism.

Weaver and Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, built a de facto alliance in the weeks leading up to the convention. As the convention was about to begin, WikiLeaks exposed the Clinton campaign’s nonaggression pact with the Sanders campaign. Many Sanders delegates, by the time they arrived in Philadelphia in July 2016 for the convention, were enraged at the theft and fraud orchestrated by the DNC. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chair and the architect of the theft, stepped down. Some DNC staff members were fired.

Sanders delegates were deluged on the eve of the convention with messages from the Sanders campaign to be respectful, not to disrupt the nominating process and to support Clinton, messages that often turned out to have been written by Clinton staffers such as Mook and then sent out under Sanders’ name. Sanders was a dutiful sheepdog, herding his disgruntled supporters into the embrace of the Democratic Party machine.

The scope of fraud in the primaries was breathtaking. Donna Brazile, who took over the DNC after Wasserman Schultz was removed, later revealed the existence of a joint fund-raising agreement among the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.

“The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Clinton would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised,” Brazile wrote. “Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.”

Sanders, although he knew by September 2016 that the process was rigged, said nothing to his supporters. He was tacitly complicit in the cover-up. It was left to one of the architects of the fraud, Brazile, to reveal the scam. But by then it was too late.

Sanders’ capitulation in the face of the overwhelming evidence of the rigging of the nomination process was political and moral cowardice. He missed his historical moment, one that should have seen him denounce a corrupt, corporate-dominated party elite and walk away to build a third-party candidacy. Sanders will never recover politically. To see the future, he has only to look at the campaign events he held on behalf of Clinton after her nomination. His crowds dwindled from thousands to a few hundred after he endorsed Clinton. Data collected by Harvard Harris Poll charted the downward spiral of his favorability ratings as he became more and more obsequious to the Democratic Party establishment. His 2020 campaign for the presidency will be a pale reflection of 2016. His “political revolution” slogan has been exposed as another empty public relations gimmick.

If we are to defy corporate power, which is vicious when it feels threatened, we need leaders with the fortitude to withstand the onslaught. Debs never sold out. He was sent to prison in 1919 and ran for president in 1920 from his prison cell. If we are not willing to pay this price we better not play the game.

“There is but one thing you have to be concerned about, and that is that you keep foursquare with the principles of the international Socialist movement,” Debs said in a June 16, 1918, speech in Canton, Ohio, that led to his being sentenced to 10 years in prison on a charge of violating the Espionage Act. “It is only when you begin to compromise that trouble begins. So far as I am concerned, it does not matter what others may say, or think, or do, as long as I am sure that I am right with myself and the cause. There are so many who seek refuge in the popular side of a great question. As a Socialist, I have long since learned how to stand alone.”

Those who support Sanders’ capitulation, including his high-priced establishment consultants, will argue that politics is about compromise and the practical. This is true. But playing politics in a system that is not democratic is about becoming part of the charade. We need to overthrow this system, not placate it. Revolution is almost always a doomed enterprise, one that succeeds only because its leaders eschew the practical and are endowed with what the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr calls “sublime madness.” Sanders lacks this sublime madness. The quality defined Debs. And for this reason Sanders is morally and temperamentally unfit to lead this fight.

“I never had much faith in leaders,” Debs said. “I am willing to be charged with almost anything, rather than to be charged with being a leader. I am suspicious of leaders, and especially of the intellectual variety. Give me the rank and file every day in the week. If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and misrepresentatives of the masses—you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.”

Heather Gautney, the author of “Crashing the Party: From the Bernie Sanders Campaign to a Progressive Movement” and an associate professor of sociology at Fordham University, has detailed the numerous ploys used by the Democratic Party establishment to deny Sanders the nomination. These tactics included the party elites’ appointment of 718 superdelegates—Democratic senators, governors and members of Congress, party officials, dozens of registered lobbyists or “shadow lobbyists” and wealthy corporate donors. More than 400 were pledged to Clinton before Sanders announced his campaign. The party also banned those who were registered as independent voters from voting in many primaries, although the taxpayers pay for the primaries. It orchestrated the theft of the vote in caucuses such as Nevada’s. And it limited the number of debates to deny exposure to Sanders. Brazile passed on the CNN debate questions in advance to the Clinton campaign.

“Over a third of under-30 voters—Sanders’s core constituency—weren’t registered to any political party,” Gautney writes in an article in The Guardian. And when they got to the polls they were turned away. In the New York primary, she notes, “between 3 and 4 million ‘unaffiliated’ voters were disenfranchised due to a statute that required changing one’s party affiliation 25 days prior to the previous general election.”

The Democratic Party in New York in the upcoming primary requires unaffiliated voters to register as Democrats 11 months before the primary, a condition that will cripple the progressive candidacy of Cynthia Nixon for governor. Sanders, bowing to the demands of the party elite, has refused to endorse Nixon’s bid against Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Gautney calls the system broken, but it works exactly as it is designed to work. The Democratic Party elites have been refining the mechanisms and exclusionary rules since the presidential election, along with purging the party of progressives, to ensure that an insurgent candidate like Sanders will never get close to the nomination. Sanders, no doubt, thinks he can overcome these obstacles by being obedient to the party hierarchy. This is a terrible miscalculation.

In state after state, as Gautney details, Sanders was systematically robbed. And he and any other insurgent can expect the same treatment in 2020. Yes, the party formed a tripartite Unity Reform Commission with representatives from the Clinton campaign and the Sanders campaign to review the rules. But the Unity Reform Commission is cosmetic. It cannot make changes to DNC rules, only recommendations, which have to be approved by the rules and bylaws committee and the DNC members. The rules and bylaws committee and the DNC are stacked with lobbyists, consultants, establishment and Clinton loyalists, and people, like Brazile, who rigged the election against Sanders. They retain control over any changes to the rules. The public has no say. There is not one Sanders supporter on the committee. The final recommendations submitted by the commission said nothing about the chief source of corruption that grips the Democratic Party—corporate and billionaire money. It didn’t mention campaign finance reform. Any attempt at reform is meaningless until corporations and billionaires stop bankrolling the party.

The Democratic Party is neither democratic nor in any real sense a political party. It is a corporate mirage. The members of its base can, at best, select preapproved candidates and act as props in a choreographed party convention. Voters have zero influence on party politics.

“I’ll never forget watching the primary votes being counted for Michigan, one of the key states that decided the 2016 election,” Gautney wrote in The Guardian. “Sanders’ ‘pledged delegate count’—which reflected the number of votes he received from rank-and-file Democrats—exceeded Clinton’s by four. But after the superdelegates cast their ballots, the roll call registered ‘Clinton 76, Sanders 67.’ ”

“In Indiana, Sanders won the vote 44 to 39, but, after the super delegates had their say, Clinton was granted 46 delegates, versus Sanders’ 44,” she wrote. “In New Hampshire, where Sanders won the vote by a gaping margin (60% to 38%) and set a record for the largest number of votes ever, the screen read ‘16 Sanders, 16 Clinton.’ ”

Sanders, who calls himself an independent, caucuses as a Democrat. The Democratic Party determines his assignments in the Senate. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who oversees Wall Street campaign donations to Democratic candidates, offered to make Sanders the head of the Senate Budget Committee if the Democrats won control of the Senate, in exchange for the Vermont senator’s support of Clinton and the hawkish, corporate neoliberal Democratic candidates running for the House and Senate. Sanders, swallowing whatever pride he has left, is now a loyal party apparatchik, squandering his legacy and his integrity. He routinely sends out appeals to raise money for party-selected candidates, including the 2016 Democratic senatorial candidates Katie McGinty in Pennsylvania, Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire, Ted Strickland in Ohio and Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada. Sanders made a blanket endorsement of every Democrat running in the 2017 election, including the worst corporate Democrats.

There was about $6 million left from the Sanders campaign, and it was used to form an organization called Our Revolution in August 2016. The organization was set up ostensibly to fund and support progressive candidates. It was soon taken over by Weaver, who ensured that it was not registered as a political action committee (PAC), a group that can give money directly to campaigns. It was set up as a 501(c)(4), a group prohibited from having direct contact with candidates and giving donations directly to candidates. The 501(c)(4) status allowed it to take and mask donations from wealthy donors such as Tom Steyer. Sanders’ decision to quietly solicit contributions from the billionaire oligarchs who funded the Hillary Clinton campaign and control the Democratic Party betrayed the core promise of his campaign. Yet, even as he created a mechanism to take money from wealthy donors he continued to write at the bottom of his emails “Paid for by Bernie Sanders, not the billionaires.”

Eight of the 13 staffers of Our Revolution resigned in protest. The organization is now adding a PAC.

Meanwhile, the DNC rules and bylaws committee has recommended a rule that any candidate in a primary be required to demonstrate he or she is a “faithful” Democrat. This loyalty test, intentionally vague, gives the DNC, which will consider the rule change in August, the power to disqualify candidates and block them from appearing on the ballot. If the party elites feel threatened, they can nuke any candidacy, including one mounted by Sanders, before it even begins.

The Democratic Party elites in an open process and without corporate backing would not be in power. They are creations of the corporate state. They are not about to permit reforms that will see themselves toppled. Yes, this tactic of fixing elections and serving corporate power may ensure a second term for Donald Trump and election of fringe candidates who pledge their loyalty to Trump, but the Democratic elites would rather sink the ship of state than give up their first-class cabins.

The Democratic Party is as much to blame for Trump as the Republicans. It is a full partner in the perpetuation of our political system of legalized bribery, along with the deindustrialization of the country, austerity programs, social inequality, mass incarceration and the assault on basic civil liberties. It deregulates Wall Street. It prosecutes the endless and futile wars that are draining the federal budget. We must mount independent political movements and form our own parties to sweep the Democratic and Republican elites aside or be complicit in cementing into place a corporate tyranny. Sanders won’t help us. He has made that clear. We must do it without him.



EUGENICS AND IMMIGRATION LAW – DIDN’T KNOW THEY WERE DIRECTLY RELATED? NEITHER DID I, BUT I HAVE KNOWN FOR YEARS THAT IN MY PARENTS’ GENERATION (1920S) THERE WAS A STRONG EUGENICS MOVEMENT WORLDWIDE, WITH STERILIZATION LAWS INCLUDING IN THE USA. MY SCIENTIFIC HERO CHARLES DARWIN WAS ACTUALLY ACTIVE IN IT. HOW DEPRESSING.

https://www.propublica.org/article/behind-the-criminal-immigration-law-eugenics-and-white-supremacy
Behind the Criminal Immigration Law: Eugenics and White Supremacy
The history of the statute that can make it a felony to illegally enter the country involves some dark corners of U.S. history.
By Ian MacDougall June 19, 8:15 p.m. EDT

PHOTOGRAPH -- Central American asylum-seekers are taken into custody near the U.S.-Mexico border in McAllen, Texas, in June. (John Moore/Getty Images)
RELATED: THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION -- The 45th President and His Administration

Amid a bipartisan backlash, President Trump has tried repeatedly to shift blame to Democrats for his own administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy, which has resulted in more than 2,300 migrant children being taken from their families along the U.S.–Mexico border. “The Democrats have to change their law — that’s their law,” Trump told reporters on Friday.

The president didn’t specify which law he was talking about. But the statute at the center of his administration’s policy is the work of Republicans — with origins dating back all the way to World War I — albeit with substantial Democratic support along the way. Known originally as the “Undesirable Aliens Act,” the statute would not exist without support from, respectively, a eugenicist and a white supremacist.

The law in question was the foundation of a memo Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued in early April that laid out the administration’s new, zero-tolerance policy. In the memo, Sessions instructed federal prosecutors in the southwestern United States to file criminal charges against any adults caught entering the country illegally. His order stripped officials of discretion over whether to place migrant families seeking asylum into civil proceedings, which allow families to stay together. (Court rulings limit how long the government can detain migrants in civil proceedings. There’s also no guarantee they’ll return for future hearing dates once they’re let out, a phenomenon that has prompted the president’s complaints about “catch and release.”)

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On Monday, ProPublica published audio recorded at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection detention facility in which a Border Patrol agent mocks the wails of migrant children as young as 4. Liberals and conservatives alike have condemned the policy, calling it “cruel,” an “atrocity,” and “inconsistent with our American values.”

Top Trump administration officials have held their ground. “We are enforcing the laws passed by Congress,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen asserted Monday. Her message echoed one Sessions had delivered to law enforcement officers in Indiana last week. “If you violate the law, you subject yourself to prosecution,” he said.

The federal law they say they are enforcing makes it a crime for foreign citizens to cross (or attempt to cross) the border into the U.S. anywhere other than an official port of entry. A first offense is a misdemeanor; a second unlawful entry is a felony.

The law’s ancestry dates back to World War I. Till that point, U.S. immigration laws had tended to be all or nothing: either no limits at all — or blanket bans for certain groups, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act. Others were free to enter provided they weren’t “lunatics,” polygamists, prostitutes, “suffering from a loathsome or a dangerous contagious disease,” or so on.

The result was floods of immigrants: Between 1901 and 1910, for example, close to 9 million came to the U.S. As that happened, anti-immigrant attitudes mounted, with mass influxes from parts of Europe associated in the popular imagination with a litany of social problems, like urban poverty and squalor.


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A reporter turned on the audio recording as Kirstjen Nielsen defended the Trump administration’s immigration policies at a White House briefing.


In May 1918, after the U.S. had entered World War I, Congress passed a statute called the Passport Act that gave the president the power to restrict the comings and goings of foreign citizens during wartime. A few months later, however, the war ended — and with it, the restrictions on border crossings.

Federal officials saw potential in the criminal provisions of the Passport Act — a maximum 20-year sentence — as a tool for deterring immigration. So prosecutors ignored the expiration of the law and continued to indict migrants under the Passport Act for unlawful entry into the U.S.

Anti-immigration sentiment continued to climb and the rhetoric of the era has resonance today. One anti-immigration group at the time claimed that immigrants tended to be “vicious and criminal” — the “bootleggers, gangsters, and racketeers of large cities.” The war, Columbia University historian Mae Ngai has written, “raised nationalism and anti-foreign sentiment to a high pitch.”

In response, Congress began clamping down. With the Immigration Act of 1924, it capped the flow at about 165,000 people a year, a small fraction of previous levels The statute’s quotas curtailed migration from southern and eastern Europe severely. Another 1924 law — the Oriental Exclusion Act — banned most immigration from Asia. At the same time, Congress made it easier to deport non-citizens for immigration violations.

In 1925, a federal appeals court put a halt to the practice of indicting migrants under the Passport Act outside wartime. But immigration officials liked what they’d seen, and by 1927, they were working on a replacement.

Two men spearheaded the effort that would lead Congress to criminalize unlawful entry into the United States. They were motivated by eugenics and white supremacy.

The first was James Davis, who was Secretary of Labor from 1921 to 1930. A Republican originally appointed by President Warren Harding, Davis was himself an immigrant from Wales who went by “Puddler Jim,” a reference to his job as a youthful worker in the steel mills of western Pennsylvania. At the time, the Department of Labor oversaw immigration, and Davis had grown disturbed by what he’d seen.

Davis was a committed eugenicist, and he believed principles of eugenics should guide immigration policy, according to The Bully Pulpit and the Melting Pot by the historian Hans Vought. It was necessary to draw a distinction, Davis had written in 1923, between “bad stock and good stock, weak blood and strong blood, sound heredity and sickly human stuff.”

PHOTOGRAPH -- James J. Davis, who was secretary of labor from 1921 to 1930 (Paul Thompson/FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

In November 1927, Davis proposed a set of immigration reforms in the pages of The New York Times. Among his goals: “the definite lessening and possibly, in time, the complete checking of the degenerate and the bearer of degenerates.” One “phase of the immigration problem,” Davis wrote, was the “surreptitious entry of aliens” into the United States in numbers that “cannot even be approximately estimated.”

Deportation alone wasn’t enough to deter illegal immigration, Davis wrote. There was nothing disincentivizing the migrant from turning around and trying again. “Endeavoring to stop this law violation” by deportation only, he wrote, “is like trying to prevent burglary with a penalty no severer than opening the front door of the burglarized residence, should the burglar be found within, escorting him to it, and saying ‘You have no right here; see that you don’t come in again.’”

An immigrant who enters the country unlawfully, he concluded, “should be treated as a law violator and punished effectively.”

To bring his vision to fruition, Davis teamed up with a senator from South Carolina. Coleman Livingston Blease, a Democrat, was “a proud and unreconstructed white supremacist,” UCLA history professor Kelly Lytle Hernández wrote in her 2017 book City of Inmates.

Migrants from Mexico were one group whose numbers the increasingly powerful nativist elements in Congress hadn’t managed to restrict. Mexican workers were key to the booming economy of the southwest. Regional employers, particularly in the agricultural sector, had successfully lobbied Congress to block any bill that would choke off their primary source of inexpensive labor. As a result, migration from Mexico soared, with many Mexicans making illegal border crossings to avoid the cost and inconvenience of customs stations.

Blease saw in Davis’s proposal for criminal penalties a way to advance his vision of a white America, and he believed it would bridge the gap between the nativists clamoring for quotas and southwestern congressmen resisting them. Large-scale farmers didn’t mind criminal penalties, Hernández writes, so long as the law was enforced once the harvest was over.

The legislation wasn’t without its opponents, as the UCLA law professor Ingrid Eagly documented in a 2010 study of immigration prosecutions. Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union opposed the bill. The ACLU felt it was unfair and unlikely to deter migration. An immigrant “may be quite ignorant of this law before he starts on his journey,” the group told Congress.

Coleman Livingston Blease (Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons)

Despite the ACLU’s objections, a Republican-controlled Congress passed Davis and Blease’s bill in 1929. A Republican president, Herbert Hoover, signed it into law.

The law made it a crime to enter the United States unlawfully and, in so doing, “created the criminalization of the border,” Eagly said.

The statute was swiftly put to use. Between July 1929 and June 1930, according to a Department of Labor report, prosecutors brought more than 6,000 unlawful entry cases. “It is believed that it will prove an effective deterrent,” the report’s author wrote. (In his recent memo, Sessions made similar claims about the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy.)

But the law didn’t reduce migration. By 1933, the Labor Department concluded that its rosy outlook had been wrong. The 1929 law “does not seem to have the deterrent effect expected,” noted a Labor Department report published that year.

It blamed budget limitations and judges wary of meting out serious sentences if a defendant was going to be deported anyway.

In the 1930s, the Great Depression achieved what prosecutions and deportations had not. Immigration plunged as the labor market in the United States dried up. Prosecutions for unlawful entry dropped to about 5,000 a year, according to a 2012 examination of the law by Doug Keller in the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal.

A shortage of labor during World War II prompted the U.S. to reverse course and encourage migration of temporary workers from Mexico through what it called the Bracero program. (The word refers to manual laborers in Spanish.)

Despite the earlier lessons, federal prosecutors began to focus their attention on bringing unlawful entry cases against Mexican migrants to deter workers from going around the Bracero program. By 1951, there were 15,000 illegal entry and re-entry prosecutions a year.

At the same time, Congress was working to overhaul American immigration law. The effort was spearheaded by two Democrats: Sen. Patrick McCarran and Rep. Francis Walter. Both were staunch anti-Communists who saw immigration — particularly from Eastern Europe and Asia — as posing a risk that Soviet or Maoist agents would infiltrate the country.

Their law is best known for preserving a quota system that meant about 85 percent of immigration visas annually went to people from northern and western Europe. But it also made a crucial change in the unlawful entry law.

In a counterintuitive move, Congress decided to reduce the penalties for unlawful entry — to a maximum of six months in prison. (It also added a felony provision for any additional illegal entry convictions.)

The change wasn’t driven by compassion or a shift away from criminalizing unlawful immigration. Rather, it anticipated the creation of federal magistrate courts that would handle the cases, according to Eagly, the UCLA law professor. A defendant facing a misdemeanor charge punishable by six months or less generally doesn’t have a right to a grand jury indictment or a jury trial. Once Congress established federal magistrate courts, prosecutors could bring criminal charges against far larger numbers of defendants.

A Democratic-controlled Congress passed the law in 1952, but it was vetoed by President Harry Truman. His veto message decried “carrying over into this year of 1952 the isolationist limitations of our 1924 law.” Congress was unmoved and overrode his veto. (In this sense, Trump is correct that Democrats bear some responsibility for the unlawful entry law that underlies his administration’s new immigration policy.)

The unlawful entry statute has remained largely unchanged since 1952. In 1968, however, Congress finally passed a law establishing federal magistrate courts, allowing for a major expansion of charges under the unlawful entry law. Without the need to go through the grand jury process or deal with potential jury trials, immigration prosecutions — almost all for unlawful entry — shot up, Eagly found in her 2010 study: from 2,536 cases nationwide in 1968 to 17,858 in 1974.

The trend culminated in programs like Operation Streamline during the George W. Bush administration, in which magistrate judges along the border took simultaneous mass guilty pleas for unlawful entry. (An appeals court ended the practice in 2009*.)

[“AN APPEALS COURT ENDED THE PRACTICE?” ONE ARTICLE IN CNN OF JUNE 18, STATES THAT THE BORDER AGENTS ARE STILL USING THE TOOL FOR PROCESSING HUMAN WIDGETS, HOWEVER A 2009 DECISION DID STOP MASS PROCESSING OF DEFENDANTS IN WHICH THE JUDGE DIDN’T EVEN SPEAK TO EACH INDIVIDUALLY. NOW HE OR SHE HAS TO ADDRESS EACH ONE. THAT MAY BE THE ONLY CHANGE, HOWEVER. SEE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Streamline]

But the number of unlawful entry cases fell, the TRAC data shows, during Trump’s first year in office, to 27,000. (It had begun to rise again in recent months, however, even before Sessions announced the administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy.) Convictions for immigration crimes now account for more than half of all federal criminal convictions.

Filed under: Immigration The Trump Administration


“THE TRUMP INSIDER'S PRIME-TIME APPEARANCE SENT THE EXACT MESSAGE THE WHITE HOUSE HAS BEEN ATTEMPTING TO COUNTER IN RECENT DAYS.” THERE ARE SOME COLD-HEARTED PEOPLE IN POLITICS, BUT THE TRUMP CREW ARE AMONG THE RUDEST AND CRUDEST. LITTLE BY LITTLE I HAVE WATCHED REPUBLICANS JOIN THE DEMOCRATS IN THEIR OPINION OF TRUMP. A REPORT TODAY SAID THAT 2/3 OF AMERICANS ARE AGAINST SPLITTING FAMILIES AT THE BORDER AS TRUMP POLICY “REQUIRES.”

THERE IS NOTHING ABOUT IT THAT IS NOT A PERSONAL CHOICE BY TRUMP. NO “LAW” MADE HIM DO THAT. AND AS FOR RACHEL MADDOW’S CRYING AT THAT NEWS REPORT, SHE HANDLES A HUGE AMOUNT OF DIFFICULT MATERIAL EVERY DAY, AND WE ARE ALL ALLOWED SOME FEELINGS. IT’S THOSE WHO HAVE NONE THAT I WORRY ABOUT. THAT’S THE PRIMARY CHARACTERISTIC OF A SOCIOPATH. EVEN IF YOU DON’T THINK THAT THIS IS A CATASTROPHE, AS I DO, YOU MUST ADMIT IT IS “DIFFICULT.”

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-pol-corey-lewandowski-20180620-story.html
NATION
'Womp womp': Trump insider Corey Lewandowski mocks story of child with Down syndrome taken from mother at border
By KYLE SWENSON
| WASHINGTON POST |
JUN 20, 2018 | 7:45 AM
| WASHINGTON

PHOTOGRAPH -- Corey Lewandowski, seen here at a Trump campaign rally in April, appeared Tuesday on Fox News Channel to discuss the president's hard-line immigration policy. (Paul Sancya / Associated Press)

As the country's blood pressure continues to rise over the separation of migrant children from their parents at the border, tempers flared Tuesday night on Fox News.

On the cable news giant's evening newscast, former senior Democratic National Committee advisor Zac Petkanas began relating an anecdote of a "10-year-old girl with Down syndrome who was taken from her mother and put in a cage." In the middle of his comments, fellow guest Corey Lewandowski cut in.

"Womp womp," President Trump's former campaign manager said, a dismissive trombone-like sound effect.

"Did you just say 'womp womp' to a 10-year-old with Down syndrome?" Petkansas shot back. "How dare you," he repeated as Lewandowski attempted to speak. "How dare you. How dare you. How absolutely dare you, sir."

The Trump insider's prime-time appearance sent the exact message the White House has been attempting to counter in recent days. Images and audio from the border, of crying children wrenched from their families by government officials, have sparked serious uproar over Trump's "zero-tolerance policy." The president has doubled down on his stance, maintaining the policy while falsely spewing blame at congressional Democrats.

The administration continues to struggle to articulate its argument for the policy, even as polls show two-thirds of Americans oppose family separation and some GOP lawmakers are breaking ranks with the president.

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Lewandowski's appearance immediately went viral. CNN's Brian Stelter called the words "dismissive, despicable" in his daily "Reliable Sources" newsletter.

"There is no low to which this coward Corey Lewandowski won't sink," former Fox News star Megyn Kelly tweeted. "This man should not be afforded a national platform to spew his hate."

Democrats also latched on to the comments.

"Democrats don't just represent progressive values, we also represent the middle & even the middle right because of how far the #GOP has shifted," Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), tweeted Tuesday night.

Swenson writes for The Washington Post.



MADDOW

THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 6/19/18
Trump cruel to migrant kids to drive immigration political wedge
Rachel Maddow points out that Donald Trump and his political allies are fomenting outrage over the cruel treatment of migrant children on purpose to boost their anti-immigrant credibility and bolster political support. Duration: 21:34


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 6/19/18
Lawsuit over family splitting policy has Trump playing word games
Dahlia Lithwick, legal correspondent and senior editor for Slate, talks with Rachel Maddow about whether U.S. courts can stop Donald Trump family separation policy and restore American dignity, and explains how an ACLU case against the Trump administration's policy explains their legal gymnastics on the issue. Duration: 8:57


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 6/19/18
Local groups work where Trump fails to reunite kids with parents
Rachel Maddow points out the failure of the Trump administration to put together a system for reuniting migrant families after Trump immigration officials forcibly take the children from their parents, and notes that small local groups are trying to pick up and do the work where the Trump administration falls short. Duration: 6:24


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 6/19/18
Parents struggle to find children ripped away by Trump policy
Jonathan Blitzer, staff writer for The New Yorker, talks with Rachel Maddow about how migrant parents are left on their own, sometimes with the help of advocacy groups to find their kids after the Trump administration took them away and put them in separate detention centers. Duration: 4:53


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 6/19/18
PA joins states withholding National Guard over Trump policy
Rachel Maddow adds Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf to the growing, bipartisan list of governors rejecting Donald Trump's request for National Guard troops at the U.S. border over his policy of separating children from their asylum-seeking parents. Duration: 1:13


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 6/18/18
Trump accelerates rate of taking migrant kids from parents
Rachel Maddow reports on the growing outrage over the Donald Trump administration's policy of forcibly removing children from their parents when they seek asylum in The United States, and notes that the rate at which children are being removed and placed in camps increased from an average of 43 last month to 67 as of this month. Duration: 19:35


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 6/18/18
How an immigrant's concern for kids drew a nation's eyes to Flint
Rachel Maddow tells the story of how first-generation immigrant Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha persisted in trying to raise the alarm about increasing levels of lead in the blood of children in Flint, Michigan until the crisis was finally taken seriously. Duration: 4:35


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 6/18/18
Doctor who sounded alarm keeps spotlight on Flint with new book
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, author of the newly released "What the Eyes Don't See," talks with Rachel Maddow about her role in exposing the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and the fact that she's a first generation immigrant from Iraq whose contributions to the United States would likely not have been realized under Donald Trump's policies. Duration: 4:20


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 6/15/18
Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort sent to jail to await trial
Rachel Maddow reads through the court transcript of Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's lawyers trying and failing to convince US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson that their client deserved to remain out of jail while waiting for his trial. Duration: 16:51


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 6/15/18
Up-hill legal battle for Manafort gets steeper from jail
Devlin Barret, national security reporter for The Washington Post, talks with Rachel Maddow about the current criminal case against Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Duration: 7:05


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 6/15/18
Children begin arriving at Trump's 'tent city' camp in Texas
Rachel Maddow reports on the first migrant children arriving at Donald Trump's tent city detention camp after they were forcibly taken away from their parents as they sought asylum in the United States. Duration: 3:16


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 6/14/18
DoJ IG report lesson: GOP bullying of law enforcement works
Rachel Maddow reports on the findings of the Department of Justice inspector general report on the FBI's handling of the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation and notes that the unequal treatment James Comey gave to Clinton was the result of Republican attacks on law enforcement that made Comey more concerned about giving the impression of favoring Clinton. Duration: 20:40


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 6/14/18
GOP keeps pressure on DoJ in effort to sink Trump Russia probe
Rep. Adam Schiff talks with Rachel Maddow about the DoJ IG report and the Republican strategy of hectoring the Department of Justice in order to get special treatment and more favorable outcomes. Duration: 5:29


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 6/14/18
Corrupt 'foundation' catches up with Trump in new NYAG lawsuit
Rachel Maddow reminds viewers of Donald Trump's shady and opaque "Trump Foundation" charity and reports on a new lawsuit from the attorney general of New York who argues that the Trump Foundation wasn't just sketchy, it was illegal. Duration: 6:43