Jan 9th, 2019 11:34 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Yes, Trump really did say he has “ordered FEMA to send no more money” – not will order but has ordered.
Whether the president even has the authority to rescind FEMA funding that has already been approved remains unclear. Guidelines for the way federal dollars flow after the president declares a national disaster, [as] he did after devastating wildfires in California this year, are outlined in the Stafford Act, said Rafael Lemaitre, the former director of public affairs for FEMA under the Obama administration.
“I’m not aware of any mechanism where you can say, ‘I’m undeclaring a state of disaster,” Lemaitre said.
Or, probably, of any president who would want to, until now.
Individual assistance dollars help victims find temporary
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Tags: President Evil, Trump
Jan 9th, 2019 10:52 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Oh my god.
CBS Los Angeles reports:
President Donald Trump Wednesday announced that he has ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency to stop sending wildfire relief money to California.
In an early morning tweet, Mr. Trump blamed the state’s forest management for its recent slew of historically-large wildfires which have leveled entire communities up and down the state.
“Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forrest (sic) fires that, with proper Forrest (sic) Management, would never happen,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!”
I’m knocked breathless.
He has GOT to … Read the rest
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Tags: President Evil, Trump
Jan 9th, 2019 10:27 am |
By Ophelia Benson
I neither watched nor listened. I’m not a masochist.
Let us read.
My fellow Americans: Tonight, I am speaking to you because there is a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border.
Every day, Customs and Border Patrol agents encounter thousands of illegal immigrants trying to enter our country. We are out of space to hold them, and we have no way to promptly return them back home to their country.
Big lie right there. Many or most of them are not “illegal immigrants” but asylum seekers. It is fully legal and a human right to seek asylum. Trump doesn’t like that, but Trump’s dislike doesn’t make something not true.
Over the years, thousands of Americans have
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Jan 8th, 2019 4:03 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Ed Pilkington at the Guardian reports a very bad thing:
The Trump administration has stopped cooperating with UN investigators over potential human rights violations occurring inside America, in a move that delivers a major blow to vulnerable US communities and sends a dangerous signal to authoritarian regimes around the world.
Quietly and unnoticed, the state department has ceased to respond to official complaints from UN special rapporteurs, the network of independent experts who act as global watchdogs on fundamental issues such as poverty, migration, freedom of expression and justice. There has been no response to any such formal query since 7 May 2018, with at least 13 requests going unanswered.
Nor has the Trump administration extended any invitation
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Jan 8th, 2019 11:11 am |
By Ophelia Benson
James Gheerbrant wrote a profile of a trans woman, Sandra Forgues, which is getting some attention on Twitter, not all of it warmly complimentary.
Beneath the surface, she was fighting currents unseen. The face that periodically appeared in local newspaper articles, the name proudly emblazoned on lacquered clubhouse boards, were pieces of an identity that did not match the self she felt deep in her soul.
“At the core of my being, I have always felt like a woman,” she says. “I have a woman’s mind, but I did not have the body of a woman.”
I have to wonder if anyone would feel like that in a world where sex differences were not so exaggerated and value-laden and … Read the rest
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Jan 8th, 2019 9:48 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Huh, guess who is “required” to work without pay during the government shutdown. (I put scare quotes on “required” because that’s slavery and as Katha Pollitt pointed out on Twitter the other day, slavery is a violation of the 13th Amendment.) The Secret Service, that’s who.
Secret Service agents are growing increasingly anxious and angry about the shutdown, according to several current and former agents. The Secret Service protects 42 people associated with the Trump White House, 11 more than were given details during the Obama administration. In August 2017, the agency’s new director, Randolph D. Alles, told an interviewer that the sprawling Trump entourage was putting unprecedented strains on his agents, in terms of staffing and budgeting.
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Jan 8th, 2019 8:57 am |
By Ophelia Benson
The damn fools at the major US tv networks have agreed to air Trump’s stupid EMERGENCY DANGER DANGER LOOK OUT speech.
Mr. Trump’s request that the major networks broadcast his speech live set off a day of tense deliberations at ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox. By Monday evening, they had all agreed to broadcast the president’s address live at 9 p.m. Eastern. Cable news channels, including CNN and Fox News, will also carry the speech.
Some journalists worry that handing Mr. Trump a chunk of network prime time could allow the president to assert falsehoods to tens of millions of viewers. But several network producers said privately on Monday that they were uncomfortable turning down the president amid a
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Tags: Trump
Jan 7th, 2019 4:16 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Can Trump give himself emergency powers if there’s no emergency?
“We are looking at it very strongly,” Trump told reporters on Sunday. “We’re looking at a national emergency, because we have a national emergency.”
How do you look at something “very strongly”? He can’t even word, and he wants emergency powers.
Also, we don’t have a national emergency of the kind he means. We have a national emergency that Trump is president.
Congress could reject the president’s emergency declaration with a vote in both the House and Senate. But the Republican-controlled Senate seems unlikely to take that step. Instead, critics would very likely pursue a legal challenge.
“I think the president would be wide open to a court challenge saying,
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Tags: Trump
Jan 7th, 2019 12:10 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Jacob Mchangama and Sarah McLaughlin at Foreign Policy also argue that Europe is going backward on free speech and free thought.
But despite the unanimous rhetorical support for free speech after Charlie Hebdo, blasphemy bans have become more firmly anchored in some parts of the continent in recent years. In a recent case, the European Court of Human Rights even reaffirmed that European human rights law recognizes a right not to have one’s religious feelings hurt. The court based its decision on the deeply flawed assumption that religious peace and tolerance may require the policing rather than the protection of “gratuitously offensive” speech. Accordingly, it found that Austria had not violated freedom of expression by convicting a
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Jan 7th, 2019 11:33 am |
By Ophelia Benson
France24 tells us the Charlie Hebdo people say things have only gotten worse.
Charlie Hebdo’s commemorative cover this week depicts both a Catholic bishop and a Muslim imam blowing out a candle flame that represents the light of reason. The headline bemoans a French society it says has become anti-enlightenment (“anti-lumières“).
In an interview with AFP, Charlie Hebdo’s editor-in-chief Riss, who was the artist behind the cover drawing, said public attitudes had only grown less tolerant since the attacks.
Not only has the tragedy faded from memory but so has the social significance of the event, he said.
“One gets the impression that we have turned our backs to it, so in our opinion the antiquated attitudes are
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Tags: Charlie Hebdo
Jan 7th, 2019 11:08 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Now Trump wants to take over the airwaves to tell us lies.
President Trump wants to address the nation about the government shutdown on Tuesday night, and later in the week plans to travel to the southern border as part of his effort to persuade Americans of the need for a border wall — the sticking point in negotiations with Democrats who are eager to reopen shuttered agencies.
The White House did not immediately respond to questions about a request to television networks to carve out time for an Oval Office address. A person familiar with the request said the White House had asked to interrupt prime time programming on Tuesday.
So that he can lie to us about … Read the rest
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Jan 7th, 2019 9:25 am |
By Ophelia Benson
It looks as if Thailand is not going to hand Rahaf Alqunun over to her father after all.
Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun, 18, will be taken to a safe location in Bangkok, a hotel where U.N. staff members will interview her and process her status determination in coming days. She originally was set to be deported back to Kuwait, where her family was waiting for her.
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Thai authorities had detained her at an airport hotel in Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport since Saturday night and had initially planned to send her back to Kuwait on a flight departing at 11:15 a.m. local time Monday. Alqunun, however, barricaded herself in her room and demanded to meet with the U.N. refugee agency, missing the
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